Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (Instruction)
Debate between Chris Bryant and William Wragg(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, That the Committee have leave to make provision relating to the prorogation of Parliament.
Normally an instruction motion of this kind is tabled by the Government themselves when they decide that a Bill they have introduced does not quite stretch far enough to allow it to include some things that they would like to debate. The reason I tabled it—I hope the Government think it is always good to debate all these matters and would therefore want the motion to be carried, which would enable us to debate the matter of Prorogation in Committee—is that the 2019 Prorogation was perhaps the biggest constitutional crisis we have had in the past 20 to 25 years. I see the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), is in his place. I think he as scars on his back from that period. [Interruption.] No, he never has scars on his back. Maybe they are on his front instead. The point is simple: the nation felt at odds with itself in part because of a phenomenal constitutional row between the courts and Parliament about the nature of Prorogation.
To remind the House what happened, on 28 August 2019, the Prime Minister secured a prorogation proclamation from the Queen proroguing Parliament from 9 September to 14 October, a longer Prorogation than there had been for more than 150 years. Normally they last for just six days; this would have been for 34 days. The subsequent (R) Miller v. The Prime Minister and Cherry v. Advocate General for Scotland case ended up in the Supreme Court, which decided unanimously on 24 September that the Prorogation was justiciable and unlawful.
When Parliament returned, never having been prorogued, the Prorogation ceremony was expunged from the Journal of the House of Commons. I think that was the first time the Journal had been altered since 1621, when the King was so angry with the House for having debated the matter of his son’s potential marriage that he ordered the Clerk of the House to bring the Journal to him and tore out the offending page. So I think that 1621 and 2019 are the two times that the Journal has been disturbed in that way. Business continued as if the ceremony had never happened.
The Prime Minister—this is important to my argument—then argued to the court in 2019 that Prorogation was analogous to Dissolution. At the time, of course, Dissolution was not a prerogative power because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. None the less, the Prime Minister argued in court that the courts should not interfere in the matter because Prorogation was a prerogative power and should not therefore be justiciable. I think it is bizarre if the Government now want to say that they do not think that Prorogation is analogous to Dissolution and that it should not be debated today.
Incidentally, we also learned from the papers that the Prime Minister gave to the Court—I think under some duress—back in 2019 that he considered the September sittings of Parliament merely to be a
“a rigmarole…to show…MPs are earning their crust”.
So at least all the hon. Members who are here today are earning their crust, by the Prime Minister’s definition.
The Court found, first, that the issue of the Prorogation itself was justiciable because it is not a proceeding in Parliament. The Prime Minister and the Government had tried to argue that it was a proceeding in Parliament and, consequently, under article 9 of the Bill of Rights and the equivalent legislation in the Scottish Parliament, it could not be considered by a court. However, the Supreme Court decided, in paragraph 68:
“The prorogation itself takes place in the House of Lords and in the presence of Members of both Houses. But it cannot sensibly be described as a ‘proceeding in Parliament’. It is not a decision of either House of Parliament. Quite the contrary: it is something which is imposed upon them from outside. It is not something upon which the Members of Parliament can speak or vote.”
This, to me, is the absolutely key point: it is not something upon which Members of either House can speak or vote. That is why I have tabled an amendment that can only be considered during the Committee stage of the Bill if this motion is agreed, which would allow a vote in the House of Commons before Prorogation could proceed. Why that is important is that, quite rightly, lots of Members have wanted to say that the courts should not be interfering in politics. The best way of making sure that they cannot interfere in Prorogation is to introduce—[Interruption.] I can see that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) is being very pregnant; I will take his intervention in a moment. The best way to make sure that no court could consider the matter of Prorogation is to make it a proceeding in Parliament, and the best way to make it a proceeding in Parliament is to allow a vote. The only way we can allow a vote is if we allow this motion to go through, and then we can debate it in the Bill Committee.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is extremely kind in giving way, although perhaps not quite accurate in describing my condition. On the question of Prorogation, would he mind turning his thoughts briefly to whether that was contained or referenced in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and how that Act relates to this Bill?
