Afternoon summary
- Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary, has told peers that the public should get a vote on the final Brexit deal. Speaking this afternoon during the second day of the second reading debate on the article 50 bill, Butler, who served as cabinet secretary to Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, said:
So, is the outcome of last June’s referendum to be interpreted as meaning that a majority of the United Kingdom want to leave the EU, whatever the terms? The government clearly thinks so. But on a matter of this importance has not the government a duty to be sure before our departure becomes final? My lords, one has to ask why those who base their arguments for Brexit on the will of the people are now opposed to consulting the people on the outcome of the negotiations. One has to suspect that they fear that they will get a different answer.
Butler said that he would back an amendment to the bill to give the public a referendum on the final Brexit deal. But he also said that, whatever happened to that amendment, public opinion might change during the two-year negotiation process, and that if the final outcome was unpopular, Labour would be much less willing to back the government than it is now. The government could be defeated in the Commons vote on the final deal, he said, and that would be seen as an issue of confidence. That would lead to an election, he implied.
If I am right, if there is a prospect of that, by one route or another this government, or a new one, will have to return to seeking the views of the British people. And so they should.
The second reading debate will finish later tonight. But peers almost never vote against bills at second reading and so it is expected to be nodded through without a division.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
The Labour peer Lord Liddle was quite harsh about Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Lords earlier today (see 3.12pm) but Liddle’s former boss, Lord Mandelson, was even more hostile when he was interviewed last night at an event with Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle.
As International Business Times reports, Mandelson said he was working every single day to bring Corbyn down.
The problem with Jeremy though is not that he is a sort of maniac – it’s not as though he is a nasty person. It’s that he literally has no idea in the 21st Century how to conduct himself as a leader of a party putting itself forward in a democratic election to become the government of our country ...
Why do you want to just walk away and pass the title deeds of this great party over to someone like Jeremy Corbyn? I don’t want to, I resent it and I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his tenure in office. Something, however small it may be – an email, a phone call or a meeting I convene – every day I try to do something to save the Labour party from his leadership.
Turnout in the two byelections on Thursday could be hit by Storm Doris which is forecast to bring heavy rain and gale force winds on Thursday. Both Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central fall within a band where the Met Office has issued an amber warning for heavy rain and 80mph winds.
#StormDoris will bring some very strong winds for parts of the UK on Thursday. Here’s a look at where will see the strongest gusts pic.twitter.com/AzdQHqUCRw
— Met Office (@metoffice) February 21, 2017
There is more on Storm Doris here.
Here are some of the best quotes from today’s debate. I’ve taken them from the Press Association reports.
Lord Liddle, a former adviser to both Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, criticised Jeremy Corbyn for his conduct over Brexit.
Today we are debating this miserable measure to trigger the process of detaching the UK from the most successful peace project in world history.
I hang my head in shame that the leaders of this country, and my party, were not able to win the majority for remain last June, and it will live with me to my dying day ...
Let’s be frank, and I do say this with terrible sadness, the debilitation of our own party contributed to Brexit.
We have a leader who, unlike the vast majority of Labour members including many of those who joined up in order to support him, has never been a European true believer.
And in the referendum he failed the key test of democratic politics, which is to cut through media cynicism and the mass of seething public discontents with a compelling and positive case for Europe which forced voters to listen.
And now I see no clarion call for the fight, only a three line whip in the Commons to force Labour MPs to troop through the lobbies alongside a right-wing Tory government dancing to Iain Duncan Smith’s tune.
Lord Lamont, the Conservative pro-Brexit former chancellor, said it would be a mistake to let parliament have a vote on the final deal that could result in Britain staying in the EU. He said:
Firstly, it would be a denial of the result of the referendum and secondly, as surely as night follows day, it would make it perfectly inevitable that the EU would offer the worst possible deal in order to have it rejected by parliament.
I believe in democracy and I believe that we should proceed rapidly with this Bill without delay.
