Bernard Jenkin
Main Page: Bernard Jenkin (Conservative - Harwich and North Essex)Department Debates - View all Bernard Jenkin's debates with the Cabinet Office
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Bernard Jenkin Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I think it would help the Committee if the Minister could cite an academic paper, some judicial text or something else that bears out this notion that Her Majesty the Queen would interfere in politics in the way he is suggesting she would. Can he quote anything?
Mr Harper
The position is that Her Majesty the Queen appoints Prime Ministers and the ultimate constitutional long-stop is that if a Prime Minister behaves in a way that is outwith the constitutional position, the monarch can dismiss the Prime Minister—but that is the long-stop constitutional safeguard in our system.
Mr Harper
I shall deal with the specific amendments shortly, when I set out why the Government think that they are unnecessary and that their drafting makes them flawed. If the hon. Gentleman does not think I have adequately dealt with his point, he will be able to intervene on me and I will happily take such an intervention. We have debated the fact that there is also a purpose in the Bill’s not specifying the exact words in legislation, because such an approach gives the House some necessary flexibility. I will return to that in a moment.
Let us consider the amendments in order. Amendment 5 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is not able to be here today because he is away on other parliamentary business. He explained that his amendment would remove the 14-day period before an early election was called in the event of the Speaker certifying that the House had passed a vote of no confidence. It is right to say that there would be circumstances in which it would be appropriate to move to an early election when the House determined that we should do so, and the Bill provides for that in clause 2(1). But it is perfectly possible that there may be circumstances within a fixed term in which a legitimate Government could be formed from the composition of the House as it then stood, so it would not be appropriate to insist on an election. Members will have been elected for five years, and they are able to give their approval to a Government formed from within their ranks without the need necessarily to go to the country. The House can decide to do so, because under our proposals if a vote of confidence is lost and no Government can be formed within 14 days who subsequently receive a vote of confidence, a general election would take place. It seems sensible to give the House the opportunity to test whether a Government can be formed.
My hon. Friend’s amendment contained a fundamental misunderstanding about what a Prime Minister should do in the event of a Government losing the confidence of the House. Two things can happen. One possibility, under our current system, is that a Prime Minister remains in office but invites Her Majesty to dissolve the House and call a general election. Thus the Prime Minister does not resign immediately, and that is what happened when the House expressed its lack of confidence in the Government in 1979. Mr Callaghan did not resign when he lost the vote of confidence; he resigned only when he lost the subsequent election. Alternatively, the Prime Minister could resign almost straightaway after losing a vote of confidence, as happened in January 1924 when the Government’s motion for the Loyal Address after the Queen’s Speech was amended: Prime Minister Baldwin resigned and the Labour Opposition formed a Government. This Bill seeks to encapsulate that double-sided convention.
At the moment, if a general election has an unclear outcome, the Prime Minister is able to test his support in the House of Commons. If the House then signalled that it did not have confidence in that Government, that Prime Minister would go and a new one could be appointed. Amendment 5 would insist that another general election took place, and if the result of that general election was unclear, we could end up having a succession of general elections. Amendment 5 would force such elections to be held. In countries that have fixed-term Parliaments it is very common for there to be a period of Government formation after a vote of no confidence before an election is triggered. That is what happens in Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden, so we are proposing an approach that has much precedent, which we think is sensible. We cannot ask my hon. Friend the Member for Stone to withdraw his amendment, because he is not here and thus unable to do so. However, we urge Members who are here not to insist on it being pressed to a Division.
Mr Jenkin
I have been in touch with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who makes things complicated because he does not text people. He is in Budapest representing the European Scrutiny Committee, but he has suggested that it would be in the interests of the scrutiny of this Bill to press the amendment to a Division, and one or two of us will attempt to do so.
Mr Harper
As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is away on parliamentary business and, as he has perhaps not reached 21st century methods of communication, my words are unlikely to reach him in a timely way. So I can only urge him not to press his amendment to a vote, but I suspect that the decision on that will be for others, not for him.
Mr Jenkin
I beg to move amendment 6, page 2, line 15, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
‘(3) Any certificate of the Speaker of the House of Commons given under this section shall be conclusive for all purposes and shall not be presented to or questioned in any court of law whatsoever.’.
