House of Lords gives unopposed Second Reading to Article 50 Bill
This week saw the Second Reading debate of the Article 50 legislation in the House of Lords. Although the Prime Minister seemingly had little difficulty getting the bill through the Commons, there was speculation at the start of the week that the upper chamber might be more intractable. However, there was never any serious prospect of peers attempting to block Article 50 completely, and it unanimously passed its Second Reading after a two-day debate.
The real test will come next week when the bill goes to Committee Stage, where peers will try to alter the legislation. Brexit Secretary David Davis has acknowledged that some of the tabled amendments – which if passed would guarantee the residency status of EU nationals currently living in the UK, and require the Government to provide Parliament with a quarterly progress report on the negotiations – may find majority support in the Lords. Should this happen, the bill will return to the Commons in what is known as “ping pong”, as the two sides attempt to reach agreement.
While there may be turbulence in the coming weeks, the Government is confident that the bill should receive Royal Assent in time for the Prime Minister to meet her deadline for triggering Article 50 by the end of March.
Another poorly judged intervention
The resumption of the debate around Article 50 was preceded by a return to the public eye by Tony Blair. In a speech hosted by Open Britain last Friday, the former Prime Minister argued that the public’s view on Brexit may change once the true cost of leaving the EU was made clear. He said that Britain’s departure would cause real economic damage, and called on Remain supporters to “rise up” and stop the process.
Although his performance was faultless, speaking with a passion and self-believe that reminded us why he still stands head and shoulders above his successors as Labour leader, Blair’s contribution was condemned as ill-judged. Iain Duncan Smith called him “arrogant, undemocratic and deeply out of touch” for suggesting that people had voted to leave the EU because they hadn’t been given information they could understand. The criticism wasn’t restricted to Brexit campaigners. Shadow Brexit Minister Jenny Chapman said the speech was a mistake that would deepen and entrench the divisions in the country brought by the referendum.
Naturally, Blair’s intrusion into the debate brought up unflattering comparisons with the other intervention that continues to define his premiership and poison his legacy – that of Iraq. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was particularly scathing, dismissing Blair as “the guy who dragooned the country into the Iraq War on a completely false prospectus with consequences which foreign ministers here are still trying to deal with.”
Government clamps down on assets of human rights abusers
Finally this week, the Criminal Finances Bill cleared its House of Commons stages, having been amended at Report Stage to incorporate an amendment which would allow the Government to freeze the assets of foreign officials accused of corruption or human rights abuses. The legislation mirrors similar steps taken in the United States and was inspired by the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for investment fund and asset management company Hermitage Capital, who was arrested and died in jail after alleging that Russian officials had defrauded the firm out of $230 million.
Security Minister Ben Wallace told the Commons that the bill, which now goes to the Lords for consideration, would make the UK a “hostile environment” for those seeking to move, hide and use the proceeds of crime or corruption.