Labour peer Lord McKenzie of Luton said responsibility for the “mess” of Brexit lay with David Cameron. He explained:
[Cameron] gambled that a referendum would heal the split in his party but has ended up splitting the country. History will rightly judge him harshly.
Lord Willoughby de Broke, a hereditary peer and former Conservative who defected to Ukip, described Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech on Brexit as a “Ukip speech” and said he was thankful peers would no longer have to ratify every EU measure put before them.
The Labour peer and QC Lady Kennedy of the Shaws rejected the claim that peers simply had to accept the result of the referendum, saying this was a “degrading of public discourse and a poisoning of honest debate”. She went on:
I will support vital amendments and if they aren’t accepted I’m going to vote against this bill. This House should be urging a rethink on this whole project. This House should be saying: not in our name.
The former Met Police commissioner Lord Blair of Boughton said that without a deal on police and security cooperation after Brexit “terrorists, paedophiles and drug barons will breathe a sigh of relief”.
Lady Altmann, the Conservative peer and former pensions minister, said personal attacks had left her reluctant to speak out against Brexit. She said:
For the first time in my life though, I have been afraid of publicly saying what I believe is right.
I fear the personal attacks, social media threats and hate-filled letters that those of us counselling caution in interpreting the results of the referendum are subjected to.
I have listened to politicians admitting that they feared leaving the EU in the manner apparently planned will be economically damaging and could undermine peace and prosperity for the future, but then saying they will vote for it anyway.
In all good conscience, my lords, and despite the consequences I may personally face, I cannot follow that example.
Theresa May’s hope that the border in Ireland could be “seamless and frictionless” post Brexit was a political possibility, the Brexit select committee was told this morning.
Experts told MPs on the committee that a unique arrangement for a unique problem would be difficult but not impossible.
Federico Ortino, a lawyer specialising in international trade told them that “as a minimum” there would have to be a free trade agreement between the UK and the EU and there would have to be a special waiver within that for Ireland. He said:
Outside an FTA agreement it would be difficult that any specific deal that tried to grant some preferences in terms of trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland, it would have to come under a waiver, a specific derogation.
He was responding to questions from SDLP MP Mark Durkan who said he was concerned that “this phrase of frictionless and seamless border gets drained of meaning with more and more repetition without any examples of what it may mean.”
Ortino’s response offered a glimpse of hope to politicians who have been told by experts that legally it would be impossible not to have a border if the UK quits the customs union, while Ireland as a member of the EU club, remains in.
The committee, which was taking evidence on trade arrangements post Brexit, spent almost three hours discussing the complicated details of possible unilateral arrangements and what it would entail.
Chairman Hilary Benn said the discussion “illuminated the complexity” of arrangements Britain would have to enter into post Brexit.
The size of negotiating teams alone was challenging, MPs heard.
Jim Rollo, a professor specialising in trade at the University of Sussex, told MPs that around 900 would be needed to mirror the 700 negotiators and administrators in the European Commission directorate on trade and the 200 in agriculture, he said.
Roderick Abbott, a former deputy director-general at the WTO, believed that teams of about 25 people would be needed for simple trade deals with countries like Vietnam but the teams would need to be double in size for complicated deals with countries like Korea or Canada.
Ortino said not being “in the room with the big boys” could cause difficulties for Britain negotiating trade deals post Brexit. “Negotiating with China and India about their standards, we’re not going to get very far - the EU and US might have more clout,” he said.
But Abbott was more optimistic about the future of British trade post Brexit. Tariffs should not be a barrier in Europe, Abbott told MPs as about half are set at zero with another half set at less than 5%.
Lunchtime summary
- Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, has said Britain will have to pay a hefty price to leave the European Union. (See 1.20pm.)
- Andrea Leadsom, the environment secretary, has said that American food imported under any post-Brexit free trade deal with the US will have to meet British standards. Answering questions after giving a speech at the National Farmers Union conference, she said:
In terms of the free trade agreement and particularly the reference to the Atlantic and the Red Tractor - I’m a huge fan of the Red Tractor, and there’s absolutely nothing that’s going to knock that into a ditch as far as I’m concerned. And of course food standards are key, I already mentioned in my speech we have a manifesto commitment on animal welfare standards in international free trade agreements. We will remain committed to ensuring a level playing field to our high standards.
