Parliament: Waging War (Constitution Committee Report)

My Lords, the Lord Chancellor’s thesis is that everything is working pretty well and we do not need to put in any safeguard. I wonder whether he would consider an example that he has not given; namely, what happened during the Suez invasion? We now know that even the law officers were not consulted about the legality of the invasion before it incurred. Instead, it went to the Lord Chancellor, the law officers gave their view afterwards, Parliament was not consulted, and I, as a member of the Armed Forces, was under orders to go under cover of darkness to conceal our deployment in order that the newspapers and Parliament would not know. I am not suggesting that this Government are guilty of that, but a future Government could be. Should there not be some kind of convention or statute that makes it less likely that that will happen in the future?