Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Naomi Long

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I will not start picking bits out of individual letters, but, given our debates in the House about preferences for four or five years, it is interesting that there have been suggestions from party leaders about moving the devolved Assemblies on to a five-year cycle. Given what has been said here and that the devolved Assemblies and Parliament were set up after considerable debate and have been on a settled model for some time, that would be a big jump and quite a change to the constitutional settlement.

[Naomi Long]

The Minister has talked about considering the context of the forthcoming Northern Ireland Assembly elections coinciding with the referendum campaign, but a better comparison would be the impact on the local government election campaign, in which the same range of parties will fight on very different issues. We need to consider this issue in that important context because the referendum campaign will not be party political in that sense and so is not directly comparable to running party political campaigns at the same time. The issue with running a general election campaign alongside an Assembly election campaign in Northern Ireland is that media coverage will focus on the general election campaign in a UK context, looking at parties that do not garner votes in the Northern Ireland context.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. When the Deputy Prime Minister and I introduced the Bill, we said that a UK general election coinciding with a devolved legislature election would be qualitatively different from a referendum campaign coinciding with a devolved legislature election for the very reason that the hon. Lady says—there would be a narrative and a debate going on and there would be questions about whether the media, newspapers and broadcasters would fairly cover both parts of the debate and whether the public could therefore take properly informed decisions in both elections. We need to consider that issue with all the parties and broadcasters and see whether there are ways around it.

Let me address amendment 1, which my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) moved on behalf of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform. The intention of the amendment is to clarify that, in the event of an early general election—before 7 May—under subsection (1) or (2) of clause 2, the general election specified in clause 1(2) would not take place, but the Bill already makes it clear that the general election of 7 May 2015 would take place only if no intervening early general elections under the procedures in clause 2 had occurred. Clause 1 sets the date for the first scheduled general election, “subject to” clause 2—those words appear in the first subsection of the Bill’s first clause. If there were an early general election, it would replace the election of 7 May. The Select Committee has been very helpful in scrutinising the Bill and its amendments have brought about some good debates. Amendment 1 is good in that it has enabled this debate, but it is not necessary because the Bill is already clear.

Amendments 10 and 11, which the hon. Member for Rhondda spoke to, would mean that the parliamentary term following an early general election would last only for the remainder of the previously scheduled term. To use a phrase that the Committee used in its report, it would keep the clock ticking on the five years whether there was an early general election or not. There has been quite a lot of speculation among academics and others on whether that would act as a disincentive for a Government or strong Opposition to engineer an early general election because a new Government would get a term of perhaps only a few months. We did think about that, and we debated it in Committee. The flip side to that is that there is an election in which a Government get elected, perhaps with a significant majority, quickly followed by another election. That explains the Government’s choice of wording.

There is a technical problem with the amendments. An early election could take place just before the scheduled election but the scheduled election would still be held. The rules for the devolved assemblies provide a window, so that if the early election takes place very close to the scheduled election, the scheduled election does not take place. If the early election is more than six months before, the scheduled election still takes place. As the amendments are drafted, there could be an election only weeks before the scheduled election, and the scheduled election would still have to be held. That would not make a great deal of sense.