Oral Answers to Questions

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

What plans he has to reform the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

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

What plans he has to reform the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 led to parliamentary paralysis at a critical time for our country. It is for that reason that the Government made a commitment in our manifesto and in our Queen’s Speech to take forward work to repeal it. An announcement about that legislation will be made in due course.

[Chloe Smith]

There are two points to make to my hon. Friend. The first is that repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act had cross-party support. It was in the manifestos of both the Government and the Opposition, so I hope that that gives it a good wind, but it is also the case that the policy does need to be carefully developed and well scrutinised so that we do not repeat past mistakes with an important part of our constitution.

[Aaron Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her answer and associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). The problem we had last year was that we had a Government who were manifestly unable to get their core legislative agenda through. They did not have the confidence of the House for that, but the House voted that it had confidence in the Government. I understand that repealing the Act will not necessarily get us back to the status quo ante, so what mechanism does she envisage will make sure that we can never again be in that position where the Government do not have the confidence of the House on their core legislative agenda?

[Chloe Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for putting his finger on a very important part of what was wrong with that scenario and what is wrong with that legislation: it divorces the issue of confidence from the issue of calling an election. One thing we want to do as we look at its repeal is to make sure that that central tenet of the constitution and of parliamentary operation can be properly functional.