UK Prime Minister Theresa May expressed doubts about key promises made by those members of her Cabinet who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union, including a points-based immigration system and leaving the single market.
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May told the BBC she would use the summit to begin talks with world leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over future trade deals.
“And the message of Jaguar Land Rover is of British success, British manufacturing success, British exporting success, and that’s the message we’ll be taking to the G20, that Britain is open for business and we’re open for business around the world”.
Mrs May will tell President Xi he must wait for a final decision on the £18billion Hinkley Point project until her review is complete later this month.
Theresa May is heading to China for her first major global summit as Prime Minister, but faces a row with her hosts over the Hinkley Point nuclear power station project.
Although a decision on whether or not the Hinkley Point C project in Somerset will go ahead is expected this month, United Kingdom officials indicated it would not be announced at the meeting with the Chinese leader – fuelling speculation the plan will be scrapped or significantly altered.
“I want to talk about how we can scope out what a trade deal and the negotiations on a trade deal would be like so that when the time comes, when we are able to sign those deals, we are able to do so”, she said.
She said: “Looking at free trade, we’ve already seen in some of the early conversations I’ve had with some of these leaders, they’re interested to talking to us about trading arrangements; the Australians for example”.
Obama added that it “would not make sense to put aside” existing negotiations with these big blocs of countries in order to do a quick deal with the UK.
The meeting is their first since May took office in July.
But expectation is mounting that the French and Chinese-backed plan to build a new £18billion nuclear power station in Somerset will be rewritten or torn up altogether.
May said formal European Union talks on Brexit will not begin until 2017, but promised the process would not be “kicked into the long grass”.
Mrs May will hold talks with Mr Xi on Monday, after the end of the two-day G20 summit of leaders of the world’s richest nations. Some in her team have expressed security concerns.
“I’m not sure that when you look around the world at all the UK’s partners that we are defined exclusively by one energy project”, the official said.
“What’s happened over the last few years is the Government has built a new strategic partnership with China – a golden era of relationships between the United Kingdom and China”, Mrs May said.
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Speaking to reporters on the plane heading to Hangzhou, she said: “I don’t just come in and say “I’m going to take a decision”, I actually look at the evidence, weigh up the evidence, take the advice and then consider that and come to my decision”.
