Jack Straw
Main Page: Jack Straw (Independent - Blackburn)Department Debates - View all Jack Straw's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
If the hon. Gentleman can be patient, I will turn to that issue as it is a legitimate one. We had a debate last week about the coincidence of the date of the referendum being the same as that of the elections for the devolved Assemblies, but, as I shall acknowledge later, if he can hold on, I recognise that concerns about the coincidence of two parliamentary elections are qualitatively different and need to be examined further.
Each subsequent parliamentary general election after 7 May 2015 will be expected to occur on the first Thursday in May every five years, dovetailing with new arrangements that will see parliamentary Sessions run from spring to spring from 2012, as we have just heard from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
On parliamentary Sessions, the right hon. Gentleman heard his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House say that there would be opportunities during debates on this Bill to debate his announced decision this morning in respect of abolishing one Queen’s Speech and having a two-year Session, until May 2012. Will the Deputy Prime Minister explain how those debates on the proposals made by the Leader of the House will arise during the Bill, because there is absolutely nothing in it that relates to them? To facilitate such provision, will the Deputy Prime Minister ensure, if necessary, that the Government move new clauses providing for the dates of Prorogation and the Queen’s Speech so that we can have those debates?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, that is not a legislative matter so such provisions would not be necessary. As I am sure he will acknowledge, these matters are linked. If we adopt this legislation on fixed-term Parliaments, which I understand he supports—unless he has changed his mind—it will have a knock-on effect: we need to align the Sessions of this Parliament to the new fixed-term provisions. Instead of hyperventilating about the abolition of a Queen’s Speech, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that all we are doing is introducing a one-off, transitional arrangement so that those two facts are aligned.
Mr Straw
Of course I understand why it is being done, but there is a lot of objection, and not just from the Opposition, to having a Session lasting two years. That has not happened for the last 150 years and it has implications for the power of the House. As the Official Report will show, the Leader of the House told the House just a few minutes ago that there would be opportunities to debate his proposal under this Bill. Could we know how that will arise?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I should like to make some headway on the next issue—
Mr Straw
The right hon. Gentleman mentions the Second Reading speech by Herbert Asquith in February 1911. I am very grateful to the House of Commons Library for drawing this to our attention. I have the full speech. The right hon. Gentleman cannot use that quotation to justify something that was never the sense that Asquith was putting across. What Asquith was suggesting was that Parliaments within the five-year bracket would normally last from beginning to end for four years. That was the Liberal party policy as late as 2007. Why is it not now?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will not compete with Herbert Asquith as well as with the right hon. Gentleman. The wording, as I said, makes it clear that he was pointing out something that we all know: that politics becomes consumed by electioneering in the run-up to a general election, and that therefore, if we have a five-year fixed term, as we are advocating in the Bill, in reality the Government of the day have at least four years to govern for the benefit of the country.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I shall finish what I am saying about this detailed and involved point.
During that case, the House of Lords reiterated that courts cannot interfere in those proceedings, so far from leading us to believe that courts may intervene under the provisions of the Bill—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I understand that “Erskine May” states that, but how much detail has just been given is open to debate. I call Mr Clegg.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
The Labour party manifesto contained a commitment to legislate for fixed-term Parliaments, as did that of the Liberal Democrats, as we have heard. The Conservative party manifesto included no such commitment whatever, and as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) reminded the House at the beginning of the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech, the proposition from the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, was directly contradictory to that contained in the Bill. His proposition was that, were there a change of Prime Minister during a Parliament, that change should trigger a general election within six months of the new Prime Minister taking over. As a direct consequence of the Bill, that solemn commitment at the general election has been not just bypassed but wholly contradicted.
I am quite sure that the process that led to the Bill, following the general election, was entirely one of cerebration and consideration of the balance of the intellectual arguments—
Mr Straw
From a sedentary position, again, my hon. Friend prompts me to correct myself: Conservative Members in the Government have made a Pauline conversion, although it is palpable from today’s debate that, unlike St Paul, they have taken few voluntary converts with them.
If the Government and the House get the Bill right, it will be a positive innovation for our democracy. I do not share the Deputy Prime Minister’s hyperbole, but I certainly share his belief that it is a step forward, not a step back. We intend to work constructively to deliver what would be a significant constitutional change. For that reason, we will not divide the House tonight. However, let us be clear from the outset: the Bill as currently drafted does not stand up to scrutiny, even the limited scrutiny that the Government have permitted the House to date. The Bill will need substantial revision if we are to be able to support it on Third Reading, as we had wished to do.
