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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I apologise for not being here earlier in the debate, but I am seriously concerned about what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting, which is a degree of politicisation of the monarch, as Head of State, from which I would draw back. If a degree of automaticity were involved and any Prime Minister of the day who could not form a Government automatically, as a convention, asked the leader of the next major party to form one, that would be one thing. If the monarch is making political judgments about who he or she should choose, that is a very different matter. When George V involved himself in helping to form the national Government in 1931 that was pushing the monarch too far into politics. Heads of State should not have that role.