Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, as the final Back-Bench speaker, I cannot help wondering whether I have been so placed because I supported the Fixed-term Parliaments Act when the Bill came through your Lordships’ House. While it may have been a political convenience for the coalition Government, as some have argued in this debate today, I believed in it, and I spoke up for it at every stage, as a Back-Bencher and a new Member of your Lordships’ House. I did that not because I particularly favoured fixed-term Parliaments—I do not. I supported the Bill because I saw that it was one of the few structural changes that we could make to our political system to show the public that we were serious about putting their interests before our own. This was, in my view, essential following the financial crash of 2008, the expenses scandals of 2009 and the crises in public confidence across all aspects of politics and institutions that are meant to serve the public interest. Indeed, I was not alone: fixed- term Parliaments featured in the Labour and Lib Dem 2010 general election manifestos, broadly for the same reasons—although it seemed to me that, once the Bill arrived in your Lordships’ House, the Labour Party seemed less convinced about them by then.

To me, alongside behavioural changes, we politicians needed to identify some meaningful structural changes that would favour the public interest, even though, from the perspective of parliamentarians, they were not broken—and I say that again. I made it clear during the passage of the fixed-term Parliaments legislation that the system for calling elections that we had before was not broken; the reason to change it was to give up some power for the benefit of the electorate.

All that said, I am not going to argue against the Government’s decision to repeal the Act. It has not worked, and I think that it needs to go. However, if we are not to perpetuate the problem which fixed-term Parliaments were meant to help solve—at least according to my view and that in the Labour and Lib Dem 2010 manifestos—we must make sure we understand why it did not work and learn the correct lessons.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord McLoughlin and the Joint Committee, which considered this matter in detail, as well as the other committees of your Lordships’ House, particularly the Constitution Committee, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton. But even with the benefit of those committees’ work and all the constitutional experts and lawyers in your Lordships’ House who have spoken today, our biggest risk is failing to see the bigger picture. We must not lose sight of that as we scrutinise this Bill in detail.

As the final Back-Bench speaker, allow me to paint with some broad brushes. The value to the voters of fixed-term Parliaments was some certainty that the Government and political parties would not be distracted by a general election, at least for a while, and certainty that the Government of the day and all political parties would have to face the electorate on a predetermined date, whatever the political conditions at that time—something that has already been said by other noble Lords today. Although fixed-term Parliaments meant certainty for the electorate in principle, in practice, as we have heard, the legislation meant the Prime Minister relinquishing power to Parliament—or, more specifically, to Members of the Commons—to decide when it would be in the public interest to undo that certainty to achieve greater clarity from the voters. Once enacted, MPs were given the power to override what the electorate had determined at the general election by way of a vote of no confidence or a two- thirds majority in favour of an early election.

The basic safeguard was our assumption, I guess, that in order not to scupper voters’ impending support via the ballot box, MPs would not seek to force a general election unless it made sense to the electorate that they did so—in other words, if there was a problem which was preventing effective governance of the country which could not be resolved without clarity from the electorate. That principle seemed to work okay in 2017, when Theresa May, as Prime Minister, could see that getting the necessary legislation through Parliament to enable Brexit would be near-on impossible. The opposition parties might not have agreed with her intentions about Brexit but, in line with all expectations and like all opposition parties throughout the ages, they did not give up the opportunity of an election when it was offered to them by the Prime Minister.

As we all know, things did not work out quite as Theresa May planned. I believe that that was not because, as some have argued already, she was opportunistic but because during the campaign the voters were left uncertain and unsure about the various party leaders and what they offered, and delivered a result that was even less clear than before. That lack of clarity from the voters was a message to the political class to sort ourselves out, but instead, we all turned inwards: Parliament and the Executive engaged in battle, and parliamentary gridlock ensued. Whatever anyone thought of Mrs May’s Government or her attempts to secure Parliament’s agreement to her Brexit deal, I think she was vindicated in her belief that, without a clear majority, Parliament would not deliver the will of the people.

By the time Boris Johnson succeeded her in 2019, normal parliamentary rules and political conventions had collapsed. It was clear that a general election was needed, but Parliament refused. Whatever noble Lords think about Boris Johnson’s tactics when he succeeded Mrs May, his efforts to force a general election were rewarded with clarity from the electorate.

Unlike most other noble Lords who have spoken, the reason why I think the Fixed-term Parliaments Act needs to be repealed is not that there is anything wrong with the legislation in principle, although I am sure that some points of detail could have been improved, but, sadly, that Parliament sought to use the legislation to its own advantage when it was out of step with the majority of the electorate—not just those who had voted to leave the European Union but the many other voters who just wanted Brexit to be dealt with, so they could move on. That is a dreadful indictment on us all, and it is the lesson that I think we need to show that we have learned.

As much as I regret the demise of a structural change to our system which I believed was in part a response to voters’ lack of confidence in Parliament, I think the only way forward now is to go back to what we had before and concentrate on behavioural changes which show how we are motivated by serving the public interest. That is why I hope very much that noble Lords, however well intentioned, do not bring forward amendments during the passage of this Bill to give the House of Commons the power to decide whether a Prime Minister can dissolve Parliament and call a general election. In my mind, that would not improve matters of public confidence in Parliament; it would make matters worse, because it would appear that this House is driven by its opinion of the current Prime Minister, not by what best serves the long-term interests of the public at large.