Mark Harper
Main Page: Mark Harper (Conservative - Forest of Dean)Department Debates - View all Mark Harper's debates with the Cabinet Office
(14 years ago)
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Stephen Pound
My hon. Friend, not for the first time and almost certainly not for the last, makes a very powerful and pertinent point. If the Bill proceeds tonight without the benefit of the amendments that we are discussing, it will be not just the political cycle that is locked into a four or five-year time frame, but the economic cycle and so many other aspects of life. They will then be locked into a fixed term. That fixed term will apply not just to Parliament, but to the country, and that is dangerous. It is dangerous if we always assume that, no matter what a Government do, they can get away with it, because there will be no election for three, four or, heaven forbid, five years.
That is the danger, and that is when the markets start to build in an assumption of front-loading and when other countries assume that, although there may or may not be a change of Government in the future, there will not be one at that moment in time. That is when offence is given to all parts of this nation with different traditions, different histories and different days of great and signal importance. There are so many fears, so many concerns, so many worries, and the case made for the group of amendments is so powerful and so much a matter of righteousness that it would be otiose of me to continue to press it any longer.
I sit down, Miss Begg, with apologies if I may on occasion have strayed slightly from the purity of the amendments before us, but I hope profoundly that this House will tonight agree that the people matter more than political fixes, and that somehow this is about the constitution, not about the coalition.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
It is a great pleasure to speak with you, Miss Begg, in the Chair.
A number of Members said that they thought that the Government would be running out of steam, but it is a very clear sign that the Opposition are running out of steam when they have to wheel members of the Whips Office in to argue a case—a case, actually, against their own Front Benchers. Their Front Benchers are in favour of four-year terms, so the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) would have done a better job if he had troubled to read the Bill, the amendments and clause 1.
In addressing the amendments that deal with clause 1 on the proposed length of the fixed term and the date of the next election, it might be helpful to explain at the outset why the Government have taken the approach that we have set out in the Bill. The Government announced in the coalition agreement our intention to introduce a Bill for fixed-term Parliaments, and I have listened to a good number of arguments for and against the proposed five-year term, not least today. The Government strongly believe that a five-year fixed term is right, not only for this Parliament but for subsequent Parliaments, as it will provide the country with the strong and stable Government that it needs.
Mr Harper
Let me make a little more progress, and then I will give way.
We have heard arguments in favour of a four-year or three-year fixed term. However, the statistical evidence shows that if we exclude the three very short Parliaments since the war, the average length of Parliaments has approached four and a half years. The first point that I would make in respect of the arguments for four-year or three-year Parliaments is that those advocating them gave insufficient regard to the current arrangements, which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) outlined in observing that this Parliament is able to sit for five years. Indeed, if the Prime Minister wanted to achieve the aim of this Parliament sitting for five years, he would merely not ask the Queen to dissolve it for five years. The Bill has nothing to do with extending the term of this Parliament.
Mr MacNeil
If the hon. Gentleman is such a strong advocate of five years for a Parliament, would he extend that strength of feeling to the devolved legislatures to enable them to have five-year terms as well? If we do the multiplication—five times four equals 20—it is clear that we will have the problem of the two dates clashing every 20 years. Would he be happy for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to move to five-year terms as opposed to four?
Chris Bryant
The Minister is being extremely disingenuous. He said that the Prime Minister can keep going until 2015 if he wants to, but that is not the case—he does not have a majority. In fact, the words of Robert Blackburn to the Select Committee are right:
“The Liberal Democrats want to be sure that the Conservative leadership would not cut and run in the same way that a minority Administration with an informal pact with the Liberal Democrats in Parliament might—as in 1974”.
The other side of the coin is that the Conservatives want some guarantee that the Liberal Democrats will not change their minds. The Prime Minister needs this Bill to keep the coalition in power until 2015.
The Temporary Chairman (Miss Anne Begg): Order. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that “disingenuous” is not necessarily a parliamentary word?
