Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill Consideration of Lords
amendments Clause 2 Revival of prerogative powers to dissolve
Parliament and to call a new Parliament 5.17pm The Minister for the
Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis) I beg to move,
That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1. The Bill passed
through the other place, where it was carefully scrutinised and
amended in only one respect: to seek to retain a role for...Request free trial
Dissolution and Calling
of Parliament Bill
Consideration of Lords amendments
Clause 2
Revival of prerogative powers to dissolve Parliament and to call
a new Parliament
5.17pm
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General ()
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment
1.
The Bill passed through the other place, where it was carefully
scrutinised and amended in only one respect: to seek to retain a
role for this honourable House in respect of Dissolution. The
Lords amendment provided that the Prime Minister could request
the sovereign exercise—the revived prerogative powers to dissolve
and call Parliament—only when this House agreed the motion
“that this present Parliament will be dissolved.”
That would create an untested, hybrid system by imposing
statutory arrangements on top of the prerogative system that
existed prior to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Such
statutory constraints would undermine the flexibility that for
generations characterised the pre-2011 arrangements that the
Government want to reinstate. With respect, the Government
therefore firmly disagree with the Lords amendment.
In fact, the Government and the Opposition both committed—in
their manifestos, no less—to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments
Act. The Lords amendment would repeal that Act only to retain one
of its fundamental flaws. That is not our wish or our intention
and it does not meet the commitment that we made to the
electorate.
(New Forest East) (Con)
I am hugely relieved to hear the Minister say that. I have stood
in every election since 1997. Only when we saw the chaos caused
by a Government who did not want to continue and an Opposition
who did not want the chance to face an election could we see how
dreadful that old system was. We need to get rid of it, bag and
baggage.
I agree with my right hon. Friend; there is of course a good
reason why the 2017 to 2019 Parliament is referred to as the
zombie Parliament.
I remind the House of the commitments that both parties made in
2019. The Conservatives committed to repealing the Fixed-term
Parliaments Act.
(Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that, if we dismiss Lords amendment 1
today, the courts will not have a role in fixing the dates for
elections, because, surely, that is matter for us, answerable to
the electors?
My right hon. Friend is quite right that it is not productive,
and, in fact, it would not be in the interests of the judiciary
themselves, for the courts to have such a role.
We committed to repealing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, as it
had led to paralysis at a time when the country needed decisive
action. In a similar vein, the Labour manifesto said that the
2011 Act
“stifled democracy and propped up weak governments.”
A vote in the Commons could create paralysis in a number of
contexts, including minority Governments, coalition Governments,
or where our parties, Parliament or even the nation, at some
point in the future, were divided.
As a majority on the Joint Committee on the Fixed-term
Parliaments Act noted, a Commons vote would have a practical
effect only where Parliament were gridlocked. The problem is that
if the Government of the day had a comfortable majority, a vote
would be unlikely to make any difference; it would have no
meaningful effect, beyond causing unnecessary delay and expense.
However, when Parliament is gridlocked, a vote could mean denying
an election to a Government who were unable to function
effectively. We witnessed the consequences of such a vote
painfully in 2019, so let us not repeat that mistake by devising
a system where those events could happen again. Lords amendment 1
is, therefore, with the greatest possible respect, without
merit.
(Cardiff West) (Lab)
The right hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned what happens
in the event of a minority Government. 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?
I do not want to get into hypotheticals, but what I will say is
that the pre-2011 position worked extremely well. There is a
reason why it worked well and it was proven to have functioned
correctly. We seek to go back to a proven, tried and tested
system, which works in a whole variety of different
circumstances, not every one of which can be easily
expostulated.
(Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Does my right hon. and learned Friend share my disbelief at some
of the opposition to the current position, especially as we
recall the chaos that led to the last general election and the
frustration among the public when Parliament, in many people’s
eyes, seemed to lose the respect of the population?
Good constitutional practice involves protecting the integrity of
the legislature, the Executive and the judiciary and, in our
view, the proposals do that and this amendment would not, so I
agree with what my right hon. Friend says.
(Thurrock) (Con)
I sat on the Joint Committee that reviewed the 2011 Act and we
spent long, productive and interesting hours looking at it. Does
my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is really
unproductive to look at our future arrangements in the context of
what happened in 2019, just as it is to look at them in the
context of what happened in 2010? The beauty of our system must
be that the constitution can flex. Those were particularly unique
circumstances in 2019, and we should not let them affect what
happens going forward.
My hon. Friend is completely right. In fact, it is difficult to
expostulate all the different scenarios that may occur in future,
so it is best to avoid that, but we know what worked well—the
status quo ante the 2011 Act.
