Queen's Speech

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I wish to address the measures announced in the gracious Speech that relate to fixed-term parliaments, the alternative vote referendum and the principle of moving to more equal-sized electorates in constituencies.

As someone who has worked both as a volunteer and a professional in the last 10 general election campaigns, I personally welcome the proposal for fixed-term parliaments in future. It is not just a matter of personal convenience to be able to plan your holidays and work around the known dates of elections nor a matter of assisting everyone involved in planning the campaigns, including the staff, the parties and the media, but an important democratic principle.

It has always seemed unfair that the leader of one political party can choose polling day according to their own party's advantage. Of course, they sometimes make mistakes, such as Jim Callaghan in 1978 or Gordon Brown in 2007. But, by and large, the power to choose polling day based principally on examination of opinion poll or local election data has in the past given an unfair and undemocratic advantage to the party in government. That is why opposition leaders have had good cause to complain. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, argued strongly for fixed-term parliaments in 1992. But Labour's addiction to power after 1997 meant that that was one of the many reforms that did not see the light of day in Labour’s 13 years in office, although it resurfaced in its recent manifesto.

Since 1999, we have seen the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly function well with fixed-term parliaments, no one party having an overall majority, different coalitions being formed and periods of minority government. The sky did not fall in in response to any of that. Many noble Lords will also be aware of how most local authorities function on a fixed-term cycle based on elections every four years. In these councils, even a vote of 100 per cent of the members does not lead to a new set of elections. Councillors simply have to respect the voters’ verdict and make it work over the four-year term.

Fixed-term parliaments work in many countries. In the United States, President Obama knows that he is elected for a four-year term to head the executive branch of the US Government. Nothing can alter that, short of impeachment. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, suggested that perhaps if a Prime Minister dies there should be a new general election, but in the United States if a President resigns or is assassinated, there is no new presidential election—the business of government continues.

There has of course been much debate today on the principle of how a general election might be triggered at an earlier point than the fixed term. My noble friend Lord Tyler pointed out that when introducing fixed-term parliaments for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, the previous Labour Government legislated to require a two-thirds vote for a new election to be triggered. To those who have said today that a Dissolution of Parliament should be triggered by a vote of 50 per cent plus one of the Members, I say that this would mean that we did not have a fixed-term parliament whenever one party, as is usually the case, had a majority. If a Government with a majority can vote for Dissolution and a general election then we will simply hand power back to the governing party to choose the time of the election. The 55 per cent rule is necessary—

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, is it not the position that the coalition has more than 55 per cent of the MPs, and therefore it can trigger a general election whenever it likes?

[Lord Rennard]

Given the public commitments by both coalition parties, that clearly would not happen. The noble and learned Lord makes a good point, however. When we consider this fully and properly in due course and learn the lessons over this parliament, perhaps the 55 per cent measure will be seen as an insufficient trigger. Perhaps his Government acted sensibly and wisely in the Scotland Act in ensuring that in Scotland, as in Wales and in Northern Ireland, a two-thirds majority is required. For this parliament, though, 55 per cent provides stability.

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[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I beg to disagree on the basis that if you do not have a percentage like that, you simply do not have a fixed-term parliament. If it is possible for one party with 50 per cent plus one of the seats in the House of Commons to trigger an election, you allow that party, for its own interests, to choose the time of the election, rather than have the fixed term that works in so many other countries.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I support fixed-term parliaments but I completely fail to understand what is wrong with a provision that says there should be a fixed term for X years, subject to a case where the Government are defeated on an Opposition Motion of confidence.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, you see what is wrong with that when you look, for example, at the models of many other European countries, where there are fixed- term parliaments, multi-party coalitions, systems of proportional representation, et cetera. If a Government fall there should always be the provision that it may be possible for another Prime Minister or other parties to form a Government. It is not necessarily logical that if one Prime Minister and one Government fall, you must assume that there will be a new general election. If you have terms of four or five years you must—as in Scotland and Wales, as noble Lords opposite legislated for 12 or 13 years ago—have provision for an alternative Government to be provided. If that is not possible, I accept that you must go to a general election.

