Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

That is because this procedure has been reinvented recently. The truth of the matter is that the House has no power to command documents that are not public and official. That is the constitutional question that the House needs to grapple with.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

May I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on the passion with which he has made his submissions to the House today? In the light of his advice, would it be reasonable for the House to invite the Prime Minister to go back to Brussels and ask for termination of the backstop either on a given date, or after the passage of a certain amount of time?

[The Attorney General]

As my hon. Friend knows, that is not a legal question. We have reached a deal. The House must make a judgment on this deal. If it had been possible to secure a unilateral right of termination, it would have been secured. It was not secured because the European Union asked for an absolute guarantee at the Northern Irish border, but has said that it is temporary; that is written into the agreement. It may well be that the word “temporary” is not enforceable, in the sense that this will subsist even in the event of negotiations breaking down, but that is a clear indication that the backstop cannot subsist forever; and, in my view, as a matter of European Union law, it cannot.