Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what his policy is on seeking a UK-Mercosur free trade agreement.

Mercosur countries are important partners for the UK and I am personally committed to strengthening our bilateral trading relationships to remove barriers to trade and help grow UK exports. I recently visited Brazil, where I signed agreements on customs, regulatory reform and export credit and pushed Brazil to complete the Double Taxation Agreement; and Argentina to further UK interests on whisky, financial services and air services.

The UK is not currently negotiating a Free Trade Agreement with Mercosur. Any decision to seek to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement with Mercosur would be communicated to the House in the usual way.