Legal Advice: Prorogation

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I will say one thing for the Scottish National party and the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) if I may. Whereas in the hon. Gentleman’s case, no shameless piece of cynical opportunism is left on the floor, the hon. and learned Lady is a lawyer and a Queen’s counsel, and she knows that it is the most puerile and infantile of criticisms to say about a lawyer whose advice has been upheld by courts right the way up to the Supreme Court that somehow or other he should be held culpable for that advice. The fact of the matter is that this advice was sound advice at the time. The court of last resort ultimately disagreed with it, but in doing so it made new law, as it was entirely entitled to do.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Ind)]

I am extremely mindful of the difficult task that my right hon. and learned Friend has as Attorney General in providing advice to Government, and I am sorry if his legal advice has been partially leaked, because he is entitled to give advice in private. Without that, he cannot do his work. I would also say that for him to get the law wrong in an area of difficulty is not necessarily something to be held to his discredit, but he may agree with me that one of the issues in this matter was one of not just law but propriety, and the propriety went to the unconstitutional or constitutional nature of the act of Prorogation itself, in view of the motivation of the Government for doing it. In those circumstances, I was struck by the fact that in the leaked document his opinion is referred to as believing it is constitutional, when I had understood from comments he made as far back, I think, as July, when Prorogation was first being mooted in order to achieve a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, that he considered that such an act would be unconstitutional. I wonder therefore whether this is not one issue that he ought to clarify.

[The Attorney General]

I know that my right hon. and learned Friend will understand that it is not right for the Attorney General or any Cabinet Minister to comment on leaks of matters that occurred within Cabinet, be they accurate or inaccurate—it would set a wholly undesirable precedent—but let me say this. It was being mooted some weeks ago that Parliament might be prorogued from the beginning of September or even earlier until 31 October. I say straightaway to him that if that had been the proposition, I could not have stayed in the Cabinet while it was done.