Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

This arrangement would also allow time after the general election for the new Parliament to meet. It did not seem appropriate to set an aggressive timetable and force overly hasty decision making. The timetable is set out so that people can have confidence that the committee will be set up.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

As the Minister knows, I thought the Bill was unnecessary and said so on Second Reading, but I cannot support the Lords amendments, because they seem equally unnecessary. Given that the Bill is primarily about the mechanism for the Dissolution of Parliament, which takes place at the end of a Parliament and over a short period, why do we have to wait until 2020 to review it?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend thinks back to our earlier debates on the Bill and its effects, he will remember that this is not just a mechanical process to do with the detail of the Dissolution itself. Rather, it is about the consequences that flow from that. Much of our debate revolved around what will happen to the nature of the parliamentary process if we have fixed terms—what will be the benefits and potential negative consequences. The reason for looking at it after a full fixed term is to enable the committee to consider whether, as I would hope, the possible positive outcomes we debated have come about, and alternatively whether some of the concerns that have been expressed on both sides of the House have been proved accurate, and then to make some recommendations and publish a report. As a consequence, this House will be in a good position to debate the matter and discover whether further legislation is needed.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman took part in many debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill before it was enacted, and he will remember that we set up a similar type of review mechanism to look at the operation of that legislation in respect of parliamentary boundaries. A similar type of post-legislative scrutiny and review was set up to consider precisely those issues in that legislation, therefore. I hope that deals with the hon. Gentleman’s concerns.

[Andrew Percy]

Will the Minister also look at the question of the term of the Parliament, which we have discussed before?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I am happy to abolish the Government Whips Office, but I am very fond of my Whips Office. It is always best to remain in as good an odour as possible with one’s Whips.

The simple point of process is that when the Leader of the House announces in the future business—as has been said, we hope that the Backbench Business Committee will do this in future—that consideration of Lords amendments may take place, he never specifies the Bill to which that relates. That is an unfortunate way of doing business, and it might make much more sense if, in future, the Government were to announce the Bills in question. If every Member of the House had known at the beginning of the week that we were going to be dealing with this Bill today, the Chamber might have been packed to the rafters—I note that it is not. That is despite the fact that we are sure to hear a wonderful speech from the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), and many would have crowded in just to see her jacket this afternoon.

The amendment, in essence, confesses that the Government have not achieved consensus on a major constitutional change. Again, I say gently to the Minister that when any constitutional change is being made, especially when pre-legislative scrutiny has not been undertaken, when no draft legislation has been produced, when the change was not adumbrated in one of the governing parties’ manifestos and when it is a significant change from what was in the manifesto of either of the two governing parties, it is all the more important that Ministers and the Government in general proceed on the basis of consensus. Although I am often a fierce critic of the House of Lords, of its hereditary principle and of its appointment principle—I call it the “patronage principle”—I believe that the Lords plays an important stop-gap role in constitutional affairs. That is why I believe that this amendment owns up to the fact that, as Lord Butler of Brockwell put it, this legislation has been introduced

“without proper consultation, preparation or consideration.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1080.]

For many years, we relished listening in this Chamber to Lord Cormack, the greatest par-li-a-ment-ar-i-an of his age—he used about seven syllables when saying that word. As he said, this is an

“ill thought-out, unnecessary and bad Bill.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1087.]

There are specific problems with this amendment, most notably because it does not add anything. If their lordships think that it is a concession, they are completely mistaken, because already the Government will have to undertake post-legislative scrutiny on this legislation in the next Parliament. All the amendment does is provide for another version of post-legislative scrutiny, but such scrutiny will already have taken place four years before the date in 2020 when the amendment suggests it should occur.

I am somewhat of a suspicious mind; I think that the reason why the Deputy Prime Minister has insisted on this date in 2020 is his ambition to put up joint Liberal Democrat-Conservative candidates at the next general election and to be able to continue the coalition for two parliamentary Sessions. I say that because it was not an immaculate conception that led to this constitutional Bill; it was conceived behind the bike sheds as a result of the coalition partners—the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats—trying to fix the length of this parliamentary Session so that nobody could abscond should any difficulties arise. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is just waving to me or whether he would like to intervene. It appears that he wishes to intervene.

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman’s argument about joint candidates falls down because he needs to be able to find someone willing to stand as a Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidate.

[Chris Bryant]

I believe that earlier this week the Prime Minister described himself as a “Pragmatic liberal conservative Eurosceptic”—he used different arrangements of those words in different arenas, as is his wont.

In addition, the amendment presumes that not only this Parliament, but a second one will run for a full five years. If that was not the case, choosing to specify dates in June and November 2020 would be particularly bizarre, as they might fall two years into another Session. This is where the following statement by Lord Armstrong of Ilminster is correct, although I confess that I do not quite understand the first bit:

“It is all Lombard Street to a China orange that the time will come when a premature Dissolution would be to the manifest benefit of the country”.——[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1088.]

I think that that is true. If we consider the recent history of the United Kingdom, we see that even on occasions when the Government had a decent majority, such as in 1964 and 1974—although the latter situation was more complicated—they decided to hold a new election because they felt that they needed a mandate to deal with a specific set of issues that had not arisen at the previous general election. I believe that that will happen again and that it will be in the interests of Parliament to have the greatest degree of flexibility to allow it to happen, if not to encourage it to happen. That is why this amendment, in trying to entrench not just one fixed term, but two—in the interests of the coalition rather than the country—is misguided. As I said, the amendment adds nothing because post-legislative scrutiny, a fixed part of the way in which we carry out our business, will apply to this legislation.

The Minister, charming as he is, tried to assert that fixed-term Parliaments are used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as in relation to local government elections and so on. However, these do not seem to have been very fixed in the past few years. Indeed, in the short time that he has been in power he has already changed the term for the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the local government elections in Northern Ireland. Now the Government have just decided that there will not be a fixed term for the police commissioners, because the first term will be slightly shorter than the second one, as the Government are not going to be able to get their legislation through in time to have elections next May and so the first elections will take place next November. So I am profoundly sceptical even about the ability of the hard-line fixed-termers, such as him, to deliver a fixed-term Parliament, because of the way in which politics works.

I wish to make a few comments about the specifics of the amendment. It states:

“A majority of the members of the committee are to be members of the House of Commons.”

I do not believe that the Government consulted anyone in the Opposition on this amendment. I am sure that had the Minister done so, he would now be leaping to his feet to defend himself—it appears, therefore, that he has not sought a consensus on this constitutional change. If consultation had taken place, we might have made some suggestions about how to constitute such a committee. It might have been better to state from the outset that it should involve Members of the House of Commons. I think that we should return to the practice of the 15th and 16th centuries—I am sure I have one hon. Member on my side here—which was that Joint Committees of both Houses should have two Members of the House of Commons for every Member of the House of Lords. I admit that that was at a time when there were perhaps 60 or 70 Members of the House of Lords and 480 or so of the House of Commons, whereas they are getting towards having double the number we have in this House. None the less, while this is a democratically elected House and that is not, it would make more sense for the majority from this House to be 2:1.

I note en passant that one Member of the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform—not from the Opposition side of the House—pointed out that having such a large number of members of a Joint Committee makes it very difficult to do serious business. It is quite difficult with large Select Committees, but with 24 or 26 members of a Joint Committee of both Houses, it is phenomenally difficult to make progress.