Future EU-UK trade must be similar to trade today, says UK finance minister

After Britain leaves the European Union, British exporters should experience trade “which feels as close as possible to the way it feels now”, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday.

“It is clearly very much on our agenda … that as soon as possible we will start talking about implementation phases so that we can be clear to business, to investors that there will not be a cliff edge,” he told ITV’s Peston on Sunday, referring to fears of an abrupt change in trading relations with the EU.

Hammond: Britain needs a seamless Brexit customs transition

Britain needs a seamless Brexit transition to support jobs and investment by ensuring a new customs arrangement with the European Union that avoids bureaucratic delays to trade, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday.

Hammond said Brexit means that Britain will leave the EU’s single market and the bloc’s customs union, but that he wanted an exit that would support jobs and investment.

“When I talk about a Brexit that supports British jobs, British investment and British business I mean a Brexit that avoids those cliff edges,” Hammond said in an interview with BBC television.

He said such a Brexit would mean “that we segue seamlessly from the customs union that we are in at the moment to a new arrangement in the future that will continue to allow British goods to flow not just without tariffs, because actually tariffs are a relatively small part of the problem, it is without delays and bureaucracy.”

British finance minister Philip Hammond also said that his medium term focus would be to improve productivity.

He said there were three ways to increase spending on public services: raising taxes, borrowing more or improving productivity.

Hammond says he’s not deaf to voter weariness on spending cuts

British finance minister Philip Hammond said he was “not deaf” to signs of weariness among voters about the country’s near decade-long grip on public spending which has come under renewed criticism after a deadly fire in a London tower block.

Asked in an interview with BBC television whether he would push ahead with planned cuts of 3 billion pounds ($3.8 billion)for funding of local authorities, Hammond said he would look again at the government’s proposals in the light of the general election result when he announces his next budget in November.

Hammond said he already had wriggle room in his existing tax and spending plans and stressed he would not abandon the overall thrust of the ruling Conservative Party’s approach to fixing the public finances.

The government is seeking to turn Britain’s budget deficit, which was equivalent to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in the last financial year, into a surplus by the mid-2020s.

“We will look at all these things. Obviously, we are not deaf. We heard a message last week in the general election. We need to look at how we deal with the challenges that we face in the economy,” Hammond said.

“And I understand that people are weary after years of hard work to rebuild the economy from the great crash of 2008-09 But we have to live within our means. And more borrowing which seems to be Jeremy Corbyn’s answer is not the solution.”

Opposition Labour party leader Corbyn attacked the government’s tight controls on spending ahead of the election which saw Prime Minister Theresa May lose her parliamentary majority.