Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

The noble Lord is masked.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I am sorry. God, I will be glad when we get rid of those for good.

The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, said that, somehow or other, there is a suggestion that the argument on this side or around the House is that a Prime Minister calling for a general election is bad, undemocratic or inappropriate. We are not saying that at all. We are saying that a Prime Minister would not be a Prime Minister unless he had a majority in the House of Commons, and the Prime Minister would get what he wanted. I apologise for the length of the intervention, but the question I want to ask the noble Lord is: if he feels this passionately about, as I understood it, the Prime Minister alone being able to make that decision, how could it possibly be the case, in his argument, that a monarch—unelected—could say no to the Prime Minister making a request of that sort?

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The Government have nothing to fear by the removal of these provisions if they wish to be free to exercise their prerogative powers in the context of Dissolution. I wonder whether the noble Lord can assure me that, if he insists on keeping these provisions in power, they are not to be a precedent for the future. As the way things are now, that is my principal concern because I do not see the court being involved in this issue about Dissolution being improperly exercised at all.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the Committee has shown in the debate on this Bill so far that there is common ground that this Bill should provide clarity. The use of “purported” in Clause 3 seems to be a deliberate choice by the Government and the parliamentary draftsmen. It is not a word used much in everyday speech but is found in other Acts of Parliament. It is also used in judgments when an act has taken place or a decision has been taken, but a court has concluded after the event that the decision or act has no legal effect. Any well-informed draftsman in this context would have had well in mind the decision in the Anisminic case.

In Miller II, as it is generally referred to—the prorogation case—the Supreme Court concluded that despite the fact that the Prime Minister had gone through all the appropriate formalities to prorogue Parliament and Parliament had been, as a matter of fact, prorogued, the prorogation, or purported prorogation, was unlawful and was thus deemed not to have happened as a matter of law, with the result that Parliament was reassembled.

The purpose of Clause 3 is plainly to render the exercise of the power to dissolve Parliament non-justiciable. The first question is whether, as a matter of construction, it has that effect, and the second is whether such an ouster clause should be in the Bill at all. That is an issue in the stand part amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Butler. If, for the sake of argument, the House were to conclude that an ouster clause was appropriate, why not include “purported” in the ouster clause? In its absence, a court could conclude that notwithstanding the apparent or purported Dissolution, because of the unlawfulness of the Dissolution—and the courts have shown considerable ingenuity on occasions in finding unlawfulness—the Dissolution never, as a matter of law, occurred. It would follow that Parliament would then be reassembled, campaigning might be halted, the date of an election vacated, with all the attendant chaos that would ensure, and it is even possible that the result of an election could be set aside. That seems to me to be a highly undesirable state of affairs, for two principal reasons: first, the uncertainly; and, secondly, the insertion of the courts into the political process.

I entirely appreciate the distinction between Prorogation and Dissolution, but before Miller 2 most lawyers would have considered that Prorogation was non-justiciable. I dare say that the advice was given by the Attorney-General or the Government Legal Department that when Mrs Miller and others brought their judicial review it was non-justiciable. That is not such an unreasonable point of view, given the unanimous decision of the Divisional Court, a court consisting of the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and the President of the Queen’s Bench Division. That court concluded that, without in any way expressing approval of the decision of the Prime Minister, it was a matter of politics, not law. In other words, the power was non-justiciable.

Why did the Supreme Court disagree with the reasoning of the Divisional Court? Unfortunately, we do not know, because it made no mention of the decision of the lower court. This departure from the normal engagement with the reasoning of the lower court could certainly be regarded as something of a discourtesy, to put it mildly.

There are differing views as to whether the Supreme Court in Miller 2 came to the right conclusion. The Government’s view may well have been a factor in the setting up of the independent review of administrative law, which I had the privilege of chairing. I do not purport to speak on behalf of the panel today, but I can point out to the House that we concluded that the decision might be regarded as something of a one-off and should not of itself lead to any fundamental changes in the scope of judicial review. The combination of a minority Government, no agreement in government on the right approach to Brexit, and the rigidity of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, with its requirement of a super-majority, created something of a perfect storm.

