Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Edward Leigh

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion No. 3: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed. That was my reason for using the metaphor of holding a loaded gun to the BBC’s head. Opposition Members do not consider that the deal was negotiated in good faith. As my hon. Friend’s point suggests, it amounted to little other than blackmail.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I apologise for being controversial—the hon. Gentleman will not agree with me—but this is rather like the triple lock. The fact is that many pensioners over the age of 75 are perfectly capable of paying a licence fee, so perhaps we should concentrate resources on people who really cannot afford to pay, rather than piling up more and more benefits to pensioners. I know that is controversial, but it is a point that needs to be made.

[Kevin Brennan]

It is an entirely legitimate point of view, but that is not what is under discussion. We are discussing who should take that decision. We say that the decision should be taken by this House and that the Government should be brave enough to face the electorate and say that they have decided that the policy is not, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, a priority. Instead of that, however, the Government are pretending that they are somehow keeping their pledge while transferring responsibility to an unaccountable body. The hon. Gentleman has been a powerful advocate in his long career on behalf of democracy and this House and against that kind of transfer of responsibility from this House and the duly elected Government to unelected quangos or other bodies. That is why we tabled the new clause, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will support for that reason.

It is a point of principle for us. We cannot accept a policy that takes responsibility for even a small part of our social security system and gives it to an organisation with no direct accountability to the electorate. If the new clause fails, Labour will do everything in its power to make it clear to those millions of over-75s exactly what is going on. It is not the BBC that will be reducing or taking away their entitlement to TV licences; it is the Government who have knowingly engineered the change. If we look at the Red Book for Budget 2016, we see that it is absolutely clear how much money the Government intend to save from this measure: in 2018-19, £185 million; in 2019-20, £425 million; and in 2020-21, £725 million.

Our new clause 17 aims to modernise the public service broadcaster regime, as recommended by Ofcom. Existing law would be extended to include on-demand channels and menus. The broadcasting landscape has changed significantly due to the emergence of new technologies such as the BBC iPlayer, the iPad and digital TV switchover, so although the Communications Act 2003 ensured PSB prominence on broadcast TV, it does not apply to connected TV sets or to catch-up services.

Connected TVs, such as Sky Q box, move the TV guide, where PSBs occupy the most prominent positions, so that it is increasingly hard to find. Seven out of 10 of the public say that they want the BBC channels at the top of the channel listings and that they want BBC iPlayer and the on-demand service there too. Among connected TV users, people are 10 times more likely to prefer to see the TV guide than the platform operators’ recommendations first. This holds true in focus groups, where consumers gave feedback on the obscuring of the TV guide. One said:

“I absolutely love Sky Q, but if there were one thing I would change, it would be where the TV guide is…it’s almost tucked away somewhere on my screen. You expect technological advances to make life easier, but this is making it harder…it’s an extra step.”

Essentially, the public are paying towards PSB content that is becoming increasingly hard to find.

The Minister argued in Committee that Ofcom should adapt the code in line with technological developments, but Ofcom itself has called for a legislative change. The point was made that the TV guide was of declining importance due to the increasing integration of TV and internet services. However, nine out of those who watch live or on-demand use the electronic programme guide to access TV programmes. Our new clause builds on the current system, with a strong duty placed on Ofcom to provide clearer guidelines than at present. The industry should then apply these as appropriate to their platforms. If the Government really believe in public service broadcasting—and they say they do—they should support our new clause 17.

New clause 18 deals with the listed sporting events regime, which ensures that events such as the Olympics are freely and widely available. Unfortunately, that is at risk, so our new clause would help to safeguard listed events into the future. Some 45 million people in the UK watched the Rio 2016 Olympics, while millions watched the Euros—including Wales’s stunning run to the semi-final this summer. Listed events are responsible for 5% of sports output but 60% of sports viewing in this country. The current law specifies that 95% of the population must be reached by a channel for it to acquire listed events rights. Due to the proliferation of alternative media devices, PSBs believe that by the end of this Parliament no TV channel will, in fact, meet that 95% reach criterion.

New clause 18 offers a solution. There is a crucial legal difference between receiving a channel and watching it. Replacing the criterion on the capability to “receive” a channel with the alternative that it “has been watched”, based on its actual uses over the past year, would capture factors such as continuous free-to-air availability, popularity and audience awareness. The new clause would lower the threshold from 95% to 90%, and give the Secretary of State powers to amend it so that the law is flexible enough to reflect consumption trends and change in new and unpredictable ways.

