Markus Andrews

Environmentalists have called on Boris Johnson’s government to postpone the Cop26 UN climate talks in November amid fears people from poorer countries will not be able to take part.The crucial talks in Glasgow – aimed at making countries deliver the emissions cuts needed to overcome the climate emergency – have already been delayed from 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.The Climate Action Network, a global network of more than 1,500 civil society organisations in more than 130 countries, called on the UK government and UN organisers to push it back again.The network blamed the failure to provide vaccines to millions of people in poor countries, the rising costs of travel and accommodation, and ongoing uncertainty over Covid.But Mr Johnson’s government insisted it is rolling out vaccines for foreign delegates and will fund quarantine hotels for those who would not be able to pay as part of efforts to ensure Cop26 can go ahead in November.The Climate Action Network said an in-person meeting in early November would exclude delegates, campaigners and journalists from the “Global South” or developing countries – many of whom are on the UK’s red list of countries people cannot travel from due to Covid.The network says shutting out these people from taking part in the conference would have serious implications for issues being discussed at the talks, such as providing finance for developing countries to help them cope with climate change and develop cleanly.“Our concern is that those countries most deeply affected by the climate crisis and those countries suffering from the lack of support by rich nations in providing vaccines will be left out and be conspicuous by their absence at Cop26,” Tasneem Essop, executive director, Climate Action Network.She added: “Looking at the current timeline for Cop26, it is difficult to imagine there can be fair participation from the Global South under safe conditions and it should therefore be postponed.”But Mr Johnson’s climate minister Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, said the conference “must go ahead” this November to allow world leaders to come together and set out commitments to tackle climate change.“We are working tirelessly with all our partners, including the Scottish Government and the UN, to ensure an inclusive, accessible and safe summit in Glasgow with a comprehensive set of Covid mitigation measures,” Mr Sharma said.Delegates who would otherwise struggle to get vaccinated, including those from campaign groups and the media as well as government officials, have been offered Covid vaccines by the UK government, with the first jabs taking place this week.The government has also relaxed its quarantine requirements for travellers from abroad for delegates, and has announced it will fund hotel quarantine stays for delegates and observers arriving from red list areas who would otherwise find it difficult to attend.The Cop26 Coalition of campaign groups in the UK joined the call for the government and UN organisers to postpone the conference until they can ensure a “genuinely inclusive” summit.Asad Rehman, director of the War on Want charity, said: “Whilst the richest will be able to attend the Cop, many poorer governments and civil society groups risk being excluded, threatening the very legitimacy of the climate summit itself.”He said the UK government had failed to live up to its own promise of the most inclusive Cop ever “as it continues to block access to life saving Covid treatments, creating a vaccine apartheid between the richest and poorest”.Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has called for an emergency summit to tackle the “scandal” of millions of people in low-income countries being denied a Covid vaccine.He published a report on Monday which claimed Western nations were “hoarding” nearly 300 million vaccines Mr Brown said could be saving lives in countries such as those in Africa. More

A health minister has cast doubt on whether Boris Johnson upcoming social care plan will definitely fix problems in the sector. Speaking on Tuesday morning ahead of an announcement by the prime minister, Nadhim Zahawi said it would be “arrogant” to claim Mr Johnson’s policy would work.”It would be presumptuous, and I think completely arrogant, to say ‘of course it will fix the problem’,” he told Sky News.”The right thing to do is deliver the reform and the investment into social care – you’ve got to make sure that is operational.”Mr Zahawi added that he was “being respectful and cautious and not being arrogant to say ‘of course, yes, everything will be fixed in five minutes’ – it won’t, in terms of the NHS backlog”.The prime minister is expected to announce his long-awaited plans at lunchtime in the House of Commons, following a cabinet meeting this morning. The proposals are expected to include a manifesto-betraying rise in National Insurance contributions to pay for a cap on care costs.Asked whether he was comfortable breaking manifesto pledges, Mr Zahawi told the BBC he did not want to pre-empt the prime minister but added: “I’m not comfortable with breaking any manifesto promises.”Opposition to Mr Johnson’s plans has been de facto led by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. Mr Burnham said on Tuesday that a wealth levy would be a fairer way of funding a social care service because it would not only hit those in work. “I think it is cowardice, if I’m being blunt … I don’t see how you can do this without asking pensioners to make a contribution. To fail to do that in my view is to come up with a flawed solution that won’t stand the test of time,” he told the BBC.Mr Burnham added: “The solution has been put forward today is a rise in national insurance that will pit the low paid, and the young to pay for a cap on care for the elderly … putting a cap on a broken system, because it will still leave millions of staff in social care on poverty wages and the real insult is they will now be asked to pay tax to protect older people’s assets, often people have much more money than they do. How could that possibly be fair?”Critics point out that National Insurance is not paid on pension contributions or income from dividends and investments. It is also paid by people on lower incomes than income tax, because of a lower tax-free allowance. The Conservatives also promised not to raise taxes, including NI, at the general election.There were reports overnight that the PM may seek to soften opposition to the plans by including pensioners in work in the levy. This would give the social care charge a special status different from other aspects of NI.Labour in Westminster has said it will wait to see the prime minister’s proposals before taking a final position.When the prime minister came to office in July 2019 he used his first address on the steps of Downing Street to promise to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”. The sector is bedevilled by high costs for users compared to the health service, and is percieved to have been starved of funding. Mr Johnson said in comments released overnight: “The NHS is the pride of our United Kingdom, but it has been put under enormous strain by the pandemic. We cannot expect it to recover alone.” More

Boris Johnson will defy widespread Conservative anger with a social care rescue plan set to hit workers and businesses with higher national insurance bills, insisting it is the only way to end “catastrophic” care bills.Despite mounting criticism that the move will punish the young and worse off – and amount to “a jobs tax” on struggling firms – the prime minister will finally unveil the plan he promised more than two years ago.In the Commons on Tuesday, Mr Johnson will hail the expected national insurance increase of around 1.25 per cent, raising £10bn a year, as evidence that he will not “duck the tough decisions needed” to “fix our broken social care system”.“We must act now to ensure the health and care system has the long term funding it needs to continue fighting Covid and start tackling the backlogs, and end the injustice of catastrophic costs for social care,” he will say.The Commons statement and afternoon press conference will come despite Tories from all wings of the party attacking the plan as unfair and likely to backfire.“Red wall” Conservatives joined with One Nation and Thatcherite MPs to demand a rethink – one echoing Labour in saying higher taxes would be “pointless” without a proper plan to overhaul care.The head of the Northern Research Group, Jake Berry – the guardian of the “levelling up” pledge – protested that increasing national insurance was a mechanism for wealthy southern property owners “to keep hold of their houses”.Robert Halfon, the respected One Nation backbencher, announced he would not support the plan unless everyone earning under £40,000 was exempt from the tax increase.And David Davis, the former cabinet minister, called higher national insurance the “worst possible tax”, because it falls on businesses as well as workers, saying: “It’s damaging on employment and on growth.”The hike will reportedly be referred to as the “Health and Social Care Levy” and will be “legally ringfenced” to ensure it is used only for the purpose of funding the care sector.The government is also expected to announce plans to break its manifesto commitment to protect the state pension. It is understood the “triple lock” will be suspended for a year and pensioners will receive an increase of 2.5 per cent rather than the expected 8 per cent.During a private drinks event on Monday evening hosted by the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives, the chancellor Rishi Sunak told MPs: “It’s fair to say that we’ve got a tough autumn ahead.”“That doesn’t mean there won’t be disagreements, there always are, but we should never lose sight of the central fact that we are a team,” Mr Sunak added ahead of the announcement on social care.The influential Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted how pensioners would pay just 1.4 per cent of the higher bills – compared with 13.8 per cent if income tax was increased instead.However, some critics did praise the prime minister for finally grasping the nettle of social care, a controversy ducked by the last two Tory prime ministers.The move is intended to deliver Mr Johnson’s pledge to prevent people having to sell their homes to meet catastrophic care bills – but at the cost of breaking his manifesto vow not to hike taxes.Lifetime care payments would be capped at about £80,000, the lower figure of £50,000 – proposed by Andrew Dilnot in a shelved study, a full decade ago – having been rejected, it appears.In the long term, the idea is for the cap to stimulate an incentive for insurance companies to begin offering to start offering social care insurance.Increasing national insurance rather than income tax means companies will pay half the