Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

The noble Baroness and her friends cannot possibly give an assurance that a circumstance will not arise not precisely the same as that which occurred between 2017 and 2019 but in which a simple majority could not be obtained for an election, because a majority of the House of Commons was content to stymie and hobble the Government and keep them in place in that paralysed state, which was what we saw in that unhappy time.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

The noble Lord seems to be missing the fundamental fact that the problems to which he referred took place under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which required a two-thirds majority. This Bill gets rid of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The circumstances that occurred in 2017-19, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, pointed out, cannot recur in absence of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

With respect to the noble Lord—he knows I have great respect for him—I do not think that he was listening to what I have just said in answer to his noble friend. All this Bill does is to replace the bar of the two-thirds majority which the Fixed-term Parliaments Act provided with a slightly lower bar, but there is still a bar and it is perfectly conceivable that we could have a House of Commons in which the Government did not have a majority.

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That is what we want to avoid. Trust the people—that is the entire point of the Bill, and that is why the amendment should be disagreed.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having attended previous debate on the Bill, but I want to make just two simple points. First, it is not true that the problems of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act were not foreseen. They were foreseen and explicitly raised by many Members on this side of the House. Secondly, however, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, has encapsulated the difference between the two sides of this argument. In particular, I ask him to reflect seriously on his statement that we want power flowing from the ballot box to the Executive. That is completely contrary to the constitution of this country. Indeed, not only is it contrary to that, but it is enormously dangerous, because any system—

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

What I want is a system where, if the Prime Minister wishes to call a general election, that election happens and we get to the situation in which we can trust the people. That is where I wish to see the power flowing.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Out of courtesy to the noble Lord, I will check the record, but my distinct recollection was that he said that we want a system where power flows from the ballot box to the Executive. Not only is that contrary to everything we believe, by omitting Parliament in the middle of it, but it is the basis of every bad dictatorship that Europe has produced—referendums and power flowing from the ballot box to the Executive. That is the extreme case or course, but it is, in essence, precisely the difference between the arguments on the two sides today, in which we believe that on major issues, which now in the British Parliament include the declaration of war, the people who should make the decision at the end of the day are those in Parliament, not the Executive. All the power that the Executive receives is because they can control or, rather, call on a majority in Parliament. Should the Executive cease to have the confidence of Parliament, whether on policy, war, peace or the Dissolution of Parliament, the Executive cannot proceed unless they can change the mind of Parliament. That is a simple argument that applies to the most important things that Parliament can decide. I would argue that the Dissolution of Parliament is one of those issues.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, this is the third time in your Lordships’ House that we have had a debate focused on this issue. At Second Reading, it was a key issue, as it was in Committee. It comes down to a fundamental point.

In the other place and, indeed, in your Lordships’ House, Ministers asserted from the beginning that bringing in this piece of legislation takes us back in some kind of parliamentary TARDIS to the status quo ante whereby we return to exactly the position that we were in before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. However, in Clause 3, that argument is completely undermined by saying, “But just in case we haven’t got it right, we are going to have a clause that avoids any legal action”, and the so-called ouster clausem Clause 3. So the Government are not confident that the Bill without the ouster clause returns us to the position that we were in before.

The fundamental point, also made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is that there is a choice. Do we accept on the calling of an election executive authority or parliamentary democracy? The huge flaw in the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, is that he seems prepared to trust Parliament on every issue—matters of life and death, legislation and whether we go to war—but not on whether there can be a general election.

I heard the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, in exactly the same way as my noble friend Lord Reid. I wrote them down. He seemed to want to make a major constitutional change where power flowed from the ballot box to the Executive. The fundamental basis of our democracy is that power flows from the ballot box to the elected Chamber of Parliament, the House of Commons, and that the Government derive their authority from that House and are responsible to it.

