BRITAIN will not align with European Union rules after Brexit, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has insisted, as the UK prepares to leave the bloc in just five days' time.

Ms Patel said the country would take back control of its laws, money and borders and would diverge from EU rules as it carved out free trade agreements.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, has warned that the UK's access to the single market would be weakened if it diverged from Brussels' rules.

But Ms Patel, in an interview with Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday, said: "In terms of divergence, we are not having alignment. We will be diverging. We want to take control of our laws, money and our borders.

"And to do that we will not be rule-takers; we will be setting our own laws and that is a fundamental feature of leaving the European Union."

However, Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, appeared to adopt a softer approach, saying the UK would not diverge "just for the sake of it".

He told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show: "We're coming out of the single market, we're coming out of the customs union. We're not just going to diverge just for the sake of it; we need to look at where the opportunities are.

"But it is true that we are going to have control of our approach to regulation and that's the very essence of Brexit: that we can do things differently, particularly where, for example, there is innovation, there is new technologies, there's things where we want to move quickly.

"Brexit at its very core is that we will have control of our laws, our regulation and that is why we can't be a rule-taker: we need to have that opportunity," he explained.

Mr Barclay said the UK's objective is to have a zero-tariff, zero-quota, ambitious trade policy but t