The British government has no legal obligation to consult parliament on triggering the formal divorce procedure with the European Union, but lawmakers will have a say, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said yesterday.
May has said she will not invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, beginning the formal two-year process for leaving the bloc, before the end of the year to allow the government time to prepare an exit strategy.
Some opponents of Brexit say that since the EU referendum result is not legally binding, elected lawmakers should review the vote before the process is started but the government has insisted the prime minister has the power to trigger an exit.
On Saturday the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported May would not hold a parliamentary vote before invoking Article 50.
“The will of the people must be respected and it must be implemented...
There is no legal obligation to consult parliament on triggering Article 50 — that position has been well set out,” the spokesman told reporters, adding that parliament had overwhelmingly backed holding the EU referendum.
“Parliament will be involved, it will have a say, opinions will be aired.”
London law firm Mishcon de Reya has begun legal action to demand the British government win legislative approval from parliament before triggering Article 50.
A hearing is scheduled in mid-October.
The investment manager behind the legal challenge has said many British voters were fooled into backing Brexit without realising there was no credible plan.
Theresa May is being urged to consider reviving the principle of social insurance to help struggling low-paid workers, as she prepares to flesh out her vision of “a country that works for everyone”. The prime minister, who will hold the first cabinet meeting since the summer break at Chequers this week, is keen to show that social reform and tackling “burning injustice” remain a priority, despite the urgent need to clarify what the new government hopes to achieve from Brexit.
May is under pressure, not least from her own back benches, to give a clearer signal as to what kind of deal her government hopes to negotiate with the other EU member-states as the government moves to implement the voters’ decision to leave the European club.
Ministers appear to have taken distinct stances on the best deal Britain can hope to strike with the chancellor, Philip Hammond, stressing the importance of retaining access to the single market, including for financial services firms, while Brexiters Liam Fox and David Davis, both of whom will have key roles in the negotiation process, are thought to prefer a go-it-alone approach.
Another knotty issue in May’s back-to-work inbox is Hinkley Point C,
the nuclear reactor due to be built by state-owned French firm EDF with Chinese backing, in a complex deal signed by Osborne.
The prime minister has launched an inquiry into the project before giving it the go-ahead, amid concerns about security and value for money.
But the Chinese ambassador has warned that a decision to cancel it could affect diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The new business and energy minister, Greg Clark, is also known to be keen to scrutinise the details of the deal and one potential option is to try to separate agreement on Hinkley from a second reactor, at Bradwell in Essex, that China hopes to build.
A decision on Hinkley is expected in September.
May will visit China next weekend for her first major international summit — a G20 leaders’ meeting in Huangzhou, in the east of the country, where she is expected to hold her first face-to-face meetings with Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.
Her fellow leaders are likely to urge her to push ahead with the Brexit process, to minimise the risk that a prolonged period of uncertainty saps economic confidence.
The International Monetary Fund recently warned that the referendum result had thrown a “spanner in the works” of the global economy.
A decision on whether to back a third runway at Heathrow — or other options for expanding airport capacity in the south-east such as increasing the size of Gatwick — is also expected in the autumn.
Meanwhile May will chair the first meeting of her social reform cabinet committee this week — a gathering of relevant ministers — in a bid to show that improving the lives of those she described in her first speech in Downing Street as “just managing” is high on her agenda.
One option thought to be under consideration is to shift the focus of welfare policy from the cost-cutting approach of George Osborne, which many Conservatives believe reached its limit when reductions to tax credits and disability payments were rejected by his own backbenchers during a public outcry, to a self-help system.
May’s new director of policy, John Godfrey, is a keen advocate of what in his last job, at financial services giant Legal and General, he called “Beveridge 2.0”: using technology to introduce new forms of social insurance.
Related Story