Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Desai Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

The noble and learned Lord misunderstands me. The election date that he was going to choose was in the previous October, and that is where he got it wrong. In his own self-interest, he thought that he should soldier on, despite the evidence. Let me not be distracted, but I am surprised that the noble and learned Lord remembers 1978 and 1979 so fondly. I have to say that it is not an example that I would wish to follow.

Statistics will not resolve this issue. In the decision over whether it should be four years or five, I find myself, rather oddly, agreeing with the Deputy Prime Minister who, in a celebrated quote of his when asked if he thought 12 months here or there mattered very much, replied, “No, I do”. I think that he summed up the situation admirably. So let us have five years. I do not know if it is a matter of principle, as my noble friend Lord Marks says—I probably would not go that far—or of sheer practicality, but it is as close to the norm as four years. If any of the political parties find it somehow offensive, they are entirely at liberty to change it. All they have to do is to win an election, and because of this Bill they will have the immense benefit of knowing precisely when that election will be held.

Even taking the extreme position of supposing that every Parliament runs its full term, a premise that personally I doubt very much, surely extending the average length of a Parliament from the present four-and-a-half years to five does no great disservice to our constitution, and by enhancing the possibility of sensible, long-term government, it offers considerable benefits in compensation.

[Lord Desai]

My Lords, I have a brief point to make, but first I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken that you cannot compare the frequency of Parliaments under a fixed-term arrangement with the frequency of Parliaments under a variable-term arrangement. They are not comparable things. I would also say to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, who expressed his distress that a Government would have only two years to legislate, not three, that if he had been in Parliament as long as I have, he would pray for fewer Bills to come from a Government rather than more. So I do not think that the quality of a Government is measured by the number of Bills they introduce; I think exactly the reverse.

I have one anxiety, which I shall explain. This Bill does not actually fix the term at five years, but at five years and two months. There is a distinct possibility that, again and again, a Prime Minister would be able to breach the standard convention that a term of five years is the limit. That is a fundamental part of our constitution. This Bill breaches that by allowing, in Clause 1(5), for an extra two months. We ought to take this very seriously. Prime Ministers can find good excuses to delay elections. As has been pointed out, if they see better a better chance two months hence, they will find a way of waiting. I do not care how long this goes on for—whether it goes on for 10-and-a-half years—but we should take the breach of a very fundamental political principle seriously. The advantage of my noble and learned friend’s amendment is that, even if a Prime Minister uses the two-month option, we would never breach the five-year rule. That is a telling argument in favour of the amendment.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, in 2005, together with my noble friend Lord Razzall, I was responsible for the Liberal Democrat general election campaign. The manifesto for that campaign contained a commitment to fixed-term Parliaments and specified terms of four years. Obviously I have changed my mind, and I should like to give the Committee three good reasons why I have done so. However, before I do that, I would point out to some noble Lords opposite that only last year they fought a general election on a manifesto promising that, if re-elected to government, the party would legislate for fixed-term Parliaments. The party has still not said how it would have legislated to “ensure” that there would be fixed-term Parliaments, and made no mention whatever of what the term of those fixed-term Parliaments would be. If the case for four years rather than five years was so absolutely clear cut, as suggested by some noble Lords opposite, I wonder why it was not included in the Labour Party manifesto of only last year.

The first reason why I think I have changed my mind is through simply looking at the balance of a five-year term for a Parliament and how much of that time might be spent governing or how much doing anything else. My noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames referred to the case for more pre-legislative scrutiny. I feel quite strongly that in the circumstances we have in this year in this Parliament, our legislation would be rather better if there was more draft legislation and more pre-legislative scrutiny, and I hope that when fixed terms of five years become the norm, there will be more of a case for such scrutiny in the first year of a Parliament, which would be good for the governance of the country.