My time is almost up and half of it has been taken up by noble Lords in other places. We will return to the very important arguments about the alternative vote referendum and to other points that need to be made in due course.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, on his genuinely good maiden speech. He has very much to offer this House. He was the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Employment from 1997 till 2001, and he practised what he preached. He achieved a lot by change. We have much to learn from him.

I also congratulate with real sincerity the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on his appointment to the Ministry of Justice. He is somebody of real warmth and ability who is extremely popular in this House, and we all genuinely wish him very well.

My noble friend Lady Jay of Paddington wished to speak today; the noble Lord, Lord McNally, should be grateful that she did not. She would have mentioned how loyally the noble Lord served her father and the Labour Party, then how loyally he served the Liberal Democrats and, now, how loyally he serves the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, the self-styled tubby toddler.

[Lord McNally]

She did give me a message—she said, “Jim must be spinning in his grave”.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, in an excellent speech, mentioned the no confidence vote in 1979. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, will remember what Jim Callaghan said describing that event—“Turkeys voting for an early Christmas”. I assume that it is that memory that has led the noble Lord to argue for a fixed-term Parliament, so that if the turkeys with whom he now associates lose a vote of confidence, they will not have to leave government.

What a marvellous sight the coalition is! The language of Cameron and Clegg is the language of love. It reminds me painfully of those “Spitting Image” programmes in the 1980s. Do noble Lords remember the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Steel, and the boy David nurtured in the arms of the noble Lord, Lord Owen? They had to choose a name for the leader and David Owen suggested that there should be one name from the Liberals—say, David—and one name from the SDP—say, Owen.

New politics—a coalition, and an opportunity to achieve through Parliament changes to the constitution which could be for the benefit of the whole country. There is a huge opportunity offered by this new politics, one which is in the process of being horribly lost. At the heart of the constitutional proposals are attempts to reduce the ability of Parliament to stand up to and restrain the Executive; proposals to prevent the Commons from forcing an election; proposals to make this House a creature of the Executive—something that it has not been since the late 1950s, when this House did not even bother to have votes, because a Tory Government down the road and all the Tories here did not think it worth while.

I think that a fixed-term Parliament is a good idea; it is a good idea to take away from the Prime Minister of the day the power to determine the date of the election. But depriving him of that power has to be consistent with the basic principle of our constitution—that the Government are selected by the House of Commons and survive only as long as they enjoy a majority in the House of Commons. For well over 110 years, whenever a vote of confidence has been lost in the House of Commons, the Government then go straight to the country. Why is that? It should not be us or them down there who choose who should be the next Government; it should be the public who choose.

Mr David Heath, the deputy leader of the House of Commons, suggested that there was an exception to that, when Mr Stanley Baldwin was defeated at the end of 1923 and Mr Ramsay MacDonald formed the first Labour Government. What happened in 1923 was that Mr Stanley Baldwin was defeated on the King’s Speech. The position should clearly be that if the Government fail to get the confidence of the House of Commons after an election, the right thing is not to ask the public to think again in a new election, but then and only then to choose a new Government in the Commons.

The twin aims of depriving the Prime Minister of the right to fix the election date while preserving the bedrock principle that if the Government lose the confidence of the House they should call an election can be achieved with a Bill that says that there should be a fixed-term parliament of X years subject to the PM having an obligation to advise Her Majesty to have a general election when his Government had obtained the confidence of the House of Commons but then been defeated on an Opposition vote of confidence. That would meet every aim that the coalition has. Why on earth has it proposed this 55 per cent? As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, a whole variety of different reasons have been suggested. But think what the consequences of that 55 per cent are. First, it means that this Government are not affected by the fixed-term Act because they have more than 55 per cent of the MPs. Secondly, well over half the years since 1945 have involved Governments with more than 55 per cent of the MPs, so it is likely that in years to come this provision will not apply to most Governments. Thirdly, what would happen if the coalition splits up? Fifty-three per cent is the number of non-Tory MPs in the Commons. If there was a vote of confidence—

[The Earl of Onslow]

If the party had more than 55 per cent of the MPs and the Prime Minister wished to call an early election after three and a half years, all the party has to do is to get 55 per cent in the Division and, lo and behold, it gets an election and the fixed-term Parliament is quashed.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The noble Earl has got it completely. That is exactly the point. The coalition Government can have an election whenever they want. They say now that it will be on 15 May 2015. Can noble Lords imagine a Prime Minister saying, in two years’ time, that circumstances have changed, and that of course it was right then to commit themselves to 15 May 2015 but the right thing to do now is for the country to see whether, in the current circumstances, it wants to go on with the current Government. It is a totally bogus piece of legislation as far as concerns the current Government.