Let me deal now with new clause 15. Over the past few years, there has been a series of round-table discussions with search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo, and rights holders including the British Phonographic Industry, the Music Publishers Association and the Alliance for Intellectual Property. The various parties have been trying to negotiate a code of practice to tackle copyright infringement whereby search engines would do more to demote sites that carry pirate content. These discussions are dragging on and, years later, the search engines and rights holders are yet to come to an agreement. Our new clause would provide the Secretary of State with the powers to legislate for a code of practice to be agreed if the next rounds of talks fail to come to a conclusion.

Piracy continues to weaken the UK recorded music industry. For example, academic evidence based on average retail prices and Ofcom’s tracker survey indicate a loss of between £150 million and £300 million a year. Our new clause would give the Secretary of State a backstop power to legislate that a code of practice be agreed. I think the Government should accept that now is the time for action in this sphere.

Education Regulations and Faith Schools

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Edward Leigh

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, of course I agree. It is very important that RE is a rigid academic discipline. Children must be aware of other faiths and of comparative religion, but they must also have a firm grounding in their own faith’s teachings, because that gives them a sense of belonging and place.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly talks about the need for a firm grounding. Is not the line that must be drawn that no taxpayer-funded school should ever be involved in proselytising or indoctrination?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I absolutely agree. I mentioned the thousands of Church of England and Roman Catholic schools. I do not think that there is any evidence that any of those schools are creating Christian jihadists. I have six children, and they have attended faith schools in the state and private sectors. The thought that any of those primary schools in the maintained sector, whether Catholic or Anglican, is teaching intolerance is completely absurd.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have not yet finished my speech. I do not want to weary the House, but I have several examples. If this was an aberrant inspection of one school out of thousands, we might say that we should not worry too much about it, but I will quote several examples. There is undoubtedly evidence that such inappropriate questioning has taken place. The schools have complained—I will deal with that in a moment—and there is no adequate evidence that Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, has gone back to the schools and questioned pupils, parents and teachers about the inappropriate questioning.

This debate is terribly important: if it achieves nothing else, it will ensure that there is no kind of pre-emptive cringe on the part of Christian schools worried that they might be marked down if they do not promote “British values” rather than their own ethos. I hope that there will be a kind of pre-emptive cringe on the part of Ofsted. Given that all my hon. Friends have come into the Chamber, inspectors will now be worried about asking such inappropriate questions because they might be held to account.

There is a bit of a pattern. I will mention other examples before I sit down because it is important to establish that pattern, and to convince the House that this is not about one aberrant inspector, but has happened in several schools and across several faiths.

[Kevin Brennan]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problems have arisen partly because of the knee-jerk way with which British values were introduced last summer? In fact, the requirement is actively to promote not other faiths, but respect for, and tolerance of, other faiths. If this had not been introduced in such a rush and with such a knee-jerk reaction, perhaps that would be better understood throughout the system.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I agree entirely, and we are looking forward to hearing the Minister make that clear. There was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, and perhaps over-zealous Ofsted inspectors have not understood what British values are about. Surely British values are about what our country has always been about, which is tolerance and understanding, not a requirement to promote other people’s religions or values.

We have to wonder how far Christian schools have to go to satisfy the new standards. In September, Bolton Parish Church primary school was told that although

“events such as…Diwali are celebrated…pupils’ understanding of life in modern Britain is underdeveloped.”

Middle Rasen school in my constituency was marked down, apparently because it was too British—a strange problem for north Lincolnshire. How many non-Christian festivals does a Christian school have to celebrate before Ofsted is happy? Faith schools have a legal right to teach their own faith, and English law stipulates that school assemblies and RE should normally be “mainly Christian”, but that has been overridden by inspectors.

Grindon Hall Christian school is one of the top state schools in Sunderland for GCSEs and the top school, state or private, for A-levels. In May 2014, Ofsted rated it good in all areas except leadership and management. In November it was also subject to a no-notice British values inspection—quite alarming for the top performing school in Sunderland. Its primary school pupils were asked if they knew anyone who thought they were in the wrong body. Well, I have sometimes thought that maybe I am in the wrong body—[Laughter.] One parent complained that her 10-year-old daughter was asked if she knew what lesbians did. One sixth-former said that the inspector was

“manipulating the conversation to make us say something to discredit the manner of teaching in school.”

Another said:

“She seemed to have the view that since we are a Christian school we don’t respect other religions and views.”

