Jack Straw
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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Jack Straw Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Laing
Yes, the hon. Gentleman is correct. I recognise that that is why he put his name to the amendment. It is a pity that we have not had an opportunity in some other way to go into these matters. However, I reiterate that the Committee has an opportunity now to consider matters relating to exclusive cognisance and the Standing Orders. I hope the Committee will take that opportunity, but I have every confidence that the Minister will also take the opportunity to reassure us. Amendment 33 is merely an alternative that I put before the Committee for consideration.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Since my elevation to the Back Benches six weeks ago, I have put a number of supplementary questions by way of interventions. This is the first time that I have spoken from the Back Benches in 23 years.
It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who represents my home area, Loughton in Essex, where from a very early age I used to be sent out delivering leaflets and canvassing against the local Conservative party, never to any effect. My mother continued to represent the area in which we lived, first on the district council and later on the town council, until she was in her 80s. Thankfully, she is still alive.
I have witnessed many occasions when a Member has moved an amendment that they do not understand. Indeed, I can think of one occasion 30 years ago on the Finance Bill when I moved an amendment that I did not understand—an embarrassment made worse by the fact that it was I who had drafted it. For the life of me, I could not work out what it meant, although I am pleased to say that officials in the Treasury, as it turned out—the Minister later showed me his briefing—had gone through all sorts of intellectual contortions to guess at that piece of total gibberish. Never before have I heard an hon. Member from either side of the House move an amendment with which they profoundly disagreed, but I admire the way in which the hon. Lady very loyally made the case for the group’s lead amendment while ensuring that her own reservations about it were put on the record.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is being slightly disingenuous. Is not the most obvious reason why the Bill is here, before us, that the coalition partners are worried that the other one will welsh out?
Mr Straw
Of course. I was going to come on to that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for leading me down that path. There is no reason to rush through legislation for a fixed-term Parliament, because, even if we do not have the Bill, there is no prospect of a general election being called, in almost any circumstances, within the next three years.
The Liberal Democrat and Labour parties were committed by their manifestos to the principle of a fixed-term Parliament, but the Conservatives’ proposal ran directly counter to that, because it stated that a general election should be called within six months of any change of Prime Minister, meaning that, if the Prime Minister had suddenly passed away or something else had happened to him and he was no longer in office, we could have had a general election within a twelvemonth.
We know, however, that the structure of the Bill and the rush derive not from the pursuit of a sensible idea for which there is all-party support, but from narrow, partisan reasons related to the internal chemistry that both parties feared and, I think, still fear could be explosive in difficult circumstances.
Mr Straw
I am glad to have the hon. Lady’s endorsement.
As we know, that was precisely the reason why, miraculously, of all the numbers that the coalition partners could have chosen, they originally alighted on the trigger level of 55%, because it would have given neither partner the ability to force an early general election against the wishes of the other.
Mr MacNeil
The right hon. Gentleman says that there is no prospect of a general election for a number of years, but may I mischievously suggest that he shows greater faith in the coalition partners than they show in themselves and each other?
Mr Straw
I would like to have such faith. My faith in the Conservative party’s ability to pursue its own interests and survival and to consume other, minor parties—mainly ones beginning with ‘L’—is always high. My faith in the Liberal Democrat party’s ability to secure its own survival was never particularly strong and has completely plummeted following the coalition deal. Shortly after the election, a Conservative peer told me—literally licking his lips at the prospect—of how he would happily predict that the parliamentary Liberal Democrat party would go the same way as previous Liberal parties, once they had been embraced by the suffocating hug of the Conservative party, and disappear for a number of decades into oblivion. I am glad to see that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is, if not quite licking his lips, smiling in approbation at the prospect.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman neglects to mention the Lib-Lab pact in the late ’70s, which I am sure he will remember, and that the Liberals got through unscathed.
