European Council

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, if the amendment for a series of indicative votes passes, we will fulfil our commitment to the House of Commons to provide government time for the process to proceed. It will be for the Commons to put forward options for consideration and to determine the procedure by which it wishes to do so.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness might clarify one point for me. She has told us that the Prime Minister does not believe it is worth putting the current deal to the House of Commons this week.

[A noble Lord]

She has not said that.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The implication is that she does not think it will be passed. However, she has also told us that only if it is passed this week will the extension to 22 May apply. Presumably, the Prime Minister is optimistic that at some point this deal will pass, but what happens if the deal is passed next week or the week after? On which date would we leave the EU in those circumstances?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, we hope to work towards bringing the deal back this week. Under the terms of the EU conclusions, the agreement was that the deal had to pass this week for us to get the extension to 22 May. Our hope is that we get the deal through this week. Obviously, if we do not, the next crunch point will be 12 April. I suppose we could ask the EU if we could bring the deal back next week but, under the current terms, we need to bring it back this week. That is why we will be working hard to ensure that we can get a majority for it.