Lords rebellion ‘will push EU to give bad Brexit deal’

Peers warned that demand for early vote on any deal with Brussels would weaken May’s hand

CONSERVATIVE peers who are today expected to try to force the Government into giving Parliament a meaningful vote on Brexit will “incentivise” the European Union to offer Britain a “bad deal”, Theresa May has said.

The Government is bracing itself for a second defeat in the Lords as peers back an amendment to the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill which would force Mrs May “not to conclude an agreement” with the EU on the UK’s withdrawal “without the approval of both Houses of Parliament”.

The amendment calls for the Lords and the Commons to be given an early vote on the Brexit deal and would give them the chance to stop Mrs May from walking away from the EU without a deal.

Lord Heseltine, the former Tory Cabinet minister, is ready to lead the rebels – said by sources to number in the “low teens” – in the vote expected late this afternoon. More than a dozen Tory peers are expected to back the change. Ministers will next week try to overturn any change in the Commons, along with an earlier amendment on guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals to remain in the UK after Brexit.

However, they face more than 20 Tory MPs, led by former ministers Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry, who are prepared to defy the Government and back the early Parliamentary vote.

Other amendments on a second referendum, regular reports to Parliament and a hard border in Northern Ireland are not expected to pass.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman warned that the move would “weaken” the Government’s hand in negotiations. “On the issue of the meaningful vote we shouldn’t commit to any process that would incentivise the EU to offer us a bad deal,” he said. “If we are in a position where any deal negotiated by the Prime Minister could be rejected by MPs obviously that gives strength to the other parties in the negotiations.

“Our view is that this should be a simple Bill in relation to triggering Article 50. It will be a meaningful vote. But what we don’t want to do is commit to anything that would weaken our hand in negotiations.”

The spokesman added that Mrs May had been clear in her Brexit speech at Lancaster House in January that no deal is better than a bad deal. Robin Walker, a minister in the Exiting the European Union department, also warned giving a veto to Parliament “would only serve to incentivise the most negative and aggressive approach from our negotiating counterparties”.

Mrs May’s warning came as sensitive official documents on the preparations for Brexit were exposed to press photographers in Downing Street.

The memo from officials to David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, seemed to indicate that he is planning to implement the EU withdrawal agreement through secondary legislation, with any “important changes” being put into an Act of Parliament. The document “queried whether there needed to be a legal distinction between the withdrawal and new relationship agreement”.

Mrs May was also warned by senior peers on the House of Lords Constitution Committee not to use the Great Repeal Bill – which will write EU law into British law – to “pick and choose” which elements of EU law she wanted to scrap or alter without Parliament’s full involvement.

A distinction had to be drawn between the move to transpose EU regulations into UK laws and any subsequent attempt to change them after Brexit, they said.

At first glance, the amendment to the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill in the House of Lords giving Parliament a “meaningful vote” on a Brexit deal may look innocuous. After all, Britain has voted to restore the primacy of its own Parliament, so why should that Parliament not decide on the Brexit deal? That is the argument that advocates will make for the amendment, which may well be endorsed in the Upper House and conceivably by the House of Commons next week, since a number of Conservative MPs are said to be minded to support it there.

Yet that argument is flawed and this amendment should not pass. The flaws are both practical and principled. The practical flaw is found in the effect this amendment would have on Brexit negotiations. It is no secret that some EU leaders still believe that Britain can be persuaded to reverse its decision to leave; the EU, after all, has a history of trying to overturn democratic votes, even referendum decisions, a contempt for the electorate that partly explains why the integrationist project is failing. If those leaders believe that the British Parliament could reject any Brexit deal and instead continue our membership, they will have a strong incentive to offer the worst deal possible.

The principled objection to the amendment is that it misinterprets the referendum vote and its meaning. Britain has indeed voted to restore national sovereignty, freeing itself from EU rules and returning to a situation where the laws and decisions that affect the British people are made by politicians accountable to the British people. But that does not mean that Parliament must now govern: that is the job of ministers. The proper arrangement is that ministers make decisions and then account for those decisions to the representatives of the British people in Parliament. That is what should happen on the Brexit deal.

In truth, the bid for a “meaningful vote” for Parliament is simply a ruse, an undeclared attempt to defy and eventually reverse the instruction the people gave at the referendum. The same is true of the argument by the Liberal Democrats and others that the deal should be put to a second referendum. If the Remainers really want to force the question over the final deal to a vote, perhaps the proper forum is, as Lord Hague suggests opposite, a general election. Whenever that election comes, we are confident the electorate will strongly endorse Mrs May’s handling of our EU exit.