The Second Deputy Chairman
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 23, page 2, line 17, at end insert—
‘(4A) The Speaker shall issue a certificate under subsection (1) or (2) within 24 hours of the relevant conditions being met under subsection (1) or (2).’.
Mr Jenkin
Amendment 6 stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who, as I mentioned earlier, is abroad on other House business as Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee.
We are at a curious juncture in the Bill and, indeed, in our constitutional history. The background to the amendment is the tension, since time immemorial, between this House’s ability to function immune from judicial interference, and the courts, which periodically have sought to limit the extent to which we can continue our business unimpeded by the courts. That was, of course settled—to a degree—in the Bill of Rights in 1789—
Mr Jenkin
Sorry, 1689. My hon. and learned Friend will keep me up to the mark, because he is much more of a lawyer than I am.
In recent years, however, the tension between the courts and the independence of this House has been thrown into relief. I remind the Committee of cases such as the one brought by Lord Rees-Mogg for judicial review of the ratification of the Maastricht treaty after this House had passed an Act of Parliament.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I would like to clarify that the judicial review case brought by my noble kinsman was not in any way to challenge what had happened in this House. It was to challenge the use by Ministers of the royal prerogative, which is why the judicial review was allowed by the courts.
Mr Jenkin
I stand corrected—again. I fear that that may occur rather often during my presentation. The case relating to the Hunting Act 2004 was certainly an attempt to impede the free functioning of Parliament in its judicial function. In addition, an attempt was made to judicially review the lack of a referendum on what was then the Lisbon treaty. There are other examples of that tension, not least over the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), and I believe that only today, in connection with another matter, are the limits of the courts being resolved.
The present situation begs for something that many have recommended for some time: that this Parliament should have a privilege Act to delineate clearly the immunities of Parliament in relation to the functioning of the courts, but we are in an even more tense situation because we are arranging our constitution in other areas that question the very sovereignty of the House. We now have a Supreme Court and it is widely known that many jurists who serve at various levels of the judiciary take differing views of the notions of parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary privilege. There was recently a case concerning the possible effective expulsion of an hon. Member as a result of a judicial decision. I do not comment on its merits as it is still sub judice. I merely advert to the fact that it represents another testing of the boundaries between the courts and Parliament.
We are told not to worry—the Bill’s provisions are immune from the courts, and nobody is going to interfere in what we decide is a Speaker’s certificate, certificating a vote of no confidence that satisfies the majority. When we are blandly and bluntly told that by the Government and at the same time told by the Clerk of the House who has bravely and independently—in his constitutional capacity as an independent guardian of our constitutional arrangements—issued a memorandum, to which I shall refer later, that flatly contradicts the Government’s view, we are obliged to take the matter very seriously.
I cannot think of a precedent, other than the Parliamentary Standards Bill, where a Government flatly refused to accept the advice of the Clerk of the House on a question of the potential justiciability of legislation before the House. The Bill before us is a major change to the constitutional settlement of this country, and it is backed by people in the Government who we know favour a written constitution—an entirely different constitutional settlement. That raises the question whether the Government have got it right when they say that the Clerk’s fears are to be disregarded.
With the indulgence of the Committee, I shall quote rather extensively from the memorandum submitted by the Clerk as written evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. He states that the Bill is
“to make statutory provision for matters which fall within Parliament’s exclusive cognizance and which may affect the established privileges of the House of Commons as well as upsetting the essential comity which has been established over a long period between Parliament and the Courts.”
Erskine May makes it clear that “cognizance” refers to the right of both Houses
“to be the sole judge of their own proceedings, and to settle—or depart from—their own codes of procedure.”
The Clerk is clear in a bald statement in paragraph 12 of his memorandum:
“The Bill brings the internal proceedings of the House into the ambit of the Courts, albeit indirectly by the route of Speaker’s certificates.”
He goes on to explain how that occurs under clause 2(2), which we have already debated. In paragraph 16 he states:
“The provisions of this subsection make the Speaker’s consideration of confidence motions and the House’s practices justiciable questions for determination by the ordinary courts.”
That should be obvious. We know that Crown prerogative, as exercised by the Prime Minister, is subject to judicial review. We know that statute is subject to judicial review. We know that proceedings in the House and Standing Orders have not hitherto been subject to judicial review or judicial question. The Bill provides a connection between what happens in the House and in the rest of the world. We are providing a bridge of law that brings the courts into the House.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman think, therefore, that the amendment goes far enough? The solution, as the Clerk of the House sees it, is for the Speaker’s certificate to be provided for not in statute but under a Standing Order, which would prevent the courts from interfering in the proceedings of the House.
