Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, Amendment 18 would remove the flexibility for the Prime Minister to have the general election up to two months earlier or two months later than the five-year term. Amendments 22 and 23 in my name would delete just the power to call the general election two months earlier.
I thought it was important that we should have the opportunity to scrutinise this provision. In the Explanatory Notes, the Government explain that they have put this in,
“to accommodate short term crises or other conditions which might make it inappropriate to hold the election on the scheduled date, for example, a repeat of the foot and mouth crisis which led to the postponement of the local elections in 2001”.
One can see that there could be some sense in allowing for such possibilities but I wonder how carefully the Government have thought this provision through. The foot and mouth epidemic ran for some considerable time and it was possible for the Government to react in the way that they did in postponing the local elections in that year. However, could other disasters be anticipated so that the Prime Minister would know that he needed to call a general election earlier than the prescribed date or, indeed, later? Might not the power to call a general election two months earlier be open to abuse? I am not suggesting that this Government would abuse it but we are legislating for the indefinite future.
A Government might anticipate disastrous figures that were about to be published. I seem to remember that Harold Wilson was of the view that he lost the election in June 1970 because there were bad trade figures—something to do with airplanes, if I remember aright. Indeed, this Government might anticipate that some terrible figures might come out on unemployment or they might anticipate that there was going to be a major social protest, as is due to occur next Saturday. As time goes on and the Government pursue their deflationary and contractionary policies more and more ruthlessly, who is to say what protests may not emerge? Therefore, the Government might think that it was not expedient to hold an election when they were liable to encounter such expressions of public opinion and might contrive an excuse to get the election in just a bit ahead of the unfortunate event that they anticipate. Might not the power to defer the general election by up to two months equally be capable of abuse? A crisis might comprise the governing parties doing badly in the opinion polls and the turkeys wanting to postpone Christmas.
Should not the clause be amended? If the Government have a majority in both Houses, I worry that they will very easily secure their majority for the order to bring the election forward or to postpone it. We need to tighten up these provisions. I suggest that we should take out entirely the provision for the Prime Minister to bring the general election forward by two months. Amendments 22 and 23 would do that. We should remove that temptation to manipulate the arrangements. We should also tighten up the drafting to specify the kind of circumstances that would constitute a genuine crisis and justify the postponement of the election by a couple of months—perhaps as a result of an epidemic, a natural disaster or the outbreak of war; although our warrior Prime Minister might be tempted to declare another no-fly zone over Brussels to attract the Eurosceptic vote and achieve some kind of Falklands effect. You never know.
Amendment 24, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, indeed attempts to address this problem. I suspect that his amendment is not stringent enough. It is expressed with a high level of generalisation and may need to be amplified and expressed in greater detail. The Liberal Democrat amendment, Amendment 25, also seeks to address this problem, but would drag in the Speaker and require a super-majority of two-thirds. Those would certainly be safeguards against abuse, but there are other difficulties with that. The Government’s amendment, Amendment 26, states that the Prime Minister must give reasons when he lays the order, but that would add nothing in practice. The Prime Minister is hardly going to lay the order and say to Parliament, “I am not going to tell you why”.
These provisions need further thought and tightening up. If the Government cannot satisfy the House today, we may need to revisit this issue on Report. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes)
Perhaps I may point out that if the amendment were to be agreed, I could not then call Amendments 20 to 24, by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I added my name to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to remove the words “earlier or” in order to press the Government as to the circumstances they believed could possibly arise that would make it necessary to bring forward a general election by up to two months. I can understand delaying an election, for reasons that I shall come on to, but I am not sure to what extent one could anticipate a situation, presumably a crisis, that would justify an early election. There may be such circumstances and, if there are, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister as to what they are.
However, I wish to devote my principal comments to Amendment 24, to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred, which stands in my name. The amendment deals with an important point of principle that distinguishes it from the rest of the Bill. Under the Parliament Act 1911, the maximum duration of a Parliament is set at five years. Within that period, the Prime Minister may exercise his discretion to advise the monarch to dissolve Parliament, or he may be forced to resign or request a Dissolution in the event of the House of Commons passing a vote of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. The principal purpose of the Bill is to remove the Prime Minister’s discretion within that five-year period. As the law stands, it is not within the Prime Minister’s discretion to advise Her Majesty to extend the life of a Parliament beyond five years. An extension requires an Act of Parliament, and such an extension has been treated as exceptional. That is why this Bill is subject to the Parliament Act, and falls into that category because of the provisions of subsection (5). The only occasions on which extensions have been made by statute have been during wartime. During the Second World War, parliamentary elections were postponed on an annual basis by a Prolongation of Parliament Act.
Subsection (5) thus engages an important principle that is not engaged by the rest of the Bill. Whether or not we have a flexible or semi-fixed maximum term is not relevant to the issue raised here. The question is whether we should permit the term itself to be breached. The importance of the principle is in effect conceded by the Government in Amendment 26. That recognises that the Prime Minister must make clear the reasons for seeking to change the date of the election. My amendment seeks to define the reasons.
The Elections Act 2001 was enacted in order to delay the local elections of that year because of the foot and mouth crisis. During Second Reading of the Bill, I said that we needed to generate clear criteria that would justify the postponement of elections. I advanced four criteria that must be met in order for Parliament to postpone an election. First, there must be a clear and recognised national crisis. Secondly, there must be a situation that affects the capacity to conduct the election. Thirdly, there must be an agreement between the parties that there is a case for delay. Finally, there must be proper parliamentary debate. Although there may be a case for speed, it should not be at the expense of parliamentary scrutiny. All four conditions were met in wartime and in 2001.
Those criteria should apply to any attempt to postpone elections. I appreciate that in the context of this Bill, the period involved is short. It is not equivalent to what was undertaken in wartime, although it is on a par with the situation in 2001. In the war and the foot and mouth crisis, elections were postponed through primary legislation. Here, provision is made for a postponement through secondary legislation. That will be debated, but it is not on a par with what is possible with a Bill. If subsection (5) is to remain, any exercise of the power to postpone an election must be on the basis of the criteria that I detailed.
My amendment provides that:
“The Prime Minister shall only lay an order … when he … is satisfied that there is a situation that renders holding an election”,
within the set term,
“impractical or injurious to the economic, social or public health of the nation or a part thereof”.
The Government's Amendment 26 provides that the Prime Minister must state his reasons for proposing a change of polling day when laying a draft order before Parliament. However, it leaves open the possibility, alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, of the Prime Minister proffering a reason that is politically acceptable to a government majority but that does not meet what I regard as the necessary criteria for taking such a serious step.
I suspect that the Minister will remind us, as he did earlier, that at the moment there may be more than five years between general elections. I appreciate that two months may not seem an exceptional period of time; but eight weeks can make a significant difference to electoral fortunes, and a fundamental issue of principle is engaged by this provision. That is why I regard my amendment as necessary if subsection (5) is to remain in the Bill. I appreciate and support government Amendment 26, but I consider it necessary but not sufficient. More stringent constraints must be built in to the Bill. I believe that the choice is either to accept Amendment 24 or to omit subsection (5). The Bill cannot remain as presently worded.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I will speak first in support of the principle behind Amendments 22 and 23, tabled by my noble friend Lord Norton and by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is not with us this evening. The amendments deal exclusively with the power of the Prime Minister to bring forward the date of the general election by two months. I speak on the basis that I have yet to hear any substantive or convincing reason for giving this power to a Prime Minister in a context in which we are supposed to be taking away from the Prime Minister the power to determine the date of a general election.
I cannot see how one could anticipate unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances that will occur in two months’ time, and thereby justify bringing forward an election by two months in order to avoid the unforeseen and extraordinary event. It was said that Nancy Reagan used her knowledge of astrology to influence the timing of some of President Reagan's decisions; I do not believe that our constitutional principles should be based on star gazing and prophecies about future disasters. If we can foresee such an event and there are extraordinary reasons for bringing forward an election by two months, there are procedures in the Bill that will let Parliament decide to do that. I believe fundamentally that the power to bring forward an election by two months, if it is necessary, should lie with Parliament and not with the Prime Minister, and that a change to the five-year rule should be made only when there is a transparent and justifiable reason that can be properly debated and considered in Parliament.
I recognise that there is a much stronger case for saying that it may sometimes be necessary to postpone an election by two months, as effectively happened in 2001 with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Therefore, I am not convinced that it is right to remove completely the flexibility for a two-month delay, as proposed in Amendment 18 by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
With my noble friends Lord Tyler and Lord Marks, I have suggested in Amendment 25 that a two-month delay, if necessary, should be subject to a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons and a majority in this place. We believe that that brings in sufficient safeguards to prevent a Prime Minister abusing his power, which is the principal intention in the Bill.
We note that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is attempting in Amendment 24, as he has just said, to put a legal restriction on the use of the Prime Minister’s power to vary polling day to situations where it would be impossible to hold an election because it would be,
“impractical or injurious to the economic, social or public health of the nation or a part thereof”.
However, it seems to me that we might get into a very lengthy and quite detailed legal argument about what constitutes such circumstances. In our opinion, it is better to leave to Parliament’s discretion the question of what circumstances are appropriate. I am confident that such support would have been forthcoming in the case of a big national crisis, such as the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001, and I hope that during the passage of this Bill the Government will be able to accept that principle.
