William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Cabinet Office
(14 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Prime Minister
Let me make a little more progress.
Although I understand that some hon. Members have expressed unease at the speed with which we are advancing, let us remember that we are not starting from square one. People have been debating the length of Parliaments since the 17th century and all the parties now agree on the principle of fixed terms.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
In advancing his rather remarkable theory about improving the powers of Parliament, can the Deputy Prime Minister give an assurance—indeed a guarantee—that in order to ensure that Parliament as a whole could properly make a decision on any such motion, there would be a guaranteed free vote on it?
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.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I shall finish what I am saying about this detailed and involved point.
During that case, the House of Lords reiterated that courts cannot interfere in those proceedings, so far from leading us to believe that courts may intervene under the provisions of the Bill—
The Deputy Prime Minister
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that I have merely referred in passing to a court case, which, as I said, confirms that courts will not involve themselves in internal parliamentary proceedings.
The Bill explicitly confirms that the Speaker’s certificate
“is conclusive for all purposes.”
So the decision is for the Speaker, not the courts or the Executive.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Not yet, as I suspect the hon. Gentleman might want to raise the point that I am about to mention.
It is also a power that falls totally outside the remit of the European courts. On that note, I give way.
Mr Cash
It was not that point at all. I assure the Deputy Prime Minister that I am very much more concerned about our domestic arrangements in this House in this respect.
The Clerk of the House, a very distinguished expert and our pre-eminent expert in the House on matters of procedure, was quite clear in his evidence. Does the Deputy Prime Minister not find it, to say the least, a little curious—even bizarre—that he should be using this opportunity to repudiate the views of the Clerk of the House of Commons about a matter of vital constitutional importance, without our having had the opportunity to see the counter-evidence? In addition, does doing that in this way not undermine the integrity and standing of the Clerk of the House?
The Deputy Prime Minister
First, it is worth acknowledging, as the Chair of the Committee would do, that many other distinguished experts and academics in this field explicitly demurred from the analysis provided by the Clerk when the evidence was provided to the Committee recently. Secondly, the Clerk’s memorandum was provided to the Committee and it is therefore available to everyone in the House to examine for themselves. Thirdly, we have today placed in the Library of the House a letter from the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, that sets out in detail our reasoned views. I do not think that this is a question of scientific doctrine. It is a matter of some significant judgment, and our judgment, based on important precedent, is that there is nothing in the Bill that will invite the courts to intervene in the internal proceedings of the House.
Mr Cash
This is a very important constitutional question. The Deputy Prime Minister has just implied that there could well be a dispute. The letter—which I have not yet had an opportunity to see—itself disputes the view of the Clerk of the House. Will the Deputy Prime Minister not concede that this matter could well be referred to the courts, even if he and his Government take the view that it could not, and that their view does not preclude the courts from intervening in certain circumstances? This is his view, and the view of the letter writer, but it is not necessarily the view of the courts.
The Deputy Prime Minister
As I have said, it is not only our view in the Government; it is also the view of a number of very distinguished constitutional experts who gave evidence to the Committee on this very point just a short while ago. As I was seeking to point out, we have looked at the court case on the Hunting Act 2005 specifically cited in the memorandum from the Clerk, and found that it arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion.
Mr Straw
No, and that is the point. The courts will decline to entertain arguments, and actions, about what happens in the House, because they are banned from doing so; their job is to interpret legislation. The Government are inherently more vulnerable—I do not say that I share the view of the Clerk that they are very vulnerable—because they can get past the first base.
Mr Cash
As the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, I was very active on questions about the privileges of the House in relation to the Bill he just mentioned. Just now, the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee implied that the views of the Clerk had effectively been overridden by the views of other experts. I have looked carefully at the evidence, and it is clear that the Clerk gave his view on 7 September whereas the main evidence, from all the other experts, was given on 21 August; in other words, the Clerk of the House of Commons—a distinguished expert and very knowledgeable about the House—gave his evidence in the light of the evidence that had already been given, save only for the oral evidence given by Professor Blackburn. The Committee did not ask Professor Blackburn specifically whether he repudiated the views of the Clerk of the House, so it seems to me—I hope the right hon. Gentleman agrees—that the matter remains very open and that both the Clerk and Professor Blackburn agree that there should have been a draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. In those circumstances, the evidence is overwhelming that the scrutiny should be properly done.
