Mr Cameron is right to highlight the advantages of a new EU-US trade deal – it would be worth billions to our manufacturers and service providers. But make no mistake: Britain can only obtain the benefits from such trade deals by negotiating as a bloc with the rest of the EU. When I was Europe’s trade commissioner, at the same time as pushing talks to liberalise world trade as hard as I could, I launched bilateral negotiations with India, Korea, South East Asia and across Latin America, as well as updating Europe’s trade agreements in Africa. Success was worth major new export opportunities for British companies, their employees and shareholders. In not a single case could I have opened these negotiations if I had been representing Britain alone because our market, by itself, is simply not big enough for others to negotiate with.