Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

I cannot understand why the Government could not have done the simple thing for this House, and for the integrity of our constitution, and simply said yes to this amendment. What on earth would the Government have lost by saying yes? They would have had the five-year Parliament that they, for whatever motives—we will not go into those—want for this Parliament. If there is a Conservative or a Liberal Democrat Government or a Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government elected in five years’ time, they could ensure that this legislation remained on the statute book and that there was another five-year Parliament after that. It would have cost the Government nothing. The Government would have lost nothing and they would at least have shown that they were listening to some of the advice from this House.

I am not thrilled by this amendment, although I thought it was very ably moved, because I just do not like five-year Parliaments, and I do not like acknowledging that the Government, with a relatively flaky coalition, should be able to legislate for themselves to survive for five years in this way. But the reason I very much hope that the House sticks to its position, requiring any future Government or Parliament to look again at this issue, is that I am convinced that, should this Bill go without any amendment now and become an Act, we will have five-year Parliaments ad infinitum and no future Government will repeal this legislation. This gives the lie to the oft-repeated argument that somehow or other this is a Government giving something away. Why on earth would any future Government want to give up the security of a five-year term of office? Of course they would not; it is very convenient to Governments; it is very convenient to the Executive. This is the last chance. I hope that my own party will win the election, and I hope that it will have in its manifesto the decision to repeal this legislation, but I rather fear that it would be as attracted to the idea of remaining in office for five years as this Government. This is the safety net—that it requires Governments to make that decision.

I make an appeal to the Minister. It really is worth listening to what this House has to say on constitutional issues. We are just seeing the first fruits—I should say the second fruits—of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, which was so strongly opposed in this House. It was strongly opposed on the ground of the unnecessary nature of a referendum on the alternative vote system, which, incidentally, I have just discovered in a reply from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, cost us £97 million in total, at a time when we are supposed not to have two pennies to rub together. I was very pleased with the result, but it was not worth £97 million for a few of us in this House and a few million people in the country to be pleased. We told the Government that it was a waste of time and a waste of money—we were right. We also said that reducing the number of MPs by 50 would not bring an advantage to our democracy and that it would be deeply destabilising. I would love the Minister to give me his assessment of what he thinks Members of the House of Commons would have to say now on a free vote in a secret ballot. Would they think that a Bill that has destabilised every constituency in Britain was a terrific one? If I were to write the Government a little resumé or memoir, which I will not, of the activities in which some of us have indulged in the past 12 months or so, I would have to call it “I Told You So” or “It’s Boring Being Right” or something along those lines. On constitutional matters—let me put it modestly—we are at least worth listening to. I do wish that the Government would listen to us on this one.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, very wisely did not mention among his justifications for five-year fixed Parliaments, or Parliaments of any fixed period, that they enable Governments sensibly to introduce legislative programmes over their period of office. I would like to challenge him to state that the Government are on course for doing that. Here we have five years, which is a year longer than any Government normally have for certain, and a two-year Session, but I would not say—again, I shall put it as kindly as I can—that we see a Rolls-Royce legislative planned operation going through. So I ask him not to use that as a defence of security of tenure and security of planning. But, above all, I ask the Minister, not with great hope or expectation, to acknowledge that we were not completely unworthy of being listened to over previous constitutional legislation and, even at this late date, not to commit the country to five-year fixed-term Parliaments ad infinitum as this legislation assuredly will—because that is precisely what any Government would want.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I wish simply to make one point which I consider, very humbly, to be a pertinent matter and one which constitutes a backcloth to the issue before the House. The point was tangentially mentioned in earlier debates that this was not a matter which could be made the subject of the operation of the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, but no one has argued in full as to its constitutional significance.

That Parliament saw fit in 1911 to make that so, and decided not to change the situation in 1949, is highly relevant to this issue. I would go so far as to suggest that it changes the whole balance of the relationship between the two Houses. I of course agree absolutely with what the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said about the general primacy of the House of Commons as the elected Chamber over this place. My submission is that, in relation to this matter, all such conventions and all such inhibitions are totally removed. Section 1 of the Parliament Act 1911 excludes two matters from its operation. The first was money Bills, which of course did not come into it in the first instance, and the second was a Bill which prolonged to any degree the maximum life of Parliament. Clause 1(5) of this Bill does exactly that. It enables the Prime Minister of the day either to reduce the period of five years by up to two months or to add to it by two months. It does not matter, therefore, whether it is two months, two years or 20 years; a wall has been breached, a wall created by the House of Commons in protection of its own position and the position of democratic government altogether. It made this House the sentinel of that boundary. In other words, when we disagree with regard to this matter, it is utterly exceptional as compared with any other disagreement. We are far from challenging the authority of the House of Commons; we are abiding by it and making it real and entrusted.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

My Lords, several noble Lords this evening have referred—somewhat kindly, I must say—to the report of the Constitution Committee, which I have the privilege to chair, on the process of constitutional change. The Minister was kind enough to refer to it in his opening remarks. I look forward to the Government’s formal response to the report. It will enable the House to have a proper debate on the report, to which I equally look forward.

I suspect that the committee will be very surprised, as am I in immediate response to what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, to hear the content of the exchanges during the Summer Recess between the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in support of his original amendment. That seems to illustrate precisely, when we hear what the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, said, the inadequacy of process within the Government as related to constitutional matters. If it is the case that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, as he suggested and as was confirmed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, came forward with what sounded like rather appropriate substitutions and amendments to his original amendment, particularly regarding the question of when such a sunset clause could be introduced in the new Parliament as well as the other questions which he mentioned, I am very surprised that the Government did not respond to them in the way that has been suggested and, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, simply put down the amendment in lieu that we have before us tonight. This is another illustration of precisely the problems about constitutional process to which the Constitution Committee’s full report tried to draw attention. As I have said, I hope that the report will be fully debated in the House.