Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between George Howarth and Adam Holloway

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Howarth]

I have to tell my right hon. Friend that I am far too modest to consider looking at such statistics. Most of the people who voted, however, mainly voted for a particular political party. I am not trying to be unduly modest—that applies to every Member of the House, with very few exceptions.

It is important to remember why people voted for particular parties. It is partly because they agreed with the policies, but partly because they agreed with the values. As the House of Commons Library has made clear in its helpful note, my party manifesto included a commitment to fixed-term Parliaments, as my right hon. Friend said, but that was in the context of a written constitution. I have already cited the wording that was used. My right hon. Friend said that the use of “and” to link fixed-term Parliaments with wider constitutional reform and a constitutional convention was a question of my muddling up subjunctive and conjunctive clauses, but I doubt very much whether he had that in mind when he drafted that section of our manifesto. Knowing him, it is possible that he deliberately left the wording ambiguous so that on a future occasion he could make the claim that he made today. Not for nothing did the late Barbara Castle suggest that he could occasionally be devious—I do not think that she actually used the word, “devious” but that was the import of what she said—and had a great deal of low cunning. Our earlier exchange perhaps demonstrated that even though he is not standing for the shadow Cabinet, he still has a great deal of low cunning.

The manifesto commitment was ambiguous, but a further point needs to be made. How far does an Opposition party go towards deciding that it must stick to every measure in a previous manifesto when, as we did, it loses the election?

I understand that Governments and parties that contribute towards Governments are rightly judged by the extent to which they do what they say will do at a general election and in their manifesto, but it seems to me—and I hope to my right hon. Friend—that although the principles that we stand by as a party and our values as a party endure defeat and victory in a general election, specific policies, and certainly policies on such an issue, do not necessarily survive a defeat.

I was out and about in my constituency over the weekend and had many conversations about matters political, not just with Labour party members, but with voters. Surprise, surprise, not one of them said to me, “George, I want you to go down there on Monday for the Second Reading of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill and vote for it.” They did not say, “Vote for it.” They did not say, “Don’t vote for it.” They have never discussed it with me at all. I have never had a letter on fixed-term Parliaments. I have never had an e-mail—no doubt I will get hundreds of them now—on fixed-term Parliaments. No constituent has ever discussed fixed-term Parliaments with me. Any belief that we have a moral obligation to support the Bill has passed me by.

There are other important things that we should take into account. I come back to the point that I made at the beginning. We are sent here to exercise a judgment about many things, one of which is the performance of any Government at any given time. One of the devices that we have at our disposal in such circumstances is a vote of no confidence. Normally, a vote of no confidence can trigger an election process, subject to the monarch and all the procedures that have to take place in those circumstances. I do not believe that our constituents want us to be in a position where we retain the right to pass a vote of no confidence if the effect of that vote is dependent on the proportion of Members who voted for it.

If a Government have lost the confidence of the House of Commons and that is manifested by a majority of one or two in a vote of no confidence, why is that wrong? Whether the Government have lost the confidence of two thirds of the House, a dozen or two or three Members, why does that make a difference? In the end, a Government who have run out of steam, run out of ideas or run out of confidence here or in the country should go.

I was sent here to make sure that whatever the political composition of the Government of the day, I had the ability on behalf of my constituents to say, “Enough is enough. Go!” That ability, which I have had for the 20-odd years that I have been a Member of the House, is circumscribed by the terms of the Bill.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

There has been much talk about hypothetical situations that may occur if the Bill is passed. A vote of no confidence does not necessarily mean that there would be a general election. I am thinking back to the time when the House voted on the Iraq war. If the Government had lost that vote, and if the Prime Minister of the day had made it a matter of confidence in him and had lost, does the right hon. Gentleman envisage that there would have been a general election, or would the then Government have changed the Executive and therefore, in effect, the Government?

[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.