MPS TOLD: DON’T SABOTAGE EU EXIT
Process to quit could start within the next 48 hours
MPs were urged yesterday not to wreck Brexit by “tying Theresa May’s hands” over crunch talks with the EU.
Ministers want the Commons to ensure the Bill to trigger Britain’s exit gets through Parliament unscathed. It will free the Prime Minister to start the exit process possibly as early as tomorrow.
MPs will be asked today to overturn two changes written into the Bill by the Lords, against the Government’s advice.
The amendments are to guarantee EU migrants’ rights and promise Parliament a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal or on any move to leave without a deal, if Mrs May cannot get a good one.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said the Government would make migrants’ rights a priority when talks start. It has also promised Parliament a vote on the final deal – but not a veto. The Government thinks that writing the
amendments into the Bill could impede Mrs May’s negotiating power and open the door to fresh legal challenges.
With Tory rebels particularly concerned over the issue of a proper vote at the end of the process, Mr Davis told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show he appreciated the importance of Parliamentary accountability.
“I’ve said since the beginning of this exercise it’s inconceivable to me that there wouldn’t be a vote.”
But he said he did not want changes to “a simple Bill which is designed to do nothing more than put the result of the referendum into law, as the Supreme Court told us to do.
“Please don’t tie the Prime Minister’s hands in the process of doing that for things which we expect to attain anyway,” he said.
He claimed calls to guarantee Parliament a meaningful vote on the outcome amounted to demanding a veto over last June’s referendum.
“What we can’t have is either House of Parliament reversing the decision of the British people,” said Mr Davis.
With most peers accepting they have no mandate to wage a protracted fight with the elected Commons if MPs overturn their amendments, the Bill could complete its Parliamentary passage later today.
Trigger
It would then require the Queen to give her Royal Assent to become law and become an Act of Parliament.
The Bill was required by the Supreme Court to give Mrs May approval to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and trigger up to two years of talks with the EU.
When the article is triggered it will be another significant moment in the Daily Express crusade for a full British exit from the EU.
It is nearly seven years since we became the first national newspaper to declare support for leaving the EU – winning the backing of hundreds of thousands of readers in a campaign which we took straight to the heart of Downing Street.
Ministers yesterday refused to say when Mrs May will trigger the process beyond pointing to her self-imposed deadline of March 31.
Potential reasons to delay include tomorrow’s crunch Dutch elections being contested by far-Right candidate Geert Wilders, and fears Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon could use her party conference this weekend to call a second referendum on leaving the UK.
Mr Davis agreed the Government wanted to get on with it “but I also want to pick the right day, do it in a right way”.
Each of various dates that people had suggested had “different implications” such as when the EU Council of Ministers could respond. Once Britain writes to the council formally notifying it of leaving, he expected it to take a month to meet to agree its guidance to the EU Commission negotiators before talks could start.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox also urged MPs not to vote for the Lords amendment, and refused to say when the PM would invoke Article 50.
“By the end of March, because that’s what the Prime Minister has said,” he told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday. “We have of course got to get Royal Assent of the Bill once it goes through. That’s assuming it is unamended and goes through this week, but we wait and see.
“And then it’s up to the Prime Minister to determine the timing. It will definitely be this week, or next week or the week after.”
Downing Street was later forced to deny that Dr Fox and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson were at odds over the consequences if Mrs May failed to strike a deal with the EU.
Mr Johnson said there was “every prospect” of getting a good deal but told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “I think
we would be perfectly OK if we weren’t able to get an agreement. I don’t think the consequences are by any means as apocalyptic as some people like to protest.”
Dr Fox said: “Not having a deal of course would be bad, but it would be bad not just for the UK, it’s bad for Europe as a whole – which is why I think it is unlikely to happen.”
Former Ukip leader MEP Nigel Farage told BBC One’s Sunday Politics he hoped the talks would be triggered this week. But he feared the Government was already preparing concessions “so the worry is what deal we get”.
With the European Parliament able to veto the final deal, he urged the UK to lobby not just EU leaders and officials, but “German car workers, Belgian chocolate makers, putting as much pressure as we can on politicians from across Europe to come to a sensible arrangement”. He warned Theresa May had a history of giving “reassuring” speeches when Home Secretary “and then didn’t deliver. We have to see”.
Mr Farage insisted: “No deal is a lot better for the nation than where we currently are because we’ll be freed of regulations, we’ll be able to make our own deals in the world.”
AS Leo McKinstry writes on this page, these are momentous days for Britain. The imminent triggering of Article 50 begins the process of leaving the EU, bringing nearer the day when Britain can regain its sovereignty, make its own laws, control its borders.
Freedom is within our grasp yet still the Remoaners are desperate to create a crisis where none exists. Just as before the referendum there were gloomy predictions of economic collapse, so today the anti-Brexit lobby are warning that the skies will fall in if we walk away from negotiations with Brussels without a deal.
The ever-excitable former minister Anna Soubry talks of Britain falling off a cliff-edge within months adding that the “Government is putting in place basically scaffolding at the bottom of the cliff to break our fall”. What is she on about? Thank goodness she isn’t in the building trade.
Of course we don’t know the outcome of the negotiations because they haven’t taken place yet. David Davis is correct when he says the Government is making contingency plans for the various possible outcomes. And Boris Johnson is right when he says that even if we did not make a deal the results would not be “apocalyptic” as the doom merchants like to imagine.
The truth is that it is in everyone’s interests – Britain’s and the EU’s – for an agreement to be reached. Economic reality is the driving force here.
Only the Remoaners actively want a disaster. What a destructive attitude.