Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

When the noble and learned Lord speaks at the end of this debate, I urge him to think hard about this, and maybe go away and consult before taking a final position. The Government have got themselves into quite a mess and alienated a lot of their friends over some of these constitutional provisions. The case for pre-legislative examination has been made very strongly. Above all, the Government should recognise that they are entitled to put this box around their own negotiations. They had to listen to some people who said, “You can’t possibly give up the right of the House of Commons to pass a vote of no confidence”. That was, again, a foolish suggestion but they moved away from it. Any pre-legislative committee would certainly have exposed that that was not workable. The more flexibility that is put into fixed-term Parliaments, the more likely they are to get general acceptance, and the more likely they are to win support in a referendum.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support this amendment, primarily because it will give the Government a chance to reconsider a key part of the Bill. The case for a fixed term of four years is not beyond argument, although my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and many other noble Lords have made a good case for it being so. However, I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said at Second Reading: whether a term should be of four or five years is in the end “a question of judgment”. That judgment should be informed by principle. I have struggled hard to find any principle advanced by the Government in favour of the Bill. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, at Second Reading seemed to base the argument primarily on precedent—on what had happened in our recent history, in several countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and so on.

However, there is a principled argument for the Government’s position. It was put forward, for example, from the Cross Benches, by the noble Lords, Lord Armstrong and Lord Butler, from all their experience of serving the state over many years. It is an argument rooted in the importance of stability for the governance of this country. This is not a negligible argument, but it comes up against the argument that accountability should be paramount. That is a judgment that I support. More importantly, it is a judgment that almost all noble Lords who have so far spoken in these debates have favoured. It is overwhelmingly, as we have heard, the view of all the experts who have given evidence to both Houses of Parliament. The search for an accommodation between the principles of accountability and stability is fundamental to the constitutional arrangements of all modern democracies. The question that still has not been adequately addressed in all the parliamentary scrutiny of this legislation is: who should make the decision about how best to make that accommodation?

Today we have heard the case for greater consultation. Even if the Government did not take the decision in favour of five years quite as casually and self-interestedly as the account given by Mr David Laws MP suggests, it is still a fact that there has been no public consultation on this fundamental issue. This legislation seeks to determine the shape of future Parliaments, yet those most affected by it—the voters of this country—have not yet been asked what they think about the judgment that the Government have made. They should be asked. We have heard a great deal about the views of academic experts and politicians; what about the people we all serve? I am not in favour of referendums in general. I am certainly not in favour of a referendum on this point. However, I am in favour of the Government embarking on one of the many forms of public engagement that already exist—exercises in deliberative democracy and so on. They are available to the Government, who should now take advantage of them.

Listening to all the rhetoric of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister, you would think they believed in the greater engagement of the public in policy formation between elections. Here is an opportunity for them to put some substance into all this airy rhetoric. If your Lordships support this amendment, I fear it will not change the Government’s mind on how long a term should be. This Government have shown very little inclination to listen to your Lordships’ House on all their measures of constitutional reform. However, the amendment will at least provide an opportunity for taking a pause. My noble friend Lord Grocott made this case persuasively at the start of this debate.

If the Government can take a pause to consult widely on measures such as NHS reform—profoundly important as they are—surely they can do the same with this important measure of constitutional reform. I hope that your Lordships will give the Government an opportunity to do so.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I set out in Committee three reasons why I felt strongly that a fixed-term Parliament of five years was more appropriate than one of four years. I shall not repeat those arguments at length. However, since I made the first argument there has been even more discussion about the principle of pre-legislative scrutiny, and there has been a considerable demand in this House and elsewhere for more pre-legislative scrutiny. A five-year fixed-term Parliament in many ways incentivises a Government to have more pre-legislative scrutiny than has previously been the case. If a Government feel that they may be in for only four years, and there was a four-year fixed-term Parliament, we would have rather less pre-legislative scrutiny than would happen if they knew they would last for five years.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, who said earlier that there is a clear danger that a four-year Parliament would not provide much time in the first year for pre-legislative scrutiny, and we all know that in the last year of almost any Parliament there is perhaps more attention on campaigning than on legislating. This would mean that in a four-year fixed-term Parliament perhaps only two years would be devoted to serious legislative work. Many people believe that in the model of the United States, which has a four-year fixed-term, there are only two years of effective governing and two years of campaigning.

Secondly, I pointed out in Committee—I thought that perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wills, would have said something about this—that there should be consistency in the way in which you conduct elections in terms of how you regulate constituency election expenditure. The previous Labour Government brought in rules that kick in four years and seven months after a general election and last for 60 months after the previous general election. In other words, the rules last to control expenditure at constituency level in general elections only for the final six months of a five-year Parliament. As we said in debates a year or two ago, it is not logical to have rules controlling constituency expenditure in that last six months of a five-year Parliament unless there is a five-year fixed-term Parliament.

