WEST Devon MP Geoffrey Cox has defended his advice given as the Government’s legal advisor on proroguing Parliament after the move was declared unlawful by the highest court in the land, writes Sarah Pitt.

As attorney general, Mr Cox, a barrister, is responsible for giving the Government legal advice.

Mr Johnson’s decision to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament for five weeks in the run up to Brexit was declared unlawful by the Supreme Court, the highest court in the UK, on Tuesday last week, September 24.

President of the court Lady Hale said: ‘The court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.’

Mr Cox, Conservative MP who represents Torridge and West Devon, attracted gales of laughter when he stood up in the House of Commons the following day (September 25) saying he had taken ‘a close interest in the case and overseen the Government’s team of counsel’.

Unabashed, he continued: ‘I have to say Mr Speaker that if I was called on to resign every time I lost a case I would probably never have had a practice. The Government accepts the judgment and accepts that it has lost the case and at all times the Government acted in good faith and in the belief that its approach was both lawful and constitutional.’

He said that although the highest court in Scotland had ruled the decision first to prorogue Parliament unlawful the High Court of England had then declined to give a judgment on whether or not the prorogation was lawful, after ruling it to be a government matter which could not adjudicated by the courts. ‘We are disappointed that in the end the Supreme Court took a different view and of course we accept the view of the court,’ he said.

An extraordinary week in Parliament saw MPs return to their seats in the House of Commons on Wednesday, after Lady Hale’s judgment which was the opinion of all 11 justices (senior judges) presiding over the Supreme Court

Her judgment was given after a three-day emergency hearing to consider the case in an appeal brought by campaigner and activist Gina Miller.

Mr Johnson and his ministers, including Mr Cox, had previously defended the prorogation to allow it to start a fresh Parliament introduced by a Queen’s Speech setting out its plans for the NHS, funding more frontline police and other aspects of its domestic agenda.

However Lady Hale said that the primary purpose of the prorogation had been to reduce time for debating the UK’s departure from the EU on October 31.

She concluded: ‘This was not a normal prorogation in the run-up to the Queen’s Speech. It prevented Parliament from carrying out its constitutional role for five out of the possible eight weeks between the end of the summer recess and exit day on October 31.

‘Parliament might have decided to go into recess for the party conferences during some of that period but, given the extraordinary situation in which the United Kingdom finds itself, its members might have thought that parliamentary scrutiny of government activity in the run up to exit day was more important and declined to do so, or at least they might have curtailed the normal conference season because of that.

‘Even if they had agreed to go into recess for the usual three-week period, they would still have been able to perform the function of holding the Government to account. Prorogation means that they cannot do that.’