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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Greening raids her own budget to find extra £1.3bn for frontline school spending - Politics live

What's being cut in education to fund extra money for schools

Here is the full text of Justine Greening’s statement.

And here are some key extracts.

On the extra money for schools

There will therefore be an additional £1.3 billion for schools and high needs across 2018-19 and 2019-20, in addition to the schools budget set at Spending Review 2015. This funding is across the next two years as we transition to the NFF. Spending plans for years beyond 2019-20 will be set out in a future Spending Review.

But as a result of this investment, core funding for schools and high needs will rise from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £42.4 billion in 2018-19. In 2019-20 this will rise again to £43.5 billion. This represents £1.3 billion in additional investment: £416 million more than was set aside at the last spending review for the core school budget in 2018-19, and £884 million more in 2019-20. It will mean that the total schools budget will increase by £2.6 billion between this year and 2019-20, and per pupil funding will now be maintained in real terms for the remaining two years of the Spending Review period to 2019-20.

On where the extra money will come from

The £1.3 billion additional investment in core schools funding which I am announcing today will be funded in full from efficiencies and savings I have identified from within my Department’s existing budget, rather than higher taxes or more debt. This of course requires difficult decisions, but I believe it is right to prioritise core schools funding, even as we continue the vital task of repairing the public finances. By making savings and efficiencies, I am maximising the proportion of my Department’s budget which is allocated directly to frontline head teachers – who can then use their professional expertise to ensure that it is spent where it will have the greatest possible impact. I have challenged my civil servants to find efficiencies, as schools are having to.

I want to set out briefly the savings and efficiencies that I will secure:

Efficiencies and savings across our capital budget can release £420 million. The majority of this will be from healthy pupils capital funding - from which we will make savings of £315 million. This reflects reductions in forecast revenue from the soft drinks industry levy. Every pound of England’s share of spending from the levy will continue to be invested in improving child health, including £100 million in 2018-19 for healthy pupils capital.

We remain committed to an ambitious programme that delivers choice, innovation and higher standards for parents. In delivering the programme, and the plans for a further 140 free schools announced at the last Budget, we will work more efficiently to release savings of £280 million up to 2019 20. This will include working more collaboratively with local authorities to provide free schools to meet basic need – so that 30 of the 140 schools are delivered through the local authority route rather than the central free schools route.

Across the DfE resource budget – which is over £60 billion per year – I will also reprioritise £250 million in 2018-19 and £350 million in 2019-20 to fund the increase in core schools budget spending I am announcing today. I will, for example, seek to identify £200m that I can redirect from the Department’s central programmes that support schools on relatively narrow areas of their work. While these projects are useful, I believe strongly that this funding is most valuable in the hands of head teachers.

Here is my colleague Rowena Mason’s story on the Greening announcement.

The Daily Record’s Torcuil Crichton says Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland won’t benefit from today’s announcement.

Updated

John Bercow, the speaker, interrupts proceedings to say that, following his earlier threat (my word, not Bercow’s - see 3.51pm), Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, has decided that he would like to make a Commons statement on HS2. It will come at about 10pm, Bercow announces.

Anna Soubry, a Conservative, asks why schools are having to pay the apprenticeship levy.

Greening says apprenticeships are important. But she recognises the concerns about this.

Labour’s Chris Leslie says Greening seems to be “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. He asks which programme in the education department will be cut to pay for the extra money going to school.

Greening says she will look across the department. She says she was struck when she looked by how many “pots of money” there are in her department. She says she wants them to work more effectively.

Here is Guido Fawkes’ take on the Greening announcement.

Philip Davies, a Conservative, asks when schools will find out how much extra they will get.

Greening says they will find this out in September.

Labour’s Liz Kendall asks if the underlying principles behind the new school funding formula are being changed. The most deprived schools were set to lose the most.

Greening says the principles behind the new formula will be set out in the autumn. But all schools will benefit from this announcement, she says.