Chris Bryant
I am not sure that that is entirely relevant. Every time we introduce new legislation we choose to start, as it were, from scratch. It is true that this Bill repeals the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. I think the hon. Gentleman voted for that Act.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and William WraggTuesday 6th July 2021
(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I welcome the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) back to her rightful place on the Treasury Bench. May I say how appreciative I have been of her attendance at the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I chair, over recent months to discuss this subject and others?
I thank my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for his mention of our report on the Bill, although it perhaps had a slight difference of emphasis to that which came from the Joint Committee. As he is in the Gallery today, I pay full tribute to Lord McLoughlin from the other place for so ably chairing that distinguished Joint Committee.
There are many minds in the House greater than mine that have given this subject a lot of thought—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] On this subject, there certainly are, if I can be self-deprecating. As Bagehot would have it, we are discussing, and indeed legislating on, the at once solemn but also practical interaction between the “dignified” and the “efficient”—that is to say, the transaction between the monarch and the Prime Minister. On that note, I was pleased to see that the draft Dissolution principles were changed on the advice of the Joint Committee, such that the Prime Minister now shall not advise the monarch of the need to dissolve Parliament but rather make a “request” so to do.
How have we reached this point? I suggest that the disputatious nature of politics in recent years is too easily given as a reason. I contend that part of the real reason is the lesson of not tinkering with the constitution to suit immediate circumstances, which brings me to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Was it a high political ideal, as advanced by some, or a case of political expediency? I humbly suggest that it was the latter. It was of course necessary for a smaller coalition partner to have the assurance that it was not going to be cast off part way through a term, when it might have been to the larger party’s advantage to seek an election.
In all this, motivation is key, so it is perhaps helpful to consider briefly the Dissolution principles, which have been mentioned already as the Lascelles principles. In May 1950, Lascelles, the King’s private secretary—Senex being his pseudonym—wrote to The Times to suggest that “no wise Sovereign” would refuse a Dissolution except in three instances. We have heard them already, but the first was if the existing Parliament was still viable. The second was if a general election
“would be detrimental to the national economy”.
The third, and perhaps the most interesting and still relevant, was if the sovereign could find
“another Prime Minister who could carry on his Government, for a reasonable period, with a working majority in the House of Commons.”
Do they all stand today? As I have said, I think the latter one certainly does.
Most people’s knowledge of Tommy Lascelles, I am afraid, comes from “The Crown”. That is how we learn history these days, and of course it is a flawless representation of the truth. People know him from that, rather than from his letter to The Times some 70-odd years ago. Here I seek to make a tangential link to the world of drama, for all are players in our unwritten constitution. Each has a role set for them, even if it is unscripted. The actors must conform to the expectations, if we are to avoid the play that goes wrong, or indeed the Parliament that goes wrong.
In recent history, I am afraid that at times some have gone off the unscripted script, if such a thing were possible, because politics is a numbers game, and the reason we had such a quagmire in the last Parliament was that the numbers did not quite add up. That going off the script was not surprising, given the testing circumstances of the 2017 Parliament, but it is also a reflection, if I can be charitable, of the constitutional short-sightedness or, if not, vandalism done by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Add to that the novel action of the Prorogation that never was, if I can put it that way, combined with the actions of the former Speaker of this House. In short, everybody went off script. Fortunately, the ultimate safety valve of our constitution—a general election—worked.
Mr Wragg
Of course, this is all my view. The House will have a chance to listen to the utterances of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) later on, and we look forward to that immensely. He will teach us a thing or two.
I support the Bill, but I fear that clause 3, the so-called ouster clause, may be superfluous. Its inclusion could be seen by those of a cynical bent as being a hangover from the intervention of the Supreme Court in 2019. We should hold more surely to the Bill of Rights of 1689. After all, the Queen in Parliament is not justiciable—at least that is my understanding.
Chris Bryant
If there is a fixed date for a general election, there are fewer options for the Government to manipulate the situation. That is a publicly known fact to everybody, so there is a level playing field. Indeed, over the last 20 years or so we have had a set of rules in this country that mean that in the six months before a general election, the Opposition are allowed special access to the civil service. If the Opposition do not even know when the general election will be, they never have that opportunity.