The introduction of fixed-term Parliaments is intended to strengthen Parliament and fetter the Executive, and to make the political process more legitimate in the eyes of the public by reassuring them that the date of elections can no longer be at the whim of the Prime Minister. We have heard a lot about the power of the Prime Minister. Having known one or two Prime Ministers, I think that many Prime Ministers and potential Prime Ministers would rather not have the right and power to call a general election, as it has a brutal logic: if they win, they have made the most positive decision of their life; if they lose, they are almost always out of office, too.
Mr Jenkin
Can we take it that the right hon. Gentleman has also reached a completely dispassionate judgment, and that his decision to allow the Bill a Second Reading is in no way coloured by the possibility that his party will end up in government without a general election if it is passed?
Mr Straw
Funnily enough, I had not thought of that. Perhaps I should have. It is not that I am innocent of such considerations, but on this occasion it had not occurred to me.
The Bill does botch the job, however. It provides for a standard Parliament to be too long, at five years. It fails to clarify the procedures for confidence votes, opening up the possibility of a lame-duck Administration and constitutional limbo. It leaves a large loophole enabling Prime Ministers to use the prerogative power to prorogue Parliament, as happened recently in Canada. The mechanism for triggering an early Dissolution of Parliament may impinge—I put it no more strongly than that—on parliamentary privilege by creating the risk that courts could intervene on parliamentary proceedings.
Much of the incoherence of the Bill is a consequence of the unnecessary haste with which it is being rushed through Parliament. A week ago, the House debated the Second Reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. That too is being rushed through, with the Deputy Prime Minister breaking all previous undertakings about the importance of pre-legislative scrutiny.
If Members accept the imperative of a May 2011 date for the alternative-vote referendum—although I do not—at least the right hon. Gentleman has a fig leaf of an excuse for seeking to rush that Bill through at this early stage, but palpably no such excuse exists for rushing this Bill through. Had there been any justification, such as a packed legislative programme which might have hit the end-of-Session buffers, that excuse would have been blown away this morning by the ill-thought-through announcement by the Leader of the House that the current Session is to last for two full years.
Mr George Howarth
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, in all his newly proclaimed virginal innocence, for giving way. Does he not believe that this Bill and the other Bill to which he has referred are in some way linked?
Mr Straw
Let me say first, for the avoidance of doubt, that I have made no protestations of virginal innocence, and would never seek to do so.
The two Bills are certainly not cognate, but they are linked in the sense that they are the price that the Conservative party agreed to pay in order to stitch together this very curious coalition. I am glad, in saying that, to receive the approbation of many right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches. In any event, the idea that this Bill had to be bashed through very quickly was blown away by this morning’s announcement.
Mr Shepherd
Given that the right hon. Gentleman is giving us a catalogue of what is wrong with the Bill and what is difficult about it, how can he vote in favour of the principle of the Bill as drafted and lying in front of the House of Commons, rather than voting against it as a matter of principle? It does not strike me as amenable to satisfactory changes in Committee, even if the good will of the Government were there for the purpose. Why is the right hon. Gentleman not standing by that principle, and demonstrating that this is an unsatisfactorily prepared Bill?
Mr Straw
It is an unsatisfactorily prepared Bill—on that the hon. Gentleman and I are in absolute agreement—but we may be in disagreement on the principle of the Bill. I have done many things from the Front Benches in 30 years to seek to justify difficult positions and have emerged upright at the other end, but with a commitment as clear as daylight in our manifesto—of blessed memory and only five months old—that said, in terms, that the Labour party would introduce legislation for fixed Parliaments, it would have been a bit tricky for me to have come to the House and opposed the Bill. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House may say that that did not worry me a week ago. But it did. [Laughter.]
There is a serious point. Had the subject of this Bill been tied up with a proposition with which we wholly disagreed—as with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, where the Government could and should have separated the alternative vote and boundaries issues—that would have been different. As I explained to the House this time last week, I would have been delighted to vote in favour of the Bill if all that it contained was part 1. The Deputy Prime Minister knows better than me why he has decided to put alongside that proposition—one that was broadly agreed—an entirely separate and unrelated proposition wholly to change the agreed and consensual way in which we have set boundaries in this country for many years, a manner last amended by this House not under Labour, but under the Conservatives.