Mr Straw
But the pact was not with the Conservative party. Sadly, in some ways, the Labour party is far less ruthless than the Conservative party when it comes to worrying about its own survival. I am happy to discuss the details and the highways and byways of the Lib-Lab pact, because I worked as a special adviser, as they were pompously called and, I think, still are, to the great Peter Shore at the time—and necessary it was, too. In those days, at least the Liberals had some sense of which side they were on, but they have abandoned even that idea since.
I shall speak specifically to amendment 4 in the name of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, which would delete clause 2(1)(c), the measure providing the two-thirds trigger for a Dissolution. The hon. Lady made a slip of the tongue that, as often with such slips, held a revealing truth. She talked of a motion of “no consequences”, rather than a motion of no confidence, and, apart from the fact that I object to the idea of special majorities in the House, it seems to me that the trigger is wholly redundant, unnecessary and, indeed, offends the role of the House in holding the Executive to account. Now that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have had to abandon the completely naked idea of a 55% trigger, which would have enabled the most extraordinary circumstances to arise, they should abandon the provision before us, including the two-thirds trigger, altogether.
The provision was included in the Bill as a copy-out from sections 3 and 46 of the Scotland Act 1998. The Deputy Prime Minister first tried to make up the arguments for the measure on the hoof, and somebody pointed out to him that such a trigger existed in the 1998 Act. He suggested that it was a completely rigid trigger, and that the only way in which an election for the Scottish Parliament could be called was by a two-thirds majority of every MSP. Closer examination of sections 3 and 46 of the 1998 Act shows that that is simply not the case, however.
Section 3 does, indeed, provide for an early election if
“two-thirds of the total number”
of MSPs vote for one or, as subsection (1)(b) goes on to state, if
“any period during which the Parliament is required…to nominate one of its members…as First Minister ends without such a nomination being made.”
Under section 46, the First Minister’s nomination is by a simple majority. If it transpires that nobody in the Scottish Parliament can command a simple majority—in other words that no confidence in either party is declared and the Government in Scotland cannot continue—there is by virtue of that fact an election, and that is entirely right.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman, and I want to push him on the points that he is making. The possibility of a no-confidence vote still exists in the Bill, and if a Government could not be formed in 14 days we would go to a general election. Would he prefer the power to call a general election to remain solely in the gift of the Prime Minister or in the gift of this House?
Mr Straw
I am in favour of a fixed-term Parliament, although I would have wished it to be four years. So, too, did the Liberal Democrats wish it to be four years. Indeed, they spelled that out in a document dated 10 May 2010 headed “Recovery and Renewal”, which contained their proposals in the coalition talks for what became the coalition agreement. I am indebted not to the department of open government in the Liberal Democrat headquarters for providing wider sight of this, because whatever they think about the Freedom of Information Act 2000, they certainly do not apply it to themselves, but to the New Statesman and its website. For greater accuracy, however, I have a copy here. It says:
“Immediate legislation to…set the date of the next election for June 2014, and establish”—
Mr Straw
I will repeat that because I know that my hon. Friend must have misheard it:
“Immediate legislation to…set the date of the next election for June 2014, and establish the principle of four-year fixed term Parliaments in future.”
[Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House is mumbling from a sedentary position. If he thinks that I have misread that, I am extremely happy to be corrected. However, it ill behoves the Liberal Democrats—I am sorry, I almost said the Conservatives: that was a Freudian slip—and, particularly, the Deputy Prime Minister to suggest that a five-year term is a matter of principle, as opposed to a four-year term, when they proposed a four-year term and agreed to a five-year term only as a result of some rather scrubby back-stairs deal.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
Let me try to help the right hon. Gentleman, because I do not believe that he was here on the first day of Committee when we debated this matter, which is in clause 1. As we are now on clause 2, I do not want him to find himself out of order.
Mr Straw
I am sure that that is a matter for the Chair, but I was simply trying to provide a comprehensive answer to the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke).
