May abandons plans to curb power of Lords
Downing Street warned it could regret decision that risks allowing peers to block Article 50
AN OVERHAUL of the House of Lords has been abandoned by the Government ahead of a likely row about triggering Article 50 which could delay Brexit by up to a year.
The Government has dropped plans proposed by David Cameron to curb the power of the House of Lords to block legislation. The decision came as senior government sources confirmed that ministers expect to lose next month’s appeal to the Supreme Court over whether Parliament can have a say on when Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is activated.
This makes it highly likely that MPs and peers will get a vote on a law to start the Brexit process, and a chance to attach conditions to their support.
Labour has now said that its MPs will vote in favour of any legislation triggering Article 50, which puts the Government on a collision course with the House of Lords.
Senior sources have told The Daily Telegraph they fear that peers could block the legislation for up to a year. This could mean that Britain’s exit talks, which must by law take two years, could start in the spring of 2018, running right up to the general election in May 2020.
The proposals drawn up by the former Cabinet minister Lord Strathclyde would have stripped peers of their power to veto laws known as statutory instruments, which effectively let the Government bring in new legislation in a shorter time than an Act.
He was asked to carry out the review by the former prime minister after the Government suffered a humiliating defeat over George Osborne’s plans to cut tax credits in October last year. How- ever, ministers have decided there are “no plans” to bring forward a law to quell the power of the Lords.
David Lidington, the Leader of the Commons, said that while Lord Strathclyde’s review was “compelling … we have no plans for now to introduce new primary legislation”.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, the Leader of the Lords, made the announcement in the Upper House, but said that if Lords do not maintain “discipline” in the rarely-used power, “we would have to reflect on this decision”.
Under the proposals, peers would have been limited to asking MPs to “think again” about planned legislation, leaving the final decision to the elected House of Commons. A parliamentary committee had called the plans a “disproportionate response” to the defeat of the former chancellor’s plans to cut £12 billion of tax credits.
Lord Jones of Birmingham, who was director general of the Confederation of British Industry, said the move was a “big mistake” and risks allowing peers to block Brexit.
He said: “I would have stuck to my guns because I think they’re going to live to regret it on all of the Brexit stuff coming down the pipe.
“When you’ve got eight Liberal Democrats in the Commons and you’ve got 100 Liberal Democrats in the Lords and they want actually to stay in the EU and they’ll do anything to stay in the EU, I think they’ll rue the day.” He added: “I think it’s, in political, legislative management terms, a big mistake because this stuff is going to be huge coming down the pipe in a year’s time.”
Lady Smith said Labour in the Lords would not block or delay Brexit. She added: “But a government without a plan does not have a blank cheque.
“Clearly this House will have an important role, especially if there is considerable secondary legislation that will need us to work together to provide effective scrutiny from all sides of the House, in the public interest.”