Hilary Benn – Parliament must be given a vote on Brexit negotiations

MPs must be a given a vote on the terms of the plan for Brexit, Hilary Benn said today.

The new chair of the Brexit select committee said Parliament must “have a chance to express a view” about Britain’s negotiating objectives.

Benn spoke out after a series of turbulent weeks for the Tories in which they have struggled to set out basic details about the terms of Brexit.

Today Benn highlighted this uncertainty after repeated claims by May that she would not provide a “running commentary”.

“Nobody is asking for a running commentary,” Benn told the BBC.

“But I think it is right and proper that first of all Parliament should have a chance to express a view about what our negotiating objectives are going to be…

“I think it is essential that [the list of negotiating objectives] is shared with parliament. Apart from anything else, when they are first delivered to Europe we’ll all find out about them. The European Parliament has an arrangement which means it has information shared with it – it cannot be that the British Parliament gets anything that is less.

“We all want the best possible deal for the United Kingdom out of this negotiating. There are some very basic questions – the biggest challenge we face at the moment is uncertainty.”

Benn, sacked as shadow Foreign Secretary earlier this year, was speaking on the Andrew Marr Show in his first major broadcast interview since beating Kate Hoey to the chair’s job on the Commons’ new and high-profile Brexit committee.