Prime minister watches on as upper house begins Article 50 debate
Theresa May stepped up pressure on the House of Lords not to disrupt her Brexit plans yesterday, taking the unusual step of watching from beside the royal throne as peers began debating the bill allowing Britain to begin exit talks.
Mrs May’s presence in the upper house underlined the prime minister’s expectation that the unelected chamber should not hold up legislation, which she hopes to have on the statute book by mid-March.
The Labour party’s leader in the Lords Angela Smith confirmed that her party would not “wreck” the bill.
As the Lords began two days of debate – and with some 190 peers scheduled to speak – there was plenty of defiance in a chamber dominated by pro-Europeans, including former ministers and ambassadors.
But there was also a weary acceptance that the Lords should not ultimately try to frustrate the “will of the people”, let alone act as a springboard for the kind of pro-EU movement that Tony Blair last week urged Remain supporters to create.
William Hague, former Tory foreign secretary, said Mr Blair was wrong to try to frustrate the result of last year’s referendum, saying that reversing the result would not be “in the interests of our democracy and the governance of our country”.
Lord Hague, who supported Remain, said: “It would open up the most protracted, bitter, potentially endless conflict in British society and politics that we have seen since the decades of debate on Irish home rule and possibly even longer than that.”
The Conservatives have no majority in the House of Lords and peers could back several amendments to the EU withdrawal bill, which gives Mrs May the power to activate the Article 50 exit clause.
The first cause being championed by pro-European peers is an amendment guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens living in the UK at the start of Brexit negotiations.
A second amendment would require Mrs May to give parliament a “meaningful vote” on her proposed Brexit deal early on in the process, effectively giving MPs and peers the opportunity to send her back to Brussels to seek a better deal.
But both proposals were rejected in the House of Commons and peers accept that they should not start a war of attrition with MPs on the issue. They expect any amendments to be overturned.
Although amendments might be sent back to the Commons once to make MPs think again, the Labour party has indicated it would not engage in a protracted session of parliamentary “ping pong”, potentially holding up the bill for weeks.
The credibility of the House of Lords will not be helped by a BBC documentary Meet the Lords in which the former speaker Baroness D’Souza said there were “many, many peers who contribute absolutely nothing but who claim the full allowance”.
“I can remember one occasion when I was leaving the House quite late and there was a peer – who shall be utterly nameless – who jumped out of a taxi just outside the peers’ entrance, left the engine running.
“He ran in, presumably to show that he’d attended, and then ran out again while the taxi was still running.”
Lord Tyler, a Liberal Democrat peer, said that the House of Lords was “the best day care centre for the elderly in London”.
He added: “Families can drop in him or her and make sure that the staff will look after them very well; nice meals subsidised by the taxpayer, and they can have a snooze in the afternoon in the chamber or in the library.”
