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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Barnier: UK must offer concessions within two weeks to ensure Brexit progress - Politics live

David Davis (left), the Brexit secretary, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, at their press conference in Brussels.
David Davis (left), the Brexit secretary, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, at their press conference in Brussels. Photograph: Eric Vidal/Reuters

The deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party has knocked back the EU’s suggestion that Northern Ireland remain in the customs union and the single market in order to achieve an invisible border with Ireland.

Nigel Dodds has told the BBC’s John Campbell in Belfast that the EU’s comment “display an unwillingness .. to engage in a meaningful fashion in relation to the border”.

His remarks come as Brexit secretary David Davis said “frank” discussions had been held with the EU on the border question in this weeks talks.

Davis’s remarks may be seen as an attempt to win recognition that the Northern Ireland border issue cannot be solved in the first of talks because it is linked to the final trading deal with the EU.

He said progress had been made on the common travel area but inferred that there was no sign of a solution on the border question.

“We’ve also had frank discussions about some of the big challenges around the border,” he said. “We remain firmly committed to avoid any physical infrastructure,” he added, reiterating previous promises that there would not be customs inspectors on the ground or watchtowers to police the border.

In August, the UK suggested it could achieve an invisible border with pre-clearance checks on either side and exemptions for small businesses.

However in the September talks the EU dismissed this solution and said it would not allow Northern Ireland to be used as a proxy for talks on the wider question of the future trading relationship between the EU and the bloc.

This week’s leaked document suggests that the EU is doing just that.

The leaked EU document on Ireland says it “seems essential for the UK to commit to ensuring that a hard border on the island of Ireland is avoided, including by ensuring no emergence of regulatory divergence from these rules of the internal market and the customs union.”

According to the BBC, today we are at the half way point between the EU referendum vote and the UK leaving the EU.

Here is a link to the full text of the speech that Lord Kerr gave earlier today saying article 50 could be reversed.

A woman who was sent “inappropriate” text messages by the Scottish government’s former children’s minister Mark McDonald says that apologies must be followed up by a wider change in attitudes.

McDonald resigned from the Holyrood cabinet at the weekend after apologising “unreservedly” for an unspecified number of messages which he said he believed to have been “merely humorous or attempting to be friendly, [but which] might have made others uncomfortable or led them to question my intentions”. He remains an SNP MSP.

Speaking to the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said:

The bottom line in this is there’s no point in people coming forward if people don’t change. People have to change in the future. Apologies are all well and good but it if doesn’t change how people act ... That’s why people come forward. People don’t want this. I don’t want it.

Yesterday first minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon suggested that there are some people who consider McDonald’s behaviour, the details of which have not been made public, not serious enough to merit his resignation.

Sturgeon said: “Mark has reflected and taken responsiblity for behaviour that some others may well have thought was not serious enough to resign, but he’s done the right thing and taken responsibility.” She added: “He’s a good MSP and will continue to be so.”

The European Commission’s proposal that Northern Ireland could remain within the customs union has been bitterly criticised by unionists who want it would create a border between the region and the rest of the UK.

Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson also claimed today that such a move would breach the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

Nicholson said the EC’s suggestion, contained in leaked documents, contradicted the EU’s promise to protect the Good Friday peace deal.

He said that “Brussels should think again” if it thinks it can speak for Northern Ireland. He continued:

Economically, placing barriers to trade with Great Britain, and taking us out of the UK single market makes no sense whatsoever. Across all major sectors, our biggest single market for sales is the United Kingdom.

What the EU is proposing would risk immense damage to Northern Ireland’s interests and would make a mockery of the Belfast agreement it has pledged to protect. It is vital that the UK Government maintains a strong line on this.

Clare Short and Jack Straw cast doubt on validity of 0.7% aid target

The department for international development has been in the news much more than normal in recent days and, with impeccable timing, Prospect magazine has just published an excellent and very thorough long read about its record by Steve Bloomfield.

It includes comments from Clare Short, who was the department’s first secretary of state when Labour set it up, in which she reveals that she now has doubts about the validity of the 0.7% aid target (spending 0.7% of national income on aid). Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary, also has his doubts. Here is the key passage.

