UK's Hunt admits Brexit could be delayed
UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Thursday became the first senior member of the UK government to admit that Brexit could be delayed in order to secure a withdrawal deal.
His comments were at odds from the usual holding line from Downing Street that the UK would leave on March 29 with or without a deal.
However, Hunt told the BBC that “extra time” could be needed to get legislation through parliament.
MPs on Tuesday voted for Prime Minister Theresa May to return to Brussels and seek changes to the Irish backstop using unspecified “alternative arrangements”.
EU officials immediately ruled out any changes to the agreement reached with the UK in November, and expressed anger that May would rip up the deal she sold as the only one on the table.
The backstop is an "insurance" policy to stop the return of a hard border in Ireland with checks on goods and people moving in and out of Northern Ireland, which would no longer be part of the EU.
"It is true that if we ended up approving the deal in the days before the 29 March, then we might need some extra time to pass critical legislation,” Hunt said on Thursday.
"But if we are able to make progress sooner, then that might not be necessary. We can't know at this stage exactly which of those scenarios would happen."
Hunt said the UK had to “demonstrate that our commitment to the Belfast agreement, the Good Friday agreement, is absolute. And we will do that”.
“Secondly, we have to show that any solution that changes the backstop won’t lead to us trying to access the single market by the back door. And we recognise that the way that we access the single market, because we are not going to be embracing free movement, will change.”
“If we can overcome those two issues, which I think we can, then I think we will be able to have substantive discussions.”
“But this is not going to happen in the next few days. We have to put these proposals together, we have to work them up, we have to go through them in detail with our partners in the EU.”
Meanwhile, MPs had had February break from parliament cancelled over concerns about how prepared the UK was for Brexit.
Parliament was due to break up in a fortnight, but House of Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom told MPs there would be no recess with the Brexit deadline looming and no deal with Brussels.
"I do think our constituents will expect that the House is able to continue to make progress at this important time," Leadsom said.