Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I rise in a state of some trepidation. It is almost 41 years since I last made a maiden speech and almost a year since I made my valedictory in the other place. I am delighted that the custom here is to begin on a totally non-controversial topic and to thank all those noble Lords in all parts of the House who welcomed the new Member. I genuinely do that. I also couple with that all those officials and members of staff who have been so unfailingly courteous, helpful and kind.

I feel this particularly because I have been welcomed twice. I took my seat on 21 December and then had the misfortune to go into hospital. I did not get back here until 8 February, when I was welcomed again. I assure noble Lords in all parts of the House that I did not retreat to hospital in order to escape those late-night sittings, which were so reminiscent of my early days in another place.

When the Prime Minister told me that he would like me to come here, I accepted his invitation with great gratitude, enthusiasm and alacrity. I did so for one very simple reason: I believe passionately in this place—in its functions, in its composition and in its powers. That belief is founded, after 40 years in the other place, on the conviction that there is a more unambiguous democratic mandate if it is held by one elected Chamber rather than divided between two. I have always seen this House as an assembly of the experienced, which has a duty to give advice but no power to impose its will. It is because of my admiration for the delicate system of checks and balances that sustains our constitutional monarchy, in which the ultimate power rests with those who elect Members of the other place, that I approach any constitutional measure, produced by any Government, with a degree of caution and trepidation.

I am of course aware of the convention that a maiden speech should be non-controversial. However, I do not take that as an instruction to be anodyne or as an excuse to be irrelevant. I have advocated the merits of fixed-term Parliaments in the past and I believe that it is entirely proper and right that the Bill before us should have an unopposed Second Reading tonight. However, as always, the devil is in the detail and it is incumbent on this House to subject this short Bill to proper scrutiny.

The logical case for fixed-term Parliaments has often been rehearsed and, indeed, has been referred to in this afternoon’s debate. By fixing the term, we remove the manipulative power of the Prime Minister of the day, we create a symmetry with other parliamentary, assembly and local government elections and we become similar to many other democracies, although by no means all. Yet it is essential that we should not deprive the elected House of the power to turf out a Government who have lost its confidence. The Bill before us recognises this, but only up to a point. No one who was in the other place at the time of the last vote of confidence when a Government fell will ever forget that March night in 1979 when the late Michael Foot made that wonderful speech as he looked at the serried ranks of the nationalists and said, “These are turkeys going to vote for an early Christmas”. It was a memorable evening. The vote was carried because Frank Maguire came from Northern Ireland to abstain in person. The Government of the day fell because immediately after the vote was announced the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, for whom I still have the greatest affectionate memories—he was one of the greatest gentlemen ever to occupy that office—came to the Dispatch Box and immediately said that he would be going to see the Queen.

Under the terms of this Bill as it stands, that vote in itself would not have triggered an immediate general election. It might instead have led to 14 days of horse-trading, perhaps resulting in a lame-duck Administration, or perhaps in another vote, in which two-thirds of the Members of the other place would have had to vote for an early election. Perhaps by then some of the turkeys would have changed their minds and thought that the prospect of having their necks wrung in December was better than having them wrung in March.

Two other provisions in this Bill need especially careful examination. Is it right to replace a royal prerogative with a Speaker’s edict? I suggest that we should reflect on what the Clerk of the House said about that and about the possible role of the courts in any subsequent dispute. It has been referred to this afternoon and is a matter that must be addressed at least by probing amendments in this place. Also, is the prescribed length of the term better fixed at five years or four? We should consider what the Constitution Committee of this House has said on that issue and, in doing so, we should bear in mind what has already been referred to several times as the proliferation of elections that are fixed at the moment for the late spring of 2015. Is that proliferation of elections, in the words of 1066 and All That, a “Good Thing”? It is for us to decide.

I am sympathetic to a move to fixed-term Parliaments. I strongly support and admire the coalition Government and I am proud to support them from these Benches. However, I cannot but ask whether everything in this Bill, which received no pre-legislative scrutiny and which was subject to a strict timetable in another place, is not capable of improvement. In recent years, there has been a tendency—no, a habit—for Governments of all persuasions to rush into constitutional reform. It might have been no bad thing if successive Governments had remembered that old Latin tag, festina lente.