Sir Peter Tapsell
May I put to the right hon. Gentleman an historical example of how the Bill would have created great problems in the past? In 1950, the Labour party won the general election with—if my memory is correct—an overall parliamentary majority of seven. That entitled a Labour Government to stay in power for five years. They were never defeated on a motion of confidence in that Parliament, but by 1951, Mr Attlee, a great statesman, felt that his Cabinet colleagues were exhausted and that it was against the national interest for the Labour Government to struggle on with a majority of only seven. He decided to ask the King for a Dissolution. He would not have been able to do so under the provisions of the Bill.
Mr Straw
With great respect, I anticipate that he would have been able to do so. I am not seeking to justify in detail what is in the Bill, but let us take that as a possibility. That was an unusual circumstance; Attlee and his colleagues, the senior ones of whom had been in office for more than 11 years and all the way through the Churchill coalition Government, were completely exhausted. Some were dying; others had already passed away. Attlee was right to say that there should be a Dissolution. Under the terms of the Bill, he would have put that to the House. I cannot see that the Conservative party would have opposed it; it would have been astonishing if it had, since it thought that it was going to win. In that situation, the likelihood would be that the resolution of the House would have easily exceeded the two-thirds threshold. As a matter of historical record, that has to be the case.
Mrs McGuire
My right hon. Friend is quite right in saying that we accept the principle of fixed-term Parliaments, but I do not want to lose his earlier comment that he would review that situation on Third Reading if some of this dog’s dinner of a Bill were not tidied up between then and now. Will he reiterate the commitment that we will reconsider our position on Third Reading if we do not get some satisfactory changes?
Mr George Howarth
My right hon. Friend said a few moments ago that one reason why he felt inclined to give this Bill its Second Reading is a commitment made in the Labour party manifesto. Perhaps it would help if I reminded him of what we actually said in our manifesto. We said that we would have the following:
“Legislation to ensure Parliaments sit for a fixed term and an All Party Commission to chart a course to a Written Constitution.”
At least two elements which would make the Bill conform with that commitment are missing.
Mr Straw
If I may say so, the “and” is disjunctive, not conjunctive—and I know that because I drafted that piece of the manifesto.
I simply do not understand why—and we have heard no serious explanation as to why—the Government are bolting it. This morning, the Leader of the House gave us a further example when he announced a decision—not a proposal; it had been decided, and that was the word he used—that this Session should last for two years. He then tried to excuse that, having run into something of a squall in the House, by saying—we can check this against the record—that it was a “proposition” that could be further considered in this Bill. I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will examine closely what the Leader of the House said about commitments for debate on that aspect of a consequence of this Bill.
Robert Flello
Does my right hon. Friend agree that not having an opportunity in Committee to discuss that matter should also be a potential trigger for voting against the Bill on Third Reading?
Mr Straw
Yes, I accept that. It will not be a pre-emptive decision for me to take, but one that will be taken in the usual way by the shadow Cabinet as a whole and the parliamentary party.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) will make his own point about this next matter when he addresses the House. He chairs the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which is an all-party Committee with, I believe, a Conservative majority. It has been very clear about what he has described as:
“The severe lack of time which the Committee has had to scrutinise this…Bill”.
He continued by saying that this
“is not only frustrating but very disappointing.”
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman is scrabbling for excuses to oppose the Bill on the grounds that it is being rushed. Is there not a risk that if we did not rush it we might end up in the embarrassing situation of a supporter of fixed-term Parliaments who had been 13 years in government but never got round to introducing that?
Mr Straw
I have simply explained to the House, while the hon. Gentleman has been sitting there, that we are not opposing the Bill tonight and the reason is that we agree with the principle of fixed-term Parliaments. What I disagree with is the manner in which it has been introduced. I also disagree with some very important detail, part of which needs to be amended, not least to bring it into line with Liberal Democrat policy. I will explain that, because one of the consequences of their going into this coalition has been the complete amnesia that has affected the whole of the Liberal Democrats’ policy.
Iain Stewart
Will the right hon. Gentleman concede that it is important to introduce this measure early so that we can give the country and the business community certainty that this Parliament will last five years? We will, thus, avoid the nonsense that we had in the summer and early autumn of 2007, when the whole country had no idea whether or not it was going to the polls.
