This morning senior judges ruled that Prime Minister Theresa May does not have the power to bypass MPs and start the clock on a two-year window to leave the EU.
The government will appeal against the judgement to the Supreme Court and the hearing will take place early next month. A government spokesperson said: “The government is disappointed by the Court’s judgment.
“The country voted to leave the European Union in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament. And the government is determined to respect the result of the referendum.
“We will appeal this judgment.”
May had pledged to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017.
Government lawyers argued that prerogative powers were a legitimate way to carry out the “will of the people”.
But the Lord Chief Justice is quoted in The Telegraph as saying the government’s arguments are “contrary to fundamental constitutional principles of the sovereignty of parliament”, before adding “the court does not accept the argument put forward by the government. There is nothing in the text of the 1972 Act to support it”.
Commenting, David Lamb, head of dealing at FEXCO Corporate Payments, said: “Mark Carney’s thunder hasn’t so much been stolen as disappeared.
“It takes a lot to trump the Bank of England Governor, but this morning’s successful legal challenge to Brexit managed it.
“The High Court ruling – that MPs must vote on Brexit before the UK’s divorce from the EU formally begins – is far from derailing Brexit. But it injected a surge of optimism into poundwatchers that has so far outweighed the Bank of England’s acknowledgement that interest rates will be going nowhere fast.
“With the prospect of an interest rate hike punted well into the long grass, today’s surge in sterling can only be attributed to one thing – the very large spanner inserted into Brexit by Britain’s High Court.”
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