Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, I tabled an amendment in exactly the same terms as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. As he is your Lordships’ leading constitutional expert, I felt very good that I had arrived at the same idea, and I am extremely happy to appear on the Marshalled List as having signed up to his amendment. The provision is so vaguely drafted as to be almost entirely without meaning. I know that it is borrowed from the Parliament Act 1911 but that does not mean that it is an appropriate precedent, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has just pointed out. In that Act, there is a clear definition of a money Bill, but there is no clear definition of a no confidence motion in this measure. The Clerk of the House of Commons, in giving evidence to the Select Committee in the other place, was of the opinion that the question of whether consultation was practicable would become a legal question. It would be open to legal challenge in so far as anything in the Bill is liable to be open to legal challenge. We had a full discussion of that in an earlier debate. One observes that judicial reviews have been upheld again and again against the Government on the grounds that Governments had failed to consult properly. If it is a question of whether the Speaker may or may not have consulted properly according to the requirements in the Bill, I suppose that that, if anything, might give an opening to judicial intervention, although I am not seriously afraid that that is the case. The real concern about this provision is that it is almost meaningless. What does ““so far as practicable”” mean? What would be proper consultation in these circumstances? The requirement to consult does not oblige the Speaker to agree with the Deputies. The Deputies themselves might disagree. In fact, one might surmise that they are rather likely to disagree in the circumstance of a no confidence vote that will occur in the most fraught and complex political circumstances. There will be enormous pressure not only on the Speaker of the House but also on the Deputy Speakers if they are to be involved formally in this process. The Deputy Speakers have disclaimed their party allegiance in their new capacities but, none the less, it is only realistic to anticipate that they would come under immense political pressure from members of their own political parties. They would need to be very sturdy to ignore all that. In the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, described how they would imagine the atmosphere to be in the House on the occasion of a no confidence vote. They gave us to understand something of the sort of pressures that would be brought to bear not only on the Speaker but, if this provision remains in the Bill, on the Deputy Speakers, too. In the end, the Speaker will be on his own. It seems that this provision gives him no useful cover or protection against the political storm. A very sensible conclusion of the Constitution Committee, contained in its report at paragraph 159, was that, whether or not this turns out to be a legal question, an obligation on the Speaker to consult with the Deputy Speakers should be a matter of internal House of Commons procedure, should not be contained within the statutory provisions of the Bill and therefore should be omitted. Rather regrettably, the Government rejected this advice in their response to the report of the Constitution Committee at paragraph 60. The Government are quite keen to pray the Constitution Committee’s recommendations in aid when they agree with them. They have not done so on this occasion, however. They cite the precedent of the Parliament Act 1911, which, they say, has worked well. As we suggest, it is not a terribly useful precedent; certifying a money Bill is a matter of ascertaining fact and hardly contentious. Certifying a vote of no confidence would be a very different thing. I hope that the Minister will agree to look again at this sensible recommendation of the Constitution Committee and that he will agree to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and myself.