Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, this has been a powerful short debate. My noble friend Lord Howarth introduced the debate moderately and marshalled the material effectively. The speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin, would make any Government stop in their tracks in relation to certification and the Speaker. It is important to identify that two separate points are being made. First, no one engaged in the discussion of the Bill wants the courts to have anything whatever to do with challenging what goes on in Parliament. I speak only from the point of view of the courts, not from the point of the view of the Commons. For all the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, the courts would run a mile from giving any determination in relation to this. They would do so for legal reasons: first, this is a proceeding in Parliament and therefore protected by the Bill of Rights; secondly, it specifically involves a certificate given by the Speaker of the House of Commons as to a proceeding in the House of Commons; and, thirdly, the Bill states: "““A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes””." As a matter of legal drafting, it is clear that the draftsman is trying to keep out the courts as much as possible. Equally, for all the reasons given by the two impressive ex-Speakers, the courts do not want to be in a position where they have to say, ““We know you all think there is about to be an election, but Mr Justice X has just said that there is not going to be an election””. Can you imagine the situation if a Speaker of the House of Commons had said, ““I know you all think that a vote on whether or not we should go to war in Iraq is a vote of no confidence, but I have decided that it is not. Therefore, even if the vote is defeated in the House of Commons, there will be no resignation of the Prime Minister and there will be no general election””. I leave it to the House to seek the views of the two ex-Speakers as to what effect on Parliament that would have. I was struck by the evidence of Mr Harper in comparison with what the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, have said. They have given graphically their opinion of what it would be like to make these decisions. However, the chairman of the Select Committee asked Mr Harper: "““But it would presumably put pressure on the Speaker if, let us say, he did not make an announcement in advance””." Mr Harper replied: "““I think the Speaker would want to make sure that the House was clear about the nature of the debate and the vote attached to it. I am not sure that it would put pressure on him; I think there would be an expectation that he would set out clearly the nature of the debate and vote that was to take place, the consequences of the vote and what he would do as a result, so that people were clear about it. I think there would be an expectation that that is what would happen … I don’t think it’s asking the Speaker to make decisions beyond those he should make if there is an expectation. If there is a convention that certain kinds of votes, like votes on the Address, are treated as confidence votes and are treated as those by the government, for the Speaker to make that explicit, effectively, it is a convention that exists and he is simply going to be setting out the consequences of that convention. He is not really creating any new rules. He is just making it more explicit about the effect of existing conventions that are already in place”” ." That was Mr Mark Harper, the Minister of State—