Hello, I'm Emily Kahn and I'm delighted to welcome you to another episode of our Beyond

Brexit podcast. Having been behind the scenes on these podcasts for many months, I have the pleasure

of holding the microphone for this episode. And what an interesting time it is to be talking

about the Brexit negotiations, what we expect the outcome to be and what businesses can be doing

now to prepare for different outcomes.

Recently, we've had the much-anticipated EU summit.

This was, for some time, where many had hoped a deal would be struck.

However, as we now know, it was judged that insufficient progress had been made to reach an agreement

or indeed to schedule the rumoured extraordinary summit for

November. So where does this leave negotiations and what can we expect over the next few weeks and

months? Today I'm joined by PWC experts, two familiar voices by now, Anna Wallace, Head of Political

Relations and Andrew Gray, our head of Brexit, and a newcomer to our panel. Welcome

Imman Chetwani, one of our immigration specialists. I'll be putting to this group some

of the questions I'm most often hearing from our clients. So Anna, perhaps you can start

us off by explaining what we know now about the October summit and where we are in the

negotiation process. Sure, thank you, Emily. And well, as you rightly said, the October summit was supposed to be the moment in this Article 50 process where we left Brussels with a deal, which would then be put to both the British Parliament and the institutions of the EU.

And unfortunately, that's not what it represented in the last few weeks.

I think what you'll see in the next few months is a lot of saber rattling, certainly within the UK.

And in many ways, it'll probably feel like we're back in the referendum as both sides recounts all of the arguments about why we should or shouldn't be closer or further away from Europe.

But having said that, all indications and certainly some of the mood music coming from behind

the Brussels negotiations is that we are heading for a deal and that the UK and the EU are close to agreement.

It won't surprise listeners to know that Ireland remains the blocker in terms of delivering that progress. But nonetheless,

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