Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Earl of Onslow and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Onslow]

The Prime Minister has said, perfectly reasonably, that he thinks his Government will go on until 15 May 2015. He has made a perfectly legitimate choice to the House of Commons, but binding his successors is a different matter altogether.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, my noble friend’s point goes to the heart of whether one should have a fixed-term Parliament, bearing in mind that no Parliament can bind its successor. We debated the arguments for fixed-term Parliaments at Second Reading. I believe that they would ensure that Governments were able to plan, as indeed could Parliament, for a fixed period, and that they would not allow a Prime Minister of the day to seek an opportune moment to go to the country earlier than the full length of a Parliament for partisan reasons. This is an advance on what we have at the moment.

The point I am making is that if the Bill becomes law as it currently stands, the Prime Minister’s hands will be tied. If he saw an advantage some time in the spring of 2014, it would not be possible for him to cut and run because, if the Bill was on the statute book, he would not be allowed to do so. The fact that the Bill ensures that Parliament cannot otherwise be dissolved means, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, remarked at Second Reading, that the Prime Minister has given up an important power.

We could debate whether the electorate have been denied as many chances to go to the polls as otherwise. The crude arithmetical approach—I do not mean crude in a pejorative way—adopted by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, did not take into account that in no case since 1945 would any circumstances have arisen that would have triggered the mechanisms for early Dissolution or an early election under Clause 2; he assumes that that would never have happened. However, if one looks at history, it may well have happened in 1951 when there was a consensus between the parties that an election was needed. It may well have happened in February 1974. I know that my noble friend Lord Cormack thinks that the then Prime Minister, Mr Edward Heath, was wrong—and, indeed, as the electorate pointed out, he probably was—but there may well have been circumstances then in which it was felt that the Government of the day, and, one assumes, the Opposition, would not have stood in the way of an election, and that could have triggered Dissolution. It may well be that, as a result of that election in 1974, when there was no working majority for any party, another election may again have been agreed.

The point I am trying to make is that you cannot simply indicate that every Parliament would have gone the full five years since 1945 because there may well have been circumstances during these years that would have triggered an election. That is the whole point of the provision of trigger mechanisms, which no doubt the Committee will debate in due course. With issues such as no-confidence Motions and their wording, there is plenty of material and meat for debate.

My noble friend Lord Onslow, in his response to my noble friend Lord Marks, asked whether the Bill would extend the lifetime of this Parliament. My noble friend Lord Marks was right to say that it has the potential, if the power is used, to extend the date by two months in certain agreed circumstances, such as the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001. However, it is important to put on record that the general election last year took place on 6 May and that the first meeting of the new Parliament took place on 18 May; therefore this Parliament can continue until 18 May 2015. The latest date on which an election could be held is 11 June 2015, so stipulating the date of 7 May 2015 does not extend the life of this Parliament. The power is there to be used in exceptional circumstances and is subject to the votes of both Houses, and that is why the Parliament Act would not apply.

The amendment invites the Government to hold a referendum on whether the general election should be held in May 2014 or May 2015, although it makes no provision for the result of a referendum to be reflected in the length of a fixed-term Parliament after that general election. I think we get the spirit of what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is moving. My reaction is similar to that of my noble friend Lord Brooke; I am not sure what the public will make of being invited to choose the date of the next general election. I suspect that they would consider that as one trip to the polling station that they did not need to make.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, asked my noble friend Lord McNally which issues would be submitted to a referendum, and my noble friend replied:

“the Government believe that Parliament should judge which issues are the subject of a national referendum”.—[Official Report, 24/1/11; col. 671.]

Indeed, it will be possible for Parliament to make that judgment on any legislation.

As to the referendum on the alternative vote, let me try to put into context where we are. I do not make any bones about the fact that in the aftermath of the last general election, when quite clearly no party had an overall majority, there were coalition negotiations in which we tried to seek agreement. This has put in place a Government who are doing things of which my noble friend Lord Onslow heartily approves. I have been involved in coalitions in devolved Administrations, and there is inevitably an element of give and take and compromise in the negotiations. It is quite clear that the Conservatives did not support electoral reform in the shape of the alternative vote, and I do not shy away from the fact that some movement was required on that if there was ever going to be a coalition that would address the immediate economic crisis facing the country. There was therefore an agreement that there should be a referendum on the alternative vote, a policy that had been in the Labour Party’s manifesto. The Conservatives did not espouse a policy for fixed-term Parliaments, but they were prepared to accept it as a part of a coalition agreement because the Liberal Democrats were prepared to accept many other things. This has subsequently laid the foundations to get us out of the economic and fiscal mess bequeathed to the Government.

Both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats had a commitment to a fixed-term Parliament in their manifestos, although neither of them said what the period would be—certainly the Liberal Democrats did not say so. We had party policy papers from the past, but we did not say four years in our manifesto. Crucially, neither party said that there would be a referendum on that commitment. Contrast that with the Conservative Party, which indicated that it wanted referendums on British membership of the European Union and ceding further powers to Brussels.