British prime minister Theresa May's government was defeated in the House of Lords on Wednesday night over an amendment that would oblige Britain to seek to remain in a customs union with the European Union after Brexit.
The amendment to a trade Bill had the support of opposition parties and independent or cross-bench peers in the upper house, where the government does not have a majority. It passed by 207 votes to 141 - a majority of 66.
Speaking ahead of the debate, Labour’s shadow international trade minister in the Lords, Wilf Stevenson, urged the government to abandon its negotiating red lines and support the amendment.
“Labour has consistently made the case for the UK to negotiate a new customs union with the EU – one that would protect jobs and secure opportunities for our industries, as well as remove the need for a hard border in Ireland. This approach commands wide support around the country and would give everyone some much-needed certainty about our future should we leave the EU,” he said.
Earlier, DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson told MPs that putting a time limit on the Northern Ireland backstop would have the effect of removing it from the withdrawal agreement. Mr Wilson told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that his party could vote for Mrs May’s Brexit deal if the backstop was time-limited.
“I’m only telling you what the EU have said and what the Irish Government have said: once you do that, you have removed the backstop. If they didn’t want to have the withdrawal agreement totally destroyed, you could remove the backstop by imposing a time limit on it. That in effect has the same outcome – there is no backstop,” he said.
Mr Wilson was speaking after talks in Brussels between Britain’s attorney general Geoffrey Cox and Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier failed to make progress. The EU has ruled out imposing a time limit on the backstop and hopes for a breakthrough have focused instead on strengthening an arbitration mechanism to determine when the backstop is no longer necessary.
Arbitration
Mr Wilson said the DUP, whose support for the Brexit deal is viewed as crucial to persuading Conservative Eurosceptics to vote for it, could not accept arbitration as a solution.
“That certainly is not a mechanism which we would accept, and I think for two reasons. First of all, that leaves us in exactly the same position as the current withdrawal agreement does, where somebody else decides whether the United Kingdom can break out of the backstop or whether it stays in the backstop. Whether we decide to alter the backstop or alter any arrangements we have with the EU should be the decision of this parliament and this government, not some independent panel of judges. And the second thing is an arbitration panel could drag on its deliberations for years,” he said.
“We have made it very clear that there has to be an ability for a sovereign parliament and a sovereign government to make a decision about the future status of the United Kingdom as a whole in relation to the EU or part of the United Kingdom in relation to the EU.”
MPs will vote next week on Mrs May’s Brexit deal and if they reject it, they can choose between leaving the EU without a deal or seeking an extension to the article 50 negotiating deadline.
