Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

David Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

Let me try to help the right hon. Gentleman, because I do not believe that he was here on the first day of Committee when we debated this matter, which is in clause 1. As we are now on clause 2, I do not want him to find himself out of order.

[Mr Straw]

I am sure that that is a matter for the Chair, but I was simply trying to provide a comprehensive answer to the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke).

If we have a fixed-term Parliament, then of course the power of the Prime Minister to call an election is very significantly modified. I am concerned about the rights of this House. This House works by passing legislation, and all other matters, on the basis of votes by a simple majority. If we had a written constitution, which I am not against, we could have a separate debate about whether there should be some means or other of entrenching certain basic provisions. We are doing that in practice for some, but not others, by way of referendum, and for some, but not others, by way of convention and cross-party consensus. Meanwhile, however, regarding how this place works and good governance, we operate on the basis of a simple majority.

What we should be doing in the Bill is laying down a fixed term—I would prefer it to be four years, but it is going to be five—and then accepting the reality that circumstances could arise in which a Government of the day lost the confidence of the House. There is no alternative to that. No new Prime Minister could suddenly pop up and regain the confidence of the House. That being the case, there has to be an election, as happened after four and a half years of the ’74 to ’79 Government. It seems to me that those should be the only circumstances that should trigger an early election. I do not want there to be provision whereby, by some method or another, whether it is by a majority of a half, 55% or 67.5%, a package of Members can be got together in order to hold a general election. Nor do I think that those provisions would ever be used, because they are so complicated. There is no point in our passing legislation that has no significant purpose.