A third said:

“It felt like she wanted a certain answer from us and wouldn’t be satisfied until she got that answer.”

Ofsted issued a report that rated the school “inadequate”. Despite the fact that it is the best in terms of results, the Ofsted report marks it as the worst of any school in Sunderland. Clearly, results count for nothing.

As with St Benedict’s, Ofsted issued a draft report with phrasing that tipped its hand. The report said:

“The Christian ethos of the school permeates much of the school’s provision. This has restricted the development of a broad and balanced approach to the curriculum.”

I thought the reason why we are such a tolerant and successful country was our Christian heritage, which teaches tolerance and respect for others. Those inspectors clearly regard a Christian ethos as inherently negative. Although the phrase was withdrawn after complaints, the report attacked every area of the school’s performance, not just British values. Hundreds of parents signed a letter to the Secretary of State to urge a review of the report which, they said,

“paints a picture of our school—and our children—that we just do not recognise.”

The Durham free school is a Christian faith school. Department for Education monitoring visits in December 2013 were very positive, but the school was targeted in the November 2014 no-notice inspections. After the inspections, pupils came forward to report questions asked by inspectors that made them feel uncomfortable. Again the views of the inspection team were revealed in the draft report which claimed that

“RE is a narrow study of the Bible”.

Well, I do not know, but I would have thought that in RE it is not a bad idea to study the Bible fairly rigorously. The school told Ofsted that

“only a very small proportion of the RE teaching at any time has constituted study of the Bible…your inspectors simply could not have seen any evidence during the inspection to support this conclusion.”

Grammar School Funding

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is exactly right, and I will come to that point in a moment. Mr Roger Hale, who runs the successful Caistor grammar school, wrote a heartfelt plea to me. Of course, he will struggle on and do his job—that is what teachers do—but he said:

“We were one of many schools who answered the call from Michael Gove to set off on our own as an Academy so that we would have better control over our resources. In the first few years, this worked very well. However in the last 18 months, the funding we receive to be an Academy has been sharply reduced.”

I have read letters from grammar schools from all over the country that say the same thing.

On the face of it, it seems fair that the Government equalised post-16 per-pupil funding between schools with sixth forms and further education colleges. A lot of the problems are due to the law of unintended consequences. I do not think for a moment that Ministers intended to hit grammar school funding adversely, but their laudable aims had unintended consequences. The funding for FE colleges and schools was equalised, which was fair enough. However, that ignored the significant further pastoral support and enrichment programmes for pupils in sixth forms. Sixth formers take on a broader programme of AS and A-levels, in addition to supervised study, sport and other programmes, in contrast to FE students. Per-pupil costs for sixth forms are in many cases higher than they are for further education colleges. Sixth formers, on the whole, have between 20 and 25 taught hours per week, while the figure for those in further education colleges is closer to 17. Furthermore, that equalisation was achieved not by choosing a figure in the middle of the previous levels of sixth-form and FE funding, but by brining sixth-form funding down to the same level as further education.

I am grateful for the argument made to me by Mr Önaç, the headmaster of St Olave’s school in Orpington. He said that the scale of the reduction that the change has brought has been huge, and that it often amounts to a whole fifth of the per-pupil budget. Although it has applied across schools, it has affected grammar schools, because almost all of them have sixth forms that comprise a much larger proportion of their total school population than other schools. That is why we have this problem. I am not sure that it was envisaged at the start of the changes.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman did not make the debate about 16-to-19 funding as a whole, because the same would equally apply to sixth-form colleges, which also have to pay VAT.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Although I wanted to talk about the problem affecting grammar schools—one should be absolutely honest—as I said at the beginning of my speech, the problem affects not only grammar schools, but successful comprehensives with large sixth forms. The hon. Gentleman is right to make that point. I hope we can look at this issue in a bipartisan way. It should not be about grammar schools versus other schools, but about fairness. All sixth-form pupils, whatever school they are in, should be funded as equally as possible.

Supplemental funding for the disadvantaged is widely welcomed, and we all accept it. Part of the reason why I and others are such passionate advocates for grammar schools is that they provide a superb helping hand for pupils from less-advantaged backgrounds.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Grammar schools can help people, in particular those from ethnic minorities. In the school that my son attends, 60% of the pupils are from an ethnic minority background, which is high. I believe that, if there were more grammar schools, we could do more to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds. One of the problems is that there are not enough grammar schools. We are not going to get into this debate now, but I wish county councils had the freedom to set up more grammar schools if they want to do so. That is what localism is all about.

