LONDON — Two days after being ordered by Britain’s Supreme Court to seek Parliament’s approval before beginning the process of taking the country out of the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May submitted a terse, 132-word bill to lawmakers on Thursday.
“The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU,’’ the main clause of the EU draft act 2017 reads.
Some saw in the government’s brevity an attempt to limit the scope for time-consuming amendments to allow May to invoke Article 50 — the legal process for leaving the Eueopean Union — by her self-imposed deadline of the end of March.
But others saw a plan to give the government a mandate for a so-called hard Brexit, short for “British exit,’’ making control of immigration a higher priority than staying in the EU’s single market.
“This narrow bill disguises the breadth of May’s objective,’’ Spencer Livermore, a member of Parliament, wrote on Twitter. “She wants a mandate for hard-right Tory policies, which Labour should deny her.’’
A pro-EU lawmaker, Chris Leslie, said the House was getting far less time ‘‘to debate the legislation that takes us out of the EU than we did previous European treaties.’’
‘‘This is the most significant law we've ever debated on our relationship with Europe and yet the government will only give it an eighth of the time that was spent on the Maastricht Treaty,’’ he said.
Erika Szyszczak, a European law expert from the University of Sussex, said Maastricht was thrashed out for weeks.
‘‘This bill is yet again another example of the political ground constantly shifting when it comes to Brexit,’’ she said. ‘‘Allowing only five days to debate the details gives MPs little room for maneuver in terms of laying opposition amendments.’’
Members of the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament, will start debating the bill Tuesday. Given her conservative majority, the prime minister is expected to win swift approval.
There was brief talk of a “rebellion’’ in the opposition Labour Party, where some lawmakers vowed to vote against an order from their party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to back the bill, but the number of those balking appears too small to make a difference.
May might face a little more resistance in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of Parliament, where her Tories do not have a majority. Some in her party have suggested that she should quickly appoint enough new lords to give her the votes she needs. But few expect this to be necessary: With little democratic credibility, the 805 lords are unlikely to dare to block last June’s referendum vote.
Most resistance will come from the pro-European Scottish National Party, which promises to submit no fewer than 50 amendments to the bill.
“There is no bill that cannot be amended,’’ said Stephen Gethins, the Scottish National Party’s spokesman on Europe. Amendments are not limited by the number of words in the bill, he said, because they can take the form of adding clauses.
In one pre-emptive move, May has already sought to shut down demands for further debate on details of the government’s Brexit plan by promising to deliver a policy paper in coming weeks. But she has not said whether the paper would be published before the final vote on the bill.
Some lawmakers pointed out that her actions seemed to turn democratic traditions on their head, issuing policy papers that should be informing parliamentary debate only after voting on the legislation.
“The way they’re rushing this through and trying to shut down any debate shows that they don’t appear to have the courage of conviction,’’ Gethins said. “They wouldn’t be afraid of debate.’’
If this bill is short, there have been shorter ones: The 1918 statute to give women the right to stand for election counted 27 words. The longest act of Parliament was a law regarding taxation passed in 1821. Written on a scroll, it was nearly a quarter of a mile long and took two workers a whole day to rewind.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
