ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: The International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, has been round the world twice in the last year or so, working on potential post-Brexit trade deals but I did manage to find some time with him in, I must say, his rather beautiful constituency, North Somerset. We sat down to talk Brexit, trade, Trump and … Well that was hopefully going to be Dr Liam Fox … I think we now have it, here goes.

It’s two years now since the referendum and last year, last July you said the Brexit deal should be one of the easiest in human history, so how do you think it’s going?

LIAM FOX: Well what I’d say was that the trade part of it should be technically easy because we already have full regulatory and legal alignment with the EU but of course this was never going to be just about trade, its mostly about politics. It’s about the politics of the European Union and that is the complicating factor in all of this.

SR: So they are playing more hardball than you expected then perhaps?

LIAM FOX: No, I think the European Commission in the first part of the negotiations was always going to represent the interests of the 27 in a way that was fairly consistent. We were worried about the money, citizens’ rights and so on. I think the second part of the negotiation which is about the economic part will be much more diverse in terms of European views because countries have different trading relationships with the United Kingdom and they want to agree to a lesser extent to protect that.

SR: Now I am keen to touch on Boris Johnson’s article that he wrote this week, a ‘bog roll Brexit’ in his very colourful language, warning of the political no-man’s land if you like where we’re half in and half out. He’s right isn’t he, we’re not heading towards the kind of Brexit you had always dreamed of either are we?

LIAM FOX: Well what I wanted was that we were outside the single market and the customs union and we were outside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s where I think we are going to end up. If we do it slightly more slowly in order to minimise any disruption, that’s fine by me, having waited forty-odd years to leave the European Union a few extra months doesn’t bother me if we are getting it right and I think it is really important that we get that deal right for Britain and we get it right for Europe. I think what’s really key to all of this is, is it a political Brexit or is it an economic Brexit for the people of Europe? That’s the decision that needs to be made in the next few months.

SR: It’s interesting listening to you because on the one hand you have got Boris Johnson warning about bog role Brexit and you have got yourself, very diplomatic, very reasonable. It’s interesting because when you were first appointed you were almost seen as the liability Brexiteer, the risk Brexiteer if you like but actually compared to Boris Johnson and David Davis you are perhaps the best behaved, what’s happened?

LIAM FOX: Well we’ve got a big department to run, we’ve got to think about what happens after Brexit and you know, we really focus on the world outside Europe and part of this whole debate, part of the problem has been that it is very Eurocentric and if you look for example at Britain’s trade, only 43% of our trade now goes to the European Union where ten years ago it was 57%. Now the rest of the world is growing more quickly, we need to think about Britain’s place in the rest of the world and not regard Europe as the centre of the world.

SR: At the same time though, you can’t say Boris Johnson and David Davis aren’t shaping Brexit, Boris Johnson by writing these newspaper columns and trying to swing government policy, David Davis by threatening to resign if his red lines aren’t met, do you not need to be a little more bullish yourself or are you doing that in private?

LIAM FOX: Well I was told yesterday that I was being too bullish by saying that the Prime Minister wasn’t bluffing when she said that no deal was a possibility. We have to balance a number of things, one is we need to be pragmatic about how we actually achieve our exit, the other is to remind our European partners that we’re not kidding, that we would walk away rather than accept a bad deal for Britain.

SR: Is that true, would you really walk away over a no-deal scenario?

LIAM FOX: Yes, as I’ve said before, our European partners would be foolish to believe that because the Prime Minister is very considered, very pragmatic, that she’s bluffing. None of us, including me, want no deal. I sincerely hope we get a good deal and I think that’s in the interests of the European Union as much as the United Kingdom but if politics is put ahead of the economic wellbeing and the long term wellbeing of the United Kingdom, we would have to walk away. I just don’t think that’s going to happen because I think ultimately the elected governments that depend upon trade and prosperity and growth and jobs are not going to put the ideology of the European Commission ahead of the prosperity of their own people.

SR: But at the same time, is it also not going to happen because you haven’t got a parliamentary majority for it either have you? So no deal isn’t going to happen if you are being completely honest, is it?

LIAM FOX: Well you know, if we had not got a deal that is good for Britain, if there are attempts to hold us inside the customs union or the single market when the people of Britain decided to vote against it then we’d have to have no deal.