Mr Harper
I am grateful, Miss Begg.
The hon. Gentleman is missing the point. He says that the Government can continue in office only if they retain the confidence of the House. I will not dwell on this at length, Miss Begg, because that would be to move on to arguments that we will make when we come to clause 2. The Bill contains provisions whereby we will have a fixed-term Parliament, but subject to two conditions: first, this House will, for the first time, have the power to cause an early general election; and secondly, we are keeping the provision that a Government have to retain the confidence of the House. The hon. Gentleman is simply wrong.
Some Members, in trying to argue that four years is the norm and five years is only for Governments who are clinging on to power, have pointed to examples of Parliaments that have lasted closer to four years than five. That completely overlooks the fact that elections that are called early, before the five-year term is up, are often those where the Prime Minister of the day thought that doing so might give their party a political advantage. It was not that they somehow thought that four years was the more constitutionally appropriate length of time for them to hold office.
Advocates of three or four-year terms are using as their strongest argument the very enemy that the Bill is designed to combat, which is political expediency at the expense of national interest. The right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), who is no longer in her place, asked why Labour did not think of the idea in 1997. I can tell her that it was because the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, wanted to preserve his ability to cut and run and seek an election at whatever opportunity he thought best.
Mr Harper
I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman. He has not been here for most of the debate, so he can just stay in his seat.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) effectively makes the case for Prime Ministers being able to cut and run. The current Prime Minister is the first one who has put aside that ability in the move to a fixed-term Parliament.
Mr Shepherd
My hon. Friend sets aside the words of Asquith, who predates any shenanigans on the matter, but will he consider the fact that the longest-serving Prime Minister of the last century was Lady Thatcher? She had four-yearly elections like a metronome, so there is experience of the concept of Prime Ministers believing that four years is an appropriate time.
Mr Harper
I am glad that my hon. Friend mentions Baroness Thatcher, who of course was a great Prime Minister and served this country well. I remember the elections that she called in 1983 and 1987, which she won with resounding majorities and continued to serve the country. I am sure that if she were here, she would agree that when she asked Her Majesty the Queen to dissolve Parliament, she thought about the likely consequences of those elections and the likelihood that the Conservative party would be returned to office. She was a politician—a very successful one—and I do not think I do her a disservice if I point that out.
Mr Harper
No, I am terribly sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has not been here for the debate, so I am not going to give way to him.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) drew attention to one of our arguments about the need for long-term thinking. Many commentators, politicians and members of the public would argue that Governments can be too short-term in their planning and decision making. We want to encourage future Parliaments and Governments to take a long-term view rather than look for short-term advantages. As a number of my hon. Friends have argued, a five-year fixed term would provide the country with a strong and stable Government.
I turn to the amendments in this group. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is not in his place, seeks to set the length of Parliaments at three rather than five years. I think perhaps he did himself a disservice when he quoted remarks of his own constituents suggesting that a three-year term was needed so that he might last it, because of his age. I am only repeating what he said; I do not agree with it myself. However, I simply do not agree with his argument. The flaw in it came when he said that the Government parties wanted not a fixed term but a five-year term. However, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is perfectly capable, while the Government retain the confidence of the House, of having a five-year term of office. That has always been the constitutional position, and the Bill is not necessary to ensure it.
Tristram Hunt
In some of the speeches that we have heard from the Deputy Prime Minister—I understand that he is giving one to the Hansard Society tonight rather than being in the Chamber to discuss the Bill, which is rather scandalous—there has been much talk about the Chartists and how this great reform is an echo of the 1840s. The Chartists were in favour of yearly elections, so why does the Deputy Prime Minister deny the will of the people by keeping Parliaments at five years?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is quite right about the point that the Chartists made, but I do not happen to think that annual elections would be a good idea, and from my experience I am not sure that the people of this country would be over-enamoured of us if we said that we would trouble them with a general election every year. I believe that they will be content with our proposal. We do not want to end up with a situation in which the people of the United Kingdom are subject to a permanent election campaign. That is the evidence that the Constitution Committee in the other place has received. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) drew attention to the matter when he looked at the US congressional experience in the lower House where, effectively, as soon as Congressmen get elected, they instantly turn their thoughts to their re-election and spend most of their period of office having to raise money for expensive election campaigns.
