Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Baroness Harman

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

This is not a question of the lawfulness of the Government’s action, as it was in the publication of Lord Goldsmith’s advice; this is simply a view on the legal effects of a particular agreement. There are hundreds of lawyers throughout the United Kingdom, I am delighted to say, who could offer a perfectly competent view on this agreement. I cannot see why there is anything exceptional about the current circumstances and about my advice. But let us suppose there were something exceptional about my advice; well, I am here to be asked any question that the Government have also asked, so all that right hon. and hon. Opposition Members have to do is ask and I will give them a frank answer.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman acknowledge frankly to this House that publishing this paper on the legal position on the withdrawal agreement and his statement to the House today does not represent compliance with the motion of this House that was passed unanimously on 13 November, and does that not represent the following fundamental point of constitutional principle? It would be serious for any Minister to resist a motion of the House, but it is more so for it to be the Attorney General, going along with Government defiance of the House, when his very office is about our constitution—when he is the person in government whose job it is to make sure the rest of them stay within the rules. How can he do that if he himself is acquiescing in breaking them? He has in his statement rightly acknowledged that he has a duty to this House as well as to the Government and that his duties involve giving legal advice to the House. It is in our Standing Orders that he is legal adviser to the Privileges Committee. So how can we have a situation where the Attorney General allows the Government to openly defy the will of the House? The Government have a choice: they can either comply with the motion of the House or seek to change it, but they cannot remain in defiance of it. It is the Attorney General’s responsibility to tell them that; will he?

[The Attorney General]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for that question. The truth is that I am caught in an acute clash of constitutional principle. A Minister is obliged to have regard to the public interest and the national interest. Let us suppose I had given any such advice that has been requested by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and let us suppose that that advice had covered all sorts of matters, including our relationships with foreign states and including arguments that might be deployed in the future—and their strengths and weaknesses—and including matters of acute importance to this country; would it be right for the Attorney General, regardless of the harm to the public interest, to divulge his opinion? I say to the right hon. and learned Lady that it would not. There is no procedure by which this House can have redactions or entertain circumstances in which it could weigh the competing public interest against the interest in disclosure, as a judge would do. She knows what I mean. Therefore, I cannot take a step that I firmly and truly believe would be contrary to the public interest. I ask the House to understand that it is only that consideration that is motivating me and this Government in declining at this stage to break the convention that applies to both sides of the House when they are in government. There is nothing to see here. [Interruption.]