Peers could make changes to Brexit Bill says Lord Mandelson
The Labour peer expects the House of Lords may attach conditions to the Bill, he said.
Lord Peter Mandelson, the Labour peer and former Business and Trade Secretary, has said he expects the Brexit Bill to be subject to further scrutiny in the House of Lords, where it will receive its second reading next week. Lord Mandelson said bill, which would allow Prime Minister Theresa May to start negotiations to leave the EU, through the Lords could well be subject to amendments as it passes through the parliament's second chamber.
As well as with regards to safeguarding the rights of EU citizens in the UK once the country has left the EU, Mandelson said the government must enshrine in legislation the agreement for a vote on the final terms negotiated with Brussels.
The bill was passed in the Commons on 8 February by 494 votes to 122, after Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party largely backed the outcome of last June's referendum, however, Mandelson said the public vote had been uninformed.
Speaking to Andrew Marr's BBC One programme, about the campaign group Open Britain, Mandelson said: "We firmly believe that many people [who] voted in the referendum had no idea of the terms on which the government would decide to leave the European Union.
He added: "There are many people who don't have an extreme view one way or the other… they feel that they are being bulldozed… that their voices are not being heard."
On this basis he said there must be a further vote on the final terms of the agreement. He said the government must, "Look at the outcome of the negotiation [and] if it's not going to be good for Britain, if it's going to be a disaster for our economy, send the government back to the negotiating table."
Lord Mandelson said he did not think Brexit voters would support the likely outcome of the negotiations with Brussels, telling Marr: "What we're going to see in this negotiation is three things: you're going to see less trade, you're going to see Britain paying through the nose for the access we want to negotiate but you're also going to see, broadly speaking I suspect, the same numbers of migrants coming to this country as now.
He explained: "Partly because already half of the migrants don't come from the European Union… and in the case of those that come from Europe, we need them to fill jobs in our economy."
If the Lords succeeds in attaching any conditions to the legislation, the amended bill will have to go back to the Commons for its approval, where amendments on both issues have already been rejected.
The legislation will be passed between the upper and lower houses until an agreement is reached.
However, under UK legislation, the House of Lords can only stall the passage of a bill rather than veto it all together. The Parliament Act 1949 sets out that the Lords can only delay a bill for one year under most circumstances, before parliament can enact it over the Lords' protests. The last bill to be enacted under the Parliaments Act was the Hunting Act 2004.
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