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SOPHY RIDGE: It’s been a rocky week for the Prime Minister: after the Salzburg Summit where she admitted talks were at an impasse, she demanded the EU show her some respect. Well the pound fell sharply, the prospect of a no-deal increased, something that will no doubt worry our next guest, the Loughborough MP and Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, former Cabinet Minister, Nicky Morgan. Hello to you, thank you very much for being on the show this morning.

NICKY MORGAN: Good morning, thanks for inviting me.

SR: Well this week the EU made it pretty clear that they don’t think that Theresa May’s Chequers plan will work. As a result we’ve had Conservative Brexiteers tweeting using the hashtag #ChuckChequers. What’s your view, is there any life left in Chequers?

NICKY MORGAN: Well I’m not sure there is life left in Chequers. I think for whatever reason Salzburg did not go as planned, I think on either side, and we ended up obviously with a bit of a stand-off, an unfortunate position. The Prime Minister made her statement on Friday, we saw Donald Tusk obviously respond on Friday evening. I think the big question for those of us, you are absolutely right, who want to see a deal, I think a no-deal scenario would be incredibly bad for our economy, for our businesses, for job security, for our constituents, so we want to see a deal so the question I think that has to be answered now by the government, by the EU leaders, is what room is there, how can we move on from where we ended up last week towards talking about continuing negotiations, talking about where we are going to get to. The issue is of course this is going to be approved by the UK Parliament when the negotiations are finished and that’s of critical importance. Some of my colleagues are going to launch this call for a Canada-style free trade deal tomorrow, that’s not going to get approved by Parliament. It has many flaws including not dealing with Northern Ireland so it is really a non-starter. The Prime Minister has now got to think what am I going to get through Parliament.

SR: So what do you think Parliament and the Prime Minister should be looking at because she basically said, didn’t she, that the EU has put two things on the table: a free trade deal which you’ve just rejected in that answer and the other one was effectively staying in the European Economic Area and customs union which would be accepting uncontrolled immigration, so is that the option that you want to see?

NICKY MORGAN: Well I don’t accept the premise that that would mean uncontrolled immigration so let’s take a step back.

SR: But that’s what they’re saying.

NICKY MORGAN: Well the whole point is this is a negotiation. This is the issue, both sides have been talking at cross-purposes for the best part of 18 months now and time is ticking away so actually getting down to brass tacks – and that’s the trouble with putting binary options on the table, Chequers or no-deal, or this isn’t going to work or that’s not going to work, actually the point is that there is a [sweet spot] I’m firmly of the opinion that can be found both with the EU and then with Parliament, it’s a question of unlocking it, that’s why carrying on with the negotiations – I think Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, is right, it’s a time for cool heads and getting on with the negotiations but having access to the single market via the European free-trade area membership, and we were a founding member, the UK, of that and their definition of free movement is different. It is free movement of workers and I think that’s important because the British public have a much more nuanced understanding of immigration than I think the debate reflects. If people are going to come here to work, to pay their tax, to contribute then I think people understand that. Look, I’m sitting in Loughborough, a big university which has just been named – congratulations – the Sunday Times University of the Year and we have EU students, EU academics that are coming here all the time. It brings diversity to our time and I think people locally understand that and want that flexibility to continue but immigration policy is going to have to change. The other issue is about having a customs union, the Prime Minister is right to say we can’t have the break-up of the Union and that again, the Canada option doesn’t deal with that.

SR: A nice name drop there for the university, well done for getting that one in. Now here at Labour conference lots of people are talking about the idea of a second referendum with both Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson opening the door for that. Is that something that you would support?

NICKY MORGAN: I personally don’t support it. I actually think that this is something now which MPs who were elected in 2017 have got to step up to the plate and sort out. For the reasons I just set out, I think there is a position that can be supported by parliamentarians across the House and I think that’s what the government also needs to be doing, is working to build a coalition if you like, a support for a position – we’re leaving the EU – that gets parliamentary support. I think it is wholly wrong for the Labour party to say categorically, the Labour front bench I should say, that they won’t vote for anything, that’s not in the national interest but I think a second vote, as I say I think it’s a distraction, I think it will rerun 2016. I also think this sabre rattling about a general election in order to potentially get a majority to get them through, look we’ve been there, we did that in 2017, it didn’t go so well, we didn’t get a majority, we lost 33 really good colleagues from our benches, we do not need to go through that again. It needs MPs to step up to the plate and sort this out now as elected representatives otherwise I think our democracy will be in big trouble.

