Back to Business: procedure at the start of a new Parliament (special collection)

UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement ratification before Brexit on 31 January 2020

• Under the two sides’ October 2019 agreement to extend the Article 50 period, the UK leaves the EU automatically at 11pm UK time on 31 January 2020.
• The UK leaves ‘with a deal’ only if both sides, the UK and the EU, ratify the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement before the end of the Article 50 period, so that the Agreement can come into force at the moment of the UK’s exit.
• On the UK side, ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement required prior passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB). This is because the UK is a so-called ‘dualist’ country – that is, its international agreements do not automatically have domestic effect but, where necessary, must be implemented via domestic legislation. The Withdrawal Agreement required such legislation.
• In the UK’s post-October 2019 ratification process, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) was needed only because of the UK’s ‘dualist’ nature. The WAB repealed the statutory requirement in section 13 of the original European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (EU(W)A) that the UK must pass an Act of Parliament before ratifying the Withdrawal Agreement. The WAB also repealed the requirement in section 13 of the original EU(W)A that the House of Commons must also pass a government motion approving the Withdrawal Agreement and UK-EU Political Declaration (the so-called ‘meaningful vote’). And the WAB also exempted the Withdrawal Agreement from the pre-ratification requirements of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (the CRAG Act). Under the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), passage of the WAB thus became the only domestic requirement for UK ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement.
• The Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) completed its parliamentary proceedings on 22 January and was given Royal Assent on 23 January, becoming the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (WAA). The Prime Minister signed the Withdrawal Agreement for the UK on 24 January, and the UK deposited its instrument of ratification with the EU Council on 29 January, completing the UK’s ratification process.
• On the EU side, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed the Withdrawal Agreement on 24 January (before the UK did so). The European Parliament gave its consent to the Council’s conclusion of the Withdrawal Agreement on 29 January, by 621 votes to 49. The Council concluded the Withdrawal Agreement (the EU’s equivalent of ratification) on 30 January.

Expedited Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) process …

The new UK Parliament considered the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill (WAB) with an extraordinarily limited amount of time and scrutiny for a Bill of the WAB’s complexity and constitutional importance. In the interests of passing the WAB in time for the end-January Brexit deadline, there were departures from normal parliamentary procedures and practice for the consideration of bills:

• In the House of Commons, the Speaker allowed the government to introduce the WAB (that is, have it given a 1st Reading) on 19 December – the day of the Queen’s Speech – without notice. (No notice of parliamentary business can be given until after the Queen’s Speech.) Given the government’s wish to hold the WAB’s 2nd Reading debate before Christmas, without this permission the government could have been obliged to try to introduce the Bill and hold its 2nd Reading debate on a single day on 20 December. This would have meant even less time for MPs to familiarise themselves with the Bill. Alternatively, the House could have been asked to hold the Bill’s 2nd Reading debate on Monday 23 December, something the Speaker wished to avoid.
• The House agreed to a Friday sitting on 20 December to hold the WAB’s 2nd Reading debate. Normally, the House sits on Fridays only to consider Private Members’ Bills (PMBs).
• Timings on the WAB on 19-20 December violated the ‘best practice’ convention that there be two weekends between a bill’s 1st and 2nd Readings.
• Whereas its predecessor declined to do so in October 2019, having given the WAB a 2nd Reading the new House of Commons agreed on 20 December to undertake the Bill’s remaining stages in three sitting days (on 7-9 January – committee stage in two days, and report stage and 3rd Reading in a further day). In the event, the House of Commons did not use the full allocation of time it had agreed for the WAB’s committee stage, and made no amendments to the Bill, so no report stage was needed.
• The new House of Commons’ proceedings on the WAB were completed before its select committees were re-established. Owing to the House of Lords’ speedier procedures for getting its select committees up and running at the start of a Parliament, the Upper House considered the WAB with three of its select committees having published reports on it.
• The House of Lords set aside two of its Standing Orders for Tuesday 21 January, so that the WAB’s report stage and 3rd Reading could take place on a single day, and to allow the late tabling of manuscript amendments for consideration at 3rd Reading.