Mr MacNeil
Let me pick up on that point about the American Congress and the House of Representatives. There are a number of American politicians—those in safe seats and those who are unopposed—who are not on a constant campaign. The Minister made a fair point about Lady Thatcher, especially given the partisan point that he could have made. She looked at the party advantage of her electoral cycle and that is why she probably went for four years. If the Minister does not support the five-year terms for the devolved legislatures, will he support new clause 4 that would allow the devolved legislatures to avoid the clash with the Westminster Parliament?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will soon get to that point and to new clause 4. I just want to take this in order.
My final point for the hon. Member for Great Grimsby—he did not address this in his remarks, so I can only assume that it is an oversight—is that his amendment would mean that the next election would take place on a Tuesday. He gave us no indication of why he would want to do that, so I assume that his amendment is technically as well as logically flawed.
Let me turn now to amendments 11, 12 and 13, the first of which was ably moved by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), and supported by those on the Opposition Front Bench. The amendments primarily make the argument for four-year terms, which is probably a good moment to pick up on the point about the coincidence with the devolved elections. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was a little too soon in her criticisms of what Ministers will do, because she had not actually heard what I was going to say. She did exactly the same when we debated the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and she was not correct in what she said. The Committee, of which she is a member, was behind an amendment that was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest. Although we did not accept the amendment, we took it away and brought back a Government amendment to do exactly what the hon. Lady wanted, which was to reduce the ability of Ministers to interfere with a boundary commission report. It was not true to say that we did not listen to the House; we tabled an amendment that was inspired by the Committee of which she is a member. The Government do listen.
When the Deputy Prime Minister made the statement on 5 July, he recognised that the coincidence of the devolved elections in 2015 with the UK general election was qualitatively different from the coincidence of the referendum and the elections next year. He has discussed the matter with the devolved Administrations and the Presiding Officers. He said that he would look at the matter, and he has kept that promise. I can tell the House that we will consult the parties in the devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly to give them the power to defer the date of their elections by up to six months—in other words, to move the election into the future to avoid coinciding with elections to this House.
I shall write to the First Ministers, the Presiding Officers and all the parties represented in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly tomorrow to set out that plan. My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales will be available to discuss those matters with parties represented in the Parliament and the Assembly.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful for what I feel is the partial acceptance of new clause 4. How drawn is the Minister to the time of six months?
Mr Harper
That is something that we will be able to discuss when we consult Members in the other places. This power will only be exercisable in the years in which elections coincide, because it is to deal with that specific issue; it is not a general power. As for the ability of the Parliament and the Assembly to bring their elections forward, we feel that two-thirds of MSPs or AMs would be needed to support such a move. As the hon. Gentleman said, this is not a power that should not be given to the Administrations; this is a power that should be given to the Parliament and the Assembly.
Mr Harper
I will give way to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) again, and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Rhondda. If the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) will give me a moment, I will get to Northern Ireland and then I will take his intervention if he still wishes to make one.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way once more. I do not want to seem pedantic, but for the sake of clarity, does he mean that two thirds of the relevant devolved legislatures can move elections both back and forward, or only back?
Chris Bryant
I apologise if this is a similar point to the one made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). The legislatures already have the power to bring forward elections, but there is to be a power to extend. In effect, therefore, the Government are extending this Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly for the convenience of the coalition. In essence, the Minister is saying that the motto of the Government is “Fewer Elections”.
