Tag Archives: Yemen

Should military action require parliamentary approval? 

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The role of parliament in authorising the use of military force has been much debated in recent years, most recently following airstrikes against targets in Yemen. The Constitution Unit hosted an event with three distinguished experts to discuss what role, if any, parliament should have in approving military action. Rowan Hall offers a summary of the key contributions.

Recent airstrikes in Yemen have revived the debate around parliament’s role in military action. In March, the Constitution Unit held an event on this very topic, with a panel consisting of academic experts Dr Veronika Fikfak and Dr James Strong, and former Cabinet minister and current chair of the Royal United Services Institute, David Lidington. This blog post summarises some of the points made at the event, a recording of which is available on YouTube and in podcast form. 

Dr Veronika Fikfak 

Veronika Fikfak began by outlining the current constitutional convention governing parliament’s role in military action and made three key points. 

First, citing the Cabinet Manual, Fikfak said that the role of MPs currently only extends to debating military action, not necessarily to voting on it. Although MPs have voted on military action in the past, this is not always guaranteed under the convention as it currently stands.  

Second, Fikfak said that the convention as it currently stands is explicitly linked to the period before military action takes place, not during or after it happens. She welcomed this, arguing that if parliament is to have a real say, it needs to do so in advance of military action. However, she did also note that this aspect of the convention has not always been observed.  

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How might Keir Starmer codify his Prevention of Military Intervention Act?

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Recent events have led to renewed discussion about the convention that parliament should have a formal role in authorising military action, which Keir Starmer at one point proposed to codify in legislation. Robert Hazell argues that placing the existing convention on a statutory footing is unwise, and calls on parliament and the government to work together in creating a ‘shared vision’ of how the convention should operate.

Tony Blair’s decision to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 has cast a long shadow over every subsequent leader of the Labour party. Keir Starmer opposed the Iraq war, and one of ten pledges he promised as part of his 2020 leadership campaign was to introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act. He subsequently specified on The Andrew Marr Show: ‘I would pass legislation that said military action could be taken if first the lawful case for it was made, secondly there was a viable objective and thirdly you got the consent of the Commons’.

Starmer was reminded of this pledge when he was interviewed about the UK airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. He told Laura Kuenssberg on 14 January that his proposal for military action to require the support of the Commons only meant sustained military action involving troops on the ground, rather than targeted airstrikes like those in the Red Sea:

If we are going to deploy our troops on the ground, then parliament should be informed: there should be a debate, the case should be made, and there should be a vote… What I wanted to do was to codify the convention: the Cabinet Manual has a convention… it could be in a law or it could be by some other means.

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