While three of Patel’s predecessors—Short, Benn and Mitchell—told me they believed Dfid should remain independent, the once-consensual target is now deeply controversial. Even Short now has her doubts. “I am afraid that the department has lost capacity and that 0.7 has ended up being destructive. Money is useful if it is well spent, not in itself.” While she insists that the target remains a “good idea,” “the UK development community needs a serious debate about what has gone wrong and how to put it right. It would be great to keep 0.7 and refocus, but this may not be possible.”

Straw is another former believer. “I don’t think protected budgets are an aid to good government. Those departments don’t have to argue their corner and they get sloppy. It leads to officials in Dfid searching for projects to spend money. An awful lot of money goes to spend on jobs for middle-class whites.”

The article, which is well worth reading in full, also reveals quite how unpopular Priti Patel, who resigned as international development secretary on Wednesday, was with her officials. Here is another extract.

While the budget remains intact, Patel happily accelerated the process by which Dfid’s very role is being eroded: a quarter of all aid money is now spent by other government departments. Its junior ministers are now shared with the Foreign Office. Long-serving Dfid staff told me morale is the lowest it has ever been, in part due to the way Patel ran the department.

Tensions between Patel’s team and Dfid veterans were there from the off—they had not forgotten that she had once argued that Dfid should be abolished. She and her team knew “that 80 per cent of their officials don’t trust them,” said one member of the 80 per cent. One long-standing Dfid civil servant went further: “Priti is about Priti,” he said. “It’s all about becoming prime minister.” Nor, he says, did she appear to know much about her brief. “She seems to be incredibly stupid and offensive” ....

Patel seemed to delight in shaking the ground on which Dfid stood. Her speech at Conservative party conference was mocked in the media as a leadership bid, but aid experts inside the department were more worried by the content. One official told me he’d watched it “open-jawed.” Time and again she criticised “wasted aid,” saying the public were “right to be angry” and that she would be “ruthless in closing programmes.” Using the sort of language that often gets used to bash benefit claimants, Patel said she was “not here to endlessly hand out money.” When she did talk about Britain’s role in development she linked “our heroic armed forces and aid experts.” One senior NGO policy official sums up the alarm this provoked: “it’s dangerous for our people” to be associated with the military.

David Davis and Michel Barnier's press conference - Summary

Here are the main points from the David Davis/Michel Barnier press conference.

  • Davis, the Brexit secretary, said the UK would not let Northern Ireland stay in the customs union or the single market. He was responding to reports of a leaked EU position paper that suggests Ireland is calling for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union and the single market to avoid a hard border going up between the Republic and Northern Ireland. With the UK government determined to leave the customs union and the single market, the paper implies the solution could involve Northern Ireland having different customs rules from the rest of the UK. But Davis said that was unacceptable. He said:

We respect the European Union desire to protect the legal order of the single market and customs union.

But that cannot come at cost to the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom.

As I have said before, we recognise the need for specific solutions for the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland.

But let me be clear.

This cannot amount to creating a new border inside our United Kingdom.

  • Davis repeated the UK’s determination to “honour the [financial] commitments we have made during the period of our membership”. This is the formula used by Theresa May in her Florence speech. But he did not say anything new about what these commitments are. Dia Chakravarty, the Telegraph’s Brexit editor, thinks the government has not prepared voters for how expensive this will be.
  • Barnier said the UK and the EU had to agree an “objective interpretation” of what May meant when she said the UK would honour its financial commitments. He said:

This is absolutely vital if we are to achieve sufficient progress in December. It is just a matter of settling accounts as in any separation.

  • Barnier said there had to be “sincere and real progress” in the Brexit talks for them to be able to move on to phase two, the trade and transition phase, in December. The EU has always set “sufficient progress” as the threshold. Barnier repeated that formula today but at least twice he used “sincere and real” as qualifiers to explain what “sufficient” meant. He said:

Only sufficient progress - that is to say sincere and real progress - on the three main key issues of these negotiations will enable the triggering of the of second phase of our negotiation.

