Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

18: Clause 1, page 1, line 14, leave out subsection (5)

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, Amendment 18 would remove the flexibility for the Prime Minister to have the general election up to two months earlier or two months later than the five-year term. Amendments 22 and 23 in my name would delete just the power to call the general election two months earlier.

I thought it was important that we should have the opportunity to scrutinise this provision. In the Explanatory Notes, the Government explain that they have put this in,

“to accommodate short term crises or other conditions which might make it inappropriate to hold the election on the scheduled date, for example, a repeat of the foot and mouth crisis which led to the postponement of the local elections in 2001”.

One can see that there could be some sense in allowing for such possibilities but I wonder how carefully the Government have thought this provision through. The foot and mouth epidemic ran for some considerable time and it was possible for the Government to react in the way that they did in postponing the local elections in that year. However, could other disasters be anticipated so that the Prime Minister would know that he needed to call a general election earlier than the prescribed date or, indeed, later? Might not the power to call a general election two months earlier be open to abuse? I am not suggesting that this Government would abuse it but we are legislating for the indefinite future.

A Government might anticipate disastrous figures that were about to be published. I seem to remember that Harold Wilson was of the view that he lost the election in June 1970 because there were bad trade figures—something to do with airplanes, if I remember aright. Indeed, this Government might anticipate that some terrible figures might come out on unemployment or they might anticipate that there was going to be a major social protest, as is due to occur next Saturday. As time goes on and the Government pursue their deflationary and contractionary policies more and more ruthlessly, who is to say what protests may not emerge? Therefore, the Government might think that it was not expedient to hold an election when they were liable to encounter such expressions of public opinion and might contrive an excuse to get the election in just a bit ahead of the unfortunate event that they anticipate. Might not the power to defer the general election by up to two months equally be capable of abuse? A crisis might comprise the governing parties doing badly in the opinion polls and the turkeys wanting to postpone Christmas.

Should not the clause be amended? If the Government have a majority in both Houses, I worry that they will very easily secure their majority for the order to bring the election forward or to postpone it. We need to tighten up these provisions. I suggest that we should take out entirely the provision for the Prime Minister to bring the general election forward by two months. Amendments 22 and 23 would do that. We should remove that temptation to manipulate the arrangements. We should also tighten up the drafting to specify the kind of circumstances that would constitute a genuine crisis and justify the postponement of the election by a couple of months—perhaps as a result of an epidemic, a natural disaster or the outbreak of war; although our warrior Prime Minister might be tempted to declare another no-fly zone over Brussels to attract the Eurosceptic vote and achieve some kind of Falklands effect. You never know.

Amendment 24, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, indeed attempts to address this problem. I suspect that his amendment is not stringent enough. It is expressed with a high level of generalisation and may need to be amplified and expressed in greater detail. The Liberal Democrat amendment, Amendment 25, also seeks to address this problem, but would drag in the Speaker and require a super-majority of two-thirds. Those would certainly be safeguards against abuse, but there are other difficulties with that. The Government’s amendment, Amendment 26, states that the Prime Minister must give reasons when he lays the order, but that would add nothing in practice. The Prime Minister is hardly going to lay the order and say to Parliament, “I am not going to tell you why”.

These provisions need further thought and tightening up. If the Government cannot satisfy the House today, we may need to revisit this issue on Report. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes)]

Perhaps I may point out that if the amendment were to be agreed, I could not then call Amendments 20 to 24, by reason of pre-emption.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this has been a thoughtful debate about what has been recognised on all sides of the Chamber as a genuine conundrum. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, drew our attention to the irony of a Bill that is intended, as he put it, to clip the wings of the Prime Minister actually proposing to confer on him the extraordinary additional power of extending the life of a Parliament beyond the five years that have been enshrined in legislation since 1911. That alone should give us pause and make us think pretty carefully about what we are doing. We all recognise that there is a significant decision to be made. I think that we all recognise, too, that there is a problem; there cannot be doubt about that. My amendment is intended only as a probing amendment. When I tabled an amendment proposing that subsection (5) be deleted, it was certainly not because I thought that this was a problem that we should ignore. We need if we can to provide satisfactorily for the contingencies that noble Lords have suggested could occur.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, with his characteristic lucidity and incisiveness, set out the criteria that he thought the House should have in mind as we frame this legislation. He desires to be rigorous. I suggest to him, as I did in my opening remarks, that his wording needs to be tightened up and made more rigorous, and not just in the technical drafting sense to which the Minister drew our attention. The noble Lord suggested that the choice was either to adopt the wording of his Amendment 24, perhaps strengthened, or to drop subsection (5), as Amendment 18 requires, and simply remove altogether from the legislation the power to bring forward or defer a general election in an emergency.

