Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate. I will be brief.

I want to address in particular the length of the proposed fixed terms and how, by choosing the dates that have been chosen, we are running into totally unnecessary conflict with the devolved Parliaments. In opening the debate, the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that he had now realised there was an issue with this. When he came to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee before the recess, that issue was pointed out to him very clearly, but until today he appeared to have chosen to ignore it or to brush it off as irrelevant.

There may have been confusion in some people’s minds between the potential coincidence of next year’s Scottish Parliament elections and the AV vote and the potential clash in 2015. There are some problems with both things, but I concede that next year’s clash is not in any way as serious as the potential clash in 2015 and the one that would come along some years further into the future, although most of us would probably not be around to deal with it—not as elected Members, at least.

The coincidence of the two general elections is a serious issue. I do not know whether everybody is aware that in Scotland a decision has been taken to move the local elections, which should have been due next year, to another year, to avoid the clash that happened in 2007; that was between local elections and the Scottish Parliament election. We have already made that move, only to discover that in some ways it has been completely undone by what might be allowed to happen here in Westminster.

The matter has been raised not only by the Select Committee but by many other commentators and it should have been addressed before now. There is no reason not to address it. Given that the bulk of the information and evidence that has come to the Select Committee also supports four-year terms, the easiest way out of the difficulty is for the Bill to be amended to allow for such terms. All the complications about whether to have the elections a month apart, which, as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said, would be absolutely ludicrous, or six months apart, which would be equally unacceptable, would disappear if we set four-year terms in train.

The change would be simple to make and it would be nice to think that we could carry it out without getting into complicated cross-jurisdictional issues about election dates. The elections are different and the issues are very different. It is undoubtedly true that the issues that the devolved Parliaments would want people to pay attention to will simply be swamped if there is a Westminster general election at the same time. I do not mean that we as politicians would cause that to happen; the media, however, would certainly concentrate on what they would see, rightly or wrongly, as the big election.

Let us not underestimate the differences between boundaries. When the Scottish Parliament elections take place next year, my Westminster constituency will have four different MSPs in it; that is how different the boundaries are. These are no minor differences.

[Mrs Laing]

The hon. Lady has just verified the criticisms that many of us made in respect of the importance of coterminosity between one legislature and another. I hope she will agree that that ought to be borne in mind by future Governments.

[Sheila Gilmore]

We appear to have lost coterminosity entirely in Scotland, and that is an issue because the situation there is making it extremely difficult for people to have more engagement in politics and a better relationship with their elected representatives. When I tell people, “I am your Westminster MP, but this person will be the candidate for that part of the constituency, although not in your sister’s area, which is not that far away,” it is difficult to make them understand. We also have local government boundaries, which are completely different again.

I am not necessarily saying that we have to change the situation in Scotland immediately; we are learning to live with our different boundaries. However, there is absolutely no need to walk into the situation that I have described. A simple change, backed up by the evidence, to a four-year fixed term, would cure the problem. I hope that the Government will at least consider the issue again—and quickly, so we can get it out of the way.

Obviously, there are other issues. I am not qualified to comment on the detail of some of them, but they are important and we need to spend time on them during the passage of the Bill. I hope that at last the Government have heard the question.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I fear that the hon. Lady is perhaps underestimating the sophistication and intelligence of her constituents and those in the rest of Scotland. The evidence seems to suggest that when elections have coincided—for instance, the local elections on 6 May this year and the county council elections previously that coincided with general elections—people have been discerning and have made separate decisions. I would vouchsafe that that was the case in Scotland.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am not suggesting that people cannot make separate decisions, but there are practical difficulties. However, over and above those difficulties—which we saw clearly in 2007 and because of which we have taken a step to move elections apart—the overwhelming objection is that we would be in danger of drowning or swamping the important issues of the different legislatures. That is important for what we have built up under devolution. I may now be an elected representative in this place, but those of us who fought hard for devolution did not do so to see everything disappearing in the way that it would in such elections. That is why we should simply amend the Bill to have four-year terms. Then I would be much more supportive of it than I am in its present form.

[Mark Durkan]

Did my hon. Friend not previously give an answer to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), when she said that the issue was not whether voters could cope with the different issues, but whether the media could handle the spread of coverage and, in particular, whether the broadcast media could handle the detailed legal requirements for balanced coverage, which would be almost impossible to achieve if those elections were melodeoned together?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I absolutely agree.