Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

In that case, Mr Evans, I am going to carry on until you tell me otherwise. There is an amount to get through, but I hope to do so.

The schedule provides for a number of changes to primary and secondary legislation to ensure the effective operation of the statute book when the 2011 Act is repealed. These amendments primarily reverse or alter legislative amendments made by the 2011 Act. The schedule works with clause 6. As I have explained, we want to make sure that references to the 2011 Act work elsewhere in other legislation. There are some key changes in the schedule to draw to the attention of the House.

The first is to rule 1 of schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983, which sets out the election timetable. The Bill amends that rule to ensure that the trigger for the election process in the case of a parliamentary general election is the Dissolution of Parliament, following the recommendation of the FTPA Joint Committee.

The second change provides additional certainty in relation to the election process. The election writ is deemed to have been received the day after the Dissolution of Parliament. This will allow returning officers to begin arrangements the day after the election writs are issued, enabling all constituencies to begin making the necessary preparations, even in the event that the physical delivery of the writ is delayed. Similar deeming amendments are included for by-elections.

The third update is to section 20 of the Representation of the People Act 1985. Under the existing legislation, in the event of the demise of the Crown after Dissolution or up to seven days before, polling day is postponed by a fortnight. The 1985 Act provides no discretion or flexibility to further alter the date of the poll. This Bill provides limited discretion for the Prime Minister to move polling day up to seven days either side of this default 14-day postponement, by proclamation on the advice of the Privy Council. This is beneficial because it ensures that enough flexibility is built into the system should such specific and unlikely circumstances ever occur. There is also flexibility to move the date set for the first meeting of Parliament in such circumstances—again, by proclamation on the advice of the Privy Council.

The last key change that I will highlight in this section is to the Recall of MPs Act 2015, which is amended to ensure that there continues to be provision to prevent or terminate recall petitions close to a general election to avoid redundant by-elections. This means that there is no requirement to trigger a recall petition if the last possible polling day for a general election, based on Parliament running its full term, is less than six months away, and a recall petition is to be terminated when Parliament is dissolved. For the reasons that I have set out, I recommend that the schedule be the schedule to the Bill.

If it remains convenient to you, Mr Evans, I will now start to work my way through the amendments that have been tabled, but I remain at your disposal to return to the clauses if hon. Members would like me to respond after they have spoken to their amendments.

New clause 2 has been tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). As I understand it, it seeks to provide a role for the House of Commons in approving an early general election by simple majority vote. This would adjust the arrangements that exist under the 2011 Act by removing the two-thirds majority requirement. It would in itself be a departure from the prior constitutional norm, whereby the Prime Minister could request an early Dissolution of Parliament in order to test the view of the electorate. As we have already begun to touch on in this afternoon’s debate, the deadlock and paralysis created by the 2011 Act did rather demonstrate why a prescriptive statutory approach does not work. Instead, what we are doing in the Bill is returning to a set of widely understood constitutional conventions and practices. Those tried and tested arrangements are the right ones, and this new clause would run against the grain of those arrangements.

It is, after all, a core underlying principle that the authority of the Government and the Prime Minister, as the sovereign’s principal adviser, are derived from the ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons. The 2011 Act attached confidence and the decision of the Prime Minister to call an election to statutory motions, which gave the Commons a direct say in Dissolution, but it is also possible to argue that those arrangements hindered the function of democracy by making it harder to have necessary elections. Instead, the House should indeed be able to express its view on confidence, but in a much freer manner. We do not need the prescriptive statutory approach of either the 2011 Act or, I fear, this new clause.

New clause 2(5) would require the Prime Minister to advise the sovereign on the date of the election within 30 days of the House approving a motion for an election. I would argue that this is not necessary. Under the Bill, once a general election has been called and Dissolution takes place, the election timetable in schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983 makes the provision for the timing of an election very clear. Again, rather than introducing prescriptive arrangements, we believe that we should return to tried and tested standards whereby it is a core principle that the Prime Minister must be able to command the confidence of the House of Commons. New measures around that concept are not needed.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

If a Prime Minister were to request a Dissolution that was proper but was perceived to be for political advantage and was premature, would not the remedy be in the hands and judgment of the electorate?

