Key events
Keir Starmer says the new UK-EU trade deal will assist in tackling illegal migration. He told the House of Commons:
It also strengthens our borders, because, again, the previous deal left a huge gap, weakened our ability to work together to tackle illegal migration, the ultimate cross-border challenge. This partnership closes that gap, including joint work on returns, preventing channel crossings and working upstream … co-operating along the whole migration route to strengthen our hand in the fight against the vile smuggling gangs.
Keir Starmer has used his statement about recently struck trade deal to criticise the previous Conservative government for its failure to secure them. He said the trade deals were “in the national interest”.
He said “The principles we took into the negotiations are clear and simple. Does it drive down bills? Does it drive up jobs? Does it strengthen our borders? And in each case, the answer is resoundingly Yes. These deals release us from the tired arguments of the past, and as an independent sovereign nation, allow us to seize the opportunities of the future.”
He said he can see that “when it comes to this hat-trick of deals, it’s our new partnership with the EU that [the Conservatives] most want to talk about. Given their abject failure to strike a deal with India or the US, I can’t say I blame them.”
Starmer says UK is ‘horrified’ by ‘escalation from Israel’ in Gaza
Keir Starmer has said before he makes the trade statement, he wishes to speak about Gaza, saying that the government is “horrified by the escalation from Israel.”
He told the House of Commons:
I’d like to say something about the horrific situation in Gaza, where the level of suffering innocent children being bombed again is utterly intolerable. Over the weekend, we coordinated a response with our allies, as set out in my statement with President Macron and prime minister Carney last night, and I want to put on record today that we are horrified by the escalation from Israel.
We repeat our demand for a ceasefire as the only way to free the hostages. We repeat our opposition to settlements in the West Bank, and we repeat our demand to massively scale up humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
The recent announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza, a basic quantity, is totally and utterly inadequate. So we must coordinate our response, because this war has gone on for far too long. We cannot allow the people of Gaza to starve, and the foreign secretary will come to the house shortly to set out our response in detail.
Starmer has now gone on to start talking about recent UK trade deals.
Keir Starmer to make statement to parliament on UK-EU summit and trade deal
Prime minister Keir Starmer is making a statement in the House of Commons on the recent UK-EU summit and the newly announced trade deal. We will bring you the key lines.
More details soon …
During Treasury questions, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has claimed the SNP has put itself in an “absurd” position over the UK-EU trade deal over fishing rights.
SNP MP Dave Doogan asked her:
What changes will the Chancellor introduce in the spring statement to compensate for the growth-threatening Sword of Damocles she has just placed over the Scottish fishing industry?
She should know, but probably doesn’t, that 70% of revenue from fishing and agriculture comes from Scotland. She should know, but probably doesn’t, that the fishing industry in Scotland is 50 times larger for Scotland’s economy than the UK. So can she explain what discussions did she have with the Scottish Fishermen Federation or the Scottish government before making this damaging decision?
In reply Reeves said:
I was very pleased that the Scottish Salmon Association welcomed the trade deal that we secured with the EU yesterday, and 70% of the fish that is caught in UK waters is sold into European markets.
The SNP are now in an absurd situation where they support Reform and the Tories in opposing the deal with the EU.
Helena Horton
My colleague Helena Horton was watching the Efra select committee this morning. Here is her report
Environment secretary Steve Reed is appearing in front of the Efra select committee this morning. He has defended the deal between the EU and the UK which was struck yesterday and allows extended fishing rights for European fishers in UK waters. Some commentators have claimed the UK was “stitched up like a kipper” by the EU and that the deal is unfair to UK fishers.
He said of critics: “Very respectfully I completely disagree with them, given that we could have been sat here this morning talking about a reduction in UK quotas, increased access of EU access into UK territorial waters, no investment fund for those communities, and no increased ability into the ease of exporting into the Eu so that’s what we could have been facing. They’ve lost nothing in terms of what they have at the moment they have gained access into EU markets.”
Reed added this is because: “Less of our British fish will rot at the border, we have pushed for long time for live bivalve molluscs to be exported back into Europe and they will be, so there is no downside for this for fishers, there’s a big upside in what they can export.”
He added: “You would think every single party in this party would agree that this [deal] is good for business and good for trade”
The precision breeding bill going through parliament currently, which would allow farmers to grow gene edited crops and it potentially also applies to livestock, puts the UK at loggerheads with the EU, which has a ban on such technologies.
Reed said this will still go ahead, adding: “I want to see our farming sector to benefit from the potential higher productivity higher yields that can come from using that technology, we are somewhat ahead of the EU. If we can increase yields, we increase profitability for the farming sector, obviously there will be issues around what can be imported into the EU. We are not in the EU.”
Testing facilities at the border between the UK and the EU, such as in Dover, will be wound down, Defra’s biosecurity chief Emily Miles said.
She said there will be a “scaling back” of the “Facilities that were built for Brexit” and checks would now focus on illegal imports. “There will be a decommissioning of some facilities, we need to work through where and how.”
Environment secretary: ‘no downside’ in UK-EU deal for fishing industry
Environment secretary Steve Reed has been speaking to MPs about the UK-EU trade deal, which he described as a “huge boost” to trade, and a “reasonably good deal for the UK fishing sector” in which there was “no downside.”
