UK/EU Future Economic Partnership

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very clear about the important role that the life sciences industry plays in the United Kingdom, and I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done with it here in the United Kingdom. We wish to explore the possibility of some form of associate membership of those agencies. That is in the interests not just of the UK but of people across the EU, in terms of getting medicines to market more quickly.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

The European Union has published the draft text of its legal stance of its negotiating position. The Prime Minister makes a speech, which does give more detail, but is still full of ambiguity. When will she publish the legal text of her negotiating stance?

[The Prime Minister]

I did try to explain this to the Leader of the Opposition, but I will have another go. The legal text that was published by the European Commission is not a legal text on its negotiations for the future economic or security partnership; it is a legal text on withdrawal agreement. We are working on that with the Commission, but what I have done is set out, from the United Kingdom’s point of view, what we want to see from our future economic partnership, just as I set out our future security partnership in Munich a few weeks ago. We now wait for the response from the European Union to our putting out our proposals before they have put out theirs.