Brexit: John Bercow says there is 'arguable case' government has committed contempt by failing to publish legal advice
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Your support makes all the difference.Theresa May is facing a constitutional crisis after six opposition parties joined forces to accuse the government of contempt of Parliament over its failure to publish its full Brexit legal advice.
The Commons Speaker, John Bercow, said there was "an arguable case" that the government had committed contempt, after he was asked by Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and the DUP to begin proceedings.
Earlier, Attorney general Geoffrey Cox admitted the UK could be locked into a customs backstop under the prime minister’s Brexit blueprint.
Mr Cox confirmed that neither the UK nor EU would be able to unilaterally end the Northern Irish backstop arrangement if it came into force, in an address to MPs.
It also comes as The Independent’s petition calling for a Final Say referendum on Brexit was delivered to Downing Street, after more than a million people backed the campaign.
See below for live updates:
Cox says the backstop is intended to be temporary but there is no unilateral right for either side to end the Irish backstop.
Someone shouts, 'It's a trap' from the Commons benches.
Cox ploughs on, saying it will offer an advantage to businesses in Northern Ireland, who will be able to circulate their goods in the EU and the UK.
He asks for MPs to show “wisdom and forbearance, calm and measured analysis," despite the high emotion stirred by Brexit.
Labour's shadow solicitor general Nick Thomas-Symonds says this is not the full legal advice that MPs were promised and it is "unacceptable" that it was leaked to the press, rather than passed to MPs.
He said the government should do the right thing and publish the full advice.
Geoffrey Cox says, with typical rhetorical flourish, that he has "wrestled with" the decision to support this plan, "as I am a unionist". However he says the divergence is as much an instrument of pain to the EU as the UK.
He was responding to a question from Nigel Dodds, of the DUP, who said it was "deeply unsatisfactory" that the UK parliament would not be able to get out of the arrangements, leaving it reliant on lawyers.
SNP home affairs spokeswoman Joanna Cherry, a QC, asked whether there was anything to prevent the backstop becoming a permanent arrangement.
Geoffrey Cox agreed there was nothing in law to stop this but such an agreement based on Article 50 would be "highly vulnerable to legal challenge" and therefore, in his legal opinion, unlikely.
He said: "If negotiations irretrievably broke down it would de facto become permanent and it would therefore fall to be seriously challenge-able in the Court of Justice of the European Union for being invalid.
"That legal certainty by itself is sufficient to promote the EU to do a deal with us."
Conservative former chancellor Ken Clarke thanked the Attorney General for addressing "paranoia and conspiracy theories" around the Northern Ireland Protocol and providing a "perfectly sensible" solution to the border problem.
Mr Cox responded: "I make no bones about it - I would have preferred to have seen a unilateral right of termination in this backstop.
"I would have preferred to have seen a clause to exit if negotiations had irretrievably broken down.
"But I'm prepared to lend my support to this agreement because I do not believe that we're likely to be entrapped in it permanently."
Mr Cox bellowed "there is nothing to see here" as he defended the decision not to publish the full Brexit legal advice.
After Labour veteran Harriet Harman raised concerns, Mr Cox said he could not take a step which he "firmly and truly believes would be contrary to the public interest".
He went on: "I ask the House to understand that it is only that consideration that is motivating me and this government in declining at this stage to break the convention that applies to both sides of the House when they are in government.
"There is nothing to see here."
Ex-Brexit secretary David Davis and former Brexit minister Suella Braverman have both delivered scathing verdicts of the legal advice.
Mr Davis said: “The legal summary document is worse than we feared: the backstop customs union is indefinite, the UK would be a rule taker and the European Court is in charge of our destiny, rather than the sovereign UK Parliament. This is not Brexit.
“This only reinforces what I’ve been saying for weeks: the legal advice must be published in full so that the House of Commons can debate this properly.”
Ms Braverman said: "With very little time until the historic vote on the deal, it is only proper that MPs are fully aware of the legally implications of what they are deciding upon.
"The duty that we owe our constituents and the country demands that we should go into this vote with our eyes wide open. Withholding the advice will keep parliament in the dark and this can't be right."
Six opposition parties have written a joint letter to the speaker asking him to launch contempt proceedings against the government over its failure to publish its Brexit legal device.
The letter is signed jointly by MPs from Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, the DUP, Plaid Cymru, and the Greens.
Shadow Brexit secretary, Labour's Keir Starmer, said: "The government has failed to publish the Attorney General's full and final legal advice on the Brexit deal, as was ordered by Parliament.
"We have been left with no option but to write to the Speaker of the House of Commons to ask him to launch proceedings of contempt."
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