Select committee: Constitution Committee
Conclusion 12
12th Report - A Question of Confidence? The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011
Published 4 Sep 2020
Paragraph 73
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)
It is difficult to draw conclusions from the unusual circumstances of autumn 2019. In this period the House of Commons rejected holding a general election on three separate occasions before consenting to one through a different route. While the two-thirds threshold can, in certain circumstances, be a meaningful constraint, it can also perpetuate political instability.
From: Constitution Committee, 12th Report - A Question of Confidence? The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, paragraph 73, 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.