As I say, we have experienced the consequences of a statutory
scheme and we know what happened in 2019, but the amendment is
also dangerously silent on critical questions of implementation
and is likely to have undesirable consequences for our
constitutional system. For example, it is likely to have negative
consequences for the fundamental conventions on confidence. The
privilege to request that the sovereign exercise the Dissolution
prerogative is an Executive function enjoyed by virtue of the
ability of the Government to command the confidence of the
Commons. That is the alpha and omega of everything, and should
not unduly constrained by any sort of prescriptive parliamentary
process that would be disruptive and unhelpful when expediency is
essential.
(Slough) (Lab)
The Minister responded to the hon. Member for Thurrock () by saying that he fully
agreed with her excellent statement, but he is in essence doing
the exact opposite. Why this paradoxical situation?
I am obviously not doing that. We are able to see where mistakes
have been made and where things have gone well in the past, and
we see that in the pre-2011 position—the position we are seeking
to achieve and that Labour sought to achieve in its manifesto, as
did my party. That tried and tested system worked well, and
worked well for generations.
(Hazel Grove) (Con)
May I refer my right hon. and learned Friend to “The Crown”, of
which I am sure he was an avid viewer? In answer to the
intervention by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (), is my right hon. and
learned Friend familiar with the Lascelles principles, as written
to The Times under the pseudonym “Senex”, and can he update the
House on whether they now form part of the Cabinet manual?
The Lascelles principles are something we still respect. One of
the fundamental tenets of Sir Alan Lascelles’ letter was the fact
that we wished to avoid any suggestion that the sovereign be
involved in politics.
The amendment, as I was saying, is silent on the issue of the
negative consequences. The privilege to request that the
sovereign exercise the Dissolution prerogative is an executive
function that is enjoyed by virtue of the ability to command the
confidence of the Commons.
We must also question how the amendment would work in practice.
For example, how would the parliamentary process be sequenced and
when would it apply? Would the Prime Minister be required to
confirm the support of the House only when they intend to request
that Parliament be dissolved before the maximum five-year term,
or would it apply following a loss of confidence? There are
myriad questions that the amendment would leave unanswered; as we
can see, it adds undesired complexity to what is a simple
proposition—a return to the status quo ante.
The Bill intends to return us to that status quo, reviving the
prerogative powers for the Dissolution and the calling of
Parliament and preserving the long-standing position on the
non-justiciability of those powers. The amendment would undermine
the entire rationale for the Bill. If it is amended as proposed,
we would be entering into precisely the kind of
ill-thought-through constitutional innovation that we are seeking
to repeal.
The simplest and most effective route is to make express
provision to revive the prerogative powers for the Dissolution
and calling of Parliament, returning our country to tried and
tested constitutional arrangements offering certainty around the
calling of elections. The prerogative power to dissolve
Parliament is the ultimate expression of humility on the part of
the Executive, placing the future and power into the hands of the
people.
Finally, with all due respect for the undoubted expertise and
value of the House of Lords, I suggest it is not appropriate for
the revising Chamber to ask the elected House to revisit
questions, not least when they relate to the process and role of
this House, on which this House has already definitively decided.
I thank their lordships, but I hope that they will now take note
of this House’s clear view. Therefore, I would welcome this
House’s sending a clear signal and I urge it to vote against the
amendment.
(Nottingham North)
(Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak for the Opposition in
this debate.
I listened very carefully to the case that the Minister made for
his motion to remove Lords amendment 1 to clause 2. I was sad to
hear it, and I think we could do better. He is right that Labour,
both in our manifesto and in the two years since, has supported
the principle of the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act
2011, which was an ill-thought-out and poorly executed piece of
legislation. I gently say, though, given how strongly the
Minister stressed that, that it was this Government’s piece of
legislation, not ours. He cautions us against novations in this
space, but that was actually a lesson for themselves, and it is
not quite fair to point it in our direction.
5.30pm
Our support for the repeal of the Act does not mean that we
cannot put better arrangements in its place. Those two processes
are very much related. It was not clear from the Minister’s
opening remarks whether he thought that the events of September
2019 were pertinent. For the first six minutes of his speech,
they were, and then, in addressing the hon. Member for Thurrock
(), they were not. We
think that they demonstrated that the previous arrangements were
not fit for purpose and that many of the arrangements prior to
the Act were better, especially in a time of parliamentary
balance.
We have been supportive thus far, but the issue at stake today is
that the Government have learned the wrong lesson from that
debacle—that rather than bringing Parliament with them, it is
instead preferable to exclude Parliament, the courts, as we have
seen, and the civic space. They say that their actions two and
half years ago were the right ones but there were too many
safeguards preventing them from getting their way. In reality—I
do not look back with any fondness on that period, but having
been an Opposition Whip during it, I remember it very well—that
is the opposite of what happened, and the Government ought to
have taken a different lesson from it. I am surprised that they
do not want to take this opportunity to, of course, remove the
old arrangements, but also to modernise what was in place
previously to strengthen the role of this legislature and to
protect parliamentary sovereignty rather than just going back to
a situation where a Prime Minister gets an election whenever they
want one. What a waste!
