Motion Moved by Lord True That this House do not insist on its
Amendment 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason
1A. 1A: Because the Commons do not consider it appropriate that the
dissolution of Parliament should be subject to a vote in the
Commons. The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con) My
Lords, with the leave of the House, I will briefly remind your
Lordships of where we find ourselves. Your Lordships’
House...Request free trial
Motion
Moved by
That this House do not insist on its Amendment 1, to which the
Commons have disagreed for their Reason 1A.
1A: Because the Commons do not consider it appropriate that the
dissolution of Parliament should be subject to a vote in the
Commons.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office () (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will briefly remind your
Lordships of where we find ourselves. Your Lordships’ House
amended the Bill, which had been passed by the other place, to
give the Commons the right to a veto on dissolution and invited
the other place to reconsider its decision. As the noble and
learned Lord, , told us, the amendment would
offer the House of Commons an opportunity to reflect again on
this highly important constitutional Bill.
It has now been considered by the other place again, and the
Commons unsurprisingly maintained its previous decision. During
the discussion in the other place, Members noted the flaws of a
prescriptive system and feared that it would recreate the
paralysis of the 2019 Parliament—something that the manifestos of
both major parties at the last general election said they wished
to avoid. Furthermore, the importance of retaining the flexible
nature of the constitution was emphasised.
Your Lordships asked the other place to consider its role, as is
your Lordships’ right. For a second time it has done so, and it
has decisively rejected a Commons veto, placing its trust, as do
the Government, in the constitutional practices that served this
country well for generations before the failed experiment of the
Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The Government agree with the view of
the other place: the amendment would undermine the rationale of
the Bill.
We are now within reach of securing important and historic
legislation and delivering the manifesto commitment of two
political parties—and notably, from my point of view, of the
Government. The Bill returns us to the status quo ante, revives
the prerogative powers for the Dissolution and calling of
Parliament, and preserves the long-standing position on the
non-justiciability of these powers.
I thank all noble Lords for their important engagement in the
passage of this Bill, which was valued by me and the Government.
It deepened reflection on the Bill and the principles behind it.
However, I would be grateful if your Lordships now accepted the
clear decision of the other place, which, as the reason before us
today notes, is that
“the Commons do not consider it appropriate that the dissolution
of Parliament should be subject to a vote in the Commons.”
That is a very clear message from the other House, and I urge
your Lordships not to insist on their amendment.
(CB)
My Lords, after a short debate in the other place, the amendment
proposed by this House was disagreed, and here we are today.
There is still an issue: we believe the Dissolution of Parliament
should not be based on the revival of the prerogative, but the
other place takes a different view. The other place is the
elected Chamber. As I made clear during the debate, this issue
was to be decided not by Parliament as a whole but by the other
place because that is the elected Chamber. It has spoken. I stand
by the undertaking I gave during the debate, and therefore this
must be carried.
In doing so—I think I am allowed to say this—I very much hope
that, in the long march of the future, it will turn out that the
decision of the House of Commons is vindicated. I really do hope
that. I would like to think that I will be right, but I still do
not have confidence that we can be sure that no future Prime
Minister will misuse or abuse this power. We will therefore have
to wait for the future to decide who, in truth, was right on the
issue.
(Con)
My Lords, I hope we are all agreed that we should not insist on
the amendment that we passed on the previous occasion. However,
we were right to ask the other place to think again. Indeed, even
though it was a relatively short debate, and programmed as such,
it was an opportunity for a number of Members to think again—if
not necessarily to change their minds, at least to reflect on the
nature of the decision that was being made. For example, said:
“In building legislation that will last, we need to ensure that
we have sufficient, adequate checks so that any Prime Minister
will not abuse their position.”
asked a very interesting
question, which we raised here:
“What would happen where the Prime Minister of a minority
Government wished to call a general election, but there was the
possibility of an alternative Government being formed? Would that
Prime Minister be able to dissolve Parliament by prerogative in
those circumstances, or would another person be given an
opportunity to form a Government and a majority in the House of
Commons?”—[Official Report, Commons, 14/3/22; cols. 647 and
643.]
Of course, the answer is that such a person may be given such an
opportunity but that would be by the exercise of the discretion
of the sovereign, which would draw the sovereign back into
decision-making—something we were all agreed that we wanted to
avoid.
The point is that our amendment was intended to raise these
issues but not in any sense to undermine the manifesto
commitments of the two main parties to repeal the Fixed-term
Parliaments Act. However, the manifestos did not say how the Act
was to be replaced.
The Government have settled to their satisfaction that the
constraint of Parliament upon the prerogative power is to be
removed, but they have not settled the question of whether the
sovereign might continue to be drawn into Dissolution decisions.
