'We can't afford it!' Pat McFadden grilled on Andy Burnham's £21billion EU reset

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden has been grilled by Camilla Tominey on Andy Burnham's £21billion EU reset, telling the minister Britain "can't afford it".

Mr McFadden argued that under Labour, the country will become closer to the EU, and that a reset of relations is crucial for trade and defence.

He told The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: "I don't know exactly what the end state of a UK-EU relationship will be, but I know it can be better than now.

"And I also know that businesses have been paying huge amounts of extra costs, paperwork, and bureaucracy in recent years. If we can do something about that, we should, and we also need to cooperate more with our European neighbours on defence and security.

"That's been a strong message from our American allies, and indeed an inescapable message from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There are many good reasons to have a closer relationship."

Camilla hit back: "Mr McFadden, there may be 21 billion reasons why you shouldn't have an EU reset, because that's the bill for the reset alone, let alone rejoin. We can't afford it. Can we, Minister?"

Mr McFadden responded: "Well, I think it was the OBR who said that the economic cost of leaving would be 0.4 per cent of GDP in the long term. That is a great deal of money. So let's see where we get to with this.

"We believe we can have a better deal than the one that we've got at the moment, both economically, both in terms of cooperation on illegal migration, which has become much more difficult since we left the EU and on defence and security.

"And those issues, I'm sure, will all be discussed at the summit on Friday."

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