AFP, London :
Britain warned Sunday it might undercut the EU economically if it cannot obtain both single market access and immigration controls, as Prime Minister Theresa May prepared her big Brexit strategy speech.
Britain would be forced to “change our economic model” in order to remain competitive if it is shut out from access to the single market, finance minister Philip Hammond said.
His intervention came as newspapers said May was planning a clean divorce from the European Union when she sets out her Brexit strategy in a major speech on Tuesday.
May aims to launch two years of EU departure negotiations when she triggers the Article 50 exit process by the end of March, although a legal challenge is still pending before the country’s Supreme Court.
She has been under pressure to reveal her proposals for the talks that will establish the future relationship between Britain and the EU.
Matching reports in several weekly newspapers said she was prepared to accept a so-called “hard Brexit”: pulling out of the single market, the European customs union and the European Court of Justice, in order to regain control of EU immigration.
Hammond, in an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper, said Britain could not compromise on the main message from the June referendum vote to leave the EU: stemming the flow of immigrants from the bloc.
EU citizens would be free to travel to Britain and do business there-but the debate was over the right to work, settle and set up businesses, he said.
“Clearly we need people to come and work in our economy to keep it functioning,” the chancellor of the Exchequer said.
But as for having no control, “that has to stop”.
He hinted that London was ready to push through aggressive cuts to business taxes to ensure British-based firms remained competitive in the face of EU tariffs.
Hammond said he wanted Britain to remain a “recognisably European-style economy with European-style taxation systems, European-style regulation systems.”
Britain warned Sunday it might undercut the EU economically if it cannot obtain both single market access and immigration controls, as Prime Minister Theresa May prepared her big Brexit strategy speech.
Britain would be forced to “change our economic model” in order to remain competitive if it is shut out from access to the single market, finance minister Philip Hammond said.
His intervention came as newspapers said May was planning a clean divorce from the European Union when she sets out her Brexit strategy in a major speech on Tuesday.
May aims to launch two years of EU departure negotiations when she triggers the Article 50 exit process by the end of March, although a legal challenge is still pending before the country’s Supreme Court.
She has been under pressure to reveal her proposals for the talks that will establish the future relationship between Britain and the EU.
Matching reports in several weekly newspapers said she was prepared to accept a so-called “hard Brexit”: pulling out of the single market, the European customs union and the European Court of Justice, in order to regain control of EU immigration.
Hammond, in an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper, said Britain could not compromise on the main message from the June referendum vote to leave the EU: stemming the flow of immigrants from the bloc.
EU citizens would be free to travel to Britain and do business there-but the debate was over the right to work, settle and set up businesses, he said.
“Clearly we need people to come and work in our economy to keep it functioning,” the chancellor of the Exchequer said.
But as for having no control, “that has to stop”.
He hinted that London was ready to push through aggressive cuts to business taxes to ensure British-based firms remained competitive in the face of EU tariffs.
Hammond said he wanted Britain to remain a “recognisably European-style economy with European-style taxation systems, European-style regulation systems.”
