13:53 - divided: - Ayes: 307 / Noes: 229 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:23 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 235 / Noes: 314 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
Let me try to help the right hon. Gentleman, because I do not believe that he was here on the first day of Committee when we debated this matter, which is in clause 1. As we are now on clause 2, I do not want him to find himself out of order.
Mr Straw
I am sure that that is a matter for the Chair, but I was simply trying to provide a comprehensive answer to the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke).
If we have a fixed-term Parliament, then of course the power of the Prime Minister to call an election is very significantly modified. I am concerned about the rights of this House. This House works by passing legislation, and all other matters, on the basis of votes by a simple majority. If we had a written constitution, which I am not against, we could have a separate debate about whether there should be some means or other of entrenching certain basic provisions. We are doing that in practice for some, but not others, by way of referendum, and for some, but not others, by way of convention and cross-party consensus. Meanwhile, however, regarding how this place works and good governance, we operate on the basis of a simple majority.
What we should be doing in the Bill is laying down a fixed term—I would prefer it to be four years, but it is going to be five—and then accepting the reality that circumstances could arise in which a Government of the day lost the confidence of the House. There is no alternative to that. No new Prime Minister could suddenly pop up and regain the confidence of the House. That being the case, there has to be an election, as happened after four and a half years of the ’74 to ’79 Government. It seems to me that those should be the only circumstances that should trigger an early election. I do not want there to be provision whereby, by some method or another, whether it is by a majority of a half, 55% or 67.5%, a package of Members can be got together in order to hold a general election. Nor do I think that those provisions would ever be used, because they are so complicated. There is no point in our passing legislation that has no significant purpose.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
This is not a fancy tactic—I would not know one if I saw one, although if I did I am sure I would have learned it from the right hon. Gentleman. It is very straightforward. We decided that if there were a general view in the House that there should be an early election, the House should have the power to cause one.
The right hon. Gentleman gave the example of Germany. The reason why the Government there engineered a vote of confidence was because there was no other mechanism for an early election. If we were to remove our provision, then if there were a general view in the political classes and in the country that there should be an early election, the only way of having one would be for the Government to engineer a vote of no confidence. That would not be very sensible or very honest.
Mr Straw
We need to speak about possibilities in the real world. The only example in recent times that I can think of when a Prime Minister has wanted to call an election of choice, without any necessity due to his parliamentary majority, is that of Edward Heath in January 1974. There was no way he would have got a two-thirds majority in favour of a Dissolution. In my view, the country as a whole and the Conservative party would have been saved a great deal if there had not been an early Dissolution at that point. I simply say that if we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, which is a good idea but will have consequences, we must ensure that a Government can get booted out only if a motion of no confidence is passed.
Mr Cash
Absolutely. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Furthermore, there was the motion of no confidence in the Callaghan Government in 1979, in which the numbers of votes were 310 against 311. The result of that vote may have been a matter of satisfaction for the Conservative party, but I am sure that it would not have been to others. However, if the two-thirds rule had been in operation, there would not have been a change in Government and that would have been a disaster for the country.
Mr Harper
I am listening very carefully to my hon. Friend. I think that he is confusing the two different processes in the Bill. There is provision for having an early election if the Government lose a vote of no confidence. That is by a simple majority, as now, and it is not changed. The other provision is an extra power for the House of Commons, which it does not have today, for two thirds of MPs to vote for an early election. We are not in any way, changing the ability of a Government to be held to account by having to have a simple majority.
Mr Cash
It is only because I have not completed my remarks that my hon. Friend’s intervention seems understandable. I do not dispute the fact that a vote of confidence by a majority of one would apply in the circumstances described in the clause, but—this is the other side of that equation—we then get into the question of the 14 days and the shenanigans that would follow with all the Whips and other people manoeuvring around to guarantee that the vote of confidence would be secured. We go back to my main point: it is the power of patronage of the Whips and the determined and ruthless exercise of that power that lies behind this proposal. That is my main objection to the whole thing irrespective of the fact that there is no mandate for these provisions from any political party.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend has mentioned the 1979 example twice now. As I said, the Bill would not change the situation when there is a motion of no confidence in any way. If that position happened now—[Interruption.] If the Government lost a Division on such a motion by one vote, the situation would be the same, but the 14 days for the formation of a Government makes things different. Amendment 4, by removing the two thirds majority rule, would effectively mean that anyone who controls a majority in the House can have an election at will—it would effectively give back to the Prime Minister the power to dissolve the House whenever he chooses to do so in a perfectly open way. If my hon. Friend is happy with that, that is fine, but that is not our proposal.
