Brexit: Cross-party bill could push leaving date back to December

UK departure from the EU could be delayed until December under a radical plan by MPs to seize control of the process.

Britain’s departure from the EU could be delayed until the end of the year under a cross-party plan by MPs to seize control of the Brexit process.

A group of rebels led by three former Conservative ministers published a draft bill yesterday that they hope to force on the government after parliament’s rejection of Theresa May’s deal. It would strip the government of the power to dictate the terms of Brexit and allow MPs to try to formulate a plan that could command majority support.

Significantly, the bill stipulates that if that failed the prime minister would be compelled to go Brussels and request an extension to Article 50 until December, nine months after the planned departure date of March 29.

Sir Oliver Letwin, Nick Boles and Nicky Morgan, the former ministers who devised the plan, all supported Mrs May’s deal this morning (AEDT). Their plan has won the backing of Hilary Benn, the Brexit select committee chairman, and Yvette Cooper, the home affairs select committee chairwoman. However, so far supporters of a second referendum have given it a wide berth, fearing that it is being used to exert pressure on Tory Brexiteers to back Mrs May’s deal rather than being a genuine attempt to consider other options.

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One said that there was no need to adopt the plan, arguing that the closer no-deal came to becoming a reality the greater the chance that MPs would coalesce around a second referendum. “This is not about getting a People’s Vote, it’s about getting Mrs May’s deal through, so I can’t really see us supporting it at this stage at least. The mechanism is to enforce the will of the House before Brexit day.”

Mr Boles denied that the plan was designed to help the government, although he said it had the tacit support of some ministers. He added that a second referendum would be an option that would be looked at if MPs were handed control of the process. “There are a lot of ministers who are very uncomfortable to be whipped against this,” he said. At least one cabinet minister is understood to be privately lobbying in favour of the plan.

Normally a backbench bill such as this would have no chance of becoming law because under Commons standing orders the government controls the parliamentary timetable. However, the rebels plan to table an amendment to the motion on Brexit that Mrs May must lay before the House next week to suspend those standing orders, giving the bill time to be debated.

The Labour front bench has yet to say whether it would support the plan, but Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, suggested that he was receptive to the ideas. “What we have got to do is create the space for parliament to show where the majority really is,” he told the Today program on BBC Radio 4.

“We can’t have no deal and therefore we need to find a majority for something else. The prime minister’s insistence that it is her deal or no deal has shut out the space for a discussion that should have being going on for two years. With only ten weeks to go we are only beginning the discussion about what actually would get a majority in parliament.”

In the Commons, Mr Benn said it was inevitable that an extension to Article 50 would be needed. “I support the bill that Nick Boles and others have tabled which, if approved, would give the House the legal means to give effect to what we decide, including on whether to extend Article 50,” he said.

“If this House cannot agree, apart from deciding that we do not want to leave with no deal, someone else will have to decide. I have to say that I can see no other way of doing that in those circumstances than by resolving to go back to the British people and asking them what they think.”

However, the Tory Brexiteer MP Sir William Cash said that the bill would achieve nothing. “There must be no extension of time indicated,” he said. “I strongly urge the government to conclude that enough is enough, and that we have reached journey’s end. Now is the time to walk away from the intransigence of the EU and our failed policy of seeking to supplicate its guidelines, its terms and its paymasters.”

The Times