Mr Allen
Does my right hon. Friend agree that were the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to have been given 12 weeks—I think that we have done an incredible job in two days, producing this report—many of the wrinkles that everyone concedes are in the Bill could have been smoked out? We could have heard from a lot of expert witnesses and we would have proposed ways in which a principle that appears to have the support of the whole House could have found consensus, as opposed to becoming a cause for bitterness and division.
Mr Straw
I accept that entirely. Constitutional legislation is always complicated and we should always seek consensus on it. I have to say—I believe Members know this—that I can think of plenty of occasions when I brought forward constitutional legislation and then had to take it away again. With the single, terrible exception of the European Parliamentary Elections Bill—for which I have already abjectly apologised as it was a dreadful piece of legislation—I have always both provided sufficient time and quite often changed proposed legislation addressing this complicated territory in the light of what was said in this House or the other place in Committee and the Chamber.
To consider why we have ended up in this situation, we have to return to a point made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) in an intervention on the Deputy Prime Minister. The hon. Gentleman echoed a comment made last week by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who said of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that people might have more respect for the Government if they admitted that it was about party advantage. There would have been greater respect for the Government over the timing and abject drafting of the Bill before us if the Deputy Prime Minister had said, “Yes, we brought this forward—and the Prime Minister has stood on his head on this—because we did a deal for a variety of reasons which I shall explain. That is the price the Prime Minister paid for this bit of the deal, and we are rushing it through for internal reasons.” The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex was absolutely right to say—he can correct me if I get a single preposition in the wrong place—that the Bill smacks of gerrymandering the constitution in favour of the coalition, which is what I heard him say, and that it was legislation on the hoof. That is true. The Deputy Prime Minister should have taken his time and invited the other parties into discussion, sought the advice of the Liaison Committee and others, and come forward with a much better proposition.
Mr Straw
If I may first make a little more progress, I will then give way to both hon. Gentlemen.
The irony will not be lost on the House that had the previous Labour Administration acted in such a fashion, Members of the current Government parties would rightly have expressed outrage, and Liberal Democrat Members would have done so in unbearably sanctimonious and pious terms. Everybody knows that to be the case.
Professor Robert Hazell of University College London’s constitution unit has said:
“The legislation could still be introduced with cross-party support, if the government is willing to take it slowly. That is what the government is seeking to do with reform of the House of Lords”—
I commend the Government’s approach on that—
“It should adopt the same approach with this Bill.”
Notwithstanding the fact that the Bill has now been introduced, my very strong advice to the Deputy Prime Minister is that he should take a long time before bringing it back before the House so that the Select Committee can have a look at it. If he wants examples of Bills just sitting around for some time while Ministers have repented at leisure of mistakes they and their colleagues have made and regrouped to bring back something better, I will provide him with them.
As we know, the Bill’s primary purpose is not high-minded; the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex was correct about that. Its effect may be welcome, but its primary purpose is to serve as a form of constitutional handcuffs to prevent either of the coalition parties from assassinating the other. This is, indeed, a partnership characterised by paranoia.
Nick Boles
The right hon. Gentleman criticises my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister for not giving time for consultation, yet even before the Bill was published he had taken on board concerns expressed on both sides of the House about a specific provision relating to early Dissolution and radically changed his proposal. It seems to me that he is listening much more intently than the right hon. Gentleman ever did when he was proposing constitutional reforms.
Mr Straw
I was just checking with my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) whether the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) was a Conservative or a Liberal Democrat, because I was very confused after this morning’s pamphlet, but I gather from my hon. Friend that he is both. I am going to buy and distribute copies of his pamphlet in all Liberal wards—there are none in my constituency, but there are some in the borough. I shall dish out copies of the pamphlet in the borough, because one of my views about this coalition is that it made every bit of sense for the Conservative party and was total madness for the Liberal Democrats. With a little luck, the Liberal Democrats will go the same way as their predecessor party did in the early 1920s as a result of exactly the same process.
The reason why the hon. Gentleman’s right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister had to change from the abjectly partisan proposal of 55% was that it was too obvious, since they had 56% of the votes. They must have thought that we were all stupid. He had to change that before he introduced the Bill because he would not have had a dog’s chance of getting a Second Reading had that ridiculous and outrageous proposal remained. It was survival that led to the change, not high principle.
