Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I do not think that they would, necessarily. There are people who might seek to do that, but one of the things that Parliament can do—and one of the reasons that my hon. Friend’s question is so helpful, as were the Joint Committee’s deliberations—is to affirm what is the case. It would then be remarkable indeed for any court to attempt to do what my hon. Friend describes; it would be constitutionally unprecedented and, to my mind, would risk the understanding of the balance between Parliament, when its will is clearly expressed, and the courts’ interpretation of the law. I hope that in Committee and on Third Reading, and perhaps later in this debate, all hon. Members will affirm the importance of the non-justiciability of the exercise of these powers.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

One thing that came out of the Joint Committee’s report was the very clear interpretation that a Prime Minister requests a dissolution rather than advising the monarch on it. I am pleased that the Government have accepted that advice from the Joint Committee, but does it not make the ouster clause completely superfluous? The monarch, acting in conjunction with Parliament, is non-justiciable already.

[Michael Gove]

That is definitely my understanding of constitutional practice, but—without getting into the details—there have been one or two recent decisions by the courts that might be thought by some to have moved one or two goalposts on the constitutional playing field. Lest there be any doubt, the ouster clause is there to affirm that interpretation. It is a new pair of braces to join the sturdy constitutional belt to which my hon. Friend refers.

Clause 4 makes it clear that the maximum length of any Parliament should be five years. Clause 5 contains some minor updates, taking account of how the Fixed-term Parliaments Act modernised our electoral law, and introduces the schedule attendant to the Bill. Clause 6 makes it clear that the Bill covers the whole of our United Kingdom.

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[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

First, may I put on the record how much I welcome the Bill? Indeed, having served on the Joint Committee chaired so ably by the noble Lord McLoughlin, who has gone on from a distinguished career in this House to—I hope—even greater things in the other place, I can probably own up to knowing more about the constitutional convolution surrounding this subject than it is healthy for any person to know, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).



I was slightly confused by the points made by the shadow Minister, as Labour has a manifesto commitment to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. I am not sure whether we will see some backtracking on that. I was also confused when she said that the Prime Minister of the day could take the opportunity of the Opposition being in disarray to call a general election. I have to say that I could probably pick any day in the past five years, and no doubt in the next four years, when that particular situation could be in force.

When we started out on this journey, I took the view that we should go as far as possible to restore the situation to as it existed before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. At the end of our deliberations, I remained of the same view, but we all came to understand better the historical and constitutional context. It is important that we restore the royal prerogative. Less important is the academic discussion about whether it was merely in abeyance and could be restored or had been abolished. The Lascelles principles were discussed: the reasons why the King or Queen could refuse the initiative from No. 10 and, of course, the discretion around a request—or is that advice?—to Her Majesty. Indeed the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) talked about whether the Lascelles principles would still be in place. We learned about the golden triangle—the communications between the Queen’s private secretary, the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister’s private secretary—who would head off an embarrassing situation for the monarch who might have to turn down an election because it was too soon after the previous election, because an alternative Government could be formed, or because other situations might mean that it was inappropriate to call that particular election.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

To emphasise the point that my right hon. Friend has just made, the truth is not that a monarch would never be put in a position where she had to say no, but that what happens in our constitution means that that question is never put until it is an acceptable time for a general election. Putting it in rules in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act got in the way of a functioning electoral democracy.

[Mr Goodwill]

That is right. I am a big subscriber to the view that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The situation that we had worked for many years—during constitutional crises, world wars and great political events in this country. The people of this country have a great regard for Her Majesty the Queen, and I feel that if anyone was going to be put in that position, she is probably the best person—with advice from those around her, including the golden triangle, to make that decision.

Having been a member of the coalition Government, I have to say that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act worked well during the coalition period, steadying the nerves of our Liberal Democrat partners against a snap election. If the same situation were to happen again—perhaps a Labour-SNP coalition, but probably not any time soon—it could be dusted off again. I am not sure whether those two coalition partners would make very good bedfellows—certainly the image of Morecambe and Wise sat reading their bedtime books does not spring to mind, but who knows what might happen at some point in the future.

In the meantime, this Bill restores the situation as it was before 2020. It is a procedure that has stood the test of time and, most importantly, cannot be challenged in the courts. Let us remember the autumn of 2019 when, three times, Labour proved that it was frightened of the electorate and did not give the two-thirds majority for an election. Indeed, in December 2019, we discovered precisely why it was frightened of the electorate; it was brought to book by the electorate for ignoring them since the referendum decision was made. Hence I very much support the need for the ouster clause in clause 3, which ensures the belt and braces situation to which the Secretary of State referred.

Finally, there is one improvement that we should consider either for this Bill or for the forthcoming elections Bill. Currently, when an election is called after the customary wash-up, we have an election campaign that lasts 25 working days. With weekends and bank holidays, that means that we have more than 35 full days on the campaign trail. That is far too long. My view is that a campaign of that length is more likely to turn off voters than to motivate them—I suspect that Brenda from Bristol would agree with me.

