Last week, I wrote about the controversy caused by the government’s revision of the ministerial code which guides ministers’ conduct. In its Blair-era version, the code said that ministers had an overarching duty
‘to comply with the law including international law and treaty obligations’.
The Cameron-era version has deleted the last six words, leaving simply
‘…to comply with the law’
. This has outraged lawyers who work in this field, but what the change exposes is that international law and treaties should never have been slipped into the rubric in the first place.
According to the great legal philosopher Professor John Finnis, in a blog for Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power project,
‘The most fundamental principle of our constitutional law … is that ministers can neither claim any immunity … from the rules of common law, nor … impose a legal duty … except to the extent that an Act of Parliament authorises them to do so.
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