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, that is precisely the point, and that underlies a number of our considerations. In the place of a prescriptive statutory scheme, we can place our trust instead in the ability of people to choose against the behaviour that they observe from parties in Parliament.

Let me turn to new clause 5, which is also in the name of the hon. Member for Rhondda. It would require the House to start sitting 14 days after a general election. Although I agree that Parliament should meet as soon as possible after polling day, it is not necessary to codify that in legislation. Fundamentally, this is a similar type of argument. It is difficult to reconcile more extensive codification with the scheme of the Bill, and I shall set out the reasons why.

First, we think it is unnecessary to allow for such a 14-day period. Before and under the 2011 Act, the date of the first meeting of Parliament was set by the sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister. In practice, Parliament has met within one to two weeks of a general election on all but two occasions since 1950. There are compelling practical reasons for a new Government to call a new Parliament as soon as possible. As I put it earlier, no Government can manage without supply. As the Joint Committee put it,

“without…the authorisation of the Commons to spend money…a modern administration could manage months at best”.

Ultimately, having won an election, any new Government would want to assemble Parliament to pass their Queen’s Speech at the earlier opportunity, and be able to move on to legislation and supply.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

rose—

[Aaron Bell]

rose—

[Chloe Smith]

I will not give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) again, if he will forgive me. I will give my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) a go.

[Aaron Bell]

My hon. Friend said a moment ago that she could not speak exactly for the AEA, but she will know from the open letter that it wrote to her that it wants even more time. It is proposing an extended 30-day timetable to

“increase capacity, introduce resilience and ensure electors are put first.”

That is all very well, but the point of an election is not to have the most perfect election imaginable, but to get the right result efficiently, so that everyone can cast their vote, but the country can be allowed to move on and resolve whatever tensions led to the election. The ever lengthening timetable is not in the national interest, let alone the interest of individual electors or individual candidates.

[Chloe Smith]

I am happy to confirm from this Dispatch Box that the Government’s position is to maintain the electoral timetable as it stands—I am not proposing an extension or reduction—but I draw the threads together as follows. We need to ensure that the system works for voters, and that includes them having enough time to register to vote, to receive their ballot papers, to return their ballot papers and to decide on the candidates in each constituency—we have a constituency-based system, after all. We also need to be able to make the same point about supporting candidates to fulfil their part of what needs to happen in an election timetable, both those who stand for parties and those who stand as independents. We have to think through these things if we legislate here.

In response to right hon. and hon. Members who have tabled the amendments, I suggest there is perhaps a space here for looking further into these issues. There would be an opportunity to have some research drawn together on the tensions between voter engagement, the resilience of polls and the needs of the country for a period when it does not have a Parliament or MPs able to help constituents. Although the Government continue to hold the powers needed to carry out essential business and respond to sudden, unexpected or distressing events, none the less the Government do after all need Parliament to be sitting. If needed, I will return to those points after right hon. and hon. Members have spoken, but I will leave new clause 1 and amendment 3 there.

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[Mrs Miller]

Of course, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has a wealth of knowledge on these issues, as I know from having served on a Bill Committee with him.

We are talking not only about the impact on people standing for election. By lengthening our campaigns by almost two weeks, a number of other issues start to come into play. There is two weeks less scrutiny of Government by this place, which is not an inconsiderable issue that we should look at, yet it is not part of a scheme of work to consider all of these different issues. There is the fact that purdah gets longer not just at national level, but at local level, so fewer decisions are being made by local government for longer, and in stifling decision making that also has an effect that is not being captured. There are not inconsiderable impacts on our economy with the potential risk to our economy, depending on the economic circumstances we face at the particular time. Indeed, there is the risk of an outside actor interfering in our democratic process. The length of elections matters to returning officers—that is for sure—but there are many other issues that we should be considering that it is not clear are being brought into play at the moment.

