Debate on the Address

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have got two homes, but I am afraid that neither of them is in Wales, so I will not actually be able to vote.

The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham mentioned the Wright reforms. We will ensure that Select Committee Chairmen and members are voted for by Members of Parliament and not appointed by the Whips. I have mentioned fixed-term Parliaments; we will be legislating for that, and also for a referendum on the voting system. So our political reform is all about cleaning up Parliament, and passing powers from the Executive to the legislature and from the legislature to the people.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman explain how setting an artificially high level to defeat the Government in this House in a no-confidence motion can look like anything other than gerrymandering, when he is cutting the number of MPs in this House and appointing more peers in the other place, allegedly to save money? How is that new politics?

[The Prime Minister]

I am the first Prime Minister in British history to give up the right to go to the Palace to choose an election at a time that suits them. Everyone in the Opposition stood on a promise in their manifesto to introduce a fixed-term Parliament. If there is to be a fixed-term Parliament, there has to be some way of trying to make sure that it is a fixed-term Parliament. That is why the hon. Lady voted to support a 66% threshold for the Scottish Parliament.

[Maria Eagle]

rose—

[The Prime Minister]

I will happily give way again, but let me make one more point first. Do Opposition Members really want to go through the whole experience of 2007 again, when we had a Prime Minister wondering whether the time was right for wandering off to the Palace and whether or not they would win? I quite enjoyed 2007, I really did. It was great for Conservative Members. Does the hon. Lady want to go through that again?

[Maria Eagle]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman can convince the country that he is not really trying to stitch up a majority in the Commons for a lot longer than he might truly own one. If he is appointing new peers to ensure that the coalition has a majority in the House of Lords, while at the same time requiring a Commons vote of more than 55%, which is more than all the Opposition parties can muster, before the Government can fall, is it not stitching up the House and—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remind the House that interventions must be brief.