To my mind, it is better to subject the power in Clause 1 to vary polling day to a political restriction, requiring political consensus, than to a potential legal argument that may leave polling day to be decided in the courts rather than in Parliament. I accept that the question of whether Amendment 24 or Amendment 25 provides the best safeguard against the misuse of power to vary polling day is a matter of debate, but I think that noble Lords will be very attracted to one option or the other. I also believe that many of us will agree that the potential prime ministerial power to bring forward an election by two months should simply not remain in the Bill.
In conclusion, it seems that there is a fundamental flaw in the logic of this part of the Bill in relation to varying the date of elections. I say that because it makes no provision for varying the fixed date of the local council elections. As we are legislating for general elections to be held in the first week of May, and as council elections every year in much of the country are held on the first Thursday in May, if it were necessary for whatever reason to vary the date of the general election, surely it would be equally necessary to vary the date of the local council elections. There are of course provisions to vary the date of the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly elections but only by one month. Therefore, why should the Westminster general election be varied by perhaps two months when elections in Scotland or Wales can be varied by only one month?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I commend the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for very effectively pointing out one of the problems of this Bill. Can he also contemplate the position that would exist with elections to this Chamber? Would they be on a fixed-term basis? Would they all be on the same day? Could they be moved, and on what basis would they be moved? Would it be two weeks or two months forward or two months later? Would that not be an additional complication?
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I have absolutely no doubt that that precise matter will be the subject of considerable scrutiny during the passage of the Lords reform Bill in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill and in the Joint Committee of both Houses.
However, for the moment we are dealing with the legislation as it is, and legislation at the moment provides for council elections to be held on the first Thursday in May every year. Therefore, it seems quite illogical for the Government to argue that we may need to vary the date of the general election and to give exclusive power to the Prime Minister to vary the date of a general election by two months when the council elections will not be varied except, as in 2001, by primary legislation. The Government accept that primary legislation can vary the date of the council elections. Therefore, primary legislation could, if necessary, vary the polling date of the general election.
The Bill could provide for a more sensible mechanism for varying the polling day in general elections by requiring any such variation to have a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons and a majority in this place.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
The noble Lord, for whom I have great respect, having known him for a long time, makes a very good point. However, I was trying to make the point that, by legislating piecemeal on these constitutional matters, a lot of problems are building up, just as he has described, and those problems are going to apply a fortiori—I am not sure whether that is exactly the right term—or almost ad infinitum when we come to legislate for House of Lords reform. Does that not point to the fact that it is very unwise to introduce constitutional legislation in this piecemeal manner?
Lord Rennard
My Lords, not long ago the noble Lord argued quite passionately that it was too much for your Lordships to consider together the two items of the voting system for Westminster and constituency boundaries. If he is now suggesting that the alternative to piecemeal legislation would have been a more comprehensive piece of legislation dealing with those two issues and the issues of fixed-term Parliaments and House of Lords reform, he is rather contradicting the argument that he made not very long ago.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was not drawn by the somewhat mischievous question of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. Many of us hope that it will be a very long time indeed before we debate elections of any sort to the Second Chamber. When that day comes, we hope that those proposals, whatever they may be, will be seen off.
For the first time, I find myself almost wholly in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in the substance of his speech proposing the amendment. As he says, it seems quite extraordinary that, in a Bill which is supposed to be clipping the wings of the Prime Minister, we should be giving the Prime Minister such tremendous power. Unless we are to appoint a soothsayer to the Prime Minister—“Beware the Ides of March”—for the life of me, I do not see that any Prime Minister could conceivably be able to forecast so accurately that he could bring forward the date of an election by two months. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said and as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and my noble friend Lord Norton have indicated, that should certainly be deleted from the Bill.
On the postponement of an election, one can understand that there could be a great national emergency or tragedy—one sincerely hopes that there will not be—when it would be quite improper, totally insensitive and wrong to plough ahead with a general election on a specific day. I will not rehearse the sort of things that could happen but we have talked about the foot and mouth crisis of 2001. I was one of those in the other place who strongly supported Prime Minister Blair when he came to the House and proposed that the local elections should be postponed. That was entirely right. God forbid that there should be some disaster like 9/11, but in such circumstances one understands that it would be right to postpone the date of an election.
It is important that the spirit of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Norton should be taken on board by the Government and that there should be a clear specification of the sort of circumstances. I also think it is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said that such a proposal should be put to and approved by both Houses of Parliament. I was delighted that he made that point so clearly and forcefully. Of course, we shall not be voting on this tonight but I hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will be able to give us a very positive and encouraging reply. He is a man of infinite resource and he is always genial and helpful to the House, but if he could not give us a real promise on this point of significant change to the current wording in the Bill, then I think on Report there would be amendments which many of us would feel obliged to support.
Lord Desai
My Lords, I have already raised my worries about the extension power that a Prime Minister has beyond five years. On this group of amendments I am aware that there is a problem, but I am not as worried as my noble friend Lord Howarth about the Prime Minister's ability to go to the country earlier than five years. I do not mind that.
I very much worry about the two-month extension beyond the five years. It would be very reassuring if the Minister took away, for example, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and produced a schedule of possible circumstances. I know that nothing is certain—there can always be the black swan which we cannot anticipate—but if we were told under what circumstances a Prime Minister could be permitted to go to Parliament about a postponement, that would put my mind at rest.
In a sense, this power goes beyond the 1911 Act, and we should take it very seriously. I calculate that, given the current date of election in the Bill, there will be 61 days in the two-month delay; 61 is not a perfect multiple of seven, so the Prime Minister may be tempted to go for 63 days. One can go on like that. We need some idea of the circumstances in which a Prime Minister could claim.
Secondly, as the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Cormack, said, the provision should be brought to both Houses of Parliament. We have a constitutional position in this question, and it should not be left to the other place alone. I can envisage circumstances under which a Government with a two-thirds majority could arbitrarily give themselves authority to extend the election for two months. I would be very worried about that.
We should have safeguards in the Bill to make sure that both Houses are consulted, that we know the possible circumstances under which the Prime Minister can exercise the power and that we can be certain that such powers will be used only in exceptional circumstances.
Lord Bach
That was a most interesting, if short, debate on an important series of points. From the Front Bench, I thank all those who have taken part and who have drafted and spoken to their amendments.
I will be very short. The case has been made out that an earlier calling of an election should not be in the Bill at all. I very much look forward to hearing the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, explaining to us the circumstances in which that might be even feasible under a fixed-term Parliament. I am absolutely with those who have spoken on that and tabled amendments on it.
As for postponement, the Committee should be grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Rennard, and others on those Benches who have tabled Amendments 24 and 25. We see the strength of what they argue. I just add one caveat and invite them, before we get to Report—because this is a very important matter, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, and might well be divided on then—to see whether their wording is absolutely right. I am sure that they intend to.
In 2005, under our present system and four years into a Parliament—not five years into a five-year fixed Parliament—his Holiness the Pope died. As I understand it, the general election plan for a certain date was postponed for a week because of that fact. No doubt various considerations were thought about very carefully: some people were grieving; others had things on their mind. That was considered and made public—it was not hidden away by politicians as a calculation.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, in my recollection of 2005, the general election happened on the same day as the council elections, which had been agreed and planned for years. There was no postponement in 2005, not even by one week.
Lord Bach
My understanding is—and if I am factually wrong of course I apologise—that all elections were put back one week in that year for that reason. I use it by way of example if it is not factually correct. In other words, if something has happened that is important to many millions of potential voters, does it fall in to Amendment 24, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Norton? If it does not, should some account be made for such unforeseen circumstances that might affect turnout or a number of issues? That may not be the best example, but one can think of other examples of the same kind.
Lord Tyler
Is that not a very good argument for adopting the solution that we are proposing that it should then be a political decision and that we do not try to foresee unforeseen circumstances? I speak as somebody who fought a by-election at the height of the Falklands war. That was unforeseen, but I did not think that that was an improper occasion to hold an election. What was significant about 2001 and foot and mouth was that it was impractical to ask people to go to the poll in large areas of the country, including my own. That was what was particular about those circumstances. Therefore, I think the solution that we are proposing from these Benches is preferable. A political consensus across the two Houses of Parliament is preferable to trying to write in advance circumstances that are by nature unforeseen.
Lord Bach
The Committee will see the powerful nature of the argument the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, makes, but whether that absolutely precludes some amendment of the type that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has put before the Committee tonight, I am not so certain. To have both would be a kind of double of lock that would not exist if we just relied on Parliament in this instance. There may be other instances that are not covered by Amendment 24 that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, might want to consider. That is our position at the moment. We are slightly sceptical that the solution has yet been found.
How wonderful it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in such fighting form on this Bill. We missed that fighting quality so much in the weeks and months that we spent on the previous Bill. Keep it up.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, I think my noble friend Lord Rennard, with his spirit on the previous Bill, managed to get some concessions out of the Government. Who knows what might happen?
Before addressing the amendments that have been spoken to in this group, I shall briefly speak to Amendment 26, which is a government amendment and implements a recommendation made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. In common with the other amendments in this group, it concerns Clause 1(5), which confers a power on the Prime Minister to vary the date of a general election by up to two months earlier or later by order, subject to the affirmative procedure.
