The First Minister admonishes the leader of the opposition about respect for the rule of law, but I do recall, last week, what he and his Counsel General said about the then binding judgment of the High Court in our jurisdiction, and they decided they would prefer to take the ruling of the court from another jurisdiction. 

What I would ask Members to think about—[Interruption.]—if I may continue—in responding to this judgment today, I think all of us would see it as being far stronger and greater in scope than had been anticipated prior to the judgment. The corollary of that is that the Supreme Court has gone further than what we expected in light of the prior constitutional norms. And I just think, in terms of considering how exorbitant the judgment is, we should focus a bit on paragraphs 49 and 50 of the judgment, which does most of the heavy lifting, where the court says,

'a prerogative power is only effective to the extent that it is recognised by the common law: as was said in the Case of Proclamations, “the King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him”. A prerogative power is therefore limited by statute and the common law'. 

The Case of Proclamations was about the Crown unmaking a law that had been passed by Parliament, and what the common law found then was that the executive could not act against the law or unmake laws where the legislature had restricted the prerogative through passing a law. That is not the case here. Parliament has had over 400 years since then to restrict the prerogative and control how it could be used. It has chosen not to, yet the Supreme Court has done so itself through the principles that it has discerned today.

Similarly, in the previous Miller judgment, on the treaty on the functioning of the European Union we saw that Parliament had restricted the use of article 49—the passerelle clause—but did not restrict the use of article 50. Yet, the court departed from previous principles of statutory interpretation to impose its own restrictions on article 50. One area—[Interruption.]. I'm describing how its judgment is exorbitant. Exorbitant is not the same as wrong. I am a lawyer and I would be cautious before going in the direction that the Member heckles to the effect of.  

In paragraph 60 of the judgment, quite rightly, the court doesn't stray into the areas of parliamentary procedure, but it does presume that Parliament controls its own timetable. Yet, it doesn't. It doesn't have a business of the house committee. The Government allocates days to the opposition or to a backbench business committee, but the Government controls the agenda. Standing Orders say it does. Standing Orders say votes must be forthwith, and there is a mechanism for Parliament—the House of Commons—to revise that on a motion from the Procedure Committee, but the Speaker didn't do that, because the Procedure Committee has a majority that backed Brexit. It's elected by the House. So, instead the Speaker ignored Standing Orders, read something into them that was not there and did things that way, contrary to the rules of the Commons in order to drive forward the law.

We have a very important judgment today. I just about managed to read it since it came out, but I think we should all take further time to reflect, and I would encourage people to approach this very calmly, because, while I respect the rule of law, and I’d be cautious about criticising judges, I fear that many, many people out there see this through the prism of 'leave' and 'remain'.