… taking place amid expedited start-of-a-Parliament procedures

Beyond proceedings on the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill (WAB), at the start of the 2019 Parliament the normal start-of-a-Parliament ceremonies, procedures and processes were also expedited or disrupted. This was due partly to the immediately pre-Christmas timing of the Parliament’s first meeting, and partly to the government’s wish to move quickly to proceedings on the WAB:

• In the new House of Commons, the newly re-elected Speaker received the Queen’s formal approbation on the day of his election, rather than the following day, so that swearing-in – which cannot go ahead until the Speaker is in place – could begin.
• House of Commons swearing-in then started immediately after the Speaker’s election, rather than only on the following day as is usual.
• More hours than normal were made available for swearing-in, so that it could be completed over fewer days.
• The House of Commons did not adjourn after swearing-in before the Queen’s Speech, but went through both processes during an uninterrupted set of sitting days.
• The House of Commons interrupted its Queen’s Speech debate, to take all stages of the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), before then resuming and concluding its debate. The House of Lords held a shorter Queen’s Speech debate than normal, so that it could move on to consider the WAB as soon as the Bill had completed its Commons stages.

Some historic timing and turnover statistics

• At five days, from 12 to 17 December, the gap in 2019 between the general election and the first meeting of the new Parliament was the equal-shortest since 1922. It was five days in 1922 and also 2017.
• The date of the start of the 2019 Parliament (17 December) was the latest in a calendar year since at least 1900.
• At two days, from 17 to 19 December, the gap between the first meeting of the new Parliament and the Queen’s Speech was the equal-shortest since at least 1918. As well as in 2019, the gap was also two days in 1955 (when there were 20 fewer MPs elected and needing to swear in during this period.)
• The Queen’s Speech at the start of the 2019 Parliament marked the first instance since 1974 of there being two Queen’s Speeches in a single calendar year. The gap between the two Queen’s Speeches was the shortest since 1948.
• The 2019 House of Commons comprises: 495 Members of the previous House, 15 ‘returner’ MPs who were not Members of the previous House but have been MPs before, and 140 Members who have never previously been an MP. This last figure is equivalent to 22% of the House. The recent benchmark for this figure is the 35% of the House of Commons elected in 2010 who had never previously been an MP. Most strikingly, owing to the frequency of general elections since 2010, according to the House of Commons Library 74% of MPs elected in the 2019 election were first elected in 2010 or later.

This panel was last updated on 30 January 2020.

• A new House of Commons must elect its Speaker because the previous House can have elected a Speaker only for itself, not for its successor.
• By contrast, the House of Lords elects its Speaker for a five-year term, renewable once. The Upper House therefore does not necessarily need to elect its Speaker at the start of a new Parliament. Lord Fowler, the current Lord Speaker, was elected for the first time in June 2016 and took office on 1 September of that year.

December 2019 Speaker election

• The election of the Speaker at the start of the 2019 Parliament took place in line with convention: the previous Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was returned to the House having stood in his constituency (Chorley) as the ‘Speaker seeking re-election’ without any of the major parties running candidates against him; and he was then re-elected by the new House unopposed, on 17 December, the first day of the new Parliament.
• The unusual aspects of Sir Lindsay’s re-election concerned timing: he was re-elected by the new House only two sitting days after he had first been elected by its predecessor, on 4 November 2019, the penultimate day of the 2017 Parliament.
• Until the House has chosen a Speaker, the Father of the House takes the Chair. The Father of the House is the MP with the longest continuous service who is not a minister. After the December 2019 general election, in which Ken Clarke stood down and Dennis Skinner lost his seat, the Father of the House in the 2019 House of Commons is Sir Peter Bottomley.

This panel was last updated on 7 January 2020.

• Normally, House of Commons swearing-in only starts on the day after the Speaker’s election, and takes place over several hours each day over two to four days.
• At the start of the 2019 Parliament, House of Commons swearing-in was expedited: it started on the same day as, and immediately after, the Speaker’s election on 17 December; and more hours than normal were made available for the process on that day and the following day. As a result, 421 MPs were sworn in on 17 December, and only five MPs had not been sworn in by the time of the start of the Queen’s Speech debate on 19 December. (They swore in on 20 December.)

This panel was last updated on 7 January 2020.