  • Barnier said the EU was not asking for concessions, and not planning to offer any itself. “We are not asking the UK for concessions, nor are we planning to make any concessions ourselves,” he said. He said the negotiation was just a matter of clarifying what was owed. (But he was ignoring the fact that any offer by the UK to pay more than it has already agreed would be seen as a concession, regardless of Brexit semantics.)
  • Barnier said there were still some issues holding up an agreement on citizens’ rights. He said:

There are still a number of points that need more work: family reunification; the right to export social security benefits; and the role of the European Court of justice in guaranteeing consistent application of case law in the UK and in the EU.

  • Davis called for more “flexibility” and “imagination” in the negotiations. He said:

The United Kingdom will continue to engage and negotiate constructively as we have done since the start.

But we need to see flexibility, imagination and willingness to make progress on both sides if these negotiations are to succeed and we are able to realise our new deep and special partnership.

David Davis (left) and Michel Barnier arrive for the press conference.
David Davis (left) and Michel Barnier arrive for the press conference. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

And here is the full text of Michel Barnier’s opening remarks. (It’s the original text, in a mix of English and French.)

Here is some comment from journalists on the press conference.

From Politico Europe’s Charlie Cooper

From the Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin

From ITV’s James Mates

From the Independent’s Jon Stone

From Politico Europe’s Quentin Aries

From the New York Times’ James Kanter

The Brexit department has tweeted some quotes from David Davis’s opening statement.

Barnier gives UK a two-week deadline to offer more money if it wants trade talks to start after December

Here is the key statement from Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator.

He was asked this question by a reporter from the German press agency.

Monsieur Barnier, could you confirm for me that you will need clarifications or concessions, whichever you prefer, from the UK within two weeks in order to move on to the second phase in December?

And Barnier replied:

Ma response est, oui [My answer is, yes.]

There are five weeks until the EU summit in December (on 14 and 15) where EU leaders will decide whether or not sufficient progress has been made in phase one of the talks to justify moving on to phase two, the negotiation about a transition and the future trade relationship. That suggests the UK has a month or more to budget.

But EU council resolutions do not get decided on the day. They are cooked up several weeks in advance, in a process that involves draft conclusions being circulated and member states being squared long before the EU leaders sit down for dinner in Brussels on the Thursday night.

Barnier was making the point that, although the summit may be five weeks away, in practice the UK’s deadline is much tighter because of the slow pace at which the EU makes decisions.

And the key issue on which the EU wants the UK to budge, of course, is money.

David Davis (left) and Michel Barnier.
David Davis (left) and Michel Barnier. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

Updated

Q: [From the Daily Telegraph - to Davis] Why will you be in a better place to make a deal in December than in October?

Davis says it is for the EU to decide what sufficient progress is.

But there has been significant progress. He says that will continue “at pace” into December.

Q: [From the Telegraph - to Barnier] You wanted to open talks on a transition. But EU leaders blocked that idea. Who is in charge of the negotiation?

Barnier says if there has not been sufficient progress by December, talks on the future will be delayed.

He says the French and German positions are important.

But he listens to all EU states, and the European parliament.

And that’s it. The press conference is over.

The most important thing is what Michel Barnier said about the two-week deadline for progress. (See 11.58am.)

I will post a summary soon.

Q: What will you [Barnier] do if you do not get the clarification you need within two weeks? And how confident are you you will get this?

Barnier says the technical experts are speaking to each other between the Brexit negotiating rounds.

He says the six rounds have been “hardly anything”. Hopefully there will be a seventh round soon.

He says he does not expect to settle everything before Christmas, but there has to be sincere and real progress.

Barnier says he will not comment on the internal political situation in the UK.

But he is following the public debate closely.

He was struck the other day by the reaction to the fact that he met Nick Clegg and others (Ken Clarke and Andrew Adonis).

But his door is open, he says. This week he met a parliamentary delegation.

But he is negotiating with the government. It says it is leaving.

Barnier says UK needs to offer concessions within two weeks for progress to be made at December summit.