Mr Straw
On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, it would have been difficult for me not to notice that he had taken an interest in privilege in relation to the Parliamentary Standards Bill, as he was scarcely ever not on his feet complaining about something or other that I was doing from the Treasury Bench. The Clerk was absolutely right to raise the issue and in the end we got through it. We were genuinely up against the clock with that measure, because the leaders of all three main parties had agreed both a timetable and broad outline contents.
In this case, I am not coming down on one side or the other, but the issue is sufficiently worrying that we need to take our time.
Mr Cox
I will in a moment, if I may.
So again I say to the House, it is not simply a done deal. It is not an open-and-shut argument that fixed-term Parliaments are a good thing. The flexibility of our constitution, the ability of the Prime Minister to seek a Dissolution, is not always a bad thing; it can be a good thing. True it is that in recent times Prime Ministers have tended to abuse it. True it is that in recent experience they have perhaps lessened the dignity of their office by declaring elections in schools and by dithering over the timing of a general election. But that does not mean that we ought not to consider carefully a fundamental change to a fixed-term parliament. My plea today is that we do not regard this as simply a subordinate consideration. The way in which this has been introduced and the lightness with which the House is being expected to deal with this critical question troubles me.
In my submission, the existence of the Queen’s right to dissolve is in some circumstances very important. That may be why in Canada the prerogative of the Queen was preserved. Although they introduced a fixed-term parliament, the Canadians decided to retain the prerogative of the Queen to dissolve Parliament. We should think long and hard before we make a change of this kind. The role of the monarch is an important one and it is not one that we should simply discard.
I have a number of other observations about the Bill. I am troubled about the length—five years. That means that it postpones for five years, in perpetuity hereafter, the ability of the people of this country to pass their opinion upon the performance of a Government. That is potentially too long. The people of this country, who have had no opportunity to be consulted on this issue, are entitled to be consulted in greater depth than we have done hitherto, through the processes that this House has for the taking of evidence and through the ordinary channels of political communication.
I am troubled about the imprecision in what is intended in clause 2 as regards a motion of no confidence. Perhaps this can be tackled in Committee. The provisions seem to give rise to the realistic prospect that the courts may be tempted to invade on these matters. Let me say a few words about privilege. I agree with the right hon. Member for Blackburn that it is probably unlikely that the courts would wish to intrude on a matter so pivotal to the workings of Parliament as the Speaker certifying that there was a requisite majority under clause 2, but we cannot rule it out. As the Clerk of the Parliament has said, once we inscribe in statute, the courts are automatically engaged. It is their constitutional function to interpret a statute, and I cannot think of a single instance where the courts have declined to entertain an arguable interpretation in an arguable case.
It is true that the courts may say, after deliberation, and after appeal upon appeal, eventually in the Supreme Court, that they have declined to consider whether the certificate issued by the Speaker is indeed a valid certificate. However, this House has tried, on many occasions, to devise so-called ouster clauses seeking to foreclose the jurisdiction of the court on a judicial review, and I cannot think of a single case in which those clauses have prevented the court from saying, “Okay, we will get involved only in certain limited circumstances, but where it is, for example, a question of the precondition for the exercise of the discretion, we will get involved.” The Clerk gave a very good example when he pointed out that although clause 2 says that a certificate shall be “conclusive for all purposes”, that does not, in theory, prevent the court from inquiring into whether it is a certificate at all.
The courts have adopted precisely that analysis in the case of two or three statutes where the House has sought to exclude the jurisdiction of the courts and they have said, “No, it is our duty to scrutinise and to interpret the meaning of a statute, and where it is a question of whether the essential, fundamental preconditions are met for the exercise of a discretion, we will see whether they have been met.” It would be an act of voluntary self-restraint by the courts to deny themselves the jurisdiction to examine the statute to see whether the Speaker had complied. It is likely that they would exercise that voluntary self-restraint, but one cannot exclude the possibility that as time goes on—
Mr Cash
I am following my hon. and learned Friend’s arguments with great interest. In the Parliament Acts, the expression about whether the provision is conclusive for all purposes is reinforced by the words,
“and shall not be questioned in any court of law”.
It is curious that those words are omitted from this Bill given that would provide an additional safeguard and put the courts even more on notice that Parliament had instructed them not to question any provision in any court of law.
