A warning shot
The ambush takes place next Monday. The two big Clegg bills - the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Bill, covering the Alternative Vote referendum and cutting the number of MPs in the Commons; and the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill, which does what it says on the tin - were published today. On Monday, backbench Tory opponents of the bills will fire their first warning shot.
I understand the senior Conservative backbencher Bernard Jenkin has already amassed 40 plus signatures on an Early Day Motion demanding that 40% of the total electorate (as well as a simple majority of those who vote) would have to approve a change in the voting system in the proposed referendum - the same hurdle that floored Scottish devolution in the 1978 referendum held by the Callaghan government. EDMs don't get debated, but ministers do take notice if they get a decent number of supporters.
The EDM's backers include some Tory heavy hitters - prominent backbenchers and former cabinet ministers - but the key question is whether Labour MPs will make common cause on this issue. And there are a couple of problems for Labour with the idea of a threshold. First, there was no threshold in the referenda which approved the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly or indeed the Greater London Authority. So why bring one in for this particular issue?
Second, why apply the principle only in referenda? It would be interesting, murmur Mr Clegg's supporters, to know how many MPs won the votes of 40% of their total electorate back in May, not just of those who actually voted but of all those on the electoral register. But will they worry about that, if there's a chance of bringing down the Coalition by forcing some poison pill amendment down Mr Clegg's throat?
Meanwhile there's criticism from another direction - Labour's Graham Allen, Chair of the new Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee, complained that the government decision to take the second reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on the first day Parliament returns after the recess (6 September) shows that "despite all of the talk about new politics, the old politics is still alive and well in many parts of Whitehall".
Mr Allen says Parliament should have the chance to undertake serious pre-legislative scrutiny through his select committee. The timing announced today effectively allowed only two brief sessions of evidence-taking to inform MPs before second reading.
That, he says, "plays into the hands of the anti-reform faction who may rightly claim that Parliament is being bounced into accepting this fundamental change to our democracy".
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
Comments
or to comment.