Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019

The Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 (c. 29) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made legal provision for the holding of the 2019 United Kingdom general election on 12 December 2019.

The Act was fast-tracked in its passage through Parliament, meaning that it completed all of its stages in the House of Commons in a single day, on 29 October 2019, and received its formal First Reading in the House of Lords on the same day. It completed its remaining stages there on 30 October, and received royal assent, thereby becoming law, on 31 October.

The Act was a very unusual piece of constitutional legislation, as it was the first time that a United Kingdom general election had been triggered by a measure that circumvented the operation of ordinary electoral law. The ordinary law on parliamentary general elections was the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 ("FTPA"), under which elections took place every five years, except that an early general election could be triggered by the House of Commons in either of two ways: a resolution supported by at least two-thirds of the total membership of the House, or a vote of no confidence in the government, when an election must be called after fourteen days unless a motion of confidence has been passed. The 2019 Act, being a new Act, required only a simple majority of the members voting in order to pass.

The Act automatically became spent upon the conclusion of the election and was repealed by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 on 24 March 2022.