Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Jack Straw and Tristram Hunt

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I am in favour of a fixed-term Parliament, although I would have wished it to be four years. So, too, did the Liberal Democrats wish it to be four years. Indeed, they spelled that out in a document dated 10 May 2010 headed “Recovery and Renewal”, which contained their proposals in the coalition talks for what became the coalition agreement. I am indebted not to the department of open government in the Liberal Democrat headquarters for providing wider sight of this, because whatever they think about the Freedom of Information Act 2000, they certainly do not apply it to themselves, but to the New Statesman and its website. For greater accuracy, however, I have a copy here. It says:

“Immediate legislation to…set the date of the next election for June 2014, and establish”—

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Ah!

[Mr Straw]

I will repeat that because I know that my hon. Friend must have misheard it:

“Immediate legislation to…set the date of the next election for June 2014, and establish the principle of four-year fixed term Parliaments in future.”

[Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House is mumbling from a sedentary position. If he thinks that I have misread that, I am extremely happy to be corrected. However, it ill behoves the Liberal Democrats—I am sorry, I almost said the Conservatives: that was a Freudian slip—and, particularly, the Deputy Prime Minister to suggest that a five-year term is a matter of principle, as opposed to a four-year term, when they proposed a four-year term and agreed to a five-year term only as a result of some rather scrubby back-stairs deal.