Mr Harper
No. The hon. Gentleman must not keep giving the Committee misleading arguments. The Bill does not extend the term of this Parliament—this Parliament can run for five years. Members of the devolved Parliament and Assemblies have asked the Government to think about how they can make a decision on whether to move the date—a sensible provision—of elections.
Mr Harper
Let me finish setting out this point, because I might be about to deal with any questions that the hon. Gentlemen have.
The Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly currently have the power to vote with a two-thirds majority for early Dissolution. In Scotland and Wales, the relevant Acts provide that if the early Dissolution is more than six months before the scheduled election, the scheduled election must still take place. Elections to the devolved legislatures must be held on the first Thursday in May. We want to give them the power to extend, because if they have only the power to hold elections earlier, elections would effectively have to be held in the depths of winter. The Government have listened on that point, which is why we want to consult the legislatures on the ability to extend the date, which will give them much more flexibility.
It is worth making two other points. First, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections are materially different from local government elections in England. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are legislatures, and they already have a limited power to vary the date of their elections. In England in recent decades, general elections have frequently been combined with local elections. Combining local and mayoral elections with a UK general election is normal practice in England. It is easily managed and should continue unchanged.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is obviously making a sensible proposal in that regard, but I presume that such a change requires primary legislation, and that he intends to advance that in the Bill. I hope that he does not expect to make amendments in the House of Lords. Will he give an undertaking this evening that any such proposal will be made on Report in this House, and not at any later stage?
Mr Harper
I hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.
The position in Northern Ireland is slightly different. One difference in the Northern Ireland settlement is that if the date of the election is brought forward by whatever period, the original scheduled election does not have to be held. Also, the responsibility for Assembly elections, including the date, remains a matter for the Northern Ireland Secretary. He also holds the power to shift the date by two months either way, whereas the date for Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections can be shifted by only one month. I have discussed that in great detail with Northern Ireland Ministers.
Given the difference of the Northern Ireland settlement, and that next year there is a triple combination of Assembly elections, local elections and the referendum, Northern Ireland Ministers want to learn form that experience to see whether the existing power is sufficient or whether they wish to modify it. They will consult parties in Northern Ireland, both now and after next May, to see whether a further change needs to be made. If so, we will legislate to bring it into force.
Mark Durkan
I thank the Minister for recognising that the position in Northern Ireland is different. In putting my name to new clause 4, I was conscious that it was in clear tension with sections 31 and 32 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, to which he alluded. Will he give an explicit assurance, however, that Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office will involve all the parties in Northern Ireland in discussions? The 1998 Act was derived from the Good Friday agreement, was based on negotiations and agreements with all parties, and should be amended only by using the proper review mechanisms in full and true spirit.
Mark Durkan
Will the Minister indicate whether Ministers might at least be open to hearing a clear statement from all the parties, and perhaps the Assembly at large, that our preference would be for parliamentary elections on a four-year cycle, so that they do not clash with the Assembly? That would be the easiest way to avoid all sorts of problems. The formula that the Minister is using to allow the Northern Ireland Assembly to move its date might be an unachievable test: it might be impossible in the mixed-party circumstances of Northern Ireland ever to achieve a two-thirds majority, so we could be left with a political crisis and uncertainty. It would be a lot better to fix the cycles.
Mr Harper
There are two issues there. First, we recognise that the existing legal position and structure of politics in Northern Ireland are different, which is why we have adopted this different approach. There will therefore be extensive consultation with Northern Ireland Ministers and all the parties in Northern Ireland.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) hit on a second point though. Changing the cycles and adopting four-year terms for both this Parliament and the devolved legislatures would not solve the problem, because there can be early elections—if, for example, there is a vote of no confidence. If we had four-year cycles for everything and one early election, we could end up with the cycles coinciding not once every 20 years, as under our proposals, but at every general and devolved election, which would make the problem worse not better. Under our proposals, the coincidence will happen only once every 20 years, not more frequently.
