Many consider these powers to be essentially spent: they have not been exercised to any significant extent in a very long time, and since then various changes (e.g. the need to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights) have put them on very shaky ground. If he had refused to go along with the Serjeant at Arms, I suspect nothing would have happened because parliament is keen to avoid a small constitutional crisis over these powers, and to avoid losing even the power of threatening to actually use them. In particular the power to compel witnesses, documents and so on in a process that is entirely separate from the courts could conceivably breach the right to freedom of expression as protected by the ECHR.I am surprised that he actually complied with this order, especially as the article says the documents were under a US court order restricting their dissemination/publication, but maybe what happened is the Serjeant at Arms appeared with these scary warnings, his lawyers didn't know quite what to do, so they just did what they were told even if they probably didn't have to.
It will be interesting to see what the US court makes of its order being broken due to the order of a foreign legislature.
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A source on the status of these powers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18875266
jsmith99|7 years ago
zeristor|7 years ago
If they’re that key there was th3 risk of the computer being stolen, hard drive encryption aside.