The noble Lords, Lord Rennard, Lord Tyler and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, commendably went further than I had done and tried to propose a constructive solution. Rather than trying to find wording that would encompass even in fairly general terms all the possible contingencies that ought to trigger such a power, they suggested a procedural device that, without attempting to anticipate all the varieties of emergency that could occur, would respond adequately to an emergency of that kind if it occurred. There is a lot of merit in that approach.

For reasons with which I shall not detain the Committee by explaining now, I have my worries about bringing in the Speaker on the lines that the noble Lords’ amendment proposes, but we shall talk about a Speaker’s certificate when we come to other amendments in due course. However, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was quite right to insist on the desirability of consistency in the legislation that determines this option not only for the Parliament of the UK but also for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and local government. My noble friend Lord Foulkes rightly drew attention to the possibility that, if we had an elected House of Lords, we would need equally to provide for such powers to apply in relation to elections to it. He rightly warned us once again of the dangers of engaging in piecemeal and ill prepared legislation on the constitution.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his exceptionally full and reflective response to the debate. He has brought forward government Amendment 26, which simply requires that, if the Prime Minister proposes an order to alter the date of the election in an emergency situation, he must set out his reasons. That is not sufficient. I know that the Government were encouraged to bring forward a remedy in these terms by the Select Committee on the Constitution, but this debate has shown that this Committee of the Whole House is not satisfied that simply requiring the Prime Minister to give reasons meets the needs of the case.

I am grateful for the willingness that the Minister has signified to think further about this issue and about how we can come to a better solution to the problem. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

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[Lord Norton of Louth]

I choose my words carefully and refer solely to national legislatures. If we are to have two mechanisms for triggering an election, then we could usefully explore the alternatives to what it proposed. Do we need the subsection at all? In evidence to the Constitution Committee, David Howarth noted that if there is all-party agreement that a situation has arisen necessitating an early election, then it would be relatively straightforward to pass an amending Bill. If the measure was introduced for political advantage then this would, he argued, deny the measure the necessary broad support and it would make slow progress in the Lords.

Adopting such an approach would avoid the problems associated with the artificial hurdle created by the subsection. My view is that the most appropriate way to proceed, if we wish to remove the Prime Minister’s discretion as to when an election is to be held, is to provide that an early election is possible only if the House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence in the Government or if the Government resign and there is no prospect of another Government being formed. My amendments 35 and 38 seek to achieve that and I shall develop the arguments for those shortly. They overcome the problem I have identified with the Bill in respect of the Government resigning without having been defeated on a vote of confidence.

I know that the principal argument for this provision is that it is in the coalition agreement. The problem with that assertion is that the provision is not in the coalition agreement. The agreement said that a binding Motion would be introduced in the House of Commons and a Bill brought forward providing for a Dissolution Motion to be passed if 55 per cent of MPs voted for it. In the event, there has been no binding Motion and the extraordinary majority to pass a Dissolution Motion is now two-thirds of all MPs. We know from David Laws’s book, 22 Days in May, which has already been quite extensively quoted from, that the figure of 55 per cent was the product of political calculation. It is a threshold utilised by no other national legislature. Given that, the case for the subsection must rest on more than its inclusion in the coalition agreement. I am not convinced that the case for it relative to the alternatives is compelling. I beg to move.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I too, put my name to the amendment to remove the two-thirds provision. This was an improvisation when the coalition’s original proposal—that 55 per cent of Members of Parliament should be able to require an early general election—was greeted with widespread derision and, indeed, anger. It was noted, even before Mr Laws underlined it in his book, that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats together had 56 per cent of the votes in the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrats and Labour had less than 55 per cent, and so this deal would have guaranteed that Parliament could only be dissolved at the wish of both partners in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. They could not get away with that, so they built in the two-thirds requirement. They certainly did so with a continuing view of protecting their hold on office.

