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Brexit: Early election bill likely to clear Commons as amendments extending franchise not selected - live news
Brexit: MPs vote for general election on 12 December - live news
(about 2 hours later)
My colleague, Rajeev Syal, has this interesting line from a Labour source on trigger ballots:
Boris Johnson has told reporters it’s time for the country to “come together to get Brexit done” as he left the Conservative backbench MPs’ meeting.
Note from a Labour source following NEC meeting: "All trigger ballots will be paused with immediate effect." So Virendra Sharma, Emma Lewell-Buck and Kate Osamor will no longer be challenged; am told that Roger Godsiff may still face action.
Here’s a little more detail from HuffPost UK:
And there are now multiple reports in Westminster that Boris Johnson is offering to return the whip to some of the 21 MPs from whom it was withdrawn:
PM leaving tells reporters as he leaves meeting: “It’s going to be a tough election but we will do the best we can.” Curious that he tries play down the Tories’ chance
EXCL: Understand Downing Street has tonight begun restoring the whip to some of the Tory 21
It is worth noting that Rees-Mogg has again declined to explicitly address whether or not the election of a new Commons speaker will go ahead before parliament is dissolved next Wednesday.
Source says Boris Johnson is personally offering the whip back to some of the group. It is expected to be those who voted for the programme motion on WAB
Asked about the matter for a second time in the Commons, he said he had nothing to add to his previous answer, which we summarised just a few moments ago.
New: No 10 says PM met with 10 of the 21 ex-Tory rebel MPs tonight - those 10 have all had the Conservative whip restored
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has said:
Sir Olly Robbins, who was Theresa May’s chief Brexit adviser when she was PM, has been giving evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee this afternoon. Here are the main points he made.
This election is a once-in-a-generation chance to transform our country and take on the vested interests holding people back.
Robbins suggested he was slow to realise how difficult it would be finding a solution to the post-Brexit border issue for goods in Ireland. He told the committee:
The choice at this election could not be clearer: A Labour government will be on your side; while Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, who think they’re born to rule, will only look after the privileged few.
I think we had all, to some extent, professionally grown up in a world where the movement of goods was a really very boring and obvious thing.
We will now launch the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change that our country has ever seen. This is our chance to build a country for the many not the few and fit for the next generation.
And the movement of people was interesting and politically controversial. And we therefore thought that the central issue in settling our post-Brexit relationship with Ireland was going to be the maintenance of the common travel area, and the mutual sustainment of rights for Irish people and British people in one another’s territories, and the sort of core of the identity problem that the Good Friday agreement had attempted to solve.
Responding to the vote in parliament for a general election, the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, has said:
I think I probably, to only criticise myself, was slower. I had weeks rather than months to come to the realisation that actually the people-side of this, while not being complacent about any of it, was, as a bureaucrat, an easier problem to see one’s way through than the movement of physical goods.
This general election will decide the future of our country for generations. It is our best chance to elect a government to stop Brexit.
He dismissed suggestions that the UK would be better prepared for Brexit if civil servants had planned for a leave vote before the 2016 referendum. He told MPs:
The Liberal Democrats are the strongest party of Remain and will be standing on a manifesto to stop Brexit by revoking article 50.
I know debate continues to rage, rightly and understandably, about whether it was the right political decision not to do contingency planning.
This country deserves better than Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn and I am excited to take our positive, pro-European, liberal vision to the country as the Liberal Democrat candidate for prime minister.
I do think, as I say, very personal view, you can probably overdo the extent to which a vast Whitehall process of churning out ring-binders full of papers pre-June 2016 would somehow have meant that the British state was far, far better prepared afterwards.
Boris Johnson received a rapturous reception as he arrived at a meeting of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee after his bid for an early general election cleared the Commons. Conservative MPs cheered and banged the table as he arrived for the meeting in parliament.
He suggested that, if the civil service had tried to flag up post-Brexit problems with the Irish border before the referendum, no one would have taken any notice. He said:
Asked whether the Commons will be electing a new speaker before it dissolves, Rees-Mogg says the dissolution date is Wednesday, so the Commons may be sitting on Monday and Tuesday.
I think if my Cabinet Office colleagues, who were in post at the time or more generally across Whitehall - I was in the Home Office at the time - if we’d been asked to produce a paper on what does the border look like after a no vote, a leave vote, I think we would have ended up in a position whereby we would have produced what I hope would have been a good quality piece of work, but I’m not sure anyone would have read it.
The leader of the Commons, Jacob-Rees-Mogg, says he’ll set out tomorrow how the government intends to proceed for the rest of the week.
That’s all from me for tonight.
