Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what progress he has made on negotiations to roll-over each EU-negotiated free trade agreement.

Discussions with all partner countries have demonstrated a commitment to finding a pragmatic way to ensure continuity of our existing international agreements. Alongside the Withdrawal Agreement, the EU agreed to notify its treaty partners that the UK be treated as a Member State for the purposes of EU international agreements during the Implementation Period (IP). This includes trade agreements. A number of countries have already publicly welcomed this approach (Library deposit of 13 September DEP2018-0926 provides a list of countries).

Nevertheless, to ensure preparedness for a ‘no deal’ scenario, we have already signed a number of agreements.

The Government recently updated the House on our progress to achieve continuity of our existing free trade agreements, and I refer the honourable member to the Government’s written statement published on 21^st February 2019. We will continue to inform the House as soon as further agreements are signed.