(This article was published in the Brighton Argus today – 6th November 2023) Tomorrow Parliament is opening up again with the King present for the first time for over a year. The public comment on the website, ‘TheyWorkForYou’, currently provides this comment
The State Opening of Parliament will take place. The House will meet at 11.25am for the King’s Speech. Members may follow the Speaker and party leaders to hear the speech delivered in the Lords. Afterwards the House will suspend until 2.30pm.
Parliament actually finished at the close of Thursday 26th October but this fact was not made public on the website until the actual day of the closure. The website changed the text for that week which previously included a modest list of actions that would take each day in Parliament replacing it with the phrase “Parliament is now prorogued until the State Opening on Tuesday 7 November.” Further information with descriptions about State Opening, the Kings Speech, the debates connected with the Kings Speech and Prorogation is provided in the Parliament website.
When is State Opening? State Opening happens on the first day of a new parliamentary session or shortly after a general election. The next State Opening, His Majesty the King’s first as Monarch, will take place on 7 November 2023. The last State Opening of Parliament took place on 10 May 2022, at the start of the 2022-23 session of Parliament. On this occasion, Parliament was opened by the then Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge as Counsellors of State for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The ‘TheyWorkForYou’ comment
The debate on the King’s Speech is then opened. Two backbench Members from the Government side will propose and second a motion for an Address (thanking the King for the Speech), after which the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister will speak. Debate on the King’s Speech may continue until 10.00pm on this day and will be resumed on subsequent days. The debate normally lasts for six sitting days: the Speaker will announce at the start of the debate which subjects are to be the main subject of debate on each day.
On another page with the headline of “Parliament prorogued ahead of State Opening” the Government states
Prorogation marks the end of a parliamentary session and brings to an end almost all business in Parliament. It is the formal name given to the period between the end of a session of Parliament and the State Opening of Parliament that begins the next session. Prorogation usually takes the form of an announcement, on behalf of the King, read in the House of Lords. As with the State Opening, it is made to both Houses and the Speaker of the House of Commons and MPs attend the Lord’s chamber to listen to the speech.
It does bring into question that way back on the 20th July, why was it that the leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt stated,
I can confirm that the State Opening of Parliament will take place on 7 November 2023. As is usual, the current session of Parliament will be prorogued ahead of the King’s Speech and this time will be used to enable logistical and security preparations for the State Opening of Parliament. The likely date of prorogation will be confirmed in due course.
Parliament then proceeded to close for the six – week summer break, opened on September 4th for two weeks and two days prior to closing for the Party Conferences. Opening again on the 16th October for two weeks promptly closing for the State Opening on November 7th Over the last fifteen weeks Parliament has only held discussions for four weeks and two days. On the 19th of October before the Government chose to close Parliament, the National Autistic Society, who are working very hard to ensure that MP’s and Parliament are informed about important education matters published a statement entitled “No-one likes having to change carefully laid plans but…” going on to say;
We’ve just learnt that Parliament will now be closed on the date we were due to have our ‘Let Every Autistic Child Learn’ event with MPs. This unexpected change is frustrating, but the rules of Parliament mean decisions about when to close ahead of the King’s Speech are only just being made. The speech is a kind of reset for parliament, marking the start of the new parliamentary session. The next chance for us to hold our event for MPs to hear first-hand from autistic people about the urgent changes needed in the education system is likely to be in January. Three months feels like a long time to wait but we are more worried that one in four parents (26%) said they had to wait three years for the right support for their child. That’s three years of their children’s education being compromised. But don’t worry, your invitations haven’t gone to waste. Thank you to the 3,000 of you who told your MP how much this matters. We’ll be back in touch soon to ask for your help in making sure they attend. In the meantime, we will continue to stand up for the thousands of autistic children in the UK and will be arranging to meet MPs and running sessions to help parliamentarians to understand autism.
I hope that the next few weeks will be a more robust period in Parliament enabling Sussex MPs to work together on vital international and essential national matters.
ianchisnall 