The Government’s consultation on the Attorney-General closed on 30 November. We received about 50 written responses and the Attorney-General held a number of seminars and meetings with interested parties. That included a useful session with Members of this House and the House of Lords, to which the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) contributed. The Government will consider all the views expressed and will announce their conclusions in the near future.
I am grateful to the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General for the consultation, which was very effective and inclusive. The Law Officers often give the Government advice as a matter of course about the interpretation of the law or the meaning of legislative proposals that is easy to disclose. However, on other occasions Ministers present policy propositions to Parliament that they argue are justified because advice has been taken from the Law Officers. Does the Solicitor-General accept that there is now an overwhelmingly strong case that such advice should be published automatically? The most obvious recent, public and famous example of that is the advice that the Government received about the legality of the invasion of Iraq.
I have two points. First, nobody could possibly expect me to pre-empt a consultation that finished only two weeks ago, so I shall not do so. Secondly, the position is far from the way the hon. Gentleman chooses to couch it. No Minister ought to disclose that there has ever been legal advice from the Law Officers, let alone what it was.