Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, like many noble Lords I pay tribute to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. For those of us who knew him in the other place, I can honestly say that it was vintage Cormack. When he speaks in future, I am sure we will note that he is a distinguished parliamentarian who is worth listening to because he talks a lot of sense.

It is somewhat ironic that this debate on further changes to our constitution by introducing fixed-term Parliaments is being held on St David’s Day. I was delighted, by the way, to see the Draig Goch flying above Westminster Abbey as I came in this morning for St David’s Day, that great day which we celebrate. It is ironic because this Government have shown a complete lack of regard—indeed, have shown nothing but contempt—for Wales in their constitutional changes put so far before Parliament. We have already seen the gross spectacle of the Government forcing through a blatantly partisan Bill, which will reduce the number of Welsh representatives in the other place by a quarter and will certainly damage the relationship between Wales and the rest of the union. This Bill has been drafted with little or no concern for the impact that it will have on Wales or, for that matter, on Scotland and Northern Ireland.

At the heart of this matter is the Government’s failure to test their proposals by way of pre-legislative scrutiny. We have constantly been told by the Government that they are committed to pre-legislative scrutiny, but we have yet to see the evidence. The Constitution Committee in your Lordships’ House has stated:

“There is strong evidence to suggest that the Government’s proposals have not been properly thought through”.

The committee is certainly right so far as that is concerned. The Government originally proposed a threshold of 55 per cent in order for a dissolution to occur in the other place; that has now been revised after much criticism to a two-thirds majority. Equally, the Government originally proposed to put a binding order for dissolution to occur—an order which would have made the next election be held in May 2015—but that has now been revised or abandoned because such an order would have no effect. These changes demonstrate that the Government simply have not thought through their proposals. It is deeply concerning that the Government are willing to take such a shoddy approach to our constitution.

The Government have equally failed to consider properly the importance of this Bill and how it interrelates with other proposed constitutional changes. They seem obsessed with piecemeal changes to our constitution. For example, it is not at all clear why changing how people vote demands a referendum, but changing when they vote does not require a referendum. None of the detail of the Bill was subjected to proper consultation or proper pre-legislative scrutiny. The Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Mr Harper, when challenged on this, informed the Constitution Committee that pre-legislative scrutiny was less important in the first term since,

“if the whole programme was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny … you would not get on and do very much”.

He was serious when he made that statement. Surely when it comes to our constitution, proper pre-legislative scrutiny should always occur—no matter how much of a brake that places upon the Government.

We all know that the Deputy Prime Minister is under a lot of pressure—so much so that he forgot the Prime Minister was abroad last week and had left him in charge of the country. It says something about the arrogant way in which the Government and the Deputy Prime Minister in particular have proceeded with this legislation that the Constitution Committee found it necessary to remind the Government that the proper way to introduce a constitutional reform proposal is to publish a Green Paper or a White Paper or a draft Bill and take into account the comments and concerns raised in the process of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny in the Bill that is finally introduced. The Bill has simply not been properly consulted upon and, as I have said, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny that is worthy of the name.

The Bill allows for an election to be called in the aftermath of the vote of no confidence and sets out a procedure to be followed after such a vote. The Bill, however, fails to state what constitutes a vote of no confidence. Instead, Clause 2(2) places the onus on the Speaker of the House of Commons to determine whether the requirements for an early election have been met. The Minister, Mr Harper, told the Constitution Committee that the Speaker of the House of Commons would be guided by convention in determining whether the requirements have been met. The conventions, however, are not clear on what constitutes a Motion of no confidence. As such, the Speaker is in effect given a significant amount of responsibility to determine when a Motion amounts to a vote of no confidence—and hence to determine when an election can be called. Such powers for the Speaker are completely unprecedented and risk radically altering the role of the holder of that office.

Conspiracy theorists who might have read the weekend press will have learned that the Government are allegedly plotting a way in which the House of Commons can remove the Speaker. Some people might think that these two things are linked, and that the Government would much prefer a compliant holder of that office in the other place. Let us not forget that it was a Speaker—a previous holder of that office—who told the King of England where to go. The Speaker has a very important role. We do not want to see that role in any way compromised.

As the Constitution Committee noted, the Speaker’s judgment on what amounts to a Motion of no confidence risks placing him in conflict with the Government, and hence with a majority of the House. It is unclear whether Motions of no confidence include defeats on key confidence issues, such as the Queen’s Speech or the Budget, or whether they include cases where the Government lose votes on other matters.

The Government have, without any consultation on the issue and with very limited justification for the position that they have taken, arrived at the decision that the appropriate length for a fixed-term Parliament is five years. The Deputy Prime Minister has stated:

“There is a pattern of five-year Parliaments, at least recently”,

with which people are familiar. However, as my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport has just pointed out, since 1945 Parliaments have sat for an average of three years and 10 months. Of the last three general elections, two were called after around four years and one was called after a full period of five years. Therefore, I contend that there is little support for the Deputy Prime Minister’s assertion that people are used to a pattern of five-year Parliaments. When my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer opened the debate for this side, he reminded us that five-year Parliaments were introduced by the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. However, it is worth remembering that Asquith said at the time that in all probability this would result in an actual working legislative period of around four years. Therefore, when a five-year maximum term was introduced, it was expected that five years would indeed be the maximum and that general elections would occur more frequently than once every five years.

A five-year, as opposed to a four-year, maximum would make elections significantly less frequent than they are at present, which would surely make politicians less accountable to their constituents. Yet we all remember that the Deputy Prime Minister promised an era of “new politics” in which voters would be more, not less, engaged in the democratic process. More important, people want to hold their politicians to account for the actions that they take in power, and we should do nothing to restrict them in exercising that right. That was certainly the view of the Liberal Democrat Party when in 2007 it published documents that favoured a four-year fixed term. One wonders whether the Deputy Prime Minister’s new-found commitment to five-year Parliaments is borne more out of fear of facing the electorate than out of principle.

The Government have not made a particularly compelling case that fixed-term Parliaments are a good thing. Even if allowing Prime Ministers to manipulate the electoral cycle to their own advantage is a bad thing, it is not clear that the Bill will improve that situation very much at all. The Government have argued that fixing each election time will improve the democratic legitimacy of Parliament, yet in reality there are a number of circumstances in which it is more, rather than less, democratic to hold an early election. First, there may have been a change of Prime Minister within the life of a Parliament, and many have argued that that should precipitate a general election. The present Prime Minister was a great fan of that until the 2010 election. Indeed, he constantly called for a general election when there was a change of Prime Minister. He now seems to have had a change of heart. Equally, where a Government change in the course of a Parliament, it would seem logical for there to be an election. If the present coalition were to fall apart and a new coalition formed, would it not be right to test in a general election whether that coalition Government had the support of the British people? Of course it would be right.

The Bill leaves many questions unanswered. We in this House must therefore give it the closest possible scrutiny in the coming weeks and months.