Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am not setting out anything that is groundbreaking; this is the position that exists now. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that there would have to be an extraordinary set of circumstances; indeed, I said as much. I did so because I was referring to a point my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest made last week in raising some concerns of the Select Committee’s concerns. My view is that those concerns are not well founded because the events they address are extremely unlikely to happen and are only really theoretical in nature, but there is a response to them if they were to happen.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend reassure the Committee that it is the Government’s intention to fulfil their duty and that of Parliament to protect the Crown from being put in a position where the monarch would ever have to make such an important constitutional decision?

[Mr Harper]

Absolutely. I can certainly say on behalf of this Government that this Government and this Prime Minister would never wish to put Her Majesty the Queen in such a position. Clearly, I cannot speak for Governments of the future, however.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

For the purposes of this particular set of motions, the only business that we would be talking about the House undertaking would be holding a vote on whether or not a new Government who had been formed had the confidence of the House. Given the things that the Government are responsible for, it would be important to have a clear Government in place for the financial markets and at difficult times. We know from experience and we can see it from what happens in other countries. Therefore, the Government formation negotiations would want to be concluded and it would benefit the country, the Government and the House for the House to vote on that without inordinate delay. If there were a number of bank holidays or other holidays in the way, that could be dealt with. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman asks about Good Friday. As I have said, the alternative is that we could arrange things by moving the no confidence vote so that it was 14 days before a sitting day.

Conventionally, no confidence motions are given time in the House very soon after they are tabled, but as long as the Government were prepared to table such a motion very soon and agreed that with the Opposition, it would not necessarily have to be tabled the next day. I do not think that it is an inordinate problem. We think that it is sensible for there to be a fixed timetable for a Government to be formed so that everyone has some certainty. That is why we picked the time period that we have.

My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest spoke in support of amendments 36 and 37, which are also tabled in the names of other members of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform. Amendment 36 would make the 14 days in a period following a Government defeat a period that would not include periods of Prorogation or Adjournment for more than four days. Although I do not think that this is the intention behind the amendment, its effect would be to permit the 14-day period for Government formation to be prolonged potentially indefinitely if the House was prorogued or adjourned. The Government do not think that that is appropriate. We think that the 14-day period strikes the right balance between giving parties in this House time to discuss and see whether a Government can be formed and not allowing things to go on for so long that the country is plunged into a period of uncertainty. We do not think that amendment 36 is acceptable.

Amendment 37 provides that a Prime Minister must resign within seven calendar days of losing a vote of no confidence and recommend to the monarch a successor who appears to them to be the person most likely to be able to command the confidence of the House. I think I am right to say—my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest will correct me if I am wrong—that the purpose of the amendment is to avoid a situation in which a Prime Minister who has lost a no confidence vote wishes to remain in power and asks the monarch to prorogue Parliament to avoid an alternative Government receiving a vote of confidence, thereby forcing a general election.

[Mrs Laing]

Yes.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend says that that is indeed the purpose of the amendment. However, I think amendment 37 is defective, because it rules out the possibility of what happened in 1979 occurring again. As I have said, Prime Minister Callaghan did not resign as a result of the no confidence motion. He remained in office, asked Her Majesty the Queen to dissolve Parliament and resigned when he lost the subsequent general election. That outcome remains a possibility under the Bill. My hon. Friend’s amendment would have meant that he would have been forced to resign before the result of the election was known. I do not think that that would have been a sensible outcome.

[Mrs Laing]

I fully appreciate the Minister’s point. Amendments 36 and 37 might well be technically defective—in any case, I have no intention of pressing them to a vote, as I said—but the Select Committee’s purpose was to ensure that this issue was properly discussed and scrutinised on the Floor of the House. Will the Minister reassure the House that he and his colleagues are satisfied that it would not be possible under the Bill’s provisions for the Government to seek indefinite prorogation in order to avoid a vote of confidence and a general election?