Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Mark Harper and Geoffrey Cox(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
A related point made in the other place was the argument that Lord Rooker’s threshold was appropriate because the question being decided in the referendum was constitutionally significant. My argument is that we are having the referendum because this is an important issue—it is about how we are elected. It is not right that we make that decision, because the people should decide how Members are elected to this House.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
What is meant by “the people”? Is there any size of turnout that the Minister would regard as not really constituting a verdict of the British people? Is it not sensible for a fundamental constitutional and political change such as this to have a minimum turnout threshold to warrant and justify it?
Mr Harper
Our system does not have a minimum turnout threshold for elections and we do not have a tradition of thresholds for the 10 referendums that have been held in this country. Only one of those referendums had a turnout threshold and its effect was to thwart the clearly expressed will of the people. It may have been something I agreed with, but it meant that that issue festered for another decade.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Mark Harper and Geoffrey Cox(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Harper
No, and that leads to where I was going, which was to turn to amendment 6 and to explain why we are using the language of the device of a Speaker’s certificate. There are precedents that have stood the test of time, which is why Professor Blackburn expressed the feeling in the quotation I read that parliamentary counsel had drafted the Bill well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) tabled amendment 6 and my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex spoke to it. I can see why they would want to use the wording in the Parliament Act 1911, but the Bill says the Speaker’s certificate is “conclusive for all purposes” and the Government do not think inserting the words
“shall not be…questioned in any court of law”
adds anything. The 1911 wording has, indeed, stood the test of time, but it used the language of the early 20th century. Later legislation used different wording. The House of Lords Act 1999 used exactly the wording we have used, which provides that certificates of the Clerk of the Parliaments on questions of whether an hereditary peer is one of the excepted 92 hereditary peers are conclusive. The provisions have worked well in practice, whereas wording consistent with the Parliament Act 1911 could bring into question whether protections in more recent Acts were meant to be an inferior sort of protection. We think that would be undesirable.
Provided certificates are conclusive for all purposes, it is perfectly adequate to show that it is for the Speaker to decide whether the conditions for an early election have been satisfied, not for the courts or the Executive. The effect and the intention of the drafting are perfectly clear. Although the additional words in amendment 6 might appear attractive, they would not add anything to the protection in the Bill. There is no evidence or reason to think the courts would want to trespass on what would effectively be highly politicised issues or that they would not continue to regard matters relating to the internal operation of the House as “proceedings in Parliament”.
I should also like to deal with the wording in amendment 6 that seeks to prevent a Speaker’s certificate issued under clause 2 from being “presented” to a court. I can see why my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is trying to do that, but it seems to me that that takes a step backwards. Being able to present the certificate to the court is the simplest and easiest way of informing the court that the conditions for an early election exist and the Speaker has made the decision. That stops the court being tempted to dwell on proceedings in Parliament; it has a clear piece of paper that explains that the Speaker has made that determination and the court need go no further.
Mr Cox
Let us suppose that the Speaker issued a certificate that omitted one of the matters that the statute required him to certify. Would it not be open to a petitioner to argue in court that there had been a failure to comply with the conditions that made a certificate valid and that the court was entitled to examine whether it was a certificate before obeying the ouster that prevents it from challenging the certificate?
Mr Harper
My hon. and learned Friend makes a point that relates to the use of certificates, but what he describes would be perfectly true of the certificate that the Speaker issues on money Bills and the certification that he issues under the Parliament Act. Those are well precedented and have stood the test of time. The courts have been content to hold that the fact that the certificate has been issued by the Speaker is indeed conclusive for all purposes and they have not sought to challenge it.
Mr Cox
We are dealing with a fundamentally different sphere here. Whether or not a Bill is a money Bill is the kind of decision that is suitable only for a legislative Assembly, but on this matter the courts would regard themselves as guarding the right to an election, which is a fundamental right of the population of this country. If Parliament had prescribed that an election should take place and a certificate was defective because it did not stipulate one of the requisite terms, the courts may regard that as an area into which they ought to go to safeguard the right to an election.
Mr Harper
If a certificate was issued by the Speaker, we would be having an election, not stopping one taking place. I do not think that my hon. and learned Friend’s concern that the courts would hold that the population were being deprived of an election would apply. The language used in the Bill was chosen for exactly the reasons I have suggested. We have used well-precedented, tried and tested language; it has stood the test of time. It is perfectly true to say that people can make groundless applications to courts on all sorts of things, but courts quickly dismiss them and prevent them from proceeding further. We are confident that these proposals are robust and will not have the effect that hon. Members suggest.
In the few minutes remaining, I wish to discuss amendment 23, because the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) suggested that he wanted to ask you, Mr Evans, whether he could press it to a Division. The amendment proposes a 24-hour time limit for the issuing of the Speaker’s certificate. I can superficially see why that might be attractive, but it sets some conditions that might introduce elements casting doubt on the validity of the certificate if it were delayed, even if it were by only a few minutes, or if it were issued close to the time limit. Thus, the amendment would enable people to question the certificate. We should therefore rely on the standard practice, whereby the Speaker’s certificate is the conclusive provision.
Given what I have said, I hope that hon. Members will not seek to press their amendments to a Division and that we are able to proceed with the debate.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Mark Harper and Geoffrey Cox(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
Is not the point about the referendum that it will change the rules of the constitutional landscape for ever? Now is therefore the time to focus our attention on who should exercise the franchise on that critical question, which will affect how Members are elected to the House for the next 100 years or more. It is different from an ordinary election.
Mr Harper
Given our tradition of parliamentary sovereignty, my hon. Friend does not set out the position accurately. If we have a referendum next year, as I hope we do, and if the people of the country decide to change the electoral system, as I hope they do not, it is open to a future Parliament to hold another referendum. The referendum will not change the position for ever—nothing is for ever in a parliamentary democracy. I do not buy the argument that, just because we are having the referendum, we are required to change the franchise over and above the one that we use for parliamentary elections. Choosing the Government of the country is a significant matter. Indeed, many—perhaps more on the Government side of the Committee—would argue that Governments who are elected can make significant changes. Governments took us into the European Union and signed treaties that bind us unless we decide specifically to opt out of them. We might not have been entirely happy that Governments did that, but we did not challenge their right to do so. The Government’s position is that we have stuck with the franchise. However, I have listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West said, and this is an issue worth revisiting, but this Bill is not the right place to make the change.
Mr Harper
Of course it could. If the voting system were changed, the public might reconsider and want to change, either back to the old system or to another one. That has been the experience of other countries that have reformed their electoral systems. It is perfectly sensible to say that that could happen, and my hon. Friend is not really setting out an argument for why we should change in this case.