Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Richard Shepherd Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We are seeking to strengthen and reinforce the powers of this House. The motion of no confidence will be passed by this House, and it will be up to this House to decide whether any subsequent Government constituted within a very short period of time—within two weeks—deserve to continue to be supported by this House. If Members of the House do not wish to provide that support to that Government, the House can say no. That seems to me to be strengthening the powers of the House.

[Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am obliged to the Deputy Prime Minister. Will not all we have in those 14 days just be an auction of offices and promises and the usual making of a Government? [Interruption.] No, I did not mean it in that sense.

In Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, a succession of Caesars were bought and sold by the praetorian guard. Is that what this constitutional reform programme amounts to?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I really think that my hon. Friend is reading too much into the provision. The existing arrangements on votes of no confidence are fairly similar to what we are proposing. First, the vote will be precisely as it is now—50% plus one. Secondly, a new Government can be asked to be formed after that vote of no confidence.

[Mr Shepherd]

But we have an election.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

No, not necessarily; that is not an automatic consequence of the existing provisions. We are giving the House a new power, passed by two thirds, that would force an early election and the Dissolution of the House.

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[Mr Straw]

Let me say first, for the avoidance of doubt, that I have made no protestations of virginal innocence, and would never seek to do so.

The two Bills are certainly not cognate, but they are linked in the sense that they are the price that the Conservative party agreed to pay in order to stitch together this very curious coalition. I am glad, in saying that, to receive the approbation of many right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches. In any event, the idea that this Bill had to be bashed through very quickly was blown away by this morning’s announcement.

[Mr Shepherd]

Given that the right hon. Gentleman is giving us a catalogue of what is wrong with the Bill and what is difficult about it, how can he vote in favour of the principle of the Bill as drafted and lying in front of the House of Commons, rather than voting against it as a matter of principle? It does not strike me as amenable to satisfactory changes in Committee, even if the good will of the Government were there for the purpose. Why is the right hon. Gentleman not standing by that principle, and demonstrating that this is an unsatisfactorily prepared Bill?

[Mr Straw]

It is an unsatisfactorily prepared Bill—on that the hon. Gentleman and I are in absolute agreement—but we may be in disagreement on the principle of the Bill. I have done many things from the Front Benches in 30 years to seek to justify difficult positions and have emerged upright at the other end, but with a commitment as clear as daylight in our manifesto—of blessed memory and only five months old—that said, in terms, that the Labour party would introduce legislation for fixed Parliaments, it would have been a bit tricky for me to have come to the House and opposed the Bill. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House may say that that did not worry me a week ago. But it did. [Laughter.]

There is a serious point. Had the subject of this Bill been tied up with a proposition with which we wholly disagreed—as with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, where the Government could and should have separated the alternative vote and boundaries issues—that would have been different. As I explained to the House this time last week, I would have been delighted to vote in favour of the Bill if all that it contained was part 1. The Deputy Prime Minister knows better than me why he has decided to put alongside that proposition—one that was broadly agreed—an entirely separate and unrelated proposition wholly to change the agreed and consensual way in which we have set boundaries in this country for many years, a manner last amended by this House not under Labour, but under the Conservatives.

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[Mr Howarth]

It is always difficult to speculate about what would have happened at a given time if the vote had gone in a different direction. I know for a fact that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had taken the view—it is now a matter of record—that he would have had to stand down as Prime Minister. That would have changed the leadership of the Executive and the political leadership of the country. How that would have affected the imminence or otherwise of a general election is impossible to judge, because the arithmetic of Parliament would have stayed the same. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman meant that to be a helpful intervention for the Government, but I do not think it serves that purpose at all.

[Mr Shepherd]

It is inconceivable and against our traditions that a Prime Minister who proposes a war with the support of his Cabinet is defeated and does not depart the scene. There would have to be a general election. That is our tradition, that is the convention, and that was our constitution.

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[Mr Allen]

There are so many flaws in the Bill’s drafting. The Committee, on the hon. Gentleman’s behalf, has done as good a job as it can in pointing them out. I hope that all of them will be put right during the Committee stage, as they could be put right if we were to have a special Public Bill Committee or a proper pre-legislative process. However, that is currently not the case. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and one that should be addressed by the Government as the Bill proceeds.

The other thing about a fixed-term Parliament is predictability and continuity. Instead of permanent politics-as-entertainment, in which there is speculation about impending general elections and people feed tittle-tattle and gossip to raise or lower the political temperature, we will know that we can get on with serious business while knowing the date of the next general election and putting such considerations aside. That is something of great importance, and would lead to us as parliamentarians being able to seize greater control of what we do in this place on a number of issues, rather than being engaged, even at arm’s length, in speculation about when an election will take place.

