Parliament will be involved in Brexit process, hearing told
THE Government’s desire to trigger the process of taking Britain out of the European Union without the approval of Parliament is not being done on a “whim” or “out of a clear blue sky”, the UK’s highest court has heard.
Attorney General Jeremy Wright MP yesterday outlined the Government’s case in front of 11 Supreme Court justices who will decide whether Theresa May and her ministers can launch Article 50 under what is known as royal prerogative.
At the start of one of the most important constitutional cases in British legal history, Mr Wright said that it was the “logical conclusion of a process in which Parliament has been fully and consciously involved”.
Mr Wright, the Government’s top law officer, said the process was one in which Parliament had “resolved to put a clear and decisive question about our nation’s future to the British people, and in which Parliament expected the Government to act on the answer they gave”.
He added: “None of this means, of course, that Parliament will not be closely involved in the process of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU over the coming months and years.”
Mr Wright was presenting argument on behalf of the Government urging the panel of justices to overturn a High Court ruling on November 3.
After opening the Government’s case, he handed over to legal expert James Eadie QC to argue through the issues and the points that the Government is basing its case on with the 11 justices.
The Supreme Court is hearing the Government’s appeal against the ruling of the High Court in which, in a decision that infuriated Brexiteers, three judges said Theresa May lacked power to use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and start the two-year process of negotiating Brexit without the prior authority of Parliament.
Mr Wright told the justices in London that the case was of “great constitutional significance in which there is understandable and legitimate interest both inside and outside this courtroom”.
He said the High Court had reached the “wrong” decision, arguing it was for the Government to exercise prerogative powers in the conduct of the UK’s affairs on the international plane.
The position of those who had brought the case and others had always been “that they have no interest in derailing Brexit but only in defending Parliament’s role in the process”.
Mr Wright continued: “But if this is all about standing up for Parliament, I say Parliament can stand up for itself.
“When it comes to leaving the European Union, Parliament has had full capacity and multiple opportunities to restrict the executive’s ordinary ability to begin the Article 50 process and it has not chosen to do so.”
He said: “However much they may wish it had, those who support parliamentary sovereignty should, we submit, respect this exercise of parliamentary sovereignty too.”
Mr Wright submitted that “in the context of this case the imposition of a legislative precondition by the courts which Parliament did not choose to impose itself, cannot be supportive of parliamentary sovereignty but must be positively inconsistent with it”.
He said: “In the delicate balance of our constitutional settlement this court should, we submit, resist the invitation to make such an imposition.”
If the historic appeal is unsuccess-