I know that the returning officers will have all sorts of reasons why they need more time, and no doubt the party campaign managers will say that they do not have enough time to organise their campaigns. I know that the situation is different with overseas and more postal voters, but surely there are technical solutions to those issues. Perhaps, once every four of five years, our hard-working council officials could do some overtime at weekends if necessary. Let us have a 25-day election campaign and not a 25 working day election campaign.

Elections never used to be this long. Many people have already decided how they will vote. We should minimise the time for which the Government are possibly hamstrung during an election and cannot be scrutinised or challenged by Parliament. I welcome the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but look forward to provisions to fix the length of the election at 25 days only.

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[Mr Carmichael]

Let me just say that the pattern of campaigning across the constituencies represented in this House is far from uniform. I spent a significant amount of time in Chesham and Amersham not that long ago, for reasons that will be understood. I was a great admirer of the late Cheryl Gillan—she was another one for whom I held not just respect, but affection—but it was apparent that the Conservatives’ campaigning machine in that constituency had perhaps been left in the garage for a few years longer than was necessarily helpful. If what we are about is engaging the electorate on an ongoing basis, I am all for that. Indeed, I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the best way to achieve that would be by getting rid of the notion of safe seats, which is a product of the first-past-the-post system, so I will look to enlist his support the next time my party brings forward proposals for introducing proportional representation.

I can see that your smile is becoming increasingly indulgent, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not carry on down this route for too long, but it is surely an important principle that we should never hand to one of the runners the starting pistol that will start the race. Whatever view people take of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the principle that Parliament should be in control of its own timetable and election is surely something that all those who fought so hard to bring back control to Parliament would have found an easy sell.

There has been some talk about the Lascelles principles. My concern about the exclusion of any decision to dissolve Parliament from justiciability, as we find in clause 3, is that the debate is essentially about constitutional theory. If the Prime Minister were to go to the Queen and ask for a Dissolution and she were to refuse him, I suspect that, given the standing that the Queen has in the public’s affection, it is probably a constitutional crisis that we and the monarchy could survive. I cannot honestly imagine it ever happening, but given everything else that has happened in this country over the past six years, we should perhaps try to legislate not just for those things that we can imagine happening. The day may come when we have a different monarch—well, the day will come—and perhaps that monarch will need time to establish their standing in the way that Her Majesty has been able to do. For that future monarch, the temptation may be not to risk the instability.

Essentially, my concern—this is what the Lascelles principles were designed to avoid—is that the Bill as currently constituted risks bringing the monarchy into active partisan party politics. That is something we should countenance only with the very greatest of caution and the most careful consideration.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The truth of the matter is that our constitution does behave in a very dignified way. We know that Prime Ministers’ audiences with the monarch are, most of the time, entirely confidential—other than when Prime Ministers choose to leak them. I think we can trust Her Majesty never to utter what has been said to her in the confines of her study on those occasions. On that basis, can we actually be sure that those discussions have never taken place?

[Mr Carmichael]

No, we cannot. That is the self-evident answer to that question. I am fairly confident that conversations will be had by, as it were, the support teams on either side on a highly theoretical and hypothetical question, such as, “Well, in the event that this were to happen…” Indeed, that was why Lascelles wrote his letter to The Times in the first place—to give a bit of necessary transparency and certainty to the whole process, which in truth, because it is rooted in convention, has neither transparency nor certainty.

Ultimately, what we show here is that the insistence on continuing with an unwritten constitution becomes more and more difficult with every year that passes. Ultimately, that is something we will have to recognise. It will be the mother and father of all tasks to get the necessary consensus to codify it, but in an age when all the constitutional changes that we have had in the past few decades are there competing with the sovereignty of this House within Parliament in particular, it is in everybody’s interests that we should find the moment to do that. This is not the moment, for the avoidance of doubt. I think Parliament would need some time to be clear of its current concerns before we could undertake that.

Finally, I want to say a few words about the conduct of the 2017-19 Parliament. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) is no longer in his place, because he outlined all the various actors in these dramas and how some might be seen to have executed their obligations better than others, but it is inevitably the case that where we have a system that relies on checks and balances, every time somebody takes out a check, somewhere else we have to adjust the balance. That is why although I felt exceptionally uneasy about the way former Speaker Bercow made some of his decisions, I thought they were necessary because the Government were getting close to abusing the substantial amounts of power that an unwritten constitution based on convention gave them. That is why instead of relying on nods and winks, and checks and balances, it is better that we should write it all down, as then everyone would know where they stood.

