May's press conference with Trudeau
Here are the main points from the press conference.
- Theresa May has insisted that her government is united over Brexit. Referring to Amber Rudd’s comment yesterday about Boris Johnson behaving like a backseat driver, May said:
The UK government is driven from the front, and we all have the same destination in our sights. And that is getting a good deal for Brexit with the European Union. That’s a good trade deal, but also a good ongoing relationship in relation to other matters like security.
- May said that she thought the UK would be able to make a “swift transition” after Brexit to a new trade relationship with Canada based on Ceta, the EU-Canada free trade deal. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, also said he was “very confident” that trade links between the two countries would remain strong. May said:
We want to ensure that when we leave the European Union, for businesses and people, that change is as smooth and orderly as possible.
And working on Ceta as becoming the first of the bilateral trade relationships between the UK and Canada that means that seamless transition can take place. People will know the basis on which that trading relationship will be set up.
We will be having a working group, which obviously will be looking at the details of how that transition will operate in detail.
.@JustinTrudeau says he is"very confident" of swift UK/Canada trade deal after #Brexit pic.twitter.com/gmQNZ6dBub
— Andrew Woodcock (@AndyWoodcock) September 18, 2017
- May rejected claims that the government had to choose between a Ceta-style relationship with the EU after Brexit, or closer one. (This has been described by some commentators as a choice between EEA-minus and Ceta-plus - see 5.09pm.) When it was put to her that she had to choose between these two models, she replied:
I don’t recognise the simple binary approach to the question of Brexit and the future relationship between the UK and the European Union post-Brexit. I’ve always said that we’re not looking to take a model off the shelf of a relationship that current exists because the UK is unique. We’re already in the European Union and so we have a relationship with the EU already. When we come out we want to make sure we negotiate a good deal, a bespoke deal, a deal that is right for the United Kingdom.
- May insisted that the departure of Oliver Robbins, the government’s lead official in the Brexit talks, from his post as permanent secretary at the department for leaving the EU (DExEU) was not a sign that the Whitehall structure she put in place for Brexit was shambolic. When this claim was put to her, she replied:
Not at all. What it is a sign of is that the negotiations are getting into a more detailed and more intense phase. As a result of that, I think it’s right that Olly Robbins concentrates on that, and obviously a different structure will be put in place in terms of the running of the management of the department for exiting the European Union.
- Trudeau said Canada would refuse to buy Boeing’s Super Hornet jets unless Boeing dropped its legal case against the Canadian aerospace firm Bombardier. Bombardier is a major employer in Northern Ireland and May said she would raise the matter again with President Trump when they met in New York. Trudeau went further. He said Canada was considering a major fighter jet procurement. He went on:
We have obviously been looking at the Super Hornet aircraft from Boeing as a potential significant procurement of our new fighter jets. But we won’t do business with a company that is busy trying to sue us and put our aerospace workers out of business.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Q: Doesn’t the fact that Oliver Robbins has had to move show that the Brexit structure you put in place was a shambles?
No, says May. She says it shows that the negotiations are moving to a different phase.
And that is it. The press conference is over.
I will post a summary soon.
Q: Did you discuss using Britain and Canada’s economic model to put pressure on Boeing, by cancelling contracts?
Trudeau says Canada is embarking on a procurement process. That includes replacing fighter jets. Canada has been looking at the Boeing Super Hornet. But Canada won’t do business with a company trying to put Canada out of business, he says.
Q: [To May] Do you fancy a Ceta-style relationship with the EU after Brexit, or something closer? [See 5.09pm for more on the background to this.]
May says she does not recognise that simple binary choice.
She has always said she does not want to take a model off the shelf. The UK is in a unique position, she says. She wants to negotiate a good, bespoke deal for the UK. That will be in the interests of the EU as well.
Q: Will you speak to President Trump about Bombadier? (See 1.46pm.)
May says she has already spoken to Trump about this. She will speak to him about it in New York. She wants a resolution to this, to defend jobs in Northern Ireland.
Trudeau says defending the CSeries aircraft is a priority for his government. He will be working with May and explaining to the Americans how Boeing’s actions are harmful.
He says the action Boeing is taking is in their “narrow economic interests”. It is not in the interests of trade, he says.
He says he will continue to stand up strongly in defence of Canadian jobs.
Q: Won’t negotiating a trade deal with Canada ruffle feathers with the EU?
May says it makes sense to maintain the Ceta arrangements throughout the transition. The UK has discussed this with the EU, she says.
Trudeau says Ceta will make an “excellent basis” for ensuring a smooth transition.
After that there will be a chance to see whether the UK-Canada trade relationship can be improved.
Q: Will you tolerate backseat driving on Brexit?
May says the UK government is driven from the front. They all have the same destination in their sights.
She says she wants a deep and special partnership with the EU.
Q: Will we see a Brexit plan for Britain that is clearer by the end of the week?
May says she set out her plan for Brexit in the Lancaster House speech.
She says she will speak on Friday.
The negotiations are being conducted in a positive spirit.
Q: Ceta took seven years to negotiate. How long will a UK-Canada deal take place?
May says the UK starts in a different place.
Trudeau says he expects to have a strong relationship with the UK throughout the transition.
Q: What do you want to hear from Aung San Suu Kyi at the UN tomorrow?
Trudeau says Canada is very concerned about the plight of the Rohingya. There is a need to de-esclate the situation.
May says she echoes what Trudea said. It important the situation is de-escalated.
In response to a question, Trudeau says Canada will respect the EU rules about negotiating a trade deal. But he expects Canada and the UK to be able to move swiftly to a new trade deal.
May says they hope the two countries can move smoothly to a new trade relationship.
Trudeau says implementing Ceta (the EU-Canada deal) will eliminate more than 90% of trade barriers between them.
He says it is reasonable to take Ceta as the model after Brexit.
May is still speaking. She says Britain and Ukraine will take part in joint military exercises in Ukraine.
They are both promoting Nato reform, she says. And they are working together on counter-terrorism.
She thanks Canada for the support offered after the Manchester and London terror attacks.
May says there will be 'swift transition' from EU-Canada trade deal to UK-Canada one after Brexit
Theresa May opens in French, thanking “Justin” for welcoming her.
She quickly reverts to English, and starts by talking about the close relationship between Canada and the UK.
She says she and Trudeau spoke about ending the gender pay gap, and about initiatives to tackle domestic violence.
They are both committed to moving away from a reliance on coal as an energy source.
The UK and Canada are natural partners in promoting free trade, she says. She says Ceta, the EU-Canada free trade deal, is coming into force this week.
She says she and Trudeau have agreed to a “swift transition” from that to a UK-Canada deal after Brexit.
