Waging war: Parliament's
role and responsibility: Follow-up
Introduction
1. On 27 July 2006 we published a report on Waging
War: Parliament's Role and Responsibility (HL Paper 236-I
and II), which considered the different options for increasing
Parliament's role in the deployment of armed force.
2. The report concluded that "the exercise
of the Royal Prerogative by the Government to deploy armed force
overseas is outdated and should not be allowed to continue as
the basis for legitimate war-making in our 21st century democracy.
Parliament's ability to challenge the executive must be protected
and strengthened" (p 41). With this in mind, we further
recommended that "there should be a parliamentary convention
determining the role Parliament should play in making decisions
to deploy force or forces outside the United Kingdom to war, intervention
in an existing conflict or to environments where there is a risk
that the forces will be engaged in conflict" (p 42).
3. More specifically, we recommended (p 43)
that the convention should encompass the following characteristics:
(a) Government should seek Parliamentary approval
(for example, in the House of Commons, by the laying of a resolution)
if it is proposing the deployment of British forces outside the
United Kingdom into actual or potential armed conflict;
(b) In seeking approval, the Government should
indicate the deployment's objectives, its legal basis, likely
duration and, in general terms, an estimate of its size;
(c) If, for reasons of emergency and security,
such prior application is impossible, the Government should provide
retrospective information within 7 days of its commencement or
as soon as it is feasible, at which point the process in (a) should
be followed;
(d) The Government, as a matter of course, should
keep Parliament informed of the progress of such deployments and,
if their nature or objectives alter significantly should seek
a renewal of the approval.
The Government's Response
4. The Government's response to our report was
published as a Command Paper (Cm 6923) on 7 November 2006 and
is reproduced in Appendix 1. The document thus appeared more than
three months after our report was published, in spite of assurances
that it would be delivered by the time the House returned from
the summer recess on 9 October. This is clearly against the spirit
of the commitment given by the Leader of the House, in a letter
to the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, that
"the Government will aim, from now on, to respond to all
… House of Lords Select Committee reports within two months".
We accept that the letter also noted that "where a report
is complex or technical in its nature, the response may on occasion
require a little longer" but, whilst the issue of war-making
powers is indeed a complex one, the brevity and paucity of the
Government's response renders such an excuse unconvincing.
5. The Government's response was indeed inadequate.
Given the seriousness of the subject matter and the scope of our
findings, we were surprised that it consisted of a mere one-and-a-half
pages of comment. This contrasts with the Government responses
to our previous major reports, which numbered 16 pages, 10 pages
and nine pages.[1] Whilst
such a cursory response might be acceptable if it genuinely engaged
with our arguments and recommendations, this document failed to
address the majority of points made by the Committee and by 46
witnesses and organisations in 243 pages of evidence. Indeed,
the response largely points back to comments and assertions already
made by the Government (not least in evidence during the inquiry)
and the Prime Minister, and fails to provide a comprehensive or
stand-alone outline of the Government's position in reply to our
final carefully deliberated report.
6. The response states that "the Government
is not presently persuaded of the case for … establishing
a new convention determining the role of Parliament in the deployment
of the armed forces", arguing that "it must be the Government
which takes the decision" because "that is one of the
key responsibilities for which it has been elected". This
underplays the fact that Parliament was also elected—indeed,
the executive draws its strength and legitimacy from a democratic
Parliament—and does not address our conclusion that "Parliament's
ability to challenge the executive must be protected and strengthened".
It is not sufficient simply to assert, as the Government do, that
"adequate mechanisms for intense parliamentary scrutiny of
executive actions are already in place". Moreover, when we
voiced our discontent about the response during an oral evidence
session with the Lord Chancellor on 22 November 2006, he declined
to throw any further light on the Government's position and told
us "I am not sure that there is much more that we can do".[2]
7. Furthermore, the Government do not seem convinced
of their own position, noting that "the matter needs to be
kept under review" and adding that they are keeping their
policies "under review". Indeed, there is more than
a suspicion that disagreement on this matter at the highest levels
of government is responsible for what is essentially a "fudged"
response to our report. As we noted at the time, the comments
by the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor on this matter seem
at odds with the Chancellor of the Exchequer's comment in January
2006 that "a case now exists for a further restriction of
executive power and a detailed consideration of the role of Parliament
in the declaration of peace and war".[3]
The Leader of the House of Commons took a similar position to
that of the Chancellor, noting that "the parliamentary votes
on military action against Iraq not only showed Parliament at
its best, but also set a clear precedent for the future".[4]
8. These sentiments appear to be shared across
the political divide. The Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron MP,
has said that "giving Parliament a greater role in the exercise
of these [prerogative] powers would be an important and tangible
way of making government more accountable", asking "shouldn't
there be a formal process for Parliamentary approval?"[5]
Similarly, the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell
has argued for "a war powers act to require parliamentary
approval for a declaration of war".[6]
9. Irrespective of the response we received,
we consider that a cross-party political consensus appears to
be emerging that the current arrangements are unsustainable. Accordingly,
we are optimistic that our recommendations will be revisited in
the very near future. We hope that this vitally important constitutional
issue will then be addressed in a more satisfactory manner and
we look forward to playing our part in that debate.
1 Responses to the following reports respectively:
Sixth Report of Session 2003-04, The Regulatory State: Ensuring
its Accountability (HL 68); Fourteenth Report of Session 2003-04,
Parliament and the Legislative Process (HL 173); and Second
Report of Session 2002-03, Devolution: Inter-Institutional
Relations in the United Kingdom (HL 28). Back
2
The transcript can be found at http://www.parliament.uk/hlconstitution. Back
3
See http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2006/press_03_06.cfm. Back
4
Speech to the Hansard Society, 11 July 2006. Back
5
See http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=127681. Back
6
See http://www.mingcampbell.org.uk/2006/05/06/we-need-to-give-power-back-to-the-people/. Back
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