Also tomorrow, he says, the prime minister will address the Commons on the Grenfell inquiry’s report and MPs will discuss the Northern Ireland budget bill.
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is now taking over.
My colleague, Rowena Mason, has just published this on the vote for a general election on 12 December:
From LBC’s Theo Usherwood
UK general election confirmed for 12 December after Brexit stalemate
Prof John Curtice’s election prediction: Tories beware. Election will return more than a 100 MPs not from Labour or Conservatives. And whilst Corbyn can do a deal with another party to stop Brexit, Johnson cannot to do a deal to deliver Brexit. https://t.co/grwCGSoLSs
Boris Johnson’s wish for a general election on 12 December looks set to be granted after MPs voted in favour of it by 438 to 20; a majority of 418.
Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, is responding to Cat Smith.
The prime minister had already defeated an attempt to change the date to 9 December (see: 8.01pm) – the only serious opposition remaining to his proposal – and the bill that seeks to implement a 12 December general election will now pass to the Lords, who are expected to wave it through.
He says that the government needs time to pass a budget for the devolved administration in Northern Ireland before parliament can be prorogued. If that legislation does not get passed, public sector workers would end up not being paid, he says.
MPs will soon vote on whether or not to hold the early general election, with the date – assuming they back it – having now been set as 12 December.
And he says he does not accept the argument about students not being able to vote if the poll is on 12 December. He says most of the big universities will not broken up for the Christmas holidays by then. And he says students always have the option of voting by post.
Dec 12 looks like the election date, if MPs vote for it shortly. Amendment on Dec 9 date defeated.
Cat Smith, the shadow deputy leader of the Commons, opens the debate, moving amendment 2, the one that would change the date of the election from Thursday 12 December to Monday 9 December. She says Labour wants as many people as possible to participate in the election.
The Independent Group for Change MP, Chris Leslie, tried to move an unexpected amendment but he’s been denied by the deputy speaker, Eleanor Laing. She then makes way for the Speaker, John Bercow, who calls for MPs to vote on a third and final reading.
Labour fears that students would be less likely to vote on 12 December, because some of them would have gone home at the end of term.
The Commons has rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal to hold an early general on 9 December, rather than the government’s plan to do so three days later.
MPs have now moved on to the bill’s committee stage. Lindsay Hoyle, the deputy speaker who is chairing this stage of the proceedings, has just read out the amendments selected. They are the same as those on the provisional list issued earlier. (See 5.19pm.)
MPs voted against amendment 2 by 315 votes to 295; a majority of 20.
MPs have given the bill its second reading by acclamation.
Just before MPs went off to vote, the Tory backbench MP Steve Baker warned that, if the Lords amended the early parliamentary general election bill, they would be “playing with their own futures”. Baker, the chairman of the hard Brexit-supporting European Research Group, told the Commons:
John Bercow, the Speaker, asked MPs to shout aye and no as he called the division. This is how divisions normally start. But only a few MPs shouted “no”, they were clearly outnumbered by the ayes, and so the bill got its second reading on the nod.
On a serious note, this bill of course has to go through [the Lords] and I think if the other place were to put in amendments to this simple and straightforward bill, which sought to produce a particular outcome, I think we would have to say they have no right whatever to do that.
The Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden is now winding up for the government.
That it would be quite unconstitutional and I think they would be playing fire and indeed they would be playing with their own futures in that House were they to seek to amend this bill to produce a particular outcome.
He says an election is necessary because parliament has stopped the government implementing Brexit. It voted for the Benn act, which forced the government to request a Brexit delay.
If MPs vote for an election on 9th December Parliament will be dissolved Thursday night. Result in about 5 minutes. #election
From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg
MPs are now voting on amendment 2, which would change the date of the election from Thursday 12 December to Monday 9 December.
Hoyle has not selected votes for 16 and 17 year olds or EU citizens but it's provisional until he confirms it in the speaker's chair which won't be until after the first vote in about twenty mins
Here’s a little more on Labour’s preparations for the likely December election: It’s understood that trigger ballots are to be halted and that Labour MPs will now be automatically reselected – subject to NEC approval and assuming they haven’t decided to retire.
Amendment 2, which is set to be put to a vote (see 5.19pm), is a Jeremy Corbyn amendment that would change the date of the election to Monday 9 December, from Thursday 12 December. It is also been signed by the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson.
Any selection meetings in key marginals that were scheduled for this week will still go ahead. In those constituencies where no such meeting was planned, the selection will now be handled by panels staffed by NEC members and regional and constituency party representatives.
