Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I beg to move, That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments 1, 2 and 9 but proposes the following amendment to the Bill in lieu of those amendments:— (a) Page 3, line 23, at end insert—"'(4) The Prime Minister must make arrangements—""(a) for a committee to carry out a review of the operation of this Act and, if appropriate in consequence of its findings, to make recommendations for the repeal or amendment of this Act, and""(b) for the publication of the committee's findings and recommendations (if any).""(5) A majority of the members of the committee are to be members of the House of Commons.""(6) Arrangements under subsection (4)(a) are to be made no earlier than 1 June 2020 and no later than 30 November 2020.'." The Government have been prepared, both in this House and the other place, to consider and support amendments that improve the provisions of the Bill. That is the normal process for refining and agreeing legislation. However—again, quite normally—we have consistently opposed amendments that would wreck the Bill. Members of this House and those in the other place have had a chance to debate the Bill at length, and one issue remains outstanding: whether or not there should be a sunset clause. Some have called it as a sunrise clause, and it was referred to in the other place as a Lazarus clause. We have discussed Lord Pannick's amendments—which inserted the sunset clause—before, and they were roundly defeated by 312 votes to 243, because they offended against the principle of the Bill: that parliamentary terms should be of a fixed length, and that the legislation should apply to each Parliament in the normal way unless repealed through the normal considered legislative process. The Bill as we would have it rightly does not attempt to entrench parliamentary terms. If a future Parliament wishes to move away from fixed terms, it may of course do so by either amending or repealing the legislation. We have, however, maintained consistently that a constitutional change such as a move towards or away from fixed-term Parliaments is not a small matter, and that it should be subject to the full scrutiny of Parliament, as this Bill has indeed been. In contrast, the sunset amendments passed by their lordships would switch fixed terms on and off like a light switch, defaulting to non-fixed terms if a simple resolution failed to be tabled or, if it is passed, to ““sunrise”” provisions for fixed terms. In our view, it is clearly not appropriate for constitutional legislation to be applied or disapplied simply as a result of a resolution, and such changes should be made only following the normal legislative process. That view appears to be shared by the Lords Constitution Committee, whatever its misgivings about the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny for first-Session Bills. Its recent report on the process of constitutional change emphasises the need for proper scrutiny of such constitutional changes. A particularly relevant paragraph states:"““We believe that both government and Parliament should recognise the need for constraints on the process of constitutional change so that a situation whereby the government is effectively able to change the constitution at will may be avoided.””"