If we have a fixed-term Parliament, then of course the power of the Prime Minister to call an election is very significantly modified. I am concerned about the rights of this House. This House works by passing legislation, and all other matters, on the basis of votes by a simple majority. If we had a written constitution, which I am not against, we could have a separate debate about whether there should be some means or other of entrenching certain basic provisions. We are doing that in practice for some, but not others, by way of referendum, and for some, but not others, by way of convention and cross-party consensus. Meanwhile, however, regarding how this place works and good governance, we operate on the basis of a simple majority.
What we should be doing in the Bill is laying down a fixed term—I would prefer it to be four years, but it is going to be five—and then accepting the reality that circumstances could arise in which a Government of the day lost the confidence of the House. There is no alternative to that. No new Prime Minister could suddenly pop up and regain the confidence of the House. That being the case, there has to be an election, as happened after four and a half years of the ’74 to ’79 Government. It seems to me that those should be the only circumstances that should trigger an early election. I do not want there to be provision whereby, by some method or another, whether it is by a majority of a half, 55% or 67.5%, a package of Members can be got together in order to hold a general election. Nor do I think that those provisions would ever be used, because they are so complicated. There is no point in our passing legislation that has no significant purpose.
Mr MacNeil
I am genuinely listening with an open mind to what the right hon. Gentleman is saying about a simple majority in Parliament. However, how can we control a Prime Minister who has a majority in the House and whips his party to vote for his will? How can we maintain the power of the Parliament when the Prime Minister controls parliamentarians through the Whips?
Mr Straw
No, it would not. There is nothing in paragraph (c) that would, in law, prevent a Prime Minister from being party to an arrangement to secure his own demise and go for a general election. If these provisions go through, there will be nothing, in law, that can be done about that theoretical possibility.
Professor Robert Hazell, in evidence to the Lords Constitution Committee, made a very pertinent comment on this point when he said that political incentives should prove a force for stability. Whatever may have been appropriate in Germany in one very unusual case where the Chancellor did indeed arrange to move a motion of no confidence in his own Government, the prospect of a Prime Minister of this country coming to the House to move a motion of no confidence in his own Administration without suffering immediate popular and parliamentary derision, and a significant loss of votes at the poll that would then follow, is fanciful.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I might have expected that the right hon. Gentleman would hit the nail on the head. He is really talking about the great damage that lies within these provisions—namely, that they are in defiance of the democratic mandate. This is about Whips and patronage; it has nothing to do with the people outside. My only suggestion—it is not a criticism—would be that he may want to qualify his reference to the impact on this House by talking about the impact on our electoral and democratic system and thereby the damage done to the people of this country.
Mr Straw
I accept what the hon. Gentleman says and thank him for the compliment.
I have a number of rules that I try to follow in politics, one of which is that fancy tactics never work. This is a fancy tactic. I am sorry to say—it is not that I have anything personal against them—that one can see the Liberal Democrats, who were, as described by one of their members, a perpetual Opposition think-tank until they suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves in government, thinking up this wheeze on the basis that because it had happened in Scotland and, no doubt, in Latvia or Leichtenstein, it would work here. However, we have a more direct system of democracy; we may criticise, and I hope that we do. [Interruption.] I hear someone referring to Scotland. I happen to think, on reflection, that the relevant section in the Scotland Act is redundant, but different considerations applied at the time. One consideration—I mean this in no disobliging way to Scottish colleagues of all parties—is that the Scottish Parliament is a creature of this House, legally, whereas we have to be responsible for our own rules.
Mr Straw
It is the first time that I have ever been thanked for anything by a member of the Scottish National party. I hope that next April and May it says on every leaflet how deeply grateful the SNP is for the possibility and opportunity to serve in a Scottish Government and to enjoy all the rewards that have come its way from the money that the British people, of all parties, have provided.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means
Order. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had some rules. Could he have another rule, which is to speak to the amendments in the group?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
This is not a fancy tactic—I would not know one if I saw one, although if I did I am sure I would have learned it from the right hon. Gentleman. It is very straightforward. We decided that if there were a general view in the House that there should be an early election, the House should have the power to cause one.
