Leaving the EU: Business of the House

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

I speak as a Minister on behalf of this Government, and this Prime Minister has made it clear where she and the Cabinet stand on Prorogation. I have also set out the risk of any deviation from that position, because there is consensus across the House on the need to avoid any suggestion of bringing Her Majesty into a royal prerogative issue. Incidentally, the Opposition day motion does not mention the word “Prorogation”. They propose a fundamental change but do not want to deal with the issue on which the House is voting, which is the motion’s proposal to take over the Order Paper. That would be a fundamental change—Opposition Members who seek to be in government in future need to reflect on this—to the way in which this House operates, and it would happen without any consultation with the Procedure Committee. If people want to support that, what is the purpose of the Procedure Committee?

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State, who has never been a member of the Procedure Committee, for giving way. It is not the Procedure Committee’s role to pre-vet Opposition or Government motions that are put before the House. Will he come back to the central point? How would he feel if somebody proposed to prorogue the House to avoid the House having a voice on something about which he was in the majority? On this matter, he is in the minority.

[Stephen Barclay]

First, I am speaking on behalf of this Government. I do not know who the next Prime Minister will be or what decisions they will take. I have set out the risks of any deviation, and Mr Speaker has made it very clear, in terms of the way in which he would represent the will of the House, that there are a number of avenues. I would not want to interpret a judgment from the Chair, but the hon. Lady knows full well that in her exchange about Standing Order No. 24, the response from the Chair is germane to the issue. Any attempt at Prorogation would open the potential for SO 24 decisions.

The hon. Lady obviously did not want to deal with the text before the House, but let me consider what constitutional experts have said. Philip Cowley, professor at Queen Mary University’s School of Politics, said that taking the Order Paper outside the Government’s control would be

“one of the most fundamental shifts in the relationship between the government and parliament.”

[Interruption.] Opposition Members chunter, “We have already done this.” Yes, but let us look at how effective that was. When it was done by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), it was justified on the basis of her concern about the imminent risk of no deal. The constitutional advice from people such as Philip Cowley and Vernon Bogdanor, professor at King’s College, London, who warned about the actions at the time, saying that they were “unconstitutional”, was overridden because, we were told, the risk of no deal merited that emergency legislation.