In her speech Leadsom also implied that the government will restrict farmers’ access to seasonal labour from the EU after Brexit, but that new technology could help them cope instead. She said:
As for seasonal agricultural workers, I have heard loud and clear the vital role they play in many farm businesses, not least in the horticultural sector.
But at the same time we mustn’t forget that a key factor behind the vote to leave the EU was to control immigration.
So I want to find out what kind of labour you need in food processing as well as farming, whilst exploring the role that innovation can play in support of this.
As I’ve travelled the UK, I’ve seen a whole raft of new technologies that complement the workforce.
Cabinet spent the majority of its time this morning discussing the importance of the union, raising suspicions that Theresa May must feel it is under particular strain at the moment ahead of the triggering of article 50.
Her spokesman refused to go into any details apart from to claim that cabinet ministers spent their time underlining how important the UK is as a union. He said ministers “touched on” Scotland’s feelings about Brexit and issues with the Northern Irish border but insisted it was a general and wide-ranging discussion.
Challenged over whether declaring their love for the union was a worthwhile way of spending their time, instead of addressing the NHS, social care crisis and worries about business rates, the spokesman said cabinet was still “most relevant”.
Although no details of the discussion are being made public, it will be interpreted as a sign of jitters within cabinet about the possibility that Nicola Sturgeon will start loudly demanding another Scottish independence referendum after March.
Updated
Britain faces hefty bill for Brexit, says European commission president
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, has said Britain will have to pay a hefty price for Brexit. He was addressing the Belgian federal parliament in Brussels and he used a French slang term which, according to the Press Association, translates precisely as “salty”, but means hefty or pricey.
According to the Press Association, Juncker said:
Our British friends need to know - and they know it already - that it [Brexit] will not be cut-price or zero-cost. The British will have to respect the commitments which they played a part in agreeing. Therefore the bill will be - to use a rather vulgar term - very salty. It will be necessary for the British to respect commitments which they freely entered into.
This is from the Press Association’s Andrew Woodcock.
UK faces "une facture très salée" (a very salty bill) for #Brexit, @JunckerEU tells Belgian MPs. What does he mean?: https://t.co/UbJ2oxNyy8
— Andrew Woodcock (@AndyWoodcock) February 21, 2017
There have been reports claiming that, when Britain triggers article 50 and begins the two-year Brexit process, the EU will demand that Britain pays a bill that could be as high as €60bn, to cover its share of proposed EU spending commitments, as well as liabilities including pensions. The Financial Times journalist Alex Barker explains the potential cost in more detail in this recent Centre for European Reform report.
In his speech Juncker also repeated the Brussels conviction that the UK will find it impossible to renegotiate a new trade deal with the EU within the two-year Brexit timetable. He said:
This will be a difficult negotiation, which will take two years to reach agreement on the exit arrangements. To agree on the future architecture of the relations between the UK and EU, it will need years.
He also said he was “sad” about the UK leaving and that he wanted the Brexit negotiations to be friendly. He said:
We need to settle our affairs not with our hearts full of a feeling of hostility, but with the knowledge that the continent owes a lot to the UK. Without Churchill, we would not be here - we mustn’t forget that, but we mustn’t be naive.
Our British friends will need to understand that we want to continue to develop European integration.
Updated
After Foreign Office questions James Duddridge, the Conservative MP who tabled the early day motion expressing no confidence in John Bercow, the speaker, used a point of order to ask if it would be debated. He acknowledged that he had received an “underwhelming” amount of support (only four other MPs have signed it), but asked if there would be a debate and vote on his no confidence motion.
Bercow replied saying there was “absolutely no reason” why the government or the backbench business committee should be allocating time for a debate on this. He said advice from the clerk of the Commons said there was no need for such a debate.
