Decision early next year could leave government with tight timetable for a vote of MPs before self-imposed March deadline

David Davis has confirmed that the government may have to wait until January for a supreme court ruling on whether it can press ahead with the formal process of exiting the EU without a parliamentary vote.

The Brexit secretary told the House of Commons that the supreme court would hear the government’s appeal against last week’s high court decision early next month; but a judgment might not come until the new year.

Asked by Labour’s Angela Smith MP whether it could be January before a judgment is handed down, Davis said: “Yes, she is right in one respect, that it may come as late as early January. The expectation is that the case will be heard in the early part of December, and it will take two or three weeks I expect to get the judgment written up. But I think it is the proper role of government to wait and respect the judgment we get from the supreme court, full stop.”

A January ruling would leave a tight timetable for the government to win a parliamentary vote – particularly if, as Davis had previously suggested, it means passing a bill through both houses.

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In a robust statement delivered in the Commons in response to last week’s judgment, Davis insisted Theresa May would stick to her timetable of invoking article 50 before the end of March. He also reiterated that the government was determined not to allow its hands to be tied by revealing too much about its negotiating strategy to MPs.

“Parliamentary scrutiny, yes; telling the prime minister which cards to play, seeking to force her to disclose her hand to those she will be negotiating with, no,” Davis said.

He accused politicians including Nick Clegg and Owen Smith, who have said they will seek to amend any legislation triggering article 50, of trying to scupper Brexit, saying: “The whole approach is designed to wreck the negotiations.”

Davis was responding to the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, who had claimed the government’s strategy, which was based on triggering article 50 without recourse to parliament, was coming unstuck.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gina Miller gives a statement outside the high court after it ruled on her article 50 case. Photograph: Hannah Mckay/EPA

“The government has approached its task in the wrong way, and its approach is now unravelling, and I’m afraid to say it’s now unravelling in the most divisive and ugly way,” Starmer said.

Starmer called for the government to disclose its position on a series of issues, including whether it wanted to remain within the customs union; and how it would maintain cooperation on security issues with the rest of the EU.

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Davis said the government had already set out some principles of its approach, including control of laws, control of borders, and the “freest possible” trade in goods and services with the EU and elsewhere.

He said parliament would have ample opportunities to debate Brexit, including as MPs pass a planned great repeal bill next year. But he insisted it would be unhelpful to give more details of the government’s negotiating stance, and MPs and peers could not dictate the talks with the rest of the EU.

“We won’t achieve a good negotiation outcome if this is a negotiation being run by 650 people in this House of Commons, or nearly 900 in the other place. No negotiation in history has been run that way,” he said.

“If parliament insists on setting out a detailed minimum negotiating position, that will quickly become the maximum possible offer from our negotiating partners.”

Davis said the government still believed a parliamentary vote was unnecessary, and would take that argument to the supreme court. “We believe it is proper and lawful for the government to trigger article 50 by prerogative powers,” he said.

The Brexit secretary defended the independence of the judiciary in the face of the vehement backlash of the past few days; and criticised attacks on Gina Miller, who brought the case. “I can’t find words strong enough frankly to say how much I detest the attacks on her,” Davis said.

”And frankly from what I’ve heard about them – I haven’t seen them myself directly but from what I’ve heard about them – they sound to me to be effectively criminal attacks, because incitement of violence, threats of violence, racial abuse, are all crimes.”

On Monday, Miller spoke out against abusive messages she had received since launching the case, which she said included “the encouragement of sexual violence, physical violence and death threats”.



“I’m absolutely appalled because I think it’s a reflection of – as I’ve called it – the dark clouds gathering over the UK and it’s incredibly worrying that that’s a place we appear to be in,” she told the Press Association. “I think the belittling of me as an individual is definitely connected to me being a woman and a woman of colour.”

Miller said she was disappointed by the government’s decision to appeal against the high court decision, which she said was handed down by “three of the most respected … successful, independent judges in the country”.

She added: “I never thought I’d hear a British prime minister say that she was supreme and above the judges, I mean that is beyond anything I ever thought I’d hear the British prime minister say, and to me it confirms exactly why this case is so important.”

On Saturday, under heavy pressure to break her silence and meet her statutory obligations, the lord chancellor Liz Truss defended the independence of the judiciary, saying it is the “foundation upon which our rule of law is built”.

That did not go far enough, the former lord chief justice, Lord Judge has said. “The lord chancellor has a statutory obligation to do it. That is one of her functions, to defend the judiciary.

“And it was a little too late and not a lot. To say you believe in independence of judges is fine but it doesn’t actually address why this matters at a particular time,” he told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

Lord Judge added that a planned march to be led by Nigel Farage on the day the supreme court hears the article 50 case poses a danger to the integrity of Britain’s institutions.



“I don’t think it makes any difference to the judicial decision but it does make a difference to public order. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, the supreme court decides the high court was wrong. It will undoubtedly be conveyed as a victory for the demonstrators. It won’t be, but that’s what will be conveyed. And if that is conveyed you’ve undermined the administration of justice.”

The supreme court is still awaiting a formal submission from the government’s lawyers setting out its application to appeal against the high court ruling.



On Monday, the Brexit referendum campaign chief Michael Gove said he backed the high court judges who had come under fire from some segments of the media. The former justice secretary said: “The high court judges who’ve ruled on article 50 are brilliant, thoughtful, wise and decent men – their judgment deserves respect.”

On Tuesday a court in Belfast will hear a separate application from Northern Ireland claimants who want to combine their challenge with the supreme court case. The Belfast claimants still have to obtain permission for their case to “leapfrog” over the appeal court stage directly to the supreme court.



Because the case raises so many issues about the relative powers of ministers and parliament, as many as 11 justices – an unprecedented number – are expected to sit on the supreme court panel. The case is provisionally scheduled for 7 and 8 December, but additional days may yet be added.

The attorney general, Jeremy Wright QC, will again lead the government’s legal team in the article 50 hearing.

Later on Monday in the Commons the business secretary, Greg Clark, opened a separate debate on workers’ rights after Brexit. Clark pledged that all rights Britain’s workers currently enjoy because of EU membership would be protected and incorporated into UK law as part of the government’s great repeal bill.

“No one listening to this debate should think that we have any intention of eroding the rights that we enjoy in this country through our process of leaving the European Union, because in fact the opposite is true,” he said. “We will be using the legislation before this house to entrench all existing workers’ rights in British law, whatever the future relationship that the UK has with the EU.”

Protecting existing workers’ rights after exiting the EU was one of the key “red lines” Labour set out for assessing the government’s approach to Brexit.