Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Jesse Norman and Richard Shepherd(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Shepherd
I am more and more puzzled about the Bill as we go on, but there are two propositions in this group of amendments. I support amendment 6, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), and I am grateful for the important contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman). Indeed, I was elated at the time of the election to hear that Jesse Norman had been elected to the House. I spent six months seeking out that fantastic opera singer—I got the wrong individual, as you will appreciate, Ms Primarolo, and I am very grateful to have encountered my hon. Friend on the Floor of the Committee.
Jesse Norman
No. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I do not propose to sing, but I am pleased to report that I have managed to overcome the quadruple handicaps of being tall, white, English and male.
Mr Shepherd
And formidable handicaps they often are.
The endeavour of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and those who support the amendment was to provide some form of belt-and-braces approach. None of us is confident that it can work, because the aspirations and ambitions of several of our lords justices have given one an uncertainty as to where they are heading in the rewriting of the constitution. I am also mindful of the European Court of Human Rights. We have an inferior court that we call a Supreme Court and a superior court that we call a court of human rights, and on top of all that we have another court called the European Court of Justice. Somewhere in there I can see a demented Prime Minister making an application for unfair dismissal as a result of a vote to every one of those courts in turn, while we watch on, as though it were a Gilbert and Sullivan pantomime. I shall support the amendment.
Similarly, I will support amendment 23. The matter has to be determined quickly and appropriately, so I shall not waste the House’s time having indicated the actions that I will take.