This is about one Lords amendment to one piece of legislation,
but it is also a continuance of a pattern of behaviour by this
Government in strengthening an overbearing Executive. There is
this Bill, the Elections Bill and the Police, Crime, Sentencing
and Courts Bill, and previously we had the Transparency of
Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration
Act 2014 and the Trade Union Act 2016. All these have sought to
strengthen the Executive at the expense of the legislature, the
courts or the shrinking civic space.
Does my hon. Friend think there is any possibility that a future
Government, or this Government given their past record, might
abuse the power to dissolve Parliament in the way that they
abused the power to prorogue Parliament during that period
through a disgraceful hoodwinking of Her Majesty the Queen?
I am grateful for that intervention. I strongly believe in the
maxim that how you do one thing is how you do everything, and I
believe that the same cast of characters will broadly act in the
same way at every opportunity. That tends to be, as with all the
pieces of legislation that I listed, that the Government see
things through a very narrow political prism, and that is what we
are seeing today.
How is it an abuse of power and a strengthening of the Executive
for the Executive to say, “We want to go to the people and let
the people decide whether we should be allowed to continue in
government or be chucked out”?
The Lords amendment is a very modest safeguard to that in saying,
“At least demonstrate that a majority of the legislature agrees
with you.” It is not unreasonable to say that Parliament could be
involved in the Dissolution process in the way that noble Lords
have said. It is a modest hurdle. All it asks is that the Prime
Minister of the day be able to command a majority, and in
different scenarios.
I know that the Minister is keen to avoid hypotheticals, but we
do have to think about how these powers may apply in future. In a
balanced Parliament like the previous one, the amendment might
mean that the Government work a little bit more broadly to secure
the election. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr
Lewis) referred to the dreadful election of 2019. I would argue
that it was the Government between 2017 and 2019 who were
dreadful rather than the election itself, being a passive
process. Indeed, the Minister characterised it as a zombie
Government. Given that he served in that Government, I think he
does himself a disservice in characterising himself in that
way.
Dr Lewis
I do not think it was a dreadful election—it was a brilliant
election. What was dreadful was the fact that it was in the power
of the Opposition to stop that election happening and to not
allow the people to have their say.
I cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The idea that it
was dreadful that a Government who did not command a majority of
this House could not just always get their way—that is how the
system is supposed to work, I gently suggest.
Where a Government have a clear working majority, as we have
today, the amendment would insure against a capricious Prime
Minister—perhaps one losing the confidence of their own Benches
in the light of, in a hypothetical, significant issues of
judgment or personal character—just going and throwing everything
up in the air in their own interest. Indeed, there is the
scenario, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West () said, where someone else
might be able to form a Government, but the individual who would
be most harmed could just call an election without that being
explored.
The point is this: why should an Opposition, when facing a
minority Government who want to resolve things via an election,
be able to stop an election? They either have to form a coalition
of their majority and govern, which is one option, or allow the
public to decide. It was outrageous that the Opposition did not
allow the public to have a Government.
I cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman, because the reality
is that before those parties could even come together to form
that possible alternative Government, the Prime Minister could be
in the car and on the way to call the election, and that process
would be rendered moot. I cannot support that.
Many Members may find it rather difficult to think of a scenario
when we would not need to have such a vote, but if other Members
have watched “The Crown”, we have seen the example—a very
fictitious one—where the scriptwriters wrote the moment when the
then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was losing the confidence
of her parliamentary party and had that fictitious meeting with
the Queen. 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. Is the truth of the
matter not that we are going back to the status quo ante? Indeed,
the existence of the ouster clause that excludes the courts means
that the Government are going further than that.
It is definitely fair to say that there are new arrangements.
That is why the Minister said the amendment would be
inappropriate, but I do not think it would be. By the way, I have
not seen “The Crown”; my wife and I are working our way through
“Flip or Flop”, and there are 160 episodes of it, so it may take
some time. In the scenario that the hon. Lady talks about, we
have seen in recent history Prime Ministers who are losing the
confidence of their party talking in terms of “Back me or sack
me”. The reality is that the Bill, without this minor safeguard,
would mean that a “Back me or sack me” moment, rather than it
being won as a parliamentary process with a party’s Back
Benchers, would instead play out as a party psychodrama with the
general electorate. I think that would be a bad thing.
I will finish with three further quick arguments against giving
the Government the power they seek, or at least not without this
minor fettering suggested by the Lords. First, it comes back to a
question of electoral advantage and ensuring that elections are
fair. It is an age-old argument, and an issue that has launched a
thousand dissertations—it was one of the major reasons for the
2011 Act—but it has become only more salient since then. Over the
past 12 years, we have seen increasing restrictions on party and
non-party activity, and the Elections Bill will put more in.
