Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘A deal will give us the best Brexit’
PRIME Minister Theresa May can achieve an improved Brexit deal from talks with EU leaders to avoid a no-deal withdrawal, insists Energy Minister Claire Perry.
The Devizes MP was speaking after persuading the PM to hold a vote on a no-deal Brexit if her revised withdrawal agreement proposal fails to win favour from MPs on March 12.
That open letter, co-written with two other Conservative MPs and published in a national newspaper, has drawn criticism from fellow Wiltshire MP James Gray, who said she should have been sacked for it.
But on a visit to the workshop of luxury kitchen manufacturers Smallbone in Devizes, she said: “I respect other people’s views and people look at things and interpret them differently, but as a business minister I talk to businesses day in day out. I see the opportunities there from a good deal, I see the challenges.
“Of course we can survive a nodeal but I didn’t come into politics to create a situation where we survive; I came into politics to try and improve what we do. It is my judgment based on all the evidence on the businesses I speak to every day that a deal will be the thing which gives us the best possible Brexit.”
She added: “What I don’t want is a no deal because I think that would be extremely difficult for the economy and we don’t have to inflict that economic hit in order to exit the EU. We want to get out, we can improve the deal, hopefully we’ll get support for it and get on with other important things.”
Together with MPs Margot James and Richard Harrington, Ms Perry had threatened to resign if there was a no-deal Brexit. She said she was prepared to vote with rebel MPs in an attempt to force the PM to delay Brexit in the event of a no deal.
In his weekly letter to North Wiltshire constituents, Mr Gray said: “A gang of ministers had threatened their resignations this week, and a trio of junior ministers – one of them very local to here – had penned an article in the Daily Mail disagreeing with Government policy on the matter, in an astonishing breach of ministerial collective responsibility. In any normal times, that would without doubt have resulted in their immediate sacking.”
At the Smallbone workshop in Devizes, Ms Perry presented awards to three apprentices who had finished courses at the company.
She praised their efforts and said the firm, which was rescued in a buy-out from American Gary Barnett last year, was making the town proud with its exports around the world.
I came into politics to try and improve
what we do MP CLAIRE PERRY