Mr Cash
I understand to a degree where my hon. Friend is coming from, but I am afraid that I am not attacking that constitutional position. I do not believe it necessary to take the power to dissolve from the Prime Minister—that power is based, as it were, on his democratic mandate—and give it to the Whips to engage in their shenanigans in the 14 days following a no confidence motion, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn said.
Mr Harper
Will my hon. Friend make that clear? Is he saying that the intention of amendment 4 is to ensure that the Prime Minister retains the power to seek a Dissolution? I ask that because Opposition Members say that they are in favour of fixed-term Parliaments, albeit there is a debate over whether the term should be four or five years. My contention is that the Opposition’s support for amendment 4 effectively drives a coach and horses through their support for fixed-term Parliaments, because it would give the power to dissolve directly back to the Prime Minister.
Mr Cash
The Opposition’s thinking is not a matter for me. I happen to believe that our present constitutional arrangement should be sustained. It gives me no pleasure to know that the Opposition will vote with me on amendment 4. Their reasoning does not matter; what matters is the constitutional principle that I am advancing.
Mr Harper
I am simply participating in the debate. I cannot agree with the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) on his characterisation of the 1979 situation. The motion in March 1979 was not about giving vent to anything; it was very clearly about whether the House had confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. I assume that everyone who voted for it had a clear idea what would happen if it were carried. It was, and there were consequences. It states:
“That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”,
so I cannot believe that anyone was confused about what they were doing.
Mr Cash
I will now move on to the very question that is being discussed, which is motions of no confidence and what they really mean. There are various permutations, which are well described in the Library note, but the issue for me is basically this. In my belief—and according to the House’s tradition and its conventions, which are now to be overtaken by statute—a majority of one should remain. However, in that 14-day period, with shenanigans worthy of Lord Voldemort and the servants of the Dark Lord, an attempt would be made to keep in power a Government who had lost the confidence of the House of Commons—that is, the representatives of the electorate. That attempt would keep the Government on their feet, while the public would be left watching the spectacle of streams of members of the Cabinet and prospective members of the Cabinet from the Opposition parties striding up and down Whitehall, in and out of offices, all under the baleful influence of the Cabinet Secretary, as they tried to hatch yet another coalition agreement, no doubt based on very different principles from those for which the electorate had voted, in accordance with the parties’ respective manifestos or—dare I use the words?—their promises.
As to the question of what confidence motions actually are, they are various. In 1945 it was Churchill versus Attlee, and the Government won. Then there was Attlee against Churchill in 1952, and Gaitskell against Eden in 1956, when the Government won again. There was also Wilson against Heath in 1972, on the European Communities Act, when there was thought to be quite a lot of manoeuvring on the question of whether there had been a free vote or not. I will not go down that route now, but examples of where the Government have lost confidence motions include the Liberal Government of 1895, the Baldwin minority Conservative Government —note: minority Conservative Government—in 1924, the MacDonald Government in 1924, when there was again a Dissolution, and, of course, the famous Callaghan defeat by Thatcher, by 311 votes to 310.
Chris Bryant
It is a delight to see the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) back in her seat. She introduced a new concept of votes of no consequence. On the Opposition Benches, it often feels as though every vote is one of no consequence, but we hope that with more support in the coming days, we will manage to turn that around.
The hon. Lady said one important thing—[Interruption.] She has doubtless said many important things, as the Minister rightly reminds me. In particular, she said that she disagrees with the amendment she tabled, which was interesting. She also referred to the fact that her Committee had had virtually no time to do what she called pre-legislative scrutiny. In fact, I suggest that a far more sensible procedure for engaging in all legislation, and particularly that on constitutional reform, is to publish the Bill in draft, send it to a Joint Committee of both Houses and provide an opportunity for evidence to be taken, and at the end of that process it can be brought to the House. That is not what has happened in this case. She and others referred to the coalition as something of a matrimony, but the Book of Common Prayer states that holy matrimony should not be enterprised or entered into
“unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly or to satisfy…carnal lusts.”
My fear is that this part of the Bill has been entered into unadvisedly, wantonly and to satisfy the lusts of the coalition partners who want to ensure that they remain in power for as long as possible.
