Facing revolt, prime minister agrees to allow MPs power to monitor conversion of EU laws on to the UK statute book

Theresa May has been forced to accept more scrutiny of Brexit lawmaking to head off a Tory revolt but is still heading for a showdown over how MPs get to vote on the final deal and whether the date for leaving should be fixed in law.

The prime minister made a concession on Monday by agreeing to set up a new committee of MPs to monitor any proposed legal changes as EU legislation is converted into the British statute book.

She had been facing a parliamentary defeat over the issue during the debate on the EU withdrawal bill on Tuesday, after a widespread backbench revolt among remain- and leave-supporting MPs.

However, the government has not backed down on its intention to fix the day of Brexit as 29 March 2019 or acceded to the demands of soft Brexit Tory MPs who wanted a meaningful vote on the terms of the final deal before that date.



One Conservative rebel said May was in trouble over these two issues because there were enough dissatisfied Conservatives combined with Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrat and other opposition MPs to defeat the government. The MP said the government and the rebels were currently in a standoff with neither side prepared to back down.

However, government sources were confident May had managed to convince enough of her backbenchers not to defy the whip by indicating that a vote was likely to happen well before the date of leaving and promising a second vote on legislation implementing the EU withdrawal agreement hammered out in Brussels on Friday.

The appetite for rebellion among Conservative MPs will become clearer during the two days of debate and voting on the EU withdrawal bill on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Up to 25 had threatened to revolt unless May promised more scrutiny over Brexit lawmaking, but No 10’s concessions appear to have allayed concerns among the would-be troublemakers.

The government will agree to establish a new committee of MPs to help weed out the overuse of “Henry VIII powers”, which allow ministers to make changes to secondary legislation as it is transposed.

The government argued that ministers would only make use of the powers to make minor tweaks, such as changing the names of regulatory bodies to refer to British rather than EU institutions.

Quick guide What are 'Henry VIII powers'? Show Hide What are 'Henry VIII powers'? One of the jobs of the EU withdrawal bill – the government’s key piece of Brexit legislation, which Theresa May hailed as a "great repeal bill" - is to transpose European Union law into UK law.

Because of the huge volume of EU law, and the limited time available before Brexit in March 2019, so-called "Henry VIII clauses" included in the bill give ministers the power to tweak legislation where it would not operate properly if simply cut and pasted on to the UK statute book. Examples given by the government include cases in which EU law makes reference to a European regulator that will no longer have jurisdiction over the UK after Brexit. Ministers will be able to use “statutory instruments” – a long-established way of changing legislation without giving MPs the opportunity to scrutinise all the details. However, critics, including former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, have warned since the legislation was published that the scope for these so-called Henry VIII powers was too broadly drawn and could be abused by ministers to bypass parliament. The powers are named after the Statute of Proclamations 1539, which gave King Henry VIII the power to make laws directly: though in this case they would be wielded by David Davis, Michael Gove and other ministers — not the Queen. Photograph: Niday Picture Library / Alamy St/www.alamy.com

However, senior MPs across the Commons expressed worries that the powers could be misused. Dominic Grieve, a Conservative former attorney general, told the procedure committee that the bill represented the “most extraordinary arrogation of powers” by the executive that he had seen during 20 years in parliament.

To deal with the problem, Downing Street said it would accept amendments proposed by the House of Commons procedure committee, which create a new process to ensure statutory instruments cannot be waved through the Commons without scrutiny under the “negative procedure”, whereby legislation is accepted if there is no objection after a certain period of time.

The job of the new “sifting committee” will be to look at each of these instruments and recommend which ones require the “affirmative procedure” instead, whereby there is a Commons debate and vote before they become law. The committee would have10 sitting days to make this recommendation.

May’s official spokesman said No 10 would be accepting the proposals in full.

“We recognise the role of parliament in scrutinising the bill, and we have been clear throughout that we’re taking a pragmatic approach to what we’ve always said is a vital piece of legislation. Where MPs and peers can improve the bill, we will work with them,” he said.

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The spokesman said the cabinet had discussed Brexit on Monday, with May thanking David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and government officials for helping to clinch last week’s “significant milestone” agreement with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.

He said May relayed to cabinet ministers that voters had told her at events in her Maidenhead constituency over the weekend that they believed “we’re on our way”. This was the headline on the Daily Mail’s front-page Brexit story on Saturday.

May’s tricky week will end with her attendance at the EU summit where leaders will decide whether enough progress has been made on Brexit to progress to talks on trade and transition. After that, she faces the headache of discussing with her deeply divided cabinet how the UK government would like the “end state” of Brexit to look. The prime minister’s spokesman confirmed this would happen at their final weekly meeting before Christmas next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a report from the Rand Corporation, an authoritative US thinktank, has said a Brexit without a deal could take 4.7% out of UK economy over 10 years, costing each taxpayer $2,144 (£1,607) and a total of $140bn.

The study, one of the largest of the various forms of Brexit on the European, British and American economies, found that in no scenario, including even the softest Brexit of remaining in the single market like Norway, would the UK be better off.

The report says it may take as long as 12 years from Brexit for any effects from regulatory divergence from the EU to have any beneficial impact. It says the most advantageous Brexit will be a tripartite free trade deal between the US, the UK and the EU, but it says this outcome is politically highly unlikely.

There have been many previous studies trying to model the impact of various forms of Brexit. The Rand Europe study takes into account those studies, covers more scenarios and analyses the impact on the US economy.

It says the benefit to the US of a trade deal with the UK will be trivial and warns that if the UK opts for the no-deal exit then pressure on UK public finances will be large enough to threaten existing British defence spending commitments, potentially undermining Nato.

It says an EU without the UK “may be more willing to create barriers for non-EU companies, to the detriment of US companies and the American economy”.