Ministers are found guilty of contempt

THERESA May is to publish the full legal advice on her Brexit deal after suffering a humiliating Commons defeat in her bid to keep it under wraps. In chaotic scenes last night, MPs voted by 311 to 293 to find the Government in ‘contempt of Parliament’ for its previous refusal to release the advice in full.

Tory Brexiteers Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone voted to find their own Government in contempt of Parliament – the first time in modern history that this has happened. A number of other Tory MPs abstained.

A Government attempt to kick the issue into the long grass was also defeated by 311 to 307.

Minutes after the vote, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom announced that the Government would back down and release the full advice given to Cabinet by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, probably today.

The move is a major setback for ministers, who had bitterly opposed the release, which Mr Cox said was not in the national interest.

In the Commons on Monday, Mr Cox confirmed that the UK would have no ‘unilateral’ right to quit the controversial Irish backstop, which could see the whole UK kept in the customs union indefinitely after Brexit. But he said he was backing the Prime Minister’s deal because ‘I do not believe that we are likely to be entrapped in it permanently’.

Nevertheless, DUP members yesterday joined forces with Labour and a handful of Tory MPs in refusing to take his assurances at face value, and the vote was lost. It sets an extraor- dinary precedent. Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve said the widespread release of legal advice ‘may undoubtedly contain confidential material which if put in the public domain could well jeopardise the national interest’. He said this was like the Government being made to ‘disclose the name of agents working for MI5 and MI6’, adding the system was ‘open to abuse’.

Only hours before the vote, Mrs May had told Cabinet that ‘candid’ legal advice given to ministers must remain confidential, despite a motion passed by the Commons last month demanding the release of the ‘final and full’ papers.

And former Tory chancellor Kenneth Clarke warned against the release of legal advice and said it should be redacted, saying there was a ‘public interest in not undermining the confidentiality of the legal advice’. But ministers will now be forced to publish Mr Cox’s unvarnished legal opinion, as contained in a six-page document handed to the Cabinet last month. Whitehall sources last night said there was ‘no difference’ between the document and the advice shared with MPs by Mr Cox this week.

But Labour’s Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer said the finding of contempt was a ‘badge of shame’ for the Government – and warned the vote showed Mrs May’s administration had ‘lost its majority’.

‘Jeopardise the national interest’