The Prime Minister has told MPs he wants to secure a series of new agreements with the European Union at the 20 November 2026 summit in Brussels, arguing the deals could add the equivalent of £10bn a year to the economy by 2040. Burnham, speaking in a statement reported by BBC News, said the areas on the table include food and drink, energy trading and co-ordination on immigration, and described refusing to pursue them as a “dereliction of duty”.
The second annual EU-UK Summit after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU is scheduled to take place in Brussels on 20 November 2026, according to a Council of the European Union press release published on 12 October 2026.
What Burnham is asking for
Burnham used the Commons statement to detail the cost of current post-Brexit trading arrangements. He said entire truckloads of plants or fresh produce could be destroyed because of a missing stamp or a paperwork delay, and that fresh meat and fish spoil while waiting in trucks. He pointed to Scottish salmon facing a 100% rate of document checks at the border, which he said was costing “around £100m in lost exports”. British burgers and other fresh meat products cannot currently be sold in the EU, he said, while seed potatoes from Scotland and shellfish from Wales are banned outright.
Salmon Scotland has separately estimated that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in 2020 cost Scottish salmon as much as £100 million a year in lost sales to the EU because of increased red tape and costs, a figure also reported by the Financial Times. The Salmon Scotland analysis was published in March 2024.
Burnham also warned MPs that the EU’s Made In Europe plans posed “a risk to UK manufacturing” and said he was in talks to secure “an arrangement” that worked for the UK, according to BBC News. The EU proposals are designed to protect EU industry from Chinese competitors but could affect British industry and supply chains.
On the longer-term shape of the relationship, Burnham said the “immediate priority” was a successful outcome at the November summit. He added: “I believe we should then set up a serious dialogue about the different options for our relationship in the long term. At every stage, the British public will be the boss, and I am clear that public opinion currently supports a pragmatic approach like the one I am suggesting.”
Burnham made clear that Labour’s manifesto commitments not to return to the single market, the customs union or freedom of movement would remain in place until the next election. However, in interviews after Labour conference, he did not rule out a new manifesto that could include re-joining the EU.
Opposition reaction
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Burnham of “unpicking the deal this country signed with the EU a decade after the referendum”. As a former trade secretary, she argued he had already revealed his entire negotiating position and would not secure a better deal than the one the Conservatives had agreed. “The EU are tough negotiators,” she said, “and it’s not just that the EU are tough negotiators, he has already revealed his entire negotiating hand.”
Burnham dismissed the criticism by pointing to the previous government’s record: “She says that, oh, I’ve revealed what I want to do and this isn’t any way to negotiate it, because the Tories were so good, weren’t they, at negotiating deals with our partners?”
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey took a different position, welcoming Burnham’s recognition of the “damage” of Brexit but calling on the prime minister to go further by dropping Labour’s red lines and opening negotiations on joining the EU single market and customs union.
In May 2025, the UK-EU Summit produced a Common Understanding on GOV.UK that included political agreements leading to full reciprocal access to fishing waters until 30 June 2038 and a commitment to extending energy co-operation on a continuous basis. The UK’s official post-Brexit trade strategy states that the prime minister and his EU counterpart at that summit agreed to take forward detailed work on a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement to ease agri-food trade, a new agreement to link emissions trading systems, and a commitment to explore energy co-operation with a view to facilitating electricity trading. The government has been working toward a mid-2027 start date for the new SPS agreement, according to a Northern Ireland Assembly Brexit newsletter published in March 2026. Burnham’s push at the 20 November 2026 Brussels summit will be the next staging post in those ongoing negotiations.
Economic growth and co-operation on illegal immigration are set to be central to No 10’s arguments for a closer relationship, both at the Brussels summit and beyond it.