Select committee: Constitution Committee
Conclusion 9
12th Report - A Question of Confidence? The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011
Published 4 Sep 2020
Paragraph 55
Constitution Committee Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was intended to provide greater certainty about the timings of general elections, but this has not been the case since 2015. A consequence of an early general election is that the main opposition parties do not have as much time to engage with the civil service. This may hamper the ability of the civil service to support an incoming administration.
From: Constitution Committee, 12th Report - A Question of Confidence? The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, paragraph 55, 4 September 2020
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 December 2020 (deadline 4 November 2020).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government says its draft Bill will repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and revive the pre-2011 prerogative powers over dissolution, so that no Commons vote is required.
- It agrees that these powers should not be "abrogated to the Courts", and the draft Bill contains an ouster clause making their exercise and limits non-justiciable.
- It agrees that certainty on term length is desirable: the draft Bill provides that, if an election is not called earlier, Parliament will automatically dissolve five years after it first met.
- It considers the two-thirds majority requirement under the FTPA "undesirable", and says confidence motions operate most effectively as a matter of convention rather than in statutory form.
- It does not accept that the power to set the date of the election should be given to the Commons or be subject to Parliamentary approval.