The constitutional arrangements for the use of armed force

• Call for Evidence ( PDF 75 KB)

In 2006 the House of Lords Constitution Committee published a report on Parliament’s role in authorising the use of armed force overseas. It recommended that a convention be created whereby the Government should seek parliamentary approval if they are proposing to deploy British troops into actual or potential armed conflict overseas. Despite various initiatives in the years following that report, no action has been taken to bring any such proposal into effect. Therefore, the Constitution Committee has decided to look again at the constitutional arrangements for the use of armed force overseas. The inquiry will focus on four areas in particular:

• the reasons for the continuing absence of a war powers resolution or other formalisation of Parliament’s role;
• changes in the Government’s internal processes for authorising the use of armed force, and the suitability of those processes;
• the impact of the changing nature of deployments on the choice of constitutional process; and
• the implications of new techniques of warfare for designing a mechanism for parliamentary approval.