Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Richard Shepherd and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Shepherd]

I am always encouraged when a political opponent, in the sense of someone from the other side of the House, adopts arguments that I advanced against him when he was sitting on the Front Bench on behalf of the Labour party. It is true. Now we see the conversion of the defeated. That is why we should always be mindful that our hold on government is a temporary experience, and that one day we will be sitting on the Benches on the other side of the Chamber and hoping to be able to make the reasoned arguments that can convince a wider public out there.

The sheer disengagement of some of our arguments from those by whom we are elected, and from why we are elected, is to me the most worrying development of Parliament in recent years. We have scorned the historic balance of where the people lie in this matter; that is why I support both new clauses. I have asked the whole way through our consideration of the Bill how it will strengthen the people’s hold over the House of Commons, which is their representative instrument for ensuring that public policy bears some relationship to the desires, hopes and aspirations of our society. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset for the informed, reasoned and reasonable way in which he presented his new clause. If it is put to a vote, I will vote for it, because I would like to show that there is some support in this House for the arguments it advances about temperance in respect of the House of Lords and its doings.

I am a democrat and truly believe in the representation of the people in this House, which is what I want to see. However, the basis of the argument that I have made the whole way through proceedings on the Bill is that we know that it is about the entrenchment of a temporary coalition, and we are trying to examine, and amend, the aspiration that things can somehow be rejigged. We have heard the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is sitting on the Front Bench, advance the startling proposition that the Queen could dismiss a Prime Minister for acting “improperly”. No constitutional documents in the past two centuries, and certainly not since 1867, have stated that that was a practical reality.

[Thomas Docherty]

In that case, perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain why Her Majesty was able to dismiss the Government of Australia, which is part of the Commonwealth, by using the powers that she has.

[Mr Shepherd]

The constitutional arrangements of Australia are a matter of written statute there, and I understand that the Governor-General exercised the prerogative power in the case to which the hon. Gentleman refers. However, that is not what I am concerned about; I am concerned about our own constitutional processes. I think that the statement by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary was misjudged, but he has never withdrawn it. He is a representative of the Government, and of the Crown itself, but as a Member of Parliament he has never withdrawn that statement.

My nervousness about the Bill is clear. I am nervous about the idea that two parties can mandate that their existence as a coalition should last for a term of five years. I have expressed that view before, and I think that it is shared by a number of Members. I have no doubt that the Lords will think that measure trivial in some ways, because it is a presumption; how can one mandate something that is formed by human beings with their own policies and parties? They can work together to a certain extent, but the coalition will last as long as the coalition lasts. I am not damning it; I am just saying that I do not think that they should have reached forward with a Bill of this nature. If they want to work in harness they will have the support of a great many Members of this House. We know that the nation is confronted with an economic crisis and difficult decisions have to be made. The people of this country are having to make difficult decisions on how to restore economic competence, balance budgets and all the rest of it.

We have spent a lot of time on the first matter, so I will now come to the real new clause, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, which I will undoubtedly vote for. His brevity today was extraordinary. [Laughter.] I do not laugh at it, for I think that the expression of great ideas is all the more effective for being expressed in a concentrated and condensed way. I appreciate that there is a drinks party at Downing street for Members from my party who want to attend, so I will bring my remarks to a close, as the great business of the Government must not be delayed by the musings of the House of Commons on such matters as constitutional reform.

I am standing up to support the limitations that are being expressed and the hesitations about the nature of the Bill. If there were one thing that I could argue for and effect, it would be that the Government themselves realise that they have a job. We salute them for that, but, when they fiddle with the constitution in ways that suit only their own purpose and stifle the natural functioning flow of politics, we lose something, and we lose the attention of our constituents. My argument is that we cannot march to a drumbeat like that. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity at least to raise our caveats, and I am grateful to the Labour party for indicating that it will support the new clause. It is important, and I commend it.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Richard Shepherd and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

I welcome you to the Chair, Miss Begg. As I sat here this afternoon and this evening, I saw my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and hon. Members on the Government Benches, and I had a feeling of déjà vu. I felt that we had been here quite recently, and it occurred to me that that was so.

We had a debate in Committee just three weeks ago—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Foyle said, it was to discuss a Bill with a different title, but one that also sought to change our parliamentary system. There are perhaps only two reasons why the Government did not amalgamate them in a single Bill. First, this is a back-of-a-fag-packet rushed job that they have pulled together, but they could not get their civil servants to work fast enough for the Deputy Prime Minister. I note that he is not here tonight, and I can only assume that after his 70-minute contribution to our eight hours of debate on the other Bill he is exhausted. I am sure that Opposition Members wish him all the best in his recovery from that exhaustion. The second reason could be that the Minister so enjoys spending time on Bills that he has been bouncing around all week in eager anticipation of listening to me and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda giving him an interesting lecture on constitutional history. Without further ado, I will indulge not that fetish, but that fantasy.

I was lucky enough to go on the visit by the all-party British-American parliamentary group to the United States some two months ago, and spent a lot of time studying the US constitution, and especially its constitutional convention, which is particularly apt given the comments by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) about interesting parallels between our parliamentary system and that of our colonial cousins across the water. I have to confess to being something of an anorak in these matters. In fact, I have been described as the Leonard to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda’s Sheldon when it comes to the constitutional process.

I should like to recommend to the Committee an excellent book by Professor Robert Beeman called “Plain, Honest Men: the making of the American constitution”, which I would be happy to lend to the Minister and to the Deputy Leader of the House if they would like to study it. They might be interested to know that when the Americans came to draw up their constitution and were considering the lengths of terms of office and the roles of the upper and lower Houses and of the Executive, they held a four-month constitutional convention in 1789. They brought together some of the great minds of the day, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and one James Wilson, who was a native of Fife and educated at St Andrew’s university, and who emigrated to the colonies in the 1750s. They spent four months debating those matters, and only at the end of that time, after a proper detailed debate, did they deign to bring forward detailed proposals for their terms of office, fixed terms and so on.

[Mr Shepherd]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not forget one of the very important constituent parts of that whole debate—namely, the federalist papers. They laid out the arguments for the wider public, which were fiercely debated with proposition and counter-proposition. That was a formidable ingredient that involved an awful lot of people.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point, and I apologise for not having touched on it. He is entirely right to say that the work of the likes of Madison and Hamilton was crucial, but that there was also a great debate. They did not try to rush their proposal through.