The Ministry of Justice, as part of its consultations on changes to Parliament's role, has proposed that the deployment of British troops or the declaration of war should be put to a vote in the House of Commons. This sets out the context in which former defence chiefs have attacked the proposals for their inflexibility.
The Government is looking at creating a War Powers Act, modelled on the US statute.
But both Lord Guthrie, chief of the defence staff under Tony Blair, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, former permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, opposed such a move.....
Lord Guthrie feared pressure for an act was the result of a "knee-jerk reaction about what happened in Iraq".
Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "In theory Parliament should be able to debate things before we go to war, but in practice it is very very difficult.
Sir Kevin said controls were already in place.
"No Prime Minister would able to deploy forces without a parliamentary majority," he said.
One of their key arguments circled around European countries where there is greater parliamentary control over armed forces, even though Brown prefers to emulate the US system. European countries are far more reluctant to commit their troops and are far less likely to go to war, even when their interests are threatened, resulting in a reputation for impotence. Would the United Kingdom trend towards this path if parliamentary accountability was enhanced?
This is an unlikely outcome. Support for this development weighs the need for a parliamentary vote in the conscious deployment of troops like Iraq and the flexible requirements for sending out forces on an urgent mission, when necessary. Blair's vote before Iraq could stand as precedent for a convention, without the need for an Act that may well fall into desuetude under the exigencies of events. Kevin Tebbit rightly states that a government without a parliamentary majority will not be able to go to war. Additional consultation in the Commons goldplates this fact and complicates the decision making process for the Prime Minister. There is little to recommend a War Powers Act.