Mr Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, to which I shall return. The entire Bill could be dealt with through Standing Orders. The only reason we have a Bill is either that a Bill is favoured by those who want to move towards a written constitution—I do not remember that being in anybody’s manifesto—
Mr Jenkin
There we are. Perhaps that is why the Opposition support the Bill. We have just had a Division in which 400 right hon. and hon. Members were in the No Lobby and only a handful of us in the Aye Lobby. That underlines the curious consensus in favour of certain principles of the Bill. I do not think either of the elected parties in the coalition was in favour of a written constitution—[Interruption.] That is two parties, but the one that won the election certainly did not—
Chris Bryant
To clarify, I think the Liberal Democrats were in favour of a written constitution, and we were in favour of looking at a written constitution.
Mr Harper
For the avoidance of doubt, the Government’s position is that they are not in favour of moving to what is more accurately said to be a codified constitution. Many of our constitutional principles are, of course, written down, just not in one document. It is not the Government’s position to do so. I hope that cheers my hon. Friend up.
Mr Jenkin
I am grateful for that assurance. The Minister, who in all these debates has shown impeccable manners and tact despite the pressure he is under, should be looking for an alternative way of delivering this part of the coalition agreement, to which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) alluded.
The Speaker’s decisions will be taken under immense political pressure, as he decides what constitutes a confidence motion, what amendments might be tabled to amend a confidence motion, whether, if carried, that would invalidate the motion, whether the amendment could constitute a motion of confidence, and the consequences of amendments being carried or the motion being carried.
I quote again from the Clerk’s memorandum:
“As these would become justiciable questions, the courts could be drawn into matters of acute political controversy.”
I respect the fact that many in the House think we should have a Supreme Court like the European Court of Justice in the European Union or the Supreme Court of the United States, which is essentially a political court, but that is a very big constitutional change. We ought to have a royal commission about it, there ought to be debates on the Adjournment about it and the implications of drawing the courts into politics, if that is what we are going to do, ought to be properly explored. The way in which the Supreme Court is appointed to make it accountable for its political judgments is another important question.
We are importing continental and American-style jurisprudence into our judicial decision making. Some judges are becoming more and more adventurous about how they interpret statute and where they feel entitled to make judicial interpretations, and the Bill invites them to decide when there might be a general election under particular circumstances.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend distinguish between two things: judicial activism, where there is extraordinarily little evidence that judges in this country are overreaching, although the same is not necessarily true in Europe and in the European Court, and impingement on the prerogatives of Parliaments, which is what the Bill covers? We should be focusing on the latter point.
Mr Jenkin
I am perfectly prepared to accept that point. I refer to judicial activism only because there are champions of judicial activism who would like the courts to be more judicially activist. The Bill creates circumstances whereby we tempt judicial activism, which is contrary to our legal traditions. It increases the danger of the Government’s assurances simply not being delivered, or of their not being able to make these assurances with any confidence.
The Clerk, in his memorandum, specifically says:
“In the case of Clause 2(3) it would be for the court to determine whether a document issued by the Speaker was a ‘certificate’ for the purposes of that clause. It is not impossible for a court to take the view that what appeared to be a certificate was not a ‘certificate’”.
The memorandum has been considered by the Select Committee, which attempted, in the short time available, to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny. It reached two principal conclusions. Paragraph 8 states:
“The Government needs to respond to the concerns expressed by the Clerk of the House of Commons about the potential impact of clause 2 of the Bill on parliamentary privilege.”
Paragraph 9 states:
“The purpose of the Bill needs to be achieved without inviting the courts to question aspects of the House’s own procedures or the actions of the Speaker, except where this is absolutely unavoidable and clearly justifiable.”
The qualification reflects the fact that on the Committee there was some disagreement about the seriousness of the threat and between those who are in favour of a written constitution and those who are in favour not of a written constitution but of the settlement that relies upon our immunity.
On whether there are alternative ways of achieving the Bill’s intentions without the risk of judicial interference, the Committee noted, in paragraph 38:
“As the Committee has noted, setting out the requirement in Standing Orders would not be satisfactory because Standing Orders can be amended, suspended or revoked by a single simple majority vote of the House of Commons only.”
