Government loses two House of Lords votes on EU withdrawal bill – as it happened

In the Lords the backbench speeches are coming to an end.

As the Press Association reports, Chris Patten, the Conservative former cabinet minister used his speech to mock claims by the international trade secretary Liam Fox that a free trade deal with the EU would be “one of the easiest in human history”. He suggested the current approach being taken by the government to securing agreements was “absurd”. He also said the idea that countries such as Australia would open up their market without any demands in return was “nonsense”.

In a sideswipe at the foreign secretary Boris Jonson, Patten said:

I don’t think repeating the Road to Mandalay whenever one’s travelling, I don’t think that is going to make a spectacular difference to our trading opportunities. I don’t think we will do better than we are doing within the customs union.

Sky’s Faisal Islam has some more highlights.

These are from the BBC’s Esther Webber

In the Scottish parliament Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, told MSPs that attempts to resolve the dispute between the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments over the EU withdrawal bill were “reaching the end game”. Giving evidence to Holyrood’s committee conveners (Holyrood’s equivalent of the Commons liaison committee), Sturgeon said the UK government’s decision to challenge the Scottish government’s own Brexit legislation in the Supreme Court was “deeply regrettable”. She explained:

The Westminster government had a decision to make, whether to respect the decision the Scottish Parliament arrived at or not to respect it, and unfortunately they opted not to and referred to the supreme court ...

I think it’s fair to say we are reaching the end game of this.

We know the stage the withdrawal bill is at in terms of being at the report stage in the Lords, so we will probably over the next couple of weeks need to see this come to an agreement or not. We are talking now more like days rather than weeks.

I genuinely hope we can reach agreement but inevitably when there is pretty fundamental issues of principles involved, the bar for agreement is not always easy to overcome.

The dispute between the UK, Scottish and Welsh government is about what happens to EU powers being repatriated that related to policy areas that are devolved. It is accepted that most should be devolved but that some should be retained (so that the UK government can maintain common rules for the UK single market), but there is a dispute over how much say Scotland and Wales over the UK-retained elements.

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Amber Rudd, the home secretary, has been summoned to the Commons home affairs committee to give evidence to it next week about the Windrush generation, the BBC reports.

The SNP has been accused of manufacturing a legal row over Brexit in order to push for a second independence referendum. As the Press Association reports, the accusation came as MPs debated the UK government’s decision to challenge emergency Brexit legislation passed by the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly in the courts.
Scottish Tory MP Kirstene Hair described the move as a “political manoeuvre” designed to instigate another referendum. Hair, speaking the Commons, said:

Myself and my colleagues have been concerned that the SNP’s continuity Bill is a political manoeuvre designed to create precedence for legislation on a second independence referendum. It’s time for the SNP to put this grievance to one side and get serious about working together as one team for the best possible Brexit.

SNP frontbencher Pete Wishart told ministers the decision to challenge the bill represented an “utter contempt” for Scottish parliament. He said:

This quite extraordinary, there’s only a question about this legislation because the Tories have chosen to question it. They’ve been democratically defeated in the Scottish parliament by an overwhelming majority and they’re now showing their utter contempt for Scottish democracy by seeking to have this democratic decision overturned in the courts.

Turning back to Albert Thompson for a moment, this is from my colleague Peter Walker.

And this is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

The government is preparing a climbdown over its key Brexit bill in the House of Lords over EU rules on clinical trials, as it braces itself for a series of defeats, my colleague Heather Stewart reports. Ministers are expected to accept the substance of an amendment tabled by crossbench peer Lord Patel, which would keep EU clinical trial regulations – which have not yet come into force – in UK law. Here is Heather’s story.

It is not unusual for ministers to offer concessions in the House of Lords but it was not until I read Legislation at Westminster, a revealing book - academic, but readable - by Meg Russell and Daniel Gover about how laws get passed, that I discovered ministers have to prepare a “concession strategy” for all bills before they are allowed to bring them to parliament. And the Lords is often where this strategy gets rolled out. Russell and Gover write:

One government official suggested that the ‘golden rule is don’t amend in committee, save it for report’. Likewise, ‘if you can wait for the Lords, then wait for the Lords’; in short ‘don’t amend until you have to amend’. Another official suggested that ‘the culture of the Commons is one in which any minor concession would be trumpeted as a major climbdown or humiliating U-turn, and I just don’t think that the rhetoric that is used is the same in the Lords’.

As Kerr pointed out a moment ago, his amendment would not guarantee that the UK would remain in the customs union. It just says the government should have to explain to parliament what it has done to negotiate “an arrangement which enables the United Kingdom to continue participating in a customs union with the European Union.” (See 3.38pm.)

On my reading of the amendment, the government could comply with it by coming back to parliament and giving the answer as - nothing.

In an Independent article today Joe Watts says that, for this reason, the government could “live with” a defeat on the Kerr amendment. Watts quotes an unnamed cabinet minister as saying:

The language of this amendment is not strictly prescriptive and if, in this instance, it passes, I think we can probably live with it.

Kerr says his amendment would require the government to negotiate for a customs union, and make a statement to parliament before the withdrawal agreement gets put to a vote.

He says he cannot require the government to secure a customs union deal. The EU may not accept this, he says. He says that is why is amendment is phrased in the way it is.

Kerr says the EU are preparing to offer the UK a “barebones” free trade deal, with little on services. That is because the UK is committed to leaving the customs union.

But the EU guidelines also say that, if the UK were to drop this condition, the EU may revise its offer. He says that is why the government should accept his amendment. His amendment would allow the government to explore what might be available if the UK were to stay in the customs union. Without that, the UK will never know what is on offer, he says.

He says the subject of the customs union did not come up in the EU referendum.

The country voted narrowly to leave the European Union, but no one can argue that it voted knowingly to leave the customs union with the European Union.

But Theresa May made it a red line in her speech to the Conservative party conference in 2016.

He says he does not know what discussions there were in government about the economic implications of this.

Other red lines have been blurred, he says.

He says he is not in favour of leaving. But if the UK must leave, it should do so in such a way as to limit the damage, he says.

If in the end we do leave it should be in a way that limits the damage to the country’s well being and the future of our children.