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British Politicians have voted in favour of legislation allowing UK Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which would begin negotiations for leaving the European Union.
It follows two days of historic debate in the UK's House of Commons. But MPs voted by a majority of 384 to pass the bill.
The Prime Minster has set a deadline of the end of march for beginning official Brexit negotiations, but the bill itself now faces further scrutiny
Our UK Correspondent Natalie Powell Reports….
IN: "There were no real…
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There were no real surprises in the out come of this vote.
Theresa May's conservative party hold a small majority in Parliament - and the opposition Labour Party were instructed not to block Article 50 by their leader Jeremy Corbyn.
House Speaker John Bercow announced the results with an overwhelming majority voting in favour of the Bill
UPSOT
498 MPs were in favour, compared with 114 against.
With opposition coming large from the Scottish National Party and some labour rebels
Nigel Farage, who led the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union for the UK Independence Party welcomed the news
GRAB: NIGEL FARAGE, FORMER UKIP LEADER
But this vote isn't quite the end of the line.
On Monday, MPs will begin three days of FURTHER debate to discuss detailed amendments to the 137-world bill
AS Jo Owen a Researcher at the UK's Institute for government explains
GRAB: Joe Owen, Researcher, Institute for Government
I think there's something like 80 pages of amendments that have been put forward to be discussed so those are the things, the detail that will say whether or not the right to invoke article 50 is the right to take you out of the single market and what role parliament will say in the rest of the process, because at the moment the bill is very simple, very short. And I think what MPs will look to do is try and look at add things into it that will say, perahps at the beginning, the government cannot trigger article 50 until XYZ is done
Three days of debate on this has been tabled beginning Monday, and if the bill is amended it will face a vote again on Wednesday.
After that it will then go to the House of Lords for further debate.
So this is just the beginning of the process to allow the government to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty
Nevertheless Prime Minister Theresa May is still confidence that formal Brexit Negotiations are still on track to begin by the deadline she has set of the end of March.
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