Time and again, the Government get to set the rules, and there is a significant party political advantage to being able to set the date of a general election. That is why Governments never wanted to change that. They did it in 2010 for 2015 only, because they wanted to solve a specific problem. My biggest anxiety is that, while we all love the fluidity of our constitution, the downside is that it becomes the plaything of the Government of the day who want to jig and rejig bits and pieces to benefit themselves and keep themselves in power.
One instance of the kind of behaviour a Government today might conceivably think of is to hold a general election immediately after the new boundaries come in, or immediately before the boundaries come in, for their own party political advantage because that is how they will have assessed that. Alternatively, they could decide that we will not have a full judicial review producing a report on the lessons learned from the covid pandemic until after the date of the next general election. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) is absolutely right that it could be after 2025—they could decide that it will not produce its result until 2027. My point is that even if a report is about to be produced, they could decide to have a general election.
The Minister herself gave evidence to our Joint Committee on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act saying that the public would punish nefarious activity of that kind. I am not convinced by that, because in a general election the public are making a whole series of decisions, and the simple matter of whether the general election should have been called is probably round about number No. 535 on the list of issues that are of concern to them. My simple point is that this is about having a level playing field. We insist on that for other countries and democracies. It is a fundamental principle of what constitutes a fair democracy.
I will deal with some specifics, if I may. First, five years is far too long for a Parliament. Over the past 200 years, they have tended to run for about four years, including when we had a seven-year term for Parliaments. It would make far more sense for us to have a four-year term—that would be more in keeping with the rest of the country. If the Bill passes Second Reading, I will table an amendment to curtail it to four years. We do not even say that it is five years at the moment—it is five years plus with the additional bits. The five years is not from the start of one Parliament to the start of the next Parliament; it is from the date of the Parliament’s first sitting until the general election.
The Government get to decide the date not only of a Parliament’s first sitting but of its first sitting to transact substantial and substantive business, which traditionally starts with the First Reading of the Outlawries Bill, followed by the Queen’s Speech. Even after the Queen’s Speech, it is for the Government to decide when we actually get into proper business and, during that period, whether there might or might not be a motion of no confidence. That means that after a general election, such as when Baldwin lost the general election, there had to be a motion of no confidence in the new Parliament, but that depended on the Government bringing Parliament to sit. We are almost unique in the world by not having any provisions in statute or our Standing Orders guaranteeing that the House will be able to transact business within a certain number of days, let alone set up Committees and all the rest.
I am very worried about snap elections, because often they mean that parties are not able to provide a duty of care towards potential candidates. I will mention only one, Jared O’Mara. If we had had a more sensible run- up to a general election, we would have served him better, because we would have gone through a proper process of selecting candidates. I could look at other instances across the last few years. As Chair of the Committee on Standards I am painfully aware that sometimes people become candidates without being prepared, briefed and given the support they need to enter into what can be a very difficult and painful place.
We have already seen that the Government have phenomenal powers over prorogation, and I simply do not understand why the House of Commons cannot have a vote beforehand. We would nearly always grant it, but if there were any jiggery-pokery, we might not. Government Members might say, “You are only doing that for a party political reason.” We could point to the Labour Government in the 1940s, who brought forward a special prorogation so that three Sessions of Parliament ran during one year, to meet the requirements of the Parliament Act 1911. Why does prorogation remain a simple act of the Executive? I think it is a mistake. Indeed, it would assist the Government simply to say that every time there is going to be a prorogation, just as there is before a recess, there will be a vote in the House of Commons.
I completely agree with the hon. Member for Hazel Grove, although when he is being sarcastic and ironic it is sometimes slightly difficult to determine which side of his own argument he is on. I think he was suggesting that the ouster clause may be a bit of an own goal. It sounds a bit like, “the lady doth protest too much”. It is as if we do not have confidence in the Bill of Rights.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is the Mona Lisa in so many ways. I do not know what to make of that. My point is that the Government are protesting too much. I think that is counterproductive and will lead to the exact opposite of what they are trying to achieve. They virtually invite the courts to have a pop at them, which is a mistake. We should rely on the fact that proceedings in Parliament shall not be impeached or questioned in a court of law or any other place, under the articles from the Bill of Rights.
