The House of Lords are debating whether to support preventing a no-deal Brexit.
The House of Commons swiftly supported this idea, the Cooper-Letwin bill, by one vote on Wednesday night, meaning there was a slim majority for supporting an extension of Article 50.
In order for the Government to ask the EU for a delay, the bill must pass in the House of Lords. If it does, the Prime Minister could ask the EU for a further delay at a summit next Wednesday.
In the Lords, Lord Leslie Griffiths, a Methodist minister and peer who sits on the Labour benches, took a few minutes out inbetween votes to explain what was going on.
He explained that the proposal seeks to take the initiative of our exit strategy away from the executive (government) and into the hands of parliament.
He told Premier's News Hour at lunch time: "We are just starting our deliberations now...we've already voted three times and I'm standing here and I can hear the bell calling me to vote again and there will be a dozen other calls during the day."
When asked how he will be voting, he replied: "My position is that...the decision was taken and it was taken by the elected House [of Commons] and the House of Lords mustn't stand in the way of a piece of legislation that comes to us in that way. So, I will be supporting all the votes that seek to give support for the position the House of Commons established last evening".
Given the importance of the topic and that we are due to leave the EU next Friday, Lord Griffiths explained that there was pressure to pass it quickly, with many filibustering to stop that happening: "Well it's threatening to be quite a long, drawn-out debate. There are people who are intent on destroying the bill and they will try to do that by talking it out by long speeches...many of us have been told to expect to spend the whole night here in order to take it through. It is unusual for a bill to pass in one day but, granted that everything has to be in place by Monday in order to make an approach to the European Council that meets on Wednesday, there's no wriggle room!"
The Methodist minister, who was President of the Methodist conference 1994-5, told Premier that one thing those not debating in Westminster can do is pray:
"Well, I think that we know that wisdom is a gift of God. And so it's compassion and it's the capacity to listen to each other rather than to come with sloganeering statements. We are in a difficult position, nobody asked us to be in this difficult position. I think that I'm right in saying that there are not many people who wanted this to be where we are.
"So, may wisdom prevail, may compassion rule and out of it all, may we present ourselves with dignity to the world outside and and then of course, the prayers about this will have to kick-in to do with how whatever's decided today will be implemented, in the law of the land, in our approach to Brussels and in the future months and years ahead because this is not just for today.
"I've got my sleeping bag."
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