Legal Advice: Prorogation

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I cannot comment on matters that are plainly covered not only by the convention but by legal professional privilege, but I say to my hon. Friend that the Government’s position was set out clearly in argument—if she followed it all, she will know it went on for a very long time—and the Supreme Court decided against it. We accept that position.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Ind)]

Having lost in court, the Attorney General is keen to try his hand at another test—an election. Perhaps I can help him. In paragraph 41 of the unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court refers to

“Two fundamental principles of our constitutional law”,

saying:

“The first is the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty: that laws enacted by the Crown in Parliament are the supreme form of law in our legal system, with which everyone, including the Government, must comply.”

Can the Attorney General confirm that he and the Government will comply with the law known as the Benn Act, recently passed by this Parliament and which has received Royal Assent?

[The Attorney General]

Yes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Boles Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. What steps she is taking to tackle maternity discrimination.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

I want to start by thanking the Equality and Human Rights Commission for the research it has led and for its report. The Government have accepted the great majority of its recommendations and will work with it, ACAS and employers to root out discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace.

[Mr Thomas]

I welcome the Minister’s answer. I am aware of a number of cases of new mothers in my constituency who have lost their jobs after giving birth or experienced some other form of discrimination at work. Will he set out a timescale for implementation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s recommendations, and will he create an opportunity, through the usual channels, for a debate in the House on that work?

[Nick Boles]

I am very happy to take up with the Leader of the House the possibility of having such a debate, because I would welcome it. The report made for depressing reading in some respects. Although it is welcome that 84% of employers think that it is important to support pregnant women and new mothers, it is frankly depressing that three in four mothers interviewed said that they had had a negative or possibly discriminatory experience during their pregnancy. We need to achieve a wholesale change in culture. I will resist putting a timeframe on implementation of that change in culture, because ultimately that is something that Governments on their own cannot do. However, a debate on how we can all work together to achieve that would be very welcome.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Many women still face difficult decisions when it comes to having a baby, particularly women in high-powered careers in places such as London, where house prices are extremely high and working part time simply is not an option. What are the Government doing to encourage businesses to adopt a modern approach, allowing women the prospect of a balanced work and family life and flexible working hours, where possible?

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I know that he will welcome the introduction of the right to request flexible working and all the Government’s interventions to provide further childcare support for working women of all ages and all income levels. I believe that that will help women who want to be able to balance engagement in the workplace with bringing up young children.

Voting by Prisoners

Nick Boles Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

This has been a very interesting debate, and rather unusual for me. I have to confess that in most debates, I arrive knowing what I think on the subject, sit here waiting for my chance to say what I think, say what I think and then vote accordingly. On this subject, which is so complicated, I find that my views have shifted during the debate.

My views on prisoner voting have shifted very slightly. I am still of the view that all people convicted and given a prison sentence should lose their right to vote, but I was much struck and influenced by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who suggested that in the last six months of a sentence, as part of the rehabilitative process, the Parole Board or whatever is the right authority might give a person back that right if they were showing signs of becoming a good citizen. I have therefore changed my position. I still believe that all convicted prisoners should lose that right, but I am open to persuasion on the possibility of restoration of the vote in the last six months of a sentence.

Before I came to the debate, I was of the view that if the European Court imposed fines, we should simply refuse to pay them and challenge it to send a gunboat up the Thames to extract the money from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I would say good luck to it in that—I have tried to do so for my constituents on several occasions and so far not been very successful. That was my view before, but I was persuaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell), who is no longer in his place, that we who believe in the rule of law and who want the laws that we pass in this place to be respected cannot allow a precedent to be created whereby it is okay to pick and choose which laws we obey and which judgments we accept. If we believe that the Hirst judgment is intolerable, we should go to the root of the problem and not try to evade the particular case.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

rose—

[Nick Boles]

I am sorry. I will not give way because we have very little time.

What is the root of the problem? I have reached the uncomfortable conclusion that the root of the problem is the nature and location of the Court. Good judges are not good judges just because they are qualified—although there have been questions about the qualifications of some ECHR judges—or because they understand the laws of the country and respect the right of the legislature to make them, and that their role is simply to interpret and apply them. Good judges are good because they are products of the society within which those laws are created and to which those laws are applied. Judges earn legitimacy to make judgments, tough as they may be. Because they are part of that society, they understand it—they are part of the warp and weft of it.

My fear is that the Strasbourg Court can never be that. That is why I agreed most with the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) when he described why incorporating the convention into our law and making it subject to the interpretation of the Supreme Court—our Court and our justices sitting not 300 yards from Parliament—was a way of making the convention, which is a fine document, something that the British people would come to respect and even love as part of their fundamental freedoms.

I hope that the debate will be one small step along the way to us saying to the Strasbourg Court: “Back in your box! Your role is to bring it to our attention—this Parliament’s attention—when you believe that our laws are out of kilter with the convention. But that is your role and no further. The specific questions of how the laws that we make apply to individual cases and citizens in this country should be for British judges in a British court.” In that way, we would have a law that we could all respect.