I do not think there is any hyperbole here, and it is overstating the case somewhat to suggest that the political turmoil of the 2017-2019 Parliament was a consequence of the term of Parliament having been fixed in 2017; there were lots of political reasons for that, most of them to do with the internal splits and divisions in the Conservatives, as the minority governing party after 2017. The fact that they had a minority set the political tone of that whole Government. Somebody said earlier that the election was far too late by November 2019. When would have been the right time? Perhaps it was when the Prime Minister became Prime Minister in July of that year, but I do not remember him having any great appetite for having an election at that point.

The truth of the matter is that we eventually had an election in 2019, at probably the worst time of year to be campaigning in Orkney and Shetland—we are never going through that again. That election required the Government of the day to work with the Opposition, with us and with the Scottish nationalists, and that is how it should be. That is effectively how the Fixed-term Parliaments Act did its job, when the Government eventually allowed it to do so. That is why I deeply regret this Government’s decision to repeal it, and why my party will be opposing them in the Lobby this evening.

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[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I join colleagues on both sides of the House in welcoming the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), back to her place at the Dispatch Box. She has fought her battle with the characteristic grace she always displays, and it is great to have her back.

I have really enjoyed this debate because I am a constitutional nerd, so bear with me if I become a bit tedious. We have heard a lot about the Fixed-term Parliaments Act today, and people’s view of it tends to be informed by where they were in the debate in 2019. Some of us are perhaps more charitable about it than others.

It is difficult to view our constitutional settlement through the prism of what happened in 2019, because those circumstances were unprecedented and they would have tested the constitutional arrangements whatever they were. Fundamentally, we had a Government who were governing without a majority in Parliament, which is always testing, and they were trying to implement a policy that was not supported by a majority in Parliament, which is equally testing. There was also much dispute within the political parties, which meant the usual ways of sorting out issues were difficult. This was an issue of major constitutional significance, overlaid by a public referendum, so it was a powder keg.

Everyone was badly behaved because everyone, recognising that there was no majority for their particular position, did what they could to pursue their own opinions. It was not Parliament’s finest hour, but it was the fault not of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act but of the outcome of the 2017 general election. We can debate how that came about, and maybe it came about because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

It might be a moot point whether consent for an election might have happened at all, given the Prime Minister went to the country with a majority in the House of Commons and without having lost a vote on any significant matter of policy, but that is a question for another day, because we have before us the Government’s proposals for reforming the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

I am supportive of the proposal to return to the status quo that prevailed in 2010, but seeing these events through the prism of what happened in 2019 has led to a draft of the Bill that perhaps needs a little improvement. I am pleased the Government have already accepted some of the recommendations of the Joint Committee on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in that regard.

It is important that the Government continue to act in that way, because these constitutional issues need to stand the test of time. If there is one lesson we can take from the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, it is that it did not stand the test of time, because it is a creature of its time. We can understand why the coalition Government wished to bake in some stability. We would all agree that messing around with the constitutional settlement in this country was perhaps not the best way to go about it, but that is easy to say in hindsight. We have to recognise there may be future coalitions, and perhaps the House could put on record that any attempt to bake a coalition agreement into legislation should not interfere with our constitutional arrangements.

We also need to acknowledge that, in delivering five years of stability in government, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was a success. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) reminded us of the political circumstances in which that Government came into being. For any long-term stability, following a financial crisis, we needed that Act to happen.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was not all bad, but what we have to replace it is better because it gives flexibility, within a reasonable amount of certainty. The Bill establishes a five-year maximum as opposed to a fixed term, and the expectation will be, as previously, that Governments will choose the date of an election. That is not to say that we encourage snap elections without any good reason. History tells us that the public do not like people who cheat; they expect everyone to play fair. If there was a perception that any Government were abusing their powers in that regard, the public would take a dim view. We can perhaps look to 2017 as an example of that.

As I said in my intervention on my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I am pleased the Government have acknowledged that the Prime Minister requests a dissolution from the Queen, and does not seek advice. Accepting that, however, renders the ouster clause irrelevant. By making a decision to grant a Dissolution, is the Queen acting in Parliament? That is covered by the Bill of Rights. The issues we had in 2019 were about advice. I appreciate the point made about “let’s do belt and braces, be absolutely certain and put it in the Bill”, but if we are going back to and re-establishing the status quo from 2010, the existence of the ouster clause goes beyond that.

We had vigorous debates on these issues in the Joint Committee, and there was a strong minority opinion that an ouster clause is not the best way of doing things. My point is that it is superfluous. That it is in the Bill is perhaps belt and braces—fair enough—but by so doing, it almost becomes an article of bad faith. I think we should put the events of 2019 well and truly behind us. As I said earlier, that was not Parliament’s finest hour. What happened is that our unwritten constitution—and this is the beauty of it—finds a way of flexing to get to the right outcome. Again, it was uncomfortable for the Government at the time to have their actions thwarted, but the outcome was the right thing to happen.