The other four MPs, all Conservatives, who signed the motion are: Karl McCartney, Andrew Bridgen, Daniel Kawczynski and Alec Shelbrooke.
Johnson also told MPs that Brexit should be seen as “Bre-entry” into the world.
In response to an earlier question, Boris Johnson told MPs that the arrival of President Trump in the White House offered the possibility of “new thinking” on Syria. He said:
I do think that the advent of the Trump administration does offer the possibility of new thinking on Syria and the hope of a new way forward.
After what has been a lacklustre election campaign in Northern Ireland things have turned a whole nastier this week with a petrol bomb attack aimed against a Sinn Fein election agent.
On Monday night the window of a black Citroen C4 Picasso was smashed and a petrol bomb thrown into the car belonging to the Sinn Fein official in staunchly unionist Bangor on the Co.Down coast.
The party’s candidate in North Down, Kieran Maxwell, condemned the attack on his agent’s car. “These mindless thugs will not stop the party in delivering its positive message to the voters,” Maxwell said.
Party leader in Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill described the incident in North Down as an attack on the entire democratic process.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, says American foreign policy is under review. We have yet to see anything coherent coming out, he says. The vacuum is being filled by Russia, she says. She asks if Boris Johnson will be proposing his own agenda.
Johnson says that the UK has been in the lead in areas like Yemen and Somalia. And the UK has advocated the approach being followed in Syria: separating Russia and Iran, and moving towards a political settlement.
Thornberry says, if that is a plan, she is a “monkey’s uncle”. When will Johnson show leadership?
Johnson says the UK wants peace negotiations for Syria to resume again as soon as possible in Geneva.
In the Commons Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, is taking questions. The Labour MP David Hanson has just asked him if the told Rex Tillerson, the new US secretary of state, when they met last week that Britain was firmly opposed to President Trump’s travel ban.
Johnson said the government had made it clear that it did not support Trump’s policy, although he answered the question generally, and did not specify whether or not he raised this with Tillerson last week.
The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt asked Johnson if he had suggested to Tillerson that Trump’s state visit should take place in 2020, to mark the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Johnson said that that was an interesting idea, but not one he raised with Tillerson.
In the House of Lords Lord Lamont, the Conservative former chancellor, has just opened day two of the second reading debate on the article 50 bill.
I won’t be covering the whole debate minute by minute, but I will be reporting any highlights.
The speaking list, showing which peers are speaking, and in which order, is here.
Amnesty International has entered the Northern Ireland Assembly election fray by reminding voters that women’s rights on issues like abortion “are not negotiable.”
The human rights organisation supports reform of the region’s near total ban on abortions in Northern Irish hospitals.
Grainne Teggart, Amnesty’s campaign manager in Northern Ireland, said that all of the parties standing in the election on 2 March must support abortion reform.
Northern Ireland’s abortion law has been found by the courts and the UN to breach women’s rights. With every passing day, women are being failed by the lack of progress on this issue. Our politicians need to stand with women and deliver much needed and long overdue change.
These reforms include allowing for abortion in cases of doomed pregnancies or fatal foetal abnormalities and when women and girls are made pregnant through sexual violence.
The largest party in the last assembly, the Democratic Unionists, are vehemently opposed to any reform of the strict abortion laws which result in thousands of local women crossing the Irish Sea for terminations in English clinics and hospitals.
But the last opinion poll about abortion taken in October 2016 showed that 72% of those surveyed supported access to abortion in cases of rape and 60% in favour for those women who wanted to terminate pregnancies in fatal foetal abnormality cases.
In the light of Paul Nuttall’s revelation that he gave a witness statement to the police about Hillsborough yesterday, this is worth a read. It’s an article in the Liverpool Echo yesterday by Prof Phil Scraton, the lead researcher and main author of the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report, about what Nuttall should give a statement about Hillsborough.
Here is an excerpt.
