Brexit: MPs debate article 50 bill - as it happened
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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including the first day of the Commons debate on the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill, allowing the government to trigger article 50
The debate has now ended for the night after nearly 12 hours of talking. It will continue tomorrow. Here’s a summary of tonight’s speeches:
David Lammy, who will be voting against the bill, made one of the evening’s most powerful speeches and quoted both Enoch Powell and Winston Churchill. He said: “[Tories] salivate at the thought of becoming a tax haven like Singapore. But the poorest will be the ones to suffer and many of them are in my constituency.”
Caroline Lucas, also made a passionate speech, saying she spoke for all those who continue to be “desperately concerned”. She criticises the way May has moved towards what she calls an extreme Brexit and the way she had dealt with Trump.
Another who plans to vote against the bill was Heidi Alexander, who said she had planned to do the opposite until Theresa May’s speech in Lancaster House, which made her feel “ashamed”.
Nick Chalk, was one of several Tory MPs who campaigned to remain but will vote for the bill saying that’s what true democrats will do.
Ed Vaizey, who was a minister under David Cameron, made one of the most outspoken and angry speeches. The MP railed against the government for sneaking out the announcement that Britain will pull out of the European nuclear research agency Euratom in the notes accompanying the bill without telling any local MPs or the agency’s staff. He’s also “sick and tired” of being branded as unpatriotic and being against the will of the people for wanting parliament to have more of a say in negotiations.
Hywel Williams said that businesses are already pulling out of investing in Wales and confidence is low. “We cannot afford the luxury of time and wait to see what deals we can strike,” he stressed.
Steve Baker had a warning for if the bill wasn’t passed they would “suffer the kind of political implosion in this country which we can scarcely imagine”.
That’s it for tonight. We’ll be back tomorrow so you can follow the rest of the debate ahead of the vote. Thanks so much for joining us today and for all your comments. Sorry I haven’t been able to directly respond.
Several Labour MPs have now said they will defy party orders not to block Theresa May from starting the Brexit process, amid criticism of the government’s approach. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn may find a few surprises in the list of those planning to vote against the bill.
Shadow foreign minister Catherine West said she felt not voting for the bill’s second reading is the “only way to make the Government listen” to her concerns. Former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw said he would go against a three-line whip on a bill for the first time in nearly 20 years as an MP. Maria Eagle, also a former minister, blamed the Government’s approach for her opposition.
A handful of other backbenchers followed, including Jo Stevens, who quit as shadow Welsh secretary over her party’s Brexit approach and compared triggering Article 50 to a “funeral”.
Hywel Williams says those who think Brexit will be all done and dusted after article 50 is triggered, need to be aware that this is going to be a marathon not a dash.
The Plaid Cymru MP says no matter how many special relationships May “scrapes” or deals she does, we’re not going to get as good a deal as the single market can offer.
Businesses are already pulling out of investing in Wales and confidence is low. “We cannot afford the luxury of time and wait to see what deals we can strike,” he says.
“If agriculture, which is back bone of my country, is threatened then what kind of future will we have?” He says his language and culture is at risk. He finishes with a question for the government: “How much lamb can we possibly sell to New Zealand?”
Tory MP Steve Baker, who is pro-Brexit, says if MPs refused to pass the bill then they would “suffer the kind of political implosion in this country which we can scarcely imagine”.
The MP for Wycombe says: “If we were to go ahead and refuse this bill, I believe that even our own party on this side would suffer grave consequences. It’s in all of our interests that this bill passes.”
In her speech, Labour former minister Maria Eagle bemoaned the lack of consultation, adding the “nature of the exit” the government appears to be pursuing has also influenced her decision to vote against the second reading of the bill tomorrow night.
“The new Government has acted as though the referendum gives them carte blanche to engineer the most extreme kind of arrangements for the UK leaving the EU, though in truth it asked only whether voters wish to remain or leave and had nothing to say about the subsequent arrangements the UK should adopt.”
She says: “I think that this extreme right-wing exit without any authorisation from this Parliament or the people of this country that they’re pursuing will damage the jobs and economy of the UK, will undermine our standing and position in the world and will hit the poorest – like many who live and work in my constituency – the hardest.”
Ed Vaizey, the former minister for culture, communications and creative industries launched an outspoken attack on the government in his speech.