The right hon. Gentleman gave the example of Germany. The reason why the Government there engineered a vote of confidence was because there was no other mechanism for an early election. If we were to remove our provision, then if there were a general view in the political classes and in the country that there should be an early election, the only way of having one would be for the Government to engineer a vote of no confidence. That would not be very sensible or very honest.
Mr Straw
We need to speak about possibilities in the real world. The only example in recent times that I can think of when a Prime Minister has wanted to call an election of choice, without any necessity due to his parliamentary majority, is that of Edward Heath in January 1974. There was no way he would have got a two-thirds majority in favour of a Dissolution. In my view, the country as a whole and the Conservative party would have been saved a great deal if there had not been an early Dissolution at that point. I simply say that if we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, which is a good idea but will have consequences, we must ensure that a Government can get booted out only if a motion of no confidence is passed.
Chris Bryant
Is there not one other very significant difference between the drafting of the Scotland Act 1998 and of this Bill? In Scotland, the process involves considerable consultation with wider civic society and all the political parties, because it was concluded that the electoral system should virtually guarantee that one political party would never enjoy a majority. That is very different from the situation here.
Mr Cash
Following the Minister’s intervention, may I take the liberty of correcting a point that was made regarding the German situation? Under the German constitution—a written constitution, of course—a two-thirds majority must be in each house, whereas the Bill’s provision applies only to the House of Commons. In addition, and more importantly, it must be two thirds of all those who vote in the Division in question, not two thirds of all seats. That is a very important difference.
Mr Straw
I accept that, and the history of the German constitution is very different from the history of ours, even though to a large extent we wrote it.
I will finish where I began, by referring to the explanation by the hon. Lady of the amendment that she moved, with which she does not agree. She pointed out that that was a consequence of her Committee having to rush through pre-legislative scrutiny. I sat on the Front Bench for part of the debates on the Bill, and I have yet to hear any convincing explanation from the Minister as to why they had to rush the Bill through.
Mr MacNeil
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the higher the percentage of parliamentarians required to trigger an election, the less likely it is that any Prime Minister will call an election of choice, because it will be more difficult for them?
Mr Straw
If a Prime Minister really wanted to call an election of choice, they would not worry about the two-thirds majority requirement, because they would be very unlikely to get it. They would instead go for a motion of no confidence.
By legislating for a fixed-term Parliament, we will establish a clear political norm that Parliaments last for five years. Leaving aside the argument about whether the term should be four or five years, I happen to support that principle, and I believe that is where the British people are. However, if the confidence of the House is lost, or the Government of the day simply give up and vote for a motion of no confidence, there must be an election. In the absence of that, there should not.
I have arranged to go and sit in Westminster Hall at 4.30 pm to listen to a debate on a matter of interest to all Members from east Lancashire. If this debate is not concluded by then, I hope I may be excused.
Mr Cash
The Chamber is very empty, considering the significance of what is being done by clause 2. In a way, that reflects the decline of this Parliament, which some of us believe strongly needs to be rejuvenated, not on the basis of protestations of power being returned to the House, as we read in our manifesto, but in the reality of how legislation is introduced.
The clause is the turn of the screw by the coalition into our democratic system of government, which, at its essence, is about the individuality and votes of conscience of MPs, irrespective of the Whips and the patronage system. It creates a permanent constitutional change through a passive, silent revolution—the most silent revolution since our Parliament began. It is being done without a mandate of any kind for any party, in any manifesto, in any part of the political system.
Mr Cash
I am more than delighted to reply to the hon. Gentleman. Sparring with him always causes me great amusement. As for what he says, there is a substantial difference. The threshold amendment that I moved on the other Bill was to do with the threshold of a number of people who would participate in the election, and not what was going on in this House. It was not even related to the question of the threshold of those who voted yes, as in the Scotland Act 1998 and the amendment of George Cunningham, the then Member for Finsbury and Islington, so there is a significant difference. I am talking about the trust that is given to us in this House and the manner in which we discharge it.
