Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I am most grateful, Mr Evans, for the opportunity to reply to the debate.

I regret that I feel compelled to press this matter to a vote, but I feel that the Minister’s response has been wholly unconvincing. We are faced with adamant and clear advice from the Clerk of the House that the Minister has chosen to dismiss as irrelevant. Let me remind the Committee what the Clerk said:

“The provisions of this subsection make the Speaker’s consideration of confidence motions and the House’s practices justiciable questions for determination by the ordinary courts.”

That includes

“what constitutes a confidence motion, the selection of amendments to such Motions and the consequences of their being carried”.

He goes on to say:

“As these would become justiciable questions, the courts could be drawn into matters of acute political controversy.”

The Minister has not responded with anything substantive to defeat that advice.

Moreover, the Minister has rested his justification for the Bill on the assertion that it would not be possible to write these provisions into the Standing Orders, which would be automatically immune. Let me read from the Clerk’s memorandum again. He said that

“a Standing Order regulating the matters in the Bill could provide for its staying in effect unless repealed by a specified majority”,

meaning that it could be entrenched,

“for example by…equal to or greater than two thirds of the number of seats in the House. Not only is the principle of specifying majorities already written into the Standing Orders of the House, but in the past the House has also required a relative majority for reaching decision.”

My hon. Friend the Minister also dismissed the comments that I read from Mr Robert Rogers, the Clerk Assistant and Director General, who made it clear that we can not only write into our Standing Orders provisions requiring super-majorities, but entrench a—[Interruption.] I am rather distressed that the Minister is not even listening to what I am saying. We can entrench a Standing Order with its own super-majority so that it could be removed only by a super-majority, if that is what the House chose to do. The whole basis of the Government’s advice remains contested by the Clerks. The basis of the Bill—that this has to be done through statute—also remains contested by the Clerks.

I doubt that we will win the vote in the Committee this afternoon, but the Minister has failed to give a full response or to acknowledge any of the points that have been made. His subsection refers to a Speaker’s “certificate under this section”, which is very unspecific. At least the amendment states

“Any certificate of the Speaker of the House of Commons given under this section shall be conclusive for all purposes”.

That word “any” and the reference to the Speaker make it clear that whatever the Speaker issues is uncontested, rather than leave it open to the courts to determine whether the certificate presented by the Speaker complies with the legislation. I am afraid that the Minister has not satisfied me and I do not think that he has satisfied a great many of my colleagues on the Government Benches or in the official Opposition. I want to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee proceeded to a Division.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Evans. At lunchtime today I was sitting in the Terrace cafeteria and, for the second time in a fortnight, I was unable to hear the Division bells at all. There was nothing to indicate that a vote was taking place. Can you facilitate Members’ ability to vote if they are sitting in that area, perhaps by asking the Badge Messengers to inform them that a vote is taking place while the problem is sorted out?

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for that point of order. I must say that I have taken a number of points of order in a similar vein since taking the Chair on 8 June, and this is clearly worrying for Members as well as irritating for the Chair. I will instruct that the matter be fully investigated, not just in the area that the hon. Lady has spoken about, but throughout the parliamentary estate. Clearly, it could affect the outcome of a vote. In the short term, I ask that, every time there is a Division today, a messenger goes particularly to that part of the House to ensure that Members are made aware that a Division is taking place.