Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I will speak first in support of the principle behind Amendments 22 and 23, tabled by my noble friend Lord Norton and by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is not with us this evening. The amendments deal exclusively with the power of the Prime Minister to bring forward the date of the general election by two months. I speak on the basis that I have yet to hear any substantive or convincing reason for giving this power to a Prime Minister in a context in which we are supposed to be taking away from the Prime Minister the power to determine the date of a general election.

I cannot see how one could anticipate unforeseen and extraordinary circumstances that will occur in two months’ time, and thereby justify bringing forward an election by two months in order to avoid the unforeseen and extraordinary event. It was said that Nancy Reagan used her knowledge of astrology to influence the timing of some of President Reagan's decisions; I do not believe that our constitutional principles should be based on star gazing and prophecies about future disasters. If we can foresee such an event and there are extraordinary reasons for bringing forward an election by two months, there are procedures in the Bill that will let Parliament decide to do that. I believe fundamentally that the power to bring forward an election by two months, if it is necessary, should lie with Parliament and not with the Prime Minister, and that a change to the five-year rule should be made only when there is a transparent and justifiable reason that can be properly debated and considered in Parliament.

I recognise that there is a much stronger case for saying that it may sometimes be necessary to postpone an election by two months, as effectively happened in 2001 with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Therefore, I am not convinced that it is right to remove completely the flexibility for a two-month delay, as proposed in Amendment 18 by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.

With my noble friends Lord Tyler and Lord Marks, I have suggested in Amendment 25 that a two-month delay, if necessary, should be subject to a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons and a majority in this place. We believe that that brings in sufficient safeguards to prevent a Prime Minister abusing his power, which is the principal intention in the Bill.

We note that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is attempting in Amendment 24, as he has just said, to put a legal restriction on the use of the Prime Minister’s power to vary polling day to situations where it would be impossible to hold an election because it would be,

“impractical or injurious to the economic, social or public health of the nation or a part thereof”.

However, it seems to me that we might get into a very lengthy and quite detailed legal argument about what constitutes such circumstances. In our opinion, it is better to leave to Parliament’s discretion the question of what circumstances are appropriate. I am confident that such support would have been forthcoming in the case of a big national crisis, such as the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001, and I hope that during the passage of this Bill the Government will be able to accept that principle.

To my mind, it is better to subject the power in Clause 1 to vary polling day to a political restriction, requiring political consensus, than to a potential legal argument that may leave polling day to be decided in the courts rather than in Parliament. I accept that the question of whether Amendment 24 or Amendment 25 provides the best safeguard against the misuse of power to vary polling day is a matter of debate, but I think that noble Lords will be very attracted to one option or the other. I also believe that many of us will agree that the potential prime ministerial power to bring forward an election by two months should simply not remain in the Bill.

In conclusion, it seems that there is a fundamental flaw in the logic of this part of the Bill in relation to varying the date of elections. I say that because it makes no provision for varying the fixed date of the local council elections. As we are legislating for general elections to be held in the first week of May, and as council elections every year in much of the country are held on the first Thursday in May, if it were necessary for whatever reason to vary the date of the general election, surely it would be equally necessary to vary the date of the local council elections. There are of course provisions to vary the date of the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly elections but only by one month. Therefore, why should the Westminster general election be varied by perhaps two months when elections in Scotland or Wales can be varied by only one month?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I commend the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for very effectively pointing out one of the problems of this Bill. Can he also contemplate the position that would exist with elections to this Chamber? Would they be on a fixed-term basis? Would they all be on the same day? Could they be moved, and on what basis would they be moved? Would it be two weeks or two months forward or two months later? Would that not be an additional complication?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I have absolutely no doubt that that precise matter will be the subject of considerable scrutiny during the passage of the Lords reform Bill in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill and in the Joint Committee of both Houses.

However, for the moment we are dealing with the legislation as it is, and legislation at the moment provides for council elections to be held on the first Thursday in May every year. Therefore, it seems quite illogical for the Government to argue that we may need to vary the date of the general election and to give exclusive power to the Prime Minister to vary the date of a general election by two months when the council elections will not be varied except, as in 2001, by primary legislation. The Government accept that primary legislation can vary the date of the council elections. Therefore, primary legislation could, if necessary, vary the polling date of the general election.

The Bill could provide for a more sensible mechanism for varying the polling day in general elections by requiring any such variation to have a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons and a majority in this place.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The noble Lord, for whom I have great respect, having known him for a long time, makes a very good point. However, I was trying to make the point that, by legislating piecemeal on these constitutional matters, a lot of problems are building up, just as he has described, and those problems are going to apply a fortiori—I am not sure whether that is exactly the right term—or almost ad infinitum when we come to legislate for House of Lords reform. Does that not point to the fact that it is very unwise to introduce constitutional legislation in this piecemeal manner?