I am sure the House will be grateful to the committee for the careful scrutiny it generally gives to legislation but has specifically given to the Bill. In its report, the committee concluded that the delegated power taken in Clause 1 was not inappropriate in principle and recommended that, when seeking to vary the date of an election under the power in Clause 1(5), a Prime Minister must lay a statement before both Houses setting out the reasons for proposing the variance of the date.
The committee itself recognised that it would be unrealistic to specify a constraint which would embrace all the possible circumstances in which it would be appropriate to change the polling day. Instead, this is why the committee focused on the importance of ensuring that each House is fully aware of the reasons why the Prime Minister has proposed changing the polling day. That is an approach with which the Government agree. I am sure that your Lordships will be pleased to hear that the amendment implements the committee’s recommendation and provides that a statement must be laid before both Houses of Parliament setting out the reasons for proposing a change to the date of a scheduled general election. I certainly urge your Lordships to accept this amendment when the time comes.
Lord Norton of Louth
That is why the amendment says “impractical or”, not “impractical and”.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it still refers to the fact of the holding of the election being,
“impractical or injurious to the economic, social or public health of the nation”,
as opposed to external circumstances that, while not being injurious to the election, certainly could make it impractical to hold it. However, I do not think that my noble friend’s amendment covers the circumstances where the external event could make it difficult actually to hold the election. I think that that is more than just a technical point, quite apart from what criteria the Prime Minister would use and what the threshold would be.
I have raised these points because they go beyond normal technical difficulties. They also illustrate the difficulties that arise when you devise formulas to try to address situations that, by their very nature, are unforeseeable. The technical matters point to the general principle agreed by your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. It said that,
“it would be unrealistic to specify in the Bill a constraint which would embrace all of the possible circumstances in which it might seem appropriate to change a polling day”.
Problems arise when you start specifying circumstances. You can bet your life that a circumstance will come along that is glaringly obvious to everyone but was not covered when the legislation was going through. The greatest safeguard on the use of the power is the fact that it must be approved by both Houses and must be accompanied by a statement setting out the reason for seeking to vary the date of the general election.
That brings me to Amendment 25, tabled in the names of my noble friends Lord Rennard, Lord Tyler and Lord Marks. It provides that an order made by the Prime Minister under Clause 1(5) would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in the other place. It also provides a role for the Speaker to certify whether the order had been approved by a Division and had the support of at least two-thirds of all MPs. I recognise the logic behind the amendment, as the Bill provides that a vote on an early Dissolution of the other place would require the support of at least two-thirds of all MPs. That measure is designed to ensure that an early general election can take place where there is cross-party consensus, a point emphasised by my noble friend. However, the order-making power in Clause 1(5) is somewhat different from the power for early Dissolution. Unlike the power to force an early Dissolution, it is a power to vary a scheduled general election and is limited in terms of time. Also, my noble friend may have sought to put in something to avoid abuse, but I believe that the circumstances are such that that would not occur, given the safeguards in place.
However, I am grateful to my noble friend for clarifying that this House would still have a role to play. As I understood it from some of the things that he said at Second Reading, it was not clear whether this House would still have a role to play. Given the comments that have been made by a number of noble Lords, that is important. In the light of that, I want to consider the amendment. I will consider, too, the fact that this provision would again involve the Speaker of the other place. That has raised issues where it appears later in the Bill, so I would want to reflect before agreeing to something that again would give the Speaker a role. It is something that I would want to have an opportunity to discuss with the authorities in the other place. Therefore I am certainly willing to consider it in the light of his assurance that this House would still have a role to play and what the implications might be for the other place.
The other point that my noble friend made was on local elections. There might be circumstances where it would be desirable to move a general election date but where local elections could continue as scheduled. However, and more important, this Bill focuses solely on what is strictly necessary to establish fixed-term Parliaments. To try to introduce other issues could lead to complications.
These are important issues and I hope that I have given assurances that the Government’s mind is not closed to them. I believe that there are safeguards in the Bill, which I hope will be added to by noble Lords agreeing to government Amendment 26. In the mean time, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, this has been a thoughtful debate about what has been recognised on all sides of the Chamber as a genuine conundrum. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, drew our attention to the irony of a Bill that is intended, as he put it, to clip the wings of the Prime Minister actually proposing to confer on him the extraordinary additional power of extending the life of a Parliament beyond the five years that have been enshrined in legislation since 1911. That alone should give us pause and make us think pretty carefully about what we are doing. We all recognise that there is a significant decision to be made. I think that we all recognise, too, that there is a problem; there cannot be doubt about that. My amendment is intended only as a probing amendment. When I tabled an amendment proposing that subsection (5) be deleted, it was certainly not because I thought that this was a problem that we should ignore. We need if we can to provide satisfactorily for the contingencies that noble Lords have suggested could occur.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, with his characteristic lucidity and incisiveness, set out the criteria that he thought the House should have in mind as we frame this legislation. He desires to be rigorous. I suggest to him, as I did in my opening remarks, that his wording needs to be tightened up and made more rigorous, and not just in the technical drafting sense to which the Minister drew our attention. The noble Lord suggested that the choice was either to adopt the wording of his Amendment 24, perhaps strengthened, or to drop subsection (5), as Amendment 18 requires, and simply remove altogether from the legislation the power to bring forward or defer a general election in an emergency.
The noble Lords, Lord Rennard, Lord Tyler and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, commendably went further than I had done and tried to propose a constructive solution. Rather than trying to find wording that would encompass even in fairly general terms all the possible contingencies that ought to trigger such a power, they suggested a procedural device that, without attempting to anticipate all the varieties of emergency that could occur, would respond adequately to an emergency of that kind if it occurred. There is a lot of merit in that approach.
For reasons with which I shall not detain the Committee by explaining now, I have my worries about bringing in the Speaker on the lines that the noble Lords’ amendment proposes, but we shall talk about a Speaker’s certificate when we come to other amendments in due course. However, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was quite right to insist on the desirability of consistency in the legislation that determines this option not only for the Parliament of the UK but also for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and local government. My noble friend Lord Foulkes rightly drew attention to the possibility that, if we had an elected House of Lords, we would need equally to provide for such powers to apply in relation to elections to it. He rightly warned us once again of the dangers of engaging in piecemeal and ill prepared legislation on the constitution.
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his exceptionally full and reflective response to the debate. He has brought forward government Amendment 26, which simply requires that, if the Prime Minister proposes an order to alter the date of the election in an emergency situation, he must set out his reasons. That is not sufficient. I know that the Government were encouraged to bring forward a remedy in these terms by the Select Committee on the Constitution, but this debate has shown that this Committee of the Whole House is not satisfied that simply requiring the Prime Minister to give reasons meets the needs of the case.
I am grateful for the willingness that the Minister has signified to think further about this issue and about how we can come to a better solution to the problem. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“( ) The draft laid before Parliament must be accompanied by a statement setting out the Prime Minister’s reasons for proposing the change in the polling day.”
Lord Norton of Louth
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, Amendment 27 seeks to leave out subsection (1) of Clause 2. My purpose is to tease out the reasons for this provision.
Although this is termed the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, it is not a measure providing for fixed-term Parliaments. It stipulates a fixed term unless certain conditions are met. There may be deviations from the set term of five years under Clause 1(5) and Clause 2(1) and (2). The Bill thus seeks to move from a flexible to a semi-flexible or, if one prefers, a semi-fixed Parliament in terms of its duration within a maximum life of five years.
The Bill proposes two safety valve mechanisms enabling a parliamentary election to be held prematurely. One is the Dissolution Motion introduced by Clause 2(1) and the other is the vote of confidence covered in Clause 2(2). In evidence to the Constitution Committee, Professor Robert Hazell, director of the Constitution Unit at University College London, said that he was,
“slightly puzzled why the Government sees the need for a dual threshold”.
Although the committee concluded that it was appropriate to include two different safety mechanisms, I wish to probe why we need this particular mechanism.
I know the argument that this provision ensures that the House, in the event of some unbreakable deadlock, does not have to engineer a vote of no confidence in order to ensure an early election. However, the problem with this provision is that it sets the bar at a high level and, as a result, the Bill fails to deal with the situation where there has been a breakdown within the Government but the Opposition are not prepared to support a Dissolution Motion. The Opposition may not be able to muster enough votes to pass a Motion of no confidence, but they may find it politically advantageous not to vote for a Dissolution. If the Government resign without either a no confidence Motion or a Dissolution Motion having been passed, then the 14-day trigger is not engaged. We could have a period of instability, with no Government but with no election in prospect either. I appreciate the situation is unlikely but, as long as it is not impossible, we need to consider it.
I am not clear why there needs to be the two-thirds hurdle in the context of the Bill. I am familiar with the fact that some legislatures have a two-thirds provision, but to what extent does this exist in the context of a dual as opposed to a single safety valve? Is it not the case that the two-thirds provision in other legislatures applies more often than not in respect of a confidence Motion? Perhaps my noble and learned friend can tell us which other national legislatures utilise an extraordinary majority for the passage of a Dissolution Motion.
Lord Empey
I am grateful to the noble Lord. If my memory serves me correctly, the Northern Ireland Assembly needs 70 per cent of its Members to vote to bring the life of the Assembly to a conclusion, albeit subject to the assent of the Secretary of State.
