Legal Advice: Prorogation Debate

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Department: Attorney General

Legal Advice: Prorogation

Lady Hermon Excerpts
Wednesday 25th September 2019

(5 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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Extreme brevity is now required. Single-sentence questions, please, without preamble. I call Lady Hermon.

Lady Hermon Portrait Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have listened very carefully to the Attorney-General—I have not agreed with a fraction of what he has said—but I would like him to answer a specific question. Did it never cross his mind that if the Prime Minister made a ridiculous decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks in the run-up to Brexit, which is the greatest constitutional change to the UK for years, the courts would rule that to be an unlawful Prorogation of Parliament?

Geoffrey Cox Portrait The Attorney General
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If I were to answer that question—tempting though it is, particularly from the hon. Lady, who is also a friend—I would be transgressing the Law Officers’ convention, because I would be telling her what advice I had or had not given. But if she is asking, “Did it occur to me?”, my answer is that of course it did. Any barrister who enters into litigation without it occurring to him that he might lose is a bit of a nit, isn’t he? Of course it occurred to me that we might lose; it would be ridiculous for it not to occur to me.