- May says there will be a “swift transition” from EU-Canada trade deal to a UK-Canada one after Brexit.
Updated
Trudeau is opening the press conference, rattling through some of the administrative proposals he and Theresa May have agreed.
Theresa May holds press conference with Justin Trudeau
Theresa May and Justin Trudeau are holding their press conference now.
Boris Johnson says Brexit transition period should 'not be too long'
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has been speaking in New York ahead of the UN General Assembly. Referring to his Telegraph article, he said:
As far as backseat driving honesty there is only one driver in this car and it is Theresa.
What I am trying to do is sketch out is the incredibly exciting landscape of the destination ahead.
On paying for access to the single market he said:
We do not want to be paying extortionate sums for access to the single market. They would not pay us access to our market.
What we will do, and everyone understand this, so far as we are on the hook for stuff in the short term that we have agreed to, that is fair enough. I have never objected to that.
On the length of the transition period he said:
It is pretty important that it should not be too long and business should have a clear sense about where we are going and what it is like at the end of it.
I am trying to to say once you take back control there are opportunities.
Asked if he would resign:
I think you may be barking up the wrong tree. On the transition period I can see some vital importance of having some clarity and certainty since what all of us want is that it should not be too long.
Let us not try and find rows where there are really not rows.
I perfectly understand that we have to honour legal obligations. What I am trying to do is in advance of the prime minster’s speech ... People want to know where are going. It is good to have a bit of a opening drum roll about what this country can do.
Boris Johnson denies 'backseat driving' on Brexit
Boris Johnson has denied being a backseat driver in the cabinet on the issue of Brexit, my colleague Patrick Wintour reports.
Boris Johnson "As far as backseat driving, honestly, there is only one driver in this car and it is Theresa,"
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) September 18, 2017
Amber Rudd, the home secretary, described him as a backseat driver on this in an interview yesterday.
Peter Ricketts, a former head of the Foreign Office, says moving Oliver Robbins to the Cabinet Office is “sensible”.
This is over-hyped. Robbins will continue to coord #Brexit work from No10 and do the negotiations, but not run DexEU https://t.co/mmvTMkuiOb
— Peter Ricketts (@LordRickettsP) September 18, 2017
In fact it clarifies Whitehall organisation. Key thing is not this sensible reorganisation but whether PM #florencespeech will break impasse
— Peter Ricketts (@LordRickettsP) September 18, 2017
The Royal Statistical Society has joined those criticising Boris Johnson for his use of the £350m figure, BuzzFeed’s Emily Asthton reports.
Fresh criticism for @BorisJohnson £350m claim, this time from the Royal Statistical Society pic.twitter.com/G77r1e4AeT
— Emily Ashton (@elashton) September 18, 2017
Here are three of the most illuminating articles on Boris Johnson and the government’s Brexit position I’ve read today.
Free movement makes it a political non-starter for Britain to stay in the single market. However, several of the most senior members of the Cabinet, backed by the institutional Treasury, think that Britain should stay as closely aligned to the single market as possible. They want Britain to shadow the EU’s regulatory structures and transpose European Court of Justice judgements. This, they argue, would allow Britain to maintain the most frictionless access possible to the single market while getting out of free movement.
But to the Brexiteers in the Cabinet this dilutes the whole point of leaving. They want Britain to have the freedom to chart a different course. Their aim is a deal with the EU based on the EU-Canada free trade agreement with a bit more on services. This would require Britain to obey some minimum labour and environmental standards. But it wouldn’t require the entire UK economy to follow every piece of EU regulation. It would mean making trade with the EU less smooth than it is now as the price of Britain being able to be more globally competitive.
In interview after interview, month after month, the Foreign Secretary has been taunted for Theresa May’s failure even to aspire to honour the NHS pledge. Although one of her key Downing Street advisers, Stephen Parkinson (and, no accident, a member of the Leave campaign), attempted to persuade the PM to embrace the pledge in some tangible way, she has always been resistant. As we now know from her mishandling of the general election she has little understanding of how votes are won, and of the key role played by the NHS pledge in delivering the 52 per cent — or of the dangers of reneging on it.
This is the backdrop to Johnson’s 4,000-word article that appeared on Saturday. He’s criticised for bad timing but would his intervention have been any more appreciated during May’s honeymoon? Or during this year’s election campaign? Or immediately afterwards during the PM’s period of maximum vulnerability? Or in a fortnight, on the eve of the Conservative Party Conference, upstaging May’s anticipated relaunch? Of course not.
Johnson, excluded from all the big decisions on Brexit and constantly briefed against by May’s very Blairite spin operation, has finally had enough. If he had not suffered that now infamous kamikaze attack from Michael Gove and won the Conservative leadership last summer he had intended to put honouring as much of the pledge as was humanly possible at the heart of the Brexit negotiations and of a new Conservatism. It wouldn’t have been easy but it would have changed the game.
- Henry Newman at ConservativeHome says the problem is that the cabinet has not decided what it wants.
I’ve spoken to dozens of senior officials, ministers and advisers. None have disagreed with my fundamental concern: that the government has not yet decided what sort of country we ought to be after Brexit. There is a range of possibilities – from Norway’s EEA/EFTA relationship to Switzerland’s web of bilateral agreements and to a Canada-type Free Trade Agreement. Where should the UK land on this spectrum from Norway/Switzerland to Canada? Or, in the jargon preferred by Whitehall – do we go for a “high access, low control” or “low access, high control”? Each scenario has benefits as well as disadvantages ...
The government has taken too long to face up to the fundamental question before us. From speaking to civil servants, it seems that – at least until recently – the cabinet has not yet properly considered either a preferred end state or indeed transition policy. If the rumours are true that David Davis only saw the Lancaster House Speech and article 50 letter at the very last minute, it’s no wonder that ministers like Johnson, who have been even further away from decision making, feel frustrated.
Here are some more pictures from Theresa May’s visit to Ottawa.
She is due to hold a press conference with the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at about 5.30pm UK time.
If anyone is still confused about how much the UK contributes to the EU budget, they should consult the letter that the UK Statistics Authority sent to the Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb about this in April last year, in response to a question about the accuracy of the claim on the Vote Leave bus. The annex, a note by the deputy national statistician for economic statistics, Jonathan Athow, is especially helpful. You can read them both here (pdf).
Here is the key table. It shows that in 2014 the average gross weekly contribution would have been been £365m if there had not been a rebate. Allowing for the rebate, the average gross weekly contribution was £285m. Taking into account the money paid back to public sector bodies (including money subsequently passed on to the private sector, like agricultural subsidies and regional developments funds), the net weekly contribution was £190m.
