Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of the UK leaving the EU (i) with and (ii) without a deal on the UK’s ability to receive gas and electricity flows from French interconnectors.

The UK does not have a gas interconnector to France so there will be no impact on gas flows.

In the event that the UK leaves the EU with a deal, the arrangements that govern electricity trading with France will be a matter for negotiations.

In the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal, we do not expect there to be any fundamental barriers to the UK’s ability to receive electricity flows from France. Alternative new rules setting out trading arrangements in the event of a ‘no deal’ have been developed by interconnection operators and were approved by national regulators on 15 March 2019.