Nicky Morgan, Greening’s Conservative predecessor, says schools like the ones that she knows in Leicestershire do need a fairer funding formula.

Greening says her plans will allow schools that were under-funded to catch up more quickly.

Labour’s Yvette Cooper asks if schools which have lost money will get anything back. How many pupils still still face a real cut to funding next year?

Greening says the Tories and Labour both promised at the election that no schools would lose out in cash terms. This goes further, she says.

Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education committee, asks which central programmes in her department will be cut to free up the £400m she needs for frontline schools spending.

Greening says she will be looking across all programmes to find the money.

Updated

Greening is responding to Rayner.

She says it is Labour that is retreating from its manifesto. She cites what John McDonnell said yesterday about student debt. Labour offered “snake oil propaganda” at the election, she says.

She says the £4bn promised by the Tories was over four years. This announcement is over two years, she says. So there is no inconsistency, she claims.

Labour says Greening's announcement is 'nothing more than a sticking plaster'

Rayner is still speaking.

She says the Tories are in “full retreat” from their own manifesto. They promised an extra £4bn for schools. Now it is just £1.3bn.

She asks if the government has retreated because it knows it cannot pass primary legislation.

She goes on:

What the secretary of state has announced today is nothing more than a sticking plaster. Per pupil funding will still fall over the course of this parliament unless further action is taken urgently.

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, says she will always be the first to welcome extra money for schools. She has been campaigning for this for the last year. And she thanks parents and teachers for campaigning for this.

But this statement raises more questions than it answers.

She asks if the extra money for schools will be on a per pupil basis.

She says the Treasury is not providing a single extra penny.

If Greening is seeking savings from the free schools programme, does she now accept it is a bad programme.

She says she cannot see how this announcement fits with the Tory manifesto.

And this is from ITV’s Robert Peston.

This is from my colleague Rowena Mason.

Greening says she will fund the extra money for schools from savings in other parts of her budget.

Greening says she will also increase PE and sports funding for primary schools.

Here is more from the Greening statement.

The NFF is the national funding formula.

This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

Greening announces extra £1.3bn for schools for next two years

Justine Greening is speaking now.

She says the current funding formula is “unfair, opaque and out of date”.

School funding is at a record high, she says.

At the election people were concerned about the overall level of funding, she says.

  • Greening says the government will introduce a new funding formula from 2018-19.
  • She says there will be an extra £1.3bn for schools for the years 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Justine Greening's Commons statement on schools

Justine Greening, the education secretary, is about to make a Commons statement on schools. According to ITV, she will scrap the proposed new schools funding formula.

What clause 9 of the repeal bill says

Perhaps what was most interesting in Dominic Cummings’ Twitter outburst (see 3.40pm) was the point he was making about clause 9 of the repeal bill. The clause will give ministers Henry VIII powers (powers to amend bills using secondary legislation) to implement the EU withdrawal agreement.

Unlike some other parts of the bill, clause 9 is fully comprehensible. This is what it says in full.

1) A minister of the Crown may by regulations make such provision as the minister considers appropriate for the purposes of implementing the withdrawal agreement if the minister considers that such provision should be in force on or before exit day.

2) Regulations under this section may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament (including modifying this Act).

3) But regulations under this section may not—

(a) impose or increase taxation,

(b) make retrospective provision,

(c) create a relevant criminal offence, or

(d) amend, repeal or revoke the Human Rights Act 1998 or any subordinate legislation made under it.

4) No regulations may be made under this section after exit day.

If you are interested in finding out more about what the bill would do, do read this blog by the Cambridge law professor Mark Elliott. It is not short, but it is clear and very informative.

In the Commons John Bercow, the Speaker, has just been taking points of order. Several MPs complained that Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, has not made an oral statement to MPs about plans to extend HS2. In response, Bercow effectively said that if Grayling did not turn up to make a statement tomorrow, he would grant an urgent question on the topic and let it run for as long as possible.

Dominic Cummings says his anti-Davis Twitter diatribe (see 3.40pm) should not be seen as reflecting the views of Michael Gove.

Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director and a special adviser to Michael Gove for a period during the last parliament, has let rip on Twitter this afternoon. His main target was David Davis, the Brexit secretary.

(Forsyth is James Forsyth, the Spectator’s political editor. Mitchell is Andrew Mitchell MP, Davis’s close friend. And Heywood is Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary.)

But Cummings has also taken a swipe at Heywood.

And this run of tweets manages to disparage almost everyone in parliament and in the government.

Dominic Cummings.
Dominic Cummings. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

A British diplomat has said Brexit talks on the issue of a frictionaless border in Ireland are “stuck” because a solution cannot be found in isolation from the final deal on the UK’s relationship with the EU.

Neil Holland, deputy head of mission at the British Embassy, told the Magill summer school in Donegal on Monday that the Good Friday Agreement on peace in Northern Ireland had “the highest level of agreement” possible from all sides involved in discussions.

“The problem is how to get from A to B, how to get from the political assertion to the realities soft border,” said Holland.

You can’t have a discussion about what Northern Ireland should look like before we know the nature of the replacement relationship, so we are kind of stuck. Until we know the shape of the future agreement [it’s very difficult to know how that would look.]

He was speaking after Brendan Halligan, former Irish politician and chairman of the Institute of International and European Affairs, warned that there was “widespread denial starting at No 10” about the terrible consequences of Brexit.

He said Ireland should prepare for a hard border as he was concerned that mooted solutions such as moving the border to “the middle of the Irish sea” would not be acceptable to the DUP.

“I now think such imaginative solutions are out of the question because of arrival of DUP and its position in Westminster,” said Halligan.

Lunchtime summary

  • Lord Heseltine, the Conservative former deputy prime minister, has said that Theresa May is leading an “enfeebled, deeply divided” government. Speaking on the World at One about the leak of information from last week’s cabinet, which was seemingly intended to damage the pro-European chancellor, Philip Hammond, the strongly pro-remain Heseltine said:

My guess is it’s [the person responsible for the leak] a leading Brexiteer. I have no evidence, but that’s where the self-interest lies. And she can’t sack leading Brexiteers because she has no authority. So you have an enfeebled government. Everybody knows this. I don’t like saying it, but I’m not telling you anything that every journalist is not writing every day ...

The Europeans have worked it all out. This is a government without authority. This is a deeply divided government and what they know, what the Europeans know, and what our national press knows is every day there’s a more depressing headline.

  • Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has said that the latest round of Brexit talk starting in Brussels today will “delve into the heart of the matter”. (See 9.14am.)
  • David Cameron has said the Conservatives must offer voters a “more inspiring vision”. (See 12.09pm.)
  • Jeremy Corbyn has written to May urging her to broaden the scope of the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry. Giving details of his reasons for wanting a two-part inquiry, he said:

We are also concerned that the information already in the public domain points to a series of systemic failures that may extend from local to national government and beyond. We would be disrespecting the memory of those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire, and putting further lives at risk, if we fail to fully learn these lessons. It is therefore our view that an immediate inquiry into the proximate causes of the Grenfell Tower fire should be supplemented by a longer-term, more wide-ranging inquiry into the underlying causes of what went wrong and the extent to which they are replicated on a national scale.

Following the successful template of the Macpherson Inquiry, the rubric for this stage should be ‘an inquiry into matters arising from the Grenfell Tower fire’, that is broad enough to allow the inquiry to follow different avenues as and when they become relevant and appropriate.

Corbyn said the second phase of the inquiry should cover topics like: housing allocation policy; levels of funding for local councils, housing associations and the fire service and its impact on the quality and quantity of services they are able to deliver; the use of outsourcing and subcontracting to deliver local government and housing responsibilities; and the responsiveness of TMOs and councils to their tenants.

