First secretary of state Damian Green stresses importance of bill passing and says ministers will listen to ‘reasonable points’

Theresa May’s deputy has signalled that the government is prepared to make concessions on its EU withdrawal bill to head off a Tory revolt over concerns it gives ministers too much power.



The first secretary of state, Damian Green, also sought to reassure businesses that have reacted with alarm to a leaked draft of immigration plans proposing time-limited visas and fingerprinting for new arrivals.

Green said he would not comment on the Home Office documents leaked to the Guardian, but promised the final proposals would not cause an economic hit to businesses when they are published in “a few weeks’ time”.



Before the bill’s second reading in the House of Commons on Thursday Green said the government would listen to “reasonable points” as the withdrawal bill makes its way through parliament in the coming weeks.

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There is widespread concern among opposition parties and some Conservative rebels that the bill to convert EU legislation into British law will not give MPs enough power to scrutinise the process.

As MPs prepare for their first day of debate, Green told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the concerns were not justified but that the government was in listening mode.

Asked whether the government would give ground to avoid defeat, he said: “People who make reasonable points, we will listen to them and hear what they have to say … What I’m saying is we will obviously listen. It’s very important the bill will get passed. It’s very surprising Labour is voting against it and they have questions to answer about that.”

Any concessions are likely to come at the next stage of the parliamentary process in October, when Conservative MPs will attempt to make amendments to the legislation, rather than trying to block its passage. The government, however, is already trying to appease the rebels, with May saying on Wednesday that she would meet Anna Soubry, one of the Tory MPs fighting against a hard Brexit, to discuss her concerns.

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Labour plans to vote against the legislation on Monday, partly as a result of its reservations about ministers’ “power grab”, which will allow the government to change bits of EU laws through secondary legislation rather than primary legislation. Secondary legislation is subject to much less detailed scrutiny by MPs.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, told the Today programme: “There is nothing about our position which is intended to frustrate or delay the process … This is about what role parliament has in the terms of leaving. A lot has been said this morning about the fact this bill converts EU law into our law but it does a lot more than that.

“The article 50 agreement has to be implemented. This bill provides that it will be implemented by delegated powers and there are at least 1,000 pieces of delegated legislation contemplated under this bill. These are instruments that are not debated, cannot be amended, are rarely voted on and the last time a negative instrument was annulled was 38 years ago.”

Employers claimed on Wednesday that Britain’s blueprint for a post-Brexit immigration policy, outlined in leaked documents, would be catastrophic for some industries.

Corporate chiefs and industry leaders in sectors including housebuilding, aerospace, farming and hotels said the tighter controls could lead to labour shortages and damage the economy, as one of their biggest fears about Brexit shows signs of becoming a reality. Other proposals in the document include a “direct numerical cap” on the overall level of migrants entering the UK and forcing employers to put British workers first.

Asked whether the final immigration plans would cause an economic hit, Green said: “You’ll have to wait and see but essentially, no. What we seek to do at all times is strike the right balance so that British business can continue to flourish and prosper.”

He added: “We want both to make sure attract more than the fair share of the brightest and best but at the same time but do need to control the numbers better and have lower numbers.

“As I say, sensible immigration policy strikes the right balance so that we continue to attract people to enable our businesses to operate but particularly among low skilled workers there is quite a lot of evidence that if we have too many low skilled workers coming in one of the effects is to depress the wages of the lowest paid.”



The signs that May is prepared to make concessions come as she was criticised for misrepresenting the findings of a House of Lords committee to justify her EU withdrawal bill.

The Lords constitution committee accused the prime minister of ignoring its clear criticism of the legislation for bringing about an unprecedented transfer of powers from parliament to ministers.

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It said it was wrong for May and David Davis, the Brexit secretary, to take its report on the legislation as an endorsement and accused them of selectively quoting its words.

The committee released a new interim report on Thursday calling for the government to act on its criticism of the transfer of powers, as MPs prepare to debate the bill in the House of Commons.

The committee, led by Ann Taylor, a Labour peer, said it wanted to restate its “profound concerns” about the legislation. May and Davis had quoted a previous interim report saying the government would need relatively wide powers to make necessary changes to EU law, but they did not mention its explicit call for a number of limitations on those powers.

The peers’ central recommendation is that powers granted to ministers under the bill must only be used to make the necessary technical changes to adapt EU law to function after Brexit and not deployed to implement policy decisions.

The committee also called for better parliamentary scrutiny of secondary legislation implementing policy decisions. Taylor said the legislation in its current form would “create very real difficulties for parliament in fulfilling its constitutional role to scrutinise this bill”.

“We acknowledge that the government needs significant powers in order to deliver legal certainty after Brexit. However, we warned the government that such powers must come with tougher parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms and we are disappointed that we have not only been misquoted by the government, but that our key recommendations have been ignored,” she said.

Paul Tyler, a Lib Dem peer and constitutional spokesman for his party, said: “No matter what your position on Brexit, absolutely no one benefits if the legislation is a mess.

“The prime minister needs to stop misrepresenting the work and findings of a parliamentary committee and start paying attention to what they have to say. It is in the best interests of the whole country.”