Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Lloyd of Berwick Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)]

I have to inform the House that if Amendment 1 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 2 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, I support four years rather than five years for the reasons which I spelt out in Committee and to which I had intended to return when we reached Amendment 3, but maybe I should address that a little earlier in view of certain observations made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, with which I agree.

I put my name to Amendment 3 last week because it followed very largely the amendment which was debated at length in Committee. I was therefore surprised to receive an e-mail over the weekend informing me that the noble and learned Lord was seeking to withdraw Amendment 3 and to substitute Amendments 1 and 2, which we now have, and asking me whether I would support them instead. I say at once that I cannot support Amendment 1.

At Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord accepted that it is open to any Government at any stage to indicate the date of the next election. That can be done within existing constitutional arrangements, as I believe everybody accepts. It did not require an Act of Parliament to establish May 2015 as the date for the next general election, but that is the course that the Government have chosen to take. There is nothing as such that is wrong with that course; it is the date that they have chosen and have put in the Bill.

If, therefore, May 2015 was to be challenged by the Opposition, surely it should have been challenged in Committee and not left to the 59th minute of the 11th hour before Report. Far from challenging that date, the amendment in Committee built on Clause 1(2). It assumed May 2015 and then substituted in Clause 1(3) “fourth” for “fifth”, and that is the amendment which I supported and still support.

It is true that, in response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, on 21 March at col. 508, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that it had always been the Opposition’s intention to challenge the date in Clause 1(2), but that was not what they did. It is true also that at the end of the debate in Committee, it was argued that if four years was to be the norm for future Governments, it should be the norm for this Government. I do not agree. The Select Committee pointed out in paragraph 17 of its report the crucial,

“distinction between ‘the immediate concern of the Government’”—

this Government—

“‘that it should continue for five years’ and ‘the long-term issue’”,

of what should be the norm for future Governments. Those are distinct issues and it is the long-term issue to which all the evidence given in the Select Committee was directed.

It is the same as the distinction that was drawn very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. He accepted May 2015 as the date for this Government because that is the date that any Government could have fixed. He thought that it was unnecessary to include it in an Act of Parliament, but there it is. Nevertheless, he favoured four years thereafter.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Is it not right that the same restrictions apply to this Government in this Parliament up to 2015 as would apply after 2015? If the same restrictions on having a general election apply in this Parliament, why is five years okay for this Parliament but not the next?

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I am grateful for the noble and learned Lord's intervention, but he is ignoring the crucial distinction between the two issues. One is the issue as to what this Government are going to do. He accepts as we all accept that this Government can choose 2015 if they want. The issue that we ought to be discussing is not for this Government but for future Governments. It is entirely consistent, if I may say so, for us to accept May 2015 for this Government yet to say that the norm hereafter should be only four years.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

I wonder if I could draw the noble and learned Lord’s attention to the conclusion of the Select Committee report. He is right that in paragraph 17 of our report we distinguished between the long and the short term. That was in the context of the broader discussion of the relevance of fixed-term Parliaments. But when we came to draw up our conclusions, we said that,

“the majority of the Committee consider that a four year term should be adopted for any fixed-term parliamentary arrangement at Westminster”.

We went on to write to the Minister, Mr Mark Harper, to say that our first conclusion stated that:

“We acknowledge the political imperative behind the coalition Government's wish to state in advance its intent to govern for the full five year term, but this could have been achieved under the current constitutional conventions”.

The noble and learned Lord has already drawn attention to that point. We did not get a response from the Government on it and I understand that there has been no particular response forthcoming. But I emphasise that the conclusion of the committee was that a four-year term was preferable.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I certainly had not read the report, which I read carefully, as having drawn the distinction that I am seeking to draw between what this Government are going to do now and what future Governments should do. I had certainly not understood the report as suggesting that the committee would support four years for this Government. Thus, I am setting aside what we all accept—that any Government can choose when they wish to go to the electorate. That is all I have to say on Amendment 1. If it is put to the vote—and it appears that it will be—I shall vote against it.

Since the noble and learned Lord has gone on to develop the whole argument in relation to Amendments 1 and 3, perhaps it would be convenient for the House for me to develop my reasons for saying why I agree with him that for subsequent Parliaments the norm should be four years rather than five. That was, as he said, the clear conclusion, which has been confirmed, of the Select Committee. The reason it gave was an obvious one: that five years,

“would be inconsistent with the Government’s stated aim of making the legislature more accountable”.

With that, I wholly agree. Indeed, it is obvious.

