Downing Street lobby briefing on pairing, Brexit 'final offer', planes over Ireland and Putin visiting the White House
2 min read
At a briefing for journalists a spokesperson for the Prime Minister was asked about the ongoing pairing scandal and whether the Chequers plan for Brexit is the "final offer" to the EU, among other things.
PAIRING SCANDAL
Asked about chief whip Julian Smith asking Brandon Lewis to break his voting pair, the spokesperson said: "We take the convention of pairing very seriously. The one incident where a pair was broken was a mistake and the PM said in the House it wasn’t good enough and cannot be repeated."
Asked about proposals to introduce a proxy-voting system to replace pairing, the spokesperson said: "We are looking carefully at the issue because we think it’s very important to support parental leave and there’s ongoing work to look at that."
'FINAL OFFER'
Asked whether the PM agreed with Andrea Leadsom that the Chequers plan on Brexit was the "final offer" to the EU, the spokesperson said: "The proposals that we’ve put forward in the white paper are what we believe to be the only credible and realistic way to move the negotiations forward. That was made clear numerous times by the PM and we are negotiating that with the EU. At the same time obviously we have to prepare for all eventualities and that’s why you’ve seen us stepping up our no-deal work."
FLYING AFTER BREXIT
Asked about threat by Irish PM Leo Varadkar that UK planes could be stopped from flying over Ireland in the case of a no-deal Brexit, the spokesperson said: "It’s wrong to claim that Ireland could simply stop the UK from flying over its land as a result of Brexit and the reason that we say that is because overflight rights are not guaranteed by the EU but rather by multilateral treaty which both ourselves and Ireland are signed up to.
"Regardless of this we are confident that we will reach an agreement which maintains our aviation access."
TRUMP AND PUTIN
And asked whether the PM was comfortable with Donald Trump inviting Vladimir Putin to the White House, the spokesperson said: "We said before when they were due to meet in Helsinki we welcome the channels of communication between the US and Russia and that continues to be the case."
