asked Her Majesty’s Government:
Whether they will hold further discussions on the role of Parliament in the future deployment of British forces overseas.
My Lords, the Government addressed this point in the House of Commons on 8 January. The position was also made clear in the Government’s response to this House’s Constitution Committee’s report Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility. The Government continue to listen to views about prerogative powers to deploy the Armed Forces and to keep their policies under review.
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for that reply. As he said, the Select Committee on the Constitution, of which I have the honour to be a member, published a report last July that recommended that there should be a parliamentary convention determining Parliament’s role in making decisions to deploy force outside the United Kingdom to war. The Government, in their very brief response, said that they were not presently persuaded of the case for establishing a new convention determining the role of Parliament in the deployment of the Armed Forces but would keep the matter under review. The Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Leader of the House of Commons have made public comments sympathetic to the view of the Select Committee. Moreover, we shall shortly—
Question!
My Lords, I am coming to the question. We shall shortly be debating the future composition of this House and its role. There is a strong chance that in future there will be a difference of view between the two Houses. In view of the public interest in this matter, will the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor undertake to facilitate a debate on the Select Committee’s report in this House at an early date?
Unfortunately, my Lords, I cannot make any offers of debates on such issues. The committee’s report, to which the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, referred, was an excellent contribution to the debate. The issue is difficult. The question is: should the Executive still formally have the power to wage war? Everyone accepts that it is inconceivable in the current climate that any Government would ever go to war without first having the support of Parliament. I suspect that the issue, although defined as a matter of principle, does not have much practical impact.
My Lords, since there were no parliamentary Motions supporting armed intervention in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, is it not clear that the supposed constitutional convention that Parliament will be asked afterwards is a fragile protection against a Government committing British forces to armed conflict without the wholehearted support of the British people? Should the prerogative powers not be based on constitutional statute?
My Lords, it was clear that the Constitution Committee rejected the idea of any sort of statute in this area because that would be inflexible. It would have been perfectly possible at any stage for Parliament to intervene and say it did not support either of the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. It did not.
My Lords, I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord has had the chance to read the Private Member’s Bill that I produced on this subject, but does he agree that it would be possible to have a statute that provided that we should not wage war without parliamentary approval, but that also had flexibility built into it for cases of emergency? What is the objection in principle to placing this part of the prerogative under the control of Parliament with built-in flexibility, rather than relying upon a rubbery, elastic, probably non-existent convention?
My Lords, the committee gave two reasons. First, you could not, by a framework in a statute, build in sufficient flexibility. Secondly, and separately, there was no enforceability of such a provision. In those circumstances, the Constitution Committee took the strong view, despite the fact that its inquiry started off looking at Bills, that an Act of Parliament was not the right way forward. It accepted that flexibility was necessary. On the noble Lord’s first question, I confess that I have not read his Bill.
My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that I am a little puzzled about the way this Question is going? My recollection is that, when I was a Member of the other place, I was permitted by the present Prime Minister to vote on the deployment of troops in Iraq, but I was not permitted by the previous Administration, under Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, to vote on the deployment of troops in the south Atlantic. Is that not a very important difference?
My Lords, my noble friend is right about the vote on both issues. On the deployment of troops in the south Atlantic, I anticipate that it is right to say that the then Prime Minister had the full support of the British people. There was no dispute about that so there was no need to have a formal vote on it. There was a vote on the invasion of Iraq, the outcome of which was in favour of going. It demonstrates that flexibility ensures that Parliament can express its view appropriately.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has emphasised that the committee was not in favour of this matter being regulated by statute. Why does he ignore the fact that the committee was equally firmly of the view that we could not leave matters as they were and that it had to progress to a properly organised convention? Why is one point relied on and the other totally ignored?
Because I was dealing with a Question on whether I support a statute, my Lords.
In that case, my Lords, does the noble and learned Lord support a convention?
My Lords, as we made clear, we do not support a convention because we do not think one is needed. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, accurately said, we said that we would keep this under review.
My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord clarify that? He says that we do not need a convention, but is there not a convention already?
No, there is not a convention already, my Lords. That is what we said in our evidence, and I do not think that people disputed it. It is perfectly possible—indeed, it will invariably happen—that Parliament would debate the going to war by the Executive, but there is no convention about how or when that should happen and what the circumstances would be.