Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I too offer my sympathies to the Minister for having to take forward this Bill under the duress of a heavy cold. I hope that my comments will not add too much to his coughing and spluttering.

This is an exceptionally short Bill but still a very significant one. The Act that it replaces was said by David Cameron to be

“the biggest transfer of powers from the Executive in centuries.”

If we accept his judgment, it follows that the repeal of the Act to return to the position that preceded its passage marks a major transfer of powers back to the Executive. So the key question before us is whether such a transfer is justified. On these Benches, we believe that it is not.

The purpose of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was to provide a stable framework within which the coalition Government formed in 2010 could operate. In his Second Reading speech in another place, even Michael Gove accepted that it had been successful in achieving this and had prevented the Tories “collapsing the Government” early to gain a political advantage.

The reason we have this Bill before us today is that the previous minority Conservative Government were frustrated in calling an election because they did not have a parliamentary majority. Yet, even with the Act in place, Theresa May was able to call an election, having had a revelation while up a mountain, and Boris Johnson was able to call an election three years early in the wholly exceptional circumstances of 2019.

The advantages of having a fixed term are clear. It brings some certainty and reduces the advantage the Prime Minister has in choosing an election date that maximises his or her chance of victory. Research in the UK by Schleicher and Belu shows that, where elections have been called opportunistically before the statutory end point of a Parliament, it has given the incumbents an average increase in vote share of 3.5% over what might otherwise have been expected, which has translated into an 11% seat advantage. In circumstances where no party has a majority in the Commons—a highly likely scenario for the UK in the future—it gives the largest party a massive advantage.

Fixed terms also provide the parties with a more level playing field on electoral expenditure.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I am most grateful. What was the massive advantage in 2017?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the massive advantage was perceived in the mind of the Prime Minister. The massive disadvantage was her judgment, not that she did not have the opportunity to exercise that judgment. We think the exercise of that judgment, on what was by any accounts if not a whim then a very short period of decision-making, is a bad idea for democracy.

As I was saying, fixed terms provide parties with a more level playing field on electoral expenditure. If the Government can plan for an early election, they can ratchet up spending in the year before the planned, but unannounced, date. Opposition parties will typically be unable to take the risk of planning and spending on the basis of an early election date. For these reasons, a fixed-term Parliament is the international norm. Some three-quarters of the world’s major democracies have a fixed term. So do the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland legislatures. No doubt that is why Labour was so enthusiastically in favour of introducing a fixed-term Parliament in Gordon Brown’s manifesto in 2010. I am not arguing that every single aspect of the current Act is incapable of improvement, but I am seeking to defend the principle which lies behind it.

So if we are to reverse the biggest transfer of executive power from the Executive in centuries and hand it back to the Prime Minister, you would hope that there would be a compelling reason for doing so. In moving Second Reading in another place, Michael Gove said that this compelling reason was that

“it gives power to the people.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/7/21; col. 788.]

This is pure doublespeak. It does not give power to the people; it gives it to the Prime Minster, pure and simple.

I suspect that this Prime Minster will not follow the precedent of his predecessor by having a revelation during a long mountain walk, but he might have it on the roundabout at Peppa Pig World and come back the next day and simply call an election. How do the people have any say in that decision? They clearly do not. They do have the power to vote the Prime Minister back or not at the subsequent election, but, if you really wanted to give power to the people, surely a Prime Minister would follow the public mood and, when it was supportive of an early election, call one. But that is exactly the time when a Prime Minister is least likely to call an election, because the people want elections when they want to change the Government, not retain them. So the democratic argument for prime ministerial discretion on calling an early election is entirely bogus.

This Bill seeks to put the clock back and reinstate prime ministerial powers over Parliament. But it goes further than that. With Clause 3, it seeks to increase prime ministerial power further by removing the power of the court to adjudicate on the way in which that power is exercised. As we saw in 2019, judicial oversight is not just a theoretical possibility but, as the noble Lord, Lord True, said, an actual possibility, and the Prime Minister simply wants to cut out this possibility in future.

If that is his aim, there is a much more satisfactory and democratic way of doing this, which is to make the calling of an election before the end of the full allotted span of a Parliament subject to a vote in the Commons. This reins in the executive power that the Bill seeks to give the Prime Minister, without unduly hobbling his or her ability to call an election—because, at the very least, the Prime Minister would have to consult Cabinet colleagues and persuade their party to vote for such an election.

In practice, it is unlikely that the Prime Minister will be denied an election by Parliament—by the Commons. Oppositions nearly always want elections and, if the Prime Minister is able to persuade neither their colleagues nor the Opposition to vote for one, the likelihood is that it would not be in the national interest. We will therefore support an amendment in Committee to make the premature calling of an election subject to a vote by the Commons. By doing so, we would remove the problem of the ouster clause and restrain prime ministerial power but allow MPs to decide whether it is in the national interest to have an election when the Prime Minister wants to call one. My colleagues will raise other aspects of the Bill both today and in subsequent stages, but, if the Lords can persuade the Commons to take back some control of the electoral process, I believe that it will have fulfilled its constitutional role.

To return to first principles, the British public do not elect a Government; they elect a Parliament, and an Executive are then drawn from that Parliament. Parliament is the servant of the people, and Parliament, not the Executive, should have the decisive vote on when the people should have their say.