Emergency Question: The Supreme Court Judgment

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 24 September 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:49, 24 September 2019

Well, Llywydd, I listened very carefully to what the former First Minister has said, as I think other Members in this Assembly should do, because of his role as a Privy Counsellor, because of the fact that he has actually attended those forums that have been at the heart of the issues that the Supreme Court has had to deal with, and, as he said, the Scottish court found that the advice given in the Privy Council was not advice based on good faith. Now, of course, what Carwyn Jones has said is right, we all of us, I'm sure, make decisions in good faith that then turn out not to be as soundly based as we had thought. The issue here is one of good faith—the fact that the Prime Minister, when providing his advice, said that he wanted to prorogue Parliament for one reason, whereas in fact it was clear from decisions that he had made that that was not the case. And that really does go to the heart of the way that our constitution operates. It goes to the heart, Llywydd, I would say, of arguments that people on different sides of this Chamber have made about the need for a constitutional convention and for a written constitution, which would avoid some of the risks that we have seen the current Prime Minister able to take and thought that he would get away with, and today he's been found out. But it should never have got to that stage and a different constitutional settlement would prevent that from happening. I agree with his final point; I have thought, ever since I heard the judgment and heard the way that the president of the Supreme Court was so unambiguous in her finding, the Prime Minister has been found to have acted unlawfully and in a way deliberately designed to subvert our democracy. How does anybody in that position think that they can carry on?