Tag Archives: confidence vote

Parliamentary reform in the 2024 party manifestos 

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The main party manifestos have now been published, allowing exploration and comparison of their constitutional proposals. In this second post in a series on the manifestos, Meg Russell looks at the parties’ commitments on parliamentary reform. What are they promising, and what are the prospects for these proposed changes? 

Yesterday on this blog, Lisa James reviewed the constitutional proposals presented by the political parties in their 2024 general election manifestos. Unsurprisingly, parliamentary reform is a key area that appears in several of them. Most parties include aspirations to reform the House of Lords, and some make other commitments on the House of Commons, or the overall power of parliament. This second post in the Constitution Unit’s manifesto series reviews these proposals, reflecting on their origins, merits, and prospects for implementation. It starts with the power of parliament as a whole, before moving to the Commons, and then the Lords. 

The power of parliament 

It is primarily the Liberal Democrats that give space to parliament’s overall place in the constitution – an area subject to significant recent controversy. The Brexit referendum of 2016 led to fierce clashes in parliament, and unusually high-profile arguments about both parliamentary procedure and the limits of the government’s prerogative power. Brexit also raised new questions about parliament’s powers over policy matters that returned to the UK following its exit from the European Union. 

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Prime Minister Liz Truss and the short, unhappy fate of the ‘takeover leader’

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Following her appointment as Prime Minister yesterday, Liz Truss has become the third Prime Minister in a row to take office directly as a result of a party leadership election. Ben Worthy explains that taking office in the middle of a parliament has historically not gone well for the incoming Prime Minister, with none of the last three ‘takeover Prime Ministers’ able to complete a full parliamentary term in office.

There are two routes to becoming Prime Minister in the UK. You can either win a general election or triumph in a party leadership election to become head of the largest parliamentary party when a predecessor leaves. As section 2.18 of the Cabinet Manual puts it:

Where a Prime Minister chooses to resign from his or her individual position at a time when his or her administration has an overall majority in the House of Commons, it is for the party or parties in government to identify who can be chosen as the successor.

Prime Minister Liz Truss is a ‘takeover’ leader, securing the post via the second route rather than the first. Remarkably, she will be the fifteenth takeover since 1916 and the second woman appointed mid-term since 2016.

There are some downsides to being a takeover. As the table below shows, takeovers’ time in office tends to be relatively brief. UK prime ministers in the last 100 years have lasted an average of just over five years, equivalent to the maximum length of one parliamentary term. Takeover tenure was considerably shorter at just over 3.6 years, compared with an average of 6.6 years for those who came to office following a general election. The longest takeover premiership was that of John Major, which lasted seven years, and the shortest was Andrew Bonar Law’s seven months (due to ill health).

The most recent takeovers are bywords for difficult, if not failed, premierships. Major (1990–1997), Gordon Brown (2007–2010) and the successive takeovers of Theresa May (2016–2019) and Boris Johnson (2019–2022) stand out as dysfunctional and struggling leaders. All led deeply divided parties and their names are linked to deep crises, whether economic (the Winter of Discontent or Black Wednesday), political (Maastricht or Brexit) or global (COVID-19).

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What happens if Boris Johnson loses a party confidence vote?

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Conservative MPs will vote tonight on whether or not to retain Boris Johnson as party leader and Prime Minister. Robert Hazell explains that if Johnson loses, he might step aside immediately or act as caretaker until his replacement is elected. But he might instead stay on and seek to call a snap election, which could place the Queen in the constitutionally awkward position of having to refuse.

The political pundits predict that Boris Johnson will win tonight’s confidence vote amongst the Conservative parliamentary party. But what will happen if he loses, either this time or in a second vote at some point in the future? How long might it take for the Conservative Party to elect a new leader, and how will the country be governed in the meantime?

Under current Conservative Party rules, if more than 50% of all Conservative MPs (currently 180 MPs) vote in support of Boris Johnson, he can stay as party leader and Prime Minister and no new vote can be triggered for 12 months. But the rules can easily be changed. Theresa May won a confidence vote with a majority of 83 in December 2018, but was subsequently forced to announce a timetable for her departure under the threat of a rule change and new vote. She had been under pressure to say that she would go, and finally went after a disastrous European Parliament election result for the Tories in May 2019. Boris Johnson may similarly find that he survives the initial confidence vote, but his long-term position is not secure.

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The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill – a return to constitutional normality?

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Alison Young argues that the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill transfers power from parliament to the government, and not to the people, and that it is wrong to place the blame for the extraordinary events of 2019 on the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) has not had a good press. So much so, that a promise to repeal the Act was included in the 2019 manifestos of both the Labour Party and the current Conservative government. However, as the second reading of its replacement, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill demonstrates, the apparent consensus ends there. There appeared to be two strong themes to the debate. First, how far does the FTPA’s replacement transfer power from parliament back to the government, or from parliament back to the people? Second, to what extent did the FTPA cause the difficulties – however defined – for the then Conservative minority government in 2019?

Turning back the clock

The FTPA placed the prerogative power of the dissolution of parliament on a statutory basis. It fixed the terms of the Westminster parliament to five years, setting the dates for general elections. It provided two ways in which parliament could be dissolved earlier. First, it was possible for two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons to vote in favour of an early parliamentary general election. Second, dissolution could occur following a vote of no confidence, if, within a two week period, it proved impossible to form a government which had received the backing of a vote of confidence from the House of Commons.

The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill aims to return the Westminster parliament to the position prior to 2011. It repeals the FTPA (section 1) and ‘revives’ the prerogative power to dissolve parliament and to call a new parliament (section 2). However this is interpreted, it is clear that the bill’s intention is to ensure that parliament can be dissolved and recalled ‘as if the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 had never been enacted’ (section 2). Fixed terms of five years are now replaced with a maximum five-year term (section 4). Moreover, the bill seeks to make the dissolution and calling of parliament non-justiciable (section 3) – arguably making the prerogative powers even less subject to judicial review than was the case prior to 2011.

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FTPA Joint Committee lays down marker for the future

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The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 placed a legal obligation on the Prime Minister to make arrangements for a committee to review the legislation before the end of 2020. That committee was duly created, and published its report last month. Robert Hazell and Meg Russell offer a summary of the committee’s report, which was rightly critical of the government’s draft repeal bill, but argue that the committee ‘ignored’ the weight of the evidence in some key areas.

On 24 March the parliamentary Joint Committee to review the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) published its report. The committee was established last November under section 7 of the FTPA, which required the Prime Minister in 2020 to make arrangements for a committee to review the operation of the Act, and if appropriate to make recommendations for its amendment or repeal. The review was carried out by a Joint Committee composed of 14 MPs and six members of the House of Lords, and chaired by former Conservative Chief Whip Lord (Patrick) McLoughlin.

The government pre-empted the review by publishing a draft FTPA (Repeal) Bill a week after the committee was established. The Conservative and Labour manifestos in 2019 had both contained a commitment to get rid of the FTPA. As a result the committee focused a lot of attention on the government’s draft repeal bill. But the report devotes almost equal space to the FTPA and how it might be amended, in case parliament prefers to go down that route, now or in the future.

There was clear interest in the committee for retaining but improving the FTPA. The government had a bare partisan majority (11 out of 20 members), and not all Conservative members supported the government line. But the committee managed to avoid any formal votes, instead referring in parts of the report to the majority or minority view. On some key issues the majority view went against the weight of evidence received.

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