Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Robert Syms Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I take back that cheap shot against Tony Blair—it was perhaps unnecessary—and I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Over the centuries, we have established a pretty good system. I think we are the only country in Europe never to have been a police state or had a police state imposed on it. We should be pretty proud of our slow constitutional growth.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

When President Nixon and Spiro Agnew resigned, the United States ended up with a President and Vice-President who had been elected by Congress and not by a mandate of the people. It is therefore possible to have a change of power without an election there, which would not happen here.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Exactly; that is a very fair point.

Our own beloved Mark Darcy, a BBC journalist who is really an ornament of the constitution, put it very well when he said that there was a danger under the Act of Parliaments

“oscillating between hyperactivity and torpor” .

We appear to be at the torpid end of this Parliament.

I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I regret that you cannot join us and make a speech. We recollect your coruscating arguments during the passage of the Bill, but we accept that you are of course now completely neutral.

I just think that five years is far too long. We have experienced a very front-loaded Parliament. The best evidence of that has been the recent explosion in the number of Back-Bench debates, compared with the number in the early part of the Parliament. I welcome Back-Bench debates, but they are taking place not through the kindness of the Government but because there is no majority in the House to do anything that would make a real difference. In my experience, the very best Conservative and Labour Parliaments have been four-year Parliaments, and the very worst have lasted for five years—in particular, our 1992 Parliament and Labour’s 2005 Parliament. Towards the end, five-year Parliaments get weaker and weaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

This is an important debate and I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) opened it. The subject needs to be aired by this House. I do not necessarily see the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 as the work of the forces of evil or, indeed, the Liberal Democrats. On the other hand, the alternative of the previous system is not necessarily a panacea.

In practical terms, if the coalition had fallen apart at some point, the Prime Minister would probably have come to the House and proposed a Dissolution, and I would have been extremely surprised if the Leader of the Opposition had not agreed with the proposition of having a general election to sort out the situation. The need for a two-thirds majority principally means that the Conservative party and the Labour party could conspire to have a Dissolution on a date on which they both agree. Essentially, it does not prevent a general election from taking place; it just means that there would have to be a degree of consultation between both major parties.

I do not think that fixed-term Parliaments are necessarily a good thing, for some of the reasons that have already been discussed. I think there comes a time—four years is probably long enough—when a Government ought to try to get a new mandate from the electorate. If we look back at history, we will see that at one point we had seven-year Parliaments and then the term was reduced to five years. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to general elections. We missed a general election in 1940, for the very understandable reason that we were doing other things at the time. That was quite reasonable and one must remember that that Parliament ran all the way to 1945.

Whenever the United Kingdom has had early general elections—I think we ought to focus on early general elections, rather than those that have taken place towards the end of a term after four, four and a half, or five years—it was usually because the electorate gave an indecisive result and, for the sake of good government, the political parties wanted the electorate to reconsider through another general election. At the end of the day, apart from holding the Government to account, Parliament is about ensuring that there is a Government, who have to deliver the health service, education and pensions. Of course, the 2010 Government had to manage the British economy, which has to be managed in a particular way. Those are very important issues.

Governments have gone early on two occasions in my lifetime. The Wilson Government of February 1974 went and got a small majority that October, and the 1964 Labour Government were re-elected in 1966, having initially got a very small majority.

[John Hemming]

Obviously, we have had fixed-term Parliaments for a long time; it is just that the Prime Minister had the power to call an early election. Who does my hon. Friend believe should have the power to decide to have an early election?

[Mr Syms]

Actually, the power to call a general election is a poisoned chalice for a Prime Minister: if they win it is great, but if they lose they generally get the chop because they made the wrong decision. Under the old system, Conservative campaign headquarters told its candidates that there were only so many Thursdays—which, by convention, we used—and only so many days of the year, because of summer days and autumn, on which we could have a general election. When it comes down to it, there are only four or five dates a Prime Minister can choose from. A Prime Minister has the seals of office from the Queen and the responsibility to discharge a Government programme. If someone has to decide, I would prefer it to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful speech. He has spoken of the poisoned chalice, but what about Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, and Tony Blair in 2001 and 2005? Is he suggesting that partisan considerations were not at play in the choice to go after four rather than five years in those four cases?

