Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Charles Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. My short answer is that I was not disappointed.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

rose—

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[Mr Harper]

I will give way in a moment.

If the Lords amendments were accepted, the electorate would have no certainty as to how long the Parliament that they will elect on 7 May 2015 would last. Such certainty, and the principle behind the Bill, have been welcomed by many electoral administrators and by members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

[Mr Walker]

Will the Minister tell the House where that desire for public certainty in relation to a five-year Parliament comes from? Does he think that there would be huge upset in 2015 if people were suddenly to discover that the Parliament might run for only four years—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman could let us know which part of the amendment he is referring to.

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[Mr Shepherd]

rose—

[Mr Charles Walker]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

My comments seem to have provoked interest. I shall give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd).

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[Mr Harper]

I would not characterise the relationship like that at all. A good case was made, and on this particular issue the Prime Minister has demonstrated tremendous leadership. He is the first Prime Minister to give up the power—a power that was his personally—to seek a Dissolution from Her Majesty the Queen. That improves our arrangements, because we now know the date of the election and so for the last year of this Parliament we will not have the “will he, won’t he” proposition, where everyone is trying to second-guess when the election will be and people are arguing about when the best time is for the party or parties in government. That is an incredibly powerful step forward and it is very welcome.

[Mr Charles Walker]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I promised earlier to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Walker]

The current system has served us pretty well for 350 years. The Minister cites other Parliaments around the world that have been established for perhaps 20 or 30 years at best. Perhaps they would be best advised to follow our example, as opposed to our following their example.

[Mr Harper]

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I do not believe that the general public support the exercise that we go through in the run-up to the end of a Parliament, where we enter the “will he, won’t he” argument. We all know—this came out clearly in the debate in the other place from some who had been close to these decisions—that the decision that is taken, perfectly honourably, is about how best the Prime Minister can choose the date to maximise the chance of their party being re-elected. I simply do not think that that is a good basis on which the decision should be made, and I think that our approach is an improvement.

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[Chris Bryant]

No, I do not accept that, because the experience over the rather sad course of this Bill has been that there has been no consultation with the Opposition about a major constitutional change. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said earlier that the system has lasted for 300 years, but I do not think it has been a good system or that it has been perfect for the British constitution, because it has on occasion allowed too much power for a Prime Minister to call a general election at his or her—well, very rarely at her—convenience. In that regard, it is better that we should proceed in a different direction. For us the key issue is whether a term should be four or five years.

[Mr Charles Walker]

No system is perfect, but we have had a fairly dynamic democracy over the past 350 years and by fixing parliamentary terms we will lose some of that dynamism.

[Chris Bryant]

I have sympathy with that argument, but I also think that this is one of the changes towards a fixed-term Parliament that would assist in that and would be another part of the steady progress of parliamentary evolution to which he referred.

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[Mr Shepherd]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. There was no way that I was going to rise to that fly. We will get back to the substance of the matter.

These are ridiculous proposals from the House of Lords—on that I agree. To that extent I am with the body of the House, which, I hope, feels that this is almost an impertinence. That impertinence is qualified, of course, by the fact that the Lords are the second Chamber, and that as it stands—other than in matters of money, as I understand it—they have all the rights of a second Chamber to make or change legislation. They are wrong to table the amendment, but they are right in the spirit of it. I hope that it is in order to suggest such a thing. My proposition is that they are right in the spirit of it because it is the only way in which they can attack this matter.

I hope that this cheerful Chamber will look askance at the Minister and his colleague, the Deputy Leader of the House, who are sitting on the Front Bench and trying to seduce us into thinking that there is some immaculate constitutional conception behind the Bill. There is not. It is the raw politics of “We want to be there for five years, in the hope that something turns up at the end of the fifth year”. That is what it is about, and we know it. I urge the House to vote for the Lords amendment, and damn them.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Fixed-term Parliaments: constitutional vandalism.

[Mr Cash]

This was not in our manifesto. The people who voted for us certainly did not vote for fixed-term Parliaments.

In 1940, as I have said, the Government won the vote in May, but the public would not countenance that Government remaining in power for another day. That was what got rid of Neville Chamberlain, and Leo Amery said:

“In the name of God, go.”—[Official Report, 7 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1150.]