Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (Instruction)

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

No, he did not—[Interruption.] He was still at school? I think that is a bit unfair on the hon. Gentleman. The point is that this was a major constitutional battle in 2019 and it would be odd of us not to consider it at all when we are dealing with these matters, which the Prime Minister himself declared were analogous.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman will know that many Government Members had serious concerns about Prorogation at the time of which he speaks, but does he not accept that we are now back in what we could describe as more normal times? That procedure, Prorogation, had never given this House any problems before and is unlikely ever to do so again.

[Chris Bryant]

Well now, for a start, I am not very keen on the concept of “normal” at all. I have tried to avoid that as much as I can in my 59 years. More importantly, I am not sure that we are living in normal times.

Are there ever normal times in political debate? Surely that is the whole point of constitutional settlements. We do them oddly in this country, because we do not have a written constitution, as the hon. Gentleman knows; we have bits and pieces of the constitution written in lots of different statutes. The danger of proceeding by statute law is that the constitution becomes a constant plaything of the Government of the day. I would always want our constitutional settlement to last at least a generation, if not several, but my anxiety is that we are fiddling with just one part of the equation, not all of it.

Some have argued, as the Government did before the Supreme Court, that a prerogative power is by definition limitless. That flies in the face of history. Successive cases across the centuries, starting in 1611, have proved that every prerogative power has to have a limit. Otherwise, Parliament would never sit; the Government could, in theory, say, “Right—we are going to use our prerogative power of Prorogation just to make Parliament never sit.” That was one of the key things that the Supreme Court found.

My anxiety is that if the Supreme Court has already determined, and it is settled law, that Prorogation is a justiciable matter, it will be justiciable again unless we introduce statute law to change it.