Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that if there is a desire for a vote, there has to be a vote on a substantive motion. If such a motion were to fall, the Government could, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has pointed out, try to bring the issue back to the House. My suspicion, however, is that the politics of the moment would probably determine that if a Government had lost, in the House of Commons, a treaty that they had signed, there would be a real danger that the Government would fall—although that is not what happened to President Wilson when he lost the Versailles treaty in the United States of America. That situation was rather different, of course, because the Executive there are completely separate from the legislature. None the less, it is pretty unlikely that Governments would want to continue to bring such a matter back again and again.