Brexit: Barnier says still 'significant points of disagreement' with UK on transition - Politics live

• The EU’s chief negotiator has summoned the UK’s Brexit secretary, David Davis, to Brussels for crisis talks over his concern that despite weeks of discussions major differences remain over the transition period, including its end date.

• Liam Fox has criticised a former chief civil servant for “sticking to the patterns of the past” by saying the UK would be damaged for diverging from the EU after Brexit. As Peter Walker reports, the international trade secretary cast the civil servant, Sir Martin Donnelly, as a cautious bureaucrat who had spent too long in Brussels. Answering questions following a speech on Brexit in London, Fox dismissed the words of Donnelly, who had said that a future outside the EU’s single market was like swapping a three-course meal for a packet of crisps. Fox said Donnelly, who was the permanent secretary in his department until March 2017 and had previously spent time working in Paris and the EU, was unable to see the benefits that would accrue from an independent trade policy outside the single market and customs union. You can read the speech, which in news terms did not go much beyond what was briefed in advance, on BrexitCentral here.

• Downing Street has insisted that Boris Johnson was not offering a “technical solution” to the thorny question of the Irish border when he compared it to the London congestion charge, after the comments caused outrage.

• Momentum is expected to go head-to-head with Labour’s biggest trade union backer in the battle for the party’s next general secretary, after a late-night conference call failed to persuade the grassroots group to rally around the Unite candidate.

• Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, has demanded an immediate end to all-male appointment panels, following the recruitment of Toby Young to the board of the new higher education watchdog. She was speaking during a Commons urgent question about a report saying the vetting process for Young was flawed and rife with political interference. Addressing the universities minister Sam Gyimah, she said:

The report also notes that an all-male appointment panel was used twice. Will he end that practice immediately?

Gyimah said that “the point around the all-male appointment panel is taken” and that an attempt had been made to make the panel more representative.

• A transgender former L’Oreal Paris model who was sacked by the cosmetics giant for saying “all white people” are racist has been appointed by a Labour frontbencher to an advisory panel. As the Press Association reports, Munroe Bergdorf has been asked to sit on an LGBT+ advisory board by shadow equalities minister Dawn Butler. Last year Bergdorf made headlines when she called on people to boycott L’Oreal after being sacked over a Facebook post responding to the killing of an anti-racism demonstrator who was opposing a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville in the United States with controversial comments. The model wrote: “Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people.”

• The chief executive of the big data marketing firm Cambridge Analytica has denied claims by a prominent Brexiter that his company worked on a pro-leave campaign during a tense hearing in front of a House of Commons committee.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

As Steven Morris and Severin Carrell report in a story filed earlier, the Scottish and Welsh governments are introducing “emergency continuity bills” to try to force UK ministers to make further concessions over their new powers after Brexit.

But in the Scottish parliament Ken Macintosh, the presiding officer, ruled that the bill “would not be within the legislative competence of the parliament”. He said:“My view is reached in each case after careful reflection and is informed by a robust consideration of the legal issues.”

The Scottish government disagrees. It has advice from the lord advocate, the Scottish government’s chief law officer, saying the bill is compliant.

The i’s Chris Green says it’s all a bit of a mess.

Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, has joined those on Twitter mocking Boris Johnson for his comments earlier (see 10.14am) about the Irish border.

Downing Street has played down the significance of what Michel Barnier said earlier (see 3.07pm) about the two sides not yet agreeing the transition. Asked for a response, the prime minister’s spokesman said:

During a negotiation you would not expect both sides to immediately agree on everything. What’s absolutely clear is that both the UK and the EU agree that an implementation period is beneficial and we’re working to reach an agreement in March that’s in the interests of both business and individuals in the UK and in the EU 27. We await publication of the draft text tomorrow and then we’ll be in a position to respond.

27 Feb 201810.48 EST

May chairs cabinet meeting focusing on rough sleeping

Anne Perkins

The prime minister has called rough sleeping a “tragedy” at a cabinet meeting focused on tackling the growing problem.

But homelessness charities will be frustrated that there was no discussion by ministers of the policies that are behind the increase in homelessness. Many charities blame the freeze in local housing allowance and the impact of the introduction of universal credit.

In a growing number of areas housing has become unaffordable for benefits claimants, while some new recipients of universal credit find it hard to manage their money which is paid monthly in arrears. Others say delays in receiving the new benefit and administrative mistakes force people into homelessness.

The government is committed to halving the number of people sleeping rough by 2022 and ending it all together by 2027. Officially, the number in England is at a record high of 4,751, although most charities believe the number is much higher. Even on official figures, it has risen tenfold in the decade since 2008 when it was just 435.

According to Number 10, at cabinet ministers were told the new rough sleepers’ initiative, “Housing First” which will provide intensive support to street sleepers, will be piloted in the West Midlands, Liverpool and Manchester. The chancellor, Philip Hammond announced a £28m fund for support in the budget last November.

Housing First is a scheme that has been successfully pioneered in the US. It aims to tackle the complex needs of people who have been homeless for some time. It starts from the presumption that housing is a human right.

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Here are the main points from Michel Barnier’s press conference on Brussels.

• Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said that there has been no progress on many areas in the Brexit talks since December and that, on the transition, there are “significant points of disagreement”. He said that meant the transition had not yet been agreed. And he urged David David, the Brexit secretary, to come to Brussels for talks to resolve the logjam. He said:

I will say objectively, and this is something I regret, but I maintain the evaluation I gave you about three weeks ago, which is that in the light of these disagreements we have not achieved the transition yet.

For all of these points of disagreement I am quite happy to discuss these straight away with David Davis. It is essential that we make progress by means of political discussions, political negotiations, above and beyond all the technical points of clarification.

Barnier also explained where the two sides have yet to reach an agreement on the transition. The EU wants it to end on 31 December 2020, but the UK apparently wants it to be “open-ended”, it says. (The UK government says it does not want an open-ended transition, but it has not yet proposed a firm end date.) Barnier said there was a disagreement about regulatory divergence during the transition; the EU says all EU rules must continue to apply to the UK during that period, including new ones he implied. He said the EU wanted EU nationals arriving in the UK during the transition to get exactly the same rights as those who arrived earlier, but that the UK disagreed. He said there was a dispute about whether the UK would be able to opt in to new justice and home affairs measures. And he said it had not yet been resolved how the UK would be consulted during the transition on matters like the common foreign and security policy, and the common fisheries policy.

• Barnier said the UK’s proposed “managed divergence” approach to Brexit was unacceptable to the EU. That would amount to cherry picking, he said. (See 2.22pm.)

• He appeared to dismiss Boris Johnson’s comments about the Irish border. He said he did not want to “make comments on comments or indulge in polemics”. But he went on: “What counts here is what the British prime minister says.”

• Barnier said the draft Brexit withdrawal treaty being published tomorrow would not contain surprises. It would be be 120 pages long and contain 168 paragraphs, he said.

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27 Feb 201809.37 EST

Anne Perkins

On the World at One Mairead McGuinness, a Fine Gael MEP, said that Boris Johnson’s comments about the Irish border showed that he failed to understand the history, geography and politics of Ireland. She said:

I’ve stopped being shocked by what the foreign secretary has said on any issues. On the border question however he must realise that two boroughs in London are in the same country. What we are talking about here is the border between the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland which is a part of the UK and therefore in a very different space. So his comments aren’t surprising but they aren’t helpful.

I don’t buy [a frictionless border] in fact I don’t even really listen to it. Has Mr Johnson any idea of what happens along the border? How they trade particularly in livestock, how milk is produced on farms in Northern Ireland and comes to the South for processing? How are we going to stop the milk flow? Who’s going to check origin?

The solution and the possibilities that he’s proposing by technology fails to understand the history, the geography or the politics.

27 Feb 201809.30 EST

Barnier says Davis should come to Brussels to break logjam in Brexit talks

Daniel Boffey

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has called for David Davis to urgently come to Brussels to break a logjam in talks as he warned that Brussels will not accept UK demands on the transition period including the suggestion that its end date should be left open.

He reiterated that the legal text to be published tomorrow will operationalise the option of keeping Northern Ireland in the single market and customs union, and dismissed Boris Johnson’s comments this morning by saying that it was Theresa May’s words that mattered.

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At a cabinet sub committee meeting at Chequers on Thursday Theresa May’s most senior ministers agreed on the Brexit outcome they will propose when they start talks on the future trade relationship with the EU. The government has not officially said what it wants - Theresa May will give details on Friday - but it has been widely reported that the UK will propose a system of “managed divergence”, involving what in Whitehall has been summarised a “three buckets” approach: sticking with EU regulations in some areas (bucket 1), adopting the same aims via different regulatory means in other areas (bucket 2), and the UK goings its own way in other areas (bucket 3).

On Friday last week, based on the initial press reports about what was decided at Chequers, Donald Tusk, president of the European council, said it was “pure illusion” if the UK thought this would prove acceptable.

Today Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, was asked if he agreed. He said yes, and explained why.

The answer is yes. I agree with the president of the European council. We can’t possibly imagine a situation in which we would expect cherry picking. We are responsible for guaranteeing the integrity of the single market. The UK knows what the rules are which underpin that integrity because they have been helping us put them together for the last 40 years.

According to the BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler, who discussed this on the BBC’s Brexitcast podcast last week, a common joke in Brussels is that the “three baskets” proposal belongs in the fourth basket - the round one on the floor in the corner of the office.

Barnier is now taking questions.

Q: Do you agree with Donald Tusk view about the UK government’s “three baskets” proposal for a Brexit deal being unacceptable?

Barnier says the answer is yes, he agrees with Donald Tusk. We cannot possibly imagine a situation where we would accept cherry picking, he says.

He says the UK has been helping to draft EU laws for 40 years.

• Barnier says the “three baskets” approach proposed by the UK government for managed divergence from the EU is unacceptable.

Q: Do you agree with the Northern Ireland MEP who said the EU’s intervention in Northern Ireland is intolerable?

Barnier says the joint report published in December has a clear framework for Ireland.

Paragraph 49 contains three options for Ireland intended to avoid the need for a hard border.

The third option refers to the need for regulatory alignment.

Barnier says he would be happy if the alternative options worked.

But the draft treaty needs to contain an operable solution.