Nick Clegg: MPs deserve a vote on the final plan for Brexit – not a vague sketch As the Government peppers Parliament with “concesssions” in its attempt to push the EU Withdrawal Bill onto the Statute Book, […]

As the Government peppers Parliament with “concesssions” in its attempt to push the EU Withdrawal Bill onto the Statute Book, MPs should not be taken in. Beyond the Parliamentary intricacies of late night debates, knife-edge votes and cross-party amendments there remains a simple question: will MPs, at the end of the day, have a meaningful vote on both the terms of our departure from the EU and the details of our future relationship with the EU?

Anything less would be a dereliction of the duty MPs have towards their constituents on such momentous decisions. If the answer is no, then MPs should not play ball.

‘It will be like buying a house on the basis of a few grainy photos from a dodgy estate agent who won’t allow you to visit the inside’ The i politics newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

At the moment, Theresa May and David Davis are lurching this way and that in an ever more disorganised attempt to curry favour with MPs. They have sought to butter up the Brexiteers on the Tory backbenches by promising that the Brexit date would be enshrined in law as part of the withdrawal bill. Then they attempted to win over the likes of Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve and a growing number of concerned Tory MPs by proposing that Parliament will get a vote on a Bill enshrining whatever threadbare deal they manage to bring back from Brussels.

Why pick a date?

For the most part, these concessions are unnecessary, synthetic and insincere. Putting the Brexit date – March 29th 2019 – into legislation is a particularly specious gesture. It may act as catnip to the increasingly agitated Brexiteers, but to our European partners the sight of the British government shutting down the possibility of extending the Brexit talks must look absurd. As they know, and as I do from my time working in the EU, deadlines can be, and are, frequently missed.

And the suggestion from the Government that if MPs have the temerity to reject the Brexit deal they will be responsible for the chaos of no deal is as thuggish as it is misleading – if MPs were to reject a bad deal, the EU would pause the Article 50 timetable rather than push us over the edge of the Brexit cliff.

There will be no full deal by the deadline

There is, however, a longer term issue which MPs must also now confront: no one in the EU negotiation team believes that there is even a remote possibility of completing a full deal on Britain’s future relationship with the European Union by March 2019.

Instead, the details of the future relationship will be thrashed out during a transition period after we have formally left. So there is now a high likelihood that MPs will be asked to give their consent to Britain’s departure from the EU before knowing the detail of our future relationship with the EU. It will be like buying a house on the basis of a few grainy photos from a dodgy estate agent who won’t allow you to visit the inside.

‘Members of Parliament must hold firm and reject the government’s tactics’

On a recent trip to Brussels, it was made quite clear to me that the two negotiating teams are aiming for no more than a “heads of agreement” deal by the time Britain reaches its Article 50 deadline. This means that David Davis will return with little more than an outline of detail-free pledges on areas like security and combating terrorism, and a vague promise to strike a Canada-style free trade agreement.

The words of such a “heads of agreement” will no doubt be warm and refer to how “deep” and “special” the future EU and UK relationship will be, but the reality is that the deal David Davis will bring back to Parliament will be intolerably vague.

What assurances will there be for British farmers once we quit the EU? What guarantees will Mr Davis make to the UK’s financial services industry about its future, especially if ‘passporting” rights are lost after Brexit? What are the consequences for our legal services? What will Brexit mean for cross-border crime-fighting if Britain is no longer a full EU member of cross-continental databases and resources? And how on earth will “free trade” be maintained at a time when we will be retreating from the world’s most open trading bloc and replacing it with a far narrower, inferior trade arrangement which will reintroduce a barrage of trade restrictions?

Signing a blank cheque

In effect, Mr Davis will be asking British legislators to nod through a document that might as well be made up of blank pages and question marks. When it comes to choosing our nation’s future, the detail matters. Being fobbed off with a “heads of agreement” will not do.

So Members of Parliament must hold firm and reject the government’s tactics. They must make it clear that it would be a profound breach of democracy for MPs to endorse a blueprint for Britain’s future which will be made up of little more than white noise.

As Parliament begins to pick apart the government’s legislative programme for Brexit, Members of Parliament must set aside their party ties, put country first, and be clear that they will not accept anything other than a meaningful vote on a detailed proposal about Britain’s future outside the EU. The government’s legislative contortions will continue, but it must be given nowhere else to turn.

@Nick_Clegg