War powers require formal definition

Andrew Blick (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Jack Straw - the first MP to be Lord Chancellor - appeared before a Lords Committee for the first time last night. Their main interest was in the judicial parts of his job. He seemingly conceded that the creation of the Ministry of Justice, which was decided without any apparent consultation with the judiciary, should have been handled better. And he implied strongly that he thought the former Prime Minister Tony Blair should not have opened his mouth over the decision to drop the investigation into alleged corruption around the the Al-Yamamah arms deal. The Committee did get onto the broader constitutional reform programme as well - taking particular interest in a subject they produced a report on last year, war powers. Currently the executive makes all decisions over war and peace without any formal obligation to consult Parliament. It seems that, like the Constitution Committee, the government favours a convention that Parliament should be able to vote on entry into armed conflict, rather than a statutory requirement. Discussion then got confused, with Jack Straw floating the curious idea of a hybrid statutory convention - surely an oxymoron. The nebulous conversation revealed the fundamental flaw in the Constitution Committee's approach to the war powers. Conventions are too vague and too malleable (especially by the executive) to work and cannot by definition be created out of thin air. The only way to avoid these problems is to formally define the role of Parliament in overseeing this and other prerogative powers, allowing the executive sufficient constrained discretion to respond to emergencies. This course was the one recommended by the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, as Jack Straw noted. Other countries, including our allies in Nato, have achieved this task and there is no reason why we cannot.