The process has been wrong, and I say gently to the Minister that in our debates last week he referred at the last minute to consultation that he was going to engage in with the devolved Administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I understand that he has written to one Member of the House about that, but he has not written to me, and he has not written to any other hon. Members who were involved in the Committee stage, so I hope that he will take this opportunity to assure us that he will write to us immediately.
Mr Harper
Frankly, the point of order that the hon. Gentleman raised last week was nonsense. He did not give me notice of it, so I was unable to respond. I listened carefully to last week’s debate and responded to it. I then made an announcement of Government policy in this House at the Dispatch Box, which I thought was the usual way of conducting business.
The following day, I wrote to the leaders of parties in each of the devolved Assemblies, as I said I would. I did not put anything in those letters that I had not announced in the debate. I also wrote to the shadow Justice Secretary, who leads on political and constitutional reform for the Opposition, to keep him properly informed. I placed copies of all those letters in the Library.
The Chairman
Order. We should not be rehashing previous points of order. We should be dealing with the amendment. I am sure that Mr Bryant wishes to do so.
Mr Chope
I will not get involved in the detail of what is happening in Ireland at the moment. If a similar situation were to happen in this country, people might well turn to their Members of Parliament and say, “Why should we trust this Government to pass another Budget when it has made such a Horlicks of the current arrangements? Why don’t we elect a new Parliament and a new Government to deal with the crisis?”
Mr Harper
At first, my hon. Friend said that this Bill would not provide any flexibility. Then he set out two ways in which we could have an early election. Our proposition is that it would be up to this House rather the Prime Minister to call an early election. The Prime Minister could come to this House, put down a motion and then Members could decide whether they wanted an early election to deal with the financial crisis. To give the power to this House and not leave it with the Prime Minister is an improvement.
The Chairman
Order. After such a long debate, may I inform the Committee that I do not propose to allow a debate on clause stand part?
Mr Harper
There are several other groups of amendments, and we can expand on these matters further in due course. I shall go only as far as I need to in discussing this group, rather than trying to accelerate the debate. I want to deal briefly with the timetable. I do not think that the Bill has been rushed in any way. It was published in July, it had its Second Reading in September, and the first day of its Committee stage did not start until November. We have another day in Committee today, and the House passed a programme motion earlier that gives us an extra day in Committee on Thursday. I do not think that we are rushing ahead with this. No knives were included in the programme motion, and we are taking the debate at the proper pace that the Committee requires.
Mr George Howarth
I accept what the Minister says about the timetable for the Committee stage on the Floor of the House. A bigger issue, however, is that there was no time for proper pre-legislative scrutiny before the Bill was published and debated. Such scrutiny would have made many of these issues less contentious, or at least it would have had the potential to do so.
Mr Harper
I do not pretend that we published a draft Bill. We did not, but we have not rushed ahead. We published the Bill in July and it is now November and we are on our second day of Committee. That is hardly rushing through at a tremendous pace. We have not overly programmed either; we have had no knives and only today we have added extra time for the Bill. I do not accept at all that we have been rushing on.
Chris Bryant
I would not want the Minister inadvertently to mislead the Committee. He said that extra time has been provided, but he has not allowed any extra time; he has merely allowed the injury time for the three statements that interfered with the debate. [Interruption.] If the Deputy Leader of the House wants to make a speech, I am sure he will be able to catch your eye, Mr Hoyle. [Interruption.]
The Chairman
Order. I would like to stop this bickering between the Front Benchers. Let us move on.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend moved amendment 33, although many members of the Select Committee pretended that they wanted nothing to do with it; to be fair, so did my hon. Friend. She explained why the amendment was tabled—to enable this Committee to debate and test the concerns raised by the Clerk. I shall touch on them briefly. I will not overdo them, as we may have an opportunity to debate them further in a later group of amendments on the Speaker’s certificate. However, I shall deal with the amendment. I know my hon. Friend said that she does not want to press it to a Division, but it is the lead amendment.
The amendment would remove two central provisions—the two mechanisms that provide for an early general election to take place: the vote through which the House can choose to have an early election and the mechanism for having one following the loss of a vote of confidence. Instead, the amendment provides that the early election could take place only on the House’s address to the monarch, which can be made only
“by the Prime Minister acting with the agreement of…the Leader of the Opposition; and…the…leader of a registered party that received more than 20 per cent. of the total votes cast at the previous…general election.”
