LONDON: Britain’s parliament will need time to approve any trade deal with the European Union otherwise the two sides will have failed to secure agreement and will trade on World Trade Organization terms, minister Michael Gove said on Thursday.

“Our approach is that we will need ... if we have secured an agreement ... time to allow parliament to have its voice and its say and to legislate and if we don’t have time for that, then the clock has run out and no agreement would have been reached and we will be in a world where we will be trading on WTO terms,” Gove, in charge of the implementation of an earlier divorce deal, told a parliamentary committee.