I was about to talk about what happens when the coalition splits up. On the basis of the 55 per cent, if it splits up and is then defeated in a vote of confidence by the 53 per cent of non-Tories, there would not be a Dissolution. Until Mr David Heath spoke on Tuesday there would have been, as I describe it, a zombie Government. There would not be an Opposition who wanted to form a Government and the Conservative Government would not have the confidence of the Commons. What would then happen? I assume that there would have to be an election. If there has to be an election in those circumstances, why is there this 55 per cent in the first place? It is obviously a botched attempt by the coalition to stay in power even though it had lost the confidence of the House of Commons. I hope that it will admit that as soon as possible.

That sort of problem is something that this House would be incredibly good at fixing. However, we read in the newspapers of an intention to stuff this House with 100 coalition-supporting Peers. I am sure that it is not true and that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, will confirm that, because then Parliament would lose the one part of the body that has stood up to the Executive over the past 10 or 11 years.

The last point I want to make is that there was a sinister reference to the Salisbury convention by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Members of this House will remember that the Salisbury convention has at its heart the proposition that if the electorate has endorsed something—for example the Labour Party's proposals in 1945—it would be wrong for this House to reject it. It cannot seriously be suggested that because fixed-term Parliaments were referred to in the Liberal Democrat manifesto—the Liberal Democrats who lost more seats than they had before—that that represents endorsement by the electorate. If that is the case, then the coalition has very severely lost its way.

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[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech has been extremely wide ranging and very stimulating. We do credit to ourselves in the quality and imagination that has been injected into a great deal of the interventions, and there have been 49 speakers. Before I do anything else, I join noble Lords in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, to our House and congratulate him on his excellent speech.

It is very gratifying that the work of the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government should attract such a long list of speakers, but it makes for a difficult task in winding up. We will undoubtedly return to all these topics in due course, which will give the Government an opportunity for fuller replies, so I hope that I may be forgiven if I do not tonight cover all the points that have been raised. I will endeavour to write on any substantive points that I miss.

Before I go to the substance, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the contribution not only of those who took part in today's discussion but of the Ministers in the previous Government who were involved in the affairs that we have discussed today, particularly the noble Lords, Lord West, Lord Hunt and Lord Bach. While in some areas of policy there will be changes of direction under this Government, in others it is clear that we shall be building on what our predecessors have done.

This Government have a strap line: freedom, fairness and responsibility. These themes run through the Government’s programme, and they have run through today’s debate with a strong focus on the citizen: the individual’s relationship with the state, the individual’s right to participate actively in the running of the society to which he belongs and the importance of people taking time and trouble to exercise those rights responsibly.

Before I turn to some of the more detailed points, I want to underline what my noble friend Lord McNally said when he opened this debate: this Government will be steadfast in their defence of civil liberties, and I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that anybody who knows me knows that I am entirely comfortable sitting next door to my noble friend Lord McNally.

Protecting the public and safeguarding our liberties are not mutually exclusive. They are not a zero-sum game; the more of one, the less of the other. Indeed, one might ask: what is the point of security in a society if it is not free, if not to preserve the values that we believe in and stand for? We will not compromise our national security in the face of a serious and continuing threat. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, rightly said, that is my particular responsibility. For me, the first duty of government is to protect a free society.

In this debate, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice have been brigaded together. Hearing the remarks made by some noble Lords, I hope that they do not think that with this brigading, somehow the Home Office will not always act proportionately. I stress that it is very important that the Home Office, in carrying out the duties that are particular to it, does so always with proportion. We should not be solely in the business of protecting the state, since in the 21st century security, and national security, are about maintaining the prosperity and way of life of society as a whole. We come back to the theme that has run through our debate; the centrality of the citizen.

