Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Louise Mensch and Sadiq Khan

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

Things are desperate when the Whips have to arrange things to get most of the Liberal parliamentary party into the Chamber, but it is good to see two rows of Liberal MPs. The Deputy Prime Minister knows more about mutinies than I do, but I suspect that the situation tonight is similar to that of a football club chairman who says to his manager, “Your job is safe.” I look forward to the right hon. Gentleman’s continued contribution to debates about constitutional reform.

The Bill before us allows the Government to set in stone the date of the next general election as Thursday 7 May 2015. It also gives them time to foist a series of constitutional changes on to the country. They will reduce the size of the House of Commons by 50 MPs, redraw constituency boundaries and silence the voices of local residents through the removal of public inquiries. This Bill allows them the time to do that, and as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who is not in his place, said on Second Reading, it smacks of

“gerrymandering the constitution in favour of a particular coalition”.—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 624.]

[Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to suggest that, by the Prime Minister giving up power and by making the votes of people in Corby equal to the votes of people in the Rhondda, we are gerrymandering in the Bill? That is an amazing use of language.

[Sadiq Khan]

That Bill is being discussed in the other place. It starts again at 3.30 tomorrow.

The hon. Lady should be interested in my next point, however, because the Bill before us also ties the hands of the Conservative party to the Liberal Democrats. With this Bill, their respective fates and identities become inseparable. Make no mistake: the Bill is not for the good of the country; it is for the good of the Ministers on the Treasury Bench. What compounds that outrageous piece of attempted constitutional fixing is the fact they are trying to ram it through at breakneck speed. That urgency is because Back Benchers from both coalition parties are having second thoughts about the issue, so party managers need to get them super-glued together quickly, with no way out.

Throughout the Bill’s passage, we have raised a number of concerns about its content and its scrutiny. I have no problem with the Conservative party being converts to fixed-term Parliaments.