The Tory MP for Wantage and Didcot says he is “so angry” after ministers snuck out the announcement that Britain will pull out of the European nuclear research agency Euratom in the notes accompanying the Bill to trigger Article 50 without telling the staff affected.
Vaizey, says scientists working on the cutting edge of nuclear research have been left fearing for their jobs and homes after the shock announcement. “I am so angry with the government on its position about Euratom. Not a single minister contacted me, the honourable member for Oxford West and Abingdon, and honourable member for Henley, the Culham Research Centre with the Joint European Torus, employing hundreds of people at the heart of nuclear fusion research.
“We have all been inundated with countless emails from people who now literally believe their job is going. I’ve got the European Space Agency in my constituency. If the government is going to make an announcement like that in the explanatory notes of a bill at least they could alert relevant MPs beforehand, and at least they could provide my constituents with a definitive statement about what the future of European co-operation on civil nuclear engineering is going to be.”
@edvaizey making an excellent speech on need to respond urgently to the fears of skilled scientific EU nationals in our constituencies
He used the end of his speech to list other things that are irritating him including the myth that on the first day out of the EU “we will be handed a suite of lovely trade deals and we will simply sign them.
He says when we try and sign a deal with the US, especially the deals on agriculture and manufacturing, there will be protests and demos like we have never seen. The government should be honest and admit it will take years to negotiate these deals “so please don’t insult our intelligence” by pretending we will be signing them on day one.
He is also unhappy about remainers such as himself constantly being branded as unpatriotic and he is “sick and tired” that to ask that the government be held to account, that it feeds back to MPs every three months and that it publishes a white paper, is somehow going against the will of the people.
Labour’s former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw said earlier that he would go against a three-line whip on a bill for the first time in nearly 20 years as an MP.
He said: “The Government has made absolutely clear that the only choice, then, will be between its hard Brexit and WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules. This could be our only chance to prevent the hardest of Brexits, or to soften its blow. I cannot and will not vote to destroy jobs and prosperity in my constituency.”
The Exeter MP added he was “disappointed and saddened” his party had imposed a three-line whip, given the lack of time available to debate the bill.
Wes Streeting, Labour MP says he would be supporting the Bill on a point of democratic principle.
“I’d just say to my party that if we want to be in government again, and we want to create the world that we want to see, we must first engage with the world as it is,” he says. “The reality of where we find ourselves today is that people have chosen to put this country on a very different course, outside the European Union.”
He spoke of the promises made in the campaign including the £350m-a-week NHS funding pledge which was splashed across campaign buses, which he says the Leave side hate to be reminded of. It was a promise that swayed many Labour votes and staff of the NHS and they expect the promise to be fulfilled. He says: “Brexit means Brexit but also £350 million a week for the NHS means £350 million a week for the NHS”.
He will vote for the bill but stressed that May has a duty to ensure parliament has a say in negotiations. It would be an outrage, he says, if parliaments in other European countries and the EU parliament itself got to vote on the deal before this parliament.
“How can it be taking back control if their voices and their votes carried more than this parliament?,” he says.
Nick Chalk, a Tory MP who campaigned to remain says true democrats, like himself, will vote for the bill. The voter turnout was high, he says, because we were asking for direct instruction. He would have preferred to stay in the single market but has come to realise it was never a realistic option.
“I’m a European, I’m a Briton and I’m also a democrat,” he concludes.
Labour’s Heidi Alexander, who tabled an amendment to throw out the Bill, said she would vote against it because she was “ashamed” of May’s rhetoric around immigration and the single market.
The former shadow health secretary says: “Democracy did not start or end on June 23. It is a process and not an event. There were circumstances in which I would have voted to trigger Article 50. The prime minister killed off that prospect for me when she made her speech in Lancaster House.
“A speech in which she said she would pull us out of the single market, a speech in which she put her desire to reduce immigration above our country’s economic interest, and a speech in which she threatened the countries closest to us with a trade war if she didn’t get her way.
“I was ashamed of the words of the British prime minister on that day and I resolved then to vote against the triggering of Article 50.”
She echoes Lammy by saying that we have an urgent need to find solutions to the NHS and social care crisis, but Brexit will mean “you can kiss goodbye to those things. Endless hours will be spent recreating systems that currently work well ... Brexit will suck all the energy from Whitehall and Westminster”
She finishes with a rousing end to her speech and says she will vote against the bill. “Now is not the time to be making threats and burning bridges. My country comes first.”