I am concerned—the Fixed Term Parliaments Act is a good example of this—that as romantics we believe in our unwritten constitution. I was someone who believed that the fewer rules there are, the more reliant we are on honourable behaviour by all players in the system. In many ways, having too much prescription in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act enabled people to be compliant with the detail of the law, but not the interests of good governance. As we pass this Bill, which enjoys considerable support across the House in terms of returning to the status quo, I would not like it to be undermined by quick fixes to address the situation that happened in 2019. That should not be informing how we look after our fantastic constitution going forward.

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

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett). As others have said, it is an absolute pleasure to see the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), in her place. We all welcome her back, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said. The Minister has not really been away, but it is good to have the Smith vs. Smith show back, live in the House of Commons.

This is a very important Bill. It is a constitutional Bill, which means it is not necessarily box office. I do not know how many people are tuned into BBC Parliament at the moment, but I am glad that we are having the debate. We have had a full debate in the best traditions of the House and—praise be—with no time limit either, although I will ensure that my hon. Friends get their space at the end of the debate as well.

It was a privilege to serve on the Joint Committee with so many distinguished Members, five of whom have already spoken in the debate, and some of whom are still in their places. We had some very eminent witnesses, including former Clerks of the House, former Cabinet Secretaries and noble lordships, most of whom also served in this House in their time, who lent so much expertise to the proceedings—not least our Chair, the noble Lord McLoughlin, who was a fellow MP from Staffordshire in his day. I pay tribute to the Clerks of the Committee, who did an absolutely superb job in both arranging the witnesses and getting us all to a report that we could all support, which is incredibly important. When legislating in this area, we should strive to be as bipartisan as possible.

The case for change has been well made by the Government and was made by the Labour party in its manifesto. The 2011 Act, which we are repealing, was indeed a product of its time, as we have discussed. It actually served reasonably well from 2011 to 2015, as it was supposed to do. In the period between 2015 and 2019, however, it clearly showed its flaws. It was a constitutional innovation that did not really survive its first contact with any sort of difficulty, which is perhaps also because of the referendum.

Referendums are also a relatively recent constitutional innovation. When the referendum asked the House to do something that it did not want to do—previous referendums had usually been on things for which the House already had a will, such as giving devolution to Scotland and Wales—and came back with an instruction from the people that the majority of Members of the House did not support, we ended up with the situation that we had in the 2017 to 2019 Parliament, which I and other Members from the 2019 intake watched with horror from home. It was not just us; it was people who were not even interested in politics and did not know what was going on. Norms had broken down, and we need to restore those norms.

As I said when intervening on the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster during his opening remarks, any constitutional arrangement needs to be equally suitable for any parliamentary arithmetic, and given what we had under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act that was blatantly not the case. I accept that Brexit exacerbated tensions, but those tensions would have been there anyway in any minority Government situation.

I understand that future coalitions may need similar security to what the Liberal Democrats sought in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but I suggest a simple Bill in the future, prohibiting the Prime Minister from requesting—something we said, requesting—a dissolution until a given date. That simple Bill would last only for that Parliament; after that, we could move back to the tried and tested, which is what we are trying to do today.

Conclusion 7 of our report was that a requirement for a super majority in this House cannot be enforced. It has been said sometimes that the constitution of this country is whatever commands a majority of the House of Commons. The only way to enforce a super majority requirement is perhaps through the House of Lords, but the idea that the House of Lords could prevent an election is not credible, or it would ultimately damage the credibility of the House of Lords to such an extent that it would not consider it.

Turning to other recommendations of the Joint Committee, I am pleased the Government have listened to the point about the Prime Minister requesting, not advising. As other hon. Members said, the name change is appropriate. Hopefully, this Bill will be part of our constitutional settlement for decades, perhaps even centuries, to come. The idea that it should have been called the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliament Act is simply not befitting. We have had some constitutional oddities in our time: the reason we have elections every five years is the Septennial Act, which means seven years. We can move on. This is the right title—the dissolution and summoning of Parliament is precisely what the Bill does.

The point about the 25 working day election period was well expounded by my right hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), for Basingstoke and for Bexleyheath and Crayford. We need to find a way to reduce that. We need to press the Electoral Commission further; it has been very resistant, both in its evidence to our Committee and in answers given to questions in this House. With technology, surely it should not be insurmountable to find a way to reduce the period in which Parliament is absent and to reduce the overlong campaign, which does not serve us or our constituents.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the principle ought to be that the electoral timetable should be fixed at the convenience of the public and the participants in the election, not the Electoral Commission?

[Aaron Bell]

I could not put it any better than that; my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I understand the desire to make sure things are done properly, but there has to be a way to do things more quickly. We have to embrace technology, which ought to make things more possible rather than more difficult—putting in extra time for this, that and the other, for coming from overseas or to set up people’s proxy vote. We must be able to do things far more quickly than we have done in the past.

