Source - Daily Telegraph 23/06/22
Happy Brexit Day! Six years ago, on June 23 2016, Britons voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to quit the European Union. And few of the 17.4 million Britons who voted to leave would have thought that six years later, Britain is still wrestling with how to enact that decision.
There is not long to wait now, with three pieces of legislation on the stocks ready to deliver the Brexit that many thought they were voting for. But the parliamentary battle to make Brexit a reality is by no means over. One MP tells me: “It will be as big as anything seen for generations.” Here is why.
Yesterday, Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, published the Bill of Rights which could hugely curb the influence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the UK.
(Indeed, Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, told me last week that the new Bill could be used to force a vote of MPs in the Commons that will mean the ECHR can no longer intervene on migrants’ flights to Rwanda, in the same way that MPs defied the court and banned prisoner votes.)
It was confirmed this morning that on Monday MPs will vote on the second reading of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which will restore UK rules and regulations in the province for goods traded with Great Britain.
And shortly, probably before the summer recess, Jacob Rees-Mogg will publish his Brexit Freedoms Bill, which is intended to sweep away thousands of EU-retained laws. He published a dashboard of the red tape in his sights.
The Bills are likely to get through the Commons unscathed. But the House of Lords will be a completely different order of magnitude. Senior Brexiteers expect the peers in the Second Chamber – where the Conservatives, and indeed Brexiteers, are very much in the minority – to try to frustrate the progress of the Bills.
This is why the timing is so important. Brexiteers fully expect the Government to have to utilise the Parliament Act to force the Lords to accept the three Bills, for the first time in nearly 20 years.
And in order for that to happen, the Bills need to have had their second readings in the Commons within about 18 months before the end of the parliamentary session, to ensure there is time for MPs to overrule the will of the House of Lords.
This is why the urgency is so important, and the Bills need to have their second readings before the end of next month.
One Tory MP tells me: “The clock is ticking. The reality is if there is going to be massive opposition from the House of Lords, that is going to have to be dealt with. We cannot have an unelected House of Lords telling the Commons that it cannot do a Bill of Rights, ‘retained’ EU law or Northern Ireland.”
Sir Bill Cash, the veteran Conservative MP who has run the rule over EU laws for nearly 30 years on the European Scrutiny select committee, adds: “This is democracy of the people being put through Parliament by the representatives of the voters.
“This is what the people voted for in a referendum and an election. It is going to be big. It is going to be the battle for Brexit. We have got a majority and the House of Lords cannot stand in the way.”
In short, a major new battle of Brexit – perhaps the biggest one yet – is about to begin, pitting elected MPs against unelected peers.
And the prize for Boris Johnson will be to deliver Brexit once and for all for the UK by the beginning of 2024 – just in time for the expected May date of the next general election.
Cheerio!
Chopper
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