Lord Norton of Louth
I choose my words carefully and refer solely to national legislatures. If we are to have two mechanisms for triggering an election, then we could usefully explore the alternatives to what it proposed. Do we need the subsection at all? In evidence to the Constitution Committee, David Howarth noted that if there is all-party agreement that a situation has arisen necessitating an early election, then it would be relatively straightforward to pass an amending Bill. If the measure was introduced for political advantage then this would, he argued, deny the measure the necessary broad support and it would make slow progress in the Lords.
Adopting such an approach would avoid the problems associated with the artificial hurdle created by the subsection. My view is that the most appropriate way to proceed, if we wish to remove the Prime Minister’s discretion as to when an election is to be held, is to provide that an early election is possible only if the House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence in the Government or if the Government resign and there is no prospect of another Government being formed. My amendments 35 and 38 seek to achieve that and I shall develop the arguments for those shortly. They overcome the problem I have identified with the Bill in respect of the Government resigning without having been defeated on a vote of confidence.
I know that the principal argument for this provision is that it is in the coalition agreement. The problem with that assertion is that the provision is not in the coalition agreement. The agreement said that a binding Motion would be introduced in the House of Commons and a Bill brought forward providing for a Dissolution Motion to be passed if 55 per cent of MPs voted for it. In the event, there has been no binding Motion and the extraordinary majority to pass a Dissolution Motion is now two-thirds of all MPs. We know from David Laws’s book, 22 Days in May, which has already been quite extensively quoted from, that the figure of 55 per cent was the product of political calculation. It is a threshold utilised by no other national legislature. Given that, the case for the subsection must rest on more than its inclusion in the coalition agreement. I am not convinced that the case for it relative to the alternatives is compelling. I beg to move.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I too, put my name to the amendment to remove the two-thirds provision. This was an improvisation when the coalition’s original proposal—that 55 per cent of Members of Parliament should be able to require an early general election—was greeted with widespread derision and, indeed, anger. It was noted, even before Mr Laws underlined it in his book, that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats together had 56 per cent of the votes in the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrats and Labour had less than 55 per cent, and so this deal would have guaranteed that Parliament could only be dissolved at the wish of both partners in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. They could not get away with that, so they built in the two-thirds requirement. They certainly did so with a continuing view of protecting their hold on office.
This two-thirds figure has not been adequately considered. It is argued in its support that no post-war Government have commanded two-thirds of the votes of the House of Commons, but it has also been noted that the National Government of 1931 did command two-thirds of the votes of the House of Commons. We cannot rule out the possibility that there could be another landslide general election. It is admittedly unlikely that one party could secure quite such a large proportion of seats in the House of Commons, but it is not inconceivable.
What is more reasonable to anticipate is that a new coalition could be formed. Perhaps this coalition could seduce other minority parties to join it. It would need only another 10 per cent of Members of Parliament to get to the magic figure required. This is a constitutional innovation of major significance that is quite unheralded, unconsulted upon and undebated by academics and the public. It is true that under its own standing orders the House of Commons does in certain situations stipulate that certain numbers of Members of Parliament must vote, for example, for a quorum or a closure. So it is not entirely novel as a principle of Commons procedure, but it is certainly novel constitutionally. If a super-majority is felt to be preferable, why does it have to be provided for in legislation? Could it not be provided for in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons? Indeed, why should we not accept—this is after all the status quo—that a simple majority for an early general election would be sufficient in the House of Commons?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I have slightly lost the noble Lord’s argument. Is he arguing in favour of a bare majority or a 75 per cent majority?
Lord Howarth of Newport
I have two amendments, to enable the House to consider both possibilities. I am not sure that we need to legislate at all. We could simply proceed on the traditional basis that a 51 per cent vote was required. However, in the context of a Bill creating fixed-term Parliaments, we perhaps do have to specify in law that a majority of one would be sufficient to trigger an early general election. I am not very happy with that, but I am not very happy with the two-thirds requirement, for the reasons that I have indicated. Therefore, I have suggested that the House might like to consider a different figure to provide a safeguard against exploitation of this particular escape-hatch which would give the Government of the day an opportunity to escape from the ordinary provisions of the legislation on fixed-term Parliaments. For these reasons, I have tabled the amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, again, Mr Laws explains how we got here. But when you see how we got here, it is difficult to understand why we are here. Perhaps I may read a paragraph that has not yet been quoted:
“There was a debate for thirty minutes or so on arrangements for dissolving a parliament before the end of its five-year term. This was an issue which we raised, but William Hague soon realised that the main risk lay with the Conservatives. Without a super-majority for dissolution being required, the smaller party could leave the coalition and dissolve parliament almost at will”.
He continues:
“Huhne originally suggested that there should be a 66% threshold for dissolving parliament before its full term was up, in line with the situation in Scotland. George Osborne said he thought that 66% was rather high and that 55% or 60% was closer to the mark. After some work on Ed Llewelyn’s calculator, and consideration of by-election risks, it was decided that a 55% vote of MPs would be required to provide for a dissolution. This was just greater than the combined opposition and Lib Dem parliamentary parties, thereby safeguarding the Conservative position”.
It is absolutely plain from what Laws is saying there that they were trying to guard against Dissolution, including a no-confidence vote. There is no doubt about that, because he says:
“Without a super-majority for dissolution being required, the smaller party could leave the coalition and dissolve parliament almost at will”.
That must be referring to a vote of no confidence. It is therefore plain from Laws’ book that it was envisaged that you could not get rid of the Government with an ordinary vote of no confidence and that the only provision intended to allow for an early end—that is, before the five years—was if the super-majority was satisfied, and that could not be delivered by the Lib Dems coalescing with Labour.
I think that that was to be put into a binding resolution, whatever that may mean, in the House of Commons. Pressure was then placed on the Government in the public debate which followed, and they changed this in two respects: the figure of 56 per cent became two-thirds, and they agreed to a vote of no confidence as a way of getting rid of the Government. Why are they both there? Which two separate situations are they trying to cover? It looks as though the coalition agreed to the 56 per cent to prevent the possibility of being voted out on a vote of no confidence. I am pretty sure that that is what happened, but they were pushed off it by public pressure and had to agree to a vote of no confidence. They retained the super-majority as a fig leaf in order to try to give some justification for it. That is what Mr Laws’ book is suggesting. Could the Minister say whether I am wrong about that analysis? No other factual analysis is being offered for why we are in the extraordinarily unusual position where both a simple majority and a super-majority can get rid of the Government by way of a vote in the House of Commons. It looks as if the analysis that I have given is the reason.
We are entitled to an explanation for this. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is respected throughout the House as a constitutional expert, is significant: no other national parliament has this extraordinary provision in it. If it is in there only because it was part of a negotiation that then got shot away by public pressure, why are the Government keeping it in? It is important that the noble and learned Lord gives us some information about it, because at the moment the only explanation on the record is the one that I have given. It is discreditable for the Government to reform our constitution simply on the basis that an idea that was floated in the coalition agreement got shot away but they kept it in, in order to preserve I am not sure what.
A second and separate point that the Minister needs to deal with is: what happens when the Government resign and no one else wants to form a Government? On the basis of the Bill, it appears—again, the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has made this point and I have not heard an answer to it—that you have no Government and no Dissolution. I would be grateful to know what happens to our nation’s Government at that point.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Norton for opening up the debates on this clause, which raises important issues regarding the mechanisms that would trigger an early election or indeed a change of Government, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. It is important to recognise that there are two mechanisms that can trigger an early election: either a Dissolution on a 66 per cent majority—or, more accurately, with two-thirds of Members voting for it—or a vote of no confidence passed by a simple majority and, after 14 days, no Government having a vote of confidence. They are distinctive.
I cannot endorse the speculative analysis by the noble and learned Lord Falconer. He admitted that he was speculating—
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am not speculating. This is what a person who was there at the negotiations said. For the Minister to describe this analysis as speculative when he is not offering an alternative explanation is wholly unfair.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it will be obvious that the proposals in the Bill are not the ones described in the book. The noble and learned Lord asks us why we have the proposals that we do, and obviously he was speculating about why they are there. If I were presenting to the House a Bill that had a 55 per cent majority and that was it, that would be a reasonable basis on which to say, “This is how we arrived at 55 per cent”. Clearly, that is not what is proposed in the Bill, and I will address that in the course of my response to this debate.
Subsection (1) provides the House of Commons with a new power to vote for Dissolution following a process that I believe is robust and transparent. My noble friend has indicated that he has his own further amendments about what might follow, including the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, about what would happen in the event of a Prime Minister resigning, and we will address these when we come to my noble friend’s amendments.
The point is that if there is a clear consensus that there should be an early general election, it would be nonsensical to force the other place to engineer a vote of no confidence, particularly where confidence in the Government is not necessarily the issue and may not be what is driving the need for an early election. We believe that it would not be right or proper to conjure up a vote of no confidence in these circumstances. That is why the Bill seeks to prevent that with our proposal for a two-thirds vote.
In the case of Germany, Governments have in the past had to engineer no-confidence votes even where there was a consensus in favour of an early general election, because there was no provision in its constitution analogous to the procedure for a Dissolution vote in this Bill. At that time there was no alternative to engineering a no-confidence vote.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I understand what the Minister said earlier. Is he now saying that this is a product not of the coalition agreement but of some other arrangement?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I might be missing something somewhere. The coalition agreement referred to the 55 per cent that the noble and learned Lord has described. At the same time, he gave a plug to my right honourable friend’s book, for which I am sure he is very grateful. However, that is not in the Bill; I am describing what is in the Bill. Of course it is a product of the coalition. It is a coalition Bill that is before your Lordships’ House.
