Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, on his excellent speech and welcome him to the House. I look forward to his insights on many worldly matters.

I am not a constitutional expert or a lawyer; nor am I a seasoned parliamentarian, as many others on the speakers’ list are. In many ways, I am an outsider and I offer an outsider’s perspective on the Bill. I believe that many of the concerns I will express may be shared by many lay people outside.

There is a broad public perception that Governments pass laws for their own convenience. The Bill ferments those concerns and reinforces them in many people’s minds. It does not enhance the power of the elected Chamber or the people. Possibly, it is all about enabling the Government to make a dash for an election before the glow of the coronavirus vaccine wears off and the consequences of their disastrous management of the economy and Brexit catch up with them.

The Minister referred to a desire to return to some glorious past. Perhaps that past was never really that glorious at all; if we look at the history, we see Governments cutting loose and seeking electoral advantage regardless of whether it was good for the country or not. We all know that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was part of the coalition Government’s strategy to remain in office; there was nothing else to it really. The Minister kindly referred to the Labour Party manifesto, so I remind him of the Conservative Party’s 2015 manifesto, which referred to the FTPA as

“an unprecedented transfer of Executive power.”

Presumably now we have an executive grab for power, because all other centres of power are being weakened.

The key factor in the FTPA was that the House of Commons determined the timing of the Dissolution of Parliament. The Bill takes that away and gives the Prime Minister unconstrained power over when to call an election. If a Prime Minister can unlawfully prorogue Parliament, he can also abuse the Dissolution powers. Are there any safeguards in the Bill? It is hard to see any, especially when the courts are excluded and people cannot go to them for any help.

Under the Bill, Parliament can be dissolved by a Prime Minister who is shoehorned into office—in other words, not the leader at the general election and therefore not subject to an earlier verdict of the people. Parliament can also be dissolved by a Prime Minister whose party does not have a working majority in the Commons.

What if the Prime Minister chooses not to dissolve Parliament and to go over five years? Are there sufficient safeguards? I could not really see anything in there to assure me. At least a vote in the House of Commons offered some safeguards against abusive Dissolutions, but all that is swept away. There is nothing to prevent Prime Ministers from behaving as they did in the past: pass a very favourable Budget, bribe the people, and call a general election. We are really talking about returning to the days of electoral bribery without any consideration of the consequences for the economy or the country as a whole, which in itself is an abuse of the Prime Minister’s office.

The Explanatory Notes accompanying the Bill say that

“the Sovereign dissolved Parliament only when requested to do so by the Prime Minister, and in certain exceptional circumstances, the Sovereign could refuse to grant a dissolution.”

I hope that the Minister will tell the public at large what the “exceptional circumstances” are in which a Dissolution may be refused. When did the sovereign last override the Prime Minister’s advice? The Prime Minister basically seems to be in control. We have an adversarial political system, but which representative of the people will be called on to advise the sovereign on whether the circumstances are “exceptional” and therefore the Prime Minister’s request ought to be denied? Without suggesting democratic arrangements, the Bill leaves the sovereign open to a potential charge of political bias and subject to public opprobrium.

Clause 3, as many have referred to, is highly troublesome. It seeks to deny people access to the courts to rule on abusive Dissolutions. The inclusion of the clause suggests that the Government are concerned that people may challenge the Prime Minister’s decision, and that the Government are out to disempower the people. We live in a country where people have access to law and adjudication by the courts on most things, but on the vital issue of the Dissolution of Parliament and Prorogation the people will have no such right. Why are they being denied that right? The Minister referred earlier to elections being verdicts, but it has already been pointed out that the election comes some time after the event of Dissolution; the abuse has already taken place.

If the courts are precluded from adjudicating on the prerogative power of Dissolution, the only check on a rogue Prime Minister is the monarch. However, the Bill does not legislate on the monarch’s powers or offer any transparency or clarity on how those powers might be exercised. The only way to protect the sovereign from party politics and a charge of bias is really to empower the people to go to the courts and to empower the courts to intervene.

Overall, the Bill is part of a worrying trend of centralising power in the hands of the Executive and weakening the powers of Parliament, the courts and the people.