Mr Cox
I take my hon. Friend’s point. However, in my experience of judicial review proceedings, no form of language has been completely successful in ousting the court’s examination of a statute. This is a well-known phenomenon in administrative law. The House has, on several occasions, tried its very best, through expressions of the character that he mentions, to oust the jurisdiction of the courts, but the courts have said no. In this case, the Bill says that a certificate shall be “conclusive for all purposes”, but the courts would be likely to say, “That means ‘a valid certificate will be conclusive for all purposes’, and we are entitled to consider whether this is a valid certificate.” It would be an act of purely voluntary self-restraint if the court said, “In these circumstances we will treat this statute as non-justiciable.” I can think of no examples of where the courts have yet done that. Certainly, they have held certain things to be non-justiciable, but usually because the duty is vague and the expression of the statute is more aspirational than definitive. In this case, it is clear what conditions are set out for the Speaker to pass a valid certificate for the purposes of an early election.
In my judgment, it is not possible to rule out the courts’ involvement. If that is right, we should pause. I say this to the Minister: please let us think long and hard about further consideration of this Bill, because it smacks of undue and undignified haste. I have spoken about the duration of the Parliament, and the monarch’s integral and pivotal role in deciding on either declining a Dissolution, agreeing to a Dissolution or insisting on a Dissolution is vital. The Bill’s imprecision on the nature of a no-confidence motion is vital. Why should we not pause in relation to fixed-term Parliaments? Why do we have to make law for the long-term future? It is regrettable, and I have great trouble with this Bill, as I did with last week’s Bill about the alternative vote referendum.
As an Opposition, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives frequently criticised the then Administration for piecemeal, incoherent and fragmentary reform in constitutional affairs. Why are we repeating that error? We should be taking a long-term, coherent view of our constitution. How can it be right that we decide the electoral cycle of this House not in conjunction with a consideration of what a reformed Second Chamber would look like? How can it be right that we decide the electoral system of this House not in conjunction with the electoral system that we shall use for the Second Chamber? That would be joined-up, mature and wise constitutional law-making; this looks like something very different. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that it is embarrassing to be on these Benches having to listen to a Bill of this kind being put forward in such a way. I had hoped for better from this Government.
Mr Allen
As I would expect, my right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. As we have heard today, many people support the principle of what the Government are saying. Why lose friends by rushing the process? Why not get better law by going steadily? I am sure that colleagues know that democratic change has been dear to my heart for many years. Above all, why not build a consensus in the House for the change once it has been gone through carefully and after everyone in the House feels that they have been able to be involved—rather than everyone in the House feeling that they have been cheated and that the process has been abusive to them as Members of Parliament? I shall return to that issue a little later.
This is a Second Reading debate, so we are talking about the big principles. The big principle is whether we should have a fixed-term Parliament. I speak personally and strongly in saying that such a Parliament is certainly needed; many of us have campaigned for one for many years. I think that it will become a steady, fixed aspect of what we do in this country. To quote the report,
“our expectation is that future Parliaments would run for their full fixed term, and that this will become an unremarkable aspect of our modern democracy.”
That is how most western democracies operate, and they take it in their stride. That is just how things are. They have a set, fixed system and do not get terribly excited for two or three years about whether there will be a general election. They know perfectly well when their legislature and Executive are going to be elected. The process is not all covered in mysticism, judicial archaeology and obscure Standing Orders; it is there for people to see, with every elector owning their democracy.
It was said that nobody writes to hon. Members about fixed-term Parliaments. People do not; but they do speak to all of us on the doorsteps about how they feel about politics. They feel that politics is not working and does not deliver for them. Our role is to take that general sentiment—albeit not expressed in favour of this or that clause in a particular Bill—that we must restore politics to people. That is one of the key principles underlying the idea of a fixed-term Parliament.
I have got form on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) talked about the 1992 Labour party decision. I was fortunate enough to have drafted that document. That was nearly 20 years ago and there has been a lot of discussion since, but the House is finally getting the chance to decide on whether the people of our country should know when the next general election is going to be. That is a really important step forward.
Mr Cash
The hon. Gentleman is doing a great job with his Committee and I congratulate it on producing such a speedy report.
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the will of Parliament can easily be subjected to the will of the Whips? On a matter of great constitutional importance, it is perfectly clear that one of the main objectives would be to use the Whip system to get whatever result the respective members of the coalition Government wanted—at the expense of the people of this country, who vote for us?