[Mr Syms]

I am perfectly sure that, in normal politics, some incumbents have a slight advantage. Clearly, both Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair used it to the maximum. One election was delayed by foot and mouth, so events can intervene and cause a delay, if everyone agrees to it. At the time, there was consensus across the House that it would have been impossible to have a general election. I remember driving through Devon and seeing pyres of the carcases of animals being burned. That showed the British system being flexible to deal with something that emerged very quickly.

[John Hemming]

I thank my hon. Friend for his previous answer. He said the effective test of whether the Prime Minister’s decision to have an election was a good one was whether the Prime Minister got elected, and that the test was measured by the political party. In essence, such a decision is driven by the party interest, not the public interest.

[Mr Syms]

There is an element of truth in that, but to go back to my earlier point, if a Prime Minister dissolves Parliament and loses, they usually end up losing the leadership of their party. Harold Wilson was unusual: he won three elections out of the four he contested, but survived after losing—by surprise—in 1970. He of course chose the date in 1970, but that was after a long period during which his party thought that it would win. In reality, most Prime Ministers go when they think they will win. Most of them hang on when they think they will lose, in the hope of something turning up, which it normally does not, and five-year Parliaments can be tortuous and difficult.

I believe we should go back to the previous system of having some flexibility in when general elections occur. In reality, they normally occur some time in the fourth and fifth year of a Parliament.

[John Hemming]

rose—

[Mr Syms]

I will give way for the last time.

[John Hemming]

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that a key priority of this Parliament has been to sort out the finances, but uncertainty creates greater instability in the financial markets. If we had to pay another 1%, it would cost us about £10 billion or more a year. Does he think that that is a reasonable price for the taxpayer to pay for giving back a power over general elections to the Prime Minister?

[Mr Syms]

One thing on which I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, who introduced the debate in a very reasonable fashion, is that we may in future have more coalition Governments than some of us would like. If we look at the pattern of politics, we can clearly see that more people are willing to vote for a range of parties, which in itself brings challenges for the major political parties. It may well be that fixed-term Parliaments are used as a device when other coalitions are formed in future.

I hope that there will be a clear overall majority for the Conservative party when there is an election—or that there is a clear majority among the electorate—but if there is no such majority and, to return to my earlier point, someone has to run the economy, interest rates need to be maintained, restrictions on public expenditure are still needed and tough decisions have to be made, coalitions will sometimes be the best vehicle.

I have always taken a very pragmatic view of the British constitution. It has shown that it can be amended, changed and challenged by what is thrown at it. The remarkable thing about 2010 was that there was an indecisive general election but a strong Government were formed to deal with the very difficult issues we faced. Those issues will still need to be dealt with in the next Parliament.

I simply point out that it would be better to have flexibility in the system. At some stage, we will find ourselves in the situation where a general election is the solution to dealing with the problems. Given some of the current polls, with both major parties on percentage shares in the 30s, one possible result would be for each to have between 260 and 280 seats and for neither to be able to form a coalition with any other party, and that would lead us into grand coalition territory. We had that in February 1974, when the Conservatives conspired to allow the Labour party to govern until there was another general election. It would be unusual but not impossible to have a situation in which no Government could be sustained. In such a case, rather than having some absurd coalition with both major parties getting together but agreeing on nothing, it would be sensible for the electorate at some point to get the chance to decide which party or coalition of parties they wished to run the country.

The coalition has not done a bad job. It was necessary, and it has probably helped the British economy. Having fixed-term Parliaments was one part of the deal. That was perfectly respectable politics, because there was a need to reassure the junior partner in the coalition. However, being conservative constitutionally, I rather hope that we can go back to the previous system. If we do, it will be the decision of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), if he is the Prime Minister after the next election, to decide about the following election. If he then made the wrong decision, he would have to pay the consequences for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I realise I am craving the indulgence of the House. I would not normally seek to intervene in a debate when I was unable to attend the opening speeches. I understand, however, that the main protagonists have yet to speak, so I will use this brief opportunity to give my pennyworth in the hope that they may each be able to reply to one or two of the points I will make.

