Labour leader also says he will not heed calls from within party for UK to stay in single market

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will meet key EU-backing MPs on Monday, including key Conservative rebels who defeated the government over the EU withdrawal bill.

He will meet a delegation led by the Conservative MP Anna Soubry and Labour’s Chuka Umunna on Monday in Brussels, as well as Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general who led efforts to amend the EU withdrawal bill.

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Barnier is understood to be keen to engage directly with British parliamentarians, rather than purely UK government officials. Two other key Labour pro-single-market MPs, Chris Leslie and Stephen Doughty, will also attend.

Last week, Barnier met key members of the hard leave campaign, including the former Ukip MEP Steven Woolfe, Lord Digby Jones, the former director of the CBI, Labour Leave’s John Mills and Leave Means Leave’s John Longworth, though none are MPs.

Monday’s meeting comes as pro-EU Labour MPs have ratcheted up efforts over the past week for Jeremy Corbyn to back continued membership of the single market and the customs union.

The Labour leader has insisted the UK cannot remain a member of the single market unless it remains in the EU, which several of his own MPs dispute.

Corbyn said on Sunday he still had significant doubts about a policy to keep the UK in the single market and customs union. “The single market is dependent on membership of the European Union,” he said.

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Umunna said that assertion was “not correct” and Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland all participated fully in the single market. “There’s no reason why the UK, if we leave, should not have that kind of relationship,” he told Sky News.

Leslie, the former shadow chancellor, tweeted four times that the single market was “not dependent on membership of the EU” adding the hashtag #worthrepeating.

Corbyn said Labour was seeking a “special relationship” with the EU “which is tariff free, which is based on access to that market, and access of Europe to our market”.

“There are also aspects of the single market one wants to think about such as the restrictions on state aid to industry, which is something that I would wish to challenge,” he said.

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The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens are set to back a separate amendment this week that would prevent ministers being able to take the UK out of the single market and customs union without the approval of parliament, but a Labour spokesman said over the weekend that the party did not intend to support it.

On Saturday, the MP Wes Streeting told the Fabian Society’s annual conference that Corbyn was the single biggest barrier to a policy that would “command a majority in the Commons and a majority in the country”.

Corbyn said on Sunday that he would direct his MPs to vote against the EU withdrawal bill at its third reading because of concern about a lack of protection for parliamentary democracy and human rights. “If our tests are not met by the government, we will vote against the bill,” he told ITV’s Peston on Sunday.

“We’ve got a vote coming up this week on the EU withdrawal bill,. wWe’ve set down our lines on that which are about democratic accountability, protection of workers and environment and consumer rights, human rights across Europe.”

Over the weekend, human rights organisations including the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Liberty, the Fawcett Society and the National Aids Trust warned that the bill, which returns to the House of Commons on Tuesday, “will not protect people’s rights in the UK as the government promised”.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, has said Labour will propose an amendment to the bill to retain the EU charter of fundamental rights in British law.





It is understood that Conservative rebels who defeated the government in December over an amendment designed to protect a parliamentary vote on the final deal are unlikely to vote in significant numbers against the final bill and are minded to wait to see any changes proposed by the House of Lords.

Corbyn was also asked if his party would definitely rule out calling a second referendum on the terms of the EU withdrawal. “We are not supporting or calling for a second referendum,” he said. “What we have called for is a meaningful vote in parliament and that is the one area that I think parliament has asserted itself just in the vote before Christmas.”