Appearing before the Environment committee, Reed said that food and drinks exports from the UK to the EU had declined 21% since 2018. He claimed the new arrangements would be a “huge boost for the UK agri-food and food and drink sectors.”
PA Media report he told MPs:
I think this is a reasonably good deal for the UK fishing sector. Compared to what some of the speculation was, and indeed some of the pressures on our negotiating team, the EU was interested in more quota, more access to EU territorial waters.
They were looking for a deal on fishing in perpetuity, and they were trying to achieve that by making what I felt was a spurious link between fishing and an SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) deal.
He continued by saying “Our negotiating team held absolutely firm and as a result of that, we have a deal for 12 years,” and that the deal involved “no loss at all of quota or our own access into territorial waters.”
Reed said:
There are further benefits as well because the UK fishing sector exports 70% of our catch into Europe. That has now become much easier, much simpler, much less costly so they can export more of our British fish across the border, less of it is likely to rot at the border. There is no downside to this for fishers. There’s a big upside in what they can export.
The House of Commons has begun sitting for the day, with Treasury questions up first.
We are expecting two statements in the house later today. Prime minister Keir Starmer will make a statement on the UK-EU Summit, and foreign secretary David Lammy is set to make a statement on “Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor
The Church of Scotland has very narrowly voted to maintain its historic opposition to assisted dying after a motion to put it on a neutral footing for the first time was amended.
A joint working group had recommended the church adopt a more nuanced stance on assisted dying, by agreeing there were valid Christian arguments for supporting it, as well as theologian arguments against it.
But to the delight of critics of the measure, its annual general assembly, meeting in Edinburgh this week, voted by 149 to 145 for a countermotion which reaffirmed its opposition, while acknowledging the diversity of views about the proposal.
The Scottish parliament will soon start formally assessing a new bill to legalise assisted dying in Scotland after MSPs voted last week to allow it to progress. Opinion polls consistently show majority support for assisted dying, including a significant majority of voters aligned with the Church of Scotland.
In 2023 the assembly had voted heavily in favour of reviewing its stance. But on Monday it heard from John Williams, a commissioner with terminal cancer, who said it was “a bad bill” and “not the way.”
Rev Dr John Ferguson, the working group convener, said that if its recommendations had been accepted “then the church will have moved on from a binary position on assisted dying to adopting a realistic honest and loving position, which it can hold with integrity.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch posted a lengthy thread to social media earlier today about the UK-EU trade deal negotiated by Keir Starmer’s government, in which she accused Labour of “reopening the old Brexit battles we’ve already fought – and won.”
In the thread she claimed the results of the deal were “More EU law. More EU judges. More money sent to Brussels”.
She claimed “Starmer never accepted Brexit. He tried to block it 43 times … we settled this debate during Brexit. Labour is now reversing it – bit by bit.”
Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel was extremely combative on the morning media round today, and the Conservative party have clipped up some of her interviews to put out on social media. Here is a taste of what she had to say:
What we’re now seeing is sheer dishonesty from Keir Starmer and his appalling Labour government that have deceived the public.
What they’ve effectively done is that they’re signing up to a foreign court, the European court of justice all over again. We’ve got to pay for the privilege of the indignity of going back into a European court and being a rule taker. And they’ve sold out our fishermen with a 12 year deal.
I understand that Starmer went into the negotiations saying he wanted a four year deal, but he’s come out 100 times worse with a 12 year deal [sic], which is basically going to put British fisheries in proper jeopardy.
Now I see these guys, the Labour MPs, the Labour government, every day. You know their instincts are not the same instincts of those of the British people. They don’t care about Britain in the way in which your listeners do, or my party does, and did when we campaigned for Brexit and delivered Brexit.
And a classic example of this is look at how they’re wrecking our domestic economy. You mentioned winter fuel payments. Look at the family farm tax, look at increases on national insurance. And they’ve got the audacity to put out a press release yesterday saying this is good for Britain
I think he’s taken us all for fools, and it just shows how arrogant and out of touch, they are.
During her media round appearances this morning, industry minister Sarah Jones also attempted to stress the stability aspect of the government’s new trade deal. She told viewers of Good Morning Britain:
Where we can sell into is just as important as what we can fish. We are protecting the existing system so there will be no more access to our waters than currently exists. There will be the same access we have into European waters that we currently have. That brings us benefits.
What would have happened under the previous deal that was negotiated by the Conservatives was this situation would have just stopped in 2026, and we would have been in a situation where we were negotiating it year after year after year. Some years we might have negotiated something that was good. Some years we might have failed and had a bad outcome.
This brings certainty for 12 years, and it opens up our European markets so we can sell more fish and shellfish into those European markets, which is really important.
Put to her that there are indications the government was only seeking to extend the arrangement by four years, and that it had been bounced into agreeing a longer timeframe by the EU, she said she had not been in the negotiations herself, but, she said “I can’t confirm this, but I suspect the Europeans were trying to make the fishing deal permanent.”
She continued:
We have negotiated what we believe to be a good deal. The benefits outweigh any costs very substantially. We will not have rotting fish at our borders because of the checks that need to go in to that. We will not be paying hundreds of pounds in admin costs for every lorry load.