SR: You’re someone who supported Remain, you got very good relationships with others, your colleagues who backed Remain, how many Conservative MPs do you think would support the idea of a second referendum?

NICKY MORGAN: Well I think there are probably a handful I’m probably talking about, those that have come out so far, it’s about half a dozen or so. There is growing interest, I’ve had since last week a number of people say to me that although they are not keen on the idea of a second vote, actually given the Prime Minister’s own description of this being an impasse, maybe a second vote would be the only way to resolve this. That’s not my position but I understand why people are thinking there’s got to be something to break the deadlock. My preferred option, as I say, is to find a deal that Parliament will support rather than have the distraction, [apart from] legislation, to have a second vote and as I say, the idea of having a general election to sort all this out is bad news all round. All that does is potentially delay things. The Labour party say that’s what they want, that is not responsible and actually you’re sitting there in Liverpool, what we should be talking about this week is the support there seems to be for Militant from the 1980s, the fact that a Labour backbencher has got to have armed bodyguards now because she’s a critic of Jeremy Corbyn – this is the sort of thing that we should be talking about, that Labour want to renationalise the railways. Seriously, is that their priority when they get into government? So there is a deal that can be done, put to Parliament and approved and then we can obviously get beyond to look at the other issues that are facing us as a country.

SR: Well let’s look at the state of the Conservative party as well, you have been very critical about the situation of the Labour party but on your own side it appears that you are fighting like cat and dogs over Brexit, there are lots of people who are very aggressively if you like criticising the Prime Minister, her future being openly discussed and even supposed loyalists, people on the modernising wing of the party, saying that actually after she’s sealed the deal on Brexit she should stand aside for a new generation. Is that your view, do you think Theresa May is the woman to lead the Conservatives into the next election?

NICKY MORGAN: No, I’ve been quite open about that. I think that she’s [inaudible] and if anyone in Downing Street thinks that she is then that would be of concern. My worry is a lot of time the focus – and I understand it, before our party conference, on shoring her position, we have got to do what’s right in the country’s interests. Having a leadership election now would not be in the country’s interests, I think the Prime Minister has got a very difficult task, she has absolutely just kept going and resiliently kept going and that is to be hugely admired. The difficulty is that actually as ever there are a number of key voices on both sides of the argument, particularly a lot of hard Brexiteers who absolutely want to bring the Prime Minister down. I mean the talk today of ‘she’s got another ten days and then we’re going to start talking to her’, Graham Brady who heads up our 1922 Committee that would run any leadership contest. This is not a move that would help the country in order to get to the best position after Brexit which does least damage to our economy and that’s what we as Conservatives should be focused on. It’s always been a big fault line in our party, of course it has but actually the majority of the parliamentary party – and I think the membership – wants us to focus on the faults of the Labour party, they want us to focus on getting a good deal that supports the economy and then moving on.

SR: And just finally, while we have you, Sky News is running a campaign to try and set up an independent commission to secure Leaders’ Debates at every General Election, is that something that you’d welcome?

NICKY MORGAN: Well I think the Leaders’ Debates are here to stay and I think that it’s one of those things that I think it would be a bit of an error really for parties now to not take part. It was something that was noticed at the last general election and of course I think that the Leaders’ Debates and how they are constituted and everything else is perhaps a matter for discussion. I certainly found as a campaigner that the difficulty was in 2010 particularly, it all focused on the Leaders’ Debates, it was hard to engage locally when these were going on in the run up and all the talking about them afterwards but I do think that actually Leaders’ Debates are here to stay and I think that that’s the right position. It is going to be a part of our election campaigns going forward.

SR: Okay Nicky Morgan, thank you very much.