That is not correct. I have taken further advice from the Clerks and I have a letter from the Clerk Assistant and Director General, Mr Robert Rogers, which, if the Committee will indulge me, I will quote. He explains that there is a precedent of super-majorities in Standing Orders being used, for example, on closure motions in the 1880s. He says:
“As to the practical issue of a “super-majority” SO being able to be amended or repealed only by a super-majority, I see no difficulty. The Speaker would be the arbiter of whether a motion…either was (a) orderly and (b) had been agreed to; he would be bound by the Standing Order (which should perhaps contain an explicit prohibition on “notwithstanding”-type Motions), and his decision would be beyond any external review.”
That neatly and devastatingly removes the need for the entire Bill. We could be operating entirely through Standing Orders, which would be protected by the super-majority that the Government want to embed in legislation for general elections. It leaves the question of why the Government are resisting this advice.
Amendment 6 is a more elaborate way of saying what the Government have already put in the Bill. I would be the first to accept that it may be regarded as a more elaborate bit of sticking plaster, because the clause will be subject to judicial interpretation. A certificate could not be presented to the courts—not even the Speaker could present one to a court for adjudication. The word “whatsoever” in the amendment means that we are referring not just to our own courts, but to the European Court of Human Rights, which is not just a figment of some Eurosceptic’s imagination. The Clerk himself has adverted to the fact that the ECHR, under article 10, could be adverted to as a cause for judicial review.
If a Member of Parliament was prevented from voting in the motion of confidence, they could say that their vote should be taken into account for a valid certificate to be issued by the Speaker. They could therefore mount a challenge saying that the certificate was not valid because they were prevented from voting. A question also arises if sick colleagues cannot get into the Lobby and are nodded through. Would that constitute a ground for challenging a vote of confidence?
Jesse Norman
Was not there an example in the 1970s of whether a Member had been able to vote? There was a tied vote and Harold Lever, I think I am right in saying, felt that he had not been able to exercise his vote. He might have had grounds under this Bill, if the Clerk is right, to invoke the care and attention of the courts.
Mr Jenkin
My hon. Friend adverts to an extremely relevant precedent. What would happen if a two-thirds majority was obtained, or not obtained, by just one vote, or the Speaker interpreted the result as a vote of confidence where there was one vote in it that was represented by somebody who was or was not present for whatever reason? These are very dangerous areas.
I have two final points, and I am grateful for the indulgence of the Committee in allowing me to quote extensively from documents. The Bill is being driven by an extraordinary consensus on some issues and by the fact that it is so close to the survival of the coalition that it is difficult openly to debate it. The Prime Minister said before the election that Committee stages of Bills should not be whipped, so that what a Committee thought can be understood. The Whips are out in force today, and I do not think that we will really find out what Members think about it. However, that invites the other place to look at the privilege and immunities of the House, and to propose comprehensive amendments that protect Parliament from judicial review.
Mark Durkan
Is the hon. Gentleman satisfied that either the Bill or amendment 6 would protect against judicial intervention on the ground of failure to issue a certificate—a controversy that could easily arise, particularly in the light of provisions in respect of a motion of no confidence? The certificate issues only after the 14-day period has been allowed—it does not issue at the time of the debate or just after the vote, but later on—and there could be controversy about the failure to issue a certificate or about whether a certificate could be issued. Someone might try to bring that to the court.
Mr Jenkin
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The amendment, as drafted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, deals with only one aspect of the matter, and, given our limited time to scrutinise this enormously important Bill, I explicitly invite the other place to look carefully at all the aspects and the advice of the Clerk. One of its own Committees is considering the matter and might well come up with different conclusions from those of the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. The Lords sorted out the IPSA Bill, under which they kept our proceedings immune from the courts, and I very much hope that they will do the same with this Bill.
My concluding point is a general one about the Bill but is relevant to the amendment. I do not think that I can recall a major constitutional measure that was so closely associated with the survival of one Administration. We have to pinch ourselves when we think of what we are doing in reality: we are completely changing our constitutional settlement at the behest of a coalition, so that it can remain in power for five years. I do not even think that that is ethical. Parliament’s immunity is basically being screwed up, and, although a Bill can at least be repealed, once the courts have been allowed into our proceedings, we will never get them out again without a major break in the constitution such as in 1689.
