May will have to heed opposition on Brexit bill, minister says

(Bloomberg) UK Prime Minister Theresa May will have to listen to lawmakers who oppose her Brexit legislation, Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom said, acknowledging the premier’s weakened hand after she gambled on a snap general election and lost her majority in Parliament.

"This government will have to listen: even if it didn’t want to listen, it will have to," said Leadsom, who last year was May’s final challenger in the party’s leadership contest. "The government is listening very carefully to suggestions right across the house on how we can make sure that Parliamentarians feel comfortable with the way we’re going to be scrutinising the legislation on the Brexit bills."

Leadsom’s conciliatory tone followed a week in which May has faced criticism for sidelining Parliament. On Tuesday, she passed a measure to load committees of lawmakers with members of her governing Conservatives. And on Monday, she won a vote on her key piece of Brexit legislation, which controversially would give ministers sweeping so-called Henry VIII powers enabling them to bypass parliament and make changes to EU laws as they’re converted into British ones.

Brexit Secretary David Davis told lawmakers the powers are there to make technical changes through 800 to 1,000 statutory instruments to ensure the law can operate post-Brexit -- such as replacing the names of European regulators with British ones. But opposition parties and members of May’s own Tories criticised the powers as being open to abuse, allowing ministers to take away workers’ rights and safeguards. 

Tory Rebels

Former Tory ministers including Nicky Morgan, Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve allowed the bill to pass its second reading, pledging to seek changes at the next step, called the committee stage. Former Business Minister Anna Soubry, another Conservative, urged Davis to consider a "triaging" system whereby lawmakers could sift through the proposed changes and decide which ones merit detailed scrutiny by Parliament.

"There were some interesting ideas that came out of the debates of Monday and Tuesday evenings around the idea of a sort of triaging process, and the government is looking very carefully at that," said Leadsom, whose job as Leader of the House of Commons involves organising the legislative timetable. "It wants to listen, it wants to make progress on the legislation and to get buy-in."

Leadsom spoke at a question-and answer session at the Institute for Government think tank in London.

May must keep potential rebels on board, because even with the support of 10 lawmakers from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, she has a majority of just 13, meaning that just seven Tories need to vote with the opposition to inflict defeat on her. So far, more than 150 amendments have been tabled for the Brexit bill to be considered at the committee stage, including more than a dozen apiece that Soubry, Clarke, Morgan and Grieve have signed up to.

That "parliamentary arithmetic" should serve to revitalise scrutiny by lawmakers, Leadsom said. "If the government had a huge majority, then it would be very easy to just overturn scrutiny and opposition amendments."