I have a number of serious issues with the amendment. First, it would prevent the Prime Minister from calling a general election only if he did so for political advantage. It ignores and does not address the circumstances where there is a loss of confidence. It also focuses greatly on Front Benchers, as our debate has made clear. I exempt my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest from this criticism, as she said she did not agree with the amendment, but given their views about the role of Front Benchers, I am surprised that the other signatories to the amendment thought that that was a good idea. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is not in his place, but I do not think he would mind my saying that he is somewhat sceptical about the power of Front Benchers and the usual channels. I am surprised that he supported an amendment that suggests they should have a lot of power. As the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) pointed out, not every registered leader of a party is necessarily a Member of this House.
The amendment also fails to deal with what would happen to a party such as the Liberal Democrats, our coalition partners, part-way through a Parliament. How would we take account of the vote it had received at the previous general election? Indeed, the 20% threshold would leave Northern Ireland parties out of the picture completely. If this measure had been in place following the 1992, 1997 and 2001 elections, only two people would have been required to table the motion—the leader of the Labour party and the leader of the Conservative party. In view of what has been said about the need to remove the power of the Executive and Front Benchers, that does not seem a sensible step forward.
It would thus be fair to say that amendment 33 is not well drafted. From what I heard, it does not sound as if it had enormous support across the Committee, including even from my hon. Friend. Despite the fact that she did not agree with the amendment, she moved it in a way that was very becoming to her parliamentary experience and the Committee enjoyed the opportunity with which it was presented.
Sir Peter Soulsby
With the amendment’s proposers having been at the receiving end of the Minister’s criticism, I hope he will acknowledge that it was tabled by members of the Select Committee to enable the matter properly to be debated, particularly in the light of our concern about the lack of proper time being accorded to pre-legislative scrutiny. We wanted to ensure that this Committee could debate the matter on the Floor of the House at this Committee stage.
Mr Harper
I entirely agree. Indeed, I think I acknowledged that that had been the purpose for which the amendment had been tabled.
I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest that there is no danger of my accepting her amendment, and that as there is not to be a Division—at least if we have anything to do with it—she will not be forced to vote against it.
Amendment 21, tabled by Opposition Members, simply changes the word “early” in clause 2 to “immediate”. I have two comments to make. First, under our own arrangements—this too emerged earlier in the debate—we do not have immediate general elections anyway. There is always a wash-up period. Before the 1979 election—which seems to have prompted the most discussion—25 Bills were passed during the wash-up period, including a number that completed all their stages during that period. Some of those Bills were very valuable. I spotted among them the Pneumoconiosis Etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which is still helping people today.
Secondly, all that the amendment does is change the language in the clause. It does not, in itself, have any effect. I know that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned a later amendment that did introduce a change, but this amendment would not bring an election further forward.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is right: we are not trying to make an enormous point. I simply wanted to tease out of the Government precisely what they understand by a motion calling for an early general election. I wanted to know, for instance, whether—as suggested by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan)—he believed that it would be possible to call such an election, and that the Speaker would be able to sign a certificate saying that one had been called, when the House had, say on Wednesday next week, passed a motion calling for a general election in nine months’ time.
Mr Harper
I do not think that that is drawn out by the amendment, but I agree with the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) that some flexibility is required. The Speaker will certify that a motion has been passed, but we do not know what all the circumstances will be. The hon. Gentleman gave a good example when he cited the way in which Ireland has arranged for procedures to take place to provide some certainty. I do not think that we want to set all the rules in stone. We want to allow the Speaker to be clear with the House—I am sure that he would be clear with the House before it debated the motion—about whether he is able to certify that the motion would trigger an early general election. It is better to leave such matters to the judgment of the Speaker. I will come to the point about the Clerk’s concern about justiciability, but I do not think that being too specific would be helpful.
Chris Bryant
What the Minister has said makes me rather more worried, and gives me much greater cause for concern than other elements of the clause. The danger is that if we are not clear enough about the precise moment when a Speaker is required by the House to act, we will be asking the Speaker to break his or her impartiality at a moment that may be very, very politically sensitive.
Mr Harper
I do not agree. I think that the Speaker would ensure that the House was clear both about a motion that would trigger an early general election and about a motion of confidence, and about what he would certify, before the debate. I do not think it would be sensible for the House to have a debate when it was not clear about those matters.
We discussed the 1979 debate earlier. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) tried to suggest that Members had voted on that motion for other reasons, but the motion was very clear in asking whether the House had confidence in the Government, and I suggested that Members could not have been in any doubt about what they were voting for. I think that the Speaker would always want to ensure that the House understood what it was voting for, and the effect of its vote.