The Hillsborough Project, of which I was the director, was based at what is now Edge Hill University, then a college of higher education. We wrote two substantial reports, in 1990 and 1995. We worked with Jimmy McGovern on his award-winning drama-documentary, Hillsborough, first broadcast in late 1996. I accompanied many families to the Stuart-Smith scrutiny of new evidence and wrote three submissions. In 1999 I published the first edition of Hillsborough: The Truth. It was widely publicised and serialised in the Sunday Mirror.
A year later the prosecutions of the two senior officers at Hillsborough were held in Leeds. Towards the end of 2000 I published the second edition of the book. The coverage, especially in the North West, was extensive. We hosted meetings with families and survivors at Edge Hill. Paul Nuttall studied History at the College. Our Centre was in the heart of the campus. We must have passed each other on numerous occasions – on the pavements, corridors, coffee bar and so on. He would have walked past our Centre many times.
During that period, given the massive publicity our work received, Paul Nuttall could not have failed to know about the Project, its work with the bereaved and survivors.
Yet he never approached us, never shared his experiences. I understand fully there were many people who were, and have remained, unable to talk about what they witnessed on the day. What is not so readily explained is why Paul Nuttall did not drop by for even a confidential conversation, why he held back on disclosure until the Hillsborough Independent Panel was in session and why he chose national television as the forum to break his silence? These are questions of timing and context that, alongside the questions regarding the details of his experiences on the day, require explanation.
Asked about immigration at the hustings, Paul Nuttall says he does not think it is the main issue in the byelection. Brexit and the NHS are the main issues, he says. But he concedes that immigration is related to these two issues.
Jack Brereton, the Conservative candidate, says people voted to leave the EU because they wanted change. They want to control immigration, he says.
He claims immigration from outside the EU has been reduced to the tens of thousands.
(That’s not correct. Gross immigration from outside the EU is almost 300,000.)
And this is what Gareth Snell, the Labour candidate in Stoke-on-Trent Central, said about his controversial comments, about women and about Jeremy Corbyn.
I’ll take the opportunity to apologise again for the things that I said previously. I have apologised to my wife and my grandmother and my daughter because those aren’t words I would like them to have to face. So if I can take the opportunity to apologise, I will do.
With regard to the comments about Jeremy [Corbyn], look, we had a very fractious summer in our party. We spent a lot of time arguing amongst ourselves. Things got very heated and things were said. The comments that I made were to point out that we were getting to a point of hyperbole in our party that was damaging us publicly.
But since then I’ve met with Jeremy. He’s been to the constituency three times. He’s been campaigning with us. He’s been on the doorstep. And every time he spoke to somebody, they’ve been glad to talk to him.
Snell also said that he had not discussed his “IRA supporting friend of Hamas” tweet with Corbyn.
Here are some more lines from the Radio 5 Live hustings from the BBCs’ Emma Thomas.
4 #StokeCentral candidates start an hour of debate with @NickyAACampbell on @bbc5live. Q 1: Hillsborough apology? pic.twitter.com/sAUbstCRtf
— Emma J Thomas (@EmmaJThomas) February 21, 2017
#StokeCentral candidate @paulnuttallukip condemns party donor's comments on being "sick of hearing" about Hillsborough. Debate on @bbc5live
— Emma J Thomas (@EmmaJThomas) February 21, 2017
#StokeCentral candidate @gareth_snell says "fractious (Brexit) summer" in Labour Party is resolved.
— Emma J Thomas (@EmmaJThomas) February 21, 2017
Labour #StokeCentral candidate @gareth_snell says he HASNT discussed "Hamas supporter" comments about Jeremy Corbyn with his party leader.
— Emma J Thomas (@EmmaJThomas) February 21, 2017
Conservative #StokeCentral candidate Jack Brereton says he wants to deliver more quality jobs to the city with better pay. @BBCRadioStoke
— Emma J Thomas (@EmmaJThomas) February 21, 2017
LibDem #StokeCentral candidate, Dr Ali, tells @bbc5live he wants a vote on the outcome of Brexit negotiations. "In or Out" of single market
— Emma J Thomas (@EmmaJThomas) February 21, 2017
Nuttall says he spent three hours yesterday giving witness statement to police about Hillsborough
Here are the key points from Paul Nuttall’s opening comments.