I am concerned about what constitutes a confidence motion. It should be perfectly possible to bring down a Government by virtue of refusing to allow them either money, or the basic thrust of their programme through the Queen’s Speech, or a major item of foreign policy, such as sending troops into war. In 1784 that was one of the first reasons a Government were brought down by a motion in the House. If I am honest, I was perplexed when David Cameron and William Hague—now Lord Hague—did not resign or even seem to think worthy of comment the fact that they lost a vote on sending British troops to war. In any other generation of our political history, that would have meant the Government would have fallen. This is an important principle: on big national issues, whether something is a matter of confidence should not simply be a matter for the Government. We all know that money, major policies, and issues of war and peace are fundamentally matters of confidence.
Lobbying of Government Committee
Debate between Chris Bryant and William Wragg(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Bryant
Of course, the Nolan principles are embodied in the code of conduct that affects all MPs, and all this does is raise the danger of bringing the whole of the House into disrepute, so I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman’s Committee will work with mine, the Committee on Standards, as we are reviewing the code of conduct to make sure that it really does work for the modern era.
Mr Wragg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.
Hon. and right hon. Members should always be careful in using the privilege afforded to us in speaking in this House, but I find it odd that the leaked emails should be from the late Cabinet Secretary, which cannot be contextualised or challenged by a man who is dead. We must be mindful of scapegoating, especially when it appears too neat, but neither should we allow conspiracy theories to abound without challenge. In the debate that follows, difficult as it may be, I would ask my hon. and right hon. Friends not to unquestioningly defend the integrity of others if they have doubts or have been asked to do so. Whatever little or imperfect integrity we have ourselves—for we are all fallible—it is the only integrity we can seek to protect.
Committee on Standards
Debate between Chris Bryant and William Wragg(4 years ago)
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Chris Bryant
Yes. So the Leader of the House was wrong earlier when he suggested that this was going to be resolved and it was not decided yet how the Government were going to be voting next week. I am sure he inadvertently misled us.
The second point is that we have moved the goalposts. How can we ask people to apply for a job and say that there is no bar to their applying just because they have been a party member, and then suddenly change three quarters of the way through the process once they have already been offered it? The point for the individual candidates—both Michael Maguire and Melanie Carter—is that they have been hanging around for months. I know Melanie Carter’s situation: she has resigned from various different posts because she thought that she was going to be having this post, because that is what the House of Commons Commission had decided.
The Leader of the House’s motion should be the motion that came from the House of Commons Commission. That is what Standing Order No. 149A says. He is doing it
“on behalf of the…Commission”—
not on behalf of the Government or on behalf of himself, but on behalf of the Commission, and I know that the Commission is not happy about this.
This is House business. It should not be whipped, let alone when the Government have more than 200 proxy votes in their back pocket. This is just wrong. It is the wrong way to do our business. This is House business, and we have to find ways of reclaiming some elements where we actually decide things not on the basis of which party we are a member of, but on the basis of what we think is right for Parliament.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I just want to ask whether, if this is House business—which I think it is, absolutely—why, therefore, is the Labour Chief Whip’s name on the amendment?
Chris Bryant
Yes, he is a Member of the House. My name is not on it incidentally, as the hon. Gentleman might have noticed, though whether my name is on it is probably not the most important thing. When we discussed this matter in the Committee today, we decided that it was not a matter for the Committee to decide who should be sitting on the Committee, and that is why I did not sign the amendment yesterday. I do support it, though, because it is taking forward precisely what was decided by the House of Commons Commission after a thorough, Nolan principle-based process of appointment.
I think this does harm to the House’s reputation, partly because we have taken so long about it, and also because we have suddenly brought politics into it at the last minute and moved the goalposts. If this were in any other business, I am sure that the person concerned would be thinking of suing, and it may well be that Melanie Carter will think about that, for all I know. She may not be able to sue the proceeding in Parliament, but there may be other elements of the process that she is able to sue. To be honest, I would say to her, “Good luck with that.”
It would of course be this candidate that the Leader of the House decides is not the appropriate one—a very successful woman lawyer who happens to be a single mum. It would be this candidate, wouldn’t it, that is the one that does not come forward? Were there any questions about any of the other candidates as to whether they had been party members previously? No. This is the only one that a question has been asked of.