Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on his superb maiden speech. It demonstrated the noble Lord’s special feel for Parliament, its practices and its history, for the magic and mystery of the British constitution and for its constitutional legislation. So subtle and insightful is his understanding of the constitution that I have long believed that the noble Lord is actually part of its warp and woof. He served as a hugely distinguished chairman of the History of Parliament Trust and his distinction has been very much in evidence this afternoon.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has been a much valued friend and mentor of mine for several years. He has sustained the gifts of the history teacher he once was; he has followed Albert Einstein's words:

“Never lose a holy curiosity”.

He is a natural transmitter of that curiosity to others. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, gave the other place long, distinguished and devoted service as a dedicated and natural parliamentarian. I am confident that he will do the same as an enormously welcome addition to your Lordships' House.

The Bill before us today is a collector's item for a combination of reasons. First, if passed, it will be a rare example of a Prime Minister relinquishing a power which his predecessors possessed: the power to request the sovereign to dissolve Parliament, thereby triggering a general election. In the unusual circumstances of the coupon election in 1918, after the sudden armistice that brought the Great War to an end, David Lloyd George took that power unto himself as coalition leader. Previously, such requests had been a decision for the Cabinet.

Secondly, as other noble Lords have pointed out, the Bill proposes that Her Majesty the Queen be stripped of a sizeable chunk of one of her two remaining personal prerogative powers: that of dissolving Parliament, although summoning Parliament or proroguing it will remain a matter for the sovereign. Her other personal prerogative, that of appointing a Prime Minister, will remain entirely untouched.

Thirdly, this is a very rare example of a government Bill originating in the other place that, as currently drafted, is entirely beyond the reach of the Parliament Acts, creating an unusual stretch of legislative turf on which your Lordships can frisk. The Clerk of the Parliaments has attested that:

“It is ... clear that the … Bill does contain provision to extend the maximum duration of a Parliament beyond five years, and that it cannot, therefore, be passed under the Parliament Acts procedure unless, before it leaves the Commons, the … provisions ... are amended”.

Not since November 1944, when your Lordships’ House agreed to extend the Prolongation of Parliament Act 1940 until the Second World War had ended, has this been true of a government measure sent to your Lordships’ House from the other place.

Fourthly, and of the greatest concern for your Lordships, the Bill seeks to change the biorhythm of our national politics by creating a statutory norm for the timing of our general elections. The question—several other noble Lords have raised it already—is whether five years captures our natural biorhythm. There is a strong case for arguing that it does not. The fine report by your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill published last December calculates that the average duration of the 17 Parliaments between the general election of July 1945 and that of May 2010 has been three years and 10 months.

As well as the biorhythmic arithmetic, we need to consider the quality of government and political life in the fifth year of Parliaments that have gone to the wire. They have rarely been shining patches in the life of Administrations. Ministers are often tired and accident prone. The palette of the electorate becomes progressively more jaded. A kind of pre-electoral blight sets in. Of course it could be argued that the final year of a fixed-term four-year Parliament would be similarly blighted. Certainly, the press would succumb to its customary pre-election frenzy as the last year deepened. However, the blight is likely to be less pronounced towards the end of a four-year span than a five-year one, and accountability is more likely to be enhanced by a four-year cycle.

On balance, your Lordships’ Select Committee, and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform in the other place, came down for four-year Parliaments. I plump for the tariff that they recommend. Four years not only fits with the UK-wide biorhythm but, as other noble Lords have pointed out, with the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies. The second question to which your Lordships’ Constitution Committee has drawn attention is the pair of safety valves for use if, for emergency or other reasons, the other place decides that an election is necessary before the fixed term is expended. For the valves to operate, either 66 per cent of the membership of the other place has to vote for Dissolution, or the Government have to lose a confidence vote and, over the subsequent 14 days, fail to conjure up an alternative Administration or be replaced by another one that can demonstrate command of the other place.

It would be highly undesirable if these provisions became the political equivalents of “get out of jail free” cards in the game of Monopoly. The British constitution is not a Stradivarius to be played—or indeed fiddled—for reasons of narrow electoral advantage by the party or parties in government. A number of safeguards, therefore, are desirable. First, the Bill needs to contain as precise a definition as possible of what constitutes a confidence Motion. Secondly, the ticking clock must be so arranged that a general election following Dissolution sooner than the expiry of the fixed term does not restart the clock from scratch. Instead, the refreshed Parliament should sit for the remainder of the original fixed term and no longer—as is, so far, the untested arrangement for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

Finally, I share the regret of your Lordships’ Select Committee, and the one in the other place, that we have before us yet another substantial constitutional Bill that is without the benefit of a Green or a White Paper, or pre-legislative hearings. For, to pinch a line from PG Wodehouse, it is always easy to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and the coalition bearing a statute prepared in haste.