These provisions are backdated, and that provides a significant
advantage for candidates of the current governing party during
the short campaign period, but the advantage grows further for
parties, as the regulated period for political parties is now 365
days prior to election day. It is a heck of an advantage to know
that start. The amendment would not completely get rid of that,
but it would even the scales, and that is another good reason to
support it.
Secondly—others colleagues have brought this up, and if I stray
out of order, I know I will be told off, so I will be very
quick—surely the real lesson to take from that 2019 episode is
that by including a parliamentary rubber stamp on Dissolution, we
remove any risk of dragging the Crown into such a decision. I
think all right hon. and hon. Members would seek to avoid that,
because it was an unedifying moment.
Hon. Members have mentioned the courts and the justiciability of
the decisions. The Lords amendment would settle that for certain
because a vote in this House would be a definitive answer. I know
that the Government think that the Bill’s ouster clause will
resolve all matters relating to the courts, but I say to them
that we will see; I do not think it is as definitive as they
say.
I urge the House to support the Lords amendment. The Minister has
made a passionate exposition of his case. I gently say to
Conservative Back Benchers that the Bill is obviously targeted at
restricting the activities of the Opposition, but that means them
too. I see some mischievous faces, including the hon. Member for
Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who is an independent figure. They mean
to fetter their own—[Interruption.]The Minister says otherwise,
but I gently say to him that the last time that was tested with
the Government, which was the first week of September 2019, 21 of
your colleagues lost the Whip—
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. Not of my colleagues.
Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker: 21 of the Minister’s colleagues. Of
course, they were rare circumstances, but it has happened again
in this Parliament that when the Government face opposition from
outside, they seek to shut us out, and when they find opposition
inside, they seek to lock yourselves out as well.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Themselves.
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I say to the Government that it is not a one-way street and we
think that having some checks and balances in our democracy is a
good thing. In that spirit, I hope that hon. Members will vote in
support of the Lords amendment.
(Hazel Grove) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North () for the introduction where he
described me as being cheeky faced. It will stun the Opposition
and surprise the Government that I will be voting
enthusiastically with the Government in the Lobby later, so
clearly my re-education is having the desired effect.
I rise to speak against the Lords amendment and in favour of the
Government’s motion to disagree. I view the Fixed-term
Parliaments Act 2011 not through rose-tinted spectacles as a
great beacon of constitutional progress, but as a politically
expedient measure that helped to secure a coalition in which the
junior partner feared being unceremoniously dumped part way
through an electoral term.
The lesson of the passage of this Bill thus far, and indeed of
the work of the Joint Committee and of my Public Administration
and Constitutional Affairs Committee, is that the genie cannot
simply be put back in the bottle. I slightly disagree with the
Minister, because by removing a prerogative power, the 2011 Act
made it impossible to return completely to the status quo ante,
hence the need for the Bill where we are codifying Dissolution
for the first time. That cannot easily be argued against.
At the heart of the Lords amendment is whether the House should
maintain a veto on Dissolution and the calling of an election,
and I believe that it should not. It is for the monarch to
dissolve the House following a request—I emphasise “a request”,
unlike the early drafting of the Bill, which suggested that Her
Majesty be advised to dissolve—from Her Majesty’s Government.
(Glasgow North) (SNP)
Why is it good enough for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly
and Northern Ireland Assembly to operate on fixed terms but not
this place?
Mr Wragg
The hon. Gentleman invites me to be intemperate about the
difference between this House and the other Parliaments of the
United Kingdom, which I will resist entirely. Places evolve
through their own conventions and those Parliaments are doing
exactly that. There is no need for universality; surely he would
argue that the beauty of devolution is that it allows for
difference. If he wanted uniformity, however, he would
essentially support the United Kingdom.
The impetus for the Bill came from the logjam of the previous
Parliament. It is important to note where the impetus came for
this Lords amendment, because it is a symptom of the mistrust
that followed the Prorogation that never was, in 2019.
5.45pm
There is a need for a constitutional release valve, which I would
say is a general election, but the country was denied that
because the Government did not have a majority. That was
problematic as it undermined our constitutional settlement, if I
can be so bold, in that we have parliamentary government rather
than government by Parliament. The Government were kept on life
support when they could no longer govern or get their main
business through. The only solution to that was a general
election, hence why requiring an affirmative vote by this House,
as demanded by their lordships, would leave us at risk of exactly
the same problem again.
