Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have a question to start. The question is in regard to a comment the Prime Minister made on November 11 to Reuters in an interview. He said, “One of the challenges is bandwidth. The U.K. hasn’t had to negotiate trade deals in the past few decades so there is an issue of not really having the bandwidth within government to move forward on this.”
I know those are his words. I know you folks aren't here to trip him up on his words. It sounds to me like you were at the negotiating table when the news came out of this WTO standing. You made the decision to back away from the table. This was in the best interests of the country, the producers and everybody else that you represent.
To me it seems that there's no bandwidth issue based on the fact that they've negotiated all of these other deals this year. They were able to do a deal with Chile and other countries.
I know you don't want to get into trouble here, so I'm going to ask you to answer any way you can.
In regard to bandwidth, is it your observation that there are any bandwidth issues with the United Kingdom?