Intelligence Services Want MPs To Back Theresa May's Deal, Says Security Minister Ben Wallace

'They want us to get on with delivering a Brexit.'
Press Association

The intelligence services and police want MPs to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal, the security minister has said.

Ben Wallace said on Monday the agencies “want us to get on with delivering a Brexit”.

Theresa May could ask MPs for a third time to vote for her deal this week - after it lost to a 149-vote defeat last Tuesday.

Boris Johnson has called on the prime minister to postpone the “absurd” plan to force the Commons to vote again before first securing more concessions from Brussels.

Philip Hammond has said the government is unlikely to hold the vote if it thinks it will lose.

Wallace, a close ally of Johnson, urged the former foreign secretary to back the deal and said to not would be to “ignore the facts”.

“Voting for this deal is the way to deliver Brexit,” he told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. “I strongly urge my colleagues to vote for it.”

“When I go in this morning I will meet the intelligence service and I will meet the police and all the people whose day job is to protect us and they want us to get on with delivering a Brexit,” he said. “They are professionals and they are looking after our safety.

“If I were to look them in the eye and say, should we just headlong fall into a collapse in government or a collapse in parliament, they would just despair because we are here to give them the support and resource they need as a government and voting for the deal is the way we will be able to continue to do that.”

May has warned pro-Brexit Tory MPs that if her deal is not approved the UK will have to seek a lengthy extension to negotiations.

Crucial to winning any vote in the Commons will be the DUP. Talks in London between the Northern Ireland party and the government were expected to continue on Monday, although Downing Street said a formal meeting has not been scheduled.

The 10 DUP MPs are viewed as pivotal, not just for the votes they provide but the influence of their stance on Conservative eurosceptics.

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