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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Welcome back to Westminster at the start of a new political term in which the Prime Minister will begin putting into practice the biggest political decision for a generation, Brexit of course.  On her first outing on the world stage, Theresa May has warned there might be difficult times ahead economically as President Obama has said that America’s focus would not be on a trade deal with the UK but with the EU as a whole.  Well joining me now is the high profile Leave campaigner and former Northern Ireland Secretary, Theresa Villiers, who was sacked by the PM on her second day in the job and a very good morning to you.  Well let’s start with Brexit then of course, the Prime Minister there saying there could be difficult times ahead.  We’ve seen something of a Brexit bounce I suppose in terms of the devaluation of the pound and the boost that’s had to exports but do you agree with her that it could get a little bumpy?

THERESA VILLIERS: I think she’s right, yes.  I mean we’ve had, as you say, some really positive economic news in recent days in terms of consumer spending and confidence and manufacturing confidence but it is a very big decision, there is a degree of uncertainty until we decide the terms of our exit, that’s probably going to have a consequence in terms of economic performance but I think what we can be certain of is that the dire predictions of the Remain campaign haven’t come to pass and I don’t believe that they will in the future.

DM: But you are agreeing it’s too early to tell really given something the size of our economy and the number of areas it’s involved in.  I mean there are some Leave campaigners who say the die is cast, it proves the Remainers were lying.  

THERESA VILLIERS: Well I am absolutely confident that leaving the EU is going to be great for our economy but inevitably there may be a period of the choppy water that the Prime Minister is referring to.

DM: Well let’s talk about how it can be great for the economy and of course the biggest trading bloc we’ll still be trading with is of course the European Union, you believe that somehow we can square this circle and maintain access to the single market yet control EU migration, do you really think that will wash?

THERESA VILLIERS: I believe it is perfectly deliverable, the EU has got free trade agreements with almost all of its neighbours, there’s more or less a free trade zone between Iceland and the Russian border, I think they are going to want to include us in that, it’s in their interests and in our interest that we continue to have high levels of trade between the two of us. They sell more to us than we do to them so it’s not in their interests to start whacking up tariffs.  

DM: But if as part of that they say your citizens are free to come in to our countries and our citizens must be free to come into yours still?

THERESA VILLIERS: I don’t believe that maintaining free movement in its current form is consistent with respecting the result of the referendum.  People I think did vote for a change, they wanted the people we elect in this country to decide the overall numbers on immigration from Europe, I think that’s a reasonable request that has been made to us by the people, the 17 million in that referendum and we have to respect that.

DM: That’s what I mean about squaring the circle though, it’s been explicit, it’s been explicit for months before the referendum itself and afterwards from Angela Merkel, from President Hollande, saying you can’t just have the good bits, if you want access to the single market that involves those four freedoms and one of those freedoms is freedom of movement of peoples.

THERESA VILLIERS: I think to do a deal that is in the interests of both the UK and the European Union is going to be the end result and that means a free trade deal, a good deal in terms of goods and services and also we have to have changes to free movement, we cannot continue with a situation of open door unrestricted free movement from the rest of the European Union.

DM: But it is  a bespoke deal then, you must like what the Prime Minister has been saying, this isn’t one off the shelf, this isn’t a Canada or a Switzerland or a Norway.

THERESA VILLIERS: We are as one of the European Union’s biggest export markets, we are an immediate neighbour, we will have a unique status.  I believe that a bespoke deal, a UK model, that’s what we said throughout the Leave campaign and I believe that’s deliverable.

DM: What do you think is the leverage with other members of the European Union, why would they cut that deal that is so beneficial to the United Kingdom, it’s got none of the downside of membership of the European Union and all the upside, why would they do that?

THERESA VILLIERS: Well because it’s in their interests to be able to continue to sell millions of German cars to us, vast amounts of French agricultural produce, it’s in our mutual interests both in the UK and the remaining EU to continue free trade access to one another’s markets.  

DM: Okay, let me ask you about other things that Theresa May has been saying, no snap election.  Do you think she is missing a chance here now given the state of the Labour party and others, here’s a chance to really increase her majority?