I recall sitting in this House during Questions and listening to many noble Lords on all sides of the House criticise that 55 per cent provision. The noble and learned Lord nods his head in agreement. It was a provision that received considerable criticism. There was a criticism that it meant a vote that could lead to a Dissolution. People asked about votes of no confidence. At the same time, there was the issue of whether there ought to be a higher majority to trigger a Dissolution automatically. The two mechanisms that provide the trigger in the Bill as it stands address the criticisms that were made. I make no apology for saying that the Government listened to the criticisms that were made, tried to take them on board and came forward with what is proposed here. It may be unique to the United Kingdom but it addresses some of the concerns.
We will come later to the issue of no-confidence votes but at present this House and—it is fair to say —other commentators and people in the other place said that there was an important point about the vote of no confidence on a simple majority having a consequence. The Government listened to that. Historically, there have been two possible outcomes. In 1924, when there was a vote of no confidence in Mr Baldwin’s Government, Mr Baldwin resigned and a new Government was formed under Ramsay MacDonald. In 1979, as has often been mentioned in our debates on this Bill, when Mr James Callaghan’s Government lost a vote of no confidence, he then proceeded to seek a Dissolution and an election was held.
When we come to the next part of this clause, that is what we will be discussing. We will no doubt debate what constitutes a no-confidence vote. We seek to reflect what has been the constitutional position of the outcome of a no-confidence vote on a simple majority. Equally, we took the view that there were circumstances in which it would be more appropriate, if there was a consensus that a Parliament should be brought to an end, to have a trigger mechanism that was more than a simple majority, such as a two-thirds majority.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
I apologise for not having been here earlier but I have heard everything since my noble friend Lord Norton spoke. The Minister referred to 1979. Would he describe for the benefit of the Committee how the provisions of this legislation would apply to the conditions of 1979? If there had been a vote of no confidence in Mr Callaghan’s Government under the provisions of this Bill, would he have been able to wait a fortnight, give jobs to the Irish nationalists and re-form his Government, thereby avoiding an election?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Hypothetically, if he was able to do that, it could have happened. In a Parliament with less than six months to go, it is highly unlikely that that would have happened. There has to be a political reality. It was quite clear that that Government had run their course and there was a general view that an election was needed. Therefore, I think it highly unlikely that a new Government would have been formed, and no new Government having received a vote of confidence within 14 days there would have been a Dissolution. That is one set of circumstances. However, there ought not to be a vote of no confidence if that is not the reason behind the consensus that Parliament needs to come to an end and for there to be a general election. Rather than contrive a vote of no confidence, one should have it as a solution but with the threshold set at such a level that it cannot easily be obtained by a single party for political advantage.
In much of the noble and learned Lord’s speech at Second Reading, his main agony about this Bill was that it would be possible for a Government to abuse the procedure and seek a Dissolution, which would defeat the whole purpose of having fixed-term Parliaments. Therefore, we believe that it is appropriate that the Dissolution should be set at a level which has not been achieved by any governing party since the Second World War. I fully accept that we departed from the 55 per cent figure because that was clearly not going anywhere. It was roundly criticised in this House and, indeed, in other places. As I say, I make no apology for having listened to that criticism, reflected on it and come forward with a proposal which still maintains that there should be a vote which could trigger a Dissolution, but one where the percentage figure is much higher to the extent that it would not be achieved by one party alone. That is why that first trigger mechanism—the subject matter of this amendment—is there. The two-thirds majority that is proposed is the same majority required for a Dissolution vote in the devolved legislatures, as set out in the relevant legislation.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am sorry to interrupt my noble and learned friend but I think that three times now he has referred to a two-thirds majority. However, it is not a two-thirds majority because that would be two-thirds of the votes cast in the Division. This is two-thirds of the number of Members, including vacant seats. Will he set the record straight?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am happy to do so. I think that I corrected myself the first time I got it wrong. I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding me of that. As I say, since the Second World War no Government have been able to command two-thirds of all the seats. This means that Parliament can choose to dissolve itself but Government cannot dissolve Parliament for their own political advantage.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked why the two-thirds requirement should not be set out in Standing Orders rather than in statute. The two-thirds requirement is set out in legislation as opposed to Standing Orders so that any change to the requirement would have to be made by fresh primary legislation, which would require the consent of both Houses of Parliament, whereas Standing Orders of the other place would require only one House of Parliament to determine that and probably could be amended or revoked by a single simple majority in the other place, and therefore could defeat the purpose of the measure. It is better to have the two-thirds vote set out in statute, which means that it has to be changed by statute. That would involve this House rather than the other place simply determining it by means of its own Standing Orders. It is not appropriate that a significant detail of reform affecting Parliament as a whole with implications for our prerogative should be amended by Standing Orders of one House of Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, very helpfully indicated that he would speak to his Amendments 28 and 29 at the same time. The first of those would omit the requirement for a two-thirds majority while the second would increase the figure to three-quarters of all MPs voting in favour of the measure instead of two-thirds. The reason why we are opposed to the simple majority—it would be a majority in that case—for the Dissolution is because it would undermine one of the purposes of the Bill: namely, establishing a fixed term and removing the Executive’s ability to decide when Parliament should be dissolved. Noble Lords may recall that at Second Reading mention was made of the late Lord Holme of Cheltenham and his analysis of arrangements whereby the Prime Minister can choose the timing of the election. Lord Holme described a general election as,
“a race in which the Prime Minister is allowed to approach it with his running shoes in one hand and his starting pistol in the other”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1007.]
I have reflected why he would not have his running shoes on, but he would certainly have the starting pistol in his hands. Unfortunately, Amendment 28 of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, would preserve the Executive’s ability to decide when a Parliament was dissolved, by providing that a Dissolution motion could be passed by a simple majority.
At the other end of the scale, the noble Lord suggests a majority of 75 per cent of Members who vote. Again, it is not an unreasonable proposition, but I believe that, on balance, the threshold of two-thirds strikes the right balance in providing a safeguard against abuse of the power, while ensuring the effectiveness of the Bill’s provisions. This Parliament passed similar provisions in relation to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
I have sought to explain why there are two mechanisms and how they are different. I indicated clearly that the 55 per cent originally proposed did not find favour. Therefore, it was only right and proper that the Government listened to those views, and we have come forward with two trigger mechanisms—one for when there should be an election, if there is a consensus, and another for when the Government have lost the confidence of the House of Commons. They are different issues that are dealt with separately. Interestingly, the Constitution Committee, whatever other concerns it may have had, thought that the Government’s proposals on the two trigger mechanisms were an appropriate way forward. In those circumstances, I ask my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in the debate which, despite the late hour, has been quite useful and has teased out the reasons for the provision. Perhaps I may begin by briefly correcting my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness on his reference to the German example. He said that the Government there had engineered a vote of no confidence in themselves. In fact, they engineered defeat of a motion of confidence, which is not the same thing and is relevant to discussions that we will have later on how one defines a vote of confidence.
Reference was made earlier to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act and pre-legislative scrutiny. I served on the Joint Committee on the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, as it then was. The title was later changed because I and others pointed out that nothing was being renewed by the Bill. My point is that the Joint Committee met for two hours twice a week for nearly three months. The more we discuss this Bill, the more convinced I am that it would have benefited from extensive pre-legislative scrutiny. The problem with much of the Bill is that it is not grounded in evidence. It is not exceptional in that respect but, as we have heard, this part of the Bill was the product of negotiations by politicians who are not necessarily noted for their knowledge of our constitutional arrangements.
Subsection (1) is highly unusual—certainly in comparative perspective. My noble and learned friend said that he would write to me with details of where this provision applies elsewhere. It may be helpful if I tell him that I can save him a letter. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, thought that we were unique in this provision. That is not quite the case. Lithuania, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have a similar provision. I wanted confirmation that the Government were unaware of that.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I apologise for misleading the House in that respect, and I accept the helpful correction of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth.
Lord Norton of Louth
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord; I am glad he found that helpful, although my remarks were directed far more at the Government and to put the issue in comparative perspective. It is that sort of information from which the Government should have started when looking elsewhere to draw up the provisions. In terms of being unique, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, will not be surprised to know that if his three-quarters proposal were to be implemented, it would render us unique.
However, my point is that measures of this type need to be better grounded in thorough evidence before we proceed with them. This provision needs scrutiny that deserves far more consideration than we are able to give it this evening, and we may wish to reflect on that between now and Report. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, the effect of the amendments in this group, tabled by my noble friends Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler, and by me, is to refine Clause 2(2), which covers the provision for an early dissolution in the event of a vote of no confidence on a simple majority followed by a period of 14 days in which no Government is formed that enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons.
At Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, in what he described sotto voce a moment ago as one of his “many agonies”, made the point that under the clause it would be theoretically possible for a Prime Minister to engineer a vote of no confidence in his or her Government by his or her side so as to secure an early dissolution at a time of his or her choosing. That would deprive the Bill of its intended very beneficial effect of removing from the Prime Minister precisely that power.
