The government will do what it can to protect the status of Gibraltar as a British territory, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said on a visit to Huntingdon.

Conservative minister Damian Green visited the district on Monday to find out more about work going on at the West Anglia Training Association, as well as to support the mayoral campaign of James Palmer.

But, as part of his visit, Mr Green spoke about one of the centre points of the Brexit negotiations.

Less than a week after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 talks on the future of Gibraltar and its sovereignty have been placed high on the list of negotiations.

“As long as the people of Gibraltar want to remain British, then they should remain British. It is their basic democratic right and they absolutely overwhelming do, so we will protect their status as a British part of the world,” Mr Green told The Hunts Post.

“It’s a question people for the people of Gibraltar to decide and the government stands completely behind them in that.”

It comes after Conservative peer Michael Howard caused uproar when he inferred that the UK should be prepared to go to war with Spain if it used the Brexit negotiations to assert sovereignty over Gibraltar, which was ceded to Britain in 1713.

In the Brexit vote, on June 23, last year, Gibraltar voted by more than 96 per cent to remain within the EU, in a high turnout of 83 per cent of the electorate.