Theresa May's Cabinet will not agree final Brexit position at Chequers away day, suggests David Davis

Theresa May’s Cabinet will not have agreed a final Brexit position by the end of its away day on Thursday, David Davis has suggested.

Mrs May’s top team is due to convene at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country home, to hammer out what it wants the UK’s future relationship with the European Union to look like.

The crunch summit has been billed as the moment when ministers will finally have to agree what the Brexit “end state” will be.

But the Brexit Secretary suggested that the meeting will not result in a finalised position as he answered questions in Vienna, Austria, after using a speech to declare that divorce from Brussels will result in a “race to the top in global standards” rather than a “Mad Max-style” dystopian future.

Mr Davis’s comments are likely to spark concerns in Brussels that Mrs May will further delay clarifying the UK’s negotiating aims as the point of withdrawal in March 2019 draws ever closer.

Mr Davis was asked if the Government will have agreed a final, clear position on Brexit by the end of the away day later this week as he was also grilled over critics’ claims that he is “lazy”.

He said: “The difficulty with answering the question is that there is no final answer.

“We have started back at Lancaster House with the grand outline of the plan which was the same as it is now in outline.

“That was fleshed out in more detail in Florence. There are two white papers on it. There are 14 policy papers last year - I lazily gave up my holiday all summer to sign them all off.

“And of course we will be talking about some of these specific issues on Thursday.

“The policy will get more and more and more closely refined and that is what will happen this Thursday and very successfully.

“I don’t suppose Mrs May is going to give us the key to the door until we conclude.”

The Chequers away day is due to start at 2pm and finish at 10pm.

It has been billed as the moment when Mrs May will try to reconcile her Cabinet and persuade warring ministers to sign up to one Brexit vision.

However, doing so is likely to be a daunting task with some Remain-backing Cabinet members advocating a high alignment future relationship with the EU with close regulatory ties while some Leave-backing ministers are arguing for Britain to be far less closely aligned with Brussels.  

Mr Davis used his speech to set out his ambition to maintain frictionless trade with Europe as he said that he is “certain” the two sides can strike a good deal.

Mr Davis sought to address concerns that the UK will slash regulations after March 2019 as it looks to make itself more competitive.

He said any fears that Britain will be “plunged into a Mad Max-style world borrowed from dystopian fiction” were unfounded as he referenced the popular film series which is set in a world in which civilisation has collapsed.

He said: “We will continue our track record of meeting high standards after we leave the European Union.

"Now, I know that for one reason or another there are some people who have sought to question that these really are our intentions.

"They fear that Brexit could lead to an Anglo-Saxon race to the bottom with Britain plunged into a Mad Max-style world borrowed from dystopian fiction.

"These fears about a race to the bottom are based on nothing, not history, not intention, nor interest.

"But while I profoundly disagree with them — it does remind us all that we must provide reassurance.”

Mr Davis used his speech to argue that neither the UK or the EU should erect "unnecessary barriers” during negotiations and that the future relationship should be based on “trust”.

The Brexit Secretary’s address was the latest in the Government’s series of “Road to Brexit” speeches.

Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, kicked things off last week but his intervention was largely overshadowed by his refusal to guarantee that he will not resign from the Cabinet if Mrs May's withdrawal plan does not closely follow his own vision.

The Prime Minister delivered her own significant speech on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference as she warned the EU that lives would be put at risk if it let its "deep-seated ideology" act as a barrier to a new post-Brexit security treaty.