The criticism cannot be made of Clause 2(1), which requires a two-thirds majority of all the seats in the House of Commons to trigger an early dissolution, so that in practice cross-party support would be required, given that no Parliament in recent history has enjoyed such a majority. However, in relation to Clause 2(2), the criticism made by the noble and learned Lord is technically accurate. At Second Reading, the response was made that any Prime Minister engineering a vote of no confidence in his or her Government in such a Machiavellian way would be punished at the ballot box. However, I and others suggested that the problem might need to be addressed at later stages of the Bill. The need to address the point made by the noble and learned Lord is given added weight by the fact that, in Germany, Governments have resorted to the device of engineering defeat on votes of confidence, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, correctly pointed out. It was done by Chancellor Brandt in 1972, by Chancellor Kohl in 1982 and by Chancellor Schroeder as recently as 2005.
The way in which Amendment 30 addresses the problem is simple. By requiring that a Motion of no confidence under Clause 2(2) must be tabled by the leader of the Opposition, the mischief is effectively addressed. The position of the leader of the Opposition is constitutionally recognised. He or she would inevitably be—and historically invariably has been—the person who would move a genuine Motion of no confidence. It follows that requiring that he or she be the mover of such a Motion if it is to have effect is a simple way to achieve the intention of the Bill. It would also provide a certain symmetry. Given that the purpose of the Bill is to remove from the Prime Minister the power to call an election at a time of his or her choosing, who better to be responsible for the trigger for an early election when all-party consensus is absent than a Member of the House who seeks to replace him or her as Prime Minister?
I note that Amendment 33, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, is to the same effect. It gives me great confidence in our amendments that this is the first time since I joined your Lordships' House that I have had the pleasure of expressing agreement with the noble Lord in a debate on a constitutional matter.
I will make one final point. A further effect of Amendments 30 and 31 is that they contain a simple definition of a vote of no confidence. A Motion of no confidence would be a Motion declaring that the House of Commons had no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. That would mean that, once any vote went against the Government on an issue that would or might be seen as a confidence issue, the leader of the Opposition would have a chance to table a Motion of no confidence in those terms. If it were passed, the Speaker’s certificate would follow and the 14-day period provided for by Clause 2(2) would be triggered. If the Motion failed, that consequence would not follow. That arrangement would avoid doubt or argument, and it would avoid the need for any complication in the definition of what did and what did not constitute a vote of no confidence. I beg to move.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has just noted, it is remarkable that I have tabled an amendment which seeks to achieve exactly the same purpose as the amendments in this group tabled by the Liberal Democrat noble Lords. It is a nice example of how our parliamentary dialectic can be fruitful. The public notice all this adversarialism—they notice that we are always disagreeing with each other. However, if one takes a longer view, we find that all this debate and argument tends to produce a new consensus. Until recently, the Liberal Democrats wanted immediately to move on to discover new truths and interest us in new suggestions. They have been the grit in the oyster, endlessly introducing new ideas into our public debates. I hope that they will be able to continue to do so now that they have joined the governmental establishment. We shall see.
We have heard a certain amount about Germany from the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Marks. I think that it was in 1983, although the noble Lord, Lord Marks, suggested it was 1982—the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will tell us who is right—that Chancellor Kohl deliberately contrived to defeat a Motion of confidence in his Government. As I understand it, the reason was that he wanted an election because he had come to power in the previous year by means of a parliamentary vote and not by means of popular endorsement at the election. He lacked a popular mandate and he wanted one. I do not think that he was punished at the ballot box, so I am not sure that the safeguard that the Government have suggested exists against the cynical use of the no-confidence provisions in the Bill to contrive an early election by an unscrupulous Prime Minister would necessarily work. On that occasion at least, Chancellor Kohl did not suffer at the election.
It is at least a possibility that Mr Cameron, too, not having won an election and feeling that he lacks popular endorsement, might, if he thought that he had an opportunity to do better in an early general election, be very tempted to go for that. It is hard to foresee that but who knows? If the 14-day provision that we are about to debate on another amendment were taken out, it would be even more important to guard against the Prime Minister being able to contrive a vote of no confidence. If immediately following a vote of no confidence he could go to the country, it would be that much more attractive to him.
I think we can see why the Liberal Democrats are keen for the Bill to be amended to provide that only the leader of the Opposition can table a Motion of no confidence. It is, sadly, because they do not trust their coalition partners and the Prime Minister. They worry that, as the Liberal Democrats become more unpopular—and we will perhaps see evidence of that after the local government elections and in the AV referendum—and as the cuts, which those who voted for them did not expect them to support, start to bite, Mr Cameron may ditch them and cut and run. Unless this amendment is in the Bill, the supermajority lock may not do the trick for them and keep the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues in office by postponing the evil day when he has to face the electors of Sheffield and the Liberal Democrats have to face the electors of the United Kingdom.
I note that an amendment of this kind would be less necessary if we were to have proportional representation as that would make it less likely that any party would win an overall majority in an early election and, therefore, it would be less tempting for the Prime Minister to contrive an early general election. However, we are where we are. The Liberal Democrats failed to secure a referendum on proportional representation and we have a referendum on the alternative vote only. I hear different views as to what the alternative vote might produce: some say that it is a majoritarian system of election that tends to reinforce the swing and others say that it is more likely that the alternative vote will produce an endless series of coalitions. Whatever the outcome proves to be in practice, with that electoral system it would be more important to have the safeguard which the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and others have proposed. I hope we do not have AV and some of us will do our best to ensure that we do not have it.
I see one significant argument against these amendments. We might have a situation, which the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has adumbrated and which the Government have already played out, in which the Government lost a vote on a key Bill, they were incapable, for whatever conjunction of circumstances, of governing effectively, and their majority had fallen as in 1951 or 1996, but the Opposition reckoned that it was in their political interest to defer the election to allow the Government to continue to stew in their political juice for a little longer. In that situation they would not want to table a Motion of no confidence just yet. Of course, that would be bad for the country.
These are all hypothetical possibilities. It is very difficult for us to provide for every contingency that might arise, but I think it would be sensible to incorporate an amendment of the kind moved by the noble Lord and of the kind that my Amendment 33 provides.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, will speak to Amendment 40, but perhaps I might anticipate that one as well. I suspect that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will be advising the House against these amendments and I thought that at this hour of the night I might bring him some joy by saying that I shall agree with him in doing so.
I shall quickly adumbrate the problems that I foresee with the amendments. I understand what they seek to achieve, but I have concerns. I understand the motivation for limiting the Motion of no confidence to be moved by the leader of the Opposition. As we have heard, it is to limit the Government so that they do not engineer a vote of no confidence. However, it does exclude other Members of the House from the opportunity to move a vote of no confidence. The circumstances in which that is likely to happen may be exceptional but in historical terms they are not unknown. One of the most important debates that took place in wartime happened on a vote of no confidence which was not moved by the leader of the Opposition. It is unusual but I am not sure that should be excluded. I have certain concerns about the way in which that amendment is drawn. I can see the reasons for trying to prevent the Government doing that, but there are problems if it is solely confined to the leader of the Opposition.
My second problem with the amendment is the way in which it is drawn in relation to what constitutes a Motion of no confidence. It limits it to the House passing a Motion expressing no confidence in the Government. That narrows it in relation to what we presently understand to be a confidence Motion in the House of Commons and it narrows it unduly. Therefore, because of Amendment 50, to which we shall come on the next day in Committee, I would prefer to go down the route that seeks to preserve, as far as possible, our existing understanding of what constitutes a vote of confidence rather than narrowing it in the way that the amendment proposes.
I now anticipate Amendment 40, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will speak. I suspect that, had my noble friend Lord Cormack been here, he might have accused the noble and learned Lord of tabling it on a mischievous basis. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will say that it is serious. Perhaps we could compromise and say that it is serious but mischievous. The amendment states that,
“a vote of no confidence cannot be a valid mechanism to precipitate an early general election if the Speaker of the House of Commons has reason to believe that it is called with the support or collusion of the Government and issues a certificate to that effect”.
I have problems with the existing wording of the Bill in relation to the Speaker. As drafted, it could draw the Speaker into political controversy in issuing a certificate. If he can be drawn into controversy under the Bill as presently drawn, he would be drawn into it in spades under Amendment 40. We can just imagine what would happen if the Speaker said, “No, no, the House has passed a Motion of no confidence, but I think that the Government has probably colluded in it”. One can imagine the uproar that would be caused. The noble and learned Lord may be proposing his amendment to tease out that very fact; we shall hear shortly. On the face of it, as it is worded, his amendment exacerbates what I consider to be an existing problem in the Bill. Although I appreciate the reasons behind the amendments relating to the leader of the Opposition and votes of confidence, I cannot support them and will be quite happy to support my noble and learned friend in resisting them.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
First, on the amendment of the noble, Lord Marks, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. It fails to deal with two particular problems. First, when a Government lose a vote that is obviously a vote of confidence—if the Government had been defeated on the Motion authorising the use of force in Iraq, that would plainly have been a vote of confidence—it would be wholly wrong if there then had to be a vote of no confidence thereafter.
