Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Chloe Smith and Geoffrey Cox

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

Thank you very much indeed, Dame Eleanor. I shall endeavour to do that, and I hope you will bear with me while I ensure that I cover all that material.

Let me begin at the beginning, with clause 1. There is consensus throughout the House that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 has proven to be not fit for purpose and has been damaging to effective and accountable government. The experience of 2019 in particular showed us that the Act was flawed and ran counter to core constitutional principles, and was therefore damaging to the flexible functioning of our constitution. It was unique legislation and it did not work. We saw how, in 2017, a Government who commanded a majority in the House of Commons were able to call an early general election with ease, irrespective of the Act’s intentions.

The events of 2019 then demonstrated how the 2011 Act could obstruct democracy by making it harder to hold a necessary election. The Act’s prescriptive constraints, such as the threshold of a supermajority requirement for a general election and the statutory motions of no confidence, created an untenable situation in which the Government could neither pass vital legislation through Parliament nor call a new election. The result was parliamentary paralysis at a critical time for our Government. The introduction of bespoke primary legislation that circumvented the Act and let us hold a general election in 2019 was the final indictment of the Act.

The Bill therefore repeals the 2011 Act and returns us to the tried and tested system whereby Parliament will automatically dissolve after five years, if it has not been dissolved earlier by the sovereign exercising that prerogative power at the request of the Prime Minister. The key argument is that in doing so it will help to deliver increased legal, constitutional and political certainty around the process for the dissolving of Parliament. Clause 1 repeals the 2011 Act and in doing so delivers, as I have already mentioned, on both a Government manifesto commitment and a Labour manifesto commitment to do so. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.

Clause 2 makes express provision to revive the prerogative powers that relate to the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of a new Parliament. That means that Parliament will, once more, be dissolved by the sovereign at the request of the Prime Minister. By doing this, the clause delivers on the Bill’s purpose, which is to reset the clock back to the pre-2011 position with as much clarity as possible. The clause is clear in its intention and in its effect. As the Joint Committee on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act put it, the drafting of clause 2 is

“sufficiently clear to give effect to the Government’s intention of returning to the constitutional position”

that existed prior to the passing of the 2011 Act.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend help the House in respect of whether the Government acknowledge the existence of the Lascelles principles? If they do, what is the impact of clause 2 on those principles?

[Chloe Smith]

Of course the Government and I acknowledge the existence of those principles; they are a historical fact in and of themselves. I refer my right hon. and learned Friend to the fact that we have said consistently throughout the Bill’s preparation and progress so far that we believe that now is the time for the underpinning conventions of the prerogative power to be debated and, indeed, restated. The Government have contributed to that by publishing some Dissolution principles at the beginning of the Bill’s journey. We think those principles form part of a dialogue that continues not only between the Government and Parliament but with the wider public as well. I hope that the work of this Committee today and the work in the other place will together form part of the continuation of that historical tradition of there being an understanding of the conventions that underpin the prerogative.