It is unfortunately likely that, if there were to be another
coalition—I speak as a former Minister in a coalition
Government—this issue will resurface; it is bound to do so. Like
the noble and learned Lord, , I hope that we will be proved
wrong and the Government proved right.
In such important constitutional legislation—the Government are
fortunate in having my noble friend on the Front Bench to steward
it in this place—we should be looking for consensus and
certainty. I am not sure that this Bill has achieved that. None
the less, I hope that the Bill will succeed in its
objectives.
(Lab)
My Lords, we should not let this moment pass without reminding
ourselves of precisely what a bizarre set of circumstances we
find ourselves in. I remind the House that the Lords amendment
that we sent to the Commons says:
“The powers referred to in subsection (1)”
—that is, the power to dissolve Parliament—
“shall not be exercised unless the House of Commons passes a
motion in the form set out in subsection (1B).”
In other words, very simply, this unelected House is saying to
the elected House that, while it is none of our business, we
think the House of Commons should have something to say about
whether the House of Commons should be dissolved and the
electorate consulted. I hope that, at some point in the future,
the Commons reason for disagreeing with this House will be
printed word for word in Erskine May, as follows:
“The Commons disagree to Lords Amendment 1 for the following
Reason—Because the Commons do not consider it appropriate that
the dissolution of Parliament should be subject to a vote in the
Commons.”
Imagine if we substituted “the Dissolution of Parliament” for,
say, something that we are going to debate in another Bill
tomorrow—“the electoral system”. This is our constitution. It is
not any old Bill but the rules of the game. Could we have an
amendment in future saying that the Commons disagrees with the
Lords in an amendment on the electoral system, on the basis that
the Commons does not consider it appropriate that the electoral
system should be subject to a vote in the House of Commons? That
could apply to any other aspect of our constitution.
I feel pretty confident in saying that there has never been
anything quite like this. As we have said time and time again,
the whole development of our parliamentary democracy has been a
slow transference of power from the monarch/Executive to the
elected House of Commons; yet this particular Commons, elected
just two years ago, is saying that whether or not there is an
election is not anything to do with it. Ultimately, this
entrenches the possibility of the monarch becoming profoundly and
deeply involved in politics and in an acutely political decision:
whether there should be a general election—there is no bigger
decision than that. The House of Commons feels that it should not
have any say in that whatever, and it should ultimately be a
decision for the monarch.
I encourage those who revise Erskine May to make sure that this
stunning reason on Dissolution appears somewhere in the text of
that great tome. I am sure that it has never happened before. I
think it is absolutely bizarre of the Commons to say that it does
not want anything to do with this.
5.15pm
(CB)
My Lords, I have mixed feelings on this occasion. As the House
may remember from my remarks on Report, I always thought that our
amendment to the Bill that we passed back to the Commons was a
second best. I also regret, as the noble Lord has just said, that
the monarch should be left as the only protection against the
misuse of the prerogative power to ask for a Dissolution of
Parliament. I wish that we had decided not to pass the amendment
that we did but instead had removed Clause 3 from the Bill, but
we did not. I hope that no trouble will come from this, but I
fear that it could.
(Con)
My Lords, I fear that if we had removed Clause 3, although I was
very sympathetic to that line of argument, as the noble Lord
knows, we would have had the same result. The Commons, whipped,
would have sent back the Bill with Clause 3 reinserted. We should
not delude ourselves.
Both noble Lords on the Cross Benches performed a signal service.
It was right that the noble and learned Lord, , should take the initiative that
he did. I supported him then, and I would support him again, but
not tonight, because we both made it plain, as did others, that
this had to be the decision of the House of Commons. I think
Members have made an unfortunate and potentially dangerous
decision, bearing in the mind the delicate position of the
monarch. I am very sorry they have deleted the wisdom that we
inserted into the Bill. But it has, and there for the moment is
an end to it.
(LD)
My Lords, I echo the sentiments of the noble Lord, . This is a bizarre situation,
in that we said to the House of Commons, “We think, O House of
Commons, that you ought to have a bit more power on one of the
most important acts of the political calendar; namely, the
calling of an election.” It is an act, of course, which affects
every one of them intimately whereas it affects us not at all.
They have said, “It’s very kind of you to suggest that we have
more power, but, actually, we don’t want it.” That seems bizarre
and surprising, but if the Commons in their collective wisdom
decide that they would rather the Queen retain a power than that
they be given one which we have very generously offered to them,
it seems churlish of us to insist on it. Therefore, I do not
propose that we do.