All that can be forestalled if the Minister simply says, “These matters cannot be resolved today,” because they cannot be resolved on the basis of parliamentary counsel’s advice to Ministers about the drafting of Bills. We need the other place to give the highest and most independent legal advice to ensure that we do not inadvertently bring about what the Government themselves do not want to see.
Chris Bryant
Many thanks are due to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who has done us a great favour by pointing out some of the problems in this small aspect of the legislation. He is absolutely right to say that large parts of the Bill exist only for the preservation of a single Administration. I do not know the appropriate Latin equivalent of ad hominem legislation, but this is “ad administrationem” legislation, which is why some provisions will not stand the test of time. The best that we can do is try to ensure that the elements of real peril are tidied up.
The hon. Gentleman was right in several regards, but not in one. He talked about the IPSA Bill having been miraculously improved in the other place, but none of us really thinks that we ended up with a perfect situation or that nirvana arrived by virtue of that Bill. However, on the Bill before us—I suspect this would also apply to the other constitutional Bill that we recently scrutinised—he is right that if there were a free vote, none of the legislation would go through at all.
Mr Jenkin
If the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill had been separate Bills, I do not think that either would have gone through.
On the IPSA Bill, at one stage there was a proposal to allow IPSA to adjudicate on and punish Members for breaching the rules. That would have driven a coach and horses through our traditional immunities under the Bill of Rights, but it was removed in the other place.
Chris Bryant
Indeed. As the hon. Gentleman said earlier, a privileges Act will be needed at some point, and I hope that the Government turn to such legislation. I realise that there are problems with any written or “codified”—to use the Minister’s term—constitution, because one risks making it justiciable and must then decide what will be the justice that oversees it. Will it be a supreme court or a constitutional court, such as many other countries have? That is a debate for another day, however.
Chris Bryant
In a sense, that is an argument against the whole Bill which I understand. I know that the hon. Gentleman is not saying that this is a conspiracy, but I think that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex feels that a bit of a cosy consensus has developed around the fact that there should be a codification of fixed-term Parliaments. We agree with that codification. However, once one starts to codify one element, one has to codify rather a lot of them. That is why I have wanted to codify what counts as a motion of no confidence and what should be a motion of confidence. Perhaps we should have tried to codify it in a slightly different way so that, for instance, a motion to amend the Loyal Address could also be considered as such, as in 1924.
Mr Jenkin
What the hon. Gentleman is suggesting might well be sensible in one respect, but I fear that it will not prevent the courts from having a go at this. Indeed, if what constitutes a motion of confidence is codified in our Standing Orders, the courts will then be interpreting whether our Standing Orders reflect what could be regarded as such. If he wants clarity and is seeking to provide a better definition, this has to be put into the legislation. Of course, that reflects the point that we are tempting the courts to interfere in the proceedings of this House.
Chris Bryant
That is an interesting point. The Bill of Rights refers, I think in section 9, to the fact that proceedings in Parliament shall not be touched by any other court. The moot point then is what constitutes a proceeding in Parliament. There have been many discussions about this over the past couple of years, not least in relation to the arrest of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex is right in one sense. However, I have presumed—this is the advice that I had when I sat on the Government Benches as Deputy Leader of the House—that parliamentary privilege covers proceedings in Parliament and the whole of the Standing Orders of this House, because that how this House chooses to proceed. I think that there is greater security in the Standing Orders of the House.
Another issue is how we ensure that the Speaker is not dragged into a partisan contest, particularly at a moment of great political drama. As I said in an earlier debate, my concern is that if it is left for the Speaker to have to determine all these elements, the Speaker’s impartiality is compromised.
Another strange element of the Bill is the provision that says that before the Speaker issues his certificate, he shall consult the Deputy Speakers. That mirrors the provision in the 1911 Act whereby the Speaker, before issuing his certificate on a money Bill, has to consult two members of the Panel of Chairs. What happens if all the Deputy Speakers disagree with issuing the certificate? Why should the Speaker have to consult? One presumes that it is simply a matter of fact, although I suppose we all know that facts are rarely clearly delineated and are rather more subjective than most people would want to admit. The point is, however, that this puts the Speaker and potentially the House in peril, because people may want to contest any one of the various elements of the Speaker’s decision. One of the matters that would almost certainly arise if there were any contest as to whether the certificate was being rightly issued is what the Deputy Speakers had said. That is an unfortunate direction for us to take.
