Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Anne McGuire

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate the members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, many of whom are here tonight, on performing a brilliant job of which I hope the House is very proud. They had a mere two or three days in which to produce for the House a first-class report; I hope that colleagues will take the chance to look at it. If it does not cover all the answers, it none the less raises most of the key questions, which can be resolved through the passage of this Bill. I thank all those Members who worked so hard on pulling the document together. I took the liberty of e-mailing it to every Member of the House within one minute of its publication on Friday morning, in the hope that those who were not out campaigning and knocking on doors at the weekend would have a chance at least to look at it and inform themselves ahead of the debate. We did the best we could, but it is still not good enough in respect of the procedures of the House. We should expect our Select Committees to have a careful, long, detailed look at the legislation that is proposed by the Government and that the House is expected to pass. We can do that by having proper pre-legislative scrutiny.

The Bill flies in the face of effective pre-legislative scrutiny. We will do our best for the two days of Committee on the Floor of the House, but I hope very much that in future the Government will ensure that we all get adequate time to do what we are here for—to make better law. The Government-drafted law, good as it is, will always benefit from a careful, steady appraisal and from the answering of questions. That is what the parliamentary process is designed for.

[Mrs McGuire]

Pre-legislative scrutiny is a valuable tool for the House across a range of legislation, and constitutional change has significant ramifications for a whole other range of legislation that the House has passed over many hundreds of years. Does my hon. Friend agree that pre-legislative scrutiny should almost have been a pre-requisite before the Bill came to the House?

[Mr Allen]

As I would expect, my right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. As we have heard today, many people support the principle of what the Government are saying. Why lose friends by rushing the process? Why not get better law by going steadily? I am sure that colleagues know that democratic change has been dear to my heart for many years. Above all, why not build a consensus in the House for the change once it has been gone through carefully and after everyone in the House feels that they have been able to be involved—rather than everyone in the House feeling that they have been cheated and that the process has been abusive to them as Members of Parliament? I shall return to that issue a little later.

This is a Second Reading debate, so we are talking about the big principles. The big principle is whether we should have a fixed-term Parliament. I speak personally and strongly in saying that such a Parliament is certainly needed; many of us have campaigned for one for many years. I think that it will become a steady, fixed aspect of what we do in this country. To quote the report,

“our expectation is that future Parliaments would run for their full fixed term, and that this will become an unremarkable aspect of our modern democracy.”

That is how most western democracies operate, and they take it in their stride. That is just how things are. They have a set, fixed system and do not get terribly excited for two or three years about whether there will be a general election. They know perfectly well when their legislature and Executive are going to be elected. The process is not all covered in mysticism, judicial archaeology and obscure Standing Orders; it is there for people to see, with every elector owning their democracy.

It was said that nobody writes to hon. Members about fixed-term Parliaments. People do not; but they do speak to all of us on the doorsteps about how they feel about politics. They feel that politics is not working and does not deliver for them. Our role is to take that general sentiment—albeit not expressed in favour of this or that clause in a particular Bill—that we must restore politics to people. That is one of the key principles underlying the idea of a fixed-term Parliament.

I have got form on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) talked about the 1992 Labour party decision. I was fortunate enough to have drafted that document. That was nearly 20 years ago and there has been a lot of discussion since, but the House is finally getting the chance to decide on whether the people of our country should know when the next general election is going to be. That is a really important step forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mrs McGuire]

Given the adversarial nature of our legislative process, does my hon. Friend agree that some of the issues to which he has alluded will be difficult to iron out in the passage of this legislation and that pre-legislative scrutiny would have led not only to a far better conclusion, but to one that would have gathered a consensus across the House?

[Mr Allen]

It is not always possible to achieve a consensus, but technical issues—whether the courts might be involved; whether the proposal might be implemented better through Standing Orders or in statute; the number of days needed after a Government have lost the confidence of the House—are the sorts of things that can be decided to everybody’s satisfaction. That does not mean that everyone will be satisfied for or against a fixed-term Parliament, but that is the purpose of a Second Reading, and that is the purpose of the final reading in this House: to say yes or no to the key principles. What we in this House are failing to deliver is technically competent, thoroughly analysed and examined pieces of legislation. That is why we have Select Committees, Public Bill Committees and the Committee stage on the Floor of the House for democratic Bills. However, we as a House are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to do that work by asking our Select Committee to come up with a report, good as it is, in two or three days.