Owen Paterson, the former Environment Secretary and high-profile Brexit-supporter, has objected to the idea that the UK might pay into the EU budget for continued "access" to the single market after Brexit.

“The United States, Japan Australia, they do not pay for access to the market”, he told the BBC's Today programme on Monday.

“Normally, if you want to pay for access to a market you pay a tariff. And we don’t want to have tariffs. We want to have reciprocal free trade. So I think that is one area where I think emphatically, we will not want to pay anything.”

Not even if that means we lose a great deal of trade as a result? Mr Paterson was asked by his BBC interviewer.

“No because we pay a tariff, which of course hits them much harder because they have this massive surplus with us. Last year they had a surplus of £71.8bn. The Germans sold us 950,000 cars. It’s absolutely in everyone’s interests that we get a reciprocal free trade deal."

“It’s a complete nonsense that we as an independent, sovereign, nation of the same level standing as countries like US, Australia or Japan should pay something. I also think it would probably be against WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules anyway because they’d be discriminatory.”

The remarks have caused some degree of bafflement and derision on social media.

So what is Mr Paterson talking about? Do his comments make sense? And what is the true situation with regard to the UK and the single market post-Brexit?