‘War Cabinet’ agrees vision on trade deals after Brexit (but Tusk says it’s pure illusion)

The Cabinet Brexit sub-committee agreed on a policy which will see Britain matching EU rules in some industries but having “the right to diverge” from them in others, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt revealed.

Mr Hunt, who did not attend Thursday’s meeting of the Brexit “war cabinet”, said he had been told it was “a very positive discussion and we have made good progress”.

He went on: “You have divergent views on a big issue like Brexit as you would expect, but the central common understanding is that there will be areas and sectors of industry where we agree to align our regulations with European regulations.

“The automotive industry is perhaps an obvious example because of supply chains that are integrated.

“But it will be on a voluntary basis, we will as a sovereign power have the right to choose to diverge.

“We won’t accept changes in rules because the EU unilaterally chooses to make those changes.”

Mr Hunt also made it clear that calls to remain in the EU Customs Union had been rejected.

“If we were a part of the Customs Union we wouldn’t be able to negotiate trade deals independently with other countries and we wouldn’t have full sovereign control destiny as a nation,” he said.

“What we want is frictionless trade and we want to find a different way – Customs Union is one way of getting frictionless trade but it’s not the only way. We want to achieve frictionless trade by agreement between two sovereign bodies, the United Kingdom and the EU.”

It is understood that Remainers of our in the Cabinet led by Chancellor Philip Hammond had hoped to get the Government to agree to stick to EU rules to make a free trade deal with the bloc easier.

In the weeks before the meeting, civil servants appeared to intervene with the leak of a now discredited impact assessment which suggested Britain would be better off staying in the Customs Union and Single Market. It was later revealed that the assessment had been reached after the wrong data had been used.

The Government’s new position is a move away from the divorce agreement which had suggested Britain may shadow EU regulations to solve the problem of the open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, which will remain in the EU after Brexit. Mrs May has recently shown support for an alternative plan for using digital technology to avoid border controls.

Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of backbench Tory Eurosceptics, warned Theresa May against allowing EU citizens arriving in Britain during the transition period to remain in the country under current free movement rules.