Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has dismissed speculation that the government is looking to shake-up its post-Brexit relationship with the EU, saying that ministers are not looking to implement any major changes.
A report had emerged in The Sunday Times suggesting that ministers were pursuing changes which would see fewer barriers to trade and allow for more migration, akin to the relationship that non-EU member state Switzerland has with the bloc.
Switzerland’s deal with the EU gives it access to the single market for most of its industry sectors and sees it contribute to the EU budget and be subject to freedom of movement.
The report was met with backlash by senior Conservatives who supported Brexit, including former cabinet minister Simon Clarke and Lord Frost, who himself negotiated the existing deal.
However, Jenrick has distanced himself and the government from the idea that the existing Brexit deal could be changed, explaining that ministers preferred to improve trading links and co-operate more closely on problems around security and illegal migration under the established framework.
He added that the deal as it stood enabled the UK to control its own borders and “pursue the opportunities” that Brexit offered, including shaking up regulation in the financial services industry, new plans for the life sciences and building a green economy for a net-zero future.
Jenrick added that a key element of Brexit was to enable the UK to distance itself from freedom of movement and having to pay into the EU budget, as well as removing any influence that European judges had in Britain’s legal sphere.
The UK chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said last week that it would “take time” for the country to make trade with Europe, but that there was obvious benefit to economic growth from free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s independent forecast published alongside Hunt’s Autumn Statement suggested that the impact of Brexit on UK trade has been “adverse”, but Jenrick insisted that the situation had to be examined in the context of current affairs.
The immigration minister said that the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic disruption caused by the conflict in Ukraine made it difficult to quantify the impact that can be attributed solely to Brexit, and that it was not possible to gauge now whether the UK would be better or worse off in the long-term for having withdrawn from the EU.