My third argument relates to our recent debates of great controversy. However, we decided in legislation that reviews of parliamentary constituency boundaries would take place every five years. The principle of revising constituency boundaries to take into account shifting population is recognised by all parties. However, the frequency with which that takes place is the subject of some dispute. Revising constituency boundaries more frequently than every five years would have many disadvantages and would certainly be unpopular in another place. The reviews of constituency boundaries should be synchronised with general elections.

There is, however, an additional argument that points in favour of a five-year fixed term. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are about to begin five-year terms, and this is likely to become the norm for future elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. There is no appetite at all in Scotland and Wales—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I am not sure that last Thursday would necessarily have been thought to be in my party’s interest. I shall not rehearse all the arguments for the coalition but we heard the comments of my noble friend Lord Dobbs, who has been there when some of these decisions have been taken. As he indicated, the question has been: can we win? No doubt all parties think that they are right for the country but clearly the decision is taken for partisan reasons—when they think they can win. If one looks at 1983 and 1987, it is interesting that Mrs Thatcher, as she then was, did not hold an election exactly after four years—or at least she did in 1987—but she made the decision in 1983 after the local election results had come through. If I recall correctly, that was when I was first elected. The Dissolution took place the week after the local government election results in the first week in May, when she quite clearly saw that that would be to her party’s advantage.

It is also suggested that Parliaments that have gone to five years have been destabilising—I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, used the expression “an awful fifth year”—but in many respects the term has been self-selecting, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra indicated. There have been fifth years under Governments who did not have the confidence to go to the country after four years because they did not think that they could win, having run out of steam and lost their way. No doubt they thought that if they carried on for a final year something might just turn up. That is not a very good argument for saying that five years would not work. I shall pay a passing compliment to the Government of whom the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, was a member. I suspect that if the Government elected in 1997 had gone into a fifth year, that year would still have been very purposeful. The noble and learned Lord shakes his head but I think that he may be doing a disservice to his party.

As my noble friend Lord Rennard pointed out, it is also interesting that when the Government gave the devolved Parliament in Scotland and the Assembly in Wales the opportunity to change their election date to avoid a clash with an election in 2015—the offer was to hold an election between the first Thursday in May 2014 and the first Thursday in May 2016—in each case they opted for a five-year term. They could have gone for four years and six months or three years and six months but they opted for five years, and that Motion was, I think, assented to by the leaders of all parties, including the Labour Party, in both the Parliament and the Assembly.

The question that has been raised, not least by the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Pannick, is: how do we ensure accountability? Accountability can come in many ways. It is not just in parliamentary general elections that parties and politicians are accountable. My noble friend Lady Stowell talked about some of the ideas that came out in the Power inquiry to try to engage ordinary people in the political process. The point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in what I thought was a very thoughtful contribution, that five years is very often required for an assessment to be made of the effectiveness of a Government’s early policies and for people to make a proper and informed decision after there has been an opportunity for those policies to feed through.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his espousal of these methods of public engagement. I, too, was pleased to hear that espousal from his noble friend Lady Stowell. Can he explain to the House why they have not taken advantage of one of these methods of public engagement to ask the public what they think about this measure?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, in the Constitution Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, asked my honourable friend Mr Mark Harper about opinion polls which showed public support for establishing fixed terms. These are not old opinion polls: the Populus survey conducted for the Times, published on 30 May 2009, found that 74 per cent of those surveyed supported the establishment of fixed terms; a poll conducted by ICM Research for the Sunday Telegraph, published on 26 May 2010, found that 63 per cent of those surveyed supported the establishment of fixed terms; and a survey by the Scottish Youth Parliament conducted in August 2010 found that 76.4 per cent of the young people surveyed were in favour of establishing a fixed term for the United Kingdom Parliament. I accept that the question as to whether it should be four or five years was not put, but there was clearly in the surveys support for the principle of fixed-term Parliaments.

My noble friend Lord Dobbs talked about the opportunity for policies to mature and to be assessed. Therefore, there is an opportunity for accountability because the electorate can see what has been delivered, not only by this Government in the present Parliament, where it may take some time for the necessary remedial measures to work through, but by other Parliaments. It is possible for a Government coming into office at the beginning of five years to plan their legislative programme and the other things that do not require legislation, and at the end of which the public can make their decision and judgment on the effectiveness of the Government over those years. That will help accountability.

Practical issues were raised by a number of noble Lords, not least by my noble friends Lord Renton and Lord Blencathra. The questions of stability, practicality and allowing for accountability point to five years.