European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — Clause 14 — Power for Ministers to Create New Criminal Offences Carrying Custodial Sentences of up to Two Years — 20 Dec 2017 at 21:22

The majority of MPs voted to give ministers the power to create new criminal offences carrying custodial sentences of up to two years if required to remedy deficiencies in European Union law retained as United Kingdom law following the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.

MPs were considering the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill[1].

The amendment rejected in this vote was:

  • page 10, line 46, leave out
  • “for a term of more than 2 years”

The rejected amendment was accompanied by the following explanatory statement:

  • This amendment would prevent Ministers using delegated powers to create criminal offences which carry custodial sentences.

The rejected amendment sought to change the definition of a "relevant criminal offence" contained within clause 14 of the Bill. The definition stated a "relevant criminal offence means an offence for which an individual who has reached the age of 18 (or, in relation to Scotland or Northern Ireland, 21) is capable of being sentenced to imprisonment for a term of more than 2 years (ignoring any enactment prohibiting or restricting the imprisonment of individuals who have no previous convictions).

Clause 7(6) of the Bill[2] prevented ministers from creating "a relevant criminal offence" under powers to prevent, remedy or mitigate any failure of retained EU law to operate effectively, or any other deficiency in retained EU law, arising from the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU.

While ministers were already prevented from creating new criminal offences carrying custodial sentences of more than two years, the rejected amendment sought to prevent ministers from having the power to create any new criminal offences with custodial sentences.

==

Debate in Parliament |

Public Whip is run as a free not-for-profit service. If you'd like to support us, please consider switching your (UK) electricity and/or gas to Octopus Energy or tip us via Ko-Fi.

Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Con308 (+2 tell) 0098.1%
DUP10 00100.0%
Green0 10100.0%
Independent0 2040.0%
Lab0 244 (+2 tell)095.0%
LDem0 11091.7%
PC0 40100.0%
SNP0 32091.4%
Total:318 294096.0%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
no rebellions

About the Project

The Public Whip is a not-for-profit, open source website created in 2003 by Francis Irving and Julian Todd and now run by Bairwell Ltd.

The Whip on the Web

Help keep PublicWhip alive