EU Exit Negotiations

David Jones Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that when she meets her EU counterparts later this week, she will tell them that although we are a patient people, our patience is not inexhaustible, and that if it continues to maintain its present negotiating stance of seeking to divide the United Kingdom internally, we will have to assume that it is not serious about achieving a negotiated settlement and therefore be obliged to prepare for no deal?

[The Prime Minister]

We are all operating to a timetable—we will leave the European Union on 29 March next year—and we are clear that to get legislation through the House, we must follow a timetable and the negotiations need to end to match that timetable. I have said—I am very clear; the Government are very clear—that we cannot accept Northern Ireland effectively being divided from the rest of the UK.