As the note explains, the net weekly contribution is even lower if you take into account the money paid by the EU to non-public bodies too.
Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, told the Lib Dem conference that the SNP wold lose the next Scottish election. He said:
By the SNPs’ very own test they are failing.
They are spending more time obsessing about power and control than delivering on health, on crime and on education.
People are fed up waiting for the SNP to deliver on their promises. And they will tell them - loud and clear - your time is up.
Theresa May has arrived at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa. These are from some of the British journalists travelling with her.
Very loud 19 gun salute for the arrival of Theresa May at the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. pic.twitter.com/7BGebUlZBs
— Christopher Hope 📝 (@christopherhope) September 18, 2017
Theresa May and Justin Trudeau inspect Canada's finest on arrival in Ottawa, to a deafening artillery barrage. pic.twitter.com/jLbUAmnkAm
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) September 18, 2017
Curiously Trudeau walks behind like Saudi wife. Must be an etiquette thing pic.twitter.com/eno7ZpVFVB
— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 18, 2017
Earlier today the Brexit department published its “partnership paper” on security and law enforcement after Brexit.
Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the Commons home affairs committee, says it leaves crucial questions about the European court of justice unresolved. In a statement she said:
Whilst it is very welcome that the government has now committed to continuing the UK’s close security cooperation with the EU, this position paper still doesn’t answer the crucial question about the European court of justice.
If the government is sticking to the prime minister’s ‘red line’ on removing the judicial oversight of the ECJ, where are the proposals for an alternative model of dispute resolution? What is the likelihood of getting agreement on and then establishing a new model from scratch by March 2019? And what will ministers do if that fails? As the paper makes clear it would be really dangerous to end up with operational gaps in law enforcement and justice because these issues remain unresolved.
And Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, made a similar point. He said:
This government has finally woken up to the fact that security cooperation with our European partners is vital. We should welcome this as a starting point.
But instead of accepting a role for the ECJ, the paper repeats Theresa May’s ridiculous red line.
This level of delusion would be laughable if it wasn’t so concerning.
The Conservatives have once again shown they’re prepared to put ideological obsessions above the safety and best interests of our country.
Turning back to Oliver Robbins’ move, the FT’s legal commentator David Allen Green says the mistake was setting up DExEU, the department for leaving the EU, in the first place.
A thread about @DExEUgov
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
Of all the decisions taken after the referendum result by the new May government, one was particularly odd.
On paper, it must have looked a very clever idea.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
One can almost imagine the boxes and arrows which made the idea seem very clever indeed.
The idea was to create two new Whitehall departments, from scratch and at speed, to deal with Brexit.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
They were @DExEUgov and @tradegovuk
The latter was based on a misconception that UK could enter into and conclude substantial trade negotiations while still a EU member.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
But the @DExEUgov department was the real problem.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
A new department charged with two vast, complex and immediate tasks.
The tasks were (1) prepare for the Brexit negotiations and (2) prepare for domestic side of Brexit ("Great Repeal Bill" as it was called).
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
An unforced error.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
The @cabinetofficeuk was already preparing for domestic side for Brexit from standing start. No need for a change.
The constant failure of UK political leadership to accept Brexit is complex is key problem.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
But still the easy answers and slogans come.
No doubt a cabinet level appointment was needed, like Lord Rippon when UK was joining EEC back in early 1970s.
— Law and policy (@davidallengreen) September 18, 2017
But not a new department.
Boris Johnson has met President Trump at the UN in New York.
May says government being driven 'from the front' - and 'Boris is Boris'
Theresa May has insisted her government is being “driven from the front” as she distanced herself from Boris Johnson’s renewed claim that up to £350m a week extra should be made available for the NHS after Brexit.
The foreign secretary was accused of “back seat driving” by his cabinet colleague Amber Rudd on Sunday, after he used a 4,000 word article in the Daily Telegraph to repeat the controversial £350m figure, and set out his personal vision of Brexit.
Speaking to journalists on Monday en route to Canada, May sought to reassert her authority, saying: “This government is driven from the front, and we’re all going to the same destination”. But she stopped short of condemning Johnson directly, saying only: “Boris is Boris.” She said:
We are all agreed as a government about the importance that we get the right deal for Brexit; the right withdrawal arrangements but also the right deep and special partnership between the United Kingdom and the European Union in the future. And we’re all optimistic about what we can be achieving as the United Kingdom in the future.
Asked directly about the foreign secretary’s intervention, she said:
Look, Boris is Boris. I am clear that what the government is doing, and what the cabinet is agreed on, is that what we base our future negotiations on, as we have done, are the principles laid out at Lancaster House.
Asked about the spat between Johnson and the UK Statistics Authority, May refused to endorse the £350m a week figure – or the idea that any extra resources freed up by Brexit should be earmarked upfront for health spending.
The issue about money going into the EU and then coming back to the UK: the reality is, year on year, the amount of money that the UK pays into the EU changes, for a whole variety of factors – but what I do know is that looking ahead, year on year on year, once we leave the EU, we will not be paying huge sums into the EU, and that will, of course, give us the opportunity as a government to decide how money that is available is then spent.
Pressed on whether the NHS should be the top priority for additional funds, she insisted: “That will be a decision that will be taken at the time, and will be taken by the government”.
Privately, Number 10 was exasperated by Johnson’s piece, which was not cleared in advance, and came as May prepares to deliver a major speech on Brexit in Florence on Friday.
May was speaking to journalists on her RAF Voyager plane en route to Ottawa, where she was expected to discuss trade with prime minister Justin Trudeau, before flying on to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, where she is due to hold a series of bilateral meetings with other world leaders.
May and Trudeau were expected to discuss the trade dispute between US airmaker Boeing and its Canadian rival Bombardier, which employs 4,500 workers in Northern Ireland; and the pair are expected to agree to open talks on a UK-Canadian trade deal, using the framework of the recently-concluded CETA deal between Canada and the EU.
Updated
Former Vote Leave campaign director says government's handling of Brexit a 'shambles'
Dominic Cummings, who was Vote Leave’s campaign director was a Boris Johnson ally during the EU referendum, has been using Twitter to condemn the way the government is handling Brexit.
Cummings says the government’s handling of Brexit has been a “shambles”. (To be fair, it is worth pointing out he is not someone given to understatement.)
DD running for cover as his extreme incompetence & Walter Mitty delusions spill out of the shambles he & Robbins have made of Dexu...?
