Industry minister Sarah Jones has said the new deal with the EU was a “sovereign choice” and not a “one-way deal”, despite widespread criticism that the government had appeared to make large concessions over fishing rights with the EU.

Appearing on Good Morning Britain, the MP for Croydon West told Richard Madeley and Susanna Reid that “It’s not a one-way deal at all because we will make a huge amount of money in terms of the exports that we can now.”

Claiming the deal had been welcomed by business, Jones said it didn’t mean the UK would have no say in rules that were set, telling viewers:

What will happen is we will have conversations about those rules. As you say, any kind of rule change has to go through a parliamentary process, and there will be an arbitration process where we can resolve any conflicts. I don’t foresee any conflicts, because we don’t want to reduce our standards.

And you know, the Tories, when they brought in [their] deal, said, you know, now we can diverge from the EU. That hasn’t happened, because we don’t want to reduce those standards.

Jones lamented the trading conditions that had been put in place by the Conservative Brexit deal with the EU, saying:

We have made a sovereign choice to do this because it is a practical, pragmatic response to the terrible situation we had where we couldn’t trade with our nearest trading partners. We couldn’t even trade at all on sausages or minced meat. This is much better. It will put more money in people’s pockets than be good for jobs.