There are fears over the Lib-Con government's 55 per cent threshold for a successful dissolution resolution. But this could be overplayed.
Analysis by UCL’s Constitution Unit suggests that fears over the Lib-Con government’s 55 per cent threshold for a successful dissolution resolution. But a fixed-term parliament of five years would be “long by comparison with most other [parliamentary] systems”.
Yesterday’s coalition agreement of the Liberal Conservative government said:
“legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”
The Guardian today quotes Scott Styles, a senior lecturer in law at Aberdeen University, who described the move as “dangerous”. He went on to say:
“This is a major and fundamental alteration in our constitution; what is being changed is not a right of the PM but a power of the Commons. The British constitution is very simple: he who commands the confidence of the House is PM, he who loses that confidence must resign.
“I simply do not see how such a rule is credible or can be enforced: a majority is a majority is 51%; not 55% or 60% or 80%.”
Meanwhile constitutional expert Peter Hennessy, of Queen Mary University of London University, told BBC News:
“Fifty-five per cent of MPs needed for a government to lose a confidence vote – I am not sure that’s a very sensible change.
“The tradition is that one [vote] is enough and I wouldn’t tinker with that. I would leave that well alone. It looks as if you are priming the pitch, doctoring it a bit. Not good. It’s meant to be a different politics, new politics.”
But in a briefing note on the proposed changes prepared for Left Foot Forward by UCL’s Constitution Unit, Robert Hazel writes:
“The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition agreement proposes a 55 per cent threshold before Parliament can be dissolved. This is intended to strengthen the hand of the Lib Dems: Cameron could not call an early election without the consent of his coalition partners, because the Conservatives command only 47 per cent of the votes in the Commons.
“Some commentators appear to have confused a dissolution resolution moved by the government, and a confidence motion tabled by the opposition. On no confidence motions tabled by the opposition parties, the normal 50% threshold should continue to apply.”
But while fixed term parliaments are becoming “increasingly common”, five year terms would be “long by comparison with most other [parliamentary] systems”. Robert Hazel writes:
“Australia and New Zealand both have three-year maximum terms. The legislatures of Canada and many of its provinces have four-year fixed terms, as do most Australian states. The devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have four-year fixed terms. Ireland’s lower house has a five-year maximum, as in the UK. So a five year term is long by comparison with most other Westminster systems.”
All this begs the question of whether 55 per cent is too low a threshold for a dissolution resolution. If the point of a fixed term parliament is that the governing party cannot dissolve parliament to suit itself, perhaps the threshold should be two-thirds as in both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
The Constitution Unit of UCL has prepared a longer briefing note on fixed term parliaments.
99 Responses to “Is 55% too low?”
Baig
Dictators, that’s what Cameron and Clegg are. This is a dictatorial move and is not liberal and is not democratic!
They want to force the locks on the new bedroom they are sharing, so no one can throw them out, even they start fighting.
this is like getting married without having the option to divorce.
Anatole
I feel stronger than ever that the anti-55%-ers have very much misread the electorate on certain key things. First and foremost is this idea of “wanting more democracy”, which I think is a very typical example of a concept which has its roots in popular sentiment, but which is twisted by those in “the Village” into something which suits them and their agenda.
Simply put, I don’t think any member of the public has any desire whatsoever to spend more time and the ballot box under any form. This includes General and local elections of course; but I think also applies to referenda, recalls, primaries or any other form of choice which involves going to cast a piece of paper for one side or another. The Great British public are cynical, caustic and lazy, even if they are perhaps more educated than we sometimes give them credit for. They see elections as very little other than a chance for politicians to preen and self-publicise. Of course, once in a while they enjoy the chance to throw out a government and change it for another that might offer something different; but overall, even most of the “in between” elections are totally unnecessary and a waste of time and money – witness 2001, 1987 and so on. Of course I am not arguing for ending the 5 year term limits but what I am arguing for is that the starting point of considering all this is that the public regard electioneering as an appalling spectacle in almost every case, and increasingly with the demise of partisan allegiances, even any overt partisanship or tribalism is marked down. This is the world we live in.
What the public want is two things: firstly, an “adult” attitude where MPs deal with the hand they are dealt, and go away and bloody well just “get on with it”. After the election, no-one wants to hear any more from politicians for a long, long time about what they are doing, what they have done, what the other lot are doing or anything else – unless a crisis happens. Secondly, what they would like (and this is one offshoot of the expenses scandal but actually started long before that) is transparency and clarity, if not ‘accountability’, to be able to access information about what is happening if they want, even if they know they will not want to access it themselves. They want to be blindly happy in the knowledge that someone else, perhaps the press whose papers they don’t buy anymore, is keeping the government ‘accountable’. But they do not want to be involved in this process themselves.
Yet hilarious the political classes seem to have interpreted this in an entirely different way, and some are putting forward the idea that what people what is more time spent at the ballot box; more time listening to politicians talk about themselves or about issues such as the constitution or indeed parliamentary reform, which no-one cares about; more time in the media attacking each other as though somehow talking about things is the accountability that people want from MPs who are paid to consider and pass legislation. People do not want politics, that is the sad fact of today. I agree that politicians are seen to be irrelevant due to the lack of major achievements but having said that, the answer is not to try and flog a dead horse and get them involved. It is to win on a manifesto which promises change and delivers it in a real, tangible manner. The answer to irrelevance is not more frequent elections, given that half of the ones we have already fought are extraneous. The idea that a reduction in the number of elections historically is proof that these reforms are bad is so detached from reality that I cannot even begin to express my opposition to it. People want less ‘democracy’.
Coming back to the parliamentary reform details, I therefore continue to support Supermajorities for dissolution of Parliament and indeed feel that at 55%, it just does not go far enough. A good two-thirds should be required because what you want is for anyone suggesting they want an early election, to go away, take a couple of aspirin and really ask themselves what the devil they are doing. Hung parliaments may or may not be here to stay; but the fact is that the public will have no sympathy whatsoever for a group of parliamentarians who seem not to be able to progress things just because they can’t get on and are too tribal to work together in parliament to pass legislation or get a budget through. They do not want to have the huge and useless imposition of another election thrust upon them just because politicians can’t be bothered to find the compromise necessary to make government work. In some cases of course it might really be necessary: but in those cases you really need a consensus from the whole of parliament, and not just a bare slender majority, to have the moral authority to ask the public for their forgiveness in demanding it. A split house really is not good enough and the public will be angry – very much so – at an election happening just because one half of the House want it.
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James Stewart
@ Baig – I don;t think you can call Cameron and Clegg dictators. Didn’t we learn our lesson with Blair and the disgraceful act of getting rid of him under the circumstances that Brown devised and planned for years.
James Stewart
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