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
1/ In REF @vote_leave said: do not commit to using A50. DD et al listened to bullshit legal advice & led like lambs to slaughter by Heywood
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
2/ I said triggering A50 quickly w/o plan & legal preps for NoDeal wd be like putting a gun in mouth & kaboom. DD chose to do exactly that
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
3/ The shambles now unfolding is a direct consequence of that historic unforgivable blunder
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
4/ At next Cabinet all SoS shd demand from Heywood/DD full briefing on THEIR contingency plans for NoDeal. G Brady shd demand the same
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
5/ Sooner MPs realise where DD has driven them the sooner mitigation can begin
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
6/ You cannot 'make Brexit work' AND keep traditional wiring of how Downing St works. Until MPs face this, shambles will continue
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
7/ SW1 assumes TM/PH/DD/BJ have been hammering out post-transition state. Wrong. That's heart of the problem & why speech being fought over
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
8/ Good heuristic: whenever u catch yourself thinking 'Govt can't be that crap', invert your perspective & you'll usually be more accurate
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
9/ The point re 350m/NHS now is not about REF, it’s re whether Tory MPs want to keep their jobs/stop Corbyn
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
10/ From political perspective Boris/MG approach gives you a shot of saving your skins, backing Hammond/DD = you're seat/gvt in dire danger
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
11/ You shd be icily realistic: REF is gone, future survival requires doing things you won't like, e.g obeying public priorities
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
12/ DD/Hammond say ‘we didn’t promise it’. That attitude will lose your seat. If you want to stop Corbyn listen to public, not those 2
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
13/ DD record: trigger A50 cluelessly then trigger election cluelessly. Boris/Gove record: unprecedented electoral triumph vs odds
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
14/ CCHQ lost a REF & election promising 'stability'. People want huge change, £ for NHS & science, & an agenda neither 'left'/'right'
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
15/ Brexit reqs huge change so reboot Downing St/civil service or Seamus will be siting next to Heywood reviewing your tax records shortly
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
16/ ARPA/PARC w 25 ppl & few 10s of millions created >$30trillion of value, much much much more than Single Market deckchair shuffling
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
The ARPA is the Advanced Research Projects Agency. PARC is an American IT company.
17/ UK shd be thinking how to do things like that - REAL value for civilisation - leaving turgid dated args re SM bureaucracy far behind
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
18/ Even if you accept Cmsn figures on SM benefits, it's paltry & dwarfed by decisions re how we shape our institutions
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
19/ Tory donors: u shd not give 1 more penny while Heywood & DD remain in post. You've more influence than u realise, use it
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
20/ For lobby clarity: I'm just as happy we won as ever tho it's sad there'll be unnecessary shambles thx to dysfunctional SW1
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 18, 2017
UPDATE: Sam Freedman, a former civil servant who worked with Dominic Cummings at the department for education, when Cummings was an adviser to Michael Gove, suggests it is not surprising he thinks the government’s handling of Brexit has been a “shambles”; Cummings thinks that about how the government handles most things, Freedman points out.
Based on working with him for a few years you could replace "Brexit" with any other word + it would still be accurate. https://t.co/8WAKRr9W5C
— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) September 18, 2017
Updated
Tory MPs 'pretty relaxed' about paying 'fairly substantial amount' to EU during transition, says Boles
And the Conservative former minister Nick Boles was on the World at One too. He said he favoured a “reasonably long” Brexit transition period, lasting two to three years.
He also said that Tory MPs generally - both those who voted leave, and those like himself who voted remain - were “fairly pragmatic” about the need for the UK to make payments to the EU during the transition period, “so long as it is temporary”. He went on:
We are all pretty relaxed about paying a fairly substantial amount - something not more than, but something not very far from our existing net contribution.
Lord Kerslake, a former head of the civil service, told the BBC’s World at One that he was “surprised” to see Oliver Robbins being replaced as permanent secretary at DExEU, the department for leaving the EU. Kerslake told the programme:
I am surprised I have to be honest. I know Ollie well, he’s a very able and serious minded civil servant ... but it seems an odd point to make this kind of change. And I wonder how he can lead a process of negotiation and not also be leading the department responsible for that process. There are the resources that he should have at his command in order to drive the process, and splitting that, having someone else running the department, and him being in the Cabinet Office, to my mind, splits the responsibility and therefore the clarity of the process.
[Robbins] was both reporting to David Davis and in to the Cabinet Office already, so he had a line into Number 10 under the current structure that has been there from the start. It is difficult to understand why moving him out into the Cabinet Office changes that fundamental dynamic. It does feel a bit like rearranging the deckchairs, to be honest.
Lunchtime summary
- Downing Street has refused to take sides in an acrimonious dispute between Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and the UK Statistics Authority over the accuracy of his claim that leaving the EU will enable Britain to “take back control of roughly £350 million per week”. (See 9.32am.) The figure does not represent how much the British taxpayer will save, and even though Johnson used more nuanced language when he revived it in his Telegraph article last week, the UK Statistics Authority accused him of “a clear misuse of official statistics.” Asked what Theresa May believed was the figure supposedly being paid to the EU by Britain, the prime minister’s spokeswoman told journalists at the lobby briefing she was “not getting into the ins and outs of the figures”, and suggested people should research the veracity of the sum themselves.
What I would say more generally, all of the UK’s contributions to the EU budget are published online and you can go and have a look at them.
Pressed on whether the UK Statistics Authority or Johnson was right, she added:
I’m not getting into that. The figures are published by the Treasury. They’ve been publishing them every year since the 1980s, a paper called European Finance.
But some Tories have backed Johnson. Michael Gove, the environment secretary who led the Vote Leave campaign alongside Johnson, defended his interpretation. And the Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries, a staunch Johnson supporter, said Sir David Norgrove should be sacked as head of the UK Statistics Authority for questioning what Johnson said.
David Norgrove, resign. You are not fit to be head of UK statistics when you deliberately play politics to deceive and distort basic facts https://t.co/MvTd6Rwc26
— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) September 18, 2017
- The Low Pay Commission, which sets the level of the minimum wage, has said that up to one in five workers who should be getting it may be getting less. Bryan Sanderson, the commission’s chair, said:
The low pay commission has always had a strong interest in compliance with the minimum wage rates it recommends. There is, after all, little point in having a minimum wage if workers do not receive the correct rate.
With more workers than ever paid the minimum wage or close to it, more people are at risk of being underpaid. Our analysis finds that up to 1 in 5 people who should be paid at least the minimum wage may in fact receive less. This equates to between 305,000 and 580,000 workers at its highest point, though it is a difficult thing to measure.
The LPC welcomes the recent increases in funding for HMRC’s enforcement of the minimum wage, and recognises the progress it has made. However, we also think there is more the Government could do to identify non-compliance and stop it happening in the first place. In our report we lay out recommendations for ways the government could go further.
