Hundreds of lawyers urge May to back People’s Vote on Brexit
HUNDREDS OF the UK’s top lawyers have urged Prime Minister Theresa May and MPs to back a second Brexit referendum, saying that “democratic government is not frozen in time”.
Labour peer Baroness Kennedy QC, former Court of Appeal judge Konrad Schiemann and David Edward, a former judge of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, are among 1,400 legal professionals who have called for a People’s Vote on EU membership.
In a letter to Mrs May, they have claimed Parliament should not be bound by the 2016 vote any more than it should be by the 1975 referendum that took Britain into the EU, especially when there are question marks over its validity.
The lawyers wrote that “voters are entitled to know what they are voting for”, adding: “There was a key difference between 1975 and 2016. The earlier referendum was held after negotiations were complete, so voters knew what they were voting for.
“In 2016, the nature of the negotiation process and its outcome were unknown. Voters faced a choice between a known reality and an unknown alternative. In the campaign, untestable claims took the place of facts and reality.”
Human rights specialist Jonathan Cooper, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers said: “The current state of the Brexit negotiations is worrying people throughout the UK and the legal profession is no exception to that. We represent people from across industry and society and we see every day the way the prospect of a catastrophic Brexit deal is already causing real harm.”
The plea from the legal profession came as more than 70 business leaders backed a second Brexit referendum, warning the UK faces “either a blindfold or a destructive hard Brexit” that would be bad for both firms and jobs. Waterstones chief executive James Daunt, ex-Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King, Lastminute.com founder Baroness Lane-Fox and Innocent Drinks co-founder Richard Reed are among signatories of a letter calling for a People’s Vote on leaving the EU. The letter argues both the Government’s current plans for Brexit, as well as a no-deal Brexit, would leave the country worse off than they were being in the EU if the country left in March.
A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union said: “The people of the UK have already had their say in one of the biggest democratic exercises this country has ever seen and the Prime Minister has made it clear that there is not going to be a second referendum.”