On our recommendations, the Government need to look at—we all ought to, actually, because this is probably a conventional point—the period after the election. In many cases, we have been lucky that we have been able to form Governments quickly, but that is not necessarily always the case. We need to look at the conventions around that. In fact, turning to conclusions 31 to 33, by definition we are not meant to vote on those conventions because they are conventions, but, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said, a discussion in Committee of the whole House may help to establish conventions.

It was our Committee’s opinion that the original dissolution principles document was inadequate. We proposed a 20-point list of conventions relating not just to dissolution but to the period of time in which Parliament is dissolved and the calling and forming of Governments. I hope that we can all consider that in Committee and come to a common understanding, because honourable behaviour and common understanding is the way that we need to proceed in these matters.

Overall, the Bill does strengthen the democratic process by restoring the overriding principle that the Government should have the confidence of the House of Commons. That was the norm that was distorted over and again in 2019. We have to reaffirm that; it is fundamental to the operation of Parliament. Once again, parliamentary votes can be designated as matters of confidence. That was the essential problem: it was possible for a number of Members to vote against the Government’s absolute flagship policy one day and the next day to vote that they had confidence in the Government. That is no Government at all. We need to find a way for things to function so that there has to be confidence in the Government’s flagship policies, Budget and Queen’s Speech; otherwise, they are no longer the Government. That is how things need to proceed in this place.

The Bill would also provide greater legal constitutional and political certainty around the processes for dissolving Parliament and holding a general election, with the flexibility we need for exceptional circumstances. The one thing that contributed to the general sense of chaos that I saw watching from home, and I know others did, was the lack of certainty about how things should be operating. In particular, nobody seemed to know what was supposed to happen in that 14-day lacuna: whether the Prime Minister was supposed to resign on day 1 or day 14; whether the Leader of the Opposition would become the Prime Minister, even if they could not command a majority. It was a ridiculous position for our country to have got into, and we will get ourselves out of that by passing this Bill.

On clause 3, the ouster clause, I accept that opinions differ and they differed in the Committee, but I certainly have no problem putting into statute the very clear precedent that the exercise of prerogative powers relating to dissolution is non-justiciable and cannot be reviewed by the courts. That is a long-standing and generally accepted convention. Personally, I would of course take a dim view of a court seeking to intervene in the timing of an election. There is nothing more inherently political than an election and involving the courts—what is called “lawfare”—in the timing of an election would be incredibly uncomfortable for the public, everyone in the political sphere and, I think, the courts as well. How could the image of a Supreme Court trying to override the wishes of a Prime Minister, as enacted by the sovereign, be tolerable to the public? I cannot see any circumstance where that is better than having the election or, potentially, the sovereign refusing to dissolve Parliament.

On that point, we heard repeatedly that the sovereign would not refuse. If the sovereign was going to refuse, it would be communicated to the Prime Minister beforehand that the sovereign would refuse, so the request would never be made. That is how our unwritten constitution should work: through those sorts of understandings. That is what we need to get back to.

The ultimate arbiter of all these matters should be the voters or, in exceptional circumstances, the sovereign. If they are unhappy with how a Government have behaved with the calling of an election or the timing of an election, it is in their hands to determine the consequences for that Government and what the electoral punishment should be. I take issue with the idea we have heard a few times today that the Bill is about putting power in the hands of the Government. It takes power away from Parliament, certainly, but it vests that power in the public and the electorate, and that is where power should truly lie.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). May I start, as so many colleagues have done, by welcoming the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), back to her rightful place? It is wonderful to see her.

This has been a very entertaining, interesting and thought-provoking debate. As ever, it is good to see Parliament on form, with cross-party consensus on what needs to be achieved. There has been a great deal of thought and consideration about what further steps this House might take. I certainly know that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) will be able to hold me up on anything I get wrong, as a constitutional geek, as I make my speech.

I want to agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said. When the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 came in, the idea that it was there for political expedience was perfectly obvious. It should have been introduced with a sunset clause, so that we did not have to endure it beyond 2015.

I want to make just a few remarks, because there is nothing new I can say at this point in the debate. In 1974, we saw one election in February and one in October. I am not able to remember either of them, but I am acutely aware of the fact that that is the exception. Governments take very seriously the idea of holding general elections. It is not a power to be abused. There is not a system where Governments think they can instantly call one and find the public on their side. It takes great consideration to be able to make that decision. We have to be clear about that. Many of the arguments that have been made by the Opposition seem to be confusing personality with the politics. That is not acceptable in this debate, because the reality is that it has not been done since 2010, apart from in 2017, and, I would argue, because of the FTPA. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made the point that elections are won not at election time but in between elections. It is in our interests to make sure that we run as close to the full term of a Parliament and certainly history would suggest that that is what we have done.

