Following the High Court ruling that Parliament must vote on whether the UK can start the process of leaving the EU, researcher Lucy Hatton briefly discusses what this could mean for the UK.

"It is not clear from the perspective of democracy who is best placed to make the decision on when to trigger Article 50: the government acting on the result of the referendum, supposedly what the people want, or the MPs as the elected representatives of the people.

"If the MPs are truly acting as delegates of their constituents’ views, then we would not expect them to resist the triggering of Article 50. It is interesting therefore that the Government plans to appeal against the High Court’s decision; inevitably involving the Parliament will slow progress towards the Brexit but I don’t expect the outcome that the UK will leave the EU would change."