Exciting? Not for my region
MINISTER’S PREDICTION OF LAST-MINUTE BREXIT DEAL ANGERS MP
BREXIT Secretary David Davis has predicted that talks between the EU and UK will continue until the day Britain leaves.
And he said Parliament may get a vote on the deal only after Brexit has taken place in March 2019.
His comments sparked concern from Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah, who said North East businesses needed to know what was happening before the UK quits the EU.
And in a sign of apparently disunity at the top of Government, Prime Minister Theresa May appeared to contradict the Brexit Secretary just hours after he made the comments.
Giving evidence to a Commons inquiry, Mr Davis said that Brussels tended to avoid concluding deals until the last moment and he expected this to be no exception, but it would be “very exciting for everybody watching”.
He said: “It’s no secret that the way the union makes its decision tends to be at the 59th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day and so on, and that is precisely what I would expect to happen.” And he said talks could even continue for hours or days after the Brexit deadline passed.
“If there is a time limit on a negotiation the union stops the clock, it assumes that it’s still at 11:59 until it is concluded, sometimes over the course of 24, 36, 72 hours thereafter and that’s what I imagine it will be.
“And it will be a lot of pressure, very high stress, very exciting for everybody watching.”
Ms Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle Central, said the comments would worry employers.
She said: “Mr Davis’s ideas of excitement shows just how out of touch he is with the hard-working men and women of the North East, whose jobs depend on a good deal for Britain, as well as the businesses anxiously watching every development. “It also shows just how incompetent their negotiating tactics are. “Mr Davis is like a child playing marbles, not a lead negotiator in the most important deal Britain has done for a generation.” But just over an hour later, the Prime Minister told MPs she was “confident” a deal would be secured in time for it to go before MPs. She told the Commons: “The timetable under the Lisbon Treaty does give time until March 2019 for the negotiations to take place, but I am confident because it is in the interests of both sides – and it is not just this parliament that wants to have a vote on that deal, but actually there will be ratification by other parliaments -– that we will be able to achieve that agreement and that negotiation in time Chi Onwurah for this parliament to have the vote that we committed to.”
Mrs May’s spokesman told a Westminster briefing that a deal with the EU would be negotiated before the exit date of March 2019.
He said: “A final deal will be agreed before we leave and MPs will get a vote on it.”
The spokesman said Mr Davis had been asked a lot of “hypothetical questions” during his Commons committee appearance.
Mr Davis’s department later issued a statement disowning the evidence he had given to MPs earlier in the day.
A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union said: “We are working to reach an agreement on the final deal in good time before we leave the EU in March 2019.
“Once the deal is agreed we will meet our long-standing commitment to a vote in both Houses and we expect and intend this to be before the vote in the European Parliament and therefore before we leave the EU.
“This morning the Secretary of State was asked about hypothetical scenarios. Michel Barnier has said he hopes to get the deal agreed by October 2018 and that is our aim as well.”