Early Parliamentary General Election Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I will make some progress and then I will consider giving way. 

        There are principled reasons why we wish to have proper scrutiny of legislation for the Northern Ireland budget. It is essential for teachers, doctors and nurses in Northern Ireland to be paid.

There is a convention that elections are held on Thursday. Once again, the Opposition are trying to move the goalposts. Initially, the argument was that they did not want a general election on 12 December because they were concerned that the Government would somehow seek to ram through the Bill giving effect to the Prime Minister’s deal. Yesterday, at the Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister give an assurance on that. Now, they seek to contrive another reason artificially to create divisions in this House over moving the date by three days.

We have had three years to consider this matter. Will three days really make that much difference? That is in tune with a wider point. The public are getting more and more frustrated at this House endlessly coming up with procedural reasons that prevent us from getting on and doing the thing we want to do, as set out in this Bill—to have a general election to allow us to resolve the issue. We will resist the Opposition amendment to move the date of the general election.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

This is just a technical question. If the general election is on 12 December, when will the new Parliament sit and when will we have a Queen’s Speech? When this was last done in 1923-24, with the general election on 6 December, the Queen’s Speech was not until 15 January, which would make it difficult to get any serious business done by the end of January.

[Oliver Dowden]

I hope I can reassure the hon. Gentleman. The reason the Government wish to have a general election is to ensure that we have a sustainable majority to pass the Bill that implements the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement. Therefore, the impetus on us is to get that done as quickly as possible. I do not think that he will find delays from those of us on the Government Benches.