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865 Fixed-term Parliaments Bill 1 DECEMBER 2010 Fixed-term Parliaments Bill 866
Mr Robert Rogers, who made it absolutely clear that it
is possible to entrench a Standing Order of this House
with its own super-majority. I am astonished that the
Government do not understand that, and that the whole
basis of this Bill seems to rest once more on the denial
of advice given by the Clerks of the House.
Mr Harper: My hon. Friend cited in the letter from
Robert Rogers a reference to existing Standing Orders,
which require a particular majority for an event to take
place. I think he mentioned the requirement for
100 Members to vote for a closure motion. There is no
precedent for a Standing Order, passed by a simple
majority, to entrench itself and require that it cannot be
changed, other than by a vote of this House on a
different majority. The Government know of no precedent
for that, and no Member has given an example of one.
If a Standing Order provided that an early general
election could be held only after a vote with the specified
majority, and if that Standing Order could be changed
by a simple majority vote in the House, it would be
open to the governing party, at the behest of the Prime
Minister, to change the Standing Order and to trigger
an early election based on the whim of the Executive.
That is exactly what we are trying to remove under the
Bill. The Government believe that if the policy objective
is to be achieved, the procedure must be specified in
statute.
Mr Shepherd: If that is so—and I accept it as such—why
does it not apply to the statute itself?
Mr Harper: I think we have touched on that before.
Once the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, it cannot
be changed purely by a majority vote in the House of
Commons. The decision would have to be made by
Parliament, which would also engage the other place, in
which the Government do not have a majority. Even
after—[Interruption.] I anticipated that reaction. Even
after the appointment of the new list of working peers,
the governing parties together will have only 40% of the
peers in the upper House; 60% will be Labour peers,
Cross Benchers or Lords Spiritual. The fact that this
will be an Act of Parliament makes it impossible for a
majority vote of a governing party to bring about an
early general election, which is our policy objective.
Chris Bryant: The Minister is right in saying that the
main difference is that the matter would have to be dealt
with in the second Chamber. As I understand it, however,
the coalition agreement states clearly that the Government’s
aspiration is to create enough peers to meet the proportions
formed by each of the parties in the general election.
That would provide a majority of 56%—quite apart
from the fact that, as far as I can see, virtually every
remaining Liberal Democrat Member in the country
will be a member of the Second Chamber.
Mr Harper: I will not dwell on this issue at length,
Mr Evans, because if I did so you would rule me out of
order, but the coalition agreement does not say that. It
says that we want to make the upper House more
representative of the result in the general election, not
exactly in line with it. The hon. Gentleman simply is not
right.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram
Hunt) quoted from a judgment. I will not be drawn into
the specifics of the Chaytor case—although the Supreme
Court has given its judgment, there are ongoing criminal
trials—but the flaw in the hon. Gentleman’s argument
lies in the fact that the case concerns the administration
of the expenses scheme. The House of Commons has
never asserted exclusive cognisance of the expenses
scheme. It has never said that the scheme, its administration
and the matters that flow from it are parliamentary
proceedings, which is why that is not a good example.
Moreover, the Supreme Court’s judgment recognises
the exclusive right of each House of Parliament to
manage its own affairs without interference from the
other, or from outside Parliament.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North
Essex quoted the views of the Clerk of the House. If the
Government were alone in their view and the Clerk’s
views were shared by everyone else, my hon. Friend
would have a stronger case. The Political and Constitutional
Reform Committee and the Lords Constitution Committee
have taken a great deal of evidence, and the weight of
independent expert evidence has supported the
Government’s view. For example, Professor Robert
Blackburn of King’s college London said—and I think
that this is in line with the comments of my hon. and
learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West
Devon (Mr Cox)—
“In my view, the government’s Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill
has been technically well-drafted by the Cabinet Office’s parliamentary
counsel, particularly in avoiding judicial review of its provisions
on early elections by way of Speaker’s certificates”.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen),
the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform
Committee, said:
“In the very limited time that we had to look at this matter, the
Clerk was the only person to raise this question, and the academics
who have been referred to—Professor Hazell, Professor Blackburn
and others—completely disagreed with the view put forward by
the Clerk.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 632-3.]
Tristram Hunt: The point was that we did not have
enough time to hear other voices that might have agreed
with the Clerk of the House, owing to our having to
rush our consideration of the Bill and to the speed with
which the Government are pushing it through.
Mr Harper: That was also the experience of the
Lords Constitution Committee—and, in fact, we have
not been rushing the consideration of this Bill. We
published it in July, Second Reading was in September,
and this is the third day of the Committee stage, in
December. We are hardly rushing forward at an enormously
swift pace. Months have elapsed. I feel sure that if
hundreds of constitutional lawyers and academics agreed
with the Clerk and disagreed with the Government, we
would have heard from them.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): Does my
hon. Friend understand that the Committee had to rush
through its work on this Bill and the Parliamentary
Voting System and Constituencies Bill at the same time?
Mr Harper: I am prepared to accept that consideration
of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies
Bill has been proceeding faster than consideration of
this Bill, but I cannot accept that this Bill is being
considered at a great pace. It was published five months
ago, we have reached only the third day of the Committee
stage, and the Report stage is still to come. I believe that