Speeches by Bryant.

“I have two things that run through my mind. I am not doing most of the negotiation in relation to the United States of America—most of those conversations have been had by the Secretary of State or by our chief negotiator working under Kate’s team or with Varun Chandra—but I think it is exactly the same as any other di…”

“The draft that was published was, I think, not the version that was anticipated in December, and the draft that was anticipated in December would have excluded us from everything. That is why, notwithstanding the very significant concerns we have about the automotive sector, I was pleased last week to see the version t…”

“No, I do not accept that. That is certainly not the view when I have spoken to my German counterpart, my—I could go through a list, and I am quite happy to provide the list if that is something that is useful to you, of other countries that we have spoken to.”

“I might have to write to you, because although I read it all last week, it is not at the top of my mind. When I met with SMMT on Wednesday or Thursday—whichever day it was—the key point it was making to me was about access to fleet sales.”

“I am very happy to. I am going to Brussels on Monday, I am going to Paris on Tuesday, and I think on Wednesday I am going to the Netherlands, as well, to meet members of the new Government there.”

“Some of them are inevitable areas in which there might be red lines on either side of the conversation. The classic instance, which has been referred to many, many times in the public domain, is what tends to be characterised as hormonal beef and chlorinated chicken and so on. We have made it absolutely clear from the …”

“I am told there are others making a different argument, and I am visiting Paris on Tuesday.”

“Okay.”

“Yes, from the conversations that I have had with my counterparts. I think I am going to have to persuade them for 10 minutes and then they start with it; they say it before I do, because it is as damaging for them as it is for us. How many cars are made just in one country—the final thing? Hardly any, if any.”

“That is why I am very hopeful that we will win this argument.”

“If we have anything different from DSIT, we will let the Committee know.”

“I think the most important part of the argument is that this does damage to an awful lot of European businesses. That is the most important thing. I have said this repeatedly, and this is the argument that the Swedes made very convincingly just after the Secretary of State’s visit; there was an article in the FT by the…”

“I do not think that it is going to get worse in the sense of the cataclysmic version that you laid out there, but I will go through the individual issues. Let me start with the Accelerator Act. This is a draft; it’s a first draft. You know the processes through the European Union. We had been engaging with the European…”

“We are not minimising it. Obviously, at some point we would want to make sure there are amendments to the Act before it ends up finally going through its trilogy of processes.”

“I certainly have not been to one. Kate?”

“It is all third-party—”

“Government procurement agreement, sorry. That element is helpful, and I was pleased to see the version that got published, but in relation to automotives, we are in a more difficult position. I am determined to win this. Since we have left the European Union, I think sometimes the UK has thought that a negotiation with…”

“If you had asked me before Christmas about where I thought Made in Europe was going to end up, I was very worried that we would be in a much worse place than we are now. For instance, the element that refers to the general procurement agreement—”

“It is certainly true that we have discussions. I myself have not seen those two things connected, and I do not think that we have, but Kate will answer in a moment. It is certainly true that one of the things that the US has regularly said, in Senate hearings and so on, is that it wants us to dismantle some of what it …”

“I am not saying that we are making contributions to the cohesion funds, just to be clear. I am saying that when we join, for instance, Erasmus+, if there are administrative costs, we would be sharing part of that cost.”