Mr Allen
Indeed. One of the small matters of dispute that I have had with the hon. Gentleman over the years has been that somehow he feels that we can recreate some golden parliamentary age. This place is owned by the Executive and the alternative Executive; the hon. Gentleman, more than anybody, should know that. If he does not understand that, he falls into the same trap as the Clerk, who talked about the
“House’s mastery of its own proceedings”.
That is a myth and a self-deception. We must confront that issue. We imagine that somehow there are 650 individuals here creating our own rules, but the rules are created by the Executive.
The Bill seeks to put into law provisions for a fixed-term Parliament, rather than putting them only in Standing Orders, which can be changed at a moment’s notice. The 10 o’clock rule is suspended on a daily basis and Standing Orders are cast aside and suspended on a regular basis. To pretend that there is an atomised Parliament with 650 Members all exercising their consciences is a self-deception out of which, I hope, hon. Members throughout the House will educate themselves. In that way, we can take back some control for the House and strengthen Parliament, and people can elect us understanding that the House of Commons—the legislature —is different from the Executive, and should have its own independence and powers.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) led me down the road of the rebalancing of powers between the legislature and the Executive, and I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that this, for once, is the Executive actually giving away a power, for whatever reason. We can make our own judgments about the reason, but I welcome the change, because it helps to rebalance the power between the Executive and the legislature. If we seize this moment, we could use it to help to strengthen this institution rather than, as the hon. Member for Stone mentioned, just following the Whips. We could use this precedent to make sure that we can build up and strengthen our Parliament.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
We last debated this matter in the House on 16 May 2008. Contrary to what the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said earlier this evening, on that occasion the Conservative Opposition did not oppose the Bill. I know that because I was speaking for the Opposition on that day. We said the matter was worthy of exploration and discussion and that we did not oppose the principle of fixed-term Parliaments.
I am sorry to have to quote myself, but I have checked exactly what I said:
“A cross-party organisation called Fixed Term was set up in October 2007…and has published the results of a poll conducted in October 2007. It found that 25 per cent. of Conservative MPs, 41 per cent. of Labour MPs and 88 per cent. of Liberal Democrat MPs support fixed-term Parliaments. If anything was to convince me to be against any Bill it would be the fact that 88 per cent. of Liberal Democrats…are in favour of it.”—[Official Report, 16 May 2008; Vol. 475, c. 1714.]
Well, times change—[Interruption.] Don’t they just. I do not know what the percentages are today, but there are good reasons for the Bill and I am happy to support it. However, that does not mean I shall not criticise it.
When the Deputy Prime Minister introduced the proposals some months ago, he said that the Bill was intended to strengthen the power of the House. I do not believe that it does so. At the moment, the House can bring about Dissolution by a simple majority, but the Bill will require in most cases a two-thirds majority. I do not believe that the Bill takes power away from the Executive and gives it to the House. That does not mean the Bill is fatally flawed; it just means that we ought to look at what it really does and not pretend that it gives more power to Parliament.
I draw the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), to the concern we debated earlier and which was raised by the Clerk of the House before the Select Committee. I am honoured to be a member of the Committee and I endorse what its Chairman said earlier in the debate. Despite what the Deputy Prime Minister said earlier, it is possible that the Bill could bring about judicial review of events that occur and decisions that are taken in the House. I do not want to see that happen, not just as a matter of principle but because it disturbs the stability of the constitution and of the House. I sincerely hope that the Deputy Prime Minister and my hon. Friend have taken into consideration the concerns expressed by the House today and by the Select Committee and that we will return to these matters in Committee.
The evidence put before the House today is not conclusive. It is one legal opinion against another legal opinion, and the integrity of the House and what happens here should not be left in the balance between one legal opinion and another. I sincerely hope that the Minister will consider that point in Committee.
Mr Cash
Does my hon. Friend accept that it is possible that the very fact that the Clerk of the House of Commons has taken one view and that other lawyers have taken another view—albeit in a strange sequence—could be a reason why a court would be more than concerned to issue a judgment in its jurisdiction?
Mrs Laing
Yes. As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important legal point and we must not lose sight of it. We must remember that at one level we can have party political banter and House of Commons arguments, but at another level we must respect the stability of our constitution. It is not just a matter of legal opinion but of consulting the law properly. I am sure that what my hon. Friend has just said will be taken into consideration by Ministers.
We have to put the Bill in its true context. It is rare for me to find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell).