The way that the funding is worked out—there is an over-emphasis on pupils who qualify for free school meals—is not adequately grounded in the hard evidence of the additional costs associated with disadvantaged pupils. The Government have injected additional funding into four sections: pupil premium; special needs; pupils who have failed GCSE English; and pupils who have failed GCSE maths. As I have said, that intention is laudable, but unfortunately, in many cases, it means that the Government have perhaps unwittingly pumped four different funding streams into the same child.

We also need to recognise that that funding increase has a converse effect on the opposite end of the spectrum in grammar schools and sixth forms more generally. It would be counter-productive to unbalance the funding of education so much towards disadvantaged pupils that we undermine centres of excellence in the state sector that we want to protect. This is not a zero-sum game: we can help disadvantaged pupils and promote centres of excellence. Surely that is the right way to proceed.

The number of young people over the age of 16 educated on a full or part-time basis has increased in recent years as a result of raising the participation age to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015. Schools and further education colleges have come under pressure to expand to accommodate such increased numbers. That is fair enough, but at the same time, the funding pot for post-16 education has become fixed, and the method of distribution has changed from a model that included higher levels of funding for courses with large practical elements, and incentives for institutions with high levels of success and retention.

The simplification of the funding system—funding is attached to the student rather than the course—is welcome, but the impact on high-achieving academic schools with large sixth forms, including the grammar schools in my constituency and others, has become considerable. The funding system means that, in some local authorities, students receive more funding for education from 11 to 16 than from 16 to 18—can that be right?—even though it is widely recognised, and obvious common sense, that the cost of delivering the curriculum increases as a student gets older. That is why many universities feel justified in charging fees of £9,000 a year.

As students move through the school system, they can exercise an increasing level of choice over the subjects they study, which tends to reduce financial efficiency. More broadly, there is a bigger perspective, which I want to end on. We need to think about that point, which I want to emphasise. The world is becoming more and more globalised. As the Prime Minister keeps telling us, Great Britain is competing in a global race for excellence. For us to compete successfully, we need more scientists, more engineers, more mathematicians, more doctors and more innovators.

[Kevin Brennan]

What evidence can the hon. Gentleman give to show that areas with selection at 11 produce more people in those professions than areas that do not have selection at 11?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I think I can establish that grammar schools provide real add-on value and are, in themselves, centres for excellence. I do not want to get into a wider debate about whether there should be more or fewer grammar schools in Lincolnshire, but the Government have decided that the existing grammar schools should survive. Nobody in the Government, or the Labour party, suggests that grammar schools should be phased out. Presumably, they accept that those schools have a contribution to make. All we are asking for is fairness. I am not saying to the Government that there should be more grammar schools, although I might well believe that. I am simply saying that I want fairness. The Government have decided that the schools should exist, so they should be funded fairly. The removal of additional programme weighting for sciences, technology and mathematics is particularly unwelcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Perhaps at the outset I should say that I was educated at a comprehensive school, I taught at a comprehensive school, and my daughter attended a comprehensive school. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) very deftly tried to change the terms of the debate away from the title on the Order Paper. He opened his speech by saying that the debate also applies to comprehensive schools. It is a pity that he did not actually put that in the title of the debate and say that it would be about sixth-form funding. I understand why he might have put it in the terms he did—the juxtaposition of the terms “grammar” and “school” is catnip to his Conservative colleagues. Had he said that the debate was about 16-to-19 funding, many other colleagues from areas of the country that do not have one of the 164 remaining grammar schools might have liked to attend and raise with the Government their concerns about 16-to-19 education funding in schools and sixth-form colleges in their constituencies. It may well be that another debate is needed to enable a broader cross-section of the House to participate.

In introducing the debate—I thank the hon. Gentleman for the advance copy of his speech, which he supplied to me prior to the debate, and wish I was that well organised—he said:

“Supplemental funding for the disadvantaged is widely welcomed”.

He then went off script and said “we all accept that”, and yet, towards the end of his speech, he said:

“What we need is not 80% or 90% of funding allocated on pupil-led factors”,

but simply “funding per pupil”. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman squares those two statements, and how he can achieve that without reducing funding to the other schools in his Lincolnshire constituency. He might want to explain to the head teachers of the other schools in his constituency how much of their budget he thinks should be cut to accommodate what he said in his speech.

The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) went as far as saying that the current 16-to-19 funding system introduced by the Government is

“damaging the life chances of children.”

That is very serious, and I hope the Minister will respond to that charge in his summing up.