Equally, there have been votes which the Government lose, for example, the vote on Maastricht in 1992, which they then followed—in my view, entirely correctly —with a Motion tabled by the Prime Minister on a vote of confidence in the Government. If that vote had resulted in the Conservative Government being defeated on the vote of confidence, which was the traditional method of dealing with that, the consequence should have been not that there then needed to be a vote of no confidence from the Opposition—which, as I understand it, is the view of the noble Lord, Lord Marks—but that there should be a general election, or a 14-day delay, which we shall debate later.
Those two examples would not be covered by the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and therefore lead to dealing, on one view, with the collusion argument but strengthen the other risk in the Bill, which is that a Government who genuinely have lost the confidence of the Commons are able to stay in power. Just as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, gets one piece of the wallpaper on the wall, another falls off.
On my amendment, I could not have asked for more from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. It is my view that in relation to a vote of no confidence, there is no possible mechanism one could adopt which would allow anyone to go behind the motivation of why a particular group of people voted in favour. That is an impossible task. It is like the vote of 100 in the Commons voting for an all-elected House of Lords. It has been suggested that that was a vote in order for there not to be an all-elected House of Lords. But one cannot go behind the vote; one must accept it at face value.
I tabled the amendment simply to illustrate the correctness of the conclusion of the committee on which the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, sits, chaired by my noble friend Lady Jay, that there is no ability to control a vote of confidence and that a Prime Minister with a majority can, if he or she wishes, engineer a situation where he or she loses a vote that is a vote of no confidence, even if not so called.
I have a third objection to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. Is it such a bad thing that, had these provisions been in place, it would have been open to, for example, Mr Heath to go to the country not by engineering in some deceitful way but by simply saying that he thought that the Government needed to have the confidence of the people to go on with the particular stance they were taking? He would therefore have put down a Motion of confidence in his own Government with a view to there being an election. Is that a bad thing? What is the view of the Government on that? These are probing amendments in Committee. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, covers one situation, but it leaves a lot of others uncovered. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth.
I tabled my amendment simply to establish the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton. You cannot go behind people’s motivation, which means that the Select Committee is probably right. The Government of the day can always have an election whenever they want on a majority of one. Do the Government think that is necessarily a bad thing?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, this is the first of a series of groups of amendments dealing with the trigger mechanism from no-confidence Motions. I thank my noble friend who tabled this amendment and noble Lords who have tabled subsequent amendments. A general view has been expressed, particularly at Second Reading, that there is some merit in having certainty. A number of those who have contributed to this debate have made the point about the potential for abuse.
As I have indicated, the Government believe that the package of the two trigger mechanisms is sensible and straightforward. However, I accept that there has been considerable interest in the handling of the no-confidence Motions in particular. When the Bill passed through another place, there was some detailed debate on this, but it was not amended. The more one looks at it, the more one finds that perhaps the balance that has been struck in the Bill is right. However, the function of this Chamber is to be a revising Chamber to improve legislation and I want to make it clear to noble Lords that, in our deliberations on this amendment and the subsequent amendments, the Government are willing to listen carefully and to reflect on what noble Lords have to say with regard to trying to address the issue of certainty about what constitutes a no-confidence Motion and ways of trying to eliminate abuse.
It is to address certainty and to eliminate abuse that the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Marks provides that only a Motion of no confidence tabled by the leader of the Opposition would trigger the procedure in Clause 2(2)—namely, the 14-day period. The amendment spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, seeks to achieve the same result. We have always been clear that this Bill is not a new constitution. It is intended to bring in an important provision—fixed-term Parliaments—having proper regard to existing constitutional arrangements and conventions. On the whole, the purpose of the Bill is to replace existing conventional democratic controls with legal controls in the context of a fixed-term Parliament. The only foolproof way in which to prevent an Executive from manipulating the rules to engineer a premature general election would be to remove those rules entirely—in other words, to provide for rigid fixed terms. The mood of the House at Second Reading—and I have not heard anything to contradict it since—was that there was very little support for having such rigidity. The Bill therefore provides procedures that allow for an early general election where one is clearly required. All the debates that we have had in this House and the other place confirm that this is regarded as a necessity. I think that we are in the territory of assessing whether the procedures in the Bill are satisfactory, rather than whether we should have these procedures at all. The purpose of these amendments is to see whether they can be improved on.
It is the case that the Bill does not say who may table a Motion of no confidence. That concurs with current practice. As was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Norton and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, there is no restriction on who may table in the House of Commons a Motion of no confidence. As it happens, in practice, these have been tabled by opposition parties and almost always by the leader of the Official Opposition. The background note prepared by the Library in the other place sets out a history of confidence Motions. I am acutely aware that my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has made an in-depth academic study of confidence and no-confidence Motions. Since 1895, not a single Motion has included the words “no confidence” other than in the name of the leader of the Opposition. As noble Lords are well aware, a decision by the leader of the Opposition to support or to table a no-confidence Motion automatically takes precedence over that tabled by any other party.
The question then is whether there is reason to deviate from current practice for the purposes of this legislation. I have listened carefully to what has been said about potential abuse, but I come back to the point that it would be obvious if the Government had set out to subvert the standard procedures of the other place. I take the view that it can in no way be excluded altogether but that there would almost certainly be retribution by the electorate. On the other hand, the electorate might decide that there was to be no retribution and that they fully supported the Government of the day—at the end of the day, the electorate are right.
The no-confidence procedures in the Bill as drafted would be activated only if the House of Commons had voted to the effect that it had no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. One has to reflect that, even if a Government tried to contrive it, if they went to the country with the Opposition saying that the House of Commons had no confidence in the Government, they might have a presentational problem on their hands. For the moment, I put it no higher than that. Those who think that the safeguard is meaningless are perhaps trying to nail down a political process with legal certainty. I have, I hope, been quite up front in these debates when I have said that if the Government were absolutely determined to try to abuse the rules, as I think the Constitution Committee itself accepted, although it would be possible to abuse them, there would be consequences to that. I rather suspect that, as the idea of a fixed-term Parliament and the rules set down by a fixed-term Parliament became more and more part of what people were accustomed to, there would be consequences over time if it was thought that a particular Government were trying to bend or get around the rules. The political consequences would be more damaging.
The amendments would have certain unintended consequences. The first of these is that the proposal is out of step with the process of rebalancing that is going on in the other place between the Front-Benchers of all parties and the Back-Benchers. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth made that point. In the past few years, there have been a series of reforms in the other place that have been designed to give Back-Bench MPs a greater voice. Part of this involved the report by the Reform of the House of Commons Committee, sometimes known as the Wright committee after its chairman Dr Tony Wright, the long-standing chairman of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, and the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee. Amendment 30 would be counter to the general trend of these reforms by allowing the no-confidence procedures in the Bill to be triggered only by the leader of the Opposition.
The amendments would put in place a statutory provision that excluded the Back-Benchers and entrenched the dominance of those on the Front Benches. I am not sure that most Members of the other place would necessarily welcome the inclusion of such a provision when we returned the Bill to them. It is interesting that a similar amendment was tabled and debated in Committee in the other place, but I think that it is fair to say that it did not receive a warm welcome and was not even pushed to a vote. The amendments also leave open a number of unanswered questions, most notably what would happen if there had been a successful no-confidence vote in the Government but the leader of the Opposition failed to table a Motion of no confidence.
Finally, Clause 2 has been drafted in a way that is sensitive to the Commons having control of its internal procedures. Only the bare essentials of the new mechanisms have been put in place—there needs to be a two-thirds vote in favour to trigger a Dissolution vote, and the 14-day period commences on the passing of a no-confidence vote—but is it right to go further than this? Is it right to use legislation to tell the other place who is permitted to table a Motion or indeed to devise the precise words that should be used in a Motion for it to have legal effect?
As I said, I fully understand and indeed sympathise with the underlying motivation to these amendments, and I have indicated that we are willing to consider them, but there would be serious practical problems, and indeed constitutional problems, for the role of Back-Benchers. The alternative of letting the Commons develop its own practice and for the Speaker to inform the outside world whether this practice has been complied with through the Speaker’s certificate is preferable. We believe that the procedures that we have put in place to trigger early Dissolution are robust and transparent, and I ask your Lordships to reflect on the conclusions of the Constitution Committee on the trigger mechanisms for an early election. The Constitution Committee did have concerns about the definition of no-confidence Motions, which we have discussed and to which we will return, but it broadly endorsed that there should be two trigger mechanisms and that the sort of manipulation which noble Lords are concerned about would be seen as,
“an abuse of the Act’s provisions”.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
As regards the third question—let us assume that this Bill applied and that the Opposition did not support a general election—would the Government be willing for Heath, for example, to have a general election in those circumstances? Would they be against it? Is that an abuse?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Just to be clear about what I am being asked, as I understand it the noble and learned Lord has asked me whether, in February 1974, when Mr Heath wanted an election, if the Opposition had been against it he could have contrived a situation to do it. Clearly, under these circumstances, it would have been possible to contrive. He might not have had the election on the date on which he wanted it if it had had to be 14 days after he had lost a confidence Motion. He may well have found in weighing that up whether it was the right course of action. It may have saved him from what happened in the end.
