Chris Bryant
Main Page: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)Department Debates - View all Chris Bryant's debates with the HM Treasury
Article 50: Parliamentary Approval
Chris Bryant Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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John Penrose
I am happy to confirm that this is not a question of “if” we leave the EU but “how”, so the calculation that we—particularly the new Prime Minister and her team—need to make is about the best way to structure and time negotiations to maximise our leverage. I am sure that the incoming Prime Minister will have read the Committee’s report with great care, as have we all, and will take those factors into consideration.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
At the beginning of his first answer, the Minister said that this was not just a legal matter, but a political matter, so I cannot understand for the life of me why the Government are challenging the legal case. Surely sending in lawyers is just a complete waste of money—whether it is 10 lawyers or 1,000, it does not matter. Why are the Government wasting money on trying to assert that this is just a matter of royal prerogative, rather than accepting the political fact that while, yes, Brexit is Brexit—that may be the case—the Minister is far more likely to get a good deal from other European countries if he has managed to bind both sides of this House and both Houses of Parliament into a strong negotiating position?
John Penrose
I had thought, and hoped, that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley was speaking for more Labour Members and that we would be able to achieve a degree of cross-party consensus. It would be helpful to have country-wide unanimity on this issue, so I am sad that there does not seem to be such unanimity on the Opposition Benches. The Attorney General, who is sitting next to me, is convinced that the Government’s case is strongly arguable, and that is why we are taking this case to court.