The excellent report produced by the Joint Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee report suggests in the recommendations that any replacement for the Act should support a majority, a coalition or a minority Government. That could include confidence and supply. I think that is exactly what happens now. As far as I can understand it—I will take any interventions if I am getting this wrong—the Lascelles principles are there to allow the opportunity for the Opposition, or another grouping, to come forward with an alternative if they can supply the numbers in the House. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) was saying that the Lascelles principles no longer stand and that that convention is overwritten by the Bill. That is not true. That is not the case. The fact that the convention is unwritten means that the point for the sovereign still stands and that, if someone were to approach the sovereign with the alternative model, it would work.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is articulating this very well. Again, it comes back to the fact that one of the biggest issues with the Fixed-term Parliament Act was the way it interfered with votes of no confidence. It had a very prescriptive set of rules that prevented the Lascelles principles from being implemented at that stage, but now that we are going back to the status quo, they will absolutely come back.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I was worried that my hon. Friend was going to tell me that I was wrong, but that was a delightful intervention and one I entirely agree with. I thank her for that point, because the wording of the Bill ensures that it will look as though the Fixed-term Parliaments Act had never been enacted. We are going back to the status quo before the Bill, rather than trying to change things forward, and it is important that that is understood.

Parliament should be flexible, agile and able to respond to the needs of the public, and by removing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, we will go back to a stage in which we can respond to the issues of the day, and the concerns and problems that must be addressed. Governments should be held to account by the Opposition and by Back Benchers. They should fear votes of no confidence where necessary and be prepared for elections to be called, if required, because their legislative agenda cannot be pursued. After all, we are here because we set a legislative agenda that we need to see through. If we are unable to do that, it is only right and sensible that we either go back to the people or offer an alternative, and that is what the Bill will do.

As far as I can make out, the only benefit of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was that it brought the Liberal Democrats into an embrace of death from which they have not recovered, five years on. However their recovery goes, that seems to be it. They did not learn from the 1920s and they have not learned from 2010-15. The Bill offers us the opportunity to reassure our constituents that we can be on their doorsteps 365 days of the year. We can make the case about knocking on their doors and ensuring that they have the democracy and the representation that they deserve.

The last point I would like to make is on clause 3, the ouster clause, which has been referenced by many in the House. It reminds this place of the fact that the courts must not involve themselves in the way in which we call elections. The point has been made time and again about the damage that would do. I welcome the Government’s Bill. I welcome the fact that it is fulfilling a manifesto commitment, and I welcome the fact that this is a return to a good piece of legislation that will ensure that democracy is secured for many years to come.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

Good constitutional practice involves protecting the integrity of the legislature, the Executive and the judiciary and, in our view, the proposals do that and this amendment would not, so I agree with what my right hon. Friend says.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I sat on the Joint Committee that reviewed the 2011 Act and we spent long, productive and interesting hours looking at it. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is really unproductive to look at our future arrangements in the context of what happened in 2019, just as it is to look at them in the context of what happened in 2010? The beauty of our system must be that the constitution can flex. Those were particularly unique circumstances in 2019, and we should not let them affect what happens going forward.

[Michael Ellis]

My hon. Friend is completely right. In fact, it is difficult to expostulate all the different scenarios that may occur in future, so it is best to avoid that, but we know what worked well—the status quo ante the 2011 Act.

As I say, we have experienced the consequences of a statutory scheme and we know what happened in 2019, but the amendment is also dangerously silent on critical questions of implementation and is likely to have undesirable consequences for our constitutional system. For example, it is likely to have negative consequences for the fundamental conventions on confidence. The privilege to request that the sovereign exercise the Dissolution prerogative is an Executive function enjoyed by virtue of the ability of the Government to command the confidence of the Commons. That is the alpha and omega of everything, and should not unduly constrained by any sort of prescriptive parliamentary process that would be disruptive and unhelpful when expediency is essential.

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[Alex Norris]

I cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman, because the reality is that before those parties could even come together to form that possible alternative Government, the Prime Minister could be in the car and on the way to call the election, and that process would be rendered moot. I cannot support that.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Many Members may find it rather difficult to think of a scenario when we would not need to have such a vote, but if other Members have watched “The Crown”, we have seen the example—a very fictitious one—where the scriptwriters wrote the moment when the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was losing the confidence of her parliamentary party and had that fictitious meeting with the Queen. In building legislation that will last, we need to ensure that we have sufficient, adequate checks so that any Prime Minister will not abuse their position. Is the truth of the matter not that we are going back to the status quo ante? Indeed, the existence of the ouster clause that excludes the courts means that the Government are going further than that.