I believe that it would be possible but, again, it would be a matter of judgment. Indeed, the electorate did make a judgment at the time on a Prime Minister who chose to go before his term of office was anywhere near complete. If he had also contrived the means of doing that, the consequences for him might well have been greater. That is pure speculation. We will never know. On that basis, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I am grateful for the indications given by the Minister that there will be some flexibility in consideration of how to deal with no confidence Motions. The Minister should know that I and my noble friends who proposed these amendments fully support the two triggers and the basis on which no confidence Motions are dealt with in the Bill, subject to the proposition mentioned at Second Reading by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. Indeed, it gave me great pleasure to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, in relation to this amendment, but it gave me less pleasure to hear him suggest that the only reason the Liberal Democrats are moving the amendment is because they do not trust their Conservative colleagues not to rat on the coalition and go to the country. I invite noble Lords to accept that the reason for the amendment is simply to address the problem that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, identified in the Second Reading debate, which was that the Prime Minister could technically engineer a dissolution and that that was the mischief at which this Bill is aimed.
I turn to the history of no confidence Motions. I had understood from the Library note, as had my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, that since 1895 all Motions of confidence or no confidence have been moved by the leader of the Opposition, or at least if not initially, then taken over by him after others had moved such Motions. The reason why that is an attractive proposition is that it is simple and it vests in the alternative Prime Minister the power to move the Motion of no confidence. In tabling the amendments as we did, my noble friends and I considered carefully the question of balance between Front-Benchers and Back-Benchers in the other place, to which the Minister referred. However, if one does not specify that it should be for the leader of the Opposition to move a Motion of no confidence, inevitably the field is opened in such a way as to make it possible for the Prime Minister to collude with another Back-Bench Member of Parliament, not of his own party, in the moving of a Motion of no confidence. That is undesirable because it increases the danger to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, originally referred.
On the question of the definition of a vote of no confidence, I accept, as I suspect do most Members of the Committee, that traditionally in the House of Commons, Motions on issues considered to be issues of confidence may take many forms. But, at the margins, such Motions do not necessarily amount to Motions of no confidence and I do not accept that the desirable way to deal with those Motions on the margins is by requiring the Speaker to certify that they are Motions of no confidence. If this Bill is enacted, we are moving into a new era in this field, that of fixed-term Parliaments with a statutory code for early Dissolution. It is, I would suggest, appropriate that there should be a new procedure, a new clarity, in the statutory code on the question of votes of no confidence. In moving the amendment, it seems to us that the sensible way to proceed is for a Motion on a confidence issue that may be at the margins or may be dubious to be followed by a clear, declaratory Motion of no confidence about which there could be no doubt. It is for that reason that the simplicity and, I suggest, the elegance of the solution whereby the leader of the Opposition has that responsibility, should be accepted.
The idea that a certificate of non-collusion should be the way forward, as suggested in the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, carries with it endless difficulties that make the solution unattractive. I see that the noble and learned Lord is nodding in agreement. It would involve the Speaker in value judgments, which would be thoroughly undesirable, would be difficult to make and would require him to conduct a single-handed assessment of the evidence before him of collusion or non-collusion. I note that the noble and learned Lord appears to agree with that.
I urge the House in passing this Bill to have regard to the central mischief at which it is aimed. In so doing, I invite a robust answer to the question of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, about the conundrum facing Mr Heath in 1974. He wanted Dissolution on the basis of testing who governed the country, the Government or the trade unions. Had he been able to get a majority, as I suspect he would have done, of two-thirds—in other words, the agreement of the Opposition to go to the country on that issue—that would have been all well and good. Had he been unable to get the agreement of the Opposition, I suggest that it would not have been appropriate to allow him the option of engineering a vote of no confidence in his own Government in those circumstances, because what should have happened was that either the House agreed, the Opposition agreed or the Opposition moved the Motion.
In so saying, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
“( ) the Speaker of the House of Commons had in advance of the motion in question being debated certified that the motion was to be regarded as a motion of no confidence, and”
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, this amendment deals with the requirement for the Speaker to issue a certificate. This is one of the most important and difficult issues in the Bill. I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Marks, speak thoughtfully about this problem in his concluding remarks just now. It seems to me, if I may venture to suggest this to the Committee, quite unsuitable that we should embark upon this very major debate at this hour of the evening, but if that is its wish, I shall very briefly sketch the issue that I think we should return to—which we will be able to do, for example, on Amendment 51, which I have tabled as an amendment to Amendment 50 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.
Amendment 32 would require the Speaker to have certified in advance that a Motion was to be regarded as a Motion of no confidence if it were to lead to an early general election. The legislation requires the Speaker to issue a certificate establishing that a Motion of no confidence has been passed on a Division as a precondition of Dissolution and an early general election. The idea of a Speaker’s certificate was lifted from the Parliament Act 1911, which requires the Speaker to certify that a Bill is a money Bill before it goes to the House of Lords. That certification is of a relatively ascertainable fact. The characteristics of a money Bill are clearly described in the preceding subsection of the Parliament Act.
The introduction of the concept of a Speaker’s certificate is entirely novel, I think, in the context of Motions of no confidence, and I believe that it needs extremely careful consideration for three reasons. First, there is the difficulty of defining a Motion of no confidence, a Motion of confidence or vote of confidence—what exactly is the Bill talking about? Secondly, through this procedure, the Speaker would be liable to be placed in extremely contentious political circumstances and to have to play an extremely contentious part in them. Thirdly, the statutory requirement for the Speaker to issue such a certificate may lay him open to legal challenge in the courts, either those of this country or the European Court of Justice. That is a major hazard apprehended by the Clerk of the House of Commons. For all these three reasons, I believe that we need to proceed with the utmost caution and that what is drafted in the Bill carries with it very considerable risks.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I completely endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has said about the importance of this issue. It is no one’s fault, but starting this debate at 11.28 pm is a little odd. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, we shall obviously have to return to this when we debate both the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—Amendment 50—and the amendment to Amendment 50 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, to leave out subsections (3) and (4). Unless other noble Lords have remarks to make, the best thing may be to move straight to the Minister and hear his response. The important point that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, made about Mr Mark Harper’s comments that he could envisage the Speaker certifying in advance will obviously have to be debated when we come to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I plan to be extremely brief, as I have classes to teach in Hull shortly after 9 o’clock in the morning.
I wish to raise one point arising from what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has said. I have considerable sympathy with the argument that he is developing that either the Speaker’s certificate goes out of the Bill completely or, if it stays in, it needs to be refined. He was teasing out the point made by the Minister that the Government would expect the Speaker to indicate in advance whether he would certify a Motion as one of confidence. So, on the basis of that expectation, I wish to raise this question. One could raise it on any serious Bill but I have used before the example of the European Communities Bill in 1972, where the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, said, “If we lose this, the Government cannot sensibly continue”. If, in a situation like that, the Speaker took a contrary view and declined to certify the Bill as one of confidence but the Prime Minister said, “This is essential to our programme and, if we are defeated, we shall resign”, what would happen?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I appreciate the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, about the lateness of the hour. I always understood that this evening’s proceedings were going to go late. We tried to accommodate that by finishing somewhat earlier last time. Nevertheless, it is an important point, as he indicated, that there will be the opportunity at a later stage with a subsequent amendment to perhaps explore this further, including the point raised by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth.
The effect of the amendment would be to require the Speaker to issue two certificates before an early election is triggered on account of a no-confidence vote. The clause already provides for the Speaker certifying that there has been a no-confidence Motion, and a Motion of no confidence in the Government during the ensuing 14-day period. The amendment, as moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, would require an additional, earlier certificate issued in advance of a debate as to whether the Motion is to be regarded as a Motion of no confidence.
This again arises out of the concern that the House of Commons may not always know whether it is voting on a Motion of no confidence. It is highly unlikely that the House of Commons, in its ordinary business, would pass a resolution which was perhaps contrary to a matter of policy and the wishes of the Government of the day, but a matter on which no one had ever actually thought that there was any great store set, and then at the end of the 14-day period the Speaker unexpectedly issues a certificate. I have heard that concern expressed but it is not a realistic scenario.
The point was made that my honourable friend Mr Mark Harper indicated that in all likelihood a future no-confidence Motion would not only take the form that it did when a Motion was last passed but also, in the event of it happening, the Speaker of the House of Commons would be able to inform Members before they vote. For example, if it was on an amendment to the Queen’s Speech, the Speaker would inform Members of the House of Commons before the vote that, in the event of the Motion being passed, the Speaker would regard it as a no-confidence Motion for the purposes of Clause 2.
That is a simple and straightforward process. The Speaker advises the House of Commons on other procedural matters before it. I understand the point that has been made and, clearly as I indicated in my introductory remarks to the previous set of amendments, we will reflect on all these points. Yet we find it difficult to accept that there should be an additional layer of complexity to the process. One wonders how much time there would be to allow such a certificate to be issued if it was a pressing debate. It would be regrettable if such a debate was somewhat held up while the Speaker was engaged in the process of considering whether a certificate should be issued and that is then done.
We share the goal behind the noble Lord’s amendment—that the Commons should be well informed before it votes on confidence matters. The idea of an ambush is unfounded but I hear what the noble Lord says with regard to trying to import that greater degree of certainty. It is an issue to which we will return, one we will certainly reflect on and one we will perhaps have a wider debate on—perhaps with more participants—in the subsequent Amendment 51. On that basis, for the moment I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. Perhaps when we come to the later debate, we will address the questions that my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has also raised.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I thank both the Minister and the Committee and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.