We have tabled an amendment, on which I hope to divide the Committee, on the timing of when the Speaker issues the certificate. At the moment, the Bill makes no provision whatsoever on when the Speaker’s certificate should be issued. One therefore presumes that it could be a month, two months or several months after the passage of two weeks. Let us say, for instance, that after a motion of no confidence has been carried, the Government try to reform themselves with a different concatenation of political parties and do not manage to secure a new motion of confidence, but there are still patently ongoing negotiations that are nearing their closing phase. Would it then be all right for the Speaker not to issue a certificate at that point but to wait until such time that another Government had been formed? The difficulty is that if the Speaker chose not to do so, who is to gainsay the Speaker? There is no provision in the Bill for what would happen if the Speaker has not done what the Bill requires.
For all those reasons, I believe that this element of the Bill is flawed. I also believe that certain elements should not be in statute but should be in Standing Orders in order to provide greater certainty for the House by taking them within the concept of proceedings of this House. Above all, I want to ensure that there is no uncertainty about the specific provision as to when the Speaker has to act and when the Speaker may act.
Mr Jenkin
My hon. Friend is making an extremely important point about the European Court of Human Rights. As soon as something gets into the Court, it respects no immunities whatsoever—nor does the European Court of Justice, but that is not adverted to in this case. Once a case is in that system, we do not know where it will lead. The European Court of Human Rights certainly would not respect the limitations of the 1689 Act.
Jesse Norman
I do not wish to comment on the procedure or intention of the European Courts, but I note merely that it is true historically that their scrutiny has extended itself over time. It is noted less than it should be that European judges have expressed concern about the exercise of parliamentary privilege and about the lack of remedies that people possess against its exercise.
The final reason why the Government should look again at the amendment is that the consequences of a mistake could be momentous. In the short term, a dissolution of Parliament and thereby an election could hang on it. In the longer term, there could be wider political and constitutional implications of judicial scrutiny of our power.
The amendment is simply worded, it offers an additional layer of protection for Parliament against a serious threat, and it does so at little or no additional cost. I urge the Minister to give it serious consideration.
Tristram Hunt
I, too, shall speak to amendment 6, which would take us some way in the direction in which we should be heading to protect this place from the actions of the courts.
Every day, as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) said, we see growing evidence of interference by and elements of activism in the courts. We now have the Supreme Court in Parliament square, and large buildings tend to have large consequences. The emeritus professor of public administration at University college London, Professor Gavin Drewry, has recorded a major shift towards cases of public law, with some high-profile cases having a constitutional air:
“The establishment of the Supreme Court is an important constitutional landmark, and it would be surprising if the Court itself were to stand completely aside from the ongoing process of constitutional development.”
There is a strong sense of certainty that the Supreme Court will be involved.
It is apposite to be discussing this Bill after this morning’s judgment in the case of three former Members of this House, Morley, Chaytor and Devine, and also a peer, against their claim of parliamentary privilege. In his summation, Lord Phillips noted that
“extensive inroads have been made into areas that previously fell within the exclusive cognisance of Parliament.”
His statement should be of major concern to parliamentarians when considering the Bill, and in particular to Ministers, who I hope have read and digested the judgment and are coming to sensible conclusions about it.
If I may, I shall quote Lord Phillips at greater length:
“Where a statute does not specifically address matters that are subject to privilege, it is in theory necessary as a matter of statutory interpretation to decide a number of overlapping questions. Does the statute apply within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster? If it does, does it apply in areas that were previously within the exclusive cognisance of Parliament? If so, does the statute override the privilege imposed by article 9? In practice there are not many examples of these questions being considered, either within Parliament or by the courts. If Parliament accepts that a statute applies within an area that previously fell within its exclusive cognisance, then Parliament will, in effect, have waived any claim to privilege.”
Those are damaging and dangerous comments, which have wide repercussions.
Lord Phillips argues that the ultimate judgment of such matters rests with the courts. He quotes approvingly a letter written on 4 March 2010 by the Clerk of the Parliaments to the solicitor acting for Lord Hanningfield which had been approved by the Committee for Privileges:
“Article 9 limits the application of parliamentary privilege to ‘proceedings in Parliament.’ The decision as to what constitutes a ‘proceeding in Parliament’, and therefore what is or is not admissible as evidence, is ultimately a matter for the court, not the House.”