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate about the future of this place and our place in society. It is a pleasure to listen to so many speeches about various aspects of the Bill and to follow the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who spoke for eight minutes about aspects of the Bill, but by the end I could not understand many of the things that were praiseworthy about it.
The Bill, which is one of a series of major constitutional measures to be introduced by the Tory-Lib Dem Government, represents a short-term compromise to hold together two coalition partners, but with a long-term hangover, or a series of hangovers, as the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged today. Our constitutional settlement has emerged and endured. Over the generations, the wash of constitutional change has flowed over the rock that is Parliament, sometimes gently eroding and reshaping. At other times in violent squalls our settlement has been remodelled. The Bill, alongside the Bill that we discussed previously, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, places high explosives under that rock, and the Tory Government, propped up by Liberals, are perfectly happy to light the fuse. Perhaps there are legitimate arguments for doing so. Perhaps the Conservatives are true revolutionaries. I would like everyone’s voices to be heard first and to proceed by consensus.
The previous Government took the view that constitutional change reflects the fact that we are custodians of that consensus, not masters of it. In other words, they sought to proceed by consultation, even at the cost of measures such as House of Lords reform failing to go forward. The present Government are content fundamentally to redesign major aspects of our constitution with limited consultation and scrutiny, at a time when our constitution is evolving by convention as a result of events, and largely for their own short-term gain. That cannot be right.
I cannot support the Bill in its current form. Even if the case can be made for fixed-term Parliaments, safeguards in the Bill serve to take power from Parliament, rather than give it back to this body. Without a Green Paper, a White Paper, a draft Bill or pre-legislative scrutiny, we are being asked to agree a big practical change to the way that our Government and Parliament act. That cannot be right, either.
Gavin Shuker
I am happy to clarify that. If there is a Division on Second Reading, I will vote with my conscience. I do not believe that this is the right Bill and I shall explain why in more detail.
The Bill is the wrong prescription for a problem of the Government’s own making. If they were truly committed to giving power back to Parliament, they would give us a free vote on the length of the term. They would consult prior to the publication of the Bill. They would seek to bring the Opposition parties with them, but they have not done so.
As we heard earlier, when a five-year parliamentary term was introduced by the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, he believed that that would
“probably amount in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years”—[Official Report, 21 February 1911; Vol. 21, c. 1749.]
One hundred years on, I find no fault in his analysis and no credit in the Deputy Prime Minister’s interpretation of his words earlier today. I was tempted to intervene and point out that I had known H. H. Asquith, and that he was no H. H. Asquith.
If the Bill is passed in its current form, we will see four-year Parliaments, followed by one-year election campaigns. The mood of the British people is not for that. Most European countries have four-year cycles, and I believe that the disinterested consensus in the House would be for four years. Four years is surely better than five. Even so, I accept that under the amendment to be moved tonight, which would introduce a four-year term, the risk of a lame duck Parliament looms large. It is an inevitable cost of having a fixed term for our Parliament, and it deserves far greater discussion than it will receive today.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
This has been a fascinating five hours of debate, and I have learned a great deal. I have been vastly entertained, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), but I have to admit to being somewhat puzzled. I thought that I would hear the great champions of parliamentary privilege and parliamentary sovereignty—
Nick Boles
One of the great champions has not been called, but he has certainly intervened many times, and we have heard from other great champions, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I thought that I would hear them make an argument for giving Parliament even more control over matters as vital to our democracy as the timing of elections, but no. We have been given an object lesson in that great phrase “looking a gift horse in the mouth”.
I just wonder what would have happened to the Government if they had come to the House with a proposal to abolish elections altogether or to abolish the role of the Speaker in deciding whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be dragged here to answer an urgent question. Imagine what our reaction would have been then. I listen to the criticism that has been made—that the proposal is somehow fragmentary and piecemeal—and I ask myself whether those critics have any education in the history of our constitution at all. I am the least historically educated person I know, but I know that this country has only ever made change fragmentarily, in a piecemeal fashion and for naked partisan political interests. We even invented an entire new Church—the leader of the Church from which we separated ourselves is about to come to this country, and we welcome him very much—just to enable our sovereign to marry somebody whom he fancied rather more than his wife at the time.