  • Aslef, the train drivers’ union, has described Philip Hammond as “ignorant and ill-informed” after the chancellor yesterday claimed unions were to blame for the fact that 95% of train drivers are men. Hammond said that was because unions controlled recruitment. In response, the Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said:

For twenty years ASLEF has been at the forefront of pushing for diversity in our industry. We have run campaigns to encourage more women to become train drivers, we have a women’s section in our union, and a dedicated official at head office lobbying the train companies every day.

But the truth is that we can only recruit as members the people the privatised train and freight operating companies choose to recruit as drivers. The train companies, not the trade unions, control the recruitment process. And they have been very slow to listen to what we say and join the 21stcentury world of work.

And he appears to have conveniently forgotten that, in 2011, when he was transport secretary, we wrote and asked for the public sector duties of the Equality Act to apply to train companies and Theresa Villiers, the transport minister, wrote back and said “No”. On his watch!

Philip Hammond wallows in his own little world but it is, frankly, shameful that he doesn’t know more before he opens his mouth. His ignorant and ill-informed comments do nothing to help this industry, or his government.

  • Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, has said firefighters are finding it hard to provide food for their families due to the public sector pay cap. Speaking at a protest outside parliament, O’Grady said the government had lost the argument on wages and that most voters supported a pay rise for public servants. She said:

They have had seven years of pay freezes, pay caps. Austerity isn’t clearing the deficit. On the contrary, the Government moved the goalposts, they say it is not going to be cleared until 2025 now.

But meanwhile public servants, dedicated, and in the case of our firefighters, brave, are finding it hard to put food on the table for their families.

  • The Electoral Commission has raised concerns about “troubling” claims that some electors cast more than one vote at the general election. As the Press Association reports, the commission said in a report that around 500,000 more people were registered for the June 8 poll than at the 2015 general election, taking the electorate to 46.8m, the largest so far, it said. The watchdog said it had not found evidence of widespread abuse but had received more than 1,000 emails from members of the public, along with 38 letters from MPs, raising the issue of people voting twice and it is working with police on how to investigate allegations. Its report states:

Although people may lawfully be registered to vote in more than one place in certain circumstances, it is troubling that some voters appear to have admitted voting more than once at the general election, which is an offence.

Alan Dukes, the former leader of Ireland’s Fine Gael party, has said he fears that the EU will come up with a “classic fudge” on Brexit.

But he said that he believes the UK can continue to be a de facto member of the single market even if it technically removes itself from the EU trading agreement. “I can see a pathway for the UK in pursuing the insane decision that the electorate took,” Dukes told the Magill summer school in Ireland in a short speech peppered with solutions rather than hand-wringing over the devastation it would cause.

Although he described the referendum result as “one of the most egregiously stupid decisions of this decade”, he pointed out that the UK can effectively remain in the single market as long as the repeal bill is passed.

If the bill rolls over standards in food, pharmaceuticals and other goods into British legislation, it would mean the key food standards, veterinary certification etc would remain a mirror of the EU legislation. This would mean “no technical barriers to trade with the EU”, he said.

The great repeal bill? Personally I thought this was a piece of genius. If passed, it means the UK has EU standards ... It could still have the benefits of single market and withdraw in areas it wanted to, so we would have a gradual separation rather than a cut.

He also said there was no reason why the UK could not seal instant trade deals with any of the 53 countries already in trade deals with the EU, as the UK could just approach places like Canada and say ‘we’ve already ratified the deal’ as part of the EU deal.

“I can’t see any reason why Canada would say no, or Japan would say no,” he said.

Here is my colleague Rowena Mason on the significance of the ministerial infighting.

And here is an extract.

Senior Tories trying to downplay the splits as the product of “too much warm prosecco” are insulting the intelligence of voters. It is a fight for the future of the Conservative leadership and the shape of Brexit, with Theresa May powerless to reassert discipline following her election disaster.

This chap is effectively deputy prime minister. For the story behind the picture, you’ll have to read Pass Notes.

