British PM promises Brexit plan in New Year

Theresa May has promised to set out her proposals for a "global Britain" in speech on Brexit in the new year.

London, Dec 20: British Prime Minister Theresa May today promised to set out her plans for Brexit in a speech early in the New Year. During a grilling by cross-party MPs of the House of Commons' Liaison Committee, made up of chairmen and women of different parliamentary select committees, she also announced for the first time that she hopes to negotiate a transitional deal for Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).

In her first appearance before a Parliament committee on the subject, May once again stressed her plans to trigger the official exit process by the end of March next year. She said: "We will meet that timetable and don't intend to extend the Article 50 process. "We've also said we will publish more information about our approach before Article 50 is triggered.

I will be making a speech early in the New Year setting out more about our approach and about the opportunity I think we have as a country to use this process to forge a truly global Britain that embraces and trades with countries across the world." Asked specifically about potential transition arrangements, she noted: "When people talk about transition, often different people mean different things by transition.

"There are some people who will talk about transition as a deliberate way of putting off actually leaving the European Union. For others transition is an expectation that you can’t get the deal in two years and therefore you’ve got to have a further period to do it. "But if you think about the process we’ve got to go through once you’ve got the deal, once we’ve got the new arrangements, there will of course be a necessity for adjustments for the new arrangements, for implementation of some practical changes."

The British PM also spoke at length about wider lessons to be learned from the referendum in June. "It's important that we understand the wider meaning of the referendum result and respond accordingly. It wasn't just a vote to leave the EU, but to change the way the country works and the people for whom it works forever," she said. The issue of immigration, especially including students within the country’s migration targets, also featured during the committee meeting. Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Liaison Committee, told Mrs May:

"Most people think that students are a huge success story for this country – a great British export. Don't you think it might be a good idea to reconsider that decision?" The PM replied: "We use the international system of definition. It's perfectly simple."

PTI