War Powers and Treaties

My Lords, on behalf of the whole House I thank the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, for the excellence of his maiden speech. As he himself indicated, it was most appropriate that with his experience and background he should speak on today’s subject, which impinges on the royal prerogative. Not only has he had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, he was in the diplomatic service, serving, I believe, in NATO and in New Delhi. Then in 1987 he joined Her Majesty’s service for the first time as press secretary—not the easiest of jobs, I am sure. He went on from there and latterly has been the Principal Private Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen. We have been privileged to listen to an excellent, insightful and knowledgeable speech. I am sure the whole House will wish to hear more from him frequently in future. I would add only that I hope he will not feel unduly inhibited by the conventions of official secrets and rules of confidence, but I am sure he knows how to deal with such matters and yet be a valued Member of this House. We thank him for his speech. In the debate on the gracious Speech, I ventured in a few sentences to welcome the consultation papers and the Government’s view with regard to committing our Armed Forces to conflict outside these shores. I welcomed the notion that Parliament should be involved. However, I raised a number of queries. If I may dare to say so, as they were not answered on that occasion, I shall put them again very briefly. What should be the consequences of a Government not acting with parliamentary approval given either in advance or retrospectively? What information must be given to Parliament to enable it to perform its functions? It is clearly of no use for Parliament to have functions without having information put in front of it that it can sensibly and usefully debate. Those questions are still important. Having thought about the matter since then, I believe the time is ripe to put into statute the principle that parliamentary authority should be sought before our Armed Forces are sent into armed conflict, except in cases made out to Parliament by the Government that there is a situation of clear emergency. The value of establishing such a general principle is evident from the seriously mistaken Suez adventure of 1956. A leading constitutional expert, the late Professor Robert Houston, said that, "““if the conduct of foreign affairs and the disposition of the armed forces of the Crown had not been included within the prerogative, the Cabinet might have hesitated in 1956 before embarking on the Suez adventure””." Eighty years ago, in the aftermath of the massive slaughter of World War 1, President Woodrow Wilson said that wars are more than anything the result of secret machinations of statesmen. Wars are much less likely to be entered into by a properly functioning democracy because young men cannot be asked to die for reasons that are not made public. If the Government are accountable to Parliament for their decision to go to war—I am talking about ““wars of choice””, to use the phrase uttered earlier today—and have to explain themselves to Parliament, the media and the public, the Government’s reasons will need to be pretty convincing. I shall say a little more on the subject of treaties, although I followed and agree with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. If I may make a party-political point, it is most appropriate that a Labour Government should wish to extend the principle of the Ponsonby rule, which of course was named after the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the first Labour Government of 1924. His great-grandson, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, may not be in his place today, but he is a valued colleague. If that has been a useful rule, in my view it has not gone quite far enough. If Parliament has insisted on a debate and it has seen the Government’s explanatory memoranda that are now so often produced in relation to treaties, it does not have any real say in whether the treaty is to be ratified. I venture to say, although this may be even less popular with my Front Bench than the remark I have just made, that unless the Government have made out a special case—unless there is a certificate for the Secretary of State, or something of that sort—no treaty should be ratified unless both Houses of Parliament have approved it. I say both Houses because of the point that is frequently made—that in this House there is a lot of expertise. We are seeing it today, in defence and foreign affairs matters. It seems somewhat perverse to say that all that is needed is the approval of the House of Commons.