The ‘dysfunctional’ and anachronistic Privy Council has no place in a parliamentary democracy and should be abolished, civil rights group Justice has said.

In a report published this week, Patrick O’Connor QC of Doughty Street Chambers said the Privy Council (pictured with the Queen, in 1969) provides an avenue by which the executive can evade scrutiny. ‘It perpetuates fictions which conceal the reality of the exercise of power,’ said O’Connor.

While some of the council’s powers are symbolic, others create a vehicle for decisions by-passing Parliament, he said. Such orders in council issued under the royal prerogative have been used to abolish the right of trade union membership at GCHQ and exile the Chagos Islanders from their home on Diego Garcia.