- The Brexit department has published its proposals for a new UK-EU security treaty to “lock in” membership of Europol, the European arrest warrant and other existing joint measures to combat crime and terrorism after Brexit. You can read the paper here.
- James Chapman, a former aide to the Brexit secretary David Davis, has said Brexit will not happen because there is not enough parliamentary support for leaving the single market. Speaking at a fringe event at the Lib Dem conference Chapman said:
The government must trigger by next March Article 127 in EEA treaty laws to leave the European Economic Area ...
Is there a majority in the House of Commons to leave the single market? No, there’s not - absolutely not.
So the government will not be able to get that through Parliament and at that point Brexit will collapse, because the British people will say, ‘we are going to have to stay in the single market and we will have pay more to stay in and we’re not going to be able to control free movement’.
Theresa May is planning to raise a dispute between two aerospace companies in North America that threatens jobs in Northern Ireland with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Plane maker Boeing is taking Canadian rival Bombardier to court alleging the latter enjoyed an anti-competitive advantage due to state support from the Quebec regional government.
Bombardier is Northern Ireland’s largest employer in terms of manufacturing and makes the wings for the CSeries passenger jets in its East Belfast plant.
Last week the prime minister telephoned Donald Trump to raise the court case and the threat to the CSeries contract which could put jobs in jeopardy in Belfast.
May is expected to discuss the Bombardier versus Boeing case with prime minister Trudeau when they meet later today in Ottawa. She will urge her Canadian counterpart to encourage Boeing to drop its case.
Canada has already threatened to withdraw an order for fighter jets its military has sought from Boeing if the Seattle based aerospace giant continues its legal battle with Bombardier.
East Belfast is represented in the House of Commons by Democratic Unionist MP Gavin Robinson. May and her minority Conservative government needs his and the votes of his nine fellow DUP MPs to remain in power.
This is from the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard.
hope no one reads anything into fact that David Davis has now lost his permanent secretary, special adviser & two ministers in a few months.
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) September 18, 2017
Pickard is referring to James Chapman, Davis’s special adviser until the general election, who is now using his Twitter feed to denounce Brexit as a complete disaster; Lord Bridges of Headley, who resigned as a Brexit minister after the election and recently used a speech in the Lords to suggest the government was not being honest about the challenges presented by Brexit; and David Jones, who was sacked as a Brexit minister after the election.
Here is Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, on Oliver Robbins’ move.
Glad someone found an exit from Brexit. Unfortunately for May it's the civil servant who was meant to be leading ithttps://t.co/e3ODYbtBa7
— Vince Cable (@vincecable) September 18, 2017
And here is the Evening Standard’s editorial on Boris Johnson, the Tories and Brexit.
Our editorial @EveningStandard on PM's Brexit speech and Boris's manoeuvres https://t.co/qrlGVgci9t
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) September 18, 2017
George Osborne’s paper is arguing that Johnson wrote his Telegraph article to try to stop Theresa May using her Florence speech to offer the EU a compromise, involving the UK being willing to pay in return for a transition deal. Here is an excerpt.
For as each month passes without even an agreement in principle to a transition, companies that operate within EU legal regimes (such as banks, airlines and pharmaceuticals) are starting to get nervous and considering relocating parts of their business.
That’s why Mrs May has, quite rightly, blinked — and wants to use her Florence speech to make the sensible offer of money in return for a transition.
There’s only one problem. Her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, will be humiliated if she does. For he travelled around the country last year promising people that far from paying billions for leaving the EU, we’d get £350 million a week back ...
As a journalist turned politician, he has chosen his weapon of choice — the long newspaper column — to lash out.
In doing so, he has thrown away a year of effort at trying to become the team player, sought again to divide the nation rather than unite it, and revived (with help from the UK Statistics Authority) his reputation for being economical with the truth.
But Mr Johnson had little choice. For if Mrs May gives the speech she wants to in Florence, he faces the kind of fatal blow the Medicis would have been familiar with.
Here is the Evening Standard’s take on Oliver Robbins losing his post as permanent secretary at the Brexit department.
EXCLUSIVE Brexit 'chaos' as top official quits Brexit dept after one year in the job https://t.co/6QJNGtA4dq
— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) September 18, 2017
Today's @EveningStandard: exclusive story on future of top Brexit mandarin & latest on Boris including @montie views + Rooney pleads guilty pic.twitter.com/FWBaKWBHrS
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) September 18, 2017
Rupert Harrison, who was chief of staff to George Osborne, the Standard editor, when Osborne was chancellor, thinks his former boss has gone a bit OTT.
With all due respect to my former boss, the Standard's take on this as Brexit 'chaos' seems pretty overblown...
— Rupert Harrison (@rbrharrison) September 18, 2017
I'd be very careful taking @ face value. Having OR report both to PM and DD, and do negotiations while also running dept, wasn't sustainable
— Rupert Harrison (@rbrharrison) September 18, 2017
Updated
Charlie Cooper’s article for Politico Europe two weeks ago about the tensions between David Davis and his (then) permanent secretary, Oliver Robbins, says that the problem was partly caused by Robbins showing greater allegiance to Theresa May than to Davis. Here’s an extract.
Prior to the election, there were “significant numbers of written advice items which went straight from Olly to the prime minister and weren’t necessarily seen by David Davis beforehand,” the ex-official said, adding that Davis was even frozen out of the early drafting of May’s pivotal Lancaster House speech in January, in which the prime minister laid out her vision for Brexit.
One senior official said problems remain. “Olly does things which DD isn’t aware of,” the official said. “That Robbins-May dynamic is a constant source of frustration for David Davis.”
Then the election result changed the dynamic of the relationship, Cooper says.
“On the morning of 9th June, the day after the election, DD was in there being an adviser, trying to stake his position,” the ex-official said. “He tried to place himself very firmly in the inner circle in the immediate post-election aftermath. Since, he has placed himself at the center of the negotiations and used the changed dynamic at No. 10, the prime minister’s relative weakness at Cabinet, and the departure of Nick, to get more of a grip.”
“He must have been the first minister to speak to her that day,” a current official said of Davis’ alignment with May the day after the election ...
“The prime minister is personally weakened since the election. David Davis, personally, I would say, is in a strengthened position. I think that Robbins probably recognizes that shift in strength,” said one senior MP and Davis ally.
Government sources are rejecting suggestions that Oliver Robbins’ move from DExEU to the Cabinet Office means that he is being sidelined. Instead his move is just an acknowledgement of the fact that, with the Brexit negotiations about to intensify, “the workload of running a department would be better handled by someone else”, one source said. The source said that Robbins could continue to be the lead official in the Brexit negotiating team and that, when David Davis, the Brexit secretary, appeared in Brussels to negotiate with his EU opposite number, Michel Barnier, Davis would continue to appear flanked by Robbins and Sir Tim Barrow, the UK’s ambassador to the EU.