Damian Green at Latitude Festival wearing a vintage 1960s Dukla Prague away kit.
Damian Green at Latitude Festival wearing a vintage 1960s Dukla Prague away kit. Photograph: @jackcevans

If Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit negotiator, had his way, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would be in Brussels today. According to the Independent, which has interviewed Verhofstadt, he thinks Corbyn should be part of the British negotiating team. Here’s an extract.

“Brexit is about the whole of the UK. It will affect all UK citizens, and EU citizens in the UK. This is much bigger than one political party’s internal divisions or short term electoral positioning. It’s about people’s lives,” Mr Verhofstadt told The Independent.

“I believe the negotiations should involve more people with more diverse opinions. Some recognition that the election result was, in part, a rejection of Theresa May’s vision for a hard Brexit would be welcome.”

Asked if that meant Ms May should include other party leaders in her negotiating team, a spokesman for Mr Verhofstadt said: “Absolutely.”

Number 10 lobby briefing - Summary

I’ve already posted the main line from the Number 10 lobby briefing. But here’s a full summary from what was a relatively dull session.

  • Theresa May will tell ministers to stop leaking at tomorrow’s cabinet, Number 10 said. (See 11.40am.)
  • Downing Street dismissed claims that ministerial infighting was hindering the government’s ability to deliver Brexit. When this was put to the prime minister’s spokesman, he said: “Everybody is working towards getting a good Brexit deal for Britain.” He also rejected the claim from the Telegraph’s unnamed cabinet source that the establishment is trying to block Brexit. (See 11am.) The government as a whole was working on Brexit and delivering “the will of the British people”, he said.
  • May is “pleased” about the new Doctor Who being a woman, the spokesman said.
10 Downing Street.
10 Downing Street. Photograph: Nigel Roddis/EPA

And, while we’re on the Brexit talks, this is from John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor.

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has already left Brussels - not because he left his notes at home (see 10.08am) but because most of the talks this week are being conducted by officials, not by the principals. He will be back on Thursday when he will hold talks with Michel Barnier before the two men give a press conference. This is from the BBC’s Piers Scholfield.

Cameron says Tories must offer voters 'a more inspiring vision'

David Cameron, the former prime minister, has given an interview to the Evening Standard. In it, he says the Tories must offer a “more inspiring vision”, which just about amounts to a criticism of Theresa May (as well as being a statement of the obvious - they lost their majority at the election).

The Standard is, of course, edited by Cameron’s close friend and political ally, the former chancellor George Osborne. A different editor might have sent the interview back and asked for something a bit more interesting ...

Here are the key points.

  • Cameron said the Tories must offer voters a “more inspiring vision”.

We on the centre-right side of the argument have to have just as inspiring a vision — a more inspiring vision — of how you build not just a strong economy but a strong society and a better life.

  • He said the Conservative party has to keep modernising.

It is very important that the Conservative Party doesn’t slip backwards. The Conservative party only succeeds if it is a party of the future.

Modernisation isn’t an event. It is a process. A political party should be asking itself all the time, ‘Am I properly in touch with and reflecting the society and the country?’.

I want us to go on being the open, liberal, tolerant party that we became post-2005 because I think that was part of our success.

  • He said one reason why Jeremy Corbyn was popular with young voters was because people had “forgotten just how dangerous this full-on programme of nationalisation, state control and rampantly high taxes can be”. The Tories had to keep making the case for free enterprise, he said.

You don’t win the argument in favour of free enterprise, free markets, choice and liberal democracy and then pack up and go home. You have to win the argument in every generation.

May to tell cabinet ministers to stop leaking

I’m back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. And the best line is that, when the cabinet meets tomorrow, Theresa May will be telling ministers not to ring up the papers afterwards and give them a read-out on what happened. The prime minister’s spokesman said:

The cabinet must be able to hold discussions on government policy in private and the prime minister will be reminding her colleagues of that at the cabinet meeting tomorrow ... She will be reminding them of their responsibilities and making the point that ministers across government need to be focused on getting on with delivering what the British public wants.