I end by calming some concerns that there may be about threats of
early general elections. Of course, that is an entirely
hypothetical possibility brought to the House’s attention by the
Opposition spokesperson. I could not imagine what circumstances
would bring that about. There is always a danger of a Prime
Minister capriciously seeking early electoral advantage. However,
that tends to backfire, as it did in February 1974, when the
question was asked, “Who governs Britain?”—from the outcome, that
was clearly not the Prime Minister—and indeed as recently as
2017.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I rise to speak in favour of the Lords amendment, which would
require any Government seeking to dissolve this House early and
call a general election to first seek and receive the support of
a simple majority of the Members of this House.
Last year, when the Bill was first introduced by the Government,
it was presented as a non-controversial resetting of a mistake
that made in his attempts to form
a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. We were told that Cameron
had made a bit of a mess of things, that this Bill would simply
take us back to exactly where we were prior to 2010, and that we
could almost pretend that it never really happened. However, as
we have heard in this place and in the Lords, that is not the
case. The Bill is not about reinstating what was in place prior
to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, but rather creates a
situation whereby the Executive have even greater powers and the
monarch, who hitherto had prerogative powers, merely enacts the
Executive’s will to dissolve Parliament.
This Lords amendment seeks to place a very minimal check on the
Executive’s power by making any Dissolution of Parliament a
decision that has to have the support of the majority of this
House. I do not think that our constituents would think that it
is too much to ask for those who have been elected to this place,
and who serve their constituents in this place, to have some say
if a Parliament is to be dissolved early and a general election
called.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, which is typically
gracious of him. He calls it a “minimal check,” but the reality
is that it is an absolute veto. If a Government do not have a
majority in the House and if the Opposition sense that a
Government might well win a majority if they went to the people,
the Opposition are basically saying, “We are not going to allow
the Government to get a mandate from the people.” That is
precisely what would have happened in 2019 if Labour had not, for
some reason, given way in the end.
Brendan O'Hara
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but that
is a decision for this Parliament to take. We are elected to take
decisions, and to abdicate that responsibility to the Executive
is a dangerous route to go down; we should not do that. He says
that it is the people, but we in this Parliament are the voice of
the people, and there has to be a check on the powers of the
Executive.
What we are hearing, especially from Government Members, is
continued Westminster exceptionalism: that this place,
particularly the Executive, once elected, knows what is best.
That is why I raised the comparison with the devolved
institutions, which operate to strict fixed terms. If they are to
devolve early, that has to be a decision taken by the legislature
as a whole.
Brendan O’Hara
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and he is right.
What we are seeing is, as he describes it so eloquently,
Westminster exceptionalism, because this does not go nearly far
enough. It is the absolute minimum that one would expect.
As Tom Fleming of University College London and his colleague Meg
Russell, the director of the constitution unit there, said of
this Lords amendment:
“Requiring prior Commons approval for an early general election
places some check on the executive, while reducing the likelihood
of either the monarch or the courts being embroiled in damaging
political disputes.”
They are right, but the problem for Tom Fleming and Meg Russell
is in believing or hoping that that this Executive would welcome
having checks being placed on their power, be they parliamentary
or judicial, because they simply do not.
Can the hon. Member explain why Opposition parties in this House
are so keen to prevent there being an early election? I thought
Oppositions welcomed early elections.
Brendan O’Hara
It is very witty to frame this debate in those terms, but I think
the right hon. Gentleman is missing the point. This is not about
the power to hold a general election; this is about the power
being ceded from this place to the Executive and what the
Executive choose to do with that power when they get it. I will
come on to what their powers could if that happens.
By opposing this Lords amendment, the Government are saying that
the decision to dissolve this Parliament and call an election
would rest entirely with the Prime Minister, and that that could
be done without any parliamentary scrutiny whatsoever and in the
absence of any judicial oversight. I suspect that many people
watching our proceedings will be surprised to see that the
Government are so opposed to the Lords amendment given that it is
so limited and that all it seeks is a simple majority in this
House.
(Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
(SNP)
Is it not strange that Conservative Members who we have had to
listen to banging on and on for years about Parliament being
sovereign and Parliament having control are now willing to cede
that control to the Executive for cheap political gain?
Brendan O’Hara
I thank my hon. Friend, and I suspect he may have been reading my
speech earlier, because I will come to that issue shortly.
This Government are determined that the Prime Minister, without
consultation with or approval from this House and free of the
threat of legal challenge, can call a snap general election when
it is politically expedient for him so to do. Regardless of what
is happening at home or abroad, basically, electoral calculus and
the position of the governing party at the time will decide when
we have a general election. It is wrong, and I believe it is
unacceptable in a modern democracy.
