A SCOTTISH judge yesterday ruled that a case against Boris Johnson’s government aimed at preventing the Prime Minister from suspending the Westminster Parliament in order to force through a No-Deal Brexit will be heard on September 6.
The case, which is being taken in the Court of Session in Edinburgh as it sits through the summer recess, features 70 cross-party politicians and Jolyon Maugham QC of the Good Law Project, and asks the Scottish judge Lord Raymond Doherty to stop the bypassing – known as prorogation – of Parliament, as threatened by Johnson.
Lord Doherty rejected the campaigners’ attempts to have the whole hearing before one court to speed up the process rather than going through the normal legal procedures.
“It’s a case that requires expedition but there is a requirement for fairness to both sides,” Lord Doherty said.
However, he agreed to “fast track” the timetable for the legal challenge to take place, setting the date for the substantive hearing as Friday, September 6.
The financial liability in the case was set at £30,000 for each side, with the government’s lawyer persuading the judge to raise it from the £5000 the campaigners wanted under a protective expenses order.
Legal papers lodged by the campaigners in the Court of Session state: “Seeking to use the power to prorogue Parliament to avoid further parliamentary participation in the withdrawal of the UK from the EU is both unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Warning that “the exercise of the power of prorogation would have irreversible legal, constitutional and practical implications for the United Kingdom”, the challenge calls for the court to declare that proroguing Parliament before October 31 would be both unconstitutional and unlawful by denying MPs and the Lords the chance to debate and approve the decision.
The case will be heard three days after MPs return to Parliament.
Jolyon Maugham QC said: “A man with no mandate seeks to cancel Parliament for fear it will stop him inflicting on an unwilling public an outcome they did not vote for.”
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