Chris Bryant
That is even more worrying. The Minister is now saying that the Speaker would decide whether a motion before the House was a motion of confidence in Her Majesty’s Government, which is profoundly worrying. Motions on the Adjournment, motions on all sorts of legislation and motions of censure of individual members of the Government have been determined to be such by the House. If it were for the Speaker to make such a determination, we would have shot the Speaker’s impartiality to pieces.
Mr Harper
In a moment; let me first address the question I have just been asked.
Earlier in the debate, we had a conversation about motions that were not specifically in these terms, and several Members on the Government Benches referred to certain votes. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) referred to some votes on Europe and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) talked about a vote on VAT on fuel. How the Government behaved after the debates on those motions was determined by Ministers, not the House.
The Chairman
Motions of no confidence are an issue to be debated later. Members ought to be speaking to amendment 33.
Mr Harper
Excellent; that is an excellent step forward. [Interruption.] I shall take it as one.
Amendment 4 stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and was also signed by Opposition Members. Effectively, it drives a coach and horses through these entire provisions; the hon. Member for Foyle picked that point up very well. It is because we want to provide for fixed-term Parliaments that the Bill specifies that an early general election can be triggered only if there is a majority of at least two thirds. If it were possible to have an early general election by way of a motion that gains a simple majority, we all know that in most circumstances that would mean that we have given the power back to the Prime Minister. If he felt an early general election was in the interests of the governing party and that view was shared by the governing party, the motion would be passed and we would have a general election, and we would therefore not have fixed-term Parliaments.
I am not surprised that my hon. Friend has tabled this amendment as it is clear from his speech that he does not like the concept of fixed-term Parliaments at all, and that instead he is happy with our current arrangements, which he is entitled to be. However, given that the Opposition have said they are broadly in favour of fixed-term Parliaments—albeit for four years, not five—I cannot understand why they have supported the amendment because, as I have said, it drives a coach and horses through the entire proposition.
Graham Stringer
This is a great constitutional innovation. In respect of these motions, can the Minister explain why some Members’ votes will have twice the weight of others’?
Mr Harper
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s proposition about the weighting of votes. We have set out a straightforward position. We decided on two thirds partly because it is the majority required in the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Act 1998, and partly because under the requirement for a majority of such a size no Government since the second world war would have been able to trigger an early election on their own. Effectively, the requirement for a majority of two thirds means that there would have to be some cross-party support and a general mood in the House that there should be an early election.
There was talk about the fact that the coalition agreement refers to 55%, and I acknowledge that. The coalition agreement was put together quite quickly however, and we have since reflected on this question. We wanted to be clear that the Government—both parties together—were going to put aside the prospect of being able to trigger an early general election and that, instead, that could happen only if there was a shared view across the House. The reason we alighted on two thirds was that it was the number used in the Scotland Act 1998, which set up the Scottish Parliament.
Graham Stringer
I understand the objectives. I am cynical about them and the motives behind them, but the numerical fact is that passing this motion will require the support of 400-odd Members, depending on the size of the Commons at that particular time—perhaps the figure will be 420—whereas stopping it will require only half that number. Therefore, someone’s vote against will carry twice the weight of someone’s vote in favour. Can the Minister be clear, not on the objectives, but on why he wants to give some hon. Members more voting power than others?
Mr Harper
I just do not agree with the way in which the hon. Gentleman has characterised this. We have said that the support of a significant number of Members is required to have an early election. It is very simple for the House to make a decision. If a simple majority is required to have an early election, we do not have fixed-term Parliaments because if the governing party or parties have a majority in this House, they will simply be able to table a motion, their own side will support it and we will have an election whenever the Prime Minister chooses. If that is what the House wants, fine. However, the House has already decided when it gave this Bill its Second Reading that it wants fixed-term Parliaments, and it did so again when we debated clause 1 last week and decided on the date and the fact that we would have five-year Parliaments. Our proposition is that if we allow an early election on a simple majority, we drive a coach and horses through the Bill.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Just to be topical, what would happen in a situation such as exists in Ireland at the moment, where there is a weak Government, a coalition breaks up, there is a financial crisis and it is clearly essential that the Government renew themselves with an early general election? What would happen in such circumstances if the Bill goes through as drafted? Would we have the absurd situation that two thirds of Members would have to vote to kill off a Parliament that nobody wanted to survive any longer?
