Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Stephen Crabb

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I think the right hon. Gentleman has plenty of opportunities to consult people other than me. Ultimately, what the House will have to decide is whether an Attorney General and a Government who are seeking to protect the public interest are in contempt of its motion when they have sought to comply with the spirit of it to the maximum possible degree, and when they have put their legal adviser at the disposal of the House and instructed him to give full, frank, complete answers to any question asked on the matters of law that any legal advice would have been likely to cover.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

The Attorney General said that he would rather that there was a unilateral termination clause in the Northern Ireland protocol. Earlier, in the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union, Olly Robbins appeared to concede that one such clause had been drafted and had been tested with EU negotiators, but ultimately not deployed in the negotiations. Could the Attorney General confirm whether he was asked to provide legal advice on a unilateral termination clause and whether the decision not to include it in the negotiations was a political or a legal one?

[The Attorney General]

I cannot. I cannot, without breaching the convention, disclose whether or not I was asked to advise on any particular point. But what I can say is that the question of termination clauses was most certainly raised in the negotiations, but the European Union declined to entertain those termination clauses. It did so because the backstop is envisaged as an absolute guarantee that in all circumstances, including that of no deal, there would be no hard border at the Northern Ireland-Republic of Ireland border. Therefore, to have a termination clause would be a contradiction in terms. It would not be a guarantee if you can walk away from it. That is the decision the House must face—in the light of that, it must decide whether this is an arrangement into which it should, given the alternatives, enter.