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Dissolution of Parliament

May I begin by saying how grateful I am to you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to raise the subject of the process for the Dissolution of Parliament on the occasion of the first Adjournment debate of this new Parliament? I am delighted that, as a result of the brevity of the preceding debate, we could spend up to one and a half hours this evening discussing this very important subject. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members present will think of contributing, as this subject is indeed worthy of one and a half hours of debate. I am delighted to see in his place on the Front Bench the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who is going to respond in his capacity as Deputy Leader of the House. He and I were often in agreement on issues in the last Parliament and I hope that that will remain the case in the current one. I think that he would agree that there is probably nothing more frustrating for Back Benchers than raising an Adjournment debate—I am talking about the standard half-hour debate—in which the Member makes his quarter of an hour speech and the Minister spends about 12 minutes going through platitudes, repeating much of the content of the Member's speech, a couple of minutes giving superficial answers to some of the points that have been raised, and then one minute's explanation of why he has not had time to answer the remaining points. Anticipating that the hon. Gentleman would respond to the debate and in the spirit of the new politics, I thought that I would send the Government, in advance, a list of questions to which I wanted responses. I sent them to the Cabinet Office—or the Government Chief Whip's Office—yesterday because I had been unable to find out for certain which Department, let alone which Minister, would respond. The Government Chief Whip kindly said that he would put my questions into the system, and that a briefing on them would be prepared for whoever happened to be responding. I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House has been well briefed on those questions, and will welcome the fact that he has much more time to expand on the detail of the answers that have been prepared than he may have expected. In due course, I shall put some of the questions on the record, so that those who read the report of the debate will be able to see the extent to which he has responded to the new politics and actually answered the questions that have been raised. All this arises from changes that were sketched out in the coalition agreement. I use the phrase "sketched out" advisedly. I fear that what is currently in that agreement could be interpreted as taking away from us—the Members of this House—our historic right to vote a Government out of office with a majority of one. Relatively few Members were here when the Callaghan Government were defeated, but that was an exercise of people power, in which the people, through their elected representatives, decided that they had had enough of the Government and no longer had confidence in them. As a consequence, the Prime Minister had to resign and a general election was called by the monarch, exercising her prerogative.