The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) talked about grammar schools in Kent, but he did not talk about the overall impact of a selective system and how Kent overall gets poorer results than many comparable non-selective counties. That feature in defence of grammar schools was not entered into during the debate. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) also criticised the effects of the Government’s policy on 16-to-19 funding.

The hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), along with many others, said that what was happening was due to the unintended consequences of what the Government have done on 16-to-19 funding. He called for a re-examination of the policy of ring-fencing the schools budget for five to 16-year-olds because of the impact it is having on the 16-to-19 budget. I would be interested to know the Minister’s response to that suggestion. By the way, if it is an unintended consequence, that calls into question the competence of the decision in the first place, because if funding at 16 to 19 was going to be levelled down while protecting the five-to-16 budget, it was obvious that that would have significant impacts. Presumably Ministers, and the submissions they received from civil servants—we do not get to see those—went through fully and in detail the consequences of taking the decision and the impact it would have on sixth forms and sixth-form colleges.

The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), who, like me, is a former school teacher, pointed out all the other additional costs that are coming down the pipeline for schools. Again, the Minister should respond to that point. I recall from an earlier debate that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood taught in comprehensive and secondary modern schools, so he has a full experience of both sides of that equation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) pointed out the impact of 16-to-19 funding on all post-16 providers, not just the selective ones—although all post-16 providers are selective in some ways, because that is the very point at which selection is permitted within our system overall. The hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) agreed that 16-to-19 funding was unfair and gave examples from his constituency.

I should say something about grammar schools, as that is the advertised title on the Order Paper. Overall, it is the Opposition’s view that a system of selection at 11 is not the way to raise school standards or to promote social mobility. In fact, that is currently the Government’s position. Instead, we should focus relentlessly on supporting schools to raise standards for all pupils regardless of their backgrounds. The most effective way to do that is through promoting great teaching and leadership in our schools. The evidence for that is absolutely clear internationally. Andreas Schleicher, who is often quoted by the Government and who oversees the OECD programme for international student assessment scores, has made it absolutely clear that the international evidence shows that systems with selection for children at the tender age of 11, and all that that entails, perform less well than non-selective school systems.

Far from promoting social mobility, selective systems entrench social division. The difference in the domestic average wages between the top 10% and the bottom 10% of earners is much wider in selective areas than in non-selective areas. Schools that select at age 11 are also highly socially selective institutions overall. Almost all the remaining 164 grammar schools in this country have fewer than 10% of pupils eligible for free school meals. In 2010, 96,680 year 7 pupils received free school meals from a total of 549,725 pupils in state schools. Of the 22,070 grammar school pupils in that age bracket, only 610 were receiving free school meals. It is undeniable that the poorest children are losing out, in part because in some areas almost everyone who passes the 11-plus has had private tuition of one sort or another.

I will not go into great detail about the evidence from the past—it is probably not where we should go in today’s debate—but suffice to say, the rose-tinted view of the selective system of the past is not true. At its height at the beginning of the 1960s, a third of grammar school pupils got only three O-levels, and only 0.3% of grammar school pupils at that time with two A-levels were working class. It is therefore a myth that grammar schools were great engines of social mobility. There are many reasons for the great surge in social mobility, but selection at 11 is not one of them.

That is why the current Prime Minister was absolutely right in 2007 when he said that those who wanted to expand the number of grammar schools were

“splashing around in the shallow end of the educational debate”.

He went to say that his party was in danger of becoming “a right-wing debating society” rather than

“an aspiring party of government”.

That is why the current Government have held on, largely, to the policy of not allowing more schools that select at age 11, although they have permitted a loophole to those that he said were

“clinging on to outdated mantras that bear no relation to the reality of life”—

they have created a loophole to allow the expansion of selective provision by stealth to locations many miles away from existing grammar schools.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Let us agree to disagree on grammar schools. In the last couple of minutes of his speech, will the hon. Gentleman focus on the fact that the Labour party presumably is committed to a fair funding formula for all schools with successful sixth forms?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, I can do that, and I can confirm that. Labour policy remains that the remaining selective schools should be a matter for local parental choice. Our policy has not changed on that since it was introduced in 1998, and it has been reconfirmed by the current Government. In the course of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, he was right to point out that sixth-form or 16-to-19 funding is causing a great problem for many schools across the country. Of course, there is no different formula for grammar schools—I would like to make that point, so there is no myth about it. The difference in funding between grammar schools and others is largely because of the difference in their pupil intakes, because of all the factors we have heard about. However, he is right that many schools, including grammar schools, have been hit very hard by the severe cuts in sixth-form and college funding that the Government have imposed. As I said, it might have been more fruitful to have a debate under that broader title to allow others to introduce that subject.

