Cable Forum - View Single Post

**Hugh** · 31-03-2019, 17:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damien

Bringing the Queen into it would be a disaster and a huge mistake for the Monarchy and given how the Queen has handled her role I suspect she knows that and will stay well clear.

This has a good explanation of why it’s unlikely to happen.

https://publiclawforeveryone.com/201...mpression=true

Quote:

All of this might appear to suggest that Laws is right: that the Queen’s legal power to give — or withhold — royal assent to Bills approved by Parliament ought to be exercised in line with Ministerial advice. On this view, if Ministers were to advise the Queen not to grant royal assent to a given Bill, the Queen ought to withhold such assent, even though, by definition, the Bill had commanded the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons and (unless the Parliament Acts 1911–49 were in play) a majority of peers in the House of Lords. Yet a moment’s reflection reveals just how deeply problematic this would be. It would mean, in effect, that the Government had an unqualified veto over legislation: that whenever the Government disagreed with legislation approved by both Houses, it could thwart its enactment by advising — and thus, by operation of the Ministerial advice convention, requiring — the Queen to withhold royal assent.

Now, it must be acknowledged that the likelihood of such circumstances arising is very small indeed. After all, Governments only govern if they are capable of commanding the confidence of the House of Commons, and, as recent events have served to underscore, Governments enjoy a very high degree of control over parliamentary business. As a result, there is very little chance indeed of a Bill succeeding in making its way through the two Houses unless the Government is willing to support it. It follows that the effective veto power that Laws appears to ascribe to the Government would very rarely, if ever, need to be pressed into service.

But these observations founded in the reality of day-to-day politics should not be allowed to blind us to the underlying issues of constitutional principle, the relevant principle here being that of parliamentary sovereignty. According to that principle, Parliament — not the Government, but Parliament — has the right to make or unmake any law. Of course, Parliament can only make law if royal assent is conferred upon the Bills it enacts. But constitutional convention provides that such assent will be given.

Quote:

The upshot, then, is clear. The Queen has a constitutional (albeit not a legal) duty to grant royal assent to Bills. That duty is enshrined in the royal assent convention and arises independently of and without reference to another of the Queen’s constitutional (albeit not legal) duties, viz. to make relevant decisions and exercise relevant legal powers in line with Ministerial advice. To presume that the Queen constitutionally could or should withhold royal assent merely because the Government advises her to do so is thus to conflate the Ministerial advice and royal assent conventions. Both conventions reflect democratic principle, in that they cabin the powers of an unelected monarch by reference to (on the one hand) the advice of (indirectly) elected Ministers and (on the other hand) the legislative will of a (directly) elected Parliament. But the two conventions operate in different domains, and the Ministerial advice convention certainly cannot legitimately be invoked so as to undercut the royal assent convention. The latter is a cornerstone of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which itself is an axiomatic feature the UK constitution. It follows that any Government that advised the Queen not to grant royal assent to a duly enacted Bill would not only be playing with political fire — it would be subverting fundamental constitutional principle. As such, if any Government were ever foolish enough to furnish the Queen with such advice, she would be constitutionally entitled — and required — to disregard it.

---------- Post added at 17:01 ---------- Previous post was at 16:54 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

Yes, but then Mr Speaker prevented the government holding Meaningful Vote 3 on the basis of a precedent set in 1604. What’s sauce for the goose and all that...

Erskine May makes reference to no fewer than 12 such rulings up to the year 1920, so whilst it was set in 1604 (as were a lot of Parliament’s rules), it’s been used since then.

Absence of Speaker intervention since 1920 is attributable not to the discontinuation of the convention but to general compliance with it.