Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I have a sense that we will probably not persuade the hon. Gentleman here and now, although I have eternal optimism that we will persuade him of everything in due course. Let me move on to the solution proposed by the hon. Member for Rhondda, which, to my mind, is as flawed—though also as ingenious—as his analysis of what he sees as the problems with the Bill. His solution is that this House, and exclusively this House, would have the power to prorogue. I believe that the House would adopt a resolution and the Speaker would then prorogue Parliament. The problem is another circumstance that the Opposition parties have talked about. When a Prime Minister with a rather small majority in this House feels, in the middle of a five-year term, that everything is going frightfully well, they might cynically decide to engineer a vote of no confidence that they would then instruct their Members to vote for in order to bring the House down, to prorogue and, more importantly, to have a further election. I have heard in earlier discussions that that vexes and worries Opposition Members and the hon. Member for Rhondda. Surely, his solution would fall prey to that ruse far more than happens under the current circumstances, when only the monarch can prorogue Parliament. If a Prime Minister who felt that everything was going frightfully well and that if he had a quick election he could get a better majority could engineer a vote of no confidence by getting his troops to support it, surely he could engineer a resolution of the House to prorogue just as cynically, wilfully and arbitrarily. Does not the hon. Gentleman's proposal move the power of prorogation, which currently sits in that special, rather hallowed constitutional place of being one of the few things that the sovereign does, on to the Floor of this House where it will become subject to all the machinations and swirls of this place and of ambitious Prime Ministers trying to secure a better majority?