Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

My Lords, I shall be very brief because most points have already been made. I start by echoing what has been said by way of welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. The number of noble Lords who have told anecdotes about his past implies that he will feel very much at home here, as I am sure will be the case.

I acknowledge, as one or two noble Lords have done, that the Labour Party policy in its manifesto was in favour of a four-year fixed-term Parliament. That is not a policy that has ever excited me, but to suggest that because of that specific manifesto commitment we should now support this entirely different Bill is, to my mind, total nonsense. My starting point is quite simple: any proposal to change the British constitution, as this Bill does, should be coherent, should have public support, should be subject to wide consultation and, as far as possible, should be based on consensus. The onus should be on those who are proposing change to prove that those conditions have been met and that what is proposed is an improvement. To my mind, this Bill fails both tests. As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer proved, it is constitutional change for party-political convenience because neither side in the coalition trusts the other and they need what he described as glue to bind them together. That is a pretty sorry state of affairs and certainly not one of high constitutional principle.

In opening the debate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said that the political system needs to be reinvigorated. With due respect, I do not think that this Bill will achieve that. I do not know about the Minister’s former constituents when he was in another place, but I served there for a good long time and no one ever indicated that they would or would not vote for me because they were in any way concerned about fixed-term Parliaments. I do not think that the mass of the electorate is demanding this kind of change.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has been welcomed as the Minister leading for the Government on this Bill. I endorse that welcome. As we saw with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, it is true that he is considered to be the user-friendly Minister for the Government on these matters and he stepped in when others had exhausted any goodwill that they had. I hope that he retains that reputation, but to do so it is important that he listens to the genuine concerns about this Bill that have been expressed on all sides of the House, not just from these Benches. The concern is genuine and I am afraid that the letter mentioned by my noble friend Lord Anderson, which the noble and learned Lord sent implying endorsement by the Select Committee, was not a reassuring start. I hope that he will be reasonable and listen to these concerns so that we can have a very constructive Committee stage.

Briefly, my concerns are twofold: one is about the content of the Bill and the other is about the context in which the Bill is being introduced. I object to fixed five-year Parliaments. I was somewhat surprised at the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, earlier when he said that anything other than a five-year Parliament could not achieve anything. I thought back to the 1966-1970 Government and the Open University, which is a glaring example of a fantastic achievement and, although I disagreed with many of their policies, I do not think that many people would say that the 1979-1983 Thatcher Government did not have, in their own way, a great number of achievements.

People say that the term has to be of five years so that we can have more achievements, but why? The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said that it has to be five years because it would save money for political parties. On that basis, why not make it six or seven years? What is so magical about five years? The point in the Constitution Committee’s report, about how many elections we would have had had there been five-year terms since the war, was a very telling one. We need to maintain contact with the electorate as much as possible.

My main very serious concern—and here I follow the noble Lord, Lord Plant—is about the mechanisms and complications that arise from making a vote of confidence more complex. I will leave aside for the moment the concerns expressed by the Clerk of the Commons—though, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out earlier, these are things that we might have to come back to because there could be difficulties. I did not find the Minister very convincing in his earlier comments. For example, the Minister did not give a very satisfactory answer to the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about the use of the 14-day mechanism. I am still not very sure whether this 14-day mechanism is supposed to be a cooling-off or hotting-up period. As a former Chief Whip, I perhaps should not have enjoyed the relish with which my noble friend spoke about how a Government might use those 14 days. However, clearly, Members opposite had had the same thoughts. Are we to have 14 days so that Government Ministers can offer jobs to rebels or inducements or threats or whatever? The possibilities of buying off an opposition in your own party or doing deals with others are certainly there. A lot could be achieved in 14 days. It is not a good idea, and I hope that it will not remain in the Bill.

However, on the other hand, when you think of the source of this idea, as was mentioned earlier, maybe 14 days is simply designed as a mechanism for one partner in a coalition to try to persuade a different partner to enter a new coalition and form an entirely different kind of majority in the Commons without an election. Either way, the deal would be done without any reference to the electorate whatsoever, which is the case with any coalition. If the alternative is the simple and obvious one of a general election, I am a long way from accepting the 14-day concept. When MPs vote on a vote of confidence—and I am one of a relatively small number of people who have done that—they know that they are voting for or against a general election. It is as simple as that. My noble friend Lord Grocott was there on that very significant night in 1979—as I was—when there was a vote of confidence. This is my main concern with the Bill. There are many others that will need clarification.

I have one specific question for the Minister that I hope he can clarify. Provision in Clause 1(5) says that the Prime Minister can make an order for a general election to be brought forward or delayed by two months —the so-called foot and mouth provision. I can understand why, if there is a foot and mouth outbreak, as in 2001, an election might be delayed. What are the circumstances, however, in which a crisis can be anticipated so that the election has to be brought forward two months? If you can anticipate in February that you will have to have an election in March, is it a crisis? I hope this question can be answered and my mind set at rest.

There are many other small points. As the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, asked, why May? What he did not mention is that, if the election is in May, there is always the problem of juggling the scrutiny of the Budget provisions in the other place because the Budget is traditionally in April. I could ask why Thursday and not the weekend, but that is not the point that we are discussing now.

My other concern about this Bill is with what is happening to the whole area of constitutional reform. The Constitution Select Committee said very politely:

“We are concerned that the constitutional relationship between the provisions of this Bill and the Government's other proposals for constitutional reform have not been adequately thought through”.

That is a wonderfully calm understatement. We have already had some legislation with a high degree of controversy because of a lack of consultation. Indeed, the committee, in its fantastic report, pointed out the possibilities of the difficulties with a five-year boundary and a five-year Parliament and them being out sync. It is a recipe for chaos.

My real problem is that we are seeing a whole ragbag of proposals from this Government, with AV brought forward with a referendum, legislation reducing the number of seats of another place and talk of recall of MPs and changing rules on parliamentary privilege as well as changes to voter registration, elected police chiefs and Lords reform, not to mention the decision to have a two-year parliamentary Session, which has a whole range of implications. What we have is a disparate range of piecemeal, ill-thought-through ideas. It is just like a series of bad schoolboy essays being put forward. My noble friend takes issue with the word “schoolboy”, but I think that those making these decisions will well understand the kind of essay that I am talking about.

If the Government want to make changes to the British constitution in so many different and fundamental ways, they should take a step back. The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, wants a codified constitution. I do not think that I do—but if we are going to have change, we must have coherent change. To do that, you need to take a step back and have a royal commission and you need to have debates on terms of reference. You cannot rush through significant constitutional proposals in this way and expect to get things right. The law of unintended consequences will come in here, and we will see great difficulties arising in future.

Finally, it was interesting that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, in describing the role of this House, mentioned the phrase “guardianship of the constitution”. It is a phrase that has echoed around this Chamber this evening, and many people realise their responsibility in that respect. I hope that this House lives up to that billing on this legislation and, indeed, on any other constitutional changes that this Government bring forward.