Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Exactly; that is a very fair point.

Our own beloved Mark Darcy, a BBC journalist who is really an ornament of the constitution, put it very well when he said that there was a danger under the Act of Parliaments

“oscillating between hyperactivity and torpor” .

We appear to be at the torpid end of this Parliament.

I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I regret that you cannot join us and make a speech. We recollect your coruscating arguments during the passage of the Bill, but we accept that you are of course now completely neutral.

I just think that five years is far too long. We have experienced a very front-loaded Parliament. The best evidence of that has been the recent explosion in the number of Back-Bench debates, compared with the number in the early part of the Parliament. I welcome Back-Bench debates, but they are taking place not through the kindness of the Government but because there is no majority in the House to do anything that would make a real difference. In my experience, the very best Conservative and Labour Parliaments have been four-year Parliaments, and the very worst have lasted for five years—in particular, our 1992 Parliament and Labour’s 2005 Parliament. Towards the end, five-year Parliaments get weaker and weaker.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument carefully. Does he agree that, for the purposes of consistency across the United Kingdom, if we were to go back to the old system and give this power back to the Prime Minister, that arrangement should also apply to the devolved Administrations? Should the leaders of those Administrations also be able to call an election whenever they wished?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

In my personal view, that is a fair point. The right hon. Gentleman has intervened at a good point, because I was about to say that our insistence on a five-year Parliament has resulted in delaying elections in the devolved Administrations. That delay was proposed because, when we had an election on the same date in Scotland, there was an unacceptable 147,000 spoiled ballot papers. I really do believe in devolution, however, and it is up to the devolved Parliaments to make that decision.