Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Debate between Maria Eagle and Geoffrey Cox

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

As my right hon. Friend knows, the job of any lawyer for any client is generally to assist the client to make decisions as to the balance of risk in any decision that they are about to take. There is no question but that the absence of a right of termination of the backstop presents a legal risk. The question whether it is one this House should take is a matter of political and policy judgment that each one of us must grapple with. The House has heard and, for reasons that I am not going here to expatiate upon, I have taken the view that compared with the other courses available to the House, this one is a reasonable, calculated risk to take. Other Members of this House must weigh it up, but that is my view.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

In response to some questions from Members of this House today, the Attorney General has asserted that in his view it would not be in the public interest to meet the terms of an effective resolution that was passed unanimously by this House. Can the Attorney General really take that view? Was it not incumbent upon him and the Government to vote against that resolution if he thought that it would be against the public interest to publish his advice, as he has asserted today?

[The Attorney General]

I fully understand the hon. Lady’s understandable indignation, because the truth is that we are now in a curious situation in which no vote was passed against that motion. I ask her to reflect on this: let us suppose that the Government had voted against it and lost. What position would that place us in? It would place me in exactly—[Interruption.]