Don't call Brexit 'divorce' from EU, Theresa May tells MPs - Politics live

• Theresa May is planning a tour of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in an attempt to build consensus before she triggers article 50 and embarks on the formal Brexit process, the Guardian understands. As Anushka Asthana reports, it has been suggested that the prime minister and the Brexit secretary, David Davis, will also meet key business figures to discuss Britain’s approach to the EU negotiations. Government figures have claimed there was always a plan to reach out to all parts of the United Kingdom, including responding to the Scottish government’s Brexit white paper, in the final two weeks of March before embarking on talks with the EU27.

• May has used a statement in the Commons to condemn the Scottish government’s call for a second independence. She also urged MPs not to refer to Brexit as a “divorce” from the EU. (See 3.36pm.)

• Nicola Sturgeon has indicated she could delay a fresh Scottish independence referendum until after Brexit, in the hope of a deal with Theresa May on its timing. As Severin Carrell reports, after saying on Monday the vote must be offered before the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, the first minister signalled she could stage it after that date if more time was needed to confirm the precise terms for the UK’s Brexit deal.

• The Scottish government has decided to hold its vote in the Scottish parliament calling for a second independence referendum next Wednesday.

• Pro-union activists are to stage a day of campaigning across Scotland in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon’s independence referendum announcement. As the Press Association reports, Scotland in Union said it aims to rally no voters who are “angry that their 2014 vote is being ignored”. The non-party movement, which has about 15,000 supporters, will take its campaign to towns and cities across the country on Saturday as the SNP meets for its spring conference in Aberdeen.

• The EU may make the UK wait until June before opening formal Brexit talks, Bloomberg reports.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Here are the main points from Theresa May’s Commons statement.

• May condemned Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to call a second referendum on Scottish independence. Although this was not the subject of her statment, May made a reference to it in her opening remarks and then she was asked about the proposed referendum when being questioned by MPs. In her opening statement she said:

This is not a moment to play politics or create uncertainty and division. It is a moment to bring our country together; to honour the will of the British people and to shape for them a brighter future and a better Britain.

And later she said:

It is important that we keep the union of the United Kingdom together. There is much that binds us and I do not want to see anybody doing constitutional game playing with the future of the United Kingdom.

But May repeatedly refused to comment when asked whether she would accept or reject Sturgeon’s call for a referendum to take place between autumn 2018 and spring 2019. Generally she did not address the timing issue at all, although she did say that it was possible that the details of the Brexit detail would not be known until right at the end of the process (see 1.11pm) - countering Sturgeon’s argument that by autumn 2018 the outline of the final Brexit deal will be clear.

• May said that voting for independence would lead to Scotland leaving the EU. She said the Spanish government had been very clear that it was not possible for a country to break away from an EU member state and immediately rejoin the bloc.

This is the [former president of the European commission Jose Manuel] Barroso doctrine, it has been reaffirmed by the European commission, and so as far as Scotland is concerned independence would not mean membership of the European Union, it would mean that Scotland would remain outside the European Union.

• She said polling showed a majority of people in Scotland did not want a second referendum.

• She claimed there was a similarity between what the SNP wanted from the Brext talks and what she wanted. She told the SNP MP Joanna Cherry.

I have of course already set out the broad objectives of our negotiations which does include the reference to the very sort of trade deal that she and her colleagues have said they want to see for the United Kingdom and Scotland.

That is an unusual reading of the SNP’s position because their main point is that they want to stay in the single market, which May has rejected.

• May urged people not to describe Brexit as a “divorce”. She said:

A number of people have used this term of divorce. Actually, I prefer not to use the term of divorce from the European Union because very often when people get divorced they don’t have a very good relationship afterwards. Honourable members need to stop looking at this as simply coming out of the European Union and see the opportunity for building a new relationship with the European Union and that’s what we will be doing.

(I’m tempted to adapt a famous Guardian headline and summarise this as: ‘Don’t call our divorce from the EU a ‘divorce’, says May’.)

• She said staying in the single market would effectively mean staying in the EU.

Membership of the single market means accepting free movement, it means accepting the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, it means effectively remaining a member of the European Union. We have voted to leave the European Union and that is what we will be doing.

This is interesting because it it is an argument commonly used by hardcore leave campaigners in Ukip and on the Tory anti-European right, but almost no one else. Before June 23 May would never dreamt of deploying this logic, and the fact that she is doing so now is a measure of how far her thinking has shifted.

• She said that the government had taken legal advice about the threat of a legal challenge to Brexit. When the Tory Sir Bill Cash asked if this was the case, she replied:

I can assure [Bill Cash] that as we move ahead with this, as we have at every stage, we have of course taken appropriate legal advice.

• She welcomed the findings of a House of Lords report saying that the government will have no legal obligation to pay money into the EU budget after it leaves. When the Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg asked about this report, she replied:

I can assure [Rees-Mogg] that I have noted the House of Lords report on this particular matter. As he will know, when people voted on 23 June last year, I think they were very clear they did not want to continue year after year to be paying huge sums of money into the European Union.

• She said now was not the right time for a poll in Northern Ireland on uniting with the Republic of Ireland.

• She refused to say whether the government’s proposed transitional deal would involve the UK remaining part of the European Economic Area (EEA) for a time after Brexit.