(Lab)
My Lords, we laugh, and in some ways, it is amusing. It is also
extraordinary—I am not sure that it is amusing. The Fixed-term
Parliaments Act was an Act of its time whose main purpose was to
protect the coalition Government, and it succeeded in that to a
degree. I was very disappointed to read the response of Ministers
in the other place. It seemed to focus on the argument that
because all parties agreed that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act
must go, there was only one way of doing it. That seemed an
extraordinary proposition to make. On the points made by my noble
friend and the noble Lord, , this House had no vested
interest whatever in the amendment that it passed. It sought to
do so in the interests of the democratic system. The Government’s
preferred option was one that we found quite extraordinary.
We enjoy in our Parliament a system of checks and balances in the
democratic system. For those of us who do not consider that the
Prime Minister alone should decide on the election, there seem to
be three alternatives: first, that the courts intervene, which
the majority of your Lordships’ House found unacceptable,
although I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Butler;
secondly, as the noble Lord, , said, that the monarchy would
be drawn into that decision-making process, which we would all
seek to avoid—I was glad that he quoted both and , because I thought the points
they made in the House of Commons were very pertinent; finally,
that Parliament should have an opportunity to be engaged in that
decision.
Those of my age who remember Wolfie Smith in “Citizen Smith” will
have heard “Power to the people”; the Minister said, “Let us hand
power back to the people”, but the Government are actually
handing power back to the Prime Minister. There was never any
difficulty in the election process—there was always going to be a
general election—it is about who decides on the election. The
Minister probably watched too much bad TV in his younger days. I
find it extraordinary that the House of Commons was prepared to
give up that power so easily.
I agree that, as the other place—albeit its majority being the
Government’s majority—does not wish to pursue this, there is
little point in our asking it to reconsider. However, I repeat a
question that my noble friend Lord Collins asked the Minister in
Oral Questions yesterday, which he sort of answered in the
affirmative. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was a prime example
of legislation being passed for one particular purpose without a
great deal of thought, and it has had to be undone for all the
reasons we know. Legislation made too quickly for a specific
circumstance does not protect the constitution in any way. I hope
the Minister will agree with me that constitutional change needs
much more careful examination of long-term and unintended
consequences. We have got ourselves into a right pickle over this
one. Does he accept that, when looking at any significant
constitutional change, a period of pre-legislative scrutiny and
consultation would provide for better legislation at the end of
the day?
But for now, bizarre as the decision made by the other place may
seem, we do not intend to pursue this further.
(Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I say to the
noble Baroness that this Bill did receive detailed
pre-legislative scrutiny; it was considered by a Joint Committee
of both Houses and Ministers were scrutinised by committees in
both Houses. Ministers in both Houses—I have had some small
endeavour in this—have engaged actively with interested Members
during the Bill. That is a contrast—perhaps this was the point
the noble Baroness was making—to what happened in 2011 when the
Fixed-term Parliaments Act was cobbled together in back rooms, as
we learn about in the memoirs of Mr .
(Lab)
Just to help the Minister, that is exactly the point I was making
about the Fixed-term Parliaments Act not having proper scrutiny
and getting us into the position we are in now.
(Con)
I was agreeing with the noble Baroness on that. The Fixed-term
Parliaments Act was an aberration from 2011 to 2022. Some noble
Lords have expressed shock that the House of Commons would wish
to return to an arrangement which endured for generations. I do
not share that shock.
The noble Lord, , who was a ferocious opponent
of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act—I agreed with him profoundly on
this—said he was surprised that the House of Commons responded in
the way it did. I read out to the House its reason in my opening
remarks. Your Lordships asked the Commons a specific question on
the Dissolution Bill: did it want a veto on this Dissolution
measure? The House of Commons has replied specifically to that
question in its reason. That does not in any way detract from the
powers of the House of Commons either to bring down a Government
through withdrawing confidence or to sustain one. That remains
one of its fundamental powers, which can promote a Dissolution
and a general election.
I agree with those who said there is an abiding need to avoid the
sovereign being drawn into politics. That principle is accepted
by all people, I think, at every level of politics; it has been
and will remain the case, as was set out in the Dissolution
principles.
It was proposed that the Commons should have a vote, and the
Commons has clearly rejected the proposal. I am grateful that
noble Lords—albeit it in a mildly chiding way in some cases—have
accepted that. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord,
, for not pressing his amendment.
I did not chide the House in any way on the role it played—I
respect that role—but I think we should show respect for the
decision of the Commons in our words and deeds now.
I thank noble Lords for all the points made in the debate. I hope
we can now proceed, and I beg to move.
Motion agreed.
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