Two weeks ago Politico Europe published a long report claiming that relations between Robbins and Davis were strained. Sources are downplaying this, and insisting that it is not a relevant factor in this move, although putting Robbins in the Cabinet Office will result in him having less contact with Davis on a day to day basis.
An alternative interpretation would be that this amounts to May taking a firmer grip over the Brexit talks. May has a good relationship with Robbins. According to the Politico Europe article:
Robbins has a longstanding relationship with May, having served with her at the Home Office. They are “unbelievably close,” a former colleague of them both said. An ex-official added: “She clearly trusts him, more so than some of the other senior Europe advisers, and other permanent secretaries. You can see it whenever they interact, she takes his steer on a lot of this stuff.”
Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
Updated
DExEU, the department for exiting the EU, has put out this statement about Oliver Robbins’ move. A spokesman said:
In order to strengthen cross government co-ordination of the next phase of negotiations with the European Union, the prime minister has appointed Oliver Robbins as her EU adviser in the Cabinet Office, in addition to his role as EU sherpa.
He will continue to lead the official-side UK team in the negotiations, working closely with the secretary of state for Exiting the European Union, and coordinate relations with the commission and member states.
The prime minister has appointed Philip Rycroft, currently second permanent secretary at the department for exiting the EU and Cabinet Office, as permanent secretary, Department for Exiting the EU.
The department will continue to support David Davis, the secretary of state for Exiting the EU, to ensure a smooth exit and to seize the opportunities presented by leaving the EU.
This will include his role as principal of the negotiations, leading on exit-related legislation, domestic preparedness for exit and engagement with stakeholders in the UK, including the devolved administrations, and in the EU27 and beyond.
Updated
Brexit department loses its permanent secretary
Oliver (Olly) Robbins, permanent secretary at DExEU (the department for exiting the EU, and the government’s lead official on Brexit, is moving, the BBC reports. These are from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
May's chief EU sherpa, Ollie Robbins, moves out of Brexit dept and into Cabinet Office - relations had not been great with Davis
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) September 18, 2017
I m told move part of May taking more control of EU negotiations as well tensions btw him and David Davis
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) September 18, 2017
Why is No 10 refusing to take sides over Johnson's £350m claim?
It should not be hard to adjudicate in any dispute about the accuracy of statistics between the UK Statistics Authority and Boris Johnson. After all, the UK Statistics Authority is an internationally respected body chaired by an esteemed economist. Boris Johnson is also renowned, but he is not revered for his commitment to accuracy. In fact, as a Europe correspondent before he became an MP, he was notorious for his unreliability. At his Brussels leaving do a colleague recited a spoof of Belloc’s Matilda starting: “Boris told such dreadful lies/ It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes./ His desk, which from its earliest youth/ Had kept a strict regard for truth,/ Attempted to believe each scoop/ Until they landed in the soup.”
So why is Downing Street refusing to take sides? Perhaps it is just because Theresa May is airborne, en route to Canada, and the press office does not want to pre-empt what she says when asked about this herself, either by journalists on the plane or at the press conference later.
However, there is a good chance that, even when May does address this in person, she will refuse to take sides. She could not disown the UK Statistics Authority without severely undermine its reputation (and, in the eyes of many observers, probably her own too). But if she were to publicly back the government’s statistics watchdog, she would be implicitly accusing Johnson of misrepresentation. It is the sort of thing that could provoke him to resign. Even before Johnson’s article appeared in the Telegraph there were reports saying Downing Street was worried about him flouncing out of government before the Tory conference. May will not want to give him a pretext.
This is from the Times’ Francis Elliott from last week.
Downing Street puts Boris on "flounce-watch"https://t.co/tHZSpfJQBR
— Francis Elliott (@elliotttimes) September 14, 2017
Updated
No 10 refuses to take sides in row between Johnson and statistics chief over £350m claim
My colleague Peter Walker is just back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. Here are the key points.
No10 not taking any view on £350m/wk Brexit figure, & insists Boris is "united behind the PM's plans for Brexit". Hmmmm.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 18, 2017
- No 10 refuses to take sides in row between Boris Johnson and UK’s Statistics Authority over accuracy of his £350m per week claim.
On Johnson's use of £350m, May's spokeswoman said: "I am not getting into the ins and outs of the figures. They are all online."
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 18, 2017
No 10 also refusing to say whether Johnson's Brexit article was pre-cleared by PM. His views on subject are "well known", we're told.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 18, 2017
You can understand No 10 not wanting to prolong the fight, but it's a pretty extraordinary
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 18, 2017
.... situation for minister to be rebuked by official watchdog for telling fibs and the PM to try and act neutral.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 18, 2017
Context: May is on a plane to Canada & will be speaking to press on the flight. So this is all an interim line for No 10 to take.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 18, 2017
Some commentators have questioned Sir David Norgrove’s decision to intervene in the argument about Boris Johnson’s use of the £350m figure. (See 9.32am.) This is from Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, which Johnson himself used to edit.
For once, the £350m figure was used accurately - the UK Statistics Authority misjudged its intervention. Here's why: https://t.co/VfN8toctUj
— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) September 18, 2017
And here is an extract from the article (paywall) by the Spectator’s Steerpike columnist that Nelson is referencing.
In fact, it’s impossible to make the argument about control without referring to a gross figure. Taxation is routinely referred to as gross: the lower-paid half of the country gets all of its money back (and more) in public services. But people still talk about the sum that’s taken from them, and understandably so. Those who advocate lower taxes emphasise – as Boris does – control. That people spend their own money better on themselves than the government does on their behalf. So the gross figure is, obviously, the most relevant.
Doubtless Sir David doesn’t like this argument, but in trying to say that it’s illegitimate – or somehow an “clear misuse” of statistics – he is over-reaching and calling the neutrality of his office into doubt. During the campaign, Sir David’s more measured predecessor Andrew Dilnot was called in to adjudicate in the £350 million figure being used in genuinely dodgy way (ie, leading people to suspect that this was the net payment that could be recouped after Brexit). Dilnot rightly said that this was ‘potentially misleading’ – ie, if used the wrong context. Emphasis on ‘potentially’.
But the lawyer and legal blogger Matthew Scott says Norgrove was just doing what he is expected to do under the code of practice for official statistics.
