My Lords, I think that we have had a slightly longer and more interesting discussion on this than we anticipated at the start. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, made a very valid point, not least because we have spoken a lot tonight about the normal conventions and practices of parliamentary politics. It remains to be seen whether the actions of this Government and this Prime Minister, in ignoring so many of them, will become the norm or whether, once he has gone, whenever that might be—it might be sooner than he anticipates—we will return to the normal way of abiding by the conventions.
I wonder whether the Cabinet Manual will be amended to say what happens or what should happen. I was amused earlier today when I read the section on the principles of collective Cabinet government. Paragraph 4.2 says:
“The Cabinet system of government is based on the principle of collective responsibility. All government ministers are bound by the collective decisions of Cabinet”,
which seems a remote concept at the moment, but perhaps we will return to those days as well.
Even though it is not within the power of Parliament to say that these documents should be updated, as with the Ministerial Code—the introduction to which now seems so dated and irrelevant in many ways because what is referred to in it has largely passed—there should be this regular updating. If we are to have a dynamic Parliament and a dynamic constitution, we need to update as appropriate.