Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend’s points are probably more relevant to the next group of amendments, when we will talk about adding some specific provisions to the Bill, so he might want to raise them then. If he does so, I shall be able to address them in an orderly way.

The Opposition supported the sunset provisions in the other place, and I anticipate that they will do so again today, so I want to point out why I think they would be wrong. Effectively, the sunset provisions drive a coach and horses through the principle of the Bill. On 24 November last year, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said:

“I want to reaffirm our commitment”

—the Labour party’s commitment—

“to fixed-term Parliaments. That means we have to lay down in statute that it is for the House, not the Prime Minister, to dissolve Parliament.”—[Official Report, 24 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 328.]

I agree, but under these sunset provisions at the end of this Parliament we would give back to the Prime Minister the power to dissolve Parliament by seeking a Dissolution from Her Majesty the Queen. I do not think that that is in accordance with what the hon. Gentleman said then.

There are a number of other useful quotes. The Labour party manifesto of last year stated that

“we will legislate for Fixed Term Parliaments…We will let the people decide how to reform our institutions and our politics: changing the voting system and electing a second chamber to replace the House of Lords.”

I do not agree with the first, but I do agree with the second.

“But we will go further, introducing fixed-term parliaments”.

Furthermore, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath said that a vote for Labour was a vote for fixed-term Parliaments.

I accept that Labour did not win the election, but it seems to me that if the hon. Member for Rhondda is going to carry out the spirit of that commitment, all the people who voted Labour at the last election will expect him to vote in favour of fixed-term Parliaments. If he does not agree to disagree with their lordships, he will not be carrying out that manifesto commitment.

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

I have not read the Conservative party manifesto recently, but so far as I remember it did not contain a commitment to fixed-term Parliaments. Therefore, if the hon. Gentleman were to take his own advice, he would withdraw his support for the Bill.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman sets me up very nicely for my final quotation. In this Bill’s Second Reading debate—which took place a long time ago, on 13 September 2010, which goes to show that the Bill has enjoyed leisurely progress through both Houses with proper scrutiny in both Chambers—the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said:

“I have long been in favour of fixed terms. I could dig out correspondence I had with Margaret Thatcher in 1983 about fixed terms. The Labour party committed itself to fixed terms in the 1992 election. What typically happens—this is why I welcome the measure and why I wanted that commitment in our manifesto—is that parties in opposition that are in favour of fixed terms go off the boil on them when they come into government.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 645.]

Interestingly, we have done the opposite. We were not very keen on them in opposition, but we have become keener on them in government, and this was in our coalition agreement.