Revealed: Brexit transition period could go on and on

Leaked paper: the wording caused anger among Brexiteers
REUTERS
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Brexiteers hit out today after a leaked Government paper appeared to open the door to the transition period lasting more than two years.

The 10-page document also raised doubts over how Theresa May will block Brussels’ demand that European Union citizens who come to the UK during the period should have the same rights as those living here before Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019.

The document was leaked from Brussels this morning and appeared to show the Government’s stance.

An explanatory note on the transition period, which Mrs May has said should be about two years, states: “The UK believes the period’s duration should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin the future partnership. The UK agrees this points to a period of around two years, but wishes to discuss with the EU the assessment that supports its proposed end date.”

The document was obtained by the Bloomberg news agency. The Department for Exiting the EU declined to say whether it was a final draft or the official paper.

Tory ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith demanded of the paragraph: “Just take a red pen and put a line through it.” He told the Standard: “The Prime Minister already said categorically a maximum of two years.”

Conservative backbencher Philip Davies said: “Why does it need to be more than two years? All of this foot-dragging and faffing about is unacceptable to the general public.” A No 10 source said the document was merely a “restatement” of Mrs May’s speech in Florence last year. “We simply want the flexibility to push the timescale to ‘around two years’ which is what the PM said in Florence,” they said. “It is a difference between 21 months and around two years.”

The EU had tried to shorten the period to 21 months. Mrs May recently rejected a claim that it could be extended to three years. The length will be set at next month’s summit of 27 EU leaders.

The document also did not lay out a clear mechanism to decide on the rights of EU citizens who arrive in the UK during the transition period. On the BBC’s Daily Politics, Brexit minister Steve Baker said: “We would hope that we will be able to negotiate that those people, after we have formally left the European Union, would be subject to UK law in their rights going forward.”

Pressed on whether they would have the right to stay, he added: “We will need to sit down with the European Union and have that conversation.”

The document says there is believed to be “broad alignment” between the UK and the EU, apart from on a “small number of areas requiring discussion”. In Brussels, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU and UK should be able to agree a final Brexit deal by October, and that he had “full trust” in the Prime Minister.

Mrs May and Jeremy Corbyn clashed in the Commons today when he mocked Brexit Secretary David Davis’ assurance that Britain would not be plunged into a “Mad Max”-style dystopian fiction after it leaves the EU. The Labour leader said: “Doesn’t the Prime Minister feel he could set the bar a little bit higher?”

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