On the one hand, the case was a magnificent demonstration of the checks and balances in our constitution working well, even if you do not agree with the conclusion. As it happens, I do not agree with it, but other views are available. I do not favour the decision because of the involvement of judges in a political matter. In conversation with constitutional experts in the United States, I have encountered considerable surprise at the decision. An equivalent challenge in the United States would fall foul of the political questions doctrine, and the claimants would not be able to establish that they had standing to bring such a challenge. In this jurisdiction, points on standing are rarely taken. We pointed this out in the IRAL and suggested that they should be taken more often, even by the court of its own motion, since it is a jurisdictional matter.

In his response to the IRAL report, the then Lord Chancellor, Sir Robert Buckland, as he now is, said that he was anxious to protect judges from politics. I think he had a point. Unlike in the US, our judges have, for the most part, skilfully avoided involvement in political matters. As a result, and in sharp distinction to their counterparts in the United States, our judges are not well known to the general public and their views are not a matter of general public interest, in the non-technical sense, and long may that continue.

This Bill would protect judges from political controversy by reason of the terms of Clause 3. I think a number of judges would be perfectly happy with that outcome, but even if they were not there would be an acceptance that Parliament is entitled to legislate to exclude the courts from considering the legality of the power to dissolve Parliament. The IRAL concluded that it was constitutionally open to Parliament to pass an ouster clause of this sort, and unless you reject the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, I do not believe that this is in any way controversial.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, if we are talking about our tried and tested constitution, we should remember that in the 17th century it was Chief Justice Coke and his defence of the rule of law against the extent of the royal prerogative which led to the development of some of the ideas of constitutional democracy at least as much as Parliament. The rule of law is an essential part of the way we work.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that we all know that this clause is in the Bill because of the judgment on Prorogation in 2019. I was interested to hear that the Minister’s definition of Prorogation did not in any sense suggest that that use of the power came within an accepted definition. Perhaps he will change his definition next time he comes.

The Minister has said that the importance of the Bill is to restore the status quo, but this ouster clause is not the restoration of the status quo. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that it opens a window to its use on other occasions, which would be highly undesirable. It is much more radical than Clause 2 in changing our customs and practices. If we want to maintain the status quo while changing it a little—

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

The noble Lord says that the clause does not restore the status quo. Does it follow that, in his view, the power to dissolve would have been justiciable at common law by virtue of the conventions?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I find it hard to imagine a situation in which the power of Dissolution would be used in the way that the power of Prorogation was used in 2019, so I do not think it likely that the case would arise. That is my instant opinion.

The radical dimension of this is that it disturbs the balance between the judiciary and the rule of law, and Parliament and the checks that Parliament has on executive power and the Government. The conclusion of The Independent Review of Administrative Law says, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, will remember:

“The Panel consider that the independence of our judiciary and the high reputation in which it is held internationally should cause the government to think long and hard before seeking to curtail its powers … It is inevitable that the relationship between the judiciary, the executive and Parliament will from time to time give rise to tensions … a degree of conflict shows that the checks and balances in our constitution are working well.”


I strongly agree with those sentiments. It is part of the proper process of constitutional democracy that each of those elements of our constitution should have a degree of tension with each other and hold each other in balance.

That is why I am in favour of amending this Bill to provide the simpler process of powers of Dissolution that Clause 2 provides—thus making Clause 3 unnecessary —and supplementing the desire for clarity of conventions by revising the Cabinet Manual to have a more fluent definition of Dissolution principles. If we do all three of those, we will substantially improve the constitutional value of this Bill.

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[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

This may be an observation intended to help the Minister. Since the Bill was drafted, the Judicial Review and Courts Bill has been introduced. It contains an ouster clause, but one that is qualified as opposed to absolute, so the argument that this is being used as some form of basis for future ouster clauses seems to be defied by recent legislative practice.