Brexit chief denies threat to security
Print Edition
BRITAIN’S chief negotiator in the country’s divorce from the European Union yesterday rejected suggestions the UK threatened to end security cooperation unless it gets a good trade deal.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said Prime Minister Theresa May’s letter triggering talks on Britain’s departure made clear Britain wants to continue to work with the EU on a range of issues, including security.
“We want a deal, and she was making the point that it’s bad for both of us if we don’t have a deal,” Davis told the BBC. “Now that, I think, is a perfectly reasonable point to make and not in any sense a threat.”
May’s six-page letter triggering two years of divorce negotiations makes 11 references to security, and said that without a good deal, “our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.”
The Sun tabloid was in no doubt about what May meant. “Your money or your lives,” was its front-page headline yesterday, along with the words “PM’s Brexit threat to EU.”
Britain is a European security powerhouse — one of only two nuclear powers in the bloc and with some of the world’s most capable intelligence services.
On Wednesday, May said Britain will probably have to leave EU police agency Europol after Brexit, but wants to “maintain the degree of cooperation on these matters that we have currently.”
Home Secretary Amber Rudd, whose responsibilities include intelligence and security, also denied there was a threat, but told Sky News: “If we left Europol, then we would take our information ... with us. The fact is, the European partners want to keep our information.”
Senior European leaders responded positively to the warm overall tone of May’s letter — but they could not miss the steely undertone.
“I find the letter of Mrs May very constructive generally, but there is also one threat in it,” said European Parliament Brexit coordinator Guy Verhoftstadt.
Meanwhile, the UK government began outlining how it intends to convert EU rules into British law when it leaves the bloc in 2019.
It published plans for a Great Repeal Bill that will transform more than 12,000 EU laws in force in Britain into UK statute so “the same rules will apply after exit day” as before. The bill is designed to prevent Britain plunging into a legislative black hole once it extricates itself from the EU.
“It will also ensure we deliver on our promise to end the supremacy of European Union law in the UK as we exit,” Davis said. “Our laws will then be made in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast — and interpreted not by judges in Luxembourg, but by judges across the United Kingdom.”
To accomplish the transition, lawmakers will need to delegate authority to the government to change some laws by executive order.
But opposition lawmakers are unhappy at plans to give government ministers power to change laws without a vote.
They fear the Conservative government will use it as a chance to water down workers’ rights and environmental protections introduced in Britain during four decades of EU membership.
Labour Party Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said the proposed bill “gives sweeping powers to the executive” and lacks “rigorous safeguards” on their abuse.
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