[Aaron Bell]

My right hon. Friend has given an excellent list of some of the reasons why a long campaign is not desirable, but the simple fact is that voters are without their MPs. If, for example, Operation Pitting had taken place during an election campaign, Members across the House who have been deluged by casework would not have been able to take up that casework in the midst of an election campaign. The longer the campaign, the more likely it is that something will occur during that campaign.

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend has put his finger on something that is probably more inequitable than he has realised, because constituents who have a re-standing Member of Parliament can deal with casework, but those where such an individual is not standing again do not have that access to casework. He raises an incredibly important point that needs to be taken into account.

There is emerging academic research in the US and Sweden that recommends shortening the length of campaigns for some of the reasons that have been made in interventions about increasing voter turnout, yet the Cabinet Office, in the excellent work it does with its democratic engagement plan, is silent on this issue. I was really pleased to hear the comments made by the Minister from the Front Bench today. Indeed, I thank her enormously for the way she has engaged on this and for the meetings she has had with colleagues. It is clear that she is not silent on the issue—she has views and thoughts—but there is no formal assessment of the link between the length of an election, voter engagement and all the risks I have talked about to our broader democracy.

New clause 1 is very much a probing amendment, but it needs a very clear response from the Minister today. She is quite rightly concerned about things such as engaging overseas voters in participating in the electoral process in a much more comprehensive way through other pieces of legislation that she is bringing before this place, and that is laudable and an important objective. However, the issue there is not the length of campaigns, but the awareness of the need to register annually. In some ways, the length of campaigns is sometimes being used as a solution for what is not necessarily the problem we face.

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I would prefer a four-year Parliament. I tabled an amendment to that effect in 2011, during the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. That is a more natural timescale. Governments tend to have run out of steam by the time they get to four years. They only end up not having an election at four years when they think they are going to lose, so they keep on running and running and running until they hope things will improve and something will come along. If we look around the world, many countries have elections after either four years on a fixed basis or three years. I think three years is too short. The idea that we should have the longest parliamentary term of any democracy in the world—any democracy in the world—is extraordinary and we should amend that, even if it is only to take an extra week off. I am grateful for Members’ attention.

[Aaron Bell]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—the right hon. Member, I should say.

[Chris Bryant]

Just hon.

[Aaron Bell]

Not yet. I am sure it will come in time.

I will not repeat my Second Reading speech—this is the Committee stage—but I still welcome the Bill for all the reasons I gave on that day. I welcome the Government’s continued engagement with all of us who have an interest in it, in particular members of the Joint Committee on which I served with the hon. Member for Rhondda and many other Members, with whom I made friends and now sign amendments with. Perhaps the Whips will regret putting me on that Committee in the fullness of time.

I will turn to new clause 1, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), in a little while, but first I want to discuss the overall principles relating to Dissolution. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said on Second Reading that the right place for a proper discussion of the principles was in Committee, so I think it is probably right, with your indulgence, Ms Winterton, that we have a little discussion about them. Perhaps the Minister can reflect on them in her closing remarks, too.

We heard about Tommy Lascelles and his principles from 1950. Younger viewers will remember him from “The Crown”, played by Pip Torrens, as the private secretary to Her Majesty, but at the time he was the private secretary to His Majesty. He was talking about the principles in another closely contested election period—1950 and 1951. Those principles are relevant today, but the second one about the national economy was widely considered to have fallen into abeyance. There are other principles that we should perhaps consider. It was the opinion of the Joint Committee that the Dissolution principles document issued by the Government did not go quite far enough and did not cover other aspects of Dissolution—the calling of the new Parliament and so on. I therefore ask the Minister to comment a little on the 20 principles in our report: on the overall paramount confidence in our system, what it means to lose the confidence of the House and how to determine that, and what the Prime Minister ought to be doing in certain circumstances, whether to offer the resignation of the Government or to request a Dissolution from the monarch, and when it would be more appropriate for the Prime Minister to resign. We said that it would be more appropriate if there had recently been a general election, if there was a new Prime Minister from that Member’s party, or if it appeared that another person might command the confidence of the House—that was, of course, the third of Lascelles’s principles. The work of the Committee in putting together a more complete list of principles around confidence ought to be reflected in the debate and I ask the Minister to reflect on that in her closing remarks.