Of course, as my hon. Friend says, a great irony here is that the
very limited check that the Government will vote down this
evening will be voted down by people who were elected on a
promise that this House would take back control. Well, they
should realise that they are not taking back control; they are
surrendering control. The collective outrage displayed at the
general election of 2019 about the perceived emasculation of this
Parliament by Brussels and the European Union—they were
absolutely determined to restore the sovereignty of what they
like to call the mother of Parliaments—is going to look rather
hollow when, at the first time of asking, they vote to take
powers away from this legislature and hand them over to the
Executive. I hope that when they go through the Lobby tonight,
they understand that this is not taking back control. Voting with
the Government this evening is about this House handing control
to the Executive and about abdicating responsibility to the
Executive.
At the risk of adding a note of discord, let us have a look at
who we will be handing those increased executive powers to. They
will be given to a Prime Minister who has illegally prorogued
Parliament, who sought to purge his party of all but his most
loyal followers, and who had to remove the Whip from a
long-standing and highly respected Member simply for being chosen
to head a Committee over his preferred candidate. We will be
giving greater executive power to a Prime Minister who, in
defiance of the security services, ennobled the son of a former
KGB officer turned billionaire Russian oligarch, a Prime Minister
whose career three weeks ago was hanging by a thread and who has
been revealed to be up to his neck in dirty Russian money, and a
Prime Minister who is currently under investigation by the
Metropolitan police.
If Conservative Members vote to defeat this Lords amendment
tonight, that is the character of the man to whom this House will
be handing even greater executive power. I advise them to think
very carefully about their decision, because this Lords amendment
is there to protect the role of the House of Commons, to avoid
executive overreach and, ultimately, to protect democracy.
Opposition parties are struggling a bit with this idea of
democracy, are they not? Taking back control was to have control
by the people and for the people, and offering the people an
early general election so that they could choose an effective
Government when a Parliament was logjammed, hopeless and not
prepared to govern with clarity and passion was the right thing
to do. I just cannot understand why Labour and the SNP are still
queuing up to defend the indefensible, and to say that because
they may well be faced again with a situation in which they do
not dare face the electors, they need some kind of legal
rigmarole and manipulation of votes in a balanced or damaged
Parliament to thwart the popular will yet again. “Never let the
people make the decision,” they say: it must be contained within
Parliament, even when a Parliament has obviously failed, as it
did when it could not implement the wishes of the British people
over the great Brexit referendum.
I want assurances from the Minister that this new policy will
protect the Crown—the Queen—from the difficult business of
politics. I think the Minister’s version of it is better than the
version from the other place. Of course, it must keep the courts
out. There is nothing more political than the decision about when
we go to an election and when we give the people their power back
and the right to make that fundamental choice. It is a choice
that now can mean something, because we do not have to keep on
accepting a whole load of European laws that we have no great
role in making. Again, we need that absolute guarantee that we
will have this freedom so that that can happen.
Those who say that they do not want the Prime Minister to have
this much power have surely been in the House long enough to know
that, while the Prime Minister has considerable power from his or
her office, they are also buffeted and challenged every day by a
whole series of pressures in this place and outside. If a leader
of a party with a majority wanted an early election that their
supporters did not want, I suspect that that would get sorted out
without an early election. So we are only talking about what
happens when a Government have lost their majority and the Prime
Minister is doing his or her best to govern as a minority. We get
the extraordinary position we got when the whole Opposition
wanted to gang up to thwart the public making a choice, but did
not want to govern. That was totally unacceptable, and the
Opposition should hear the message from the doorsteps in the 2019
election. The public wanted a Parliament with a Government who
could govern, so they decided to choose one. Those who sought to
block it made themselves more unpopular, and they showed that
they do not understand the fundamental point of democracy that,
when Parliament lets the people down, the people must be able to
choose a new and more effective Parliament.
(Rhondda) (Lab)
I apologise to the House that, because I have been in Committee
Room 10 launching the call for evidence on setting up a national
strategy for acquired brain injury, I am afraid I was not able to
hear the wonderful speeches that doubtless came from those on the
Front Bench—well, on the Opposition side anyway.
I completely agree with what the right hon. Member for Wokingham
() has just said. Yes, I think
the people of this country are crying out for a Government who
can actually govern. They still were after the general election,
and they certainly are at the moment. Yes, of course, the Prime
Minister is buffeted, and I think the Prime Minister should be
buffeted a bit more, to be honest. What I do not understand is
that this is the tiniest, most minimalist check on government
that one could imagine. It simply means that a Government, which
by definition already has a majority of Members of the House of
Commons, should be required to come to the House of Commons to
get a vote through to have a general election. It is absolutely
minimal.
6.00pm
In nearly every instance, the Opposition will, of course, vote in
favour of having a general election, for the obvious reason that
we want to replace the Government. It would be a very cowardly
Opposition who would vote against an early general election.
Personally, I think five years is far too long. Our five-year
rule is about the longest anywhere in the world, and I think it
should be four years. In many countries in the world it is three
years. I am in favour of having general elections more
frequently, and in nearly every instance, the Opposition will
want an early general election. However, the problem with the way
the Government have constructed this provision—and this was a
problem in the past—is the “good chaps” theory that presumes that
everybody will be a good chap. Historically, it would have been a
chap, but it would be a good person.