This two-thirds figure has not been adequately considered. It is argued in its support that no post-war Government have commanded two-thirds of the votes of the House of Commons, but it has also been noted that the National Government of 1931 did command two-thirds of the votes of the House of Commons. We cannot rule out the possibility that there could be another landslide general election. It is admittedly unlikely that one party could secure quite such a large proportion of seats in the House of Commons, but it is not inconceivable.

What is more reasonable to anticipate is that a new coalition could be formed. Perhaps this coalition could seduce other minority parties to join it. It would need only another 10 per cent of Members of Parliament to get to the magic figure required. This is a constitutional innovation of major significance that is quite unheralded, unconsulted upon and undebated by academics and the public. It is true that under its own standing orders the House of Commons does in certain situations stipulate that certain numbers of Members of Parliament must vote, for example, for a quorum or a closure. So it is not entirely novel as a principle of Commons procedure, but it is certainly novel constitutionally. If a super-majority is felt to be preferable, why does it have to be provided for in legislation? Could it not be provided for in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons? Indeed, why should we not accept—this is after all the status quo—that a simple majority for an early general election would be sufficient in the House of Commons?

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I have slightly lost the noble Lord’s argument. Is he arguing in favour of a bare majority or a 75 per cent majority?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I have two amendments, to enable the House to consider both possibilities. I am not sure that we need to legislate at all. We could simply proceed on the traditional basis that a 51 per cent vote was required. However, in the context of a Bill creating fixed-term Parliaments, we perhaps do have to specify in law that a majority of one would be sufficient to trigger an early general election. I am not very happy with that, but I am not very happy with the two-thirds requirement, for the reasons that I have indicated. Therefore, I have suggested that the House might like to consider a different figure to provide a safeguard against exploitation of this particular escape-hatch which would give the Government of the day an opportunity to escape from the ordinary provisions of the legislation on fixed-term Parliaments. For these reasons, I have tabled the amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, again, Mr Laws explains how we got here. But when you see how we got here, it is difficult to understand why we are here. Perhaps I may read a paragraph that has not yet been quoted:

“There was a debate for thirty minutes or so on arrangements for dissolving a parliament before the end of its five-year term. This was an issue which we raised, but William Hague soon realised that the main risk lay with the Conservatives. Without a super-majority for dissolution being required, the smaller party could leave the coalition and dissolve parliament almost at will”.

He continues:

“Huhne originally suggested that there should be a 66% threshold for dissolving parliament before its full term was up, in line with the situation in Scotland. George Osborne said he thought that 66% was rather high and that 55% or 60% was closer to the mark. After some work on Ed Llewelyn’s calculator, and consideration of by-election risks, it was decided that a 55% vote of MPs would be required to provide for a dissolution. This was just greater than the combined opposition and Lib Dem parliamentary parties, thereby safeguarding the Conservative position”.

It is absolutely plain from what Laws is saying there that they were trying to guard against Dissolution, including a no-confidence vote. There is no doubt about that, because he says:

“Without a super-majority for dissolution being required, the smaller party could leave the coalition and dissolve parliament almost at will”.

That must be referring to a vote of no confidence. It is therefore plain from Laws’ book that it was envisaged that you could not get rid of the Government with an ordinary vote of no confidence and that the only provision intended to allow for an early end—that is, before the five years—was if the super-majority was satisfied, and that could not be delivered by the Lib Dems coalescing with Labour.

I think that that was to be put into a binding resolution, whatever that may mean, in the House of Commons. Pressure was then placed on the Government in the public debate which followed, and they changed this in two respects: the figure of 56 per cent became two-thirds, and they agreed to a vote of no confidence as a way of getting rid of the Government. Why are they both there? Which two separate situations are they trying to cover? It looks as though the coalition agreed to the 56 per cent to prevent the possibility of being voted out on a vote of no confidence. I am pretty sure that that is what happened, but they were pushed off it by public pressure and had to agree to a vote of no confidence. They retained the super-majority as a fig leaf in order to try to give some justification for it. That is what Mr Laws’ book is suggesting. Could the Minister say whether I am wrong about that analysis? No other factual analysis is being offered for why we are in the extraordinarily unusual position where both a simple majority and a super-majority can get rid of the Government by way of a vote in the House of Commons. It looks as if the analysis that I have given is the reason.

