Tory leadership: Liam Fox backs EU exit by 2019

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• published: 04 Jul 2016
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The UK should leave the EU on 1 January 2019, Conservative leadership candidate Liam Fox has said. Mr Fox said official negotiations should begin this year, warning that momentum cannot be lost "by stealth or the ideological rigidity" of Brussels. Free movement must end or this would be a "betrayal" of the Brexit vote. As a former defence secretary, Mr Fox said he had sat round the table with world leaders and had the "necessary breadth of experience" to do the job. Mr Fox is one of five candidates, alongside Theresa May, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom and Stephen Crabb, in the race to succeed David Cameron as Conservative leader and prime minister. The first ballot of Tory MPs takes place on Tuesday, with the eventual outcome due on 9 September. Brexit slippage Launching his leadership bid, Mr Fox - who campaigned for the UK to leave the EU - said he believed the process of exiting the EU could be concluded in about two years and he urged his rivals to be equally "explicit" about the deadline for leaving to prevent any slippage. "We cannot have a contest where doubts about the exit process remain among my colleagues and the public," he said. Insisting politicians should not "second-guess or water down" the UK's decision to leave the EU, he said there was no justification for the UK remaining in the single market and therefore having to accept unrestricted EU immigration. "If the price of the relationship with the single market is free movement of people, it's a price I'm not willing to pay. I believe the British people have made their view very clear. It is not for politicians to water it down or second guess it," he said. Use it or lose it' In his speech, Mr Fox - who also stood for the leadership in 2005 - said national security would be his number one priority while housing and health would also be key planks of any government he would lead. He called for a "use it or lose it" clause on developers to require building with a certain period and infrastructure audits to determine the impact that new developments would have on school places and the availability of GP appointments. Mr Fox, who was a doctor before entering Parliament in 1992, urged an end to structural re-organisation within the health service, saying there should be "more medicine and less management" in the NHS. He suggested he was the only candidate in the field who combined a long-standing passion for Brexit with top level cabinet experience, saying he had "sat round a table" with President Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel. He also called for Heathrow expansion to be given the green light and said the government's deficit reduction strategy needed to be intensified, suggesting it was "convenient" for the Treasury to use Brexit to drop its fiscal rule targets.