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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Amendment 6 stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who, as I mentioned earlier, is abroad on other House business as Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee. We are at a curious juncture in the Bill and, indeed, in our constitutional history. The background to the amendment is the tension, since time immemorial, between this House's ability to function immune from judicial interference, and the courts, which periodically have sought to limit the extent to which we can continue our business unimpeded by the courts. That was, of course settled—to a degree—in the Bill of Rights in 1789—