Jonathan Edwards
In the light of the Minister’s concessions this evening, which we welcome, will he hold back Report to allow us to table further amendments?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman, who has been following the Bill’s progress very closely, will know that we have allocated the second day in Committee for next Wednesday, but we have not announced a day on Report, so there is not a date to hold back. We have not been rushing through the Bill’s proceedings at great pace.
There was great discussion about the Gould report.
Mr MacNeil
I have three points for clarification. Is the Minister guaranteeing that there will be no clash of election days between, say, Scotland and Westminster? Will he guarantee that the six months he has spoken about will be put into legislation? Finally, who will have the power to shift the dates? We feel that that should be for the devolved legislatures. Also, the point made by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) about the difficulties of getting a two-thirds majority was apposite. But it is all in the mix.
Mr Harper
I thought that I made it clear that it would be a two-thirds decision for—in the hon. Gentleman’s case—the Scottish Parliament. It could not be a simple majority, because effectively that would give the power to the First Minister of Scotland or someone leading a majority Administration simply to choose a date that suited them—and that would be wrong. It would therefore be for the Parliament to make a choice about the election date.
Mr Harper
The Scottish Parliament would have the choice to consider the date. It could be moved by up to six months—it does not have to be six months—but it would be for the Parliament to make the decision. I gave a commitment that we would make that change in the Bill at a later stage of its progress.
Let me turn briefly to amendment 32, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) spoke on behalf of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform and which was effectively about whether we should reset the clock when there is an early election. The Committee’s train of thought, which she set out, was that if a party knew that it would get only the remainder of the term, it would be less inclined to pass a Dissolution motion or a no-confidence motion. Her Committee suggested that if that was the case, we would not need the super-majority proposal for an early Dissolution. There is a technical problem with amendment 32 as drafted, because it would allow an early election to be held at any time, right up to the next scheduled election, but would still force the scheduled election to take place, so we could have an election in March and then another in May, which would not be very sensible.
Mr Harper
Let me just finish this point. The Government could not accept amendment 32 as drafted even if we thought that keeping the clock ticking was the right thing to do. However, we thought about the issue carefully, which we also debated a little on Second Reading. The Government did not think that resetting the clock made sense for this reason. If there were an early election because the Government had lost their majority and gone to the country, and a Government were then returned with a significant majority, it would not be right for that Government, perhaps with a clear mandate, to be unable to put their programme to the country and carry it through. When people go to the polls, they expect that they are electing a Government who will last for a full term, with the ability to carry through a full programme. The Constitution Committee in the other place considered the evidence from other countries, including the Swedish model, and was told that the prospect of leaving the clock ticking actually protected the Government—the Executive—rather than the Parliament.
Mr Harper
Let me make some progress.
Finally, new clauses 4 and 5 would provide that elections to this House and the devolved legislatures could not occur on the same day. The problem with that proposal is that if it were agreed, it would provide that where a devolved legislature’s general election had been moved, the following poll would take place on the first Thursday in May four years later. For example, if one of the devolved legislatures delayed its 2015 elections by one year, elections to that legislature and the House of Commons would coincide again in 2020. New clauses 4 and 5 would mean that those elections would have to be moved again in 2020, so they are actually a back-door method of substituting a five-year term for the devolved legislatures.
I do not know whether that was the intention of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, who spoke so powerfully against a five-year term and in favour of a four-year term, but the effect of his new clauses would be to deliver a five-year term through the back door. For that reason I do not think that it would be very sensible to accept them. Also, new clauses 4 and 5 do not make provision for a super-majority, which appears to suggest that a majority Government in a devolved legislature could just play around with the election date to suit themselves, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve in this Bill. The Government therefore cannot accept new clauses 4 and 5, and I would ask the hon. Gentleman not to press them to a Division.
In conclusion, I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this debate, particularly those who were here for the whole debate and those who have tabled or supported amendments to clause 1. The Government are convinced that our Bill as drafted provides the right approach. I would urge hon. Members not to press their amendments to a Division and to support clause 1.