Britain looking to ‘intensify’ Brexit negotiations with the European Union, says Downing Street

BRITAIN is ready to “intensify” the pace of negotiations over Brexit, Downing Street has indicated.

The comment came amid reports the UK wants to ditch the current pattern of negotiating for one week each month in Brussels and move to continuous talks.

It followed claims by former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg that talks were moving too slowly to be completed by the deadline of March 2019.

“It’s a bit like staring at a building site and saying we’ve made progress because we’ve made a cup of tea,” Mr Clegg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The Politico website reported that officials at David Davis’ Department for Exiting the EU have requested rolling talks to begin on September 18 and continue until a breakthrough is achieved.

Asked about the prospect of stepping up the tempo of talks, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We are ready to intensify negotiations.

“Nothing has been formally agreed but that is something that we can discuss.

“Typically, with negotiations, as time goes on you see the pace pick up. Certainly we wouldn’t rule that out, but nothing has been agreed yet.”

The Number 10 spokeswoman said Britain is continuing to press for talks to be expanded to include the future UK-EU relationship as well as the terms of withdrawal.

And she said the UK will not set out how much money it believes it owes the EU until this stage is reached.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has suggested the “divorce bill” could come to around £50nbn, but other estimates

put it as high as £80bn.

“Currently we are talking with the EU about withdrawal,” she said. “We want to be talking about withdrawal and the future partnership.

“We are not at the stage in negotiations where we are talking about the figure. We will seek a fair settlement of our rights and obligations as a departing member state, but we are not at that stage yet.”

Meanwhile, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, moved to calm a row over claims that he had suggested Britain needed to be “taught a lesson” over Brexit.

According to reports, Mr Barnier told a conference in Italy at the weekend that the UK needed to be “educated” about the price it would pay for leaving the EU, in comments seen by some Eurosceptics as a barely-veiled threat.

But in a message on Twitter on Monday, the EU negotiator said he had told delegates that Brexit was an “occasion to explain single market benefits in all countries, including my own”, adding: “We do not want to ‘educate’ or ‘teach lessons’.”

The third round of Brexit talks ended on Thursday with Mr Barnier claiming there had been no “decisive” progress on key issues and suggesting there was a lack of trust as a result of the UK’s refusal to accept financial obligations.

But Mr Davis said the Commission’s position was “silly”, insisting that Britain would not be pressured into giving up its line-by-line scrutiny of Brussels demands for a multibillion-pound “divorce bill”.

“They have set this up to try to create pressure on us on money, that’s what it’s about, they are trying to play time against money,” said the Brexit Secretary.