Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Like the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), I shall speak in support of amendments 6 and 23, which are both attempts to earth the Bill against some of the dangerous shocks that could be created for the House in the future. To make some of my points, I will have to refer to what the Minister said about the previous group of amendments. In the debate on the previous group, the Minister said that he could think of no circumstances in which a debate on a motion of no confidence would take place without the House knowing that it was a motion of no confidence, even though the Bill requires the Speaker to issue a certificate only after a period of 14 days has elapsed—it does not specify how long after. That creates a situation that we all have to consider before we even go into the danger of what will happen when the matter goes to the courts. Let us first look at the difficulties and controversies that will be created in this House. If a motion of no confidence can be played like a wild joker, and any motion can be converted into one, then whenever there is a controversial issue or one involving Opposition or rebel tactics, the Speaker will be asked early in a debate, ““Will you signal whether you would be minded to say that this debate is certifiable? Will you declare that we are going through a potentially certifiable chain of political and constitutional events?”” Of course, the Speaker might wish to say, ““You are trying to draw me into a matter of controversy””, because he might not be privy to what Whips are saying to Members about the significance of a particular motion. What would happen if the Speaker said that a motion was not certifiable, and the Prime Minister subsequently decided that the nature, colour and content of the debate meant that it had been a motion of no confidence in him rather than in the Government, as in the example of the 1940 debate mentioned by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills? Somebody could announce from the Dispatch Box, on either the Opposition or Government side of the House, that as far as they were concerned, there had been a motion of no confidence. Would that mean that the Speaker's ruling was somehow removed or overturned? If anybody wanted to contest in court either the issuing of a certificate or the failure to issue one, that sequence of events involving the Speaker and Front Benchers could become relevant. It could become a matter of contest and controversy being presented in court. Even short of the matter getting to the courts, we are already potentially compromising the Speaker. He will constantly be hostage to inquiries as to whether a particular motion could be treated as a motion of no confidence, and his ruling could at any time be upstaged from the Treasury Bench.