Brexit: Single market membership 'probably unlikely'

David Jones says the UK will seek access to the single market "on the best possible terms"

UK membership of the European Union's tariff-free single market is "probably unlikely", a Brexit minister has said.

Clwyd West Conservative MP David Jones said the government wants to achieve access to the single market "on the best possible terms".

He spoke after Prime Minister Theresa May told the Tory conference the UK was going to be a "sovereign country" with freedom over immigration decisions.

The single market requires people can live and work freely across the EU.

Restrictions on the free movement of people was something which the victorious Leave referendum campaign had promised to restrict.

The single market is the mechanism under which EU states trade with each other without charging duty. It also sets common standards for goods and services across the member nations to reduce bureaucracy.

Meanwhile Mrs May has told BBC Wales she wants to listen to the Welsh Government's views on Brexit to ensure it is "fully engaged" as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.

She announced on Sunday the UK would trigger Article 50 - which formally launches the two-year process of leaving the EU - by the end of March.

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Speaking to BBC Radio's Good Morning Wales programme at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Mr Jones said: "Access to the single market is something almost every country in the world has got. China has got access to the single market. America has. India has.

"The question is the basis upon which we have that access.

"I think that what is fairly clear from the prime minister's speech yesterday [Sunday] is that membership of the single market is probably unlikely, but access to it is something that we want to achieve on the best possible terms.

"I think that our negotiating position is something that is going to develop. It's going to develop I think before Article 50 is triggered and it will continue to develop after Article 50 is triggered.

"This is going to be a very complex negotiation by any terms and I think to say our position is set in tablets of stone at this stage is really quite unacceptable."

Mrs May told the conference on Sunday: "We are going to be a fully independent, sovereign country - a country that is no longer part of a political union with supranational institutions that can override national parliaments and courts.

"And that means we are going, once more, to have the freedom to make our own decisions on a whole host of different matters, from how we label our food to the way in which we choose to control immigration."