EU Free Trade Agreements

Greg Hands Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

That was a pretty long shopping list, and I am not in a position to answer all the hon. Gentleman’s questions, but I will make one point. I told him in Committee back in November that there was a wide range of reasons why some of these agreements had been challenging in many instances. For example, there have been changing incentives. If this House cannot make up its mind on what Brexit looks like, it will obviously be difficult for some of our interlocutors to decide whether we will be leaving the EU on 29 March. That said, a responsible Government make plans for any eventuality, and we are working extremely hard to make sure that the 40 agreements we have in place are available to those companies that use the preferences they guarantee.

I told the hon. Gentleman earlier that I believed the majority of these agreements would be in place by 29 March, and I continue to believe that, but it would not be appropriate to go into further details on an individual country basis, because these conversations are necessarily confidential, and our partners wish them to be confidential. To go into them, therefore, would not be proper. I am very happy to tell the House, however, that I believe we will have the majority of agreements rolled over, and it is absolutely our objective to have them all rolled over.

Finally, one small detail worth clearing up—it has been a matter of some press speculation—is that the Swiss agreement does not include any provisions on free movement.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

It has always been very likely that the counterparties to these deals would want to keep them operable, as it is in their interests to do so, but may I highlight the stinking hypocrisy of the Labour party on this? It voted against adopting many of these deals in the first place—it voted against adopting the comprehensive economic and trade agreement in February 2017 and against adopting the EU-Singapore agreement in September 2018—and now Labour Members complain that the deals will no longer be operable next month. Does my hon. Friend agree that this shows the Labour party at its absolute worst on Brexit, with its members unable to agree among themselves, and unable to do what is in the UK national interest?

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister at least pays obeisance to, and I think has genuine respect for, etiquette, protocol and the principle of parliamentary courtesy, so it would not occur to him for a moment to descend into the swamp, disregard his ministerial responsibility to the House, and start prating on about the policy of the Opposition, but let us put it to the test and hear from the Minister.