It is not surprising that the Select Committee reached that view, since it was the unanimous view of all the experts who gave evidence before the committee, including such acknowledged experts as Professor Dawn Oliver and Professor Vernon Bogdanor. Exactly the same was true of all the experts who gave evidence in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons, including Professor Robert Hazell and Professor Blackburn. As has been pointed out, Professor Blackburn is particularly important because he has made a specific study of this issue.

If some of this evidence had been one way and some the other, or indeed if it had been subjected to any sustained challenge when it was given, one could understand the Government sticking with their five years. However, the evidence was all one way and was virtually unchallenged. That evidence simply cannot be brushed aside or disregarded, otherwise there is really no point in having Select Committees, or them listening to evidence, because the witnesses would all be wasting their time. I cannot help thinking that if the Government had been aware of the expert evidence that was subsequently given, both in the House of Commons and here, they would not have chosen five years in the first place. Indeed, the point was almost conceded—as your Lordships may remember—by the Minister in charge of the Bill. When he was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Powell, in the course of his oral evidence, he said:

“If we had been starting with a clean sheet of paper, we might have reached a different conclusion, but we started from our existing position where the length of a Parliament is up to five years”.

I simply cannot understand the logic of that reasoning. The question is what the norm is, not how it relates to the existing maximum.

Alongside all that weight of evidence, many noble Lords also spoke at Second Reading in support: the noble Lords, Lord Hennessy, Lord Grocott, Lord Norton and Lord Morgan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, were all in favour of four years. To that list we must now add the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup—I do not know whether he is in his place—who made a most impressive speech at Committee in favour of four years; as well as my noble friend Lord Martin, and of course the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, himself. All these noble Lords were well aware of the only argument that I know of in favour of five years, which is roughly as follows: it takes an incoming Government a year to get going and the last year is spent in preparing for the election, which leaves only three years of a five-year Government for implementing policy. If there is anything in that argument at all—and I suggest there is nothing—it is surely outweighed by the need to make Parliament more, rather than less, accountable to the electorate, The electorate should be able to get rid of Governments who are tired and unpopular, for whatever reason, after four years rather than five. That is why, while I will support the Government on Amendment 1, I hope that they will accept Amendment 3.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith]

Noble Lords will notice from this that over many years, both in this House and at the Bar before, my noble and learned friend and I have made quite a good double act. I intended to come to that very point shortly but I do not blame him for trying to get in first. As an advocate, it is important always to make a point that you think is a good one before the other advocate does so.

On the point about pre-legislative scrutiny, it is not only a question of having an opportunity to scrutinise in this House; the committee asked the Minister responsible, “What do the people think about this? Have you asked the people what they think not only about the principle but also the term?”. As noble Lords will see in the evidence, that has never been done; there has been no attempt to consult on that kind of question. The Minister drew attention to two newspaper polls and a survey by the Scottish Youth Parliament, which were no doubt very worthy, but, as far as I am aware, they were not on the question of term but simply on the question of fixed-term Parliaments.

So the Government had nothing to support their view other—and we come now to the evidence to which my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has drawn attention—than a political decision, a political compromise, that this Parliament was going to last for five years. We all agree in this House that that could have been done by a statement by the Government that they were going to do that and sticking to their guns. It did not need a Fixed-term Parliament Bill at all.

That brings me to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, that we should allow the Government to have five years this time round and four years thereafter. With respect, that makes no sense to me at all. The recommendation in the report from the Select Committee on the Constitution was not that it should be five years this time and four years thereafter. It was very clear in saying at paragraph 62 that,

“the majority of the Committee consider that a four-year term should be adopted for any fixed-term Parliamentary arrangement”.

When I put my name to this, I did not for a moment think that the report was saying that we should let the Government have five years this time and four years thereafter. They could have achieved that if they had done what the committee wanted, which was to spend the time during this Parliament to consult properly, reach a view, legislate for hereafter but not to rush this through in this way. So I have no hesitation at all in rejecting the shabby compromise that ended up with a five-year term in the discussions to which my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has referred, and I would reject any compromise on four years. If it is to be four years for a fixed-term, it should be four years now and hereafter.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

The noble and learned Lord will not have overlooked paragraph 17 of the report, which explains the important distinction between the Government’s immediate concern that they should continue for five years and the long-term issue of the fixed-term Parliament.

[Lord Goldsmith]

That is the point. The Government could have said that they had decided that they wanted the term to last for five years, that they would do that by making a commitment now for it to last for five years, unless there are unforeseen circumstances, and that they would legislate for future fixed-term Parliaments of a different level. It was not at all a question of the committee recognising that five years, as a legislative fixed-term as opposed to as a result of the exercise of prerogative, was right for this Parliament.