That was just the starting point for a whole generation of constitutional change, so let us not deny the value of fragmentary and piecemeal constitutional change. Let us instead take advances when we get them, and if they are in the interest of the Government proposing them, let us be grateful for the fact that that interest is so well aligned with the interest of this House.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The Bill was not in the manifesto, and the Prime Minister effectively conceded the case against it some time ago. In addition, there has been no consultation whatever. As I have said, far from giving more power to Parliament, which I regard as a wholly disingenuous argument, it gives more power to the Whips. I love the Whips, but they do use their power to ensure the passage of legislation. I do not hold that against them—they have their job to do, and we have ours.
This issue is not just a matter for the coalition: there is a connection to many other legislative programmes, including the alternative vote Bill. In my judgment, despite the Liberal Democrats having reached a very low point in the polls, the Bill is largely for their benefit. On the constitutional questions that arise periodically of who governs the United Kingdom and how—whether it is on this issue, AV, or matters European—the Liberal Democrats are wagging the tail.
I endorse the concerns of the Clerk of the House, and I do not need to repeat my points on that. There should be pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills of this kind. The Bill is being brought in with precipitate haste and is fundamentally flawed. I also believe that Standing Orders would be able to deal with the issue. The idea that, on a whim, the House would reverse the Standing Orders is faintly ridiculous.
Lastly, it is fundamental that we govern ourselves in the House, because we are here on behalf of the people; it is their Parliament, not ours. If we want to subscribe to that principle, there is one simple solution: give us free votes and put it in the Standing Orders and/or in the Bill, that any legislation that contradicts the principles of the Bill should be endorsed by a free vote of the House. Will the Minister guarantee that there will be a free vote if there is any attempt to upset the arrangements of the Bill?
Mr Harper
As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said, in the last Parliament, when Conservative Members had the opportunity to discuss this matter, we did not vote against it. It is a very clear principle in the coalition agreement to have a fixed-term Parliament. All Members on the Opposition Benches—or at least in the main Opposition party—were elected on that principle. I am sure that they will support the Bill if there is a Division this evening.
The proposals this morning from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on the way we want to change the Sessions of this place to fit in with this Bill can, I am confident, be debated in Committee. We debated them a little earlier today and I think that the fact that the Chair allowed that debate to take place shows that they are in order and that we will be able to debate them in Committee.
Mr Harper
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to make some progress.
On the subject of the date and combination of the elections, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made it clear that the Government draw a distinction between the coincidence of the referendum next year and parliamentary or Assembly elections—a combination that we think is perfectly justifiable when there is a simple yes-no decision—and the coincidence of elections to different Parliaments or Assemblies. He accepted that such elections were more complex and made it very clear that the Government will engage and continue to engage with devolved Administrations.
Mr Harper
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can have it both ways. If I were to come out with specific proposals before we have discussed them in detail with representatives from the devolved Administrations and from those Assemblies and Parliaments, he would rightly criticise me for being high-handed. The Deputy Prime Minister has made it very clear that we want to solve this problem.
On the issue of not having consulted people in advance, however, I think it is right that, unlike what happened under the previous Government, proposals brought forward by the Government should be announced to this House first before they are discussed with others. That explains why we did not hold those discussions with others first.
On the issue of confidence and the mechanism for motions of confidence, a number of colleagues on both sides of the House seem to be a little confused about the present position. This Bill does not change the position in any way. The right hon. Member for Knowsley and my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) all appeared to confuse to some extent our proposals on confidence and on Dissolution. It is very clear that, on confidence, we are not changing the position at all. The Government must have a simple majority in this House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) worried about a change of Government without an election. That can happen now, so that is not a change. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) said that there was an automatic right for an election following the loss of a confidence vote. There is no such automatic right—that is a matter of judgment for Her Majesty the Queen.
Mr Cash
In the memorandum that my hon. Friend issued this afternoon, he effectively attacks the Clerk of the House when he says:
“Turning to the specific points raised by the memorandum: it contains a fundamental misunderstanding about the effect of the Bill on the rules and principles”,
and so on. Will he clarify something for me? On the jurisdiction of the courts, will he be good enough to spell out, as do the Parliament Acts, that none of the documents or procedures under the Bill should or could be questioned in any court of law? Will he bring forward an amendment to make sure that we get absolute symmetry between this Bill and article 9 of the Bill of Rights?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes some very good points, but I do not think I will be able to do them justice in the four and a bit minutes remaining to me. I have placed in the Library a memorandum responding to the Clerk’s points, which Members can look at. We will deal with these issues—I am confident that my hon. Friend will raise them—in Committee.