(UTV|COLOMBO) – British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal was condemned as “a huge step into the unknown” by a committee of lawmakers responsible for scrutinising it, in the latest blow to her efforts to win parliamentary approval for it this week.
The critical report by the cross-party Committee on Exiting the European Union, agreed unanimously and published on Sunday, will help lawmakers decide how to vote, said the committee’s chairman Hilary Benn.
“It does not give the British people or our businesses the clarity and the certainty they need about our future trading relationship with the EU in five or ten years’ time.”
A summary of the report listed over a dozen problems with the deal in its current form including the backstop – the mechanism intended to ensure there is no return to a hard border between British-ruled Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland, an element of the deal which has come in for some of the heaviest lawmaker criticism.
