ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: The Prime Minister referred to Northern Ireland more than a dozen times in her speech on Friday but not a single mention of the British Overseas Territory with a land border with an EU country, Gibraltar and that’s something that my next guest might have a thing or two to say about, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo. Mr Picardo, many thanks for being with us. Do you feel ignored, do you feel side-lined by Downing Street as they focus on solving one border issue but not another?

FABIAN PICARDO: Not at all. Good morning to you and to all your viewers. I will be in London this week for a further meeting of a Joint Ministerial Council that deals specifically with the issues that affect Gibraltar in Brexit. There’ll be Sir Alan Duncan, one of the Minister at the Foreign Office who is responsible for Europe and the Americas, with specific responsibility for Gibraltar, and Robin Walker, a Minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union. We’ve been working very closely indeed with the British government since the Brexit decision was announced in that JMC to ensure that all issues which relate to Gibraltar, not just border issues, are considered and taken into account and considered as part of the negotiation which the Prime Minister is leading and you’ll see that in her speech at the Mansion House on Friday she did actually mention the Overseas Territories in particular.

NP: Is part of the reason that communication with Downing Street has improved since the general election is that key figures who Theresa May used to surround herself with are no longer there. The suggestion in Tim Shipman’s book is that you tried to get the Prime Minister on the phone a number of times but only got as far as Fiona Hill.

FABIAN PICARDO: Well I was interested to read some aspects of the reading of a transcript of a conversation I had with the Prime Minister, as you can imagine I am not going to comment on the comment of how that conversation was interpreted, other than to tell you that I think the Prime Minister was absolutely right earlier today on another television political show when she said Brexit is about people. It’s not about the member states, it’s not about institutions, it’s about people and what we have to do is concentrate on how we ensure that the Brexit decision is implemented, because it’s the decision of the British people, but in a way that doesn’t make the lives of people either British or European, and my responsibility is to look after those who reside in Gibraltar, any harder.

NP: Indeed, and people it would seem are the biggest issue for Gibraltar. Such a huge portion of your workforce are those frontier workers coming across from Spain and given again the desire not to have a hard border there, what are the solutions that you see presenting themselves, issues for which there are a number of parallels with the Northern Irish/Republic of Ireland border.

FABIAN PICARDO: Well there are, you are absolutely right, a number of parallels and there are also a lot of differences. Of course we border not just the European Union, we border Schengen which Northern Ireland does not do because the Republic is not presently in Schengen, so we have got issues relating to the Schengen Border Code and how citizens can cross that frontier, whether they are European citizens or in the future, British citizens who will not be European citizens. And it’s not just about workers, although workers are an important part of this of course but as you can imagine there are relationships of friendship and consanguinity across that frontier as well as commercial relationships and we also see people come to Gibraltar as tourists, an important part of how Gibraltar creates employment. So we have to get it right not just for workers but in particular for workers and in particular for residents of Gibraltar because that’s who I have responsibility for, and I think there are a number of mechanisms that we can look at which apply elsewhere in the European Union where there are for example micro-states that border Schengen – because as I told you, Northern Ireland might not be the best parallel – and see how they’ve been giving business efficacy to the application of the Schengen Borders Code in those areas.

NP: Indeed and another key difference is of course is that Spain has a de facto veto on any deal when it comes to the border with Gibraltar. How is it possible, given that position, given that Spain appears to have the final say in all of this, how is it possible that Gibraltar will be able to come through this unscathed?

FABIAN PICARDO: Well if you look at the final say, there are a number of parliaments in the European Union, not just 27, some member states have more than one parliament, up to 34 parliaments in the European Union that will have the final say in the implementation of the final Brexit deal. One of them of course is the central parliament in Madrid. The issue for us is that Clause 24 of the negotiating guidelines of the European Union give Spain the opportunity to take Gibraltar apart from the Brexit deal and then address the issue of Gibraltar separately. We think that’s contrary to EU law, we think that there are good arguments that we could deploy in the event that there was an attempt to engage Clause 24 in a way that was negative for Gibraltar but at the same time, and looking at the theory of that, we can all die in a ditch arguing about never surrendering and our finest and darkest hours but I don't think that’s going to solve anything. At the same as that’s going on, the Government of Gibraltar is saying look, we have been ready to engage in technical discussions which improve the life of people across that frontier long before Brexit and during Brexit and we think we have a responsibility to ensure that in the future we have laid out a method of a relationship enduring with the European Union and in particular Spain, because she is our neighbour, and we reach the rest of the European Union through Spain, in a way that works for generations and we remain open to that. We’ll be working with colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Exiting the European Union on how we can ensure such mechanisms are part of the new multilateral arrangements that the European Union enters into with the European Union.

NP: Of course Gibraltar has a rather unique relationship with the European Union, not part of the customs union but with your own tariffs so within the single market you still have that free trade. Are you honestly not concerned about the prospect of Spain closing the border as Franco did back in ’69?

FABIAN PICARDO: Well look, I think Franco is long dead. There may be some people in Spain who still worship at the altar of his policies but I don't think anybody sensible in any of the political parties today represented in the Spanish parliament, the Congress of Deputies, is going to seriously suggest that they should cut of two and a half square miles of the continent of Europe from the rest of the European Union, even if we have left the political club that is the EU. Señor Dastis, the current Spanish Foreign Minister, has said that is not the position he has taken. In fact he has repeatedly said that he’ll ensure from his point of view that he does whatever he can to make sure that Brexit doesn’t affect the fluidity of people across that frontier because I think he appreciates, he’s an Andalucian, he appreciates the importance and the sensitivity of that for families, let alone for businesses in this region, so I believe that we can confine the idea of the border between Gibraltar and Spain being closed to the history books where it deserves to be.

NP: Fabian Picardo, good to see you, thanks very much for joining us.

FABIAN PICARDO: Thank you very much indeed.