Brexit bill - as it happened: Government accused of 'cover up' as Labour vows to force release of secret papers
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Peers in the House of Lords have started the lengthy process of scrutinising Theresa May’s flagship Brexit legislation.
It comes after an influential committee in the Lords warned that the legislation – in its current form – is constitutionally unacceptable and will need to be substantially rewritten.
More than 190 members had lined up to speak during the two-day debate on the Bill’s second reading. During the first round of debates, on Tuesday, one of the best interventions came from the former Brexit minister Lord Bridges.
He challenged the Prime Minister to make clear what sort of relationship the Government wanted with the EU after Brexit, adding ministers have so far provided “no clear answers”, offering only “conflicting, confusing voices”.
He told peers he feared the Government would come up with “meaningless waffle” for its future relationship with Brussels, and that the implementation period would be “a gangplank into thin air”.
In the Commons – as Ms May headed for China on an official visit - Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary raised an urgent question following a leak of the Government’s Brexit impact assessments on Monday evening. The papers claimed that Britain will be worse off after leaving the bloc regardless of the deal.
Labour have now vowed to win a Commons vote to force the release of the secret analysis laying bare the economic damage from Brexit, as the affair was branded a “cover up” by one MP.
Lord Hope of Craighead, a crossbench peers, said the Bill "comes to this House in a sorry state".
The former deputy president of the Supreme Court said: "Others have criticised some of the clauses containing those powers as amounting to Henry VIII clauses.
"As far as I know, Henry VIII never got to Scotland. Oliver Cromwell did, and he and the forces under his command did quite a lot of damage while he was there.
"So I think that these clauses have a touch of Oliver Cromwell about them too."
Baroness Jones of the Green Party says she cannot vote for the Bill in its current form.
Lord Newby, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords, said the Bill "exhibits the arrogance and incompetence of the Government in equal measure".
He said the Lib Dems had no intention of derailing the Bill, or "unnecessarily spinning out debate".
Lord Newby also said his party's call for a second referendum represented the view of the majority of the British public. "The Government has no substantive policy on what Brexit will mean in practice," he added.
"We're hurtling towards March 29 next year with no hand on the steering wheel.
"The Government appears to hope to get to the other side of Brexit by muddling through til the last minute, and leaving many of the critical issues covered by a thin layer of ambiguity in any end-of-year agreement."
Brexit Minister Steve Baker is currently answering an urgent question on the leaked Brexit analysis in the Commons.
He said MPs will be presented with "appropriate analysis" carried out by the Government when it comes to voting on the final deal agreed with the EU.
But he added the Government cannot be expected to publish such information publicly before it has been completed, adding: "That would misrepresent our views."
Mr Baker, referring to the Buzzfeed News website report on the leaked document, said: "The article is a selective interpretation of a preliminary analysis. It is an attempt to undermine our exit from the European Union."
In the Commons, Steve Baker said the Government is undertaking a wide range of analysis on Brexit, with the next stage, summarised in a draft paper brought together for ministers this month, "not yet anywhere near being approved by ministers".
He said: "Even the ministerial team in my department has only just been consulted on this paper in recent days and we've made it clear it requires significant further work.
"In fact, I only saw this report myself this morning."
Watching the Commons, deputy political editor Rob Merrick picks out these lines:
Pro-EU Labour MP Chuka Umunna said the Government "is not protecting the interests of the British people" but rather "withholding information from them".
He asks why being in the single market has been taken off the table, without a mandate for it.
Steve Baker hits back, saying it would not be possible to honour the referendum result if the UK remains in a "political purgatory of rule-taking" from the EU.
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