Chief Minister Howard Quayle has renewed his pledge to protect the rights of EU citizens in the island after Brexit.

Ahead of the Brexit Bill debate on Tuesday, Mr Quayle was asked by Liberal Vannin leader Kate Beecroft (Douglas South) to outline some of the moves being made to mitigate against any negative impacts from Brexit.

Mr Quayle pointed to the Brexit Bill as one such move.

He said: ’Another area of key importance is ensuring that we protect the rights of EU citizens living here on the Isle of Man, and we are taking steps to ensure that those rights will be protected whether there is a deal or not.’

The Chief Minister added: ’As I have mentioned previously, the UK’s membership of the World Trade Organisation extends to the Isle of Man and we have been working to ensure that we will comply with the obligations that that entails.

’This will be particularly important if there is a no-deal scenario and the UK falls back on trading on WTO terms.’

On top of that, he said, contingency planning was underway across government to ’mitigate any potential disruption, including supply chains for goods, as a result of a no-deal exit’.