Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Lamont of Lerwick

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, will no doubt recall very well from the period in early 1992 that there was much speculation about the likely timing of the general election then due. Options of April, May and June were all under consideration by John Major, and his choice was based simply on when was most likely to favour his party in what was expected to be a very close contest. Indeed, it was a very close contest that was well described in the book I much enjoyed by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, entitled Too Close To Call. It was clear from that account that the advantage of being able to choose polling day possibly made a decisive difference.

At the time I was involved in helping to prepare the campaign led by my noble friend Lord Ashdown. I was quite shocked to receive a call one day in the run-up to that election from someone who ran a printing firm.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

The noble Lord says that John Major was much advantaged by being able to choose the date of the election, but he actually chose the last possible date. Is that an argument for a fixed-term Parliament?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, the last possible date was June of that year. A date that was widely considered was the May of that year, which coincided with the local elections. In fact, the date chosen was 9 April, which was rather earlier than the last possible date, and was chosen—as the book I have just described accounts—for his advantage. I asked the printer, who told me that the date would be 9 April, how he could know. He told me he was breaking commercial confidence by telling me, but he knew because he was in the process of printing the election address of a then Cabinet Minister who was able to tell him that the date would be 9 April, and that this date was on the front of his leaflet. It seemed to me that that Cabinet Minister had an advantage over other candidates in that election, and that the ability to print election literature at a time of one’s choosing is just one of the unfair advantages afforded to the governing party over all other parties in our present arrangements.

As I have said before in these debates, it is rather like allowing Sir Alex Ferguson to pick the dates for all the Manchester United games. In 1992, the advantage of choosing polling day was possibly crucial to the narrow and generally unexpected Conservative victory, although in that election the Sun newspaper famously said:

“It’s The Sun Wot Won It”.

I know that many noble Lords opposite were candidates for the Labour Party in that election, in which they were led by the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock. I ask them to remember the words of their manifesto in 1992, which said:

“This general election was called only after months of on-again, off-again dithering, which damaged our economy and weakened our democracy. No government with a majority should be allowed to put the interests of party above country as the Conservatives have done”.

It concluded:

“Although an early election will sometimes be necessary, we will introduce as a general rule a fixed parliamentary term”.

The principle of this Bill is to do exactly that. It upholds a principle that was also in last year's Labour manifesto, which guaranteed to ensure that legislation would be introduced to make sure that we have the principle of fixed-term Parliaments. That principle was also in last year's Liberal Democrat manifesto and was one that David Cameron agreed in opposition to consider seriously before committing his party to it in the coalition agreement.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Lamont of Lerwick

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Will the Minister comment, at least for my benefit, on one aspect of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said? How will the Electoral Commission distinguish between the designated lead organisation and other organisations and decide whether they are truly independent of it? My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay was quite right to remind us that the rules in the PPERA were set down for referenda. None the less, all sorts of problems come with these rules. That is the point that some people on the other side were genuinely making, and that I was making when I intervened earlier. In many ways, these rules are inappropriate.

I am particularly worried about how you identify the designated lead organisation. The very fact that there is a body in this country that actually decides that there is a permitted lead organisation in a campaign makes me quite nervous. It gets rather close to the situation recently when the United States Supreme Court overthrew many of the rules relating to campaign contributions because they were interfering with the freedom of individual citizens to spend their money and support causes they wanted. I can hardly remember what I said a decade ago, despite the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, reminding me, but one of the points that I raised then was the interference, as I saw it, in certain basic freedoms: that a government organisation will decide who the lead organisation is, and that other organisations will be subject to this or that control.

These rules, frankly, made me very uneasy at the time, and I remain uneasy. Will my noble friend tell me how he envisages that the Electoral Commission will distinguish between expenditure of the lead organisation and whether another organisation is genuinely independent or not? Some of these organisations are very interconnected.

[Lord Rennard]

On a point of clarification, does the noble Lord accept that the Electoral Commission is absolutely not a government organisation, that it is independent from government and can therefore do something that perhaps a Government cannot do?

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Of course it is independent. That is how it was set up. I intervened earlier with a comment about the Electoral Commission that I was rather nervous about making, and I hesitated to make the comments directly; in some of the evidence presented to the Constitution Committee by at least one academic, the independence of the Electoral Commission on this issue of electoral reform was brought up. I am not saying I agree with that, but it was brought up—it was mentioned in a submission to the Constitution Committee by a well respected academic. When bodies exist on a permanent basis, such as the Electoral Reform Society, what constitutes routine non-campaign expenditure for them and what has to count as an item of spending in the campaign? At what point does academic and educational activity become a form of campaigning covered by the PPERA? I am afraid that these rules are full of holes and really quite impractical.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

But does the Minister remember that the leaflet that was published had a map of the United Kingdom on the front that left Orkney and Shetland off, which were the only areas to vote against continuing our membership of the EEC?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, could I invite the Minister and other noble Lords to confine their arguments more to Amendment 39B, which deals with civil sanctions, and perhaps make other arguments when we are dealing with other relevant parts of the Bill?