If Edward VIII had remained as monarch through the second world
war and thereafter, and was working with Neville Chamberlain, I
can perfectly well imagine that they might have come to very
different sets of decisions about whether there should or should
not be general elections, because I do not think that they were
good chaps. I can easily imagine a time when a Prime Minister
would lie to the monarch about why they wanted a dissolution of
Parliament. The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) who chairs
the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee,
said that the electorate can always deal with that and can see
through a politician doing something surreptitious, but I am not
sure that is always true. Indeed, I can imagine plenty of
nefarious reasons for holding an early general election, either
because a Government know of something coming up that the public
do not know about, or a set of events that is likely to come
round the corner that the Government want to keep hidden from
others. That is why I believe we cannot simply have a law that
presumes that everybody will always be a good chap in the
future.
Is it equally the case that including this vote in the Bill would
not mitigate people not being good chaps? If a Prime Minister has
a majority and they could get that vote through—who knows what
their reasons are—when they see things coming over the horizon
that might give them some advantage, it makes it difficult for
the monarch to say “no” under the Bill. Is it better to preserve
what was best about our constitution before 2010, which relies on
the Prime Minister and the monarch being responsible, and the
good behaviour that should follow?
I think the danger is precisely the opposite. The arrangements
that the hon. Lady would like us to have are ones that put the
monarch in a regular position of making a decision, and brings
them closely into not only party politics, but sometimes into
partisan politics within a political party. It is perfectly
possible that a Prime Minister might have lost, or be about to
lose, the confidence of their political party, but that political
party might still want to govern and carry on under a different
leader. In other words, there may be within the House an
alternative Government who would be better for the nation.
My other problem is that there seems to be a very high
theological understanding of the role of the Executive. I think
the former Leader of the House set that going with his rather
Stuart early-17th-century understanding of the constitution,
which is that basically, as long as the Prime Minister has the
confidence of the House of Commons, he or she should be allowed
to do pretty much anything and, frankly, parliamentary democracy
is a little bit of an irritant. It is worth always bearing in
mind that the Executive today is the only body who can ensure
that business and legislation are considered, and the only body
who decide when Parliament sits, when it will go into recess, and
how long it will go into recess for. If we had the same rules
today as we had in 1939, nobody would have been able to table an
amendment to the recess debate that led to the big row before the
beginning of the second world war. Today we have an Executive who
are more powerful than they have been at any stage since the
early 17th century, and it is time, occasionally, that the House
of Commons said, “You know what? We’re a parliamentary democracy.
Let’s take just a tiny bit of power into our own hands.”
(Orpington) (Con)
I will be brief as I gather I have only a few minutes to speak.
The Lords amendment would require the House of Commons to give
prior approval to a dissolution of Parliament, and that would be
done by simple majority rather than the two-thirds majority
required by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011. On the face of
it, that would be an improvement to the existing position, but it
is still something of a half-way house that causes confusion. In
the event that a Government lose their ability to command a
majority in the House of Commons, it does not automatically
follow that the House would vote to approve an election.
For example, it may suit Opposition parties to keep a lame-duck
Government in place, so that they can inflict parliamentary
defeat after parliamentary defeat, as a means of further
undermining confidence in the Government. But in whose interests
would that be? Certainly not the interests of the country. As
hon. Members have said, we very much saw that in the “zombie”
Parliament of 2017-19, when Parliament initially refused to allow
an election to take place. The country became ungovernable, and
contempt for Parliament rose dramatically—I speak as somebody who
was outside Parliament at that time, and who shared in that
contempt. I submit that that is not in anyone’s best
interests.
We recently heard some confused interventions on this matter from
the other place. For example, a Liberal Democrat peer asked:
“But why should a Prime Minister who cannot get a majority of the
House of Commons for an election be entitled to a
Dissolution?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 February 2022;
Vol. 818, c. 1590.]
I am still not sure whether that was a rhetorical question or
whether the Lord in question was trying to figure it out for
himself. Either way, it is non-sequitur reasoning because in the
example he gave, a Government would not seek to dissolve
Parliament unless they found it impossible to gain simple
majorities in the first place. In my opinion, a rather better,
and frankly rather more honest question would be: why would
Parliament want to avoid an election, unless it feared that the
result would go against its own wishes? That is the real question
that those who support the Lords amendment must ask
themselves.
There is concern in certain quarters that going to the electorate
to seek a new mandate would allow an opportunistic Government to
call an election at a convenient time to increase their majority.