[Alex Norris]

It is definitely fair to say that there are new arrangements. That is why the Minister said the amendment would be inappropriate, but I do not think it would be. By the way, I have not seen “The Crown”; my wife and I are working our way through “Flip or Flop”, and there are 160 episodes of it, so it may take some time. In the scenario that the hon. Lady talks about, we have seen in recent history Prime Ministers who are losing the confidence of their party talking in terms of “Back me or sack me”. The reality is that the Bill, without this minor safeguard, would mean that a “Back me or sack me” moment, rather than it being won as a parliamentary process with a party’s Back Benchers, would instead play out as a party psychodrama with the general electorate. I think that would be a bad thing.

I will finish with three further quick arguments against giving the Government the power they seek, or at least not without this minor fettering suggested by the Lords. First, it comes back to a question of electoral advantage and ensuring that elections are fair. It is an age-old argument, and an issue that has launched a thousand dissertations—it was one of the major reasons for the 2011 Act—but it has become only more salient since then. Over the past 12 years, we have seen increasing restrictions on party and non-party activity, and the Elections Bill will put more in. These provisions are backdated, and that provides a significant advantage for candidates of the current governing party during the short campaign period, but the advantage grows further for parties, as the regulated period for political parties is now 365 days prior to election day. It is a heck of an advantage to know that start. The amendment would not completely get rid of that, but it would even the scales, and that is another good reason to support it.

Secondly—others colleagues have brought this up, and if I stray out of order, I know I will be told off, so I will be very quick—surely the real lesson to take from that 2019 episode is that by including a parliamentary rubber stamp on Dissolution, we remove any risk of dragging the Crown into such a decision. I think all right hon. and hon. Members would seek to avoid that, because it was an unedifying moment.

Hon. Members have mentioned the courts and the justiciability of the decisions. The Lords amendment would settle that for certain because a vote in this House would be a definitive answer. I know that the Government think that the Bill’s ouster clause will resolve all matters relating to the courts, but I say to them that we will see; I do not think it is as definitive as they say.

I urge the House to support the Lords amendment. The Minister has made a passionate exposition of his case. I gently say to Conservative Back Benchers that the Bill is obviously targeted at restricting the activities of the Opposition, but that means them too. I see some mischievous faces, including the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who is an independent figure. They mean to fetter their own—[Interruption.] The Minister says otherwise, but I gently say to him that the last time that was tested with the Government, which was the first week of September 2019, 21 of your colleagues lost the Whip—

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If Edward VIII had remained as monarch through the second world war and thereafter, and was working with Neville Chamberlain, I can perfectly well imagine that they might have come to very different sets of decisions about whether there should or should not be general elections, because I do not think that they were good chaps. I can easily imagine a time when a Prime Minister would lie to the monarch about why they wanted a dissolution of Parliament. The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) who chairs the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, said that the electorate can always deal with that and can see through a politician doing something surreptitious, but I am not sure that is always true. Indeed, I can imagine plenty of nefarious reasons for holding an early general election, either because a Government know of something coming up that the public do not know about, or a set of events that is likely to come round the corner that the Government want to keep hidden from others. That is why I believe we cannot simply have a law that presumes that everybody will always be a good chap in the future.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Is it equally the case that including this vote in the Bill would not mitigate people not being good chaps? If a Prime Minister has a majority and they could get that vote through—who knows what their reasons are—when they see things coming over the horizon that might give them some advantage, it makes it difficult for the monarch to say “no” under the Bill. Is it better to preserve what was best about our constitution before 2010, which relies on the Prime Minister and the monarch being responsible, and the good behaviour that should follow?

[Chris Bryant]

I think the danger is precisely the opposite. The arrangements that the hon. Lady would like us to have are ones that put the monarch in a regular position of making a decision, and brings them closely into not only party politics, but sometimes into partisan politics within a political party. It is perfectly possible that a Prime Minister might have lost, or be about to lose, the confidence of their political party, but that political party might still want to govern and carry on under a different leader. In other words, there may be within the House an alternative Government who would be better for the nation.

My other problem is that there seems to be a very high theological understanding of the role of the Executive. I think the former Leader of the House set that going with his rather Stuart early-17th-century understanding of the constitution, which is that basically, as long as the Prime Minister has the confidence of the House of Commons, he or she should be allowed to do pretty much anything and, frankly, parliamentary democracy is a little bit of an irritant. It is worth always bearing in mind that the Executive today is the only body who can ensure that business and legislation are considered, and the only body who decide when Parliament sits, when it will go into recess, and how long it will go into recess for. If we had the same rules today as we had in 1939, nobody would have been able to table an amendment to the recess debate that led to the big row before the beginning of the second world war. Today we have an Executive who are more powerful than they have been at any stage since the early 17th century, and it is time, occasionally, that the House of Commons said, “You know what? We’re a parliamentary democracy. Let’s take just a tiny bit of power into our own hands.”

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I will be brief as I gather I have only a few minutes to speak. The Lords amendment would require the House of Commons to give prior approval to a dissolution of Parliament, and that would be done by simple majority rather than the two-thirds majority required by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011. On the face of it, that would be an improvement to the existing position, but it is still something of a half-way house that causes confusion. In the event that a Government lose their ability to command a majority in the House of Commons, it does not automatically follow that the House would vote to approve an election.

