Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on his maiden speech. I note with pleasure that he now seems to be in robust good health. I have known him for 10 years in two capacities, one is his chairmanship of the all-party group that has been indefatigable in sustaining the arguments against an elected second Chamber and for a reformed appointed Chamber along the lines of the Bill introduced—I cannot remember how many times now—by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. The second capacity is his chairmanship—for many decades, I believe—of the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group, which has given such great pleasure and, indeed, education to so many of us.

In preparing my speech I have been very much assisted, as we all have, by the report of the Constitution Committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Jay of Paddington. I look forward to a riposte to the Government’s riposte. I hope that she will add her own recollections—perhaps this has been mentioned—of her father’s very relevant experience in 1979.

The central scenario that I want to consider is to some extent my response to the very fair question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart—this is not said in a partisan spirit, although it might be viewed as such—namely, what happens when the coalition collapses? That is the central question. The whole Bill is framed to try to ensure that it cannot collapse and that it can be nailed down as if by President Mubarak. People say it is like being locked in a loveless marriage, but the idea that it was dreamt up in heaven does not quite tally with one’s instincts.

Why were some of us quite content with the Labour party manifesto one minute and then appearing to say something else the next? In the case of two recent Bills, many of us were supportive. My reaction to the Bill preceding this on AV was to be vaguely supportive until we started to look at some of the detail. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, will accept in good faith that there are so many contortions in the detail because of the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny, the lack of a Green Paper and a White Paper and the fact that the Bill is designed specifically not for the good of the Commonwealth for the next 500 years but to keep the coalition going for five years.

There is going to be a degree of sophistry in the arguments that are put forward. I would compare the central argument to the famous Catch-22 in Joseph Heller’s novel. Once one has nailed down the idea that there has to be a fixed-term Parliament for five years, obviously all the arrangements for votes of confidence and the question of whether the Prime Minister has to agree with the Speaker and whether anyone can turn up at Buckingham Palace or whatever are secondary to ensuring that the scheme cannot fail. Five years, again, has been designed clearly to maximise the period of this particular coalition, because not until five years have passed—it is hoped on the other side—can the economic and social crisis facing this country possibly turn around so that not everyone on the other side will be decimated at the next general election. If bets were taken on how the public would view a vote on five years versus four years at the moment, I do not think the bookmakers would agree to take any bets other than one way for very long.

The little exchange between the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Rooker, was very informative. As I understand it, the argument is that we have made arrangements on party funding in a five-year cycle and somehow it would be very inconvenient if the electoral cycle did not match that cycle. What an extraordinary way of putting the tail before the dog. Without necessarily repeating every word my noble friend said—I agree with the sentiments and the language—I must say that he made a very fair point in his question. I think the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made an inappropriate remark. He is forensically very able in dealing with all these matters, but I did not think that that remark was particularly apt.

I have one question about how this would work in practice. We all remember 1974 and everything that happened in January, February and March that year, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who will have it branded on his soul; he was Principal Private Secretary to Mr Heath. Let us say that this Bill had been an Act. The Labour Government came in with a majority of minus one or plus one or whatever it was.

[Lord Kinnock]

It was minus three.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Minus three, jolly good. Can someone just spell out what the scenario would have been then? Who would have done what, with which and to whom, and would not the royal prerogative have somehow come into it at all? I ask the question in all innocence because I just cannot work out the answer looking at this Bill. I suppose that Harold Wilson would have been able to manufacture Dissolution by manufacturing a confidence vote that he would lose. Is that what we are supposed to believe? I would like to know where I am wrong. It seems to me an extraordinary contortion. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said so eloquently, when you go around the Commonwealth and other places on electoral missions and to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and so on, people tend to respect the very things that we are now going to tear up. It is English or British pragmatism gone mad, you might say, but these things work, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The balance of evidence for deciding this matter is the degree to which it is broke and the degree to which fixing it will be satisfactory. That is the balance that we should obviously look to.

Finally, as an aside, how many of the IPU 77 countries cited by the Government in their reposte to the memorandum of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, can change their whole constitution by a single vote in the House of Commons? That worries me as well because many of them, I am sure, have a two-thirds majority to change the constitution. We have in this Bill a two-thirds majority to instruct the Speaker to sign a piece of paper, like Cromwell or someone, to say that this is now a lost vote of confidence. If the principle of a two-thirds majority is so important for that, why do we not have some sort of two-thirds majority provision on constitutional Bills generally? I am happy to echo what my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton said in this characteristically superb forensic speech: that we will be protected only by the fact that unless the Government make some significant changes, they will be up a gum-tree so far as the Parliament Act is concerned. They could get away from under the Parliament Act if they do another U-turn on all the arguments that they have been advancing today, but that is something else. It is against that background that we will, I am sure, have a very interesting Committee indeed.