WTO membership for island ‘to be done within weeks’

Membership of the WTO has been seen as a strategic objective for the island’s government to support future trading relationships in a post-Brexit world.

‘In terms of WTO, indirectly I’ve had discussions with Liz Truss [the International Trade Secretary] and we’re confident that the WTO arrangements will be in place well before 31 October. I spoke to Gavin St Pier and the Policy & Resources committee around that. So that is all in the pipeline,’ said Brexit minister James Duddridge.

He also said it was important to talk about opportunities after Brexit – with 90% of growth in world trade being outside the EU over the next 10 years. It was not about ‘turning our back’ on EU friends but making deeper relationships with high-growth nations and countries that the UK shared a common language, heritage, legal and accounting systems with.

‘Normalising around international rules-based organisations rather than EU rules-based organisations puts Guernsey and the United Kingdom in a better place,’ added the minister.

‘Our relationship with the European Union has been goods-focused, whereas the dynamics of the UK economy and certainly the Guernsey economy now are very much around financial services.’

It had been good to meet members of Guernsey’s financial services sector, he said. Rather than apeing what happened in the EU or the City of London, the sector operated on a ‘best of breed internationally’ regulatory system, he added.

‘The jurisdictional flexibility that Guernsey has had will increase and not decrease, and the UK will have a greater degree of jurisdictional flexibility when it comes to financial services.’

Mr Duddridge said that ‘significant employment and investment flows come through to the UK because of Guernsey’.

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