Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Baroness Jay of Paddington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[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 Wallace of Tankerness]

I have made the point that it is not the Government who are proposing four years for subsequent Parliaments; we are proposing five years. I indicated that if we had proposed five years for this Parliament and four years subsequently, that would have been the subject of legitimate criticism. But that is not what we propose—we propose a consistency of five years. I will come on to argue why we believe that five years is right for subsequent Parliaments as well.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

I understand the noble and learned Lord’s point. However, as I tried to ask on previous occasions, does he take the point that a five-year term for this Parliament and this Government could have been achieved in a way that did not involve this Bill?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Clearly the Government could have continued for five years, but the point is that the Government are seeking to introduce the principle of fixed-term Parliaments. In wishing to introduce that principle, we believe that it should apply to this Parliament as well. It is not just the length of time; it also involves the trigger mechanisms for an election other than at the end of the five years. In terms of consistency, we are saying that what is right for the future—and we are self-evidently legislating for the future—is something that this Parliament should equally be obliged to have regard to and, indeed, to be bound by. I hope that I can make some progress.

--- Later in debate ---

Parliament should set out now what we think are the constitutional principles now and in the future. Surely in this House we are not seriously arguing that Governments should be given the opportunity regularly to manipulate Parliament, after every election, into choosing whether or not to be subjected to a fixed-term rule. The Bill as drafted provides for a constitutional lock on the length of Parliaments, to take politics out of election timetables. That is its purpose, and it is a purpose I strongly support. By contrast, I fear that the amendments add more politics to election timetables. Imagine the party pressures immediately after a general election when the country and the parties have been subjected to extraordinary partisan argument and controversy. We would be right back into the simple party-political advantage game immediately after that peculiarly partisan situation. On that basis, however seductive the amendments and however distinguished the authors, the amendments, though doubtless very well intentioned, are flawed and I hope your Lordships will reject them.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

Before the noble Lord sits down, will he help me with the force of his argument about the imposition of party politics on the kind of provision that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and his associates have suggested to the House when that will take place, as I understand it, immediately after a general election? It is not, as it was in the circumstances which he describes, something that Prime Ministers could calculate towards the end of a Parliament was to their party advantage, or was not, as the case may be.

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Baroness may recall that I was elected on 1 March 1974, and given the convention—it was referred to earlier—that normally it is six months before another election is agreed to by the monarch, that would have been precisely the situation. It was entirely wrong that the Prime Minister of the day decided for party advantage that he would ignore all the big economic problems of the summer of 1974, did nothing to disturb the popularity of his Government, carried on to the autumn without taking important strategic decisions about the future of the country and then went to the country in the autumn. That is the sort of situation that we should certainly avert because party advantage could, very soon after a general election, be uppermost in the mind of a party leader who would therefore take advantage and destroy the fixed-term legislation for his or her own party advantage.