Oral Answers to Questions

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I respect the right of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly to debate whatever they want to debate, but the UK referendum to leave the EU needs to be delivered on by this UK Parliament.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

7. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for International Trade on the potential effect of the proposed withdrawal agreement on the UK’s ability to trade with the US.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

DExEU Ministers and officials, as the House probably knows, engage regularly with the Department for International Trade on EU exit and trade matters. Our officials also jointly attend the US-UK trade and investment working group, which has met five times already. As the withdrawal agreement states, we will be free to negotiate, sign and ratify free trade agreements during the implementation period, and we will be able to bring them into force after that implementation period is complete.

[Mr Sharma]

Is President Trump wrong when he says that the withdrawal agreement is a good deal for the EU but a bad deal for Britain?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

President Trump can justify his remarks for himself, but the US ambassador, Mr Woody Johnson, recently said:

“Britain is the perfect trading partner for the United States”.

That relationship is already the strongest we have—the United States is our single biggest trading partner, accounting for 20% of our trade—and there is no reason to suggest that that would be in any way jeopardised by the deal.