Reeves hopes hat-trick of deals shows Britain is open for business

“It shows Britain now is the place to put investment and business, because we’ve got preferential deals with the biggest economies around the world. And so I’m confident that these deals will lead to investment coming to Britain,” Reeves said. In practice, these barriers – including veterinary checks – have been hugely damaging, and a SPS deal is aimed at dismantling some of them, for this key sector. But ministers clearly believe this could open the way for UK defence companies such as BAE Systems to profit, as defence spending ramps up on both sides of the Channel. He recently forecast that an SPS agreement would add less than 0.1%, for example, against the 0.2% upside modelled by the government.