• The Queen’s Speech at the start of the 2019 Parliament, delivered on 19 December 2019, set out an extensive legislative programme. The government has indicated that this programme is unlikely to be completed within the normal year, and that the first session of the 2019 Parliament is thus likely to last into early 2021.

December 2019-January 2020 Queen’s Speech debates and the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB)

• The House of Commons’ debate on the December 2019 Queen’s Speech was interrupted after only one day, on 19 December, to allow the House to consider all stages of the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) either side of the Christmas/New Year recess, before resuming the Queen’s Speech debate on 13 January. This was the second successive time the Commons’ Queen’s Speech debate was interrupted for Brexit business, after this also took place in October 2019.
• The Commons’ 2019-20 Queen’s Speech debate was a six-day debate. This has been the normal length in recent years. The debate took place on 19 December 2019, 13-16 January 2020 and 20 January 2020.
• The House of Lords’ debate on the December 2019 Queen’s Speech was shorter than normal, to free the House then to consider the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) from the week of 13 January 2020, as soon as the Bill’s Commons stages were completed. The Lords’ 2019-20 Queen’s Speech debate lasted four days and was concluded on 9 January.

December 2019 Queen’s Speech and State Opening: some historical comparisons

• The Queen’s Speech on 19 December 2019 marked the first instance since 1974 of there being two Queen’s Speeches in a single calendar year.
• Of the seven such cases since the start of the twentieth century, the gap between the two Queen’s Speeches in 2019 was the second-shortest, at only just over two months. Among these cases, the gap was shorter only in 1948.
• At two days, from 17 to 19 December, the gap between the first meeting of the new Parliament and the Queen’s Speech was the equal-shortest since at least 1918. It was two days also in 1955.
• The date of the December 2019 Queen’s Speech (19 December) was the latest in a calendar year since at least 1900.
• The State Opening of Parliament on 19 December 2019 was ‘dressed-down’ and involved less ceremonial than normal, with the Queen arriving by car not carriage and wearing normal clothes rather than the Robe of State. In this respect, the 2019 State Opening replicated the 2017 occasion, and similarly partly reflected the fact that it followed an early general election which left less time than normal for preparation.

This panel was last updated on 29 January 2020.

• The principal Deputy Speaker also holds the position of Chairman of Ways and Means. The Chairman of Ways and Means chairs committee-stage debates on constitutional bills (which are taken in the Chamber, in Committee of the whole House) and also normally debates on financial matters such as the budget. The two further Deputy Speakers are the First and Second Deputy Chairmen of Ways and Means.
• The principal Deputy Speaker and one of the others (the Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means) must come from the opposite side of the House to the Speaker (under Standing Order No. 2A, which sets out the election process). The remaining Deputy Speaker (the First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means) must come from the same side of the House as the Speaker. Under Speaker Hoyle, this is the opposition.
• Standing Order No. 2A also prescribes that among the Speaker and the three Deputy Speakers there should be at least one man and one woman.
• The election of the Deputy Speakers takes place by secret ballot, using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system.

January 2020 Deputy Speakers’ election

• At the start of the 2019 Parliament, the three Deputy Speakers elected (on 8 January 2020) were: Dame Eleanor Laing (principal Deputy Speaker and Chairman of Ways and Means), Dame Rosie Winterton (First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means) and Nigel Evans (Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means). Dame Rosie was elected automatically, having been the only nominated candidate from the opposition side of the House. Five Conservative MPs contested the remaining two posts.
• All three of the Deputy Speakers elected in January 2020 have held the post before – Nigel Evans in 2010-13, Dame Eleanor since 2013 and Dame Rosie since 2017. Dame Eleanor and Dame Rosie stood unsuccessfully for the Speakership in November 2019, losing to the previous principal Deputy Speaker, now the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle.
• Dame Eleanor is the first woman to be Chairman of Ways and Means.

