Brussels will dictate what we can tell British Parliament about Brexit negotiations, ministers say

David Jones said he would have to wait for a European Council rulebook on the matter

David Jones, Brexit Minister (House of Commons)

Brussels will be able to dictate what the British government can and cannot tell the British Parliament about Brexit negotiations, the Government has claimed.

EU minister David Jones told the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee that he could not say how much information MPs would be given about the talks until the European Council had laid down its rules about secrecy.

The claim comes after Theresa May and Brexit Secretary Davis Davis both said there would be a limit to how much they would tell the UK Parliament about negotiations.

The Prime Minister’s lack of clarity over Brexit was branded “unsustainable” by the influential chair of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, earlier this week. He told the Prime Minister in the Commons that the lack of even a simple statement by the Government about what it was trying to achieve in negotiations was in danger of spooking businesses with uncertainty.

Speaking to the European Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, the minister Mr Jones said the UK was awaiting Brussels’ say-so on what British MPs could be told.

“The negotiations that we will be entering into will be subject to guidelines that will be published in due course by the European Council and they of course have not published those guidelines yet simply because the process of negotiation has not yet been commenced by the service of the article 50 notice,” he told MPs.

“I think it’s fair to say that at present we’re working out how that would be translated into practice.”

In a related development, the minister also pledged that the Department for Exiting the European Union would match the European Parliament when it came to disclosing information to British MPs – meaning the Government could potentially be bounced into revealing information it had not planned to.

He said Brexit Secretary David Davis had committed to “provide British parliamentarians with at least as much information as European parliamentarians receive”.

Theresa May has said Brexit negotiations will last two years “or more” after she triggers Article 50 in the first quarter of 2017. She has refused to give Parliament a vote on the opening terms of Brexit but Downing Street has said a vote on the end Brexit deal is likely.