Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup]

My Lords, a key argument advanced by the Government in favour of five-year fixed terms as opposed to those of four years is that it will improve overall government effectiveness, because there will be fewer elections and therefore less distraction to the Government in having to fight them. In mulling over this question, I have found it useful to think about the whole lifespan of a Government rather than the individual terms that go to make that up. Modern experience seems to be that most Governments serve for two or three terms. They occasionally serve for one or four but two or three seems to be the norm.

On that basis, modern experience is that a two-term Government will serve for about nine years and a three-term Government for about 13. That is because most Governments go to the polls every four years, except in their final term when they realise that the jig is probably up and hang on for as long as possible. Actual experience since the Second World War is that two-term Governments have served for even shorter periods, because of the narrowness of their initial victory and the need to go to the country early to try to secure a workable majority. Even setting that to one side, we have two-term Governments of nine years and three-term Governments of 13 years under the current system.

Under the proposals in the Bill, we would have Governments of 10 years or 15 years. However, in the second or third term of each Government, they seem to run out of steam. The toxins that are produced by reshuffled Ministers and disaffected and disappointed Back-Benchers build up to such a degree that the Government find it increasingly difficult to provide coherent and decisive leadership. They therefore end either their second or third term in a rather weakened state. It seems to me that these dynamics are likely to occur at about the same pace under whichever system we adopt so it seems likely that, under the Bill’s proposals, we would have weakened Governments limping on for about one or two years longer than they currently do. I find it hard to see how that can be construed as an overall increase in government effectiveness. Indeed, it seems quite the opposite; that four-year fixed terms would probably produce such an increase in effectiveness, rather than the reverse.

Perhaps I might make one final point. I may have a rather idiosyncratic view of this but the essential and, indeed, the defining characteristic of any democratic electoral system of whatever model is the unassailable power and right to remove incumbents. This is to say not that doing so at too frequent an interval is conducive to effective government but that one should be very cautious about extending the period at which that is customarily done. That seems to me to be inescapable under five-year fixed-term Parliaments.