Boris Johnson has suffered yet another Lords defeat over his Brexit plans, as Tory peers rebelled against an attempted “power grab” over devolved nations.
Peers voted by 367 to 209 for a cross-party amendment that would prevent Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from being “bypassed” once the UK’s transition period out of the EU ends on December 31.
The latest rebellion guts another key section of the PM’s landmark Internal Markets Bill, which has already suffered one of the biggest Lords defeats in history over its provisions to break international law.
Nicola Sturgeon has already called the bill “a full-frontal assault on devolution” because it hands to London previous EU powers over food safety, minimum pricing, environmental policy and animal health and welfare.
Johnson is already under fire over the issue after he told MPs this week that “devolution has been a disaster north of the border”.
And peers warned that the campaign for Welsh independence would take off too if they bill was passed in its current form.
Peers voted for an amendment tabled by independent crossbencher Lord Hope of Craighead, a retired Scottish judge who was the first deputy president of the Supreme Court, to protect “common frameworks” across the whole of the UK.
A total of 15 Tory rebels defied the government whip.
Former Tory Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay and former Tory minister Lord Bourne both joined the rebellion against “top-down imposed direction from the centre”.
Ex-solicitor general Lord Garnier warned the unamended bill would “hasten the break up of the UK” by fuelling further resentment in Scotland.
In a withering speech, former judge Lord Hope claimed the bill was typical of “an uncompromising, careless style of government ...that has no place in our democracy”
“Not only does the bill ignore the common frameworks process, it destroys one of the key elements in that process, which brought the devolved administrations into it in the first place,” he said.
“It destroys policy divergence. It destroys those administrations’ ability through that process to serve the interests of their own people and innovate.”
The PM already faces huge challenges over the Brexit legislation, with incoming US president Joe Biden suggesting that it poses a threat to the Northern Ireland peace process and the EU threatening legal action over its bid to breach the withdrawal treaty signed earlier this year.
The government was later defeated a second time on another key element of the bill that would give ministers the power to change the legislation. An amendment opposing the power was passed by 327 votes to 223, a majority of 104.