Before I go into more detail about the Home Office and the Government’s programme, I will address the questions raised by noble Lords about constitutional and electoral reform. I am in danger of wading into deep water here. It is clear that the prospect of change raises mixed emotions in this House, and a considerable degree of excitement. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that a great opportunity for reform was being missed. Perhaps I might ask what the previous Government were doing for the past 13 years. Their enthusiasm for electoral reform was reserved for very near the election.

I turn to the substance of the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and many other noble Lords, asked about legislation on AV and the referendum. He inquired about the timetable for both. The referendum is a priority for this Government and we plan to hold the poll as soon as possible. The precise timing will depend on the passage of the Bill through the two Houses. More information on timing will come with the introduction of the Bill in another place. The question to be put will be submitted to the Electoral Commission for comment on its intelligibility, to ensure that we get a good question. The choice will be between the current system and AV. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also asked about threshold and turnout, and a number of other more detailed questions. I am afraid that I cannot give him more information at present.

A number of questions were also asked about electoral issues that largely affect the other place. I do not propose to go into detail on those. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and others, suggested that speed in redrawing electoral boundaries might come at the expense of consultation. I entirely agree that consultation is important. However, many people might consider that the present system has created a situation in which the boundaries are out of date before they are ever used, as in the case of the last election, and that we need to improve the speed at which these things are done. We do not accept the thesis that larger constituencies lead to less accountability—there is not going to be such a radical change—nor that more equal-sized constituencies are a bad idea. We will allow small variations to accommodate local conditions.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and many other noble Lords also raised the issue of reform of your Lordships’ House. Indeed, I suppose that if there were a single issue on which we focused most, not surprisingly it was that. As the noble Lord noted, a committee is being set up but not, I think, on this occasion located in the long grass. Its composition is currently under consideration and the aim is that the committee should make recommendations by the end of the year.

My noble friend Lord McNally has already given some indications of the Government’s broad direction of march on some of the important issues. The committee will look at the detail of these issues and such matters as the choice of the electoral system, the proportion of Members to be elected and the transitional arrangements, including some of the ones that we have discussed, such as grandfathering. These will also be matters for the committee, as indeed will the issue raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester concerning the future position of Bishops in our House.

We on these Benches are well aware of the strength of feeling in this House, including that we should have some say in our own fate. I share it. The noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Armstrong, made characteristically to-the-point speeches about the issues involved, including the question of powers. Ensuring that views expressed in this House are heard properly and are thoroughly considered is important. The Leader of the House has already made clear the possibility of timely discussion at a formative stage and I am sure that we shall want to enable that to happen.

I think that on the Benches opposite there is great excitement—perhaps I may put it that way—about the possible effect of what they see as being new appointments to this House. At the moment, there are no announcements so far as I know, only rumours. If there are new creations, I doubt that they will be only on one side of the House; I am sure that they will be on the other side, too.

There has been a certain amount of questioning about Parliaments being fixed for a term of five years. When I travelled abroad—and I used to do a great deal of that—I found that most countries found it pretty odd that we did not have a fixed term. We are, in our present state, extremely unusual. Many in this country have long thought that it would be a good thing to move to fixed-term Parliaments. A Parliament of five years does not seem to be outside the British tradition, so I feel that it is a perfectly reasonable figure on which to fix.

The question of 55 per cent is a sensitive issue. There were a number of very thoughtful contributions from noble Lords about the 55 per cent threshold, as well as the expression of some anxiety and, indeed, criticism. However, there is no hidden agenda. Such provisions are normal in the context of fixed Parliaments. If you have a fixed Parliament system, you tend to have a provision of this kind, particularly in countries where there are coalitions. Germany, for example, is no exception. Therefore, if we are botching this idea—to use the phrase of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer—I suspect that so are many other countries.

The first point that I want to emphasise is that the Government’s proposals on the 55 per cent vote for Dissolution do not affect the conventions relating to a confidence vote in the other place. A Government who lose a confidence Motion, even by a single vote, will have to resign. This is not about stopping Parliament