cost through employer contributions – rather than workers having to stump up the full £10bn a year.The government signalled its intent to press ahead when James Heappey, the armed forces minister, told LBC Radio: “This is going to be hard, there will be no consensus, but we have to try.”No 10 is buoyed by polling suggesting that voters will support the national insurance increase, backed by 64 per cent in a YouGov poll with only 23 per cent opposed.The current system has been widely condemned for the unfairness of dementia victims paying for their care, while someone cared for by the NHS receives treatment for free.Anyone with assets over £23,350 pays in full – with around one in seven people facing bills of more than £100,000.But Mr Berry revealed the anger of his Northern Research Group when he accused Sajid Javid, the health secretary, of opposing higher national insurance when writing the 2019 Conservative manifesto.“He was a great believer in not racking up the jobs tax and I just wonder why he’s had a sort of Damascene conversion when becoming the health secretary to seeing the jobs tax as the way forward,” he told the BBC.He also attacked a policy that would “hit the youngest, particularly hit those in work” in order to “pay for people to have protection in care”.Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats opposed hiking national insurance to pay for social care, Labour arguing the cart is being put before the horse until there is worked-up plan to rescue rundown services.Alex Stafford, a red wall Tory elected in Rother Valley, Yorkshire, echoed the criticism, telling Times Radio: “We can’t just raise tax without a plan to actually make fundamental changes and make things better.Crucially, the increases to national insurance are not expected to fund a better care system for three years – with the £30bn raised first used to tackle rapidly rising NHS waiting lists, caused by the Covid pandemic.To begin that task, the NHS will be given £5.4bn over the next six months, with £1bn to cut waiting lists and £2.8bn for costs such as better infection control to continue to protect against the virus.Mr Johnson said: “The NHS is the pride of our United Kingdom, but it has been put under enormous strain by the pandemic. We cannot expect it to recover alone.“My government will not duck the tough decisions needed to get NHS patients the treatment they need and to fix our broken social care system.” More

Boris Johnson has told Tory MPs they will need proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test in order to attend a party at Downing Street, according to a report.The prime minister is said to have invited Conservative MPs elected before 2009 to a drinks reception at Downing Street on Tuesday night, in a series of such meetings with colleagues organised according to the years they took office.According to The Telegraph, the invitation to the event said that “for security and safety reasons … you will need to present your NHS Covid Pass on entry which shows proof of double vaccination, a recent infection or a recent negative test”.Some of the veteran MPs have threatened to turn up without the required proof in order to underline their concerns about “vaccine passports”, the paper reported.Downing Street confirmed last week that Mr Johnson intends to introduce vaccine passports in England for “nightclubs and some other settings”, with details to emerge “in the coming weeks”.In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has already confirmed plans, subject to an upcoming vote by MSPs, to bring in vaccine passports for nightclubs, unseated indoor events with audiences larger than 500 people, and unseated outdoor events with more than 4,000 audience members.The issue of vaccine passports is particularly contentious among the Conservative Party’s libertarian wing, with Mr Johnson’s announcement in July that the scheme would be introduced in nightclubs prompting threats that some would boycott the party’s annual conference in October, were such a requirement to be imposed there.The following week, the Department for Education rubbished plans to introduce vaccine passports at university halls of residence, reports of which had prompted former Tory minister Steve Baker to suggest the government was “in terrible danger of splitting the Tory Party irretrievably”.More than 40 Conservative MPs have since signed a declaration stating their opposition to vaccine passports, with the government having faced calls to recall parliament from recess early to debate the issue.Tory MP Andrew Bridge predicted a vote on vaccine passports in the Commons would result in an “embarrassing defeat” for Mr Johnson. MPs returned on Monday.Responding to the idea of presenting vaccination certification at Downing Street on Tuesday, Sir Desmond Swayne – who has been a frequent critic in the Commons of lockdown restrictions and vaccine passports – told The Telegraph: “I will turn up at Number 10 and if I’m asked for a Covid passport I will politely decline. “There are other parties.” More