SR: But some people will be listening to you saying that in a week where Airbus and BMW have warned of absolutely catastrophic consequences if there is no deal and think, hang on, you’re the one putting politics ahead of economics.

LIAM FOX: No, what we said is we want there to be a deal and it’s in the interests of everybody that there’s a deal.

SR: So why don’t you just take this no-deal scenario off the table? You haven’t got a parliamentary majority for it, the UK is not ready for it – look at Dover, the preparations haven’t been done, companies like Airbus are saying that they are prepared to delay investment or just not invest in the UK if it happens, so just to safeguard jobs and investment in the UK, just take it off the table.

LIAM FOX: Because it’s a negotiation. If we actually say we’ll accept any deal you give us rather than walk away, that weakens our negotiating position and people who are making these comments need to understand that they may actually be putting the UK at a disadvantage by making these cases. We have got to be free in a negotiation to say if we don’t get the deal that we want, there won’t be any agreement.

SR: So do you think then that companies like Airbus or indeed MPs who are pushing for the no-deal scenario to be taken off the table are actually putting prosperity at risk then?

LIAM FOX: I think that companies are right to say that if there’s no deal that won’t be good for Britain but it won’t be good for Europe either.

SR: Would it be catastrophic?

LIAM FOX: The point I make to them is that they should also be making the same case to European governments but that will be bad for them in an era where we have got complex integrated supply chains it will be necessarily bad for both sides.

SR: It is clear that you are sticking to your position on no-deal so let’s see if we can get a bit of clarity in other areas. Can you rule out any extension to Article 50?

LIAM FOX: I think to keep Britain in the European Union would not be politically acceptable, it wouldn’t be acceptable to me.

SR: So no extension to Article 50?

LIAM FOX: No, I wouldn’t find that politically acceptable and I couldn’t support it.

SR: Is it something that you might resign over?

LIAM FOX: Well everyone keeps saying what would you do if this happens, I’m saying it is not politically acceptable to me.

SR: And how about an extension of the transition period?

LIAM FOX: Well if the transition period had to be extended for technical reasons as we discussed with the backstop, for example if one other country was unable to ratify an agreement or we didn’t have technical means in place and we already the withdrawal agreement and the future economic partnership already agreed, I wouldn’t have a major problem with that as long as it was very time limited and there was a unilateral mechanism for Britain to pull out of it if we thought that we were being kept in the European Union against our will.

SR: So actually you could see a scenario if it was a time limited extension to the transition?

LIAM FOX: If it was time limited and Britain had a unilateral mechanism to end it. What we couldn’t accept was any extension to the implementation period that was under the control of Brussels and not under the control of London.

SR: Another big risk to Brexit is what’s happening in America, this trade war if you like that seems to be at risk of being launched by Donald Trump. Are you confident still that the UK will get a good deal with the US after Brexit?

LIAM FOX: Well you have to separate out the two things and they are also done by two different bits of the US government. Our discussions on future trading agreements with the United States are based on our mutual interests, what would be good for both sides. We don’t think that the tariffs being applied by the United States are in the interests of both sides so that’s a separate issue. I have spent the last couple of days in Geneva at the World Trade Organisation and there is real concern now that this could damage the global economy. If you start getting restrictions on trade applied by both sides on an ever-escalating basis, then you will get potentially real damage to that global economy. That will do much more harm to Britain than anything that could come out of the Brexit process if that were unsuccessful, this is a genuine threat to global growth and for a country like Britain that is an open trading country could be extremely damaging so we still hope that we can roll back from this. We understand a lot of the analysis that the United States makes about Chinese over-production, about problems with market entry, forced technology transfer and so on. We also understand why the US is upset with NATO countries not carrying their share of defence spending and of course, when Britain leaves the European Union that brings it into sharp focus because when we leave the European Union the EU NATO members will be carrying less than 20% of the NATO budget which is absurd. I understand all of those things but the way of going about it is not to apply tariffs.

SR: Have you had any assurances about tariffs in the UK?

LIAM FOX: Well of course we are affected by being members of the European Union and we will continue to be members of the European Union until …

SR: But when we leave the European Union do you think we will still have these tariffs slapped on us by the US?

