Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Alan Reid Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Let me raise a few protest points at the outset. First, the Bill started its lengthy process on 22 July last year. In the normal course of parliamentary business, this parliamentary Session would have come to an end by now and therefore this Bill would already have fallen, so it would not be becoming law. Indeed, there would have been a point at which the House of Lords would have been able to hold the Government’s feet to the fire so as to extract greater concessions from them. I merely note that the Government have managed to give themselves a two-year Session. When the Leader of the House announced that that was going to be the case, I complained that it would give added powers to the Government. This is yet another example of how the Government have abused the constitution over the past year.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. We were both elected in 2001, so I am sure he will recall that in both the 2001 and 2005 Parliaments the first Session lasted about 18 or 19 months.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, although I am surprised he is only taking us back to 1911. He normally takes us back a little further. The Parliament Act cannot be used in relation to this legislation because the Bill would allow for the extension of Parliament beyond five years—possibly to five years and two months—and that Act expressly prevents the Speaker from forcing the Bill on their lordships. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: your lordships, stand firm.

[Mr Reid]

The Lords amendment we are debating requires the Bill’s provisions to be renewed if they are to be used in each future Parliament, but the Pannick amendment defeats the purpose of the Bill by permitting fixed-term Parliaments only if agreed by both Houses in a future Parliament. It effectively annuls the provisions of the Bill unless both Houses of every future Parliament vote to put the provisions back in place.

The Lords amendment is effectively a wrecking amendment, because it does not even require a resolution to be brought forward to annul the provisions—it is the other way around. Resolutions have to be put forward in future Parliaments to re-establish the provisions. That is completely unnecessary, because if a future Parliament wanted to amend this Bill, it could do so through the normal process of legislation. The amendment simply creates an unnecessary layer of law and its real purpose is to wreck the Bill. It would have been better if the Lords had simply been honest about it and voted against the Bill rather than trying to insert this clause, which is simply a wrecking measure by another route.

The Government’s new amendment, which I support, provides to the Lords a reasonable compromise in that it allows post-legislative scrutiny after we have seen the effects of the Bill through the full cycle. I urge the House to accept the Government’s amendment and reject the Lords’ wrecking amendment.

[Thomas Docherty]

May I begin by asking the Minister to answer the third question I posed to him? In some ways, it is the most important—it is the question about the size of the proposed committee. I have a huge amount of respect for the Minister and I think he secretly enjoys coming along on a Thursday lunchtime and spending some time with right hon. and hon. Friends on his side and on ours. We have excellent debates and he engages well with them. I suspect that the reason why we have such a poorly drafted offer from the Deputy Prime Minister and why the Minister has signed it off on behalf of the Prime Minister is that he knows the Lords will have to reject it, because it is so badly written, and he will be able to come back next week or in October and have another swing at this. The proposition offered on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister opens up many questions that have not been answered about the size and remit of the committee.

One could reasonably say that the Bill will have an impact not only on the workings of both Houses but on the devolved Administrations and on the local authority elections that subsequently take place, because we would have to have five-year Parliaments permanently for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly in order to keep one year behind. That is a very unsatisfactory arrangement.

[Mr Reid]

Surely the Bill removes the uncertainty that would otherwise have applied, because without it not only would the Scottish elections have been scheduled for May 2015 but if this Parliament were to go full term, that election would also be in May 2015. That complete and utter uncertainty is removed by the Bill.

[Thomas Docherty]

I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s optimism about the coalition holding together successfully for the full five years. I think that he is accepting that, in effect, we now have, permanently, a five-year Scottish Parliament and a five-year Welsh Assembly, but I am not sure whether legislation will be brought forward to make that clear in the next Parliament. That is a huge change in constitutional convention and I think he was involved in that. Certainly, his party played a significant role and there was cross-party consensus on it.

One of the key issues was having a four-year Scottish Parliament. I would very much hope that if the committee were set up, it would have a remit that covered not just the impact on the workings of both Houses, but the impact on devolved Administrations and on local authority elections in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is disappointing that we have seen no such indication from the Deputy Prime Minister about what the committee’s remit would be.

It is also disappointing to note that there is no length of time attached to when the committee is expected to report by. If I were cynical and thought that the Deputy Prime Minister could not be trusted and might make a pledge that he would then break, I might think this issue would then be kicked into the proverbial long grass for, perhaps, the full five-year period. I was very surprised that although the Minister gave a reasonably satisfactory assurance about the starting date of the committee, a closing date for its work has not been provided. I look forward to hearing his response in a few minutes, when I very much hope he will deal with that point.

We also heard from the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) that this is a wrecking measure. I have been in the House for only 15 months but it strikes me that every time the Deputy Prime Minister puts forward something that his coalition partners are not keen on, some measures are described as wrecking measures. I seem to recall that exactly the same argument was used about changing the date of the referendum on the alternative vote. It was said that moving the date back six months would wreck the whole premise, but I note that that argument was not put forward this week by the Liberal Democrats about shifting the date of the police elections—somehow that is not a wrecking measure, but I cannot think why.

It is very disappointing that the debate was not better advertised, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned, possibly because the Patronage Secretary was hoping that many of his more principled colleagues would make other arrangements for this afternoon and would not be around to give the measures the due diligence they could do with. I would be grateful if the Minister would outline why we were not notified until 3 o’clock yesterday afternoon that this important debate was going to take place.

The last issue that I want to address is the Minister’s argument that it would take nine years to start this process. I do not see why he requires, effectively, two complete Sessions of five-year fixed terms to do this. His argument about the upper House is quite revealing and I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members in his party will take great comfort from the fact that he is now saying that there will not be an elected upper House and that we will rightly have a fully appointed House of Lords, as we have at the moment. I am sure that is part of the deal that was cooked up over dinner last night. I understand that the Minister was the subject of some roasting last night at the dinner and it is good to see his hands fully today. I understand that there was some concern among parliamentary colleagues that he would have to keep his hands in sight at all times. Without further ado, I will sit down so that he can respond.