Boris Johnson will defy widespread Conservative anger with a social care rescue plan set to hit workers and businesses with higher national insurance bills, insisting it is the only way to end “catastrophic” care bills.Despite mounting criticism that the move will punish the young and worse off – and amount to “a jobs tax” on struggling firms – the prime minister will finally unveil the plan he promised more than two years ago.In the Commons on Tuesday, Mr Johnson will hail the expected national insurance increase of around 1.25 per cent, raising £10bn a year, as evidence that he will not “duck the tough decisions needed” to “fix our broken social care system”.“We must act now to ensure the health and care system has the long term funding it needs to continue fighting Covid and start tackling the backlogs, and end the injustice of catastrophic costs for social care,” he will say.The Commons statement and afternoon press conference will come despite Tories from all wings of the party attacking the plan as unfair and likely to backfire.“Red wall” Conservatives joined with One Nation and Thatcherite MPs to demand a rethink – one echoing Labour in saying higher taxes would be “pointless” without a proper plan to overhaul care.The head of the Northern Research Group, Jake Berry – the guardian of the “levelling up” pledge – protested that increasing national insurance was a mechanism for wealthy southern property owners “to keep hold of their houses”.Robert Halfon, the respected One Nation backbencher, announced he would not support the plan unless everyone earning under £40,000 was exempt from the tax increase.And David Davis, the former cabinet minister, called higher national insurance the “worst possible tax”, because it falls on businesses as well as workers, saying: “It’s damaging on employment and on growth.”The hike will reportedly be referred to as the “Health and Social Care Levy” and will be “legally ringfenced” to ensure it is used only for the purpose of funding the care sector.The government is also expected to announce plans to break its manifesto commitment to protect the state pension. It is understood the “triple lock” will be suspended for a year and pensioners will receive an increase of 2.5 per cent rather than the expected 8 per cent.During a private drinks event on Monday evening hosted by the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives, the chancellor Rishi Sunak told MPs: “It’s fair to say that we’ve got a tough autumn ahead.”“That doesn’t mean there won’t be disagreements, there always are, but we should never lose sight of the central fact that we are a team,” Mr Sunak added ahead of the announcement on social care.The influential Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted how pensioners would pay just 1.4 per cent of the higher bills – compared with 13.8 per cent if income tax was increased instead.However, some critics did praise the prime minister for finally grasping the nettle of social care, a controversy ducked by the last two Tory prime ministers.The move is intended to deliver Mr Johnson’s pledge to prevent people having to sell their homes to meet catastrophic care bills – but at the cost of breaking his manifesto vow not to hike taxes.Lifetime care payments would be capped at about £80,000, the lower figure of £50,000 – proposed by Andrew Dilnot in a shelved study, a full decade ago – having been rejected, it appears.In the long term, the idea is for the cap to stimulate an incentive for insurance companies to begin offering to start offering social care insurance.Increasing national insurance rather than income tax means companies will pay half the cost through employer contributions – rather than workers having to stump up the full £10bn a year.The government signalled its intent to press ahead when James Heappey, the armed forces minister, told LBC Radio: “This is going to be hard, there will be no consensus, but we have to try.”No 10 is buoyed by polling suggesting that voters will support the national insurance increase, backed by 64 per cent in a YouGov poll with only 23 per cent opposed.The current system has been widely condemned for the unfairness of dementia victims paying for their care, while someone cared for by the NHS receives treatment for free.Anyone with assets over £23,350 pays in full – with around one in seven people facing bills of more than £100,000.But Mr Berry revealed the anger of his Northern Research Group when he accused Sajid Javid, the health secretary, of opposing higher national insurance when writing the 2019 Conservative manifesto.“He was a great believer in not racking up the jobs tax and I just wonder why he’s had a sort of Damascene conversion when becoming the health secretary to seeing the jobs tax as the way forward,” he told the BBC.He also attacked a policy that would “hit the youngest, particularly hit those in work” in order to “pay for people to have protection in care”.Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats opposed hiking national insurance to pay for social care, Labour arguing the cart is being put before the horse until there is worked-up plan to rescue rundown services.Alex Stafford, a red wall Tory elected in Rother Valley, Yorkshire, echoed the criticism, telling Times Radio: “We can’t just raise tax without a plan to actually make fundamental changes and make things better.Crucially, the increases to national insurance are not expected to fund a better care system for three years – with the £30bn raised first used to tackle rapidly rising NHS waiting lists, caused by the Covid pandemic.To begin that task, the NHS will be given £5.4bn over the next six months, with £1bn to cut waiting lists and £2.8bn for costs such as better infection control to continue to protect against the virus.Mr Johnson said: “The NHS is the pride of our United Kingdom, but it has been put under enormous strain by the pandemic. We cannot expect it to recover alone.“My government will not duck the tough decisions needed to get NHS patients the treatment they need and to fix our broken social care system.” More