The government is opposed to this, because it would mean parliament proroguing on Thursday, making it hard for the government to pass legislation needed to approve a budget for Northern Ireland, but it has not said that the passing of this amendment would lead to the bill having to be shelved.
A Labour spokesman said:
The amendments on extending the franchise to give EU nationals and 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in the general election have not been selected, according to Tony Grew (aka @PARLYapp).
After the 2017 snap general election, we immediately began democratic selections to ensure Labour members would be able to choose their candidates. Members have selected candidates in almost 200 seats.
This means the prospect of the government facing a defeat on these issues, and then deciding to pull the bill, has probably been removed.
We’re more prepared than we’ve ever been at this stage in the parliamentary cycle, ready to launch the most ambitious, radical campaign for real change that this country has ever seen.
pic.twitter.com/FcATH3lbk3
Here’s a little more on the news that the Tory party has welcomed back 10 rebel MPs. The prime minister was said to have told them he always wanted to find a way for them to rejoin the party and the 10 MPs accepted his offer to be readmitted. A party spokesman said:
In other words amendments on 16/17 year olds and EU nationals have NOT been selected.
They have had the whip offered back to them, they have accepted the whip: they are Conservative Members of Parliament with the Tory whip.
The @jeremycorbyn amendment changing the date of the election to Monday 9 December has been selected pic.twitter.com/q4DClSoc6U
He said the decision was not a comment on those who have not had the whip restored. The former Tory chancellors, Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke, along with former justice secretary, David Gauke, are among those not to have been welcomed back.
Phillips says the current electoral laws are not fit for purpose. She says at the last election someone was able to stand against her whose main claim to fame was that he had threatened to rape her.
Their number also includes Sir Oliver Letwin, Justine Greening and Dominic Grieve, as well as Rory Stewart, Guto Bebb, Anne Milton and Antoinette Sandbach. Each of them remains an independent MP, while Sam Gyimah joined the Lib Dems.
A one-line bill will not sort out these problems, she says.
The Tory MP Andrew Percy has called for a “more civil campaign” during the next general election. The Brigg and Goole MP said:
She says she will happily go back to her constituency for the election, so she can spend six weeks sleeping in her own bed and seeing her children.
The 2017 election was an appalling campaign for many of us to go through and the abuse and threats and damage to property, damage to constituents’ property perpetrated, in some cases, by people in the name of the leader of the opposition.
But she thinks, when it comes to addressing the problems facing democracy, this bill will be “useless”, she says.
So I hope the campaign next time in December is a more civil campaign on all sides, because this is not a matter that one side owns particularly.
The Labour MP Jess Phillips is speaking in the debate now. She says the problem facing parliament is that the government is behaving as if it has got a majority when it hasn’t.
The idea of introducing a bill that might attract majority support in the Commons was never considered, she says.
She says MPs are in a “twilight zone” where the government seems to think it only has to write down a proposal and it will pass. That is not the way parliament works, she says.
She says she represents a leave seat. But she is not worried about that, even though she voted remain. She says her majority went up at the last parliament.
Phillips asks what will happen if there is another hung parliament. The election will be a Rorschach test, she says. MPs will look at the result and draw whatever conclusion from it they want.
She says MPs should be honest about the fact that they will interpret the election results to suit their own agendas.
The Brexit extension until 31 January has now been officially confirmed, my colleague Jennifer Rankin reports.
And now it's official: the UK's membership of the EU extended until 31 January 2020.https://t.co/ZJk8mRtFq1
Donald Tusk, the outgoing president of the European council, has sent the UK a farewell tweet.
He says this extension could be the UK’s last.
(Whether that is true or not is another matter. In practice, the EU27 would be reluctant to push the UK out of the EU against its will. If Labour won the election, it would request another extension to allow time for a renegotiation and a referendum.)
To my British friends, The EU27 has formally adopted the extension. It may be the last one. Please make the best use of this time. I also want to say goodbye to you as my mission here is coming to an end. I will keep my fingers crossed for you.
Tusk also urged the UK not to waste the time granted by an extension when the last one was announced in April. It is hard to argue that his advice was taken to heart, because it was another six months before a new UK government agreed an alternative Brexit plan with the EU.
These are from ITV’s Robert Peston.
There are 4 broad categories of amendments to @BorisJohnson’s Early Parliamentary General Election Bill (attached) - for 3.4m EU citizens to be able to vote (loads of these amendments), for a referendum on 26 March, for enfranchisement of 16 & 17 year olds, and for... pic.twitter.com/n5N3vfpqPC
election to be on 9 December not 12 December (strikingly @JohnCornyn and @ChukaUmunna have joined forces to ask for this). Speaker faces agonising decision about which amendments to allow.