Finally, there are a few questions that the Minister needs to address. Was the decision to slash 16-to-19 funding intended to impact hardest on sixth forms, colleges and, indeed, selective schools? What was the rationale for that decision? Was the result deliberate, or is it, as many hon. Members have suggested, an unintended consequence, in which case there would be an issue of incompetence in relation to the decision?

Since 2006, the Conservative party has said that it is against more selection at 11. Is that still the case? Will the Minister tell us what is happening with the decision about the satellite grammar school in Kent? Will he pledge to include financial data in performance data relating to academies, so that we can debate them?

Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Debate between Kevin Brennan and Edward Leigh

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No, I am not saying that. I think we should simply go back to the old system and the Prime Minister should be able to call an election when it is appropriate. I agree, however, that if we were going to have a fixed term, a four-year one would be much more acceptable. However, we are not here to honour fixed-term Parliaments; we are here to bury them. So I would rather go back to the old system, which worked perfectly well. Interestingly, in the previous century the average length of a Parliament was four years and 10 months—

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Three years—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Sorry, three years and 10 months. So if we stick with this Act, in the next century we could lose six general elections—that is six occasions on which the people are given a real choice. In short, the greater flexibility that the power of Dissolution allows is to the advantage of our parliamentary democracy. The great advantage of our constitutional tradition is that it bends rather than breaks, but fixed-term Parliaments remove that flexibility, with consequences that cannot be foreseen.

Professor Robert Hazell of University College London’s constitution unit, has said that

“Anthony Eden’s decision to call a premature election in April 1955 can be justified on a mandate basis: he had only taken over as PM nine days earlier after the resignation of Winston Churchill. Fixed terms will remove or at least limit the government’s capacity”

to renew their mandate. We all know that the decision of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), not to have a general election as soon as he was elected—or, rather, appointed—as Labour Prime Minister was a serious mistake and his Government never recovered from it.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is the other side of the coin, which is why the Liberal party, which always delights in its own rationality, came up with this idea of fixed-term Parliaments. It is strange that the Liberal party, which is so apparently rational in all respects, is so unpopular with the people—I never quite understand that. It is precisely the sort of point that comes from political scientists and leads to dangerous constitutional innovations that are not thought through and are, in the end, profoundly undemocratic. The old system was better, more democratic and more in tune with what the public want.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is it not entirely unfair to criticise the Liberal Democrats when they are not here to defend themselves?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is a good point. [Interruption.] Why be fair in politics anyway—they are not.

This constitutional change was not in our manifesto, although I believe it was in both the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. Interestingly, the Liberals maintained that fixed-term Parliaments would

“ensure that the Prime Minister of the day cannot change the date of an election to suit themselves.”

It is telling that the Liberals speak so contemptuously of consulting the people and seeking their approbation. I believe the Liberals had previously been in favour of a referendum on the European Union before they decided they were against one—they now say they will have a referendum at the time of a treaty change. Why not have a vote on the European Union at a fixed time—they have succeeded in foisting that on us for our Parliaments? They are totally irrational, and they are arguing from different points of view on fixed-term Parliaments and on a referendum on Europe. When did their support start imploding? It was when they broke their election promises on tuition fees, and they have never recovered. That was in the heady days of the coalition, which they were determined to try to maintain for five years. Indeed, now they are apparently the main body of people who have maintained that this coalition must struggle on for five years.

How was the arrangement formed? It was a hash job—let us be honest about it. It was designed to keep both parties in the coalition from doing a runner on each other and it was never thought through properly. This was always going to be a loveless marriage, and fixed-term Parliaments were a pre-nuptial settlement drawn up between two parties that were never in love. Indeed, they had to bind their marriage in barbed wire to stop them ratting on each other. Is that the right way to make a major constitutional innovation? I do not think it is. These constitutional innovations of profound import for our democratic system should have been the result of lengthy debate and academic debate, but they were not. They were cobbled together in five days in May in secret meetings between the leaderships of the two parties. These things were put not to a vote of my parliamentary party, but to a show trial public meeting of MPs in Committee Room 14 with planted questions. There was no democratic mandate in our manifesto for the fixed-term Parliament. We should put this issue in our manifesto and repeal the Act, and think about repealing it now.