Q: [From a German press agency] Will the EU need concessions from the UK within two weeks to allow time for an agreement at the December summit.

Barnier says his answer is yes.

  • Barnier says UK needs to offer concessions within two weeks for progress to be made at December summit.

Davis says there are still unresolved issues on citizens’ rights.

He says it is a priority for the UK to retain the sovereignty of UK courts.

On money, he says the UK will honour the commitments it has made during its EU membership.

He says this weeks’s talks have allowed both sides to consolidate progress already made.

Both sides need to maintain progress, he says.

Davis insists Northern Ireland must leave customs union and single market

Davis turns to Ireland.

He says both sides are committed to avoiding physical infrastructure are the border.

The final outcome can only be agreed when the UK and the EU agree the final border.

But the UK will maintain its integrity, he says. He says it will not accept a new border between the island of Ireland and the mainland.

(He seems to be rejecting the proposal in the leaked EU document for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union and the single market.)

  • Davis insists Northern Ireland must leave customs union and single market.

Davis says flexibility and pragmatism required on both sides

David Davis is speaking now.

He says the Florence speech gave dynamism to the talks.

This week they have been working through the issues where there are disagrements.

Now is the time for both sides to move forward together.

It will require flexibility and pragmatism from both sides, he says.

  • Davis says flexibility and pragmatism required on both sides.

Barnier says the two sides have common goals on the Irish issues.

And he turns to money (switching back to speaking in French).

This is a matter of settling accounts, he says.

He says the UK will be leaving. In order to achieve their common objective, both sides will work “intensely” in the run up to the December EU summit.

Updated

Barnier says UK has provided 'useful clarifications' on some aspects relating to citizens' rights

Barnier turns to citizens’ rights. They have made “some progress”, he says.

He says the EU wanted reassurance about the registration system, and about the appeal system. The UK has provided “useful clarifications that are a good basis for further work”.

But he says there are still issues to be resolved relating to family reunification, the export of benefits and the influence of the European court of justice in relation to the application of case law.

Barnier says, if you look at the European council’s resolutions, you will see that there has to be sufficient progress - that means sincere and real progress - for the second phase of the negotiation to be triggered.

He says in this extraordinarily complex negotiation, the EU is not asking for concessions. And nor is is planning to make concessions itself. It is basing the talks on facts, and commitments.

It wants to create certainty where Brexit has created a fair amount of uncertainty.

Updated

Michel Barnier opens the press conference.

He says don’t expect any announcements or decisions today.

This is a time for technical work, and clarifications, he says.

He says he wants an orderly withdrawal. He is looking ahead to the European council in December.

David Davis and Michel Barnier hold press conference

The Davis/Barnier press conference is due to start any minute now.

Brown says Corbyn is 'a phenomenon' who is saying things that are 'absolutely right'

In an interview on the Today programme this morning, Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, praised Jeremy Corbyn for the way he has articulated public anger while setting out his vision for a fairer society. Brown said:

Jeremy is a phenomenon. He has cut through because he expresses people’s anger at what has happened - the discontent.

When he attacks universal credit he is speaking for many people. When he says the health service is underfunded he is speaking for many. What he is saying on these things is absolutely right.

As the Press Association reports, Brown acknowledged that during his time in office as chancellor and later prime minister, he and Corbyn rarely saw eye-to-eye, with the current Labour leader voting against the government more than 500 times.

He pointed out, however, that Corbyn had since adopted the New Labour slogan “For the many, not the few”, while his shadow chancellor John McDonnell had backed Brown’s decision in office to make the Bank of England independent. Brown went on:

Jeremy has articulated a view of a fairer society.

You have got to convert this sense that you have restored people’s faith in your principles to a plan for the future that is credible and therefore electable and a programme that is popular

They are now with the responsibility - and I hope that they can discharge it - of showing that they can produce a programme that is costed and which is popular and which is both radical and progressive.

That is the challenge for any left-wing or progressive party.

Gordon Brown.
Gordon Brown. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Updated

At the press conference David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is likely to be asked (as he usually is) about how much the UK might pay the EU when it leaves.

