Privilege (Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Advice)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I commend those hon. and right hon. Members who secured this debate and thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing it. I also pay tribute to the stamina of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) and of other colleagues who ensured that you had ample time last night to consider the response to the original application.

Later today, we begin five days of debate on possibly the most important peacetime decision that this Parliament will ever take. Also today, Ofsted has described the Government’s treatment of thousands of vulnerable schoolchildren in England as a “national scandal”, we have a major investigation into alleged profiteering by funeral companies, and we have had reports from the UN special rapporteur and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighting the appalling poverty that exists here in one of the wealthiest economies on the planet. What does all that have to do with the motion before us now? The only reason why we are allowed to know and discuss those things openly and without fear is because the power of the state to prevent us from knowing about them is tempered by the rights of this democratically elected Parliament—not tempered nearly enough in my humble opinion. Elections to this Parliament are not democratic enough, but we do have an elected Parliament to hold back the excesses of the Government, and that is what today’s motion is all about.

We have a Parliament of 650 people, and each of us is entrusted to exercise sovereignty on behalf of those who have sent us here. A contempt of this Parliament is a contempt for the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the people. A Government who seek to place themselves above the express will of Parliament are a Government in contempt of the people. They are a Government who have already taken a dangerous step down the road from democracy to dictatorship.

Today’s debate is not about the rights and wrongs of the original motion presented to the House on 13 November. Astonishingly enough, the time for debate on those questions was on 13 November. Let us not spend time today on questions of convention and precedence, of the confidentiality of legal advice or of when that confidentiality should be waived. The time for opposition to the terms of that motion was when that Question was put to the House, but the Government instructed their MPs to do nothing. They instructed their Members not to oppose the motion. I welcome the degree of humility that they have shown in admitting that they got that wrong, but that admission is not an excuse for the Government unilaterally to seek to change the wording of or meaning behind a binding decision of this Parliament. They have the audacity to come here yesterday and today and say that they, not Parliament, know what Parliament decided. They are placing themselves above Parliament. That is a contempt of Parliament.

As for the “legal position” document published yesterday that was going to fix it all, it could hardly have been more patronising if they had included pictures to colour in and wee join-the-dots puzzles every so often just to keep us interested. It was not a legal position by any accepted definition. It was possibly an attempted sop to some Conservative MPs, who are in a very difficult position—struggling between their understandable loyalty to their Government, to their party and to individual Ministers and their overriding loyalty to the people and to this Parliament.

As the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said, the Government have made a habit of not turning up if they think they are going to lose. Maybe the problem is that they are so used to being allowed to ignore the views and opinions of Parliament that they forgot that sometimes Parliament takes decisions they are not allowed to ignore. Maybe that is why they are so upset now. Maybe it is because, alongside the issues of what should and should not be made available to Members of Parliament and to the public, this decision has laid bare the incompetence at the heart of a Government who do not even know the basics of parliamentary procedure.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to openness now mean that he will be asking the Scottish Law Officer to publish all her advice to the Scottish Parliament in future?

[Peter Grant]

I have absolutely no doubt that, if the Parliament that represents the sovereign people of Scotland gave a binding direction to the elected Government of Scotland, the elected Government of Scotland would comply with that binding direction. No such binding direction has been given, so let us not try to deflect attention from the clear and blatant contempt that has been committed against this House with completely false accusations of contempt elsewhere.

We have a Government who are behaving like a football team who do not turn up for friendlies if they think they will be beaten and then discover that they have missed a cup final and have forfeited the tie with a notional 3-0 score. Not only are they asking to be allowed to replay the final, but they are complaining that the score is void because the three notional goals would all have been offside if they had been there to defend them.

We are not talking about a game of football with a trophy at stake, and we are not talking about the sanctity or non-sanctity of the confidentiality of legal advice; we are talking about the most fundamental principle that governs our nations, the principle that Parliament can tell the Government what to do, not the other way around. This is not just some temporary individual aberration; it is part of a pattern of Government attempts to keep Parliament out of this altogether. They want to restore sovereignty to Parliament by keeping Parliament out of its own sovereignty.

