The attempt by two British MPs to legislate for the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man would be an ’act of war’ according to the deputy director of the Institute of Law in Jersey, Prof Claire de Than.

Dame Margaret Hodge (Labour) and Andrew Mitchell (Tory) keep trying to force the Crown Dependencies to create a public register of beneficial ownership.

Professor Claire de Than was addressing the April meeting of the Positive Action Group when she and her fellow panellists were asked by an audience member about the issue.

The questioner asked whether the panel, including advocate Paul Beckett and Professor Peter Edge, thought it was right to the UK Parliament to consider the move, especially given that the UK itself does not have a workable public register of beneficial ownership.

Prof de Than said that she has in the past asked ’senior Channel Islands politicians’ who agreed with her that if the UK tried to legislate for the Crown Dependencies that ’it would be an act of war’.

She has written widely on the subject of the Crown Dependencies and the potential for direct rule, stating in an article for the University of London that the UK ’has no direct control over tax laws in the Crown Dependencies’ and that imposing direct rule is ’not constitutionally possible’.

She told Monday’s PAG meeting that the UK has ’failed to recognise’ that the Crown Dependencies often have many of the laws in place already.

Despite this, Mitchell and Hodge have twice attempted to force the Crown Dependencies into an open registry by seeking to attach amendments to bills required to pass before Brexit is completed.

However, in both circumstances the amendment or the bill itself was pulled.

Chief Minister Howard Quayle has previously said the Isle of Man may be left with ’no alternative but to challenge the legislative provisions before the courts’.

Earlier Mr Beckett had given details of the island’s constitutional relationship with the UK, which the UK set out to the UN in 2014.

He said: ’The Isle of Man is a self-governing dependency of the British Crown with its own directly-elected legislature, administrative, fiscal and legal systems and its own courts of law.

’The sovereign, in her role as Lord of Mann, is the island’s head of state and the Lieutenant Governor is Her Majesty’s personal representative in the Isle of Man.

’The Isle of Man is not, and never has been, a part of the UK but the UK Government, on behalf of the Crown, is responsible for the island’s defence, international relations and good government.’

The two MPs attempted in March to justify their actions by framing it in terms of the UK’s responsibility for the island’s ’good government’.

Prof Edge criticised the argument put forward by Hodge and Mitchell, calling it a ’late attempt to justify what they thought was appropriate’.

And added that if the laws the MPs were trying to implement are good laws they should be implemented by Tynwald in the Isle of Man and not by Westminster.