EU Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Advice

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:05 pm on 13 November 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Keir Starmer Keir Starmer Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union 1:05, 13 November 2018

As the right hon. Lady knows, I have great respect for her, but I really do not think that engaging in that kind of intervention is helpful in this serious debate.

In relation to the intervention of Mr Grieve and the general point, my response is this: this issue of the disclosability of legal advice has been discussed very much in the past two or three weeks. As soon as I started calling for it, I made it very clear, when I was pressed as to what procedures we would use to try to obtain the advice, that I did not want to use any. I invited the Government to indicate that they would disclose the advice in full rather than have this fight in the House, and therefore I declined, three weeks ago, to say what procedure we would use. I wanted the ball to be in the Government’s court. I wanted the Government to see the good sense in putting the legal position before the House, for all the exceptional reasons that have been set out, and the Government have not responded in kind. That is why we are here today with this Humble Address.