The Government went to the Supreme Court to stop us having any say on the triggering of article 50, and they lost. They did their damnedest to stop Parliament having any say on the withdrawal agreement, and they lost. They spent thousands of pounds of our money trying to prevent a group of Scottish parliamentarians from finding out whether article 50 can be unilaterally revoked, and they lost. The Court of Justice of the European Union will now almost certainly find that article 50 can be revoked.

I pay tribute to the parliamentarians from five political parties and three national Parliaments who took that case to the Court. What they have won will prove to be a pivotal victory, but it raises a question that is too important to be treated as rhetorical, and a question that is highly pertinent to the substance of today’s debate. What kind of Government go to court to prevent their own citizens from knowing that the Government have legal powers but have chosen not to use them? What legitimate reason can there be for a Government to want their people to believe something is legally impossible when the Government already have legal advice telling them it is perfectly possible?

This morning’s preliminary opinion from the CJEU is simply another example of this Government’s attitude that the path they have chosen unilaterally is the only one worthy of consideration and that nobody is even allowed to know that other paths might be possible. They have their priorities completely wrong. They repeatedly tell us, and the Leader of the House said it often enough in moving the amendment, that their ultimate duty is to act in the public interest, but in fact they are demanding that Parliament and the public act at all times in the Government’s interest—that is not the same thing at all. The Government, and not the Parliament that holds sovereignty on behalf of the public, have taken upon themselves the right to decide what is in the public interest. The Government declare they know better than Parliament what is in the public interest. The Government place themselves above the decisions of Parliament, and they place themselves in contempt of Parliament.

Early next year we will see the 370th anniversary of the day when a crowned king of Scots was executed, just a few hundred yards up the road from here, for defying the will not of this Parliament—this Parliament did not exist then—but of one of its predecessors. I do not think anyone is suggesting a similar fate for those who are found in contempt of this Parliament, but we should be under no illusions about the gravity of what we are discussing, and we should be under no illusions as to how the mockery from the Conservative Benches is being perceived by those who believe this Parliament should be allowed to tell the Government what to do.

The elected Parliaments of our four nations, for all their faults, flaws, imperfections and ridiculously outdated, arcane procedures that the Leader of the House sometimes does not like, represent the rights of our citizens. No one, but no one, has the right to wield power over the people without the consent of the people. In a parliamentary democracy, that consent is expressed through Parliament, not through the office of the Prime Minister or any other office of state.

When Parliament speaks, it speaks on behalf of the people and the Government must listen. When Parliament instructs, it instructs on behalf of the people and the Government must comply. Parliament has spoken, and the Government must listen. Parliament has instructed. It has not asked, opined or suggested; it has instructed. The Government can disagree, moan or complain as much as they like, but they must comply with the instruction of Parliament.

Instead, the Government seek to defy the instruction of Parliament. They seek to defy the sovereignty of the people, as expressed through their elected representatives. It is now for Parliament to take the only course of action open to us to compel the Government to back down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

I fully respect the hon. Gentleman as well, as he knows, but I put it back to him that the Scottish Government have through their actions shown themselves to be disrespectful of the Scottish Parliament on binding motions, for example on primary 1 testing or the named persons legislation or fracking, when the Scottish Government abstained, or possibly the offensive behaviour at football Act, all of which they decided were advisory motions that the Government did not have to abide by.

[Peter Grant]

I am interested that the hon. Gentleman says that the Scottish Government decided these were advisory motions. Is it not the fact that they were advisory motions under the Standing Orders of the Scottish Parliament, exactly like the advisory motions from the Opposition that this Government have ignored for the last three or four years? Can he give a single instance when a binding motion of the Scottish Parliament has not been complied with by the Scottish Government or indeed Scottish Executive prior to 2007? A single example would do.

[Andrew Bowie]

I am not here to debate these issues; I am here to point out the rank hypocrisy of SNP Members in putting their names to a motion demanding that this Government publish legal advice when they themselves have not done so on countless occasions, including, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) pointed out, recently when the Scottish Government’s Brexit Minister refused to publish their own legal advice for their continuity Bill. So I ask SNP Members what has changed: have they changed their minds on this, and do they believe now that it is in the interests of the country and of all Governments at every level—from here at Westminster to Holyrood to Cardiff to Belfast—to publish legal advice in full? If so, that is quite a change from where they were six years ago, and quite a change from where they were even six weeks ago, and it would lead to some interesting questions on the Floor of the Scottish Parliament.