Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

The problem with the American Senator term is that a third of the Senate is elected every two years, which means that they, too, are in a perpetual state of elections, so that idea does not carry over completely.

The other experience of more regular elections is that there tends to be a greater propensity on the part of the electorate to re-elect their incumbents. As I am now an incumbent, that is not necessarily something that I would take issue with. I suspect that all hon. Members would be happy to see incumbents re-elected—[Interruption.] Well, yes, perhaps their own incumbency re-elected. I was particularly intrigued by the comments of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby that elections offer the opportunity for politicians to recharge their batteries. That is certainly not an experience I have ever had in an election campaign.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Are not comparisons with the Congressional elections inappropriate, because Congressmen, by and large, manage to insulate themselves from the electorate because they do not have independent boundary commissions but negotiate their constituency boundaries so that 85% of the seats are safe? Therefore, there is no real comparison; when they go to face the electorate most of those Congressmen know they are going back.

[Andrew Percy]

I was involved in that in New Jersey in 2000. Such matters were determined on a state-by-state basis and depended very much on who was in control in that state. It is not quite the case that Congressmen themselves are busy dividing up their own seats, but there are examples where that happens.

I conclude where I started. For me, a four-year term feels more natural. As I said, I have no academic support for this argument. To go to the electorate every four years, which fits in properly with the elections in Scotland and Wales, feels the right thing to do. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments and I look forward to the comments of Opposition Members who, having enjoyed a five-year term, now seek to criticise the Government for seeking to continue them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs McGuire]

Thank you for calling me, Miss Begg. It is a great pleasure to see you in your place today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) on her dynamic speech. She has always been a participant in constitutional debates. We have often not seen eye to eye, and, frankly, I am not sure that we are going to change that this evening. However, she spoke with her usual vigour, vim and—in her way—logic. For those who do not know, she and I have always had an issue with some Members of this House who could never pronounce her name properly—that is, as we pronounce it in Scotland. I know that I am not allowed to mention names, but I am sure that she knows what I am talking about. [Hon. Members: “Go on!”] In Scotland, we would pronounce the hon. Lady’s name “Lang”. I will leave hon. Members to work out the difference, because, without usurping the Chair, Miss Begg, we would normally—[Interruption.] No, sorry, we would say “Layng”, not “Lang”. After 13 years down here, I have almost gone native.

I would like first to comment on one or two other previous speeches in this debate. There have been some powerful contributions to this debate. On the principle of the four-year term, although I did not agree with the analysis on three years put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), he and the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) made telling statements about re-energising our democracy at regular intervals. Frankly, it is arrogant of us in this House to assume that we should not go out there and re-energise our democracy at reasonable times. I am not convinced that five years is the right period to re-energise our democracy. Indeed, the dynamic of the British political infrastructure is built around four-year terms. The hon. Member for Epping Forest assumed that somehow Parliament was in a different position from the other elements of our democratic infrastructure, but I do not think that we are, in that they are underpinned by the same principle that if someone is elected by the people, then every so often, after a reasonable interlude, they should have to regain that mandate.

As an aside, the hon. Member for Epping Forest is a fantastic successor to Sir Patrick Cormack—I hope that she will take that as a compliment—in that she says the word “Parliament” with such gusto and conviction. Her articulation—I think that is the word—of the word “Parliament” brought back fond memories of Sir Patrick.

There is a dynamic in the British parliamentary system. There is also a logic to the four-year term, which has been built up over many years, yet the one thing that has been missing from the Government’s case in proposing five years is logic. There is absolutely no logic to their case, although the hon. Lady’s honesty perhaps got us closer than anybody else on the Government Benches was prepared to admit. This is not about logic or principle; this is about sheer political expediency. The current Government tell us that their activities in managing the economy will deal with the deficit in four years, so why are they afraid to go back to the electorate in four years? Why do they need to extend this Parliament for an extra year? Some elements of the coalition Government are in a lifeboat, waiting for the general election of 2015—a political equivalent of the Carpathia—to come by and lift them out of the seas in which they find themselves. That is the only reason for proposing a five-year term.

It is preposterous to introduce a five-year element into a well established cycle of elections every four years. It is almost like the Olympics: if we can divide the year by two, then it should be an election year. Every other democracy that we have highlighted today has gone down the road of four years—in the case of the American Senate, the division is by two. We have a well established political infrastructure in this country.

[Graham Stringer]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case for shorter periods between general elections, but when it comes to a coalition, is there not an even stronger democratic argument for shorter periods? By necessity, the policies of a coalition will have been opaque to the electorate at the last general election. Therefore, a coalition Government should go back to the people more often.

[Mrs McGuire]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend. We now have a different kind of Government. Had the numbers been slightly different, we might have been in a similar position—that is, in a coalition. However, I cannot imagine that one of our first Bills would have been to extend the life of that Parliament and put a statutory limit—not a flexible limit—on the length of our term, although some of my colleagues have asked why we did not think of the idea first, when we had a majority of 164 in 1997. Hindsight is a great thing.

As for the length of Parliaments, I want to offer my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) an apology, because he was right when he said that there were three Parliaments that ran in excess of five years. There were three others—I have just added up the years; I did not have the benefit of the chart—that effectively ran for five years. However, I hope that he will accept that, taken together, it has been unusual to go beyond four years.

There has been a strong element of honesty—certainly from this side of the Committee—about what happens in the fifth year of a Government. We have to be realistic about the dynamism and energy of a Government in their fifth year. I remember coming into the House in 1997 and hearing then Opposition Members—some of whom are now members of the Government—say that the fifth year of any Parliament is often the one in which the Government are tired and running out of steam. You might remember hearing similar comments, Miss Begg. I do not think that creating fixed Parliaments of five years will change that dynamic of politics. Four years is the time it takes a Government to put a programme in place and to deal with the major issues that it came to power to deal with.