I have been listening to the debate, but I wonder if I could take the House back, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) did, to the beginning and to when the coalition was being formed. When it was formed, I remember it was announced that there were going to be some constitutional changes, including this one. We were told that we were ushering in a new era of the new politics that was going to transform the people’s perception of how we conduct ourselves in this place. It was going to show the parties re-engaging with the enthusiasm of the voters and that, as a consequence, this would be a much happier country. I remember having a conversation with a Minister on the stairs going up to the Committee Corridor. He said to me that politics, after five years of the coalition, would be unrecognisable—that is what he said. If we ask voters today what they think about how politics looks today compared with four years ago, I think they would say that it is all too recognisable.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone described—I understand he has had to leave the Chamber in a rush because he is attending to other duties in the House—has turned this place in upon itself even more than it was before. We are even less focused on what the voters think because we have given ourselves tenure. We have given ourselves security. We have given ourselves a fixed-term lease that cannot be challenged. And there is the idea that this was done as some selfless and noble act! I am amazed that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) —I am afraid he is not in his place at the moment—should keep raising the question of how the Prime Minister might exercise his power with regard to partisan considerations. Well, perish the thought that any Prime Minister would ever do anything with partisan considerations in mind! I look back at previous Prime Ministers and think to myself: did Gordon Brown ever act in a partisan manner? No, no, never! Did Sir John Major or Tony Blair ever act in a partisan manner? No, no! The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was obviously yet another selfless Act introduced by a Prime Minister, with no party considerations involved! I think we are being asked to stretch our imaginations a little too far.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is one of the most partisan and self-interested Acts of Parliament that has ever been put on the statute book. It did not just provide MPs with tenure; it provided the coalition Government with tenure. It was providing the coalition with security; it was providing them with a five-year guaranteed supply of money from the taxpayer for their Administration. It was self-interested on the part of the Conservative Ministers who wanted to give themselves tenure. It was self-interested on the part of the Liberal Democrats to give themselves tenure not only in this coalition but in a future hung Parliament to guarantee that the only option would be another five-year coalition in which they, the smallest party, would once again have influence disproportionate to the number of votes they received. Even I missed the point about why the Labour party was so happy to give tenure to the coalition. The Labour party knew it was in a mess. It had a deeply unpopular ex-Prime Minister who had just been thrown out of office. It was going to have a long, protracted leadership election process. The last thing it wanted was another general election within six or 18 months. It was in no fit state to fight one, so of course it also supported the Act. This has created a politicians’ paradise. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said, it is designed to shut the British people out of the decision about what kind of Government they should be able to choose.

[Mr Syms]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Equal votes in constituencies for fair representation is one of the fundamentals of politics, yet the boundary review was voted down for narrow party interests.

[Mr Jenkin]

I totally agree. The whole question of House of Lords reform was also being advanced for party political interests.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley asked who should have the power to dissolve Parliament. Should it be the Prime Minister? I put it to him that holding that power is part of the authority of being Prime Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) described it, part of the poisoned chalice of office is that the Prime Minister holds that power. By passing the Act, we have robbed the Prime Minister of part of that authority. We have robbed the Government of part of the authority of office that the Government live on a day-to-day basis, subject to the confidence of the House of Commons. That has been taken away and represents a fundamental change in our constitution.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) wants not only a written constitution and the continuation of fixed-term Parliaments, but the separation of powers. Basically, he wants an American constitution rather than a British constitution, but let us look at the American constitution. First, it is paralysed. It cannot get its deficit down and it cannot elect a strong Government. It can elect a President, but the separation of powers means that Congress can defeat everything the President wants to do. I do not think that that is a very good recipe. We do not want to follow that. In any case, the separation of powers is based on a misapprehension of how constitutions work. There is, in fact, no such thing as a separation of powers in any constitution. That was what Montesquieu thought he understood about the British constitution. The need for a separation of powers was the lesson that the American founding fathers thought they had learned from him about the British constitution. However, in the American constitution the President, the Executive, vetoes legislation and appoints the judiciary, and the legislature conducts pre-appointment hearings on the senior people in the judiciary. There is always overlap between the functions of government, and ours is a system of parliamentary government in which the Executive can hold office only with the permission of Parliament.

The Act has fundamentally altered the balance of power in our constitution. English votes for English laws, which many of us, including Labour Members, want, would require only a minor adjustment to Standing Orders and the running of the House, yet people are saying, “Oh, we’ll have to have a constitutional convention.” The Act made a far greater change but without a constitutional convention or any consultation; there was absolutely no debate. It was not even explained to the Conservative parliamentary party before we agreed to the coalition. It only became apparent that there would be a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill when the coalition agreement was published. Well, we have all learned our lesson, and the Conservative party will not be forming a coalition in the next Parliament until we have seen the coalition agreement in draft, and we will want to go through it line by line to ensure that such sleights of hand are not repeated.