According to George Parker in today’s Financial Times (paywall), Theresa May is “working on different scenarios that would see her considerably increase the €20bn she has already put on the table.” Parker says:

British ministers and officials have told the Financial Times that although the negotiations leading up to the European Council on December 14-15 will be complex, they believe the money issue can be resolved.

“The money isn’t the problem,” said one senior minister. “The real problem is deciding what our end-state relationship with the EU will be.” Another government figure said: “The domestic political obstacles to a deal may not be as high as they once seemed.”

Mrs May’s room for manoeuvre on the exit bill has until now been limited by hostile Tory Eurosceptic MPs, some of whom have argued that Britain should not pay any money to leave the EU.

But in recent weeks, the mood has softened. One senior Eurosceptic MP agreed with the Treasury’s assessment that an exit bill running into the tens of billions of pounds was a small price to pay for a good trade deal with the EU. “It’s money down the back of the sofa,” the MP said.

The Conservatives have lost a council seat to the Liberal Democrats in a local by-election caused by the resignation of a Tory councillor who previously had been elected for Ukip, the Press Association reports. The Lib Dem victory came in a contest in the Stubbington ward of Fareham Borough Council. Ukip was forced into third place.
Voting was: LD 1,185, C 769, Ukip 117, Lab 76. The turnout was 39%.

Elsewhere in the latest council by-elections, the Conservatives held two seats - at High Peak (Limestone Peak ward) and Wandsworth (Thamesfield) - while Labour held two seats - at Camden (Gospel Oak) and Flintshire (Buckley Bistre West).

Lord Kerr, the British diplomat credited with drafting article 50, has given his speech this morning arguing that Brexit is reversible. Matthew Weaver has covered his main arguments in a story filed earlier today.

Here are some of the other points he made as he delivered his speech.

  • Kerr said a future trade deal between the UK and Brussels could be blocked by referendums in EU countries.
  • He said he was “puzzled” by the government’s suggestions that a trade deal could be concluded by this time next year. He pointed out that the Canadian deal has taken seven years to negotiate and “got stuck in the Wallonian parliament”.
  • He suggested Theresa May triggered article 50 too soon.

I don’t know why Mrs May was in such a rush to send her letter in March, before her Cabinet had an agreed plan. It was odd to start the clock and not start negotiating, instead calling an election.

  • He said that if the UK tried to rejoin the EU having left it would lose its budget rebate.
Lord Kerr.
Lord Kerr. Photograph: Sky News

The Guardian has a very good column today by Charles Grant, director for the Centre for European Reform, look at how Brexit is likely to unfold. You can read it here.

The press conference is definitely scheduled for 11.30am UK time. There will be a live feed here.

Good morning. For various domestic reasons today’s Politics Live is getting sandwiched between the school run, but that doesn’t matter because today’s main event is the regular David Davis/Michel Barnier at the end of the latest round of Brexit talks. These events always take place just before lunch - in Brussels, they know their priorities - and so we are expecting them up some time after 11.30am UK time.

Here are the main Brexit related stories around this morning.

  • Theresa May has used an article in the Daily Telegraph (paywall) to announced that the government will table an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill to specify that the UK will leave the EU at 11pm GMT (midnight in Brussels) on 29 March 2019. Writing in the Telegraph, the prime minister said:

We will not tolerate attempts from any quarter to use the process of amendments to this bill as a mechanism to try to block the democratic wishes of the British people by attempting to slow down or stop our departure from the European Union ... We are leaving the European Union on 29 March 2019.

  • An internal EU document say a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland can only be avoided by Northern Ireland effectively staying in the single market and customs union, it has emerged. As the Guardian reports, the document says

[It is] essential for the UK to commit to ensuring that a hard border on the island of Ireland is avoided, including by ensuring no emergence of regulatory divergence from those rules of the same internal market and the customs union ... necessary for meaningful north-south cooperation, the all-island economy, and the protection of the Good Friday agreement.

I will be mostly focusing on Brexit, but some other politics may feature.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard’s Playbook. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ 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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