Deputy Speakers and Committee stage of the the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill (WAB)

• The Deputy Speakers’ election at the start of the 2019 Parliament was held three House of Commons sitting days after the Queen’s Speech – so, if anything, more quickly than normal. Nevertheless, it was too late for the new principal Deputy Speaker to chair the Committee of the whole House on the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB). This took place on 7-8 January, the new House’s fifth and sixth sitting days, and two and three sitting days, respectively, after the Queen’s Speech. The Deputy Speakers’ election was on the second of these days, 8 January. On 19 December, the House had appointed temporary Deputy Speakers “up to the first sitting day following the election of the Deputy Speakers” – that is, 9 January.
• The temporary Deputy Speakers at the start of the 2019 Parliament were Sir Roger Gale, Sir George Howarth and Sir Gary Streeter. Sir Roger was the temporary principal Deputy Speaker and Chairman of Ways and Means, who was thus in the chair for the Committee of the whole House on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB).

This panel was last updated on 18 January 2020.

At the start of the 2019 Parliament, the Private Members’ Bill ballots in both Houses took place in line with normal practice:

• In the House of Lords, the ballot took place on 20 December, the day after State Opening and the Queen’s Speech. Eighty-four Peers applied for a PMB. The ballot allocated the order in which each bill will be introduced in the Lords, starting from Wednesday 8 January and running through to Wednesday 5 February.
• In the House of Commons, the ballot took place on 9 January, the second sitting Thursday of the session. The ballot bills will be introduced on Wednesday 5 February. The top seven MPs in the ballot were: Mike Amesbury (Labour); Darren Jones (Labour); Anna McMorrin (Labour); Laura Trott (Conservative); Chris Loder (Conservative); Paula Barker (Labour); and Philip Dunne (Conservative).

This panel was last updated on 18 January 2020.

• In the House of Commons, the process of getting select committees re-established involves several steps. Some committees have chairs who are elected by the whole House. The House must first pass a motion allocating the chairmanships to parties, before the election process can take place. The members of all select committees are nominated by the Committee of Selection, which must thus be re-established before any other committees can have members.

Re-establishing House of Commons select committees: timings at the start of the 2019 Parliament

• At the start of the 2019 Parliament, initial steps in the House of Commons process have been taken broadly in line with timings at the start of previous Parliaments, at least in sitting-day terms. The Committee of Selection was appointed on 15 January 2020, and the motion allocating elected committee chairmanships to parties was passed on 16 January. (The motion was tabled on 9 January, within an extended deadline agreed by the House on 20 December to accommodate the Christmas/New Year recess.)
• The elections for select committee chairs were held on 29 January 2020. The Speaker brought the date forward by one day compared to the timing specified in Standing Orders. The elections were thus on the new House’s 18th sitting day. This was the same as in 2015, but, of the four sets of start-of-a-Parliament chair elections held so far, marginally the equal-latest. The bulk of the chair elections were held on the new House’s 12th sitting day in 2010 and 16th in 2017.
• After the chair elections on 29 January, most Commons select committees will still have no members, and will thus still be unable to function. As of 29 January, the new House has nominated members to only one select committee (its members of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, JCSI).
• Parties large enough to qualify for select committee seats must nominate their members by passing names to the Committee of Selection, for the Committee to propose for the House’s endorsement. With the Committee of Selection in place, there is no procedural obstacle to this process moving ahead. On the basis of the timings at the start of other post-2010 Parliaments, the question in 2020 is whether select committee members will be in place before, or only after, the mid-February parliamentary recess. In contrast to the process for getting elected chairs into place, the process for getting select committee members nominated and approved is not attached to any deadline.

2020 select committee chair elections

• At the start of the 2019 Parliament, there were 28 elected select committee chairmanships. Thirteen were uncontested. The 13 sole candidates for these posts were declared elected automatically when nominations closed on 27 January 2020. The share of uncontested elections at the start of the Parliament was 46%, against 32% in 2010, 44% in 2015 and 61% in 2017.
• Among the 28 chairs elected in January 2020, 15 held the same position at the end of the 2017-19 Parliament, and 13 are new. Sixteen MPs who were chairs at the end of the 2017-19 Parliament ran for the same positions again. Of these, 11 were re-elected unopposed, and five faced a contest. Of these five, four were re-elected (Tom Tugendhat, Foreign Affairs; Angus Brendan MacNeil, International Trade; Sir Robert Neill, Justice; Simon Hoare, Northern Ireland Affairs). One (Damian Collins, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) was narrowly defeated. There were 12 chairmanships for which the previous postholder could not or did not stand again. Of these 12, two were filled with new chairs without a contest (Stephen Crabb at Welsh Affairs and Caroline Nokes at Women and Equalities).