Mark Durkan
My right hon. Friend rightly touches on many of the concerns about the timing of the Bill, given the fairly scrappy nature of some of its proposals. Is the timing not really related to the fact that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which we discussed last week, and the Bill that we are discussing this week were the Liberal Democrats’ two glittering prizes in the coalition agreement, and they want to go to their party conference saying that they have already achieved the Second Reading of both those Bills? That is why we are being put through this today.
Mr Straw
I am quite sure. I was in favour of September sittings and my hon. Friend will recall that they had to be abandoned one year so that the screen in the Chamber could be put up. When I tabled a motion the following year as Leader of the House to reinstate September sittings I was roundly voted down by an all-party alliance, including many Conservative Members. Both parties in the coalition are probably now regretting this September sitting, because it has done them absolutely no good. Long may that continue.
Mr Leigh
The right hon. Gentleman is being very unfair to our Liberal friends. Does he share my understanding that, if there were a crisis and the Liberals had to walk out of the coalition, the Conservative Prime Minister would be prevented from calling an election if the Bill had become law? If the Liberals were then to offer to join a coalition with the right hon. Gentleman, would he embrace them tenderly?
Mr Straw
I am not going to get into too many hypotheticals, but it is a matter of public record that, speaking personally, I was not too keen on the embrace when it was offered on or about 8 May. The hon. Gentleman might wish to take some comfort from that for the future. Aside from anything else, he should do the arithmetic as to whether there could be some stability from such a coalition.
As others want to speak, let me come to the crucial issue of whether the fixed term should be five years or four years. Most constitutional experts are agreed that four years is a more appropriate fixed term and would better reflect the constitutional position, historical practice and comparisons with other Parliaments. Professor Robert Blackburn has said:
“In the UK, there can be little doubt that the period between general elections should be four years...It was the period expressly approved of as being normal in practice, when the Parliament Act set the period of five years as the maximum.”
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Straw
If the hon. Gentleman will first allow me to make this point, I shall give way.
The Library alerted me to what Asquith said in February 1911, and so I asked for the whole of the speech, which I have here. As the information from the Library and Blackburn both show, Asquith was talking about the idea that a Parliament would normally last for four years. There is not a word in Asquith’s opening speech on the Second Reading of the Parliament Bill along the lines that the right hon. Gentleman who is now leader of the Liberal Democrats tried to tell us that there was. He should not busk on these points. Asquith said that the Act would lead to a normal length of four years and that was what he meant. Overall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has pointed out, that has been the average length of a Parliament.
Mr Straw
May I finish this point, and then I shall of course give way? Indeed, the hon. Lady might wish to answer a question that I am about to pose to her right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister.
Alongside the position adopted by a former Liberal Prime Minister—the last but one, it must be said, and look what happened to him and to his successor, although we need not detain the House on either of their fates—I want to refer to recent Liberal Democrat policy. I know that that apparently does not matter, but if the roles were reversed and if, just three years ago, the Labour party had said that there should be fixed Parliaments that should last four years, we would soon hear something about that from those on the Liberal Democrat Benches. We would hear suggestions that we were selling out and standing on our heads and that we did not know what we were talking about, and would be asked what was the point of making commitments—especially as simple a commitment as that—simply to tear them up. However, that was the Liberal Democrat position. They published a position paper—I am happy to take an intervention from the Deputy Prime Minister on this point—called “For the People, By the People”, which said that the term should be four years and not five. Let me gild that lily: David Howarth, the excellent former Member for Cambridge, introduced a ten-minute Bill to the sounds of cheering from the Liberal Democrat Benches that set a term of four years and not five. He made very good arguments that were absolutely right.
I am glad that the Deputy Prime Minister has at long last spotted that coinciding the date of a general election with that of national elections in Scotland and Wales is crazy and he is about to seek to go through hoops by which the people of Scotland and Wales and the political parties that are an essential part of the process—
Lorely Burt
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Between the two sides this evening, we are having an interesting history lesson. Perhaps I might point him towards a more recent piece of history: the passage of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, which covers the regulations for election campaign spending and also refers to five-year Parliaments. That Act was supported by many of our colleagues who are now on the Opposition Benches.
Mr Straw
I do not know whether the hon. Lady was in the House at the time, but I was responsible for that Bill, which emerged from cross-party negotiation. It was an agreed measure. As for the reference to five years, we were not setting the length of a Parliament in the Bill. We were accepting that as a fact and then determining how we dealt with party funding within that frame. There was no commitment whatever in principle in favour of five years rather than four.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct and spot-on in his views on five-year fixed-term Parliaments. I know that it is not my job as a Scottish National party Member to give the Labour party further reasons to vote against Third Reading, but will he guarantee to me that if there is no change in the date and if these elections are to clash, the Labour party will oppose the Bill?