Turning briefly to new clause 1, since I am a signatory to it with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, I am grateful for the comments the Minister made from the Dispatch Box. I am also grateful for her engagement with those of us who signed new clause 1. I welcome the additional research we ought to see. As I said in my intervention on her earlier, the purpose of an election is not simply to have the most perfectly admirable election in the world, but to resolve things. The longer we take, the more people we can register and persuade to vote, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) said, eventually they might get bored and not vote. The point of an election is to resolve things. We want to make sure people vote—once and once only, as I said in my speech on the Elections Bill the other day—but the key purpose of an election is to let the country move on from a moment of tension, contest and electoral joust between opposing candidates in our constituencies. I do not think it serves anybody for that to go on a day longer than is truly necessary. That is why I was happy to put my name to new clause 1.

I listened to the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators. I understand that there are complications with going back to the status quo ante of 17 days as things stand, but I reflect on what my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) said. Rather than saying it cannot be done with the rules as they are, we should look at which rules we could change to get back to the status quo ante. The Bill takes us back to the status quo ante in so many ways and I welcome that, but the real key is to get everything back to how it was before. I remember, as a teenager, watching elections that were short, sharp and got the job done. It did not work for us in 1997 when I was a teenager, but it got the job done and let the country move on. That is what we should have with our elections. They should not be dragged out for months. For the reasons I have given and for the candidates too, we should look at ways to make them shorter, notwithstanding the arguments that have been made by the administrators.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Diolch yn fawr, Dame Rosie; it is a pleasure to contribute to this debate, to serve under your chairmanship and to speak to my amendments 4 and 5. I welcome the provisions in the Bill that put certain safeguards in place to protect against a clash between ordinary Westminster and Senedd elections. My amendments go one step further and would remove regulations from the Government of Wales Act 2006 that allow the Secretary of State to combine a UK general election with an extraordinary general election to the Senedd. Although these are probing amendments, I would like to set out why the possibility of even an extraordinary election to the Senedd taking place at the same time as a Westminster election is a cause for concern.

The introduction of the Elections Bill has put Wales and Westminster on a rapidly diverging path when it comes to empowering and engaging citizens in the democratic process. In Wales, 16 and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in Senedd and local elections, rightly having a say over critical issues that affect their future. In Wales, any legal citizen, no matter their nationality, can vote in Senedd and local elections. It is telling that as Wales and, of course, Scotland extend their franchise, this place seeks to do the exact opposite. In Westminster elections, the introduction of mandatory ID cards risks placing an additional barrier between voters and democratic engagement, especially for younger people and minority groups.

This all comes at a time when the Conservative Government here are intent on slashing the number of Welsh MPs from 40 to 32. Not only is this part of a relentless anti-devolution power grab from our Senedd, but it will cause practical confusion, as many will find themselves living in different boundaries for the Senedd and Westminster. In addition, if both elections were held at the same time, headlines would inevitably be dominated by the Westminster election, prejudicing the national debate in Wales. Despite the fact that we will celebrate a quarter of a century of devolved Welsh governance in a few years’ time, there continues to be a lack of understanding about which tier of government is responsible for which policy area. Simultaneous elections would therefore only increase confusion, a phenomenon probably encouraged by some political parties.

I gladly admit that there has yet to be an extraordinary Senedd election to date, but it is not completely out of the realms of possibility. Indeed, further reforms to the Senedd may make this outcome more likely. For example, the expert panel report on Assembly electoral reform, chaired by the formidable Professor Laura McAllister, made a strong case for the introduction of the single transferable vote system—a system that could vastly improve how connected voters feel to the democratic process but which would make coalition Government in Wales inevitable. Although I believe such cross-party governance to be a good thing, it could increase the likelihood of an extraordinary election.