UK govt suffers fresh Brexit defeat

Britain's House of Lords inflicted another defeat on the government today over its flagship Brexit bill, sending it back to MPs and setting up a fresh showdown between Prime Minister Theresa May and her pro-European rebels.

Unelected peers in the upper house voted by 354 to 235 to support a rebel amendment on the role parliament should play if the government fails to secure a deal with the European Union before Britain leaves the bloc



in March 2019.

The amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill was drawn up in consultation with pro-European MPs in the lower House of Commons, who will have a chance to vote on it themselves on Wednesday.

The EU (Withdrawal) Bill would formally end Britain's membership of the bloc and transfer more than 40 years of European law on to the British statute books.