This reflects the fact that some (but not all) of the blue-on-blue hostile briefing we’ve had from ministers in recent days has included detailed accounts of what Philip Hammond said, and allegedly said, at cabinet last week.

But May does not seem minded to launch a leak inquiry; the spokesman said he was not aware of any plans for one. And the spokesman did not talk about what might happen to ministers who continue to leak.

In the past comments like this have prompted stories about the prime minister “reading the Riot Act” to ministers about leaks. But from what we were told it did not sound as if they will be getting the Riot Act tomorrow; more like an extract from the Westminster city council bylaws.

Updated

Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, was on the Today programme this morning talking about the new HS2 contracts awarded this morning. But he also did his best to play down suggestions - fuelled by a briefing frenzy over the weekend - that cabinet ministers are at war with each other. He told the programme:

All I can say is my experience of both being inside cabinet meetings and also with cabinet colleagues in the last few weeks is that I don’t see these great divisions that are suggested in some of the Sunday newspapers. I have to say I think all of this is somewhat overblown.

Here is the Guardian’s story about his comments.

But this morning’s papers contain fresh evidence that hostile briefings are taking place. The most colourful account is in the Daily Telegraph, which has splashed on the musings of a leave cabinet minister ranting on about “the establishment”. (Some of us thought that cabinet ministers were the establishment, but never mind.)

But a senior Cabinet minister told The Telegraph: “What’s really going on is that the Establishment, the Treasury, is trying to ---- it up. They want to frustrate Brexit.

“This is a critical moment. That’s why we have to keep Theresa there. Otherwise the whole thing will fall apart.”

Mr Hammond views Brexit-supporters as “a bunch of smarmy pirates” who have “taken the Establishment prisoner”, the source said, adding that Mr Hammond is now “trying to break out” and get his own way.

Theresa May has the support of the majority of the Conservative party if she chooses to sack ministers and enforce discipline on her feuding cabinet, after a weekend of leadership manoeuvres and poisonous leaks.

A message has been sent to the prime minister by the executive of the 1922 committee, which represents the parliamentary party, saying she has its support to stay on and deliver Brexit in March 2019. “The PM has the strong support of Tory MPs — she can enforce cabinet discipline however she thinks is appropriate,” said one senior Conservative. “We will be cheering her on.”

How seriously should we take the Tory cabinet turmoil, and talk of a leadership challenge?

Not having been on the receiving end of these briefings personally, it is hard to be sure. But what I am fairly sure of is that, although newspapers are prone to exaggeration, reporters generally don’t actually make things up. If ministers are being quoted attacking their colleagues unattributably, then it is best to assume that these things are being said. (Andrew Marr, who unlike me was at the Spectator summer drinks party last week, wrote in the Sunday Times yesterday: “After a few sips and some surreptitious whinnying, I have to conclude that the plot against Theresa May is a little more serious than I had thought.”)

The widespread assumption that Theresa May will not fight another general election means that the “long” phase of the next leadership contest is already underway. That, plus divisions over Brexit, provides the background to the current in-fighting. Another key point is that there is no-one in Number 10 with the authority to stop this. Before the election any cabinet minister suspected of briefing against a colleague would have received a four-letter-word-flavoured bollocking from Fiona Hill, and face a ban from the Today programme for six months. Now there is no-one in Downing Street exerting that sort of authority.

But whether this will result in a leadership challenge is another matter entirely. Given the damage a contest would cause, and the fact there is no agreed successor, it seems very unlikely that 48 Tory MPs will demand one. But a cabinet resignation over Brexit, perhaps in the autumn if the government were to agree “soft” Brexit terms, does seem more possible, and that could end up provoking a contest.

I’m off to the lobby briefing now. I’ll post again after 11.30am.

Updated

Here is an AFP picture of David Davis, the Brexit secretary, sitting opposite Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, at the start of talks this morning.

Barnier and his colleagues have a huge wodge of notes in front of them. Davis and his fellow Brits have almost nothing. Perhaps they have amazing memories, or perhaps they’ve hidden the paperwork under the desk.