From the 2009 Code of Practice for Official Statistics, issued under the Statistics & Registration Service Act 2007, Principle 3 "Integrity" pic.twitter.com/BIeosWEUdv
— Matthew Scott (@Barristerblog) September 18, 2017
From the foreword to the Code of Practice. Sir David is doing his job. pic.twitter.com/yUdiOdnjv9
— Matthew Scott (@Barristerblog) September 18, 2017
“The government faces a growing revolt from carmakers in Britain unhappy at the slow pace of clarity over post-Brexit customs arrangements crucial to their business model”, Sky’s political editor Faisal Islam writes in a good Sky “Brexit Forensics” investigation. You can read it in full here.
Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, liked Boris Johnson’s Telegraph article.
Reading @BorisJohnson's vision for Brexit cheered me up. Someone in government is finally being positive about what we voted for. pic.twitter.com/Em0RsxTbrS
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 18, 2017
Redwood opposes transition period and says paying money to EU after the UK leaves could be illegal
In his Today interview John Redwood, the pro-Brexit Conservative, also said that he was opposed to a Brexit transition period. He told the programme:
I think it’s much better not to have a transition period. Indeed, I think the remaining 19 months [before Brexit] could be a transition period of there are things we need to change in order to comply with the new agreement. What we need to do now is concentrate on the [future UK-EU] agreement, not on some kind of transition agreement. We need to know if we are going to be transiting to something we want to do, or whether there isn’t an agreement on offer, so we won’t be transiting to that at all.
He also said the UK should not continue paying money to the EU after Brexit for access to the single market. He said:
Many of us don’t think there is any moral or political or legal reason to go on paying them once we have left. Indeed, I think it would be illegal to go on paying them once we have left. And I find it very odd how many people there are around government, in official circles and advising government, who seem to think the British people want to pay a lot of money to the EU after we have resigned from the club. They don’t, I can assure you ...
When it comes to trade, it is a very odd idea that you need to pay to import BMWs or whatever and make a payment to the EU.
Redwood’s position puts him clearly at odds with the government in two respects.
First, even the pro-Brexit cabinet minsters now accept that a transition period will be necessary.
Second, it is accepted in government that a Brexit deal will involve some payments to the EU after Brexit. It seems likely that, in practice, these could be implicitly connected to single market access. But whether there will be a formal link is another matter, because the EU is demanding money as the UK’s share of outstanding EU budget obligations and these payments would not formally be linked to single market access.
In perhaps the most important line in his Telegraph article (paywall), Boris Johnson said an explicit link between payments to the EU and single market access would be unacceptable. He said:
We would not expect to pay for access to their markets any more than they would expect to pay for access to ours.
Chris Giles, the Financial Times’ economics editor, has identified another spurious claim in Boris Johnson’s Telegraph article (paywall). Johnson wrote:
We should seize the opportunity of Brexit to reform our tax system. Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, argued in 2015 that our system is currently skewed so as to discourage investment. He believes that reform could raise output by around 20 per cent.
Giles explains the problems with this on his Twitter feed.
While Boris Johnson's lies about £350m got most people's juices flowing, I was intrigued but this claim in his Brexit "essay" pic.twitter.com/Xw5fG9lT0T
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
That's quite a claim and Andy Haldane is no tax expert, so a little unlikely, I thought. It raises 4 questions
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
1. Did Andy say our tax system discourages investment?
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
2. Did he say reform would raise output by 20%?
3. Does the EU prevent such reform?
It's hard to find the Haldane reference. With @bankofengland press office help and google, we tracked it down: https://t.co/UTKQfwKJZo
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
Private companies have more fixed assets is the main conclusion and then there are some throwaway remarks pic.twitter.com/AR7fJXHZgv
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
This is the "ish" bit. A back of the envelope calculation of output based on dividend distribution Vs retained earnings
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
Then the authors muse about policies. No research here mind. pic.twitter.com/rbGWYtFc57
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
They certainly don't say tax reform would get 20% more output. Just it might be an idea to give greater tax incentives to retained profit
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
The EU does not prevent such moves, so Brexit is irrelevant. EU nations have very different corporation tax schemes on dividends
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
And there was an example of the UK changing corporation tax to discourage dividends in 1997, by Gordon Brown, when he restricted and
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
then abolished Advance Corporation Tax. Most of the reason was to raise revenue, but it also skewed incentives towards retained profits
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
What did Boris Johnson think of that tax reform he just advocated?
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
He thought it was a "great pensions raid" https://t.co/4bAzJ2mJYh pic.twitter.com/h8o1Qn6qqA
Oh dear
— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) September 18, 2017
This is from ITV’s Carl Dinnen.
Source close to Boris Johnson says he is not against EU during a transition period, but doesn't want to pay for access after that.
— Carl Dinnen (@carldinnen) September 18, 2017
Gove defends Johnson over £350m per week claim
Michael Gove, the environment secretary and a fellow leader of the Vote Leave campaign alongside Boris Johnson, has defended Johnson’s right to use the £350m per week figure for the cost of the EU, while also urging people to move on. He has just posted these on Twitter.
In the debate on EU contributions it's important people look at what Boris actually wrote in his Telegraph article - not headlines
— Michael Gove (@michaelgove) September 18, 2017
debate should be forward looking on how to make most of life outside EU - not refighting referendum
— Michael Gove (@michaelgove) September 18, 2017
On the Today programme this morning John Redwood, the pro-Brexit Conservative backbencher, backed Boris Johnson over the £350m figure. It was “entirely true” for the Vote Leave campaign to say last year that £350m per week was the gross contribution to the EU. It was a bit higher now, he said.
That is the official figure. The statistical disagreement is not over whether that is the gross figure or not. As I understand it, the statistical intervention is that he should have used a net figure rather than the gross figure.
But, interestingly, Jacob Rees-Mogg, another leading Tory leave campaigner, was not willing to defend the £350m figure in his Daily Telegraph article (paywall). The article is generally very supportive of Johnson, but Rees-Mogg pointedly does not claim that leaving the EU will immediately free up £350m per week for the NHS. Instead he says:
The positivity of Boris Johnson uses the settling of our account with the EU to boost public services. He wants to deliver on the promise to ensure better funding of the NHS by using the money we will save by leaving the EU, £10bn, or nearly £200m a week. That will come straight away as long as we do not agree some unnecessary divorce payout, and the next £150m, which was implied if not formally pledged by the Leave campaign, can be found if we can grow our economy.
Here is the BBC’s Reality Check on the £350m claim.
We've said it before... The UK did not (and still doesn't) send £350m/week to the EU @BorisJohnson . https://t.co/PPllLXSHiH
— BBC Reality Check (@BBCRealityCheck) September 16, 2017
But Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director who tweets as @odysseanproject, defended the figure over the weekend, highlighting what Sir Andrew Dilnot, Sir David Norgrove’s predecessor as chair of the UK Statistics Authority, told a Commons committee in April last year.
