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855 Fixed-term Parliaments Bill 1 DECEMBER 2010 Fixed-term Parliaments Bill 856
[Tristram Hunt]
It is apposite to be discussing this Bill after this
morning’s judgment in the case of three former Members
of this House, Morley, Chaytor and Devine, and also a
peer, against their claim of parliamentary privilege. In
his summation, Lord Phillips noted that
“extensive inroads have been made into areas that previously fell
within the exclusive cognisance of Parliament.”
His statement should be of major concern to
parliamentarians when considering the Bill, and in
particular to Ministers, who I hope have read and
digested the judgment and are coming to sensible
conclusions about it.
If I may, I shall quote Lord Phillips at greater length:
“Where a statute does not specifically address matters that are
subject to privilege, it is in theory necessary as a matter of
statutory interpretation to decide a number of overlapping questions.
Does the statute apply within the precincts of the Palace of
Westminster? If it does, does it apply in areas that were previously
within the exclusive cognisance of Parliament? If so, does the
statute override the privilege imposed by article 9? In practice
there are not many examples of these questions being considered,
either within Parliament or by the courts. If Parliament accepts
that a statute applies within an area that previously fell within its
exclusive cognisance, then Parliament will, in effect, have waived
any claim to privilege.”
Those are damaging and dangerous comments, which
have wide repercussions.
Lord Phillips argues that the ultimate judgment of
such matters rests with the courts. He quotes approvingly
a letter written on 4 March 2010 by the Clerk of the
Parliaments to the solicitor acting for Lord Hanningfield
which had been approved by the Committee for Privileges:
“Article 9 limits the application of parliamentary privilege to
‘proceedings in Parliament.’ The decision as to what constitutes a
‘proceeding in Parliament’, and therefore what is or is not admissible
as evidence, is ultimately a matter for the court, not the House.”
We should consider that evidence and the actions of a
growing number of judges in considering the Bill.
Mr Jenkin: Bluntly, what the hon. Gentleman is
averting to is a power struggle. The question is whether the
House will stand up for its immunities or give them up.
The Bill is an indication that we want to give them up.
Tristram Hunt: I agree with the hon. Gentleman and
with the fundamental basis of his analysis, which is that
the constitutional reform programme is driven by the
immediate necessities of the Government in the context
of this Parliament. We are making major decisions that
will have wide ramifications in the functioning of the
constitution of the United Kingdom, based on a political
programme and timetable. That is never the best way in
which to develop deep consensus thinking about the
constitution.
I would finally raise a point that the Clerk of the
House has also raised. As he put it in a note to the
Committee in the other place,
“given that a draft Parliamentary Privileges Bill has now been
announced, why deal in advance and separately with a matter
affecting the proceedings of the House of Commons in legislation”,
if it is not for the specific political purposes of the
current Government?
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 Jessye 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 rose—
Chris Bryant: He wants to sing. Sing for Britain.
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.
Mark Durkan: Like the hon. Member for Aldridge-
Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), I shall speak in support of
amendments 6 and 23, which are both attempts to earth
the Bill against some of the dangerous shocks that
could be created for the House in the future. To make
some of my points, I will have to refer to what the
Minister said about the previous group of amendments.
In the debate on the previous group, the Minister said
that he could think of no circumstances in which a
debate on a motion of no confidence would take place
without the House knowing that it was a motion of no
confidence, even though the Bill requires the Speaker to
issue a certificate only after a period of 14 days has
elapsed—it does not specify how long after. That creates
a situation that we all have to consider before we even
go into the danger of what will happen when the matter
goes to the courts. Let us first look at the difficulties and
controversies that will be created in this House.
If a motion of no confidence can be played like a wild
joker, and any motion can be converted into one, then
whenever there is a controversial issue or one involving
Opposition or rebel tactics, the Speaker will be asked
early in a debate, “Will you signal whether you would be