Common Travel Area a priority in Brexit talks – Brokenshire

The new Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, has told MPs that the future of the Common Travel Area will be a priority in Brexit negotiations but he dismissed calls for a Border poll.

Taking Northern Ireland questions in the House of Commons for the first time since his appointment, Mr Brokenshire said he recognised the benefits of the Common Travel Area.

"It is about not just the movement of people, but goods and services. I certainly do not want to see a return to the borders of the past, which is why I will engage with colleagues across government, as well as the Irish Government, to get the best possible outcome for Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, " he said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny this week raised the prospect of a Border poll being triggered in the context of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU but Mr Brokenshire dismissed the idea.

“The conditions are set out very clearly in relation to the Belfast Agreement, and I have been very clear that those conditions have not been met,” he said.

Mr Brokenshire was speaking moments before prime minister Theresa May took to the despatch box for the first prime minister's questions of her premiership. In a strong, confident performance, she delighted Conservative backbenchers with repeated swipes at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whom she compared to an unscrupulous boss exploiting workers.

“I suspect that there are many members on the opposition benches who might be familiar with an unscrupulous boss. A boss who doesn’t listen to his workers, a boss who requires some of his workers to double their workload and maybe a boss who exploits the rules to further his own career. Remind him of anybody?” she said.

Ms May offered few details about her negotiating stance in Britain’s EU withdrawal negotiations and dodged a question from her own backbenches about a trade-off between access to the single market and free movement of people from the EU.

“In negotiating the deal, we need to ensure that we listen to what people have said about the need for controls on free movement, and that we also negotiate the right and best deal for trade in goods and services for the British people,” she said.

Ms May’s appointment as prime minister has boosted the Conservatives’ popularity, according to a new YouGov poll, which shows the party’s support at 40 per cent, up 10 points since last April. Labour is at 29 per cent, down four points and Ukip is down eight points at 12 per cent.

The poll suggests that, after the referendum, Ukip supporters may have drifted back to the Conservatives.

Nominations for the Labour leadership closed on Wednesday, with Mr Corbyn facing just one challenger, former work and pensions secretary Owen Smith. Mr Smith on Wednesday defended himself against claims that, as a lobbyist for Pfizer more than a decade ago, he favoured private sector involvement in the National Health Service.

Mr Smith's opponents said that, as a Pfizer lobbyist, he had called for more "choice" in the NHS, a term often seen as a euphemism for part-privatisation.

“No, that’s clearly not true, and it’s a gross exaggeration, and extrapolation, of one comment in a press release about a report commissioned by Pfizer before I worked there, at a period in which the last Labour government was using a word like “choice” to describe getting private providers to do hip and knee and cataract operations. So, I have never advocated privatisation of the NHS,” he told the BBC.