It is true that the power to call an election gives an advantage
to a sitting Government, but that ability is a double-edged sword
and can seriously backfire against a Prime Minister seeking to
exploit a perceived opportunity. Post-war history is replete with
examples of an incumbent Government misreading the political
situation, and calling an election that fails to deliver the
result they wished for. Harold Wilson’s Labour Government in 1970
and Ted Heath’s Conservative Government in February 1974 are
obvious examples of that. Similarly, a failure to call an
election can damage an incumbent Government. The obvious recent
example would be from 2007 when publicly flirted with calling
an election, only to back off at the last moment and cause
irreparable damage to his public image as a result. The power to
call an election—or not—does not automatically confer an
insuperable advantage on the incumbent Government. The Lords
amendment is therefore completely unnecessary, and I will
continue to support the Bill as it stands.
Members across the House want the repeal of the Fixed Term
Parliaments Act 2011, but in its defence, it was a creature of
its time and it delivered stable government for five years. Let
us not reinvent history regarding why it was introduced in the
first place. It disappoints me that so much of this debate has
been seen through the prism of 2019. That was a unique political
position where we were divided by an issue that crossed party and
electoral politics. We risk making very bad law on the basis of
what happened in that history.
Call me old-fashioned, but I am a romantic when it comes to our
constitution. We have an unwritten constitution, and the less of
it that is written, the more likely it is to flex to meet those
challenges. On that basis I am opposed to the Lords amendment.
However, equally, while the Government’s stated ambition is to go
back to the status quo ante, the existence of the ouster clause
goes beyond that, and the amendment is an alternative to that
ouster clause—it is another way of ousting the courts from
deliberation on our proceedings—so the ouster clause’s existence
makes a strong argument for it as an option.
I regret that we are having this debate. As Conservatives, we
ought to stick to the more romantic view of our constitution and
be able to expect Prime Ministers to behave well and honourably
in their deliberation with monarchs so that monarchs are never
put in that difficult position. However, we have the Lascelles
principles, which articulate the occasions where the monarch can
be empowered to involve themselves in politics, and that should
be enough. I recognise that the argument is lost—it was probably
lost in 2011 when the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was passed, and
it certainly was when we came to the sad events of 2019—but I
hope that we can go back to normal.
It is not really for the Scottish National party to defend the
Westminster interpretation of democracy, but the Bill, and
rejecting the Lords amendment, is such a retrograde step that we
must put that on the record and see it as part of a bigger
picture. This is not control being taken back by Parliament but
control being taken from Parliament by the Executive and, as a
number of other hon. Members have said, consolidating power as
part of a package of measures—not least the Elections Bill.
The effect of all that is that the next election campaign starts
today. Everyone in the Chamber must therefore be aware of what
they are doing when they cast their vote on the amendment. The
campaigning starts today. The power will end up with the Prime
Minister and he alone, without the check of his Cabinet or of
this House. That is a significant power grab that will further
undermine confidence among the public in the institutions of this
place. Again, I say to Government Members that, from an SNP point
of view, that is fine in a way. The Bill and the rest of their
package of reform is not strengthening the Union. As I said in my
interventions, we can look at the systems in place to protect the
devolved institutions’ democracies and see how they can dissolve
only with the permission of the legislature or must operate to a
fixed term that everyone knows in advance, but the Bill is taking
this place backwards. It is increasing the divergence on these
islands. Once again, from where I am standing, that is fine, but
perhaps Government Members ought to think twice about it.
First, may I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock
() that I, too, am a
romantic—that may come as a surprise to the House—especially when
it comes to the constitution? I agree that flex is required and
that it is highly desirable to have an unwritten constitution
that gives us that flex and ability to change things as needed
while accepting the conventions of our constitution.
The Lords amendment before the House is not a small amendment; in
fact, it is a wrecking amendment as it would convert the whole
purpose of the Bill. I can hardly think of anything more
democratic than saying: a Government of any particular day might
have lost of the confidence of the elected House and will
therefore go to the country and ask the people for their
view.
I know that the Opposition would not want to go back to 2019 and,
as happened then, block a general election three times. That is
no doubt why they agreed in their manifesto that the 2011 Act had
to go. Let us not allow that to happen again. Let us hand power
to the people, let us protect the sovereign from involvement in
politics and let us disagree with the Lords amendment.
Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment
1.
[Division 210
The House divided:
Ayes
292
Noes
217
Question accordingly agreed to.
Held on 14 March 2022 at
6.14pm](/Commons/2022-03-14/division/DB526832-B94C-4D26-BE35-703B2B53C735/CommonsChamber?outputType=Names)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.
83H(2)), That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be
assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendment 1;
That , , , , , and Brendan O’Hara be
members of the Committee;
That be the Chair of the
Committee;
That three be the quorum of the Committee.
That the Committee do withdraw immediately.—(.)
Question agreed to.
Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and
communicated to the Lords.
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