UK to seek Brexit delay from EU

Britain will ask the European Union for a Brexit delay that gives the option to leave as soon as a divorce deal is approved by parliament, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Wednesday.

"The important thing now is that in any extension that we get from the EU, we have an absolute clarity that as soon as we've done the deal, we are able to bring that extension to an end," Hammond told ITV.

"So it's less about the nominal length of time of the extension and more about the mechanism for bringing it to an end once the deal is done," he said. "That would be our expectation."