Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

Can I make the point that going beyond four years can be a double-edged sword for a Prime Minister? Margaret Thatcher was very shrewd in how she went after a strict four years, as was Tony Blair. We have seen what happened with five years, so it does not always work in a Prime Minister’s favour.

[Lord Cormack]

I make one brief point following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Martin. Surely in a coalition Government the Prime Minister could not do what his partner, the Deputy Prime Minister, did not wish him to do. So why are we here?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I want to repeat a point I made on Second Reading, which does not seem to have been raised so far today. I do not bring any preconceived ideological support for fixed-term Parliaments. The Bill is a positive step to address the lack of public confidence in the political system. One of the points I made on Second Reading, which is the most powerful reason to support the Bill, is that it would ensure that the Government and the Opposition had to face the electorate on a predetermined date, whatever the political conditions are at that time. That is the most compelling thing about fixed-term Parliaments. As to the length of the term and whether it should be four or five years, I was struck by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. He made the point about Governments being distracted by preparing for elections and said that if there were to be a fixed-term Parliament, in his view as a former Cabinet Secretary, it should be five years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

If this Bill becomes law and there is a five-year Parliament, the Government of the day can expect to be there for five years and therefore can plan their programme over a five-year period. They need not necessarily frontload the parliamentary programme. It may allow more opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny, which is regularly being encouraged. That is a difficult issue in the first year of a Parliament when Governments clearly want to move on and do some of the things they were elected on. But if they know that there is a five-year fixed-term Parliament, there is a better opportunity to programme it.

If it was a four-year Parliament, the final-year problem described by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, would kick in in the fourth year, with people going back to their constituencies because they knew an election was looming. Therefore, the effective period of a Government’s programme would be much reduced. If you have a five-year period it will be possible for a Government to plan that programme over five years. We are talking about annual Sessions beginning in May. At the moment the final Session tends to start in late November and has to wind up in late March. I do not think any of us who saw the wash-up last March found it a particularly edifying experience. One would hope that if a Government knew that the final Session was starting in May and going through to a solution the following late March, that would allow for a much better programme in the final year and avoid the consequences of wash-up.

[Lord Cormack]

If the virtue of five years is to give more time to plan, and I accept the logic of that, why have we not had better planning in the first year of this Parliament?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, we have indicated that we will move towards a May Queen’s Speech. There is a legislative programme and I do not think the number of Bills in this first Session matches the numbers in some of the first Sessions of the previous Administration. This Bill is not yet on the statute book but if it is passed, I believe that we will see a much more orderly planned programme than I have seen since I came into this House, certainly in the final Session.