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We are about to vote on clause 2, characterised by some very distinguished cross-bench lawyers and judges as a “highly undesirable” executive power-grab on giving effect to international treaties. They had my support at Committee stage and will again today. https://twitter.com/ukhouseoflords/status/1273186120658870273
Lord Mance, who knows this field better than almost anyone, describes the Minister’s position on clause 2 as “like the black knight’s in the Monty Python sketch”.
“Why does the House of Lords exist at all if such strong adverse opinion is simply ignored?” Strong stuff.
Clause 2 is a blank cheque to all future governments to take us into such treaties on jurisdiction and enforcement of judgments as they please. Dangerous, as we find our new place in the world. Parliament needs to decide whether foreign judgments are automatically accepted here.
Whether you approve of @UKHouseofLords or not, this is the sort of thing we are here for. The elected Commons prevails in any conflict: but when sense is spoken to them by people who know exactly what they are talking about, they generally listen.
That, at any rate, is the civilised (though legally fragile) basis on which our constitution has functioned in the past. Whether the Commons is asked to reinstate clause 2 (which we have just rejected by 320-233) will be one indicator of how it will function in future.
In such dry-as-dust and barely-noticed debates are our liberties (in the case of the amendment now under discussion - happily overtaken by the vote on Clause 2 - not to be tried for an offence that Parliament never sanctioned) defended - or eroded.
