Part of Business of the House (Today) – in the House of Commons at 3:00 pm on 12 March 2019.
After three months of running down the clock, the Prime Minister has, despite very extensive delays, achieved not a single change to the withdrawal agreement: not one single word has changed. In terms of the substance, literally nothing has changed.
On
“to be replaced with alternative arrangements”.
On
“a legally binding time limit… a legally binding unilateral exit clause”,
or
“the ideas put forward by the Alternative Arrangements Working Group”.—[Official Report,
There is no unilateral exit mechanism, there is no time limit, and there are no alternative arrangements.
So let us be clear: the withdrawal agreement is unchanged, the political declaration is unchanged, the joint statement is a legal interpretation of what is in the withdrawal agreement, and the unilateral statement is the UK Government trying to fool their own Back Benchers, because the European Union has not even signed up to it.