The coalition originally proposed 55%, but that was so manifestly absurd that the coalition agreement was then torn up and the figure was replaced with two thirds. If not 55%, why two thirds? The Scottish Parliament—I am using this analogy because it has already been raised, but I think that it is completely irrelevant—does not form Her Majesty’s Government. Decisions in time of war, a Finance Bill or any of the other great levers of power are determined, and will continue to be determined, by the United Kingdom Parliament. One such great exercise of power at a most important time was the confidence motion of 10 May 1940, which was passed, as it happened, by the Government, and it led to the demise of Neville Chamberlain’s Government, because everyone knew he had to go. I do not regard the Scottish parliamentary experience as relevant. If not two thirds, why not 75%, 60% or any other number that Harry Potter’s wand might conjure out of thin air?
Mr Cash
Absolutely. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Furthermore, there was the motion of no confidence in the Callaghan Government in 1979, in which the numbers of votes were 310 against 311. The result of that vote may have been a matter of satisfaction for the Conservative party, but I am sure that it would not have been to others. However, if the two-thirds rule had been in operation, there would not have been a change in Government and that would have been a disaster for the country.
Mr Cash
My hon. Friend with his customary originality brings into play a contemporary example. Imagine a two-thirds rule being applied in respect of Mr Cowen at this moment. Be in no doubt, there would be riots in the streets of Dublin. This is an essential question about the irresponsible manner in which this power could be used to induce results that are fundamentally undemocratic.
Mr Straw
I understand the Minister’s point that these provisions relate not to a motion of no confidence but to other motions for an early Dissolution. Given, too, the poor definitions of a motion of no confidence, we could anticipate a situation in which a Government who wish to cling to power, even though they lack a simple majority, could dodge and weave—because they determine the business of the House—for quite a period and ensure that the motion that went before the House was tabled under clause 2(1)(c) requiring a two-thirds majority in the hope of buying themselves a little time. If this provision were not in the Bill, the choice between going to the end of the period and having an early election would be much more stark.
Mr Cash
The right hon. Gentleman demonstrates why many people thought that he was one of the foremost leaders of the House of Commons. He understands the mechanics that lie behind such questions. Precisely what he has just said could easily happen. Indeed, many other things are likely to be conjured out of thin air by the wave of a magic wand of the kind that only Harry Potter seems able to use.
Mr Cash
The Opposition’s thinking is not a matter for me. I happen to believe that our present constitutional arrangement should be sustained. It gives me no pleasure to know that the Opposition will vote with me on amendment 4. Their reasoning does not matter; what matters is the constitutional principle that I am advancing.
Mr Straw
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way. May I illustrate the point that he and I have made in answer to the Minister’s perfectly reasonable point? At first blush, it appears that the provisions of clause 2(1)(c) strengthen the role of the House against the Prime Minister. However, I remember what happened in 1979. I was a candidate at the 1979 election, so I was no longer working for the Government, but I was in very close touch with people for whom I had worked for three and a half years and knew a lot about what was happening. There was a crisis over the outcome of the Scottish Assembly referendum, and the Commons needed an occasion on which it could give vent to that feeling, because the various smaller parties had to have their positions put on the record. Had there been a provision in legislation for an early Dissolution by two-thirds majority, the Government of the day—
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Interventions must be shorter. I understand that the point has to be made, but I would be grateful if we could get to it quickly.
Mr Straw
In that situation, the Government of the day would have worked with the smaller parties and said, “You can have your shout on the two-thirds majority, and in return, we’ll give a bit of extra cash to Northern Ireland,” and so on. That would have happened. Therefore, the motion of no confidence would probably never have been tabled, and even if it had been, it probably would have been lost.