Final showdown with Tory rebels likely after No 10 says it cannot accept peers’ version

The government “cannot accept” a Lords amendment giving parliament a “meaningful vote” on a Brexit deal, and will re-table its rejected version, Downing Street has said, setting up a final showdown with Tory rebels on the issue this week.

Theresa May put off a likely Commons defeat last week by promising rebels a compromise on the issue in the EU withdrawal bill. However, the eventual government amendment did not go as far as one drafted by Dominic Grieve, the Tory former attorney general.

When the bill returned to the Lords on Monday, peers passed another amendment, based on Grieve’s proposals and tabled by Lord Hailsham, by 119 votes, a bigger majority than the first time the issue was in the upper house.

Asked if May was confident about getting her version through the Commons, her spokesman said the Lords had agreed with the Commons on the majority of issues with the bill voted about on Monday, such as customs union membership and environmental protections.

He said on Tuesday: “But we cannot accept the amendment on meaningful vote agreed in the Lords. Agreeing to amendable motions would allow parliament to direct government on its approach to exiting the EU, binding the prime minister’s hands and making it harder to secure a good deal for the UK.

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“It also does not meet the reasonable tests set out last week by the prime minister and the secretary of state for exiting the European Union that any new amendment must respect the referendum result, cannot undermine the negotiations or change the constitutional role of parliament and government.

“Our original amendment struck the right balance between respecting the tests set out by the government as well as delivering on the aims of Dominic Grieve’s own amendment. That’s why we will be re-tabling our original amendment today and will look to overturn the Lords decision tomorrow.”

Re-tabling the government’s amendment, which has been roundly rejected by Grieve and other Tory rebels, sets up a vote on the issue on Wednesday, when the ping-pong process return the bill to the Commons.

Earlier on Tuesday, Grieve had said he and the other rebels were not trying to bring down the government, but said a meaningful vote before leaving the EU may help to avoid a crisis moment.

Grieve was criticised in some newspapers over the weekend when he suggested he could “collapse the government” and said he woke up in a cold sweat thinking about it.



He said: “One of the reasons I’ve supported [this amendment] is precisely to avoid a situation where the government would immediately collapse,” he said. “And I’ve been misreported on that, it was suggested I want to collapse the government, I don’t.”

Grieve said the new amendment was “a mechanism by which the House of Commons could express a view, without moving to a motion of no confidence, which could collapse the government.

“All of us must hope this doesn’t happen. But there is a risk it will happen, and if we have no deal at the very end it is a serious crisis.”

Several MPs have suggested Grieve’s amendment is unnecessary. The Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat said MPs would be “looking for a new government” if the current one failed to deliver a Brexit deal that could pass the Commons.

Grieve said he did not want to leave such a situation to chance. “If we get to a situation where we are three weeks away from no deal … the idea that it’s a good moment to get a new prime minister, have a general election … it doesn’t seem to me a good moment, if it can be avoided,” he said.