Keir Starmer MP, Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary, responding to the Foreign Secretary’s speech, said:

“This speech underlined the Government’s real intentions; a Brexit of deregulation, where rights and protections are casually cast aside and where the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union are ignored.

“Nobody will be fooled or reassured by the Foreign Secretary’s empty rhetoric. His insistence on deregulating our economy is the opposite of what businesses and trade unions want to hear.

“Instead of building the consensus we need, the Government’s approach will only further divide the country and put jobs, rights and living standards at risk.”