Mr Straw
First, I cannot make that offer, not least because it is almost certain that it will not be me standing on the Front Bench, for reasons that the House knows. Although I keep saying that I will leave the Front Bench—and I have probably never been busier as a Front Bencher—it is my intention to do so. Secondly, it would be a matter for the shadow Cabinet and the parliamentary party even if I were to lead on this issue. As I have said to my other hon. Friends, we would weigh all these matters and come to a view.
Alec Shelbrooke
I have listened to the right hon. Gentleman’s arguments. I am a newly elected Member, and I have spent a great number of years as a prospective parliamentary candidate wondering when the election would be. All I hear from him now is excuses why we should have Parliaments of four years, although it suited his Government rather well to have Parliaments of five years. Is this just about trying to get an election as quickly as possible?
Mr Straw
I have long been in favour of fixed terms. I could dig out correspondence I had with Margaret Thatcher in 1983 about fixed terms. The Labour party committed itself to fixed terms in the 1992 election. What typically happens—this is why I welcome the measure and why I wanted that commitment in our manifesto—is that parties in opposition that are in favour of fixed terms go off the boil on them when they come into government. As someone who was a PPC on a number of occasions before coming an MP, I know that the speculation is difficult. It is important to have some certainty and that is why we are not opposing the Bill on Second Reading. I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will use the time available to get things right, not least on whether terms should be for four years or five.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
Is not the coincidence of elections in different parts of the country just a problem of our having too many tiers of government? Would not it be better if we simplified the whole thing and did not have so many tiers of government? Then this problem would not arise.
Mr Straw
Oh, she is—okay. I shall ensure that the Prime Minister is made aware of her views. Obviously, this is her job application for the position of Secretary of State for Scotland, as she hails from there. I am certainly in favour of abolishing one tier of government where there is two-tier local government, which does not work. Thanks to a wise Conservative decision in 1995, Blackburn and Darwen have greatly benefited from being outwith the clutches of Lancashire county council and the two-tier system. However, that is not Conservative party policy, nor is it in the Bill.
On Prorogation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) has pointed out, clause 4(1) expressly states:
“This Act does not affect Her Majesty’s power to prorogue Parliament.”
Hon. and right hon. Members on both sides might not particularly have considered this, but it is perfectly possible for a Prime Minister who faces the prospect of a defeat on a motion of no confidence and who does not want an early general election, which would otherwise arise on a simple majority, to seek a Prorogation of the House. That is not idle speculation, because that is exactly what happened in 2008 in Canada.
In Canada, there are fixed terms, by law, of four years, but there are also procedures for early elections, as all fixed-term Parliaments have, if a Government lose confidence. The crisis in Canada arose because there had been an agreed all-party deal on substantially enhanced state funding for the political parties in return for draconian controls on donations and spending. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, in justifying all that against an austerity budget, decided to abandon the commitment and arbitrarily and unilaterally to reduce the amounts to be given to the other parties and his opponents. They cried foul and there was a crisis. When there was about to be a motion of no confidence against him, which almost certainly would have been won, he went to the Governor-General, in the seat of Her Majesty, and got a Prorogation so that Parliament would be suspended for quite a long time. The Prorogation was accepted and he subsequently sought, but was not successful, a further Prorogation. Given that the Bill is making significant changes, clause 4(1) has to be changed to ensure that the Bill does affect the right of Her Majesty to prorogue the House.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the ability to prorogue would also be useful to a Prime Minister who wanted an early general election? They could prorogue the House for a fortnight, preventing an alternative Government from being formed and leading straight to a general election.
Mr Straw
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. People say that such things will never happen, but I am sure that Stephen Harper is an honourable man—as honourable as any British Prime Minister. When senior politicians are up against it and are fighting for their life, they will clutch at any lawful provision, and it would be lawful to do that, so this issue must be considered.
Mr George Howarth
My right hon. Friend referred to my intervention on the Deputy Prime Minister as being about clause 2(1)(c), which I said in terms it was about, but the Deputy Prime Minister is so knowledgeable about this five-clause Bill that he confused it with clause 4(1), so my right hon. Friend is right about the answer but wrong about the question.
Mr Straw
I acknowledge the point that my right hon. Friend makes.