We are entitled to an explanation for this. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is respected throughout the House as a constitutional expert, is significant: no other national parliament has this extraordinary provision in it. If it is in there only because it was part of a negotiation that then got shot away by public pressure, why are the Government keeping it in? It is important that the noble and learned Lord gives us some information about it, because at the moment the only explanation on the record is the one that I have given. It is discreditable for the Government to reform our constitution simply on the basis that an idea that was floated in the coalition agreement got shot away but they kept it in, in order to preserve I am not sure what.

A second and separate point that the Minister needs to deal with is: what happens when the Government resign and no one else wants to form a Government? On the basis of the Bill, it appears—again, the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has made this point and I have not heard an answer to it—that you have no Government and no Dissolution. I would be grateful to know what happens to our nation’s Government at that point.

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[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, the effect of the amendments in this group, tabled by my noble friends Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler, and by me, is to refine Clause 2(2), which covers the provision for an early dissolution in the event of a vote of no confidence on a simple majority followed by a period of 14 days in which no Government is formed that enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons.

At Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, in what he described sotto voce a moment ago as one of his “many agonies”, made the point that under the clause it would be theoretically possible for a Prime Minister to engineer a vote of no confidence in his or her Government by his or her side so as to secure an early dissolution at a time of his or her choosing. That would deprive the Bill of its intended very beneficial effect of removing from the Prime Minister precisely that power.

The criticism cannot be made of Clause 2(1), which requires a two-thirds majority of all the seats in the House of Commons to trigger an early dissolution, so that in practice cross-party support would be required, given that no Parliament in recent history has enjoyed such a majority. However, in relation to Clause 2(2), the criticism made by the noble and learned Lord is technically accurate. At Second Reading, the response was made that any Prime Minister engineering a vote of no confidence in his or her Government in such a Machiavellian way would be punished at the ballot box. However, I and others suggested that the problem might need to be addressed at later stages of the Bill. The need to address the point made by the noble and learned Lord is given added weight by the fact that, in Germany, Governments have resorted to the device of engineering defeat on votes of confidence, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, correctly pointed out. It was done by Chancellor Brandt in 1972, by Chancellor Kohl in 1982 and by Chancellor Schroeder as recently as 2005.

The way in which Amendment 30 addresses the problem is simple. By requiring that a Motion of no confidence under Clause 2(2) must be tabled by the leader of the Opposition, the mischief is effectively addressed. The position of the leader of the Opposition is constitutionally recognised. He or she would inevitably be—and historically invariably has been—the person who would move a genuine Motion of no confidence. It follows that requiring that he or she be the mover of such a Motion if it is to have effect is a simple way to achieve the intention of the Bill. It would also provide a certain symmetry. Given that the purpose of the Bill is to remove from the Prime Minister the power to call an election at a time of his or her choosing, who better to be responsible for the trigger for an early election when all-party consensus is absent than a Member of the House who seeks to replace him or her as Prime Minister?

I note that Amendment 33, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, is to the same effect. It gives me great confidence in our amendments that this is the first time since I joined your Lordships' House that I have had the pleasure of expressing agreement with the noble Lord in a debate on a constitutional matter.

I will make one final point. A further effect of Amendments 30 and 31 is that they contain a simple definition of a vote of no confidence. A Motion of no confidence would be a Motion declaring that the House of Commons had no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. That would mean that, once any vote went against the Government on an issue that would or might be seen as a confidence issue, the leader of the Opposition would have a chance to table a Motion of no confidence in those terms. If it were passed, the Speaker’s certificate would follow and the 14-day period provided for by Clause 2(2) would be triggered. If the Motion failed, that consequence would not follow. That arrangement would avoid doubt or argument, and it would avoid the need for any complication in the definition of what did and what did not constitute a vote of no confidence. I beg to move.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has just noted, it is remarkable that I have tabled an amendment which seeks to achieve exactly the same purpose as the amendments in this group tabled by the Liberal Democrat noble Lords. It is a nice example of how our parliamentary dialectic can be fruitful. The public notice all this adversarialism—they notice that we are always disagreeing with each other. However, if one takes a longer view, we find that all this debate and argument tends to produce a new consensus. Until recently, the Liberal Democrats wanted immediately to move on to discover new truths and interest us in new suggestions. They have been the grit in the oyster, endlessly introducing new ideas into our public debates. I hope that they will be able to continue to do so now that they have joined the governmental establishment. We shall see.

