Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

As I noted earlier, we have regular dialogues with the Indian and Pakistani Governments. I reiterate that, at the end of the day, it is up to the two countries to come together and to work on the pace of bilateral relations.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is not just the Foreign Secretary’s bank manager who will miss his many newspaper columns. Like the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), I read the one he wrote in The Daily Telegraph on 26 June in which he said that the only change that Brexit would make to our country would be that we would extricate ourselves from EU laws. Can the Foreign Secretary assure us today that he has not changed his mind again, and that he still believes that it is in our country’s interests to remain within the single market?

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her question. I can tell her that my view remains absolutely crystal clear—adamantine—that we will be better off extricating ourselves from the toils of the EU legal system. As the Prime Minister rightly said, we are going to leave the penumbra of European legislation and that is the right thing to do for this country. We will go forward with a fantastic free trade deal in goods and services that will be good for this country and good for the EU.