Article 50: Parliamentary Approval
Debate between Chi Onwurah and John Penrose(8 years, 4 months ago)
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John Penrose
As I said earlier to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and, I think, to the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), discussions are already under way. We are endeavouring to involve everyone and to seek consensus whenever possible but, ultimately, foreign policy is reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. While we want to ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute, and that, as far as possible, there is a collective view so that we understand what are the best opportunities for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, at the end of the day the matter must come back to the United Kingdom Government and Parliament.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Brexit means Brexit, but there is no agreed definition of what “Brexit” means, apart from the fact that it involves parliamentary sovereignty. Is the Minister seriously proposing that we should undergo such a momentous seismic change as Brexit without its having been defined to the British people before the referendum, or decided on by Parliament after it?
John Penrose
The hon. Lady is right: the details will become a great deal clearer as the negotiation goes through. We will all discover more about the various facets of how Brexit will affect different parts of our lives as the negotiations near completion. However, I must repeat what I have said several times already: we shall not be able to say how Parliament will engage with that until the new Prime Minister has had a chance to lay out her timetable for the negotiations, whereupon it will be possible to assess when opportunities for debate and discussion will occur.