- Nuttall said that he had spent three hours yesterday giving a witness statement to Operation Resolve, the criminal investigation into Hillsborough. He said that claims that he was not at the match were part of a smear campaign against him.
It is part of a wider smear campaign which started last Friday, whereby there was a claim in a newspaper that I wasn’t actually at the Hillsborough disaster even though I provided a witness statement that I was there, even though I spent three hours yesterday morning in Operation Resolve giving a witness statement. And this has been part of a wider smear campaign.
The crassness wasn’t shown by me. And I spoke to one of the former branch chairmen last night who said that he went out to bat for me on the press, on national media as well. I hold my hands up. I did not check something that went up on my website. I did not write it. But it’s my responsibility, it’s my website, I should have checked it.
- He said the BBC report quoting him as saying he lost close friends at Hillsborough was based on a quote on his website put up without his knowledge. He did not say that to the BBC directly, he said.
- He said he has apologised to the people of Liverpool for the Hillsborough error.
I got it wrong. I did not check something that went up on my website. It is not as if I’ve taken illegally from the public purse. It is not as if I have said something racist. It is not as if I have sent people to war ... I failed to check something that went up on my website. It was my fault, I’ve apologised, and that’s all I can do.
- He said that he was not happy about Arron Banks’ comment about Hillsborough. But he said he had not spoken to Banks about his remark, and could not discipline him because he was not a Ukip party member.
He’s not a member of Ukip. He has given money in the past to the party. I can’t kick him out of an organisation that he’s not a member of.
- He ruled out resigning as Ukip leader if he lost the byelection. Asked if he would stay on as leader if he lost, he replied:
It will only be 12 weeks into my leadership at the end of this byelection. What we have got here is a long-term project going forward.
Updated
Gareth Snell, the Labour candidate, was interviewed after Paul Nuttall.
He apologised for the derogatory comments about women posted on his Twitter feed some years ago.
Asked about his tweet criticising Jeremy Corbyn, and calling him an “IRA supporting friend of Hamas”, Snell said Corbyn had been to the constituency three times to back him. He said they had not spoken about that tweet.
At the start of the hustings Paul Nuttall was asked about the Ukip resignations.
He said the “crassness” cited by the Ukip chairmen who resigned was not shown by him.
But he held his hands up, he said. He had not checked what was on his website.
He also said he was the victim of a smear campaign. A news organisation (the Guardian) has suggested he lied when he said he was at Hillsborough, he said.
He said he spent three hours yesterday giving evidence to Operation Resolve about what happened at Hillsborough. He gave a witness statement, he said.
Asked if he would apologise to the people of Liverpool, he said he already had. Of course he would apologise to the people of Liverpool, he said. He said he was apologising for not checking what was on his website.
Asked about the comments from Arron Banks, the Ukip donor, about being sick of hearing of Hillsborough, Nuttall said he was not “over the moon” about them. He was not happy about them, he said.
But he said he had not spoken to Banks about the remarks. And he said he could not discipline Banks because Banks was not a party member.
Updated
Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader and the party’s candidate in Thursday’s Stoke-on-Trent Central byelection, had a fairly wretched day yesterday when two Ukip party chairmen resigned over his Hillsborough falsehood. Nuttall did not comment on the row yesterday, but he is on Radio 5 Live now for a Stoke hustings, which has just started.
I will be covering it live. Here is our story about the Ukip resignations.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: The Labour MP Rachel Reeves launches a Social Market Foundation report on self-employment.
10am: Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.
10am: Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem former business secretary, and Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary, are speaking at a ResPublica event on likelihood of UK companies facing takeovers due to fall in value of sterling.
10.30am: Andrea Leadsom, the environment secretary, speaks at the National Farmers’ Union conference.
11am: Peers resume their debate on the article 50 bill.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
Updated
