UK/EU Future Economic Partnership

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is very discourteous behaviour. Let us hear from another well-behaved individual. Ah, yes: Jeremy Lefroy.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I am not sure that my family would say that.

May I thank my right hon. Friend for two things in particular? The first is her absolute upholding of the United Kingdom—our United Kingdom—and our internal trade within our United Kingdom. The second is her point about the frictionless border. In my area of the west midlands, that is incredibly important. We are manufacturing exporters, and we rely on “just in time” deliveries to enable us to export our fine products around the world.

[The Prime Minister]

The point about the importance of the integrated supply chains that we now see across the UK and the rest of the European Union has been made to me, and to others in the Government, by businesses. That is precisely why I said what I did in my speech about regulatory standards. Many businesses have made it clear that, to maintain those supply chains, they need to be able to operate on the basis of the same regulatory standards. That is why we want to have that frictionless border, and why we have made proposals to do just that.