I want now to deal with the privilege of the House, which was much aired in the evidence that the Clerk gave the other day to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. This issue has echoes of our debate 15 months ago about the Parliamentary Standards Bill. I recall that when I introduced the Bill there was a huge harrumph about the degree to which Parliament’s privilege would be being affected by its provisions. There was such a huge harrumph that the Government were defeated on those provisions and had to go back to the drawing board, so I have thought about this matter.
I would not dream of asking the Deputy Prime Minister to confirm this, but I dare say that the advice that he has received about the implications of this Bill are from similar sources to those from which I received advice on the 2009 Bill. I understand that the arguments are often finely balanced. I have certainly given similar undertakings to that given by him about the very long odds on the courts intervening, but this House and the other place are both highly sensitive to interventions by the courts on the privilege of the House. The hunting decision can be used in both ways: the actual decision of the courts, in respect of the Parliament Acts, was not to overturn a decision of this House, but the very fact that they entertained the argument was worrying. I ask him to think very carefully about that.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
Can the right hon. Gentleman think of any other statute in respect of which the courts have declined at least to entertain an arguable interpretation?
Mr Straw
No, and that is the point. The courts will decline to entertain arguments, and actions, about what happens in the House, because they are banned from doing so; their job is to interpret legislation. The Government are inherently more vulnerable—I do not say that I share the view of the Clerk that they are very vulnerable—because they can get past the first base.
Mr Cash
As the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, I was very active on questions about the privileges of the House in relation to the Bill he just mentioned. Just now, the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee implied that the views of the Clerk had effectively been overridden by the views of other experts. I have looked carefully at the evidence, and it is clear that the Clerk gave his view on 7 September whereas the main evidence, from all the other experts, was given on 21 August; in other words, the Clerk of the House of Commons—a distinguished expert and very knowledgeable about the House—gave his evidence in the light of the evidence that had already been given, save only for the oral evidence given by Professor Blackburn. The Committee did not ask Professor Blackburn specifically whether he repudiated the views of the Clerk of the House, so it seems to me—I hope the right hon. Gentleman agrees—that the matter remains very open and that both the Clerk and Professor Blackburn agree that there should have been a draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. In those circumstances, the evidence is overwhelming that the scrutiny should be properly done.
Mr Straw
On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, it would have been difficult for me not to notice that he had taken an interest in privilege in relation to the Parliamentary Standards Bill, as he was scarcely ever not on his feet complaining about something or other that I was doing from the Treasury Bench. The Clerk was absolutely right to raise the issue and in the end we got through it. We were genuinely up against the clock with that measure, because the leaders of all three main parties had agreed both a timetable and broad outline contents.
In this case, I am not coming down on one side or the other, but the issue is sufficiently worrying that we need to take our time.
Mr Straw
Many Members want to speak, and as I have spoken at some length I want to conclude.
Legislation for fixed-term Parliaments is a desirable objective and it could be achieved on a cross-party basis, but that requires the Government to go back to the drawing board and respond to the valid criticisms that have been made about the Bill. We want to play our part in helping them to do that and, as I said, we shall not oppose Second Reading, but we want considerable revisions, which require more time and considerably greater opportunity for scrutiny. It also—if I may say so—requires the Deputy Prime Minister in particular to adopt a more measured, considered and consultative approach than has been evident to date. I fully accept that the House’s not knowing about the note on privilege was an error and in no sense intentional, but I have to say that it is very aggravating and does not improve the environment in which the House receives such measures. I hope that we can see a different approach from Ministers. Although most Members support the principle, a huge amount of detail has to be got right before there is any chance of the legislation becoming law.
Mr Howarth
My hon. Friend makes a useful suggestion, and doubtless he will expand on it if he succeeds in catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. Issues of principle are involved, as well as of detail, and that is what I intend to try to deal with.
Before dealing with the Bill’s provisions, I want to say a word about the trust that was placed in our hands by our constituents at the general election. I hope that that does not sound too pious, but it is important that we discuss these principles when we deal with measures of this kind. Regardless of our party labels, we have been entrusted by our constituents with the ability to exercise judgment as representatives of our constituencies. That may appear trite, but it is important that we do not lose sight of it. Let me qualify the point, however, as I am not so naive as to assume that the 31,000 people who voted for me in Knowsley in the general election did so wholly or even mainly on the basis that I was the best person for the job.
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.