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The Constitution After Scott

Government Unwrapped

Adam Tomkins author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:26th Feb '98

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Constitution After Scott cover

This book provides a thorough and authoritative account of the constitutional implications of the Scott report. It is the only book-length treatment of this pivotal Report. The Scott report was established by John Major in 1992 to look into British government policy during the 1980s with regard to trade (including the arms trade) with Iraq and to establish whether the Government had lied to Parliament about its policy. Scott also investigated a number of high-profile and controversial criminal prosecutions which the government brought against several companies that were accused of illegally exporting "defence equipment" to Iraq. All of these cases failed. This book does more than merely relate the Scott story. It offers a full analysis of what the report means for the future of constitutional government, and constitutional reform, in Britain. Issues of lying to Parliament and ministerial responsibility; of the regulation and control of the civil service; and of open government and freedom of information are all reappraised in the light of Scott's discoveries. Central questions of secret intelligence and troublesome "public interest immunity certificates" are also considered. Unusually for a political scandal, Scott was not an exclusively national affair affecting only one country. There was a little-known equivalent to the Scott inquiry in the USA, and the lessons of the US experience are also discussed here - for the first time in Britain.

essential reading for 'all students of the British constitution or the British government'... the book provides a detailed analysis of the substance of the inquiry into the export of arms to Iraq and the Matrix Churchill case and the subsequent report by Sir Richard Scott. / Diana Woodhouse, Parliamentary Affairs, April 1999.
Tomkins is to be congratulated on producing a succinct description of some of the salient features of one of the most important episodes of recent British constitutional history .../ Ivan Hare, The Cambridge Law Journal, 1998.

ISBN: 9780198262909

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 16mm

Weight: 459g

294 pages