For example, it may suit Opposition parties to keep a lame-duck Government in place, so that they can inflict parliamentary defeat after parliamentary defeat, as a means of further undermining confidence in the Government. But in whose interests would that be? Certainly not the interests of the country. As hon. Members have said, we very much saw that in the “zombie” Parliament of 2017-19, when Parliament initially refused to allow an election to take place. The country became ungovernable, and contempt for Parliament rose dramatically—I speak as somebody who was outside Parliament at that time, and who shared in that contempt. I submit that that is not in anyone’s best interests.

We recently heard some confused interventions on this matter from the other place. For example, a Liberal Democrat peer asked:

“But why should a Prime Minister who cannot get a majority of the House of Commons for an election be entitled to a Dissolution?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 February 2022; Vol. 818, c. 1590.]

I am still not sure whether that was a rhetorical question or whether the Lord in question was trying to figure it out for himself. Either way, it is non-sequitur reasoning because in the example he gave, a Government would not seek to dissolve Parliament unless they found it impossible to gain simple majorities in the first place. In my opinion, a rather better, and frankly rather more honest question would be: why would Parliament want to avoid an election, unless it feared that the result would go against its own wishes? That is the real question that those who support the Lords amendment must ask themselves.

There is concern in certain quarters that going to the electorate to seek a new mandate would allow an opportunistic Government to call an election at a convenient time to increase their majority. It is true that the power to call an election gives an advantage to a sitting Government, but that ability is a double-edged sword and can seriously backfire against a Prime Minister seeking to exploit a perceived opportunity. Post-war history is replete with examples of an incumbent Government misreading the political situation, and calling an election that fails to deliver the result they wished for. Harold Wilson’s Labour Government in 1970 and Ted Heath’s Conservative Government in February 1974 are obvious examples of that. Similarly, a failure to call an election can damage an incumbent Government. The obvious recent example would be from 2007 when Gordon Brown publicly flirted with calling an election, only to back off at the last moment and cause irreparable damage to his public image as a result. The power to call an election—or not—does not automatically confer an insuperable advantage on the incumbent Government. The Lords amendment is therefore completely unnecessary, and I will continue to support the Bill as it stands.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Members across the House want the repeal of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, but in its defence, it was a creature of its time and it delivered stable government for five years. Let us not reinvent history regarding why it was introduced in the first place. It disappoints me that so much of this debate has been seen through the prism of 2019. That was a unique political position where we were divided by an issue that crossed party and electoral politics. We risk making very bad law on the basis of what happened in that history.

Call me old-fashioned, but I am a romantic when it comes to our constitution. We have an unwritten constitution, and the less of it that is written, the more likely it is to flex to meet those challenges. On that basis I am opposed to the Lords amendment. However, equally, while the Government’s stated ambition is to go back to the status quo ante, the existence of the ouster clause goes beyond that, and the amendment is an alternative to that ouster clause—it is another way of ousting the courts from deliberation on our proceedings—so the ouster clause’s existence makes a strong argument for it as an option.

I regret that we are having this debate. As Conservatives, we ought to stick to the more romantic view of our constitution and be able to expect Prime Ministers to behave well and honourably in their deliberation with monarchs so that monarchs are never put in that difficult position. However, we have the Lascelles principles, which articulate the occasions where the monarch can be empowered to involve themselves in politics, and that should be enough. I recognise that the argument is lost—it was probably lost in 2011 when the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was passed, and it certainly was when we came to the sad events of 2019—but I hope that we can go back to normal.

[Patrick Grady]

It is not really for the Scottish National party to defend the Westminster interpretation of democracy, but the Bill, and rejecting the Lords amendment, is such a retrograde step that we must put that on the record and see it as part of a bigger picture. This is not control being taken back by Parliament but control being taken from Parliament by the Executive and, as a number of other hon. Members have said, consolidating power as part of a package of measures—not least the Elections Bill.

The effect of all that is that the next election campaign starts today. Everyone in the Chamber must therefore be aware of what they are doing when they cast their vote on the amendment. The campaigning starts today. The power will end up with the Prime Minister and he alone, without the check of his Cabinet or of this House. That is a significant power grab that will further undermine confidence among the public in the institutions of this place. Again, I say to Government Members that, from an SNP point of view, that is fine in a way. The Bill and the rest of their package of reform is not strengthening the Union. As I said in my interventions, we can look at the systems in place to protect the devolved institutions’ democracies and see how they can dissolve only with the permission of the legislature or must operate to a fixed term that everyone knows in advance, but the Bill is taking this place backwards. It is increasing the divergence on these islands. Once again, from where I am standing, that is fine, but perhaps Government Members ought to think twice about it.