Speeches by Reynolds.

“I would push back very strongly on what you have said there. The measures in the Employment Rights Bill are measures that have been in the public domain and have been put forward by the Labour party for many years now. The Employment Rights Bill is not the totality of those packages. They are not all employment rights …”

“The aggregate impact of all aspects of Government policy is something that we not only consider within DBT, but champion within the collective write-round process by which decisions are made. Often another Government Department will be proposing something, and I see it as the duty and the role of DBT to be able to put …”

“I am always in the market for ideas that I can steal from countries that are doing a good job. There are parts of our industrial strategy where, to be honest, I have been inspired by the Choose France strategy, which has been fairly successful when it comes to making a practical difference to exports. We are always int…”

“It is important for me to say that the specific negotiations around the EU reset sit with the Cabinet Office, as it is more than just a trade question: it relates to security and some other aspects that are fundamental to the relationship between the UK and the EU. We have a set of aspirations that, again, are mostly i…”

“It is also very important to say that the chief trade negotiator does not negotiate the trade deals. Each trade deal has a specific person allocated. It would be quite a remorselessly hard job, to be honest, if you just had to cover them all in that way.”

“I would not portray them as little niggles. For instance, the fact that we still have the same food and agricultural standards or SPS standards as the European Union, yet we have a whole range of bureaucracy that now stands in the way of smooth and easily facilitated trading, is quite a substantial thing that could be …”

“I am familiar with the Swedish board of trade. It operates within a very different remit, historically, from how we have operated in the UK. I want to change the Board of Trade. I want it to be a set of people who can have that ambassadorial role to UK business and bring with them expertise, knowledge of the markets an…”

“You are right to highlight the obvious potential problem of a carbon border, essentially, between us and the European Union. The commitment that the Government have inherited and have renewed to a UK carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is technically a tax policy under our system rather than a trade one, would po…”

“Let us take the first bit of the question first. You are right to say that this is the big question facing global trading relationships. There has been a great deal of interest, as there always is, in the US presidential election, where it is fair to say that trade conversations about tariffs and the role of the US in …”

“The second part of that sentence is that we would all recognise the challenges as to why such an agreement does not exist either between the EU and the US or between us and the US, particularly around areas like agriculture, where there would be a pretty profound conversation to have in the UK if we were willing to cha…”

“I would not do it as a percentage of our GDP growth. It would perhaps be more useful to look not at the long-term impact on our growth, but at the position that we would otherwise be in were it not for tariffs. There is a negative impact from that. The key question alongside that is what degree, if any, of retaliation …”

“It would be reasonable for the Committee to start from the premise that every potential outcome of the US presidential election has been prepared for.”

“Any impact expressed as a percentage of UK GDP is not insignificant when you are a G7 economy. You also have to bear in mind that the long-run position in itself, or the figure there, disguises what can be a disproportionate impact on certain parts of the country or certain sectors, and that the short-term period of di…”

“Again, I would not want to speculate, but the Committee should assume that all eventualities have been prepared for.”

“Those are always the options in any trade dispute. A key question for any European country is to what degree any conversation about tariffs would be as part of a negotiation around closer trading relationships, rather than necessarily a standing item of policy. If you follow the intellectual basis for some of these dis…”

“Again, given how sensitive this is, there is a level of discretion that is required in answering, but the relationship between the UK and the US on a country-to-country basis of trade, security and intelligence co-operation is clearly a very strong one. There are areas where I absolutely believe we could see a really p…”

“In recent history, we have had some disputes. If you think about the steel tariffs that we had imposed on the UK, that report covers some of the measures comparable in the past. Again, you would expect this Department to prepare for every eventuality, but we should just be a little bit sensitive at this stage about spe…”

“We are all aware of the questions that have come up in the past, but at this stage, why would we limit our ambitions or conversations before any offer has been made to us or any negotiation has begun? In areas such as agriculture, which is a particularly good example, history tells us that we have very different system…”

“I do not see the need at this stage to rule anything out or in, but we need to be realistic about where our national interest lies and frank with the Committee about the fact that any negotiation in any major principal market that we might do has to be considered not in isolation, but in terms of its relationship to ot…”

“Mr Reynolds, it is nice to see you. I wondered, just after the election, why I was receiving correspondence about Maidenhead, and you probably had a bit about Stalybridge and Hyde, I imagine. You highlight in that question the kinds of issues that have been in the public domain in the past, when conversations have occu…”