Put party allegiances aside - former Commons Speakerpublished at 10:58 Greenwich Mean Time 31 January 2018
EU Withdrawal Bill
House of Lords
Parliament
"I admit at the outset, that the referendum result was a very bad, sad day for me," says Crossbench peer and former Speaker of the House of Commons, Baroness Boothroyd.
She says that during the referendum she wrote an article in a national newspaper asking Remain to campaign with "greater vigour, but it had little effect, and we lost".
The win for the "other side" has caused confusion, inside the government, in industry and commerce, in the City of London, in the European Community and the wider world, she adds.
She says that the role of the Lords should be to "scrutinise, amend, and if needs be reject parts of this bill, and to use the entire arsenal of our powers and prerogatives to limit the damage that threatens the sovereignty of Parliament and the national interest".
She calls for partisan allegiances to be "put aside," because "nothing less than the nation's future is now at stake".