Dominic Grieve: former attorney general says ministerial code change "sends out a very bad signal"

Senior Tory backbencher joins former Treasury solicitor Sir Paul Jenkins in questioning removal of reference to international law


By Aggie Chambre

28 Oct 2015

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve has joined those questioning recent changes to the ministerial code.

The latest version of the code omits a reference to ministers being bound by international law. The code used to dictate ministers' duty to abide by the law "including international law and treaty obligations" until a new version was published last Thursday referring just to “the law”.

Grieve, who now chairs parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, told the Guardian: “It is impossible to understand why this change has been carried out. If it’s intended to try to remove the obligation to respect international law and our treaties, it doesn’t work. It sends out a very bad signal and is open to misunderstanding and they shouldn’t have done it.”


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On Monday Sir Paul Jenkins – who served as Treasury solicitor and head of the Government Legal Service until March last year – also criticised the changes.

"It is disingenuous of the Cabinet Office to dismiss the changes to the ministerial code as mere tidying up," he wrote in a letter to the same paper. 

"As the government’s most senior legal official I saw at close hand from 2010 onwards the intense irritation these words caused the PM as he sought to avoid complying with our international legal obligations, for example in relation to prisoner voting.

"Whether the new wording alters the legal obligations of ministers or not, there can be no doubt that they will regard the change as bolstering, in a most satisfying way, their contempt for the rule of international law."

A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, however, said the changes were made to "bring the code more in line with the civil service code", and said the reference to legal compliance "includes international law".

"The obligations remain unchanged by the simplified wording," the spokesperson added. "The ministerial code is the prime minister’s guidance to his ministers on how they should conduct themselves in public office."

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