Johnson’s Brexit bill passes without a single Labour vote in favour

The House of Commons has approved Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill by a large majority of 99 votes – but without a single Labour MP voting in favour of the legislation.

330 MPs voted in favour of the new withdrawal agreement bill, while 231 voted against including 169 Labour MPs. 32 members from the Labour benches had no vote recorded.

The Brexit legislation will now go to the House of Lords, where it is set to receive detailed scrutiny from peers. The passing of the bill comes as the European Union warned that the UK could leave the bloc without a trade deal.

Labour’s Paul Blomfield called for alignment on workers’ rights and environmental protections, as well as policies on human rights, during the debate this afternoon.

The opposition party criticised the approach taken by the government towards EU nationals currently living in the UK, who will have to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme, and towards child refugees.

Before the December parliamentary recess, Keir Starmer warned that Boris Johnson was seeking to “tear up” protections for child refugees and had scrapped a previous commitment to protect them after Brexit.

The new bill removed any obligation to negotiate in a Brexit deal that “an unaccompanied child who has made a claim for international protection in a member state can come to the UK to join a relative”.