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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

No. It is very clear in the Bill. I do not think that the issue arose in Committee. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) also put his finger on this issue when he correctly drew attention to it in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. If my hon. Friend presses the new clause to a vote I shall ask hon. Members to oppose it. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone, in speaking to new clause 5, said that the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill was about perpetual coalition arrangements. It is not about fixed-term Governments, but about the length of Parliaments. All it does is take away the Prime Minister's power to dissolve a Parliament and bring it to an end. It replaces that right with two provisions that establish no confidence procedures, which we have already, and give Parliament the opportunity to vote for an early Dissolution. My hon. Friend confirmed, in effect, that new clause 5 was a wrecking amendment. He said that he could not table the proposal exactly as he had wanted, because it would have been ruled out of order. I suppose that it is a wrecking amendment in a cunning disguise.