Theresa
May will come under pressure from Brexit supporters in the
cabinet to spell out what she hopes the UK will gain from paying the EU a
higher divorce bill of about £40bn, as her most senior ministers meet to
discuss an improved offer.
The prime minister will attempt
to reach a consensus over a proposed offer at a meeting of her cabinet
committee on EU strategy on Monday as the UK tries to break the deadlock
in Brexit negotiations.
But some of the leave-supporting
ministers, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, are
understood to be applying pressure behind the scenes to make sure that the UK
has a clear idea what it wants from a future trading relationship before
agreeing to hand over such a large sum.
They are likely to press the
prime minister to begin cabinet discussions on the UK’s future trading
relationship after the pair sent a joint letter to No 10 in recent
weeks demanding an arrangement that allows Britain a wide degree of regulatory
freedom.
Philip Hammond confirmed on
Sunday that the UK would make an improved offer to the EU within three and a
half weeks, after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator
in Brussels, said Britain had a fortnight to break the impasse.
“We will make our proposals to
the European Union in time for the council [on 14 December], I am sure about
that,” the chancellor told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. He promised Britain
would honour its debts but also “negotiate hard” on the various aspects of the
financial settlement.
However, senior Brexiters are
particularly concerned about the idea of signing over a high sum as part of the
withdrawal agreement but later ending up with an unsatisfactory deal on the
future relationship.
Johnson is not thought to be
opposed in principle to a divorce bill higher than the £20bn already offered by May but would
need assurances that the UK was heading for the right type of relationship with
the EU when it leaves. At the moment, there is a cabinet agreement on seeking a
two-year transitional period after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, but
nothing has been agreed on what the future relationship should look like after
that.
Some in the former remain wing of the
Conservative party are also keen to see clarity in terms of what the UK will
achieve by agreeing to pay a higher amount. Stephen Hammond, one of the
Conservative MPs opposing a hard Brexit, told the BBC’s Sunday Politics: “I
think where we have to be clear is what we’re paying for and what we’re
getting. No one is suggesting that we should just hand over money without any
proper scrutiny.
That would be entirely inappropriate. But it may well be
entirely appropriate to put in money to facilitate international trade which
will secure jobs in this country.”
May’s
meeting comes at a time of continuing tensions over Brexit within the cabinet,
including reports that David Davis, the Brexit secretary, was
pushed to the brink of resignation by being excluded from Johnson and Gove’s
letter to the prime minister making demands over her strategy.
A
source close to Davis strongly denied that he had any intention of walking out,
saying: “This is completely wrong and anyone pushing this nonsense in order to
undermine Brexit is going to be sorely disappointed.”
However,
the demanding tone of Johnson and Gove’s letter raised eyebrows among their
senior colleagues. May has agreed to one of its requests – a Brexit taskforce
on implementation – but Johnson has been left off the list of those on the new
subcommittee on preparations for leaving the EU.
May is also facing the continuing
parliamentary battles over the EU withdrawal bill on Tuesday. The most
significant vote of the week will be over the issue of human rights, led by the
former attorney general Dominic Grieve as he attempts to get the EU charter of
fundamental rights incorporated into UK law. The senior Tory may withdraw his
amendment if the government makes concessions to safeguard human rights.
But Grieve, who is battling to
stop May fixing the Brexit date of 29 March 2019 in law, told BBC Radio 5 Live
that some of his colleagues, though not the prime minister, had “become
unhinged” over the issue of leaving the EU.
“The prime minister’s problem is
that she’s surrounded by people who get louder and more strident by the moment
as some of the inevitable problems which were going to come with Brexit start
to make themselves apparent,” he said.
On the other side, Suella Fernandes
and John Penrose, two Tory MPs involved in the strongly pro-Brexit European
Research Group, accused rebels of trying to “torpedo” Britain’s withdrawal from
the EU.
They said the legislation should
be a “spectacularly simple” legal “copying and pasting” of EU law in UK law but
claimed there was a “danger it will be used as a Trojan horse, to thwart the
referendum result by stealth”.
“The issue isn’t really the date:
it’s the timing of a vote on the final deal that’s being negotiated with
Brussels,” they wrote in a joint article for the Sunday Telegraph.
“If the deal isn’t agreed until
the two-year article 50 timetable is up (and whoever heard of an EU negotiation
or summit finishing early, after all?) then the vote can only be ‘please choose
between this deal or no deal at all’.”
Source: Guardian