As head of UK stats authority said (before leant on by gvt): 350m ‘is a legitimate figure for gross contributions’ https://t.co/faHm2c7cah
— odysseanproject (@odysseanproject) September 16, 2017
Full text of letters exchanged between Johnson and UK statistics chief over £350m claim
As Anushka Asthana reports in our overnight splash, Sir David Norgrove, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, criticised Boris Johnson for suggesting in his Daily Telegraph article that leaving the EU will free up £350m a week for the UK government. Johnson rejected Norgrove’s criticism.
For the record, this is how Johnson phrased the claim in his article (paywall).
And yes – once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS, provided we use that cash injection to modernise and make the most of new technology.
The Telegraph splash headline was less nuanced (as headlines always are.)
Here is the full text of the letter Norgrove sent to Johnson about this claim.
Dear Foreign Secretary,
I am surprised and disappointed that you have chosen to repeat the figure of £350m per week, in connection with the amount that might be available for extra public spending when we leave the European Union.
This confuses gross and net contributions. It also assumes that payments currently made to the UK by the EU, including for example for the support of agriculture and scientific research, will not be paid by the UK government when we leave.
It is a clear misuse of official statistics.
Yours sincerely
Sir David Norgrove
And here is the full text of Johnson’s reply to Norgrove.
Dear Sir David
I must say that I was surprised and disappointed by your letter of today, since it was based on what appeared to be a wilful distortion of the text of my article.
When we spoke you conceded that you were more concerned by the headline and the BBC coverage, though you accepted that I was not responsible for those. I suggest if the BBC coverage offends you that you write to the BBC.
You say that I claim that there would be £350m that “might be available for extra public spending” when we leave the EU.
This is a complete misrepresentation of what I said and I would like you to withdraw it. I in fact said: “Once we have settled our accounts we will take back control of roughly £350m per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS.”
That is very different from claiming that there would be an extra £350m available for public spending and I am amazed that you should impute such a statement to me.
You claim in your defence that we would not really be taking back control of that sum, because it includes the rebate and other EU spending in this country. But, as you accept, these sums - amounting to about half the £350m - are spent at the discretion of the EU. We do not control them.
To give you an example: when I was mayor of London I thought it would be a good idea if we persuaded the commission to spend £8m on the Emirates cable car. We succeeded, and the commissioner concerned was so delighted with the results that he said he would like to fund some more cable cars in London. I was delighted, too, and was glad to have steered some of our EU contributions back to this country. But the decision was his. Control was in the hands of the commission, not the UK. Or do you suggest otherwise ?
As for the balance of the £350m, it of course disappears around the rest of the EU, and is spent as the EU sees fit in other countries. Once we leave the EU we will take back control of all such UK-funded spending, and, although of course I have no doubt that we will continue to spend significantly on UK priorities such as agriculture and research, that spending will be done under UK control.
As for the rebate - whose value you did not know - it only forms part of the EU’s financing arrangements with the agreement of all other EU member states. We do not control it ourselves.
What is beyond doubt is that, upon withdrawal, we will have complete discretion over the £350m per week and that huge sums will indeed will be available for public spending on priorities such as the NHS. I believe that would be a fine thing.
If you had any concerns about my article, it would of course have been open to you to address the points with me in private rather than in this way in a public letter. As it is, if you seriously disagree with any of the above, I look forward to hearing your reasoning.
Boris Johnson
Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs
Good morning. It is more than 48 hours since Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, published his long, provocative Brexit essay in the Daily Telegraph but his intervention is still dominating the talk at Westminster and dividing Conservative.
Here are two Tories who have spoken out against him overnight.
George Freeman, who chairs the Conservative party’s policy forum and the prime minister’s policy board, told the Westminster Hour last night that he thought Johnson was wrong to suggest that Brexit would lead to the UK government being able to spend an extra £350m a week and that a lot of the money should go to the NHS. Freeman said:
Personally I think the £350 million figure is just far too early to be able to make wild promises about what exactly is going to be coming out of the Brexit negotiations ... It’s not a figure I would have repeated, and he’s not the health secretary and it needs to be negotiated.
And Tobias Ellwood, who was a minister in the Foreign Office under Johnson until June, used Twitter to accuse his former boss of fomenting disunity.
PARTY DISCORD:
— Tobias Ellwood (@Tobias_Ellwood) September 17, 2017
Think many would agree:
We are not witnessing our finest hour-at a testing time when poise, purpose and unity are called for pic.twitter.com/09IWYLG3my
But in an article in the Daily Telegraph (paywall), Jacob Rees-Mogg, the pro-Brexit backbencher, says Johnson has made Theresa May “stronger” because he has set out a positive vision for Brexit.
Needless to say, Boris’ critics, a small but noisy group, see this as a leadership bid, but in truth it helps the Government and boosts Mrs May. As the foreign secretary he is quite reasonably setting out an enthusiastic case for Britain’s future position in the world. That is what he ought to do; it is part of his job. He is loyally putting forward Government policy as outlined by the Prime Minister in her Lancaster House speech, and is doing so with panache to explain why this approach will benefit the nation. Not for Boris snide anonymous briefings allegedly by friends; instead a double page spread in the Daily Telegraph promoting the cause of conservatism in the nation.
And John Redwood, another backbench pro-Brexiteer, defended Johnson’s use of the £350m figure on the Today programme this morning and argued that it was the Treasury, not Johnson, that was trying to alter government Brexit policy.
Brexit champ John Redwood says the Treasury have been far worse in briefing against No10 policy than anything Boris Johnson wrote
— steve hawkes (@steve_hawkes) September 18, 2017
There will be a lot more on this all day, I’m afraid. And this afternoon we will be hearing what May herself as to say about it all.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The Liberal Democrat conference resumes in Bournemouth. At 11am Tim Farron, the former leader, will be speaking. I will be covering conference events from London today, but tomorrow I will be in Bournemouth for Sir Vince Cable’s speech on the final day of the conference.
11am: Downing Street lobby briefing.
12.30am: DExEU (the department for exiting the EU) publishes its partnership paper on security, law enforcement and criminal justice. As Alan Travis reports, it will propose a new UK-EU security treaty to “lock in” membership of Europol, the European arrest warrant and other existing joint measures to combat crime and terrorism after Brexit.
4.30pm (UK time): Theresa May meets the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau in Canada. They are due to hold a joint press conference at 5.30pm.
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 post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard’s Playbook. Here is the ConservativeHome round up of today’s politics stories in the papers. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must reads.
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.
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