LONDON (Reuters) – British foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Tuesday no other country sees Britain as anything other than a defender of international law when asked whether passing the Internal Market Bill had hurt the country’s reputation.

The British government has admitted that the bill breaks international law but says it was forced to pass it through parliament to protect the internal market of the United Kingdom against threats from the European Union.

“I think it’s a precautionary defensive reaction,” Raab told a parliamentary committee, adding that no other country saw Britain as “anything other than a … reliable defender of the international rules of law.”

(Reporting by William James, writing by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Stephen Addison)

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