We have heard a certain amount about Germany from the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Marks. I think that it was in 1983, although the noble Lord, Lord Marks, suggested it was 1982—the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will tell us who is right—that Chancellor Kohl deliberately contrived to defeat a Motion of confidence in his Government. As I understand it, the reason was that he wanted an election because he had come to power in the previous year by means of a parliamentary vote and not by means of popular endorsement at the election. He lacked a popular mandate and he wanted one. I do not think that he was punished at the ballot box, so I am not sure that the safeguard that the Government have suggested exists against the cynical use of the no-confidence provisions in the Bill to contrive an early election by an unscrupulous Prime Minister would necessarily work. On that occasion at least, Chancellor Kohl did not suffer at the election.

It is at least a possibility that Mr Cameron, too, not having won an election and feeling that he lacks popular endorsement, might, if he thought that he had an opportunity to do better in an early general election, be very tempted to go for that. It is hard to foresee that but who knows? If the 14-day provision that we are about to debate on another amendment were taken out, it would be even more important to guard against the Prime Minister being able to contrive a vote of no confidence. If immediately following a vote of no confidence he could go to the country, it would be that much more attractive to him.

I think we can see why the Liberal Democrats are keen for the Bill to be amended to provide that only the leader of the Opposition can table a Motion of no confidence. It is, sadly, because they do not trust their coalition partners and the Prime Minister. They worry that, as the Liberal Democrats become more unpopular—and we will perhaps see evidence of that after the local government elections and in the AV referendum—and as the cuts, which those who voted for them did not expect them to support, start to bite, Mr Cameron may ditch them and cut and run. Unless this amendment is in the Bill, the supermajority lock may not do the trick for them and keep the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues in office by postponing the evil day when he has to face the electors of Sheffield and the Liberal Democrats have to face the electors of the United Kingdom.

I note that an amendment of this kind would be less necessary if we were to have proportional representation as that would make it less likely that any party would win an overall majority in an early election and, therefore, it would be less tempting for the Prime Minister to contrive an early general election. However, we are where we are. The Liberal Democrats failed to secure a referendum on proportional representation and we have a referendum on the alternative vote only. I hear different views as to what the alternative vote might produce: some say that it is a majoritarian system of election that tends to reinforce the swing and others say that it is more likely that the alternative vote will produce an endless series of coalitions. Whatever the outcome proves to be in practice, with that electoral system it would be more important to have the safeguard which the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and others have proposed. I hope we do not have AV and some of us will do our best to ensure that we do not have it.

I see one significant argument against these amendments. We might have a situation, which the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has adumbrated and which the Government have already played out, in which the Government lost a vote on a key Bill, they were incapable, for whatever conjunction of circumstances, of governing effectively, and their majority had fallen as in 1951 or 1996, but the Opposition reckoned that it was in their political interest to defer the election to allow the Government to continue to stew in their political juice for a little longer. In that situation they would not want to table a Motion of no confidence just yet. Of course, that would be bad for the country.

These are all hypothetical possibilities. It is very difficult for us to provide for every contingency that might arise, but I think it would be sensible to incorporate an amendment of the kind moved by the noble Lord and of the kind that my Amendment 33 provides.