[Mr Shepherd]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and his Committee, and for the evidence that it has taken. However, what concerns me—one of the witnesses makes this point in a written statement—is that we are talking about piecemeal constitutional change. The Labour and Conservative parties are dedicated to an elected House of Lords, for instance. How does a five or four-year term—or whatever it is—fit into the broader picture for us? That is what bothers me, so to talk about a piece of piecemeal legislation—and to ask the question “Cui bono?”—is not good enough.

[Mr Allen]

Perfection may be the enemy of the good in this case. As parliamentarians, we are feeding on the crumbs from the table, and I guess that this is as good as we can do. The choice is not between the Bill and a big-bang written constitution that solves all the problems in one go; the Bill is what is on offer, and as supplicants in the process, we can only try to make it a better part of this piecemeal change. Unfortunately, we do not have the option of something much more fundamental; and indeed, I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would really want that. However, perhaps he does, so I will follow his speech with interest.

The other thing about predictability and continuity is that they give Governments the chance to decide their programme and work through their Bills much more effectively. This helter-skelter “throw it into the mix” way of passing legislation debilitates Governments of all parties. Let there be proper evidence-based policy making—probably for the first time in our lifetime—so that the Government can put things to the House of Commons that are almost fully formed, rather than throwing them in and saying, “We’ll hope to amend them as they go through this House and the second Chamber.” Instead of saying, “Let’s botch a few things and get hundreds of amendments down to try and get the Bill into shape,” how about having proper, considered, evidence-based policy making from the Government, which would then be immensely strengthened by proper scrutiny by the House? Who loses in that process?

Some might say, “It’s going to delay things,” but we did this. Indeed, a classic example from when Labour was in power was criminal justice Bills. We popped them out virtually once a year because we had not got it right the first time, but we also had to get something before the House and show that we were fighting crime. I think we can all do better than that. If we used the process that is readily available to us to consider legislation carefully, the Government would amaze themselves at the Bills they could produce for the House and the House would amaze itself at the contribution it could make by having proper scrutiny of how legislation develops.

We have proposed, on an all-party basis, that there should be 12 weeks of pre-legislative scrutiny. To his great credit, the Leader of the House has written to the Liaison Committee saying that Bills should normally have a 12-week evidence-taking pre-legislative scrutiny period. If we can get the so-called new politics to deliver on that, so that every Bill goes through that process, we will produce much better law. However, if we just ram things through the House of Commons, it will be business as usual and legislation will be flawed. Those who throw in the bogey of the courts coming and lurking in the corridors of the House of Commons will find their wish fulfilled, because there may indeed be flaws in the legislation. I hope we will iron out all those wrinkles this week and in the days on the Floor of the House, but if we are not careful and if we do not have the right level of scrutiny, we may get what we wish for.

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[Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

Four minutes to go. Thank you, Sir.

Bills of this nature rankle. If I think about it seriously, this looks like an attempt to entrench a Government. On that basis alone, I would vote against it, as it is not my intention to prolong beyond its natural life, the life of any Government. I have listened to two interesting speeches, which I contrast. The first was that of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), which took me back to the schoolroom. I listened carefully; this was the constitution I learned as I was growing up. The speech also reminded me of my undergraduate years, and of when I came here and saw all those things cast aside by a simple vote.

Tony Benn has articulated more clearly than anyone else that it is no longer the monarch that is crucial; the Crown resides in Downing street. That is what this Bill is about and, in a sense, has always been about. We changed our Administrations by slaughter on battlefields and then we evolved a constitution. I will follow that constitution to the end.

I have no problem with fixed-term Parliaments, but how does the Bill relate to the constitutional programme put forward by an inept Deputy Prime Minister who cannot bring coherent constitutional measures to the Floor of the House? How does this Bill integrate with the supposed reform of the House of Lords, which is going to be elected? All these issues need to be thought through, but that is not happening. That is why it is legislation on the back of an envelope. There is a cheerful cynicism about it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) suggested, and he is talking the truth.

This has always been a place that has had its machinations and purposes, with Governments striving to last for longer. Everything said by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Select Committee Chairman, was in a sense trying to identify what was the ideal. I have reverence for the constitution that was, but that went. We had 13 years of the Labour party bringing forth constitutional measures on the back of an envelope time and again. I saw the corruption of this Chamber. I saw the spirit of this House, which the Select Committee Chairman wants to revive. This House still holds all the power and sovereignty of this country should it wish to exercise it. That is all it has ever been about. If we conspire and work together, we can overthrow Governments, or Governments can come to the end of their time.

As I said last week, I support this coalition because it is the agent by which I hope to see sensible economic, budgetary responses to the dire situation we are in. However, we are confronted with the cheerful cynicism of the Front Bench: “How do we protect ourselves in office?” That is what I feel that this is about. I do not want the people of Aldridge-Brownhills, who sent me here, to be forced to live under a Government extended by an artificial device when that Government’s time has gone. The Government have the Parliament Act 1911, which gives them five years if they can make the course and hold the attention of each of us as individual Members from constituencies across the country—and I hope they can. However, they can do it without this half-baked legislation.