DOWNING St has rebuffed a call from Nicola Sturgeon to extend the Brexit transition period amid the worsening Covid crisis and brushed aside any possibility that a provisional agreement on trade could be reached before December 31 with ratification taking place in the New Year.
The First Minister led calls for the end-of-year deadline to be extended while the UK Government and country battled the spread of the new coronavirus variant.
She tweeted: “It’s now imperative that PM seeks an agreement to extend the Brexit transition period. The new Covid strain & the various implications of it means we face a profoundly serious situation & it demands our 100% attention. It would be unconscionable to compound it with Brexit.”
Her view was echoed by Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, who said: “Securing our key supply chains and fighting the coronavirus pandemic requires the full and undivided efforts of ministers more than ever before.
“Risking the chaos and uncertainty of a no-deal Brexit was reckless even before the latest surge in Covid cases and the worrying news about this latest strain.”
Mr Khan added: “With the virus spreading rapidly and our hospitals increasingly stretched, the only thing the country should be concentrating on is fighting the virus.”
However, Sir Keir Starmer did not back their calls for a transition extension, calling instead on Boris Johnson to deliver a deal.
“Get that deal over the line today or tomorrow, don’t delay,” declared the Labour leader. “People were promised a deal and you must deliver that deal,” he added.
This led to Ian Blackford, the Nationalist leader at Westminster, to attack Sir Keir, saying: "It beggars belief Keir Starmer is happy to impose a devastating Tory hard Brexit in ten days' time, in the middle of a global pandemic, when many families and businesses are already struggling to get by.”
Earlier, Grant Shapps, the UK Government’s Transport Secretary, stressed how firms already knew that change was coming after December 31 and had been told to plan for it.
Extending the transition period would only “add fuel to the fire” by creating extra uncertainty, he argued.
No 10 also dismissed any prospect of extending the transition period. The PM’s spokesman accepted “time is obviously in very short supply” to get a deal done and ratified by January 1 but stressed how the UK was prepared for World Trade Organisation[WTO] terms if there were no agreement with the EU.
“We will need to ratify any agreement ahead of January 1. The Leader of the House[Jacob Rees-Mogg] made clear that we would recall Parliament in order to give MPs a vote on the necessary legislation.”
Lead negotiators Michel Barnier and Lord Frost continued their talks on Monday but the discussions over the weekend were described as “difficult”.
There has been a suggestion that if the two sides could agree a deal in the days before the December 31 deadline, then they could ratify it retrospectively in January.
Another suggestion has been a “stand-still” agreement – effectively a transition extension - to maintain current arrangements until a deal were in place in the New Year.
But Mr Johnson’s spokesman said: “We have been clear on this point that we will either leave the transition period on December 31 with a free-trade agreement or we will leave with Australia-style WTO terms. That remains the case.”
Later at a Downing St press conference, the PM emphasised how the position of deadlock with the EU on the key points of competition rules and access to fishing waters remained unchanged.
“There are problems,” declared Mr Johnson. “It’s vital that everybody understands that the UK has got to be able to control its own laws completely and also we’ve also got to be able to control our own fisheries. It remains the case WTO would be more than satisfactory for the UK; we can certainly cope with any difficulties that are thrown in our way.”
He then added swiftly: “Not that we don’t want a deal but WTO terms would be entirely satisfactory and ‘prosper mightily’ remains an extremely good description of life after January 1 either way.”
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