David Davis has insisted EU citizens will not be used as a bargaining chip after Liam Fox described their right to remain in the UK as “one of our main cards”. Davis told tonight’s Spectator fringe that he is “100% sure” all EU citizens currently in Britain will be allowed to stay, there will be no deportations, and it will be the first issue dealt with during the negotiation.

“It’s a legal right. If you’ve been here five years you have an indefinite leave to remain anyway… if people have been here two and a half years, by the time we leave they’ll have been here five years so there’s no risk.

We have no intention of deporting people or setting about treating people who through no fault of their own are here during a transition. But what we have to do is we have to also keep in mind the rights of British citizens abroad. So we’ll fix the whole thing together and I am absolutely 100% sure we’ll be able to do that and there will be no difficulty for anybody…

If we take the whole thing together, there’ll be nobody taken hostage, nobody used as a bargaining chip. I suspect it’ll be the first thing on the agenda when we actually start the discussion.”

Sensible words after the Lobby got all excited about Fox earlier.