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The principle behind the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill is that it is wrong that a Prime Minister should be able to time a general election to his own partisan advantage. We regret the unnecessarily rushed way in which the Bill is being proceeded with, without any prior consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny, which a bill of this legal and constitutional sensitivity deserves.
Because of this expedited process, our Report has been produced at speed to ensure that the House is aware of some key issues and concerns, before it begins to debate the Bill. We trust that the recommendations made in this Report will provide a context for the detailed examination of the Bill by the House at committee stage, if it decides to give the Bill a second reading.
Most of the opinion we have received in the limited time available to us suggests that it would be better for general elections to be held every four years, rather than every five as the Government proposes.
If the Bill is enacted, our expectation is that future Parliaments would run for their full fixed term, and that this will become an unremarkable aspect of our modern democracy. In this context, it is unsurprising that most of the anxieties we have heard have centred on those circumstances in which the Bill would allow for a fixed term to be broken prematurely. The proposed requirement for a super-majority in the House of Commons to vote for an early general election is novel for the United Kingdom, and the consequences of the provisions for confidence motions contained in the Bill are uncertain.
Our Report proposes two options that the House may wish to explore as possible ways of simplifying the provisions in the Bill for ending the fixed term prematurely:
- A super-majority might not be necessary if a Parliament following an early general election lasted for only as long as the remainder of the term of the previous Parliament.
- A super-majority could be dispensed with if an early general election could be called only with cross-party agreement.
Dispensing with the super-majority could also arguably avoid the need for separate provision for an early general election where no government could be formed that commanded the confidence of the House.
The Clerk of the House believes that the Bill as currently drafted could allow the courts to question aspects of the House's internal proceedings. We have concerns about whether a super-majority could be adequately entrenched in the House's own Standing Orders, but the Government needs to respond to the Clerk's concerns, and the purpose of the Bill needs to be achieved without inviting the courts to question aspects of the House's own procedures or the actions of the Speaker, except where this is absolutely unavoidable and clearly justifiable.
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