We should consider that evidence and the actions of a growing number of judges in considering the Bill.
Tristram Hunt
I agree with the hon. Gentleman and with the fundamental basis of his analysis, which is that the constitutional reform programme is driven by the immediate necessities of the Government in the context of this Parliament. We are making major decisions that will have wide ramifications in the functioning of the constitution of the United Kingdom, based on a political programme and timetable. That is never the best way in which to develop deep consensus thinking about the constitution.
I would finally raise a point that the Clerk of the House has also raised. As he put it in a note to the Committee in the other place,
“given that a draft Parliamentary Privileges Bill has now been announced, why deal in advance and separately with a matter affecting the proceedings of the House of Commons in legislation”,
if it is not for the specific political purposes of the current Government?
Mr Jenkin
We all know that we are talking about heated and potentially controversial circumstances. If there was a raging controversy about alleged malpractice in our proceedings or surrounding them, and if public opinion was strongly supportive of one view or the other, there would be intense pressure on a court to intervene. Does my hon. and learned Friend not think it would be difficult for a court not to intervene under such circumstances?
Mr Cox
No, I do not think that. Intense pressure is precisely what an independent judiciary is set up to resist. One would expect and hope for that from a senior judge. We are fortunate in the judiciary we have in this country. I hope that hon. Members will reflect carefully on some of the language that we have used in this debate today. It is not the case that the judiciary have an appetite to assume the powers of this House. Indeed, in my experience the preponderance in the judiciary is to be careful and scrupulous in the way they observe the parameters of judicial power.
The problem is—if I can extend this parenthesis as briefly as I may—that we have invited the judiciary into the territory time after time, since the European Communities Act 1972, which fundamentally altered the constitutional arrangements in this country. It essentially meant that there was a higher constitutional court, namely the European Court of Justice—we already have it—which presupposes and believes it is capable of trumping domestic law. That ultimately led to a decision in a case called Factortame, in which an Act of Parliament was set aside by the House of Lords, on the basis of the seniority—or superiority—of the European Union’s law. Then we had the Human Rights Act 1998, which preserves—or attempts to preserve—a careful balance. Nevertheless, it invites the courts into consideration of the policies and legislative objectives—almost on the basis of their merits—that this House has always considered to be its prerogative and to fall within its exclusive sphere. The courts are careful, but they themselves acknowledge that the Human Rights Act has invited them further into that territory.
Mr Jenkin
At the risk of repeating what I have already read out from the Speaker’s memorandum, I want to ensure that we are not speaking at cross-purposes. In paragraph 16 of the Committee’s report, the Clerk makes it very clear, in discussing clause 2(2), that
“The provisions of this subsection make the Speaker’s consideration of confidence motions and the House’s practices justiciable questions for determination by the ordinary courts.”
I do not think that the Clerk could have been clearer: it is subsection (2) that he is concerned about.
Mr Harper
I had a conversation with the Clerk about the certification, with the majority being specified. The Government decided to place the provisions on the early general election in statute rather than relying on Standing Orders because, as I stated in the memorandum I placed in the Library on 13 September, we cannot achieve the policy objective by relying on Standing Orders, which can be changed by a simple majority—
Mr Harper
Let me just finish this point, then I will take an intervention from my hon. Friend.
Standing Orders can be changed by a simple majority. The Government’s view was that, if that was the case, the power to dissolve Parliament early would effectively be left with the Prime Minister.
Mr Jenkin
I beg to suggest that, if the Minister had listened carefully to what I said earlier, he would have heard me reading from a letter I had received from Mr Robert Rogers, who made it absolutely clear that it is possible to entrench a Standing Order of this House with its own super-majority. I am astonished that the Government do not understand that, and that the whole basis of this Bill seems to rest once more on the denial of advice given by the Clerks of the House.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend cited in the letter from Robert Rogers a reference to existing Standing Orders, which require a particular majority for an event to take place. I think he mentioned the requirement for 100 Members to vote for a closure motion. There is no precedent for a Standing Order, passed by a simple majority, to entrench itself and require that it cannot be changed, other than by a vote of this House on a different majority. The Government know of no precedent for that, and no Member has given an example of one. If a Standing Order provided that an early general election could be held only after a vote with the specified majority, and if that Standing Order could be changed by a simple majority vote in the House, it would be open to the governing party, at the behest of the Prime Minister, to change the Standing Order and to trigger an early election based on the whim of the Executive. That is exactly what we are trying to remove under the Bill. The Government believe that if the policy objective is to be achieved, the procedure must be specified in statute.