Mr Harper
There are two parts to clause 2. Importantly—some Members were getting this confused—a motion of no confidence in the Government can still be passed by a simple majority. So if a Government did not command the confidence of the House, the House could express that lack of confidence. I shall not go into that in detail, because we will deal with it when we discuss a later group of amendments—Mr Hoyle is clear about that—but the House can vote in support of a motion of no confidence and the Government will then have the period of examining whether another Government can be formed from within that Parliament.
As the hon. Member for Foyle said earlier, when I do not believe my hon. Friend was present, the Bill also provides the opportunity to renew the Parliament if there is a sense that events mean that it needs to be renewed—I believe that is the view in Ireland at the moment. If a simple majority has lost faith in the Government, a motion of no confidence can be passed. If there is a general sense that there should be an election, we have given the House that opportunity—a power that it does not currently possess. I am surprised, as the hon. Gentleman said he was, that some Members of the House sound as though they do not want a power that is not possessed by the House and has previously been possessed only by the Prime Minister.
Chris Bryant
What happens if the Government table a motion calling for an early parliamentary general election—I presume only they will be able to do so—and it is carried by 330 votes, but not by the 434 votes necessary? Could the Speaker, or for that matter the Prime Minister, determine that to be a motion of no confidence in the Government?
The Chairman
Order. I am sorry, but I am making a ruling from the Chair. I feel that this is a debate that we are going to have and I am concerned that we are getting drawn into it now. The Minister may answer quickly, if he wishes, but I do not want to let this go any further after that.
Mr Harper
Mr Hoyle, you are pointing out that we can discuss this at length when we get on to a later group of amendments. My view on the hon. Gentleman’s example is very clear: if the Prime Minister so wishes, he can cease being Prime Minister whenever he feels like it. The House could then see whether an alternative Government under a different leader could be formed—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda says not under this provision, but this provision is for an early election. The Prime Minister can cease being Prime Minister whenever the Prime Minister chooses and Her Majesty will then be able to send for an alternative person to form a new Government. That is not what the Bill is about. The Bill is about fixed-term Parliaments, not fixed-term Governments.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Another way that Parliament could do what it wished would be to repeal this legislation by a simple majority.
Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, in the sense that this is an Act of Parliament and can be repealed, but the difference is that it will then engage the other place, in which the Government do not have a majority—and in which we will still not have one when the new peers have been introduced. We think that putting the provision in legislation is preferable to putting it in Standing Orders because the Government then have to get the Bill through both Houses of Parliament, in one of which they do not have a majority—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) says that the Government will have a majority, but no. Even when the new list of working peers has been created, the two governing parties together will not have a majority. There are Cross Benchers in the Upper House, which he keeps forgetting.
For those reasons, I think that amendment 4 is flawed. If it is pressed to a vote, I urge my hon. Friends to oppose it. The Government’s position is very clear. We want fixed-term Parliaments but we want there to be two circumstances in which there can be an early general election: when there is a traditional motion of no confidence, in which a simple majority is enough to say that a Government have lost the confidence of the House; and when the House uses its new power to force an early election, which is decided by two thirds of the Members of the House. The same provision is in the Scotland Act 1998 for the Scottish Parliament. I should say that it is the same provision, because in Scotland it is two thirds of all Members, not just those voting. The hon. Member for Rhondda did not get that quite right.
Whichever of the amendments is pressed to a vote, I urge hon. Members to reject it. We can then move on.
Mrs Laing
It was the Select Committee’s intention to give the House an opportunity to debate these important matters and that has certainly been a success. I am pleased to have given the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) his first opportunity to address the House from the Back Benches for more than 23 years. I am grateful to my colleagues on the Select Committee, the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby), for their support for—or rather opposition to—the amendment, which none of us wants to see become part of the Bill but which we are all grateful to have had the opportunity to debate this afternoon. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 4, in clause 2, page 2, leave out lines 3 to 7.—(Mr Cash.)
The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)
Before we come to the next group of amendments, I have the following announcement to make regarding deferred Divisions. On the question relating to local elections in Northern Ireland, the Ayes were 337 and the Noes were 217, so the Question was agreed to. On the question relating to Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the Ayes were 338 and the Noes were 216, so the Question was agreed to. On the question relating to health and safety and the EPR nuclear reactor, the Ayes were 520 and the Noes were 27, so the Question was agreed to. On the question relating to health and safety and the AP1000 nuclear reactor, the Ayes were 517 and the Noes were 26, so the Question was agreed to.
[The Division lists are published at the end of today’s debates.]