Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Tristram Hunt and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, Mr Hoyle. I am sorry, but the right hon. Member for Blackburn, who is a former Home Secretary and holder of many other important national offices, drew me down that road of speculation.

To sum up, the Government have a motive to cover either outcome of the AV referendum. It suits both parties in the coalition to prevent an early general election, which is why they want a fixed-term Parliament—they want to assure themselves of a longer period in office. I say only this: good luck to them, but they should not expect me to vote for the Bill tonight.

[Tristram Hunt]

I wish to speak to amendments 33 and 34. Even though I, too, am a member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, I did not put my name to them. As the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) suggested, they allow us to pursue the idea of exclusive cognisance, and of this place having control of its powers rather than being opened up to external powers, particularly the possibility of the courts intervening in the parliamentary process.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, the Clerk of the House has repeatedly warned Members that the provisions of the Bill

“impinge upon Parliamentary privilege and…may bring the Courts and Parliament into conflict”,

and yet the Government seem unwilling to heed any such advice. When the Clerk of House appeared before the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, with his usual subtlety and modesty, and we tried to press him on whether he had been consulted on the developments behind the Bill, he rather averred in his answer. The Government consider that

“this Bill would cause no such rebalancing and that the Bill will not in any way open up parliamentary proceedings to the jurisdiction of the courts.”

That is an idea that the amendments are beginning to tease out. In their reply to our Committee, the Government also said that insufficient time for pre-legislative scrutiny is a

“natural consequence of legislating at the beginning of the first term”.

I am a new Member in this place, but I do not regard that as a sufficient excuse for some of the lacunae that we have seen opening up in the course of our scrutiny of this legislation.