Jane Onyanga-Omara

USA TODAY

LONDON — The upper house of Parliament dealt British Prime Minister Theresa May a stinging, though temporary, defeat Wednesday by voting to guarantee European Union citizens living in the United Kingdom can stay after Britain leaves the 28-nation bloc.

The House of Lords voted 358 to 256 to amend the Brexit bill to include that guaranteed protection for EU nationals. The bill which was approved by the House of Commons — the lower house — last month, authorizes the government to start exit talks with the bloc.

The promise may not be binding on the government. The bill will return to the elected House of Commons for another vote, where there is a good chance it will be rejected since May's Conservative Party has a majority in the lower chamber. Back-and-forth between the two bodies could delay passage of the legislation and threaten May’s timetable for starting Britain's EU exit talks.

The Labour Party’s Brexit spokeswoman in the Lords, Dianne Hayter, said Europeans living in Britain “need to know now, not in two years’ time or even 12 months’ time” what their rights are, the Associated Press reported. “You can’t do negotiations with people’s futures. They’re too precious to be used as bargaining chips,” Hayter said.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said in a letter sent to lawmakers in the House of Lords on Tuesday that there was no question that EU citizens would be treated with “anything other than the utmost respect.”

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May plans to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the process that begins the divorce, by the end of March. The process to leave the EU, which Britons voted for in a referendum in June, will take at least 2 years.

Currently, there are 3 million EU nationals living in the United Kingdom and 1 million Britons living in other EU nations. Free movement of EU citizens between member states is a fundamental principle of the EU.

