PARLIAMENTARY REPORT
UNITED KINGDOM
PARLIAMENTARY ‘WASH-UP’
The Parliamentary ‘Wash-up’ The lead up to the dissolution of a Parliament is often called ‘the wash-up’; a period of frantic legislative activity as the Government seeks to get its Bills into law before dissolution. In 2010, major pieces of legislation such as the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill were substantially re-written in order to ensure the cross-party agreement needed to get them into law.
By comparison, the end of
the 2010-2015 Parliament was comparatively sedate – at least in legislative terms. The largest piece of legislation was the Finance Bill, needed to enact the Budget announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt Hon. George Osbourne MP (Con) on 18 March. However, the period was not without its controversies. Firstly the Chancellor used
his speech to argue that the Government’s time in power had been an economic success and to use this to launch the Conservative’s election campaign. “Five years ago, millions of people could not find work. Today I can report that more people have jobs in Britain than ever before. Five years ago, living standards were set back years by the great recession. Today the latest projections show that living standards will be higher than they were when we came to office. Five years ago, the deficit was
out of control. Today, as a share of national income, it is down by more than a half. Five years ago, they were bailing out the banks. Today I can tell the House that we are selling more bank shares and getting taxpayers’ money back. We set out a plan, that plan is working, and Britain is walking tall again.” The Leader of the Opposition, Rt Hon. Ed Miliband MP (Lab) did not share the Chancellor’s interpretation of his economic record: “This Chancellor has failed the working families of Britain. For the first time since the 1920s, people are earning less at the end of a Government than they were at the beginning. […] People are £1,600 a year worse off. The next generation has seen wages plummet and tuition fees treble. The Government have built fewer homes than at any time in the past 100 years. It is certainly not a truly national recovery when there are more zero-hours contracts than the populations of Glasgow, Leeds
and Cardiff combined. That is the reality of the lives of working people. These are the facts. These are the inconvenient truths of this Chancellor’s record. It is a recovery for the few from a Government of the few.” The Liberal Democrats – the second party in the coalition Government – presented their own economic plans in a Ministerial Statement by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rt Hon. Danny Alexander MP (Lib Dem). This resulted in furious
Rt Hon. Ed Milliband, MP 132 | The Parliamentarian | 2015: Issue Two
protests by the Labour opposition, who saw it as an abuse of process for a Minister to make what they believed to be a purely party political announcement. Indeed, before Mr Alexander’s statement, the Speaker set out the Chair’s position on the use of Ministerial statements: “The content of ministerial statements is, by longstanding practice, not a matter for the Chair, nor is my permission required for such a statement to be made. However, these statements must be ministerial, delivered not in a personal or a party capacity but on behalf of the Government. Although some latitude is of course permitted, there comes a point at which using the privilege accorded to Ministers for purely party purposes would be unfair to the House and would put the Chair in a very difficult position.”
Mr Alexander’s statement defended the Government’s economic record. But he argued that future spending plans need not follow the path set out by the Conservative or Labour parties and that the deficit could be controlled whilst preserving “fairness”. The Chief Secretary defended his right to make the statement, arguing that the figures he had based his analysis on were official Treasury figures. The role of the Chair and,
specifically, the re-election of the Speaker, was also to be at the centre of the second controversy of the ‘wash-up’ period. In the House of Lords at
5:35pm on Wednesday 25 March, following a Government victory in a division on motion to agree to a Commons amendment to the Modern Slavery Bill, the Government announced that Parliament would prorogue the following day at the close of business. At about the same time, the Government whips in the Commons were tabling four motions relating to procedural changes in the new Parliament. Three of them were uncontroversial, the fourth related to the election of a Speaker and proved to be anything but. At the start of a Parliament, if the Speaker from the previous Parliament has been re-elected, the Question is put to the House that that person take the Chair as Speaker in the new Parliament.
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