Yvette Cooper
Main Page: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)Department Debates - View all Yvette Cooper's debates with the Attorney General
(4 years, 7 months ago)
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The Attorney General
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. I do of course agree with him that legal advice, and particularly the role of the Attorney General, is always difficult, because one polices and intersects a very difficult line between giving advice of an impartial, and politically impartial, character, and being a political Minister, but I hope that I have endeavoured to do that with all the conscience and candour at my disposal—and when I say to the House, as I do today, “I accept that we lost; we got it wrong on the judgment of the Supreme Court; but it was a respectable view on the law to take, and that view was taken by four of the seven judges who had opined up to the point of the Supreme Court.”
The Supreme Court has made new law. Let us be absolutely clear: from now on, the prerogative power of Her Majesty, advised by the Prime Minister, can be the subject—the justiciable subject—of the court’s control, and that was a judgment that the Supreme Court was perfectly entitled to make. What the implications are for the future of our constitutional arrangements will have to be reflected upon in the coming months and years, but it is never wise to reflect upon a court case and its implications in the immediate aftermath of that case. It will have to be done carefully and deliberately, and this House will have to decide, ultimately, whether these matters and these powers are for this House to regulate and control, or whether they are for the judiciary; but, at the moment, the Supreme Court has spoken, and that is the law.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Attorney General’s acceptance at that point that the Government got it wrong in this case is very welcome. Will he now advise the Prime Minister and the Government to accept and agree with the content of the Supreme Court’s judgment—not just the obligation to abide by its conclusion—and, in particular, to accept that it is wrong for this Government, or any Government, to seek to prorogue Parliament for five weeks, rather than just for a few days, without giving any reason, let alone, in the words of the Supreme Court, a good reason, to the public, to Parliament, or to the courts?
The Attorney General
The judgment is clear. The Government are assessing its short-term and long-term implications now, but the right hon. Lady can be quite certain that they will abide by its ruling, and by the content and implications of its judgment.