I would like to make a bit more progress.
I put on the record my thanks to Professor Meg Russell and Professor Robert Hazell for their evidence to the Joint Committee, which I have found very useful, as well as for their informative podcast, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was a feature.
The arguments that I have heard for leaving Dissolution in the hands of Parliament have convinced me that it would be the easiest way to keep the courts out of these decisions. Clause 3 will be a topic of quite heated debate. It is impossible to imagine the crack through which the courts could intervene had a House of Commons decision to trigger a statutory power of Dissolution been recorded. If the Government adopted that approach, we could remove the ouster clause, which would then be self-defeating in its current terms.
As long as Prorogation continues as a prerogative power, one way to avoid Parliament being prorogued against its will would be to make the prerogative power exercisable at the request of Parliament, rather than on the advice of the Prime Minister. An alternative would be to abolish the prerogative power and put Prorogation on the same footing as the power of Adjournment, thereby enabling Parliament to be prorogued when the House of Commons passes a motion to that effect.
Ultimately, I believe that Dissolution should remain in the hands of Parliament, not the Executive. The Bill is very much about the question of where power lies. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was problematic and there are certainly aspects of it that I will be quite happy to see the back of, but the principle of having fixed terms is not in itself necessarily a bad thing—indeed, it puts us on a level footing with many other western democracies and progressive democracies around the world, and in line with our own Parliaments here in the United Kingdom.
Prorogation should be in the hands of Parliament, not the Executive, so I urge all colleagues, as this Second Reading debate continues, to consider where power should lie and how checks on that power can be put in place. If indeed we are to place power in the hands of people, I argue that the situation is far stronger if that power lies in the hands of the elected representatives in this House, rather than in the hands of one Prime Minister.
3.37 pm