Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, it is a pleasure for me to be able to participate in a debate which has seen the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Cormack. It was joyous and I look forward to listening to his speeches for many years to come.

It is also a great pleasure to speak on St David’s Day, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has pointed out, and to listen to the fine speeches of so many Welshmen. As a naive newcomer to this place, I might have been forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that the vast majority of Members of this House were Scots.

I have never been elected. I have never even stood for election, although many years ago I did suggest to the Conservative Party that it should adopt me as its candidate in the constituency of Manchester Moss Side. Very wisely it turned me down, as no doubt the electors would have done had they been given the chance. However, I have had various other roles and have come to revere elections—the unelected in pursuit of the uninterested, to mangle Oscar Wilde, although I have never been entirely sure which is the hunter and which is the fox.

I was fortunate, indeed honoured, to be with my noble friend Lady Thatcher in Barnet town hall in 1979 watching her own count on the night of her election victory. I was the first to be able to tell her that she had won. I was with her the following day in Downing Street as she took her first steps across the threshold as Prime Minister and quoted St Francis of Assisi:

“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony”.

Yes, I have to admit that I thought we had lost her there for a moment. I was there when she went in and I was there with John Major when we were kicked out, so I know a little about both the triumphs and the tears that go with these great outbursts of the people’s will.

I do not wish to tread over ground already so well trodden during this debate and will perhaps find a slightly different path in considering the Bill. I do not relish change for the sake of change. If in doubt, don’t. If our constitution has to be changed, it must be for sound and solid reasons. But I think there are good reasons for looking favourably on fixed-term Parliaments, one of which probably will not be considered in Committee. That is money—party-political money to be precise, which is not a subject we like to shout about but perhaps one that in quiet moments we all know is of real practical importance.

The costs of running political machines are huge, and those costs regularly leave our political parties in a state of financial chaos—often near bankruptcy. Of the millions that are raised, so much is spent—some would say squandered—during a few weeks of electoral warfare, leaving the parties to starve in the following years when issues on which those elections were fought are pursued through Parliament. Great political machines are built to win the campaign only to be ripped apart immediately thereafter. Party workers are sacked and discarded just at the point when they might have been working for the long-term health of their parties and our political system. It is a sad and desperately inefficient way to run a democracy.

Perhaps I should declare an old and perhaps expired interest because I was once an employee of the Conservative research department—a place where I laboured many long hours and for very little money under the direction of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. As I said, it was a long time ago. Finding the money to run a healthy political system is not easy but I believe that this Bill will help. Under the present system, party managers never dare take the risk of being unprepared, so at the first whiff of a possible election they gear up before any spending caps ever come into consideration. Staff are employed, premises are leased, equipment is found, posters sites are booked and battle buses are commissioned. The troops are brought up to speed and made ready for war, but having been marched up the hill, under present circumstances, they are often then marched down again until the next scare, and much of the precious money raised is wasted.

We have not yet found the right answer to funding political parties but I believe that fixed-term Parliaments will help by allowing party managers to plan more effectively and party treasurers to fund more wisely. That may not be the most important outcome of this Bill but it must be a good outcome. I have no doubt that in Committee my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will listen with all his characteristic sensitivity to suggestions for improvement that are already being put forward. I hope that he will not close his mind to them even if they take matters a little beyond the fixed wording of the coalition agreement. I mention just one. It is not the matter of thresholds—although I have to say that a two-thirds threshold is a very generous offer and one that I would happily have accepted a couple of weeks ago. I want to endorse the point raised by many Members here. The noble Lords, Lord Foulkes, Lord Wigley and Lord Howarth, have asked, why May? Why not, for example, June or October? I hope we will be allowed to identify a date that is most suitable in the long term, not just one which, through present circumstances, is temporarily convenient.

The month of May creates issues with elections for devolved institutions which others will raise, but May is not often an ideal general election date. Campaigns fought over April almost inevitably run into the barriers of Easter and school holidays. Asking party workers to campaign through these periods and then to give up their May Day bank holiday seems unnecessarily clumsy. Of course, an election fought on the first Thursday in October would also have its drawbacks. It would require us, for instance, to abandon our party conferences, but somehow I feel that the electorate would find it in their hearts to forgive us.

Underlying the Bill is the decision to take away from the Prime Minister the right to choose the election date. I can recall very few occasions in recent years when Prime Ministers have given up anything, let alone a key prerogative such as this. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, on that—I believe that this is an entirely genuine matter. I am all in favour of the Executive giving up powers to Parliament. I think that we should have more of it and I applaud the Prime Minister for taking this step.

In any event, Prime Ministers are often very poor at taking these decisions about election timing. They gather their soothsayers, the entrails are extracted, the runes are read and, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, pointed out, still they make a mess of it. How different might things have been. Ted Heath going to the polls in February 1974; Jim Callaghan not going in October 1978; Gordon Brown too—how might history have been rewritten if they had made different decisions?

There is an inherent uncertainty that accompanies all elections; that is one of the many splendours of democracy. After Winston Churchill’s extraordinary election defeat in 1945, his wife, Clementine, tried to comfort him. “Darling, it is a blessing in disguise”, she said. “If it is a blessing”, the old man said, “it is very well disguised”. The Bill contains many blessings, even if at times some of them seem to be rather well disguised.