Recommendation 9

The two-thirds ‘super majority’ required to trigger an early election under the Act can, like any statutory provision, be circumvented by passing an Act of Parliament to set an election date. As was made clear to the Committee the option of such a circumvention was clearly always contemplated as a possibility in certain circumstances, such as occurred in Autumn 2019. The principle of parliamentary sovereignty means this will always remain a possibility. Attempting to entrench a ‘super majority’ would be a difficult, unnecessary and The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 33 potentially damaging move; the Committee advises against this being included in any proposals to replace the FtPA.