Is the government trying to avoid scrutiny of its Brexit policy?

Is the government trying to avoid scrutiny of its Brexit policy? That’s the charge that MPs on the Labour and SNP benches are levelling at ministers today as the White Paper on leaving the European Union is published. Keir Starmer told the Commons this afternoon that he and his colleagues were being hampered in their attempts to ask decent questions and properly scrutinise the government’s approach because they had been handed the document just minutes before David Davis gave his statement on the publication. The SNP’s Stephen Gethins complained that the whole situation was a ‘mess’ and that Parliament was being mistreated. These complaints were echoed from the benches behind them.

That the statement and the accompanying White Paper might be an exercise in placating MPs rather than offering further detail was underlined by questions from Tory MPs about the fate of EU citizens living in Britain. Theresa Villiers, who was a passionate Brexiteer, raised the case of a woman in her constituency who was receiving cancer treatment and anxious about her status.