Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I stand corrected by my noble friend, who is very expert on these matters. However, a Motion that says, “This House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government” is absolutely clear, and it would trigger an election. In the context of this Bill, with a fixed-term Parliament, it is going to change. I accept that, because the nature of the Parliament will have changed. But I would much prefer something clear-cut, simple and explicit. If you want to bring down the Government, you have to pass a Motion of no confidence. That is absolutely clear. If such a motion is passed, the Prime Minister has to go to the country.

I was going to sit down, but my noble friend has set me off again. To turn to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, the idea that a Prime Minister should somehow be prevented from going to the country to get the consent of the people for what he is trying to do, to call a general election, is also a deeply worrying change to our constitutional pattern. But I sit at the feet of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and I am perfectly prepared to alter my view and go along with this amendment, at least in part under his instruction, because it is a far better thing than Clause 2 as it stands.

I hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will accept the good advice that has been given him tonight and that at a later stage we will be able to discuss something that is more practical and workable and does not threaten the integrity of the office of Speaker of the House of Commons or the ability of the House to hold the Executive to account.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

This debate has demonstrated the need for the Government to reconsider Clause 2. I am very grateful to all my noble friends and all those who have supported the amendment for raising the issue again and in a different context from the previous debates. The intention is to remove the opportunity for Governments to fiddle with arrangements in any way, and that is a desirable purpose. The amendment also seeks to clarify the circumstances in which a vote of no confidence is deemed to justify the holding of an election. However, although noble Lords have raised the debate, I do not think they have concluded it. There are defects in the drafting of Amendment 50 that need to be considered. No one has suggested that this is a perfect drafting, but I would like to suggest two or three points that could be considered when the Government come forward at a later stage.

The first point is that proposed new subsection (2) states:

“A vote of no confidence will have been deemed to have been passed if the House of Commons”,

does certain things, but those things do not appear to be an exclusive list. It would still allow other circumstances to occur that enabled it to be said after the event that there had been a vote of no confidence. The rubric of statutory interpretation that springs to my mind is the Latin tag, “inclusio unius est exclusio alterius”. That might be the answer to this if that were still the law and still the rule of statutory interpretation, but it is not sufficiently clearly the case to avoid the possibility of a further circumstance being deemed to have been a vote of no confidence.

It also seems to me that there has been a slight conflation between a vote of no confidence and the inevitability of a Government’s fall followed by an election. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, with great respect, as I always do, but it seems to me that, even if the Wardlaw-Milne Motion of no confidence had been carried—and of course it was not—it would have been perfectly understandable in wartime if that had led to the demise of the particular Prime Minister or a significant change of Government without any election being held. I think the constitution was sufficiently flexible at that time to make it likely that that would have been the outcome. What we are considering here is the circumstances that trigger an election, and I think that needs to be put beyond doubt. I do not believe, even in the case of the European Community Bill in 1972, that despite what the Prime Minister of the day said it would have inevitably resulted in an election. It seems to me that it might have led to the departure of the then Prime Minister. However, he could easily have been told that there were others who would have been prepared to take his place and preside over the parliamentary majority that existed.

If we want an escape clause—and clearly an escape clause is necessary, even with a fixed-term Parliament—in a constitution that is prime ministerial and not presidential, we must have the possibility of having a vote of no confidence. However, I think the better solution to that is the one proposed already by my noble friend Lord Tyler, which is that the Motion of no confidence should come from the leader of the Opposition. If the Government appear to the party in government itself to be in a shambolic condition, it does seem highly probable that a leader of the Opposition would seize the opportunity to declare that the House has no confidence in the Government. I hope that that is the line that will be taken by the Government in reconsidering this clause, but that the case for reconsidering it is strong I have no doubt. Clause 2 as it stands is ill defined and gives no certainty on what the circumstances are within that two-week period which could lead to the holding of a general election. Amendment 50 is a good stab at trying to clarify which issues need to be addressed. The debate tonight will have given my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a lot to think about and to discuss further with his colleagues, as I believe is definitely necessary.