Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I choose my words carefully and refer solely to national legislatures. If we are to have two mechanisms for triggering an election, then we could usefully explore the alternatives to what it proposed. Do we need the subsection at all? In evidence to the Constitution Committee, David Howarth noted that if there is all-party agreement that a situation has arisen necessitating an early election, then it would be relatively straightforward to pass an amending Bill. If the measure was introduced for political advantage then this would, he argued, deny the measure the necessary broad support and it would make slow progress in the Lords. Adopting such an approach would avoid the problems associated with the artificial hurdle created by the subsection. My view is that the most appropriate way to proceed, if we wish to remove the Prime Minister’s discretion as to when an election is to be held, is to provide that an early election is possible only if the House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence in the Government or if the Government resign and there is no prospect of another Government being formed. My amendments 35 and 38 seek to achieve that and I shall develop the arguments for those shortly. They overcome the problem I have identified with the Bill in respect of the Government resigning without having been defeated on a vote of confidence. I know that the principal argument for this provision is that it is in the coalition agreement. The problem with that assertion is that the provision is not in the coalition agreement. The agreement said that a binding Motion would be introduced in the House of Commons and a Bill brought forward providing for a Dissolution Motion to be passed if 55 per cent of MPs voted for it. In the event, there has been no binding Motion and the extraordinary majority to pass a Dissolution Motion is now two-thirds of all MPs. We know from David Laws’s book, 22 Days in May, which has already been quite extensively quoted from, that the figure of 55 per cent was the product of political calculation. It is a threshold utilised by no other national legislature. Given that, the case for the subsection must rest on more than its inclusion in the coalition agreement. I am not convinced that the case for it relative to the alternatives is compelling. I beg to move.