Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, Rachel Maskell, quit yesterday over the handling of Labour’s response to the Article 50 vote. Maskell resigned from the shadow cabinet to vote against granting the government power to trigger Article 50, in line with the views of the majority of her constituents in York.

Following a ruling by the Supreme Court in January, the government was obliged to consult Parliament on plans to trigger Article 50 by the end of March this year. In the event, the hastily produced European Union bill, giving Prime Minister Theresa May power to begin Brexit negotiations, was passed by by MPs with 498 votes to 114 on Wednesday.

SNP, Plaid Cymru and Lib Dem MPs voted against the bill, as did senior tory Ken Clarke. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn imposed a three line whip (the strongest measure available to him) to compel his MPs to back the bill. He said Labour’s focus should be on shaping the terms of Brexit, which will be the subject of upcoming debate on the bill, but around a fifth of Labour MPs defied the whip and three shadow cabinet MPs resigned over the move.

In a statement outlining her reasons for resigning, Rachel Maskell said, “The UK is no longer being offered a ‘people’s Brexit’ but a ‘Theresa May Brexit’, which goes far beyond just leaving the European Union, as voted on at the referendum last June.”

The former shadow secretary continued, “I believe that Theresa May’s Brexit ‘plan’ is creating an unjustifiable level of risk at a time of national and international uncertainty and volatility, with silence on national security measures, no mention of climate change mitigation or environmental protections, and no guarantee of good jobs or employment rights. Most worrying of all is the rapidly changing social context which is leading to a rise of racism and hate crime in the UK. These are the very things that I have campaigned on all my life and believe are central to Labour’s values.

“I also have serious concerns about the impact of the Prime Minister’s plan to take the UK out of the Single Market and Customs Union on the agricultural sector.”

The Article 50 bill will be subject to further debates in the House of Commons and Lords before it enters into law. The government has promised to publish a White Paper outlining its Brexit plans on Thursday.