Chris Ward

I am afraid I will not; I am so sorry. That first stage includes a new security and defence partnership because, as the Prime Minister said in Munich, there is no British security without Europe and no European security without Britain. As mentioned, it also includes an SPS agreement which will—my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) made this point powerfully—make a huge difference to farmers and food producers. We are also in the process of negotiating access to the EU’s internal electricity market, which will cut bills for businesses and consumers. We are negotiating the youth experience scheme, which a number of Members mentioned and which I strongly support and called for. I am also delighted that we have negotiated—quite quickly, I think—to rejoin the Erasmus+ scheme, which will benefit more than 100,000 young people. We will legislate for that shortly. We aim for the agreements to be in play by the first half of 2027. The progress we have made in the last 18 months is the basis of the closer relationship that the Prime Minister had in his mind’s eye when we discussed this back in his garden some 10 years ago. To be clear—I say this proudly and confidently—this is just the start of a new relationship with the EU under this Government. We are no longer, as the Prime Minister said in Munich, the Britain of the Brexit years. We want a closer relationship with the EU and we want deeper integration. We were elected with a mandate to do precisely that and we will deliver it. In line with our manifesto, that will be outside the single market and the customs union and without freedom of movement. We will not try to relitigate the referendum result, but we will repair the unnecessary national self harm of the deals negotiated in the last decade, and we will align with the single market where it is in our national interest and our sovereign right to do so. We will deliver a partnership with the EU, based on common economic and cultural interests and in the national interest, and turn the page on the last decade of failure.