On the point made by the noble Lord about denying the people a vote—that somehow, if the House of Commons were to vote not to have an election, we would be denying the public an opportunity to have their say—he is not correct, but is right on one point. In effect, there is a fixed or maximum term, in which it is not open to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister, or anyone else to never have an election. There is an end term to any Parliament, by which time an election must be held. It is not simply fixed in time. The argument is that previously the Prime Minister would be expected to go to the monarch. I doubt any of us wish to return to the situation where one puts the monarch in such controversy. We are all scarred by the unlawful Prorogation and how the Government behaved on that. It comes back to this point: do we have executive authority or parliamentary democracy in calling an election? There is nothing more basic for the House of Commons than that objective. Offering the other place an opportunity to vote on this issue avoids the need for Clause 3. The idea that the courts would involve themselves in a decision of Parliament to hold a general election is fanciful. This is an elegant and correct solution of this issue.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, referred to the issue of the former Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, threatening MPs that if they failed to support the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister could call an election. If we are talking about hypothetical circumstances or crises that could occur again, that is certainly one, and should be guarded against at all costs, by not placing the power in the hands of just one person. We should not be surprised by such threats; noble Lords may recall that the current Leader of the House, early on in his parliamentary life, threatened your Lordships’ House with 1,000 extra peers if we failed to pass a piece of legislation he supported. Perhaps threats come quite easily to him.

We had a lengthy debate on this, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, summed up well at the beginning. When this was debated in the House of Commons, there was no lengthy debate, and there is an opportunity for them to reconsider this. When we debated it in Committee previously, my noble friend Lady Taylor said that she was surprised that the House of Commons gave away that power so easily. It may be because it did not discuss it in any great depth or with consideration. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, said, the Joint Committee was divided on the issue of whether it was appropriate or not. It is entirely appropriate that the House of Commons is given the opportunity to consider this again.

I come to one final point, which is that the noble Lord, Lord True, said at both Second Reading and in Committee that the Commons had not amended the Bill, so your Lordships’ House should not do so either. Last night, this House sat beyond 3 am, which is unusual. Today, to facilitate business, we are sitting at 11 am, on a much longer day. If it is not the duty of this House to pass amendments that the other end can consider, then what is the point? The amendment has our full support and I urge noble Lords to vote for it.

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[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, your Lordships are required to deal with the Bills that are sent to us by the other place, and the other place has sent us a Bill with no such provision. Members of your Lordships’ House under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord McLoughlin on the Joint Committee, which reflected at length on these matters, did not propose such an amendment. None of those who have scrutinised the legislation formally have proposed what the noble and learned Lord has suggested.

The noble and learned Lord said that we could not return to an ancient system. There is perhaps a faint irony in advancing that argument in an unelected House with a tradition that dates back centuries. He said that we had to be 21st century. Well, we tried “21st century” in 2011 and, frankly, I rather prefer the experience of many decades in the long past which I believe served us well, and the proposition before your Lordships, supported by my party and the party opposite at the general election, was that we should do away with the failed 21st-century experiment.

We do not have to talk the talk about the problems that a Commons vote might cause. There has been a lot of speculation, to and fro, on this, but we lived it in 2017 to 2019; that Parliament refused three times to be dissolved and to meet the verdict of the people.

The repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was in our manifesto and that of the party opposite. I found it fascinating to hear the throaty roar of approval from the Benches opposite when any noble Lord, starting with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said that we must not go back to the situation before the Act was passed. I remind the party opposite, as did my noble friend, of the Labour Party’s promise to the people:

“A Labour government will repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which has stifled democracy and propped up weak governments”.


They wish to maintain an essential part of that Act in the form of a Commons vote.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Can the Minister give one example of a spokesman from this side saying that we wish to retain the Fixed-term Parliaments Act?

[Lord True (Con)]

I fear I must say to the noble Lord, who I greatly respect and admire, that I simply stated a feature of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act that the party opposite wishes to retain: that there should be a Commons veto on Dissolution. That is what I said, and that is a fact. If the party opposite votes for this amendment, it will be voting for a House of Commons veto potentially on its own Dissolution—it is written there in the book.