LIAM FOX: This is not a European issue, we have to try to stop seeing everything through a Brexit lens, this is a unilateral action carried out in what we believe is in breach of World Trade Organisation rules. We believe in that rules based system and we will stand up for that and the concept of free trade and therefore if we are forced into the position of taking counter measures in WTO law then we will do so.

SR: When it comes to trade deals of course it is not just the US that we will be looking at in future, it is lots of other countries around the world, countries like India for example. Would you be prepared to see a relaxation of the visa requirements on these countries if it meant we’d be getting good trade deals with them?

LIAM FOX: Well movement of people is always one of the things that’s considered in any trade agreement and that would be something that we would look at in a bilateral negotiation but remember it is a negotiation and you don’t give your cards away at the beginning of that but in any trade negotiation you have to recognise that you are looking at a whole range of factors. When you get into those negotiations you will decide, both sides will decide what’s on the table and what’s off the table but that’s a long way away.

SR: But it’s on the table though, that seems to be what you’re saying.

LIAM FOX: It’s a long way away because we are currently not looking at a free trade agreement with India in the near future, we are engaged in a discussion with India on a trade review, we are looking sector by sector at our economy to see how we can get to within a closing distance that might enable us to have a free trade agreement but we’re not there yet.

SR: Okay. Now I want to move on to a couple of other issues before we end, one of those is those difficult votes that we saw in the House of Commons over the meaningful vote. Now one of the things that will sit in people’s minds is the sight of Naz Shah in a wheelchair with a sick bucket because the Conservatives decided not to allow her to be simply nodded through, they wanted her to be in the Commons chamber voting. As a medical man, does that not worry you?

LIAM FOX: Well the Labour party make the decisions about who they bring in themselves and the whips make decisions amongst themselves in how that voting is going to go on. I’ve seen that before, I’ve seen it when John Major had no majority and I remember the Labour party at that time bringing people, Conservative MPs having to come in by ambulance from hospital to vote.

SR: It seems a ridiculous system though doesn’t it, that this can happen?

LIAM FOX: I think to most rational people it is a ridiculous system and I think we need to find ways to make that more acceptable.

SR: Is there a worry as well that you are kind of losing the viral war if you like? Forget the very important intricacies of a meaningful vote, what many people will remember is the sight of that woman in a wheelchair and it is similar to the up-skirting being blocked by Christopher Chope. Is there a risk that because you are losing the viral campaign to Labour you could be seen as the nasty party again?

LIAM FOX: No, I don't think that’s true. I think what people will remember is that there was a very vibrant vote, that both Houses considered the Withdrawal Bill and the government ultimately succeeded in delivering what we’re there for which is to carry out the voters instruction to leave the European Union.

SR: Another vibrant debate coming up of course is the Trade Bill and that could be a difficult one for the government if there is a vote for staying in the customs union. If the government loses you might be out of a job.

LIAM FOX: Well the Trade Bill was there to ensure continuity of our current trading arrangements, it also was there to ensure that we have the ability to set up a trade remedies body to defend things like our steel industry, our ceramics industry. People have played games with this, we need to understand the consequences would be a disruption to our trade and an inability for us to defend parts of our industry against dumping from places like China. Before they start to play parliamentary games they should think about the consequences for real British jobs.

SR: Is that a message to some of your own backbenchers as well?

LIAM FOX: It’s a message to everybody who will be voting on that Bill.

SR: And then just finally, we’ve got a vote on Heathrow Airport coming up, of course the extension of Heathrow Airport. Boris Johnson is conveniently going to be out of the country, do you think it is one rule for him and one rule for everyone else?

LIAM FOX: Well the Foreign Secretary is regularly out of the country and probably the only person more than myself who is required to be away to do their job.

SR: You’ll be there though won’t you?

LIAM FOX: I happen to be there but I was away last week. I’ll be there. Here we are in the south-west of England, it is hugely in our interests here as I believe in the rest of the country that we get further expansion at Heathrow. We need more airport capacity, we’ve got too few links at the moment to places like China, we can only do that by improving the capacity. Heathrow is one of our biggest ports by value and from a trading perspective we need to get that new runway built and soon. There are those, and not a few of them I have to say around the world, who wonder why it takes us so long in this country to make big decisions about our infrastructure.

SR: Dr Fox, thank you very much.