Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Peter Tapsell

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am slightly surprised that the hon. Gentleman is commenting in detail on plans that have not been published yet. We have not yet finalised the details of our new investment in support for families facing high child care costs, but we will do so in the weeks to come. I point out to him, though, that it is this Government who have introduced 15 hours of free pre-school and child care support for every three and four-year-old in this country, which no Government have done before. It is also this Government who, from this April, for the first time ever, will be providing 15 hours of free pre-school and child care support to two-year-olds from the most disadvantaged families in this country. Government Members are proud of that.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Why is the fact that an Act has been in existence for more than 300 years an argument for amending it, together with the Bill of Rights and the Act of Union with Scotland, in a single day? I would have thought the argument was very much in the opposite direction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Peter Tapsell

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

One Member of this House on the other side of the planet is, I think, enough. I do not intend to take a long voyage myself, although I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind suggestion. Thankfully, we do not need to travel around the globe to communicate with each other these days. We have other means by which we can liaise with colleagues and friends in the New Zealand Government—and indeed, with the other realms. As I have said before, I am as impatient as the right hon. Gentleman to see the end of the outdated and discriminatory rule of male primogeniture and also the bar on the monarch or the successor to the throne marrying a Roman Catholic. I am as anxious as the right hon. Gentleman is to see those rules updated and modernised. It just takes a bit of time and a little bit of patience to make sure that all the realms are properly aligned, as they need to be to make this change happen.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister—and the Prime Minister of New Zealand—bear in mind that, but for our law of male primogeniture, the German Kaiser would also have become King of England, which would have produced almost as interesting a coalition as the present one?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We always rely on my right hon. Friend for such erudition and grasp of history, which he possesses but unfortunately I do not. I am grateful to him for pointing that historical quirk out to us, but I hope he will agree that that is not reason enough not to modernise the rules of succession and bring them into line with the 21st century.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Peter Tapsell

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said before, wrongdoing has clearly been committed if someone is given a prison sentence, and I think that any prison sentence of any length should disqualify MPs. Otherwise, we clearly need to establish a mechanism here in the House to prove serious wrongdoing, and only once that has been established would we grant electors the right, following a petition of 10% of the electors, to trigger a by-election—[Interruption.] I think that the hon. Gentleman is asking from a sedentary position whether that mechanism should be without any kind of filtering here in the House. The honest truth is that if we did it like that, and had a sort of free-for-all, there would be a real danger of a lot of vexatious and unjustified claims being made against one Member by others.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Will extreme care be taken in the drafting of the legislation to ensure that in absolutely no circumstances will a recall of a Member of Parliament be possible because of the way in which a Member votes or speaks—however objectionably—or because he changes party, as Winston Churchill did on two occasions?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We certainly would not want a recall mechanism that would have disqualified Winston Churchill. Precisely for the reasons that my hon. Friend has alluded to, we need to ensure that the system contains checks and balances so that it does not impinge on the freedom of Members on both sides of the House to speak out and articulate our views. That will not be the purpose of the recall mechanism. Its purpose will be to bear down on serious wrongdoing and to give people a chance to have their say in their own constituencies without having to wait until the next election for an opportunity to do so.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Peter Tapsell

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is a great expert in expressing his views regardless of what the Whips say. Whipping is of course a matter for the parties. I question his suggestion that there is something unorthodox or unwelcome about giving the House more power. We have a Prime Minister who is the first in history to relinquish the right to set the date of the general election. Surely the hon. Gentleman, who has always fought so valiantly for the rights of the House, welcomes that shift of power from the Executive to the legislature.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just made a statement that the Prime Minister has made on a number of occasions—that he is giving away a power that no previous Prime Minister has chosen to do. Why do the right hon. Gentleman and our Prime Minister think that they are wiser than their 40 predecessors?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said, the virtues of a fixed-term—[Interruption.] It is not a question of wisdom; it is a question of the weight of history. We have been talking about this for decades, the Labour party campaigned on it, as did other parties, and at a time when we are trying to restore people’s confidence in politics after the expenses scandals, one of the essential ingredients is to strengthen the rights of the House at the cost of the excessive powers of the Executive.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman may be referring to the continuation of the existing powers to prorogue Parliament, which will remain in place, particularly after the House has been dissolved for exceptional reasons. In addition, the Bill provides for a new power for the House of Commons to dissolve Parliament early by means of a motion, passed by a majority of two thirds of the total number of seats in this House, which states that an early general election should take place. This new power ensures that Parliament will be able to dissolve itself in any eventuality, regardless of whether the reasons relate to the merits or failings of the Government of the day.

As you will be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, these votes have already been the subject of considerable discussion. I shall therefore take a little time to explain to the House exactly how they will work. First, on the new power of early Dissolution, the defining principle of this Bill is that no Government should be able to dissolve Parliament for their own political advantage. So as I said, in order to secure a Dissolution motion, a vote will need to be passed by a majority of two thirds of MPs— the same threshold that is required in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Hon. Members will remember that originally the coalition proposed a threshold of 55%. That was not found to be satisfactory by many Members of this House, who feared that it would not provide a sure enough guarantee against a Government with a large majority triggering an election for partisan gain. We listened to those arguments and we agreed that the bar should be raised. At two thirds, we have settled on a majority that no post-war Government would have been able to achieve. It will be possible only if agreement is secured across party lines, thereby preventing any one party or the Executive from abusing this mechanism.

On powers of no confidence, no-confidence votes have until now been a matter of convention.

[Sir Peter Tapsell]

Before my right hon. Friend moves on to his next point, can he explain why, when he is putting forward a Bill of the most enormous constitutional importance, almost revolutionary in concept, there is not a single Conservative Cabinet Minister on the Front Bench to support him?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am sure that they have other things which they need to attend to.

As I said, no-confidence votes have until now been a matter of convention. Although it has been widely accepted that a no-confidence vote would require a Prime Minister either to resign or to call an early election, there has been nothing to date to enforce this. So for the first time, the Bill gives legal effect to a motion of no confidence passed by this House. Such motions will continue to require only a simple majority.