Davis says UK unlikely to agree payment to EU until very end of negotiation – as it happened

Caroline Lucas, the Green party co-leader, has denounced the government’s immigration plans - revealed in the Guardian leak - as “economically illiterate” and “plainly cruel”

You can read the leaked document in full here.

And here is a 10-point summary of what it says.

That’s all from me for tonight.

Thanks for the comments.

And this is from MLex’s Matthew Holehouse.

This is from Newsnight’s Mark Urban.

The Guardian has a huge scoop. My colleagues Nick Hopkins and Alan Travis have got a draft of the document setting out the government’s plans for immigration rules after Brexit.

David Davis revealed surprisingly little that was new about the Brexit process in his statement and it is telling that the Press Association first take leads on Davis being laughed at by some MPs after he claimed that no one ever said the Brexit process would be easy. (See 5.37am.)

Here are the other notable lines.

• Davis, the Brexit secretary, said he did not expect the UK to agree a financial payment to the EU for Brexit until the end of the entire negotiating process. He told MPs:

My expectation is that the money argument will go on for the full duration of the negotiation. The famous European “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” will apply here absolutely, as anywhere else.

• Davis refused to commit to giving MPs a specific vote on the financial settlement. Asked if MPs would get a specific vote on this, he told the Labour MP Chris Leslie (see 5.25pm) that MPs would get a vote on the final settlement as a whole.

• Davis claimed that, if the UK were to leave the EU with no deal, some EU countries would suffer more than Britain would.

• Davis said the talks would get “very stormy” at some point. He said:

As I have said from the beginning of this, this is going to be a turbulent process. There will be ripples, there will be times when it’s smooth, there will be times when it is very stormy, and we must be ready for that, because it is a negotiation which is going to be about big issues between major states.

• Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, accused the government of making “too many promises” about Brexit “which can’t be kept”. He told MPs:

We are obviously reaching the stage of negotiations where fantasy meets brutal reality. The truth is that too many promises have been made about Brexit which can’t be kept.

The secretary of state has just said that nobody was pretending it would be easy. Mr Speaker, they were pretending it would be easy. The international trade secretary [Liam Fox] promoted that negotiating a deal with the EU would be, and I quote, “one of the easiest deals in human history” to negotiate.

A year the secretary of state wrote “within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete” we would be able to “negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU”.

Even this summer the government published position papers riddled with further fantasies. The track-and-trace customs idea was put forward on 15 August this year as an apparently serious proposition, only to be effectively removed on the 1 September by the secretary of state himself with the admission that it was merely “blue sky thinking”.

Starmer singled out for particular criticism Theresa May’s claim that the European court of justice would have no further role in British life after Brexit as a particular problem. He said:

It is a fantasy to think that you can have a deep and comprehensive trade deal without shared institutions. The sooner we face up to that, the better.

Davis says the Brexit negotiations will get “very stormy” at some point.

Here is the start of Press Association story about the statement.

David Davis was heckled by Labour MPs after claiming no-one pretended it would be “simple or easy” to make progress in Brexit talks.

The Brexit secretary faced jeers in the Commons as he said he always believed the negotiations would be “tough, complex and at times confrontational”.

Davis added the UK must not lose sight of its overall aim to create a “deep and special new partnership” with its closest neighbours.

His remarks came as he updated MPs following the latest talks in the Brexit process.

Davis said the UK wants the talks to move on to the future relationship with the EU by October “if possible” - something the UK has previously expressed greater confidence over.

He told the Commons: “Last week we turned our considerations to the next round of talks and in that my message to the commission was, let’s continue to work together constructively but put people above process.

“To that end, my team will publish further papers in the coming weeks, continuing to set out our ambitions for the negotiations and a new deep and special partnership the UK wants to build with the EU.

“Ultimately, businesses and citizens on both sides want us to move swiftly on to discussing the future partnership and we want that to happen after the European Council in October, if possible.

“As colleagues know, at the start of these negotiations both sides agreed that the aim was to make progress on four key areas - citizens’ rights, financial settlement, Northern Ireland and Ireland, and broader separation issues.

“We’ve been doing just that.”

As Opposition MPs laughed at this comment, Davis added: “Nobody has ever pretended this would be simple or easy.”

This prompted further heckling and jeers before he added: “I’ve always said the negotiations will be tough, complex and at times confrontational - so it has proved.

“But we must not lose sight of our overarching aim - to build a deep and special new partnership with our closest neighbours and allies whilst also building a truly global Britain that can forge new relationships with the fastest growing economies around the world.”

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the “slow process of progress” was a “real cause for concern”.

“The parties appear to be getting further apart, rather than closer together,” he told MPs.

“Round three of five in phase one is gone, we would expect agreement to be emerging on the key issues.

“The last round is in October and that should be for formal agreement. There’s now huge pressure on the negotiating round in September.”

He said if phase two is pushed back, there would be “very serious consequences for Britain” and a no-deal option “could yet rise from the ashes”.

In his update to MPs on the talks with the EU during July and August,Davis addressed issues around nuclear materials.

He said: “We held discussions on the need to resolve issues around the ownership of special fissile material and the responsibility for radioactive waste and spent fuel held both here and there.

“We reiterated, this is important, a strong mutual interest in ensuring the UK and Euratom community continue to work closely together in the future as part of a comprehensive new partnership.”

Davis also claimed the discussions have shown the UK’s approach is “substantially more flexible and pragmatic” than the EU’s as it “avoids unnecessary disruption for British business and consumers”.

Starmer said it was “increasingly clear” that the prime minister’s “flawed red lines” on issues such as the European court of justice and citizens rights were “at the heart of the problem”.

He urged the government to be more flexible, warning: “I fear that these are not just examples which will crop up in phase one, these flawed red lines will bedevil the rest of the negotiations.

“It is a fantasy to think that you can have a deep and comprehensive trade deal without shared institution and the sooner we face up to that the better.”

Starmer said “too many promises” had been made about Brexit which “can’t be kept”.

Responding to Starmer, Davis said the issue of citizens’ rights was not “vexing” the European commission at the moment.

He said the commission was seeking to use time pressure on maintaining the first part of the negotiation as a “pressure point to put up against Britain in the future”.

Davis says understanding of what a transition period might involve has changed a lot over the last six months.

Originally the EU wanted to spend two years negotiating the withdrawal, he says. Then they wanted to spend an indefinite amount of time negotiating a future trade relationship.

Labour’s Pat McFadden asks if Davis thinks the EU are “blackmailing” the UK over money. He is referring to the phrase Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, used.

Davis says he uses his own words.

But he says there are “pressure points” in the negotiation.

Labour’s Chris Leslie asks if MPs will get the chance to vote on any “divorce bill” to the EU. On Monday MPs will vote for a money resolution to go with the EU (withdrawal) bill. MPs should not vote until they know what the final bill will be.

Davis says MPs will get a vote on the final agreement.

He says he does not think the money issue will be solved until the end of the progress.

• Davis refuses to commit to giving MPs a specific vote on the “Brexit bill” to be paid to the EU. He just said there would be a vote on the final deal.

• He says he does not expect the “Brexit bill” issue to be settled until the end of the process.

The Labour MP Chris Bryant says the EU (withdrawal) bill will give ministers wide-ranging powers to amend bills, including the EU (withdrawal) bill itself. No government has done that before, he says. It is not a Henry VIII clause. It is an Alice in Wonderland clause.

Davis says he will deal with this when MPs debate the bill on Thursday.