Alternatively, this could be an indication that all those EU complaints about the UK government not knowing what it wants from the talks are not entirely unfounded ...

David Davis (centre right) and Michel Barnier (centre left)
David Davis (centre right) and Michel Barnier (centre left) Photograph: Thierry Charlier/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

On the Today programme this morning Ales Chmelar, the Czech secretary of state for European affairs, said that he hoped that the UK would get a trade deal with the EU that was “deeper” than Canada’s. But he also suggested that the UK might have to pay for this. He said:

We still hope that there will be a mutually agreeable settlement also on trade issues and we also hope that the UK will have a specific access to the European market, that’s something that we have negotiated for example now with Canada, it can be much broader, it can be much deeper.

And if it is deeper than other settlements, than other trade deals, then it is understandable that there will be also certain commitments.

He also said that by October EU leaders would expect to see “substantial progress” towards agreement on who much the UK will pay when it leaves the EU (because of its share of EU budget commitments that have already been made). He said:

Now we’re dealing with the legacy issues, it means what has been already committed and what somehow has to be settled.

In this there is a lot of work to be done, we need in October so-called substantial progress in those terms, and we need to see and set at least a methodology in how much and in what areas we can actually have to settle what commitments have to be settled.

On the same programme Owen Paterson, the pro-leave Conservative former environment secretary, said he was opposed to the UK making an ongoing commitment to pay for access to the single market. If it had to pay, it should be through tariffs, he argued. But he said a tariff-free agreement would be in the best interests of both sides. He told Today:

If you want to pay for access to a market, you pay a tariff. Now, for us actually, we would raise far more in tariffs than the Europeans would raise with us because of this massive surplus the European Union has with us.

So I totally agree with Mr Chmelar that this has to be worked out fast and this is screamingly obvious, it’s in everyone’s interest that we establish reciprocal free trade without tariffs, that would be much in everybody’s interests.

But if the European Union does want to charge us for access, they charge it through tariffs which we would pay at the rate of most favoured nation status under WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules, not some arbitrary charge.

Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, is also in Brussels today. In a statement to reporters, he said he hoped the EU would take seriously the UK government’s offer on the rights of EU nationals (one of the issues coming up in the Brexit talks this week). He said:

A very fair, serious offer has been put on the table by the UK government about citizenship, the value we place on the 3.2m EU citizens in our country. The, I think, very good offer that we are making to them and the security they can have about their future - I hope very much that people will look at the offer in the spirit it deserves.

He did not take questions.

Boris Johnson in Brussels.
Boris Johnson in Brussels. Photograph: Sky News

Barnier promises to 'delve into heart of the matter' as fresh round of Brexit talks starts

A fresh round of Brexit talks takes place in Brussels this week. The first round was relatively perfunctory - it focused on procedure - and so in practice this is the first week of full-on negotiating. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, spoke briefly to journalists about an hour ago as they opened the session. Intriguingly, Barnier, said:

I look forward to our negotiations this week. We will now delve into the heart of the matter. We need to examine and compare our respective positions in order to make good progress.

Davis said it was “incredibly important” they made good progress. “Now it’s time to get down to work and make this a successful negotiation,” he said.

Davis and Barnier did not take questions. They are due to hold a press conference on Thursday, when this round of talks has concluded. Politico Europe has a useful guide to exactly what is being discussed, and when, this week.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: The latest round of Brexit talks start in Brussels.

10.15am: The TUC stages a protest about public sector pay at Westminster.

11am: Number 10 lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

3.30pm: MPs begin an emergency debate demanded by Labour about the government’s refusal to schedule time for opposition day debates and about claims the lack of business in the Commons is creating a “zombie parliament”.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to publish a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.

David Davis and Michel Barnier (right) at the start of this week’s round of talks in Brussels.
David Davis and Michel Barnier (right) at the start of this week’s round of talks in Brussels.
 Photograph: Isopix/REX/Shutterstock

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