UK Plans for Leaving the EU

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I echo the comments that my right hon. Friend has made. That is exactly what we found in our dealings with the American Government. We have a working group on issues relating to trade working with the American Government. The exact arrangements during the implementation period will be a matter for the negotiations, but we are clear that during the implementation period it should be possible for us to continue to negotiate trade agreements. We would not enter into anything that was contrary to the agreement we had come to with the European Union.

[Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has been asked several times about implementation of transition and has not made any sense at all in the answers she has given. She has said today that she foresees a framework for transition of around two years along the existing structure of EU rules and regulations. The existing structure has the single market and customs union at its heart. How can what she is proposing for her implementation period be anything other than continued membership of the customs union and the single market, which our companies require?

[The Prime Minister]

I thought that I had explained this in response to one of the hon. Gentleman’s hon. Friends. As of 29 March 2019, we leave the European Union. That means we leave full membership of the customs union and full membership of the single market. We will, as part of that—this is our proposal to the EU—have negotiated an implementation period to take us in a smooth and orderly process, so that the practical changes can be made towards the end agreement with the European Union. How long that needs to last will depend significantly on the nature of that agreement and how different it is from the current arrangements, but during that period what we are proposing is that it is in the interests of individuals and businesses on all sides to be able to continue to operate on the same basis as they do today. That would be part of the withdrawal agreement that we propose to negotiate with the European Union, so that negotiation would be about the basis on which we operate during the implementation period.