Exiting the European Union and Global Trade

I would differentiate between trade deals and trade rules. We of course need rules to govern the global trade environment, which is why we are committed to the World Trade Organisation—a subject to which I shall return later—but we do not explicitly need free trade agreements in order to trade. The trading environment is regulated in lots of other ways, such as mutual co-operation agreements. The hon. Lady is quite right that we can use several tools to shape the global environment.