EU Exit: Negotiations and the Joint Committee

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the credit should go to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade. She has not just concluded a free trade agreement with Japan, but has made progress on free trade agreements with Australia, on our accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and on other opportunities for businesses, including those in Stockton South, for which he is such a brilliant advocate.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I have been listening patiently for the past hour and I am still not certain whether we are heading for a no-deal Brexit or for a deal Brexit. Business always says that it wants certainty. What certainty can the right hon. Gentleman offer business at this very late stage now for 1 January 2021?

[Michael Gove]

The certainty that I can offer is that we will be out of the customs union and out of the single market, and that as a result we will be able to take our place as an independent free trading nation. Businesses in Bath and elsewhere know what it is that they need to do. That is certainty. It is very different from the proposition that the Liberal Democrats put forward at the last general election, which was a second referendum or a third referendum—I have no idea how many referendums the Liberal Democrats wanted. One thing I do know is that they returned fewer than a dozen MPs, which shows what the country thought of that.