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion also makes a powerful speech, saying she speaks for her constituency and all those who continue to be “desperately concerned”. She criticises the way May has moved towards what she calls an extreme Brexit.
She says we are being forced to make trade deals with “any despot we can find” from Turkey to “a divisive and dangerous US president who the prime minister unable or unwilling to stand up to”.
She says nobody voted for us to be a tax haven, “clinging onto the coat tails of Trump’s America”.
She says that the issue of the environment has been conspicuous by its absence in all the debates. Environment regulation as strong as what the EU offers is needed.
Some people are claiming that people who voted to leave didn’t know what they were voting for, Stuart Andrew, Tory MP for Pudsey says. That shows some complete arrogance and real misunderstanding of people’s concerns and frustrations, he says.
Claims that people voted to leave out of racism or prejudice really angered him. “That is frankly disgraceful,” he says. “We are not little Englanders. We are now big Britainers.”
David Lammy has made one of the most passionate speeches of the debate. He says a hard Brexit will mean that there will be no capacity to deal with the hard pressed issues highlighted in the Brexit campaign such as problems in the NHS and the housing crisis.
He says: “It is the easy option to blame migrants who have come here with skills instead of successive governments, both Conservative and Labour, who have failed. Failed to educate our own to compete, failed to build affordable housing, failed to fund our public services, and failed to ensure growth is felt outside London and the South East.
“A hard Brexit won’t deal with any of the long-standing structural problems highlighted by the Brexit vote, it will make these worse.”
He also says: “[Tories] salivate at the thought of becoming a tax haven like Singapore. But the poorest will be the ones to suffer and many of them are in my constituency.”
He finishes by quoting both Winston Churchill and Enoch Powell. “How far have things fallen when a black member of parliament has to quote Enoch Powell?” he asks.
Powell, he says, made the same false warnings about immigration as Brexiteers 50 years ago – and notes he was wrong. He says he will be voting against the bill. “Patriotism is about more than just blind faith,” he concludes.
MPs have now spent almost seven hours debating historic legislation which will trigger the start of Britain’s departure from the European Union, with little enthusiasm and considerable anxiety. Although some pro-leave MPs have spoken with jubilation, claiming this marks a landmark moment in British history, generally there has been very little triumphalism, and the overall tone has been one of caution and humility. A majority of MPs voted to remain in the EU referendum, and today is a rare example of a legislature voting for something that it doesn’t really want. But, from pro-remain MPs, there is widespread acceptance that, having delegated the decision to the public in the referendum, the Commons ought to accept their verdict. Brexit was supposed to be partly about handing power back to parliament but today it sounded like a subordinate body, not a confident, assertive one.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has so far refused to indicate whether the government will offer further concessions as the bill goes through parliament. Opposition MPs have tabled 85 pages of amendments to the bill, but beyond promising a white paper - now expected on Thursday - Davis has refused to indicate whether he will accept any of them. If Labour and pro-remain Tory MPs do unite around any one demand, it seems most likely to be behind the call for a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal. Dominic Grieve, the Conservative former attorney general, said it was important for MPs to get a vote on the proposals before MEPs. (See 3.38pm.) There is also considerable support from all sides of the House for the rights of EU nationals living in Britain to be guaranteed. But it is not clear whether the opposition have enough rebel Tory support to win votes on these issues when MPs vote on amendments next week.
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, has defended his party’s decision to vote for the article 50 bill despite the fact most Labour MPs opposed Brexit. His speech was sombre, although mostly heard with respect. Several Labour MPs have confirmed that they will ignore the whip and vote against the bill tomorrow. One estimate puts the number of likely rebels at around 25. There are also some Labour MPs who have said they will vote with Jeremy Corbyn tomorrow, but who have said they reserve the right to vote against the bill at third reading if the government does not accept amendments. The most significant of these potential “third reading” rebels is Clive Lewis, the shadow business secretary who is seen as a possible leadership candidate in the future. (See 7.06pm.) The Lib Dems also have their own mini revolt problem, with two of the party’s nine MPs not signing the party’s reasoned amendment. (See 12.33pm.)
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