Legal Advice: Prorogation

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

My right hon. and learned Friend has great experience, as does my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) sitting next to him, of the role that I now have the great privilege to occupy. He knows how important confidentiality is to the ability of the Attorney General to give frank, unvarnished and sometimes unwelcome advice to those who are conducting the policy of the Government. So he is quite right. He discharged his functions, as did my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, with great distinction and I am proud to have been a successor of theirs.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made it quite clear that the Supreme Court judges had every right to come to the decision they came to, and in fact they came to it unanimously, in an excoriating judgment which should put the Government’s Front Bench to shame. What is his view, therefore, of a Leader of the House who persists in believing, and makes it known that he feels, that the Supreme Court has instituted a constitutional coup? Surely he cannot remain in his post if he has that view.

[The Attorney General]

There is nothing wrong with expressing robust critical views about a judgment. In so far as it imputes an inappropriate or improper motive, then it is wrong. I think it is a question of wording and of being careful with one’s language, but I took that remark, in so far as I saw it reported, simply to be a robust criticism of the judgment and nothing more—to which my right hon. Friend is entitled.