A video grab from footage broadcast by the UK Parliament's Parliamentary Recording Unit (PRU) shows British Prime Minister Theresa May as she speaks during Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons in London on October 12, 2016. AFP
LONDON: Main opposition Labour MPs have released 170 questions about Brexit, calling on the government to answer one question per day through next March 31, Prime Minister Theresa May’s self-imposed deadline to start the process.
The questions were sent in a joint letter to Brexit Secretary David Davis by Emily Thornberry, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for foreign affairs, and Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit secretary of state.
“If you are able to provide satisfactory answers to all these questions, just one per day from tomorrow until 31 March next year, it might give some confidence that the Government is entering the Article 50 negotiations with a clear plan,” said the letter posted on the party website, referencing the article in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty on exiting the European Union.
The questions cover a wide range of topics from free movement of people to employment rights, security to foreign policy issues, but the government is not under any formal obligation to answer them.
“This would not be for the purpose of blocking the Brexit process,” the letter stated, “but simply to ensure that process will lead to the best possible outcome for Britain, and that the Government’s proposed plan will deliver that outcome.”
Britain will trigger the formal process for leaving the European Union no later than March 2017, May said earlier this month.
May said a two-year period of exit negotiations with European officials would begin once the U.K. invokes Article 50 to leave the 28-country bloc.