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Moved by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

32: Clause 2, page 2, line 11, at end insert—
“( ) the Speaker of the House of Commons had in advance of the motion in question being debated certified that the motion was to be regarded as a motion of no confidence, and”

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this amendment deals with the requirement for the Speaker to issue a certificate. This is one of the most important and difficult issues in the Bill. I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Marks, speak thoughtfully about this problem in his concluding remarks just now. It seems to me, if I may venture to suggest this to the Committee, quite unsuitable that we should embark upon this very major debate at this hour of the evening, but if that is its wish, I shall very briefly sketch the issue that I think we should return to—which we will be able to do, for example, on Amendment 51, which I have tabled as an amendment to Amendment 50 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

Amendment 32 would require the Speaker to have certified in advance that a Motion was to be regarded as a Motion of no confidence if it were to lead to an early general election. The legislation requires the Speaker to issue a certificate establishing that a Motion of no confidence has been passed on a Division as a precondition of Dissolution and an early general election. The idea of a Speaker’s certificate was lifted from the Parliament Act 1911, which requires the Speaker to certify that a Bill is a money Bill before it goes to the House of Lords. That certification is of a relatively ascertainable fact. The characteristics of a money Bill are clearly described in the preceding subsection of the Parliament Act.

The introduction of the concept of a Speaker’s certificate is entirely novel, I think, in the context of Motions of no confidence, and I believe that it needs extremely careful consideration for three reasons. First, there is the difficulty of defining a Motion of no confidence, a Motion of confidence or vote of confidence—what exactly is the Bill talking about? Secondly, through this procedure, the Speaker would be liable to be placed in extremely contentious political circumstances and to have to play an extremely contentious part in them. Thirdly, the statutory requirement for the Speaker to issue such a certificate may lay him open to legal challenge in the courts, either those of this country or the European Court of Justice. That is a major hazard apprehended by the Clerk of the House of Commons. For all these three reasons, I believe that we need to proceed with the utmost caution and that what is drafted in the Bill carries with it very considerable risks.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I appreciate the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, about the lateness of the hour. I always understood that this evening’s proceedings were going to go late. We tried to accommodate that by finishing somewhat earlier last time. Nevertheless, it is an important point, as he indicated, that there will be the opportunity at a later stage with a subsequent amendment to perhaps explore this further, including the point raised by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth.

The effect of the amendment would be to require the Speaker to issue two certificates before an early election is triggered on account of a no-confidence vote. The clause already provides for the Speaker certifying that there has been a no-confidence Motion, and a Motion of no confidence in the Government during the ensuing 14-day period. The amendment, as moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, would require an additional, earlier certificate issued in advance of a debate as to whether the Motion is to be regarded as a Motion of no confidence.

This again arises out of the concern that the House of Commons may not always know whether it is voting on a Motion of no confidence. It is highly unlikely that the House of Commons, in its ordinary business, would pass a resolution which was perhaps contrary to a matter of policy and the wishes of the Government of the day, but a matter on which no one had ever actually thought that there was any great store set, and then at the end of the 14-day period the Speaker unexpectedly issues a certificate. I have heard that concern expressed but it is not a realistic scenario.

The point was made that my honourable friend Mr Mark Harper indicated that in all likelihood a future no-confidence Motion would not only take the form that it did when a Motion was last passed but also, in the event of it happening, the Speaker of the House of Commons would be able to inform Members before they vote. For example, if it was on an amendment to the Queen’s Speech, the Speaker would inform Members of the House of Commons before the vote that, in the event of the Motion being passed, the Speaker would regard it as a no-confidence Motion for the purposes of Clause 2.

That is a simple and straightforward process. The Speaker advises the House of Commons on other procedural matters before it. I understand the point that has been made and, clearly as I indicated in my introductory remarks to the previous set of amendments, we will reflect on all these points. Yet we find it difficult to accept that there should be an additional layer of complexity to the process. One wonders how much time there would be to allow such a certificate to be issued if it was a pressing debate. It would be regrettable if such a debate was somewhat held up while the Speaker was engaged in the process of considering whether a certificate should be issued and that is then done.

We share the goal behind the noble Lord’s amendment—that the Commons should be well informed before it votes on confidence matters. The idea of an ambush is unfounded but I hear what the noble Lord says with regard to trying to import that greater degree of certainty. It is an issue to which we will return, one we will certainly reflect on and one we will perhaps have a wider debate on—perhaps with more participants—in the subsequent Amendment 51. On that basis, for the moment I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. Perhaps when we come to the later debate, we will address the questions that my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has also raised.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I thank both the Minister and the Committee and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 32 withdrawn.