THERESA VILLIERS: Well obviously there is a temptation amongst commentators about early elections but I do think we need some stability.  As you kicked off this section of the programme by saying, the country has just taken one of the biggest decisions for a generation and I think sort of pausing for breath, sticking to the timetable for a 2020 election does make a lot of sense.

DM: But there are choppy times ahead within the party as well, there is going to be some kind of compromise with the Europeans, the EU are not going to say all right Britain, whatever you like here it is, we’ll just sign it off and off you go. There is going to be compromise and then Theresa May is going to have to elements of her party and say we know you don’t think this is enough but it’s the best we can get.

THERESA VILLIERS: I think the crucial thing is ending the supremacy of EU law, ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, to me that is the absolutely crucial thing and I think across the Conservative party we are agreed that that is going to be part of our deal with the EU but yes, I agree, there will be choppy times  politically as well as economically.

DM: Do you think there are some in your party who want a so-called hard Brexit, they want to cut the ties and more or less turn their back on Europe and say we don’t care about the trade side of it, we just have to be out and out means out.

THERESA VILLIERS: I think everybody across parliament wants to maintain a sensible open trading relationship with the rest of the European Union, wherever they stand on the Brexit debate I think we all want to see businesses and services freely trading across our border with the remaining EU.

DM: And talking about borders, that patch you know so well on the island of Ireland and the six counties of Northern Ireland and the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland, there are big fears now in the Republic of Ireland that it will have to lead to a hard border and some kinds of tariffs on certain goods, particularly in terms of people moving around.  You can have access to Ireland from any part of the EU, we don’t want that and if you don’t have a border it can’t be checked.

THERESA VILLIERS: The reality is that that has never been a truly hard border, even when there were over 20,000 soldiers and 10,000 police officers …

DM: Or even before that, I used to live there, I was brought up there and there used to be customs guards, you used to have to have little triangles on your car if you were coming from Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland, there were checks, there was a border there.

THERESA VILLIERS: But it was never enforced very effectively.  What has encouraged me since the referendum result  is that we have the new Prime Minister, we have the Brexit Secretary, we have the Taoiseach in Ireland all saying we need to keep this border open, it is crucial.  Throughout this campaign…

DM: They are saying that but they fear that it might have to be shut particularly because of that free movement of people.

THERESA VILLIERS: If you have all countries determined to keep that border open I think there must be a reasonable chance that we can do that.  What you are effectively saying is that the EU is somehow going to impose a hard border despite the fact that neither the United Kingdom nor Ireland want this.

DM: But might not the United Kingdom have to be the people that we want to stop coming here, they’re not stupid, they can work it out, it’s not much different to get a flight from wherever it is, from Sofia or Bucharest to Dublin and then walk across, drive up over an open border into the United Kingdom.  

THERESA VILLIERS: But if people come to the United Kingdom and work when they then have the right permissions there are plenty of ways to crack down on that which don’t involve physical border checks.  Of course we’d need measures to control EU migrants who came to the UK and chose to work if they didn’t have appropriate entitlements but we have already got legal mechanisms to deal with that because we’ve criminalised working without the proper …

DM: So we’ll have to check all EU nationals then for the proper paperwork.

THERESA VILLIERS: You don’t have to do that via border checks. For example there are, we’ve legislated to require landlords to check before they let …

DM: But within our own borders we’d have to check regularly on EU nationals, they have to produce their paperwork to certain authorities perhaps to a police station?

THERESA VILLIERS: No, I’m not saying you need those kind of measures, what I’m saying is the best way to enforce rules on immigration is not through physical border checks at our land border in the Republic of Ireland because as I say that’s never been a properly enforced border, no one wants it on either side of the border to become a hard border again, there are other ways in which we can deal with the risks around illegal migration.

DM: But ID cards would make something like that, those checks, a lot easier wouldn’t they?

THERESA VILLIERS: I don’t believe there is any support for a move to ID cards in this country, we had that debate over a period of years and it was clear that there isn’t support for that.  There are different ways to tackle illegal migration and illegal working.

DM: Okay, Theresa Villiers, good to see you, thank you very much indeed.