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Brexit: May faces Tory call to resign as she addresses MPs about delay until October – live news
Brexit: May faces Tory call to resign as she addresses MPs about delay until October – live news
(30 minutes later)
Here is some Twitter comment on what Nigel Dodds said about the prospect of this session of parliament being extended. (See 2.07pm.)
Antoinette Sandbach, a Tory pro-European, says her constituents are pleased to see the government in talks with Labour. She says a survey after the referendum showed only 35% of people who voted leave thought that would mean leaving the single market and the customs union. And she tells May he confidence and supply partners, the DUP, are undermining confidence and not supply the votes.
From Sky’s Faisal Islam
Labour’s Karen Buck asks May when she will decide whether she can bring forward an EU withdrawal agreement bill.
Back on Dodds - inconceivable that DUP would back a Queens Speech designed to ratify the Withdrawal Agreement, nor back WA in current form too, nor a Govt that has passed it. As they now say extension of Parliamentary session unacceptable - we are heading for a June crunch.
May says it will depend how the talks with Labour go.
From HuffPost’s Paul Waugh
Sammy Wilson, the DUP MP, asks May to name any issues on which the UK said no to the EU.
.@NigelDoddsDUP adds 'unacceptable' if current Parliament session extended beyond 2 yrs (and extension of session is rumoured).Of course if there is a new session, May needs a new Queen speech. Which the DUP can vote down if it wants..
May says she resisted a Northern Ireland-only customs union, and she resisted demands for an exit bill of £100bn.
From Sky’s Lewis Goodall
Alistair Burt, the Tory pro-European, asks May if she will allow free votes in an indicative votes process.
VERY interesting. Nigel Dodds warns May not to extend current session of parliament (which has already lasted for two years).Significnace of this is new session needs new Queen's Speech- which govt might lose. And, funnily enough, DUP deal runs out at end of *this* session...
May thanks Burt, who resigned recently from the government, for his work as a minister. But she sidesteps his question.
Anna Soubry, the former Tory who is now an Independent Group MP, says she welcomes the extension, because it allows more time for a people’s vote. On which issue is May willing to compromise?
Labour’s Owen Smith says May would get her deal through parliament if she attached a people’s vote to it.
May says she is talking about this with Labour.
May says she has already covered this.
Steve Baker, the leading Tory Brexiter, says the government relies on the votes of the DUP. If it pushes through the withdrawal agreement with the backstop, will it rely on Labour votes in confidence motions.
Chuka Umunna, the former Labour MP who now sits with the Independent Group, says May has put her party before her country. Will May face down Brexiters in her party and consider a people’s vote.
May laughs. She says what she is doing with Labour is unprecedented. But she wants to get her deal through, she says.
May says she has answered this already.
Labour’s Kate Hoey asks May if she accepts any responsibility for signing up to a backstop that MPs would not support.
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock asks for an assurance that full membership of the single market through the EEA will be an option in any indicative ballot.
May says she thinks the backstop is something that should never be used and need never be used.
May says the UK does not need to be a full member of the single market to gets its benefits.
Labour’s Yvette Cooper asks May if she is willing to consider a common external tariff with the EU (a key part of a customs union).
Richard Harrington, the Tory pro-European, asks May if she will use a preferential voting system if she needs to hold indicative ballots.
May says the Commons has rejected a range of options. On a customs union, there is “more agreement [between the Tories and Labour] than is often given credit for”, she says. She says the language used sometimes obscures this. She says she wants this country to be in charge of its trade policy in the future.
May says she would discuss this with Labour. There are a number of options, she says. But she would want a system that provided a clear result.
May claims Labour and the Tories agree more on a customs union than people realise.
Labour’s Peter Kyle says MPs seem increasingly fearful of the electorate. Isn’t it time for MPs to investigate how they can use public ballots to bring people through ballots, and how they can lead people with facts?
Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader at Westminister, says the EU said they would not offer an article 50 extension without a credible plan as to what the UK would do next, and without stringent conditions. But the EU backed down, and offered an extension without either of those applying. He says May should learn the lesson, and push for changes to the backstop. And he says extending this session of parliament until the autumn would not be acceptable.
May pays tribute to the way Kyle has championed a confirmatory ballot. But she says no one is running scared of the electorate. Many people would see a second referendum as a sign of bad faith, she says.
DUP warns May not to try extending current session of parliament.
May says she thinks a second referendum would increase division just at the time when the government needs to bring people together.
May says the UK has repeatedly pushed for changes to the backstop.
Labour’s Stephen Doughty says trying to decouple a vote on her deal from a vote on a confirmatory vote will not be acceptable to many Labour MPs.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, the Tory former chief whip, says Jeremy Corbyn refused an offer of cross-party talks some time ago.
May says she thinks MPs agree they do need to deliver Brexit.
May says there was not “the same level of interest” when she first offered cross-party talks to Corbyn.
Mark Francois, the Tory Brexiter, says “perseverance is a virtue, but sheer obstinacy is not”. What will May do if Corbyn collapses the talks and calls a confidence motion?
Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, asks May to get officials to prepare a timetable for a second referendum.
May says she will continue to argue for the Conservatives to remain in office.
May says the house has already rejected this plan twice.
UPDATE: This is from the former Labour MP Ian Austin, who now sits as an independent.
Sir Bill Cash, the Tory Brexiter, asks May if she understands the anger people feel about this “abject surrender” last night. “Will she resign?”
Mark Francois wins today's award for self-awareness by telling the PM that "sheer obstinacy" is not a virtue.
May says she thinks Cash knows the answer to that.
She admits that she often said she wanted the UK to leave on 29 March. She voted for that, she says. She also voted to leave on 22 May. But other MPs did not, and so that is why a further extension was necessary.
Bill Cash says May should resign.
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, says Brexit has been a “total fiasco”. He says it is an irony the EU has got the UK out of this mess.
He asks May if she has offered Labour a second referendum in the cross-party talks.
May says she has not offered a second referendum. Her position on this has not changed, and the idea has been rejected twice by MPs. But, she says, as Brexit legislation goes through the Commons, she expects MPs to push for a vote on this.
Ken Clarke, the Tory pro-European, urges May to ignore some of the more vicious attacks on her from their more rightwing colleagues.
He asks May if she accepts that the minimum needed for a compromise will be some sort of customs arrangement, and some sort of regulatory alignment.
May says the political declaration already says the UK wants to keep the advantages of a customs union.
May is responding to Corbyn.
She says she is not prepared just to accept Labour’s policy. And Labour is not prepared just to accept hers. This takes compromise on both sides, she says.
Jeremy Corbyn is responding now.
He says having to ask for a second extension is a sign of the government’s failure.
He says a third of May’s MPs voted against her proposed extension earlier this week.
He welcomes May’s decision to open talks with Labour. But the invitation did not come at the 11th hour; it came at five past midnight - after the original Brexit deadline, he says.
He says the talks have been serious. But if they are to succeed, there will have to be compromise.
That is why he was disappointed by Liam Fox’s letter this week. It was an attempt to scupper Labour’s proposal for a customs union. Only yesterday the taoiseach said it was credible and negotiable, he says.
He says, if Labour’s Brexit is not possible, all options should be on the table, including a public vote.
He says May said she would stand down after a deal is passed. But Labour has no idea who might replace her, he says. He says some of the candidates would scrap the Human Rights Act, rip up “burdensome regulations”, accept no-deal or use Brexit “to create a race to the bottom”.
May says some leaders argued for stringent conditions on the UK while it remains an EU member.
But, says May, she argued against it. She said there was only one tier of EU membership.
She says she told EU leaders that, while the UK remains a member of the EU, it will continue to play a constructive role. That is the sort of country we are, she says.
She says she continues to hold talks with Labour. That is not the normal practice in UK politics, but she wants to break the deadlock, she says.
She says she hopes to reach a compromise deal with Labour. But, if that is not possible, she will put a small number of options to MPs for indicative votes. She says she will agree to bound by the results, provided Labour agrees to that too.
She says the EU has confirmed that it is willing to reconsider the political declaration.
She says she knows the whole country is frustrated by this delay.
And she understands how this is putting MPs under immense pressure.
She urges MPs to use the recess to reflect on this, and consider how they can get out of this impasse.
This is their national duty, she says
Theresa May is now making a statement about last night’s EU summit.
She says she asked for an extension until 30 June. But she says she also asked for an assurance that, if the UK passed the deal before then, it could leave immediately.
She says the discussions at the summit were difficult.
Many EU countries are frustrated with the impasse, she says.
She says many leaders wanted a long extension. The result was a compromise, she says - an extension until 31 October, with a review in June.
But the UK could still leave earlier, and it could avoid having to take part in the European elections, she says.
Here’s a question from BTL.
Does the Yvette Cooper bill rule out a no-deal Brexit for good?
Andrew - factual question. Does the Yvette Cooper Bill protect us indefinitely from a No Deal Brexit? (In October, if we're still in an impasse, would May or any PM have to come back to Parliament and be forced to request another extension? If the answer is that we're not protected indefinitely, presumably Cooper and co could re-run this week's exercise. I.e. The fact that there's a majority against No Deal, in both the Commons and the Lords, does give us lasting protection - unless the EU itself eventually chucks us out?).
The Cooper bill was a one-off. After the vote on Tuesday, it ceases to have effect.
So it does not rule out a no-deal in October.
And it never fully ruled out a no-deal this week either, despite some claims to the contrary. All it did was ensure that the PM would have to hold a vote on extending article 50, making it impossible for Theresa May to go to the EU proposing no-deal on 12 April against the wishes of MPs. There was always a risk the EU could have refused a further extension, despite the Commons vote on Tuesday.
But your main point is right. If a majority of MPs now can force a Cooper-style bill onto the statute book against the wishes of the government, it is likely that the same will be true in the autumn (although by then we may have a different Speaker, who may be less indulgent of such procedural initiatives.)
