Legal Advice: Prorogation
Debate between Geoffrey Cox and David Tredinnick(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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The Attorney General
I cannot answer the last question, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, as Attorneys General have long maintained the convention that we cannot disclose either the fact or content of any advice. But I will deal with the first point. There is no question of this Government not obeying the law. There is a question as to precisely what obligations the law might require of the Government, but once those obligations are ascertained with clarity—and I am not saying that they are not clear; I am just saying that it is a legitimate consideration the Government must go through—the Government will obey them.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
Set alongside the decision of the Supreme Court, what force in law does the decision of the British people to leave the European Union have?
The Attorney General
The law in relation to the referendum is that it was not binding upon this Parliament. It was binding in every moral sense upon those who promised the British people that it would be implemented, but it was not binding as a matter of law.