Mr Harper
If a certificate was issued by the Speaker, we would be having an election, not stopping one taking place. I do not think that my hon. and learned Friend’s concern that the courts would hold that the population were being deprived of an election would apply. The language used in the Bill was chosen for exactly the reasons I have suggested. We have used well-precedented, tried and tested language; it has stood the test of time. It is perfectly true to say that people can make groundless applications to courts on all sorts of things, but courts quickly dismiss them and prevent them from proceeding further. We are confident that these proposals are robust and will not have the effect that hon. Members suggest.
In the few minutes remaining, I wish to discuss amendment 23, because the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) suggested that he wanted to ask you, Mr Evans, whether he could press it to a Division. The amendment proposes a 24-hour time limit for the issuing of the Speaker’s certificate. I can superficially see why that might be attractive, but it sets some conditions that might introduce elements casting doubt on the validity of the certificate if it were delayed, even if it were by only a few minutes, or if it were issued close to the time limit. Thus, the amendment would enable people to question the certificate. We should therefore rely on the standard practice, whereby the Speaker’s certificate is the conclusive provision.
Given what I have said, I hope that hon. Members will not seek to press their amendments to a Division and that we are able to proceed with the debate.
Mr Jenkin
I am most grateful, Mr Evans, for the opportunity to reply to the debate.
I regret that I feel compelled to press this matter to a vote, but I feel that the Minister’s response has been wholly unconvincing. We are faced with adamant and clear advice from the Clerk of the House that the Minister has chosen to dismiss as irrelevant. Let me remind the Committee what the Clerk said:
“The provisions of this subsection make the Speaker’s consideration of confidence motions and the House’s practices justiciable questions for determination by the ordinary courts.”
That includes
“what constitutes a confidence motion, the selection of amendments to such Motions and the consequences of their being carried”.
He goes on to say:
“As these would become justiciable questions, the courts could be drawn into matters of acute political controversy.”
The Minister has not responded with anything substantive to defeat that advice.
Moreover, the Minister has rested his justification for the Bill on the assertion that it would not be possible to write these provisions into the Standing Orders, which would be automatically immune. Let me read from the Clerk’s memorandum again. He said that
“a Standing Order regulating the matters in the Bill could provide for its staying in effect unless repealed by a specified majority”,
meaning that it could be entrenched,
“for example by…equal to or greater than two thirds of the number of seats in the House. Not only is the principle of specifying majorities already written into the Standing Orders of the House, but in the past the House has also required a relative majority for reaching decision.”
My hon. Friend the Minister also dismissed the comments that I read from Mr Robert Rogers, the Clerk Assistant and Director General, who made it clear that we can not only write into our Standing Orders provisions requiring super-majorities, but entrench a—[Interruption.] I am rather distressed that the Minister is not even listening to what I am saying. We can entrench a Standing Order with its own super-majority so that it could be removed only by a super-majority, if that is what the House chose to do. The whole basis of the Government’s advice remains contested by the Clerks. The basis of the Bill—that this has to be done through statute—also remains contested by the Clerks.
I doubt that we will win the vote in the Committee this afternoon, but the Minister has failed to give a full response or to acknowledge any of the points that have been made. His subsection refers to a Speaker’s “certificate under this section”, which is very unspecific. At least the amendment states
“Any certificate of the Speaker of the House of Commons given under this section shall be conclusive for all purposes”.
That word “any” and the reference to the Speaker make it clear that whatever the Speaker issues is uncontested, rather than leave it open to the courts to determine whether the certificate presented by the Speaker complies with the legislation. I am afraid that the Minister has not satisfied me and I do not think that he has satisfied a great many of my colleagues on the Government Benches or in the official Opposition. I want to press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee proceeded to a Division.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Evans. At lunchtime today I was sitting in the Terrace cafeteria and, for the second time in a fortnight, I was unable to hear the Division bells at all. There was nothing to indicate that a vote was taking place. Can you facilitate Members’ ability to vote if they are sitting in that area, perhaps by asking the Badge Messengers to inform them that a vote is taking place while the problem is sorted out?