Legal Advice: Prorogation

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and John Redwood

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

The judgment is clear. The Government are assessing its short-term and long-term implications now, but the right hon. Lady can be quite certain that they will abide by its ruling, and by the content and implications of its judgment.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

What limits are there on the powers of the Supreme Court to intervene in how Parliament conducts its business, and what powers are there for it to intervene over the highly political matter of when and how we leave the European Union?

[The Attorney General]

I think I understood my right hon. Friend’s question correctly. The Court in this case was giving its judgment on a particular issue—whether or not Prorogation of this length could be the subject of judicial control and, if so, what was the correct test to apply to that judicial control. It chose to delineate a test that suggests that from now on, a Prorogation of any length must be reasonably justified. The Court included in its analysis the fact that there was before the House, and before the country now, a particularly acute constitutional controversy, which made it even more important that the House should sit. I have to say, and I think there is nothing wrong in venturing to express respectful disagreement, that what that will mean in future is that the Court will be obliged to assess whether or not a particular political controversy is sufficiently serious, excites sufficiently heated controversy, as to warrant the House sitting for any particular length of time; but be that as it may, that is the test that the Court has set, and that is the test that now must be applied.