Labour has released a five-page legal opinion that casts doubt on the government’s case for missile strikes against Syria, warning that the necessary standards to justify military action on humanitarian grounds had not been met.

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Downing Street published its own legal case for military action on Saturday, hours after the prime minister said the targeted strikes were “right and legal” and would hamper the Syrian regime’s ability to deploy chemical weapons in future.

The attorney general, Jeremy Wright, presented his legal advice to the cabinet last Thursday, making the case that the strikes were necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophe. No 10 swiftly published a summary to avoid the sort of damaging criticism suffered by Tony Blair’s government when it refused to do so over Iraq.

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However, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has said that the attack on the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles early on Saturday morning was legally questionable.

His deputy, Tom Watson, commissioned legal advice over the weekend after the government published only a summary of its own. Dapo Akande, the professor of public international law and co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, concluded that the government’s position was “significantly flawed”.

He argued that contrary to government claims, neither the United Nations charter nor international law permitted military action on the basis of humanitarian intervention. He also suggested that accepting the UK’s position on the use of force would undermine the supremacy of the UN charter.

Akande claimed that even if a doctrine of humanitarian intervention did exist under international law, the strikes against Syria would not meet the three tests set out by the government as they did not bring “immediate and urgent relief” from the evils it sought to prevent, and was taken before international chemical weapons inspectors were able to reach eastern Ghouta.

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He concluded that if nations accepted the UK government’s position, it would set a precedent for individual states making their own assessments of when force was necessary to achieve humanitarian ends in future, with the risk of abuse.

Watson told the Guardian, which has seen the legal advice: “MPs and the public should not have to rely on the partial information about legality released by the government. There is a clear public interest in this expert and impartial advice from Prof Akande and that is why I am releasing it in full. The government should do the same with their advice.”



The summary of legal advice given by the attorney general to the prime minister outlined why the UK was permitted, in his view, under international law to take measures in the face of “overwhelming humanitarian suffering”.

It set out three reasons why the strikes met international laws for military action on humanitarian grounds, including the repeated use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which it was likely to use again in future.

It also argued that other attempts to alleviate suffering had been blocked and there was no “practicable” alternative. It concluded the action was “carefully considered” and the “minimum” judged necessary.

Other leading lawyers, including two who held ministerial positions under Blair at the time of the Iraq war, backed the legality of the strikes on humanitarian grounds.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton said interventions in Kosovo and to protect the Marsh Arabs in Iraq after the first Gulf war had shown there was a basis for it in exceptional circumstances.

Lord Goldsmith, who advised Blair on the legality of the Iraq war, said the government had made the case “squarely and convincingly”.

However, the prominent international lawyer Philippe Sands QC questioned the government’s explanation of the legal reasons for the attack on Syria. “There is no basis in international law for arguing that a UN member state is entitled to act in the face of an ‘unreasonable veto’ at the security council, or to act by way of reprisal,” he said on Monday. “Has the UK ever made this argument before?” he asked on Twitter.