MINISTER’S FURY AS SCOTTISH JUDGES TELL PM: YOU BROKE LAW
(But English High Court says he DIDN’T)
A SENIOR minister last night accused judges of ‘interfering in politics’ after they ruled Boris Johnson had broken the law by suspending Parliament.
Scotland’s highest civil court said the PM had ordered Parliament to be shut down for five weeks in order to ‘stymie scrutiny’ of Brexit.
The court said the prorogation – which began in the early hours of Tuesday morning – was unlawful and suggested Mr Johnson had misled the Queen over his reasons for the suspension.
The ruling could see Mr Johnson forced to recall Parliament if it is upheld by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Critics, including former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, said Mr Johnson would have to resign if it was found that he had ‘misled the Queen about the reasons for suspending Parliament’.
Downing Street said it was ‘disappointed’ with the verdict and lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court. However No 10 backed away from initial comments which appeared to accuse the Scottish court of bias.
But Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng waded into the row last night, saying Leave voters were ‘ beginning to question the impartiality of the judges’. In an interview with the BBC, he said he accepted that judges were ‘impartial’, but warned that many voters believed the courts were trying to frustrate Brexit.
‘The extent to which lawyers and judges are interfering in politics is something that concerns many people,’ he said.
He added: ‘Many people are saying – I’m not saying this – but many people are saying that the judges are biased, the judges are getting involved in politics. I’m just saying what people are saying.’
The Scottish judgment was directly contradicted by a High Court ruling in England, which said the issue was ‘not a matter for the courts’. Explaining their decision in a separate case brought by anti-Brexit activist Gina Miller and former PM Sir John Major, three of England’s most senior judges said the suspension of Parliament was a political, rather than legal matter.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and President of the Queen’s Bench Division Dame Victoria Sharp said the decision to suspend Parliament and the PM’s advice to the Monarch ‘were inherently political in nature and there are no legal standards against which to judge their legitimacy’.
Legal experts and politicians also questioned the Scottish court’s decision to intervene in such a highly political issue.
Former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption said: ‘My own view is that this is a political issue, not a legal one, and that the case can only be resolved politically.’ Lord Sumption, a Remainer, said he believed that Mr Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament was ‘disgraceful’. But he warned that the Supreme Court would be straying into uncharted constitutional territory if it backed the Scottish judgment.
He told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: ‘I’m not going to give a prediction, but I think that if they were to decide that the Scottish judges were right, they would be making really quite significant changes to a correct understanding of our constitution because the issue is the propriety of the legal motives, and that seems to me to be a fundamentally political issue.’
Brexiteers rounded on the judges. Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘This is a highly political judgment, they have overstepped the mark. There are no laws governing the use of prorogation – this is the courts trying to second guess what politicians intended.’
Yesterday’s ruling by the Court of Session in Edinburgh said advice given by ministers to the Queen which led to the five-week prorogation was ‘unlawful and is thus null and of no effect’. Downing Street had insisted the five-week prorogation was needed to allow the Government to set out its legislative programme in a Queen’s Speech on October 14 and was nothing to do with silencing its critics.
The PM’s official spokesman said the Government would abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court, which is also considering an appeal against a ruling by the High Court in London which found that the suspension was lawful. In the meantime, officials said Parliament would remain prorogued.
Jeremy Corbyn said the ruling showed that the PM ‘is not above the law’. Union bosses called for
‘A highly political judgment’
Mr Johnson to be arrested. Manuel Cortes, head of the TSSA transport union said: ‘Parliament must be immediately reopened – but Johnson should be in jail, not Number 10. He’s broken the law.’
The ruling blindsided No 10 and led one source to suggest the Scottish court was politically biased.
‘We note that last week the High Court in London did not rule that prorogation was unlawful,’ a source said. ‘The legal activists chose the Scottish courts for a reason.’ The unattributed comments sparked an angry backlash and were later denied by No 10.
Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, said: ‘This is a very unwise road for a party that believes in a) the Union and b) the rule of law to go down.’
The backlash prompted Justice Secretary Robert Buckland to intervene, saying: ‘Our judges are renowned around the world for their excellence and impartiality and I have total confidence in their independence in every case.’
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Mr Johnson was deliberately ‘stymying’ Parliament and dodging scrutiny, they said. His prorogation request to the Queen and her decision to accept it had been unlawful.
The judiciary is of course independent and free to make judgments as it sees fit. But it must be very careful not to allow itself to be dragged into politics.
Parliament is the supreme legal authority in this country and many will see this ruling as challenging that principle. On Tuesday, our Supreme Court must decide whether Mr Johnson is indeed a criminal for giving MPs an extra few days off after their party conferences. The Mail sincerely hopes they will rule that he is not.
Separation of powers, under which the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) operate independently of each other, is the keystone of our constitutional law.
If that principle is allowed to corrode, democracy itself begins to crumble.