Lisa Nandy on national insurance hike: It will load ‘more pressure onto the working aged people’Sir Keir Starmer has accused senior government figures of being “missing in action” on Afghanistan, alleging that Boris Johnson is “incapable of international leadership, just when we need it most”.With the Commons returning from its summer recess on Monday, Mr Johnson and his foreign secretary Dominic Raab faced down anger from some MPs over their handling of the crisis, which saw some 15,000 people evacuated from the now Taliban-held country in under a fortnight.It came as Brexit minister Lord Frost confirmed a further extension of grace periods on border checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea, to “provide space for potential further discussions” over the Northern Ireland Protocol. One government source earlier described the move as “sausage wars on hold”. Meanwhile, the prime minister faces a Tory revolt over reported plans to fund social care reform by raising National Insurance (NI).A number of Tory grandees have criticised the plans, with former chancellor Lord Hammond suggesting that such a move would break a commitment in the government’s manifesto and would provoke a “very significant backlash”.Labour has ruled out his party supporting the proposed increase, arguing that it would unfairly punish young people and low earners.It came as Downing Street denied rumours suggesting that Mr Johnson was planning to hold a Cabinet reshuffle this week after it was reported that his schedule had been cleared for Thursday.Show latest update

1630960923That’s us wrapping up the liveblog for today, thanks for following here.You can find all of The Independent’s latest articles on UK politics here.Or else keep scrolling to read about the day’s events, as we reported them.Andy Gregory6 September 2021 21:421630910428Hello and welcome to The Independent’s live coverage of UK politics today.Conrad Duncan6 September 2021 07:401630911283Boris Johnson to face ‘very significant backlash’ over social care funding plansBoris Johnson will face a “very significant backlash” if he goes ahead with plans to fund social care reform by raising National Insurance, Tory grandees have warned.The prime minister, health secretary Sajid Javid and chancellor Rishi Sunak are currently working on details of a funding plan, as the government prepares to unveil its long-promised reforms for the social care system.However, reports that National Insurance will be increased by 1.25 per cent to raise between £10bn and £11bn per year for the system have sparked criticism.Former chancellor Lord Hammond suggested it would be unfair to ask younger people to pay so much to fund the care costs of older people.“I think that if the government were to go ahead with the proposed increase in National Insurance contributions, breaking a manifesto commitment in order to underwrite the care costs of older people with homes, I think that would provoke a very significant backlash,” he told Times Radio.He added: “Economically, politically, expanding the state further in order to protect private assets by asking poor people to subsidise rich people has got to be the wrong thing to do.”Meanwhile, Lord Clarke, the Conservative chancellor between 1993 and 1997, said there were “problems with national insurance” that should be tackled while raising it.He told LBC that it was “too heavily weighted on the lower paid” and there was “no reason” why people who continue to work after the state pension age no longer pay it.Former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major has also warned against a move targeting workers and employers by arguing it would be “regressive”. More

The NHS in England will be given an extra £5.4bn over the next six months to respond to the fallout from Covid-19 and tackle the country’s large patient waiting list, the government has announced.The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that £1bn of the funding will be used to help clear the backlog caused by the pandemic, with more than five million people waiting for hospital treatment in England.Some £2.8bn will be allocated towards improving infection control in hospitals, helping to keep patients and staff better protected against the virus, while a further £478m will be spent discharging patients in order to free up more beds.Prime minister Boris Johnson said the money would go “straight to the frontline” and provide treatments people “aren’t getting quickly enough”. “The NHS was there for us during the pandemic – but treating Covid patients has created huge backlogs,” he said. “We will continue to make sure our NHS has what it needs to bust the Covid backlogs and help the health service build back better from the worst pandemic in a century.”The government said the waiting list for routine operations such as hip replacements and cataract surgery could reach 13 million, and that people coming forward for treatment they delayed during the pandemic was expected to make the situation worse before it improved.Some £500m of the funding announced on Monday was due to go towards opening extra theatre capacity and utilising new technology to increase the number of surgeries that can take place.The funding is for England only, with devolved nations being allocated an extra £1bn, and brings the total NHS spending on Covid-19 to £15bn for 2021.The health secretary Sajid Javid said: “We know waiting lists will get worse before they get better as people come forward for help, and I want to reassure you the NHS is open, and we are doing what we can to support the NHS to deliver routine operations and treatment to patients across the country.”The new funding comes days after two major organisations warned that the NHS needed a boost of around £10bn to prevent crucial services from being cut.In a joint report, NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation revealed that some £4.6bn would be needed to cover the costs linked to the Covid crisis, while between £3.5bn and £4.5bn would be required to tackle waiting lists for operations and other medical procedures.The report was based on a survey of England’s 213 hospital, mental health, community and ambulance trusts, which, when combined, spend nearly two-thirds of the NHS budget.Responding to the government’s funding announcement, the two organisations said the initial £5.4bn package would allow the NHS to “now get on with the huge task it has ahead of we anticipate will be one of the most challenging winters the service has ever faced”.Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, and Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said £10bn would still be needed on an annual basis for the next three years to avoid patient services being cut.Although the extra funding will allow hospital, ambulance, mental health, community and primary care services to start planning for the immediate future, major staff shortages will continue to hamper recovery efforts, the two health chiefs said. “This isn’t a short-term fix – we are looking at five to seven years to clear the backlog,” they added.The Health Foundation said “it’s important that the government recognises that this is the only the first instalment of the substantial funding needed to put the NHS on the road to recovery”.Anita Charlesworth, director of research at the charity, said: “With the pandemic far from over and huge uncertainties about winter pressures, the government should continue allocating further funding to the NHS for the current year based on need.“Covid-19 will impact the NHS for many years to come, services won’t just bounce back to ‘business as usual’ next spring.”She said there “will need to be realism about the speed” at which the NHS can recover from the pandemic and cut down its current patient waiting times. More

Britain said Monday it is postponing the start of post-Brexit border checks on goods going to Northern Ireland as it seeks breathing space in its tense standoff with the European Union over trade rules.Brexit Minister David Frost said the government would continue to trade “on the current basis,” maintaining grace periods that the U.K. gave itself after splitting from the EU’s economic embrace at the end of 2020. He did not set a new end date for the grace periods, some of which had been due to finish on Sept. 30.Frost said the standstill would “provide space for potential further discussions” with the EU over the two sides’ deep differences on the Brexit divorce agreement.U.K.-EU relations have soured over trade arrangements for Northern Ireland the only part of the U.K. that has a land border with the 27-nation bloc. The divorce deal the two sides struck before Britain’s departure means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. The regulations are intended to prevent goods from Britain entering the EU’s tariff-free single market while keeping an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland — a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. But the checks have angered Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say they amount to a border in the Irish Sea and weaken Northern Ireland’s ties with the rest of the U.K. One of the deferred measures, which had been due to take effect Oct. 1, would ban chilled meats such as sausages from England, Scotland and Wales from going to Northern Ireland. The “sausage war” has been the highest-profile element of the U.K.-EU dispute, raising fears that Northern Ireland supermarkets may not be able to sell British sausages, a breakfast staple.The trade tensions have destabilized Northern Ireland’s delicate political balance and raised tensions with the EU, which is calling for Britain to implement the deal it agreed to, and with the U.K. government, which says the rules need fundamental reform. Britain’s Conservative government is seeking to remove most checks, replacing them with a “light touch” system in which only goods at risk of entering the EU would be inspected. Frost warned last week that the U.K. and the EU risked entering a long period of “cold mistrust” unless issues around the agreement were resolved.The U.K.’s previous unilateral extension of the grace period angered the EU, which responded by launching legal action. The bloc has since put that action on hold, and the two sides have taken tentative steps to cool the situation. Monday’s announcement by Britain was made with the advance knowledge of the bloc.Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he expected the EU would agree to an extension of the grace periods in order to allow for “deep and meaningful” talks with Britain.___For more of AP’s Brexit coverage, go to https://apnews.com/hub/brexit More