Party breakdown

• The distribution of select committee chairs and members is supposed broadly to reflect the party balance in the House. In the House elected in December 2019, among the largest parties this balance is: 56% Conservative; 31% Labour; 7% SNP; 2% Liberal Democrats.
• Under the motion agreed on 16 January 2020, the Conservatives have 16 of the 28 elected chairmanships (57%) in the 2019 House of Commons. This is three more than they secured at the start of the 2017 Parliament, and four more than they had at its end (because of the defection to the Liberal Democrats of Sarah Wollaston, previous chair of the Health and Social Care Committee).
• Labour has ten elected chairmanships in total at the start of the 2019 Parliament: nine under the 16 January motion, plus the chair of the Backbench Business Committee. (Standing Orders specify only that this chairmanship must be held by a non-government party. Labour’s Ian Mearns was re-elected unopposed to the position on 27 January. This post must be re-filled at the start of each parliamentary session.) Labour has two fewer elected chairmanships than it secured at the start of the 2017 Parliament (losing the Environmental Audit and Transport Committees), but one fewer than it had at its end, because Frank Field, the former chair of the Work and Pension Committee, was by then sitting as an independent, whereas the Committee has a Labour chair at the start of the 2019 Parliament.
• The SNP has two elected chairmanships, the same as in the 2017-19 Parliament. The Liberal Democrats lose the one chairmanship (Science and Technology) they had in 2017-19.

Possible sources of delay or disruption

At the start of the 2019 Parliament, even after the election of chairs at the end of January, several factors could delay or disrupt the process of getting House of Commons select committees fully up-and-running:

• As a result of the government’s promised post-Brexit reorganisation of Whitehall, some MPs elected at the end of January could find that their committees are shortly being abolished, after the departments they shadow are eliminated. Depending on its scale, a Whitehall reorganisation could necessitate approval of a new motion by the House of Commons changing its committee line-up, and a re-distribution of chairmanships among parties.
• The most prominent example is the Brexit Committee, of which Labour’s Hilary Benn was re-elected as chair unopposed on 27 January. By default, the Brexit Committee would have ceased to exist at the end of the 2017 Parliament, because it has existed since October 2016 only under successive temporary Standing Orders, which lapse at the end of a Parliament. However, on 16 January the House agreed a government motion to re-create the Committee, for one year. The government is abolishing the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU), which the Committee shadows, when the UK leaves the EU on 31 January. The future of the Brexit Committee is thus unclear.
• The promised post-Brexit government reshuffle could also see new select committee chairs or members resign quickly, if they were to take up government office.
• The Labour leadership contest could also delay or disrupt the process of getting House of Commons select committees re-established. The leadership contest could cause Labour to be unable to nominate its select committee members in a timely fashion, or new Labour committee chairs or members to resign quickly to take up frontbench roles once the new party leadership is in place.

Select committee chair term limits

• On 21 January, the House of Commons agreed to a government motion to set aside for the rest of the 2019 Parliament the Standing Order which sets a term limit for select committee chairs. (The limit is whichever is the greater – two Parliaments or eight continuous years. Between April 2018 and the end of the 2017 Parliament in November 2019, this was raised temporarily to ten years.)
• Three select committee chairs in post from the start of the 2010 Parliament to the end of the 2017 Parliament would have been caught, by summer 2020, even by the extended ten-year term limit. Of these three, at the start of the 2019 Parliament, Labour’s Clive Betts was re-elected unopposed as chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. The Conservatives’ Sir Bernard Jenkin did not run again as chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC). At the European Scrutiny Committee (ESC), which is one of the committees which chooses its own chair, if he is nominated as a member and again chosen as chair Sir Bill Cash could remain in that post beyond July 2020.

House of Lords select committees

• At the start of the 2019 Parliament, as is normal, House of Lords select committees were re-established more quickly than their Commons counterparts. The Lords completed their process for House of Lords-only committees on 9 January 2020. As of 29 January, the Lords still has members to nominate for some joint committees.

This panel was last updated on 30 January 2020.