The House of Commons will this week on Tuesday and Wednesday consider whether or not to accept the fundamental amendments made by the House of Lords to the EU withdrawal bill. Some have likened the significance of the debates to the Norway debate of May 1940, which displaced Neville Chamberlain replacing him with Winston Churchill.
The government will probably secure reversal of the most radical of the Lords amendments – committing Britain to retain the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights after Brexit and to remain in the European Economic Area with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. It may be defeated on the amendment requiring it to “inform Parliament of the steps it has taken to negotiate British participation in a customs union”, but it can live with that, since the amendment does not commit the government actually to remain in the customs union.
But the most dangerous amendment, from the government’s point of view, is that proposed by Lord Hailsham, which would require both houses to approve the agreement by 30 November 2018, and to pass an act providing for the implementation of the agreement by 31 January 2019.
This seemingly innocuous amendment would give the House of Lords, around 80% of whose members support Remain, a veto over Brexit. The Lords have the power to refuse to consider a motion to approve the withdrawal agreement; they could delay passage of the bill providing for its implementation. The amendment would also allow parliament to refuse to accept any agreement. In consequence, Britain would remain a member of the European Union in defiance of the outcome of the referendum.
More fundamentally, the Hailsham amendment would substitute parliament for government in the negotiating process. If parliament refused to approve the…
