Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, my amendment to the new clause tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and his very distinguished co-signatories would delete subsections (3) and (4) of his new clause, which require the Speaker to issue a certificate and assert that the Speaker’s certificate shall be conclusive. I have three grounds for proposing to the Committee that we should delete these provisions. There is the difficulty of defining a vote of confidence or of no confidence. The noble Lords’ new clause goes some way to achieving this but I do not think that it is the whole story. Notwithstanding the reassurance that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just offered, I believe that there is a risk to the Speaker that he would be placed in a damagingly contentious role. There is the risk of intrusion by the courts into parliamentary proceedings, which we debated very fully on Amendment 42, and I do not propose to say any more about that in this debate. I do question the wisdom of the attempt, made with the very best of intentions by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and his co-signatories, to specify and define in this new clause the varieties of no confidence vote that there could be. I fear that the more we try to write down the constitution, the more specific and detailed we need to be. We shall be chasing our own tails in more and more circles, yet the task is impossible to accomplish. I do think that the new clause is an improvement on what the Government have provided in Clause 2. The Government’s Clause 2 is vague. It appears to elide a no-confidence motion with a confidence motion. My noble friend Lady Jay asked Mr Mark Harper, when he was before the Select Committee, whether votes in various circumstances could be confidence or no-confidence votes. The Minister replied: "““I think the intention is that the Bill would encompass those examples””." Yet the Government’s drafting does not make it clear, for example, whether a defeat on a motion or an issue of confidence would count as a vote of no confidence. The conventional no-confidence vote is entirely obvious. It is what it says on the tin: "““That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government””." No problem would arise with that variety of no-confidence vote, but after that it gets harder. There is an excellent note on confidence motions and votes provided by the House of Commons Library, which I commend to everybody. It says that, "““despite their central importance, there is no certainty about the rules on the form and applicability of confidence motions in the UK Parliament, as it is established by convention rather than by statute or standing order of the House””." The note goes on: "““Broadly speaking there are three main types of motion which act as tests of the House of Commons’ confidence in the Government: ‘confidence motions’ initiated by the Government; ‘no confidence motions’ initiated by the Opposition; and other motions where because of the particular circumstances can be regarded as motions of censure or confidence … There is no standard formulation for confidence motions””." Apart from motions of confidence and of no confidence, there are, "““Other motions put down by the Government or the Opposition treated by the Government (whether expressly declared as such or not) as, or because of the particular circumstances can be regarded as, motions of censure or confidence””." Examples of all the motions and votes of confidence that have taken place over a long period—the whole of the 20th century, I think—are described in that brief. There were, for example, substantive motions of no confidence during the Suez crisis. On 1 November 1956 the Prime Minister, Mr Eden, spoke but the leader of the Opposition, Mr Gaitskell, did not, so you cannot necessarily define a motion of no confidence in the terms that the party leaders speak on it. In the debate on 5 and 6 December of that year, Mr Gaitskell spoke but Mr Eden did not—admittedly, because he was ill and unable to do so. On a much earlier occasion, there was a motion in 1895 to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State for War which led, after a short delay, to the resignation of the Rosebery Government. There have also been motions to adjourn. On 11 March 1976, following the defeat of the Government on its public expenditure White Paper Mr Wilson, the Prime Minister, did not take defeat on that matter of central importance to the Government’s programme as a vote of no confidence. He used a vote on the adjournment the next day as a device to avert his resignation and during the course of that Parliament of October 1974 to 1979 Mr Wilson, in very specific terms, narrowed the interpretation of confidence motions. He advised the House that the Government would only regard a motion as a confidence motion if every Member was aware in advance of the vote that that was its status. It was as well for him and the Labour Government that they did, because they were defeated 17 times in the short 1974 Parliament and 42 times in the October 1974 to 1979 Parliament. Practice has evolved and there is not a set orthodoxy in these matters. Previously, historic Governments accepted defeats on major policy items as votes of no confidence. Yet how assured can we now be when it is now the case that only votes specifically stated by the Government to be matters of confidence or by the Opposition to be matters of no confidence count? I think that is the latter-day view. The Clerk of the House of Commons, giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, said: "““I think that what is a confidence motion—other than the very straightforward one, ‘There is no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government’—is an ambiguous matter””." Would not votes on intensely controversial issues such as tuition fees and going to war now be widely regarded by the public as confidence votes, and perhaps the more so with coalitions? The tendency in our politics appears to be that we shall have more coalitions because of the declining proportion of the vote for the major parties. Certainly, if we get the alternative vote, it seems likely that we will have more coalitions and more minority Governments. At the same time, we are very properly encouraging increased public engagement with and accountability of Parliament. Petitions submitted by members of the public may in certain circumstances now be debated in Parliament in a way that they never were before. The Government are about to introduce legislation to provide for the recall of Members of Parliament. In these new developing political and constitutional circumstances, can we not expect that the public will take a very much closer interest and that they will not necessarily be content to leave it to the party leaders or the traditional authorities to define a confidence motion? In these much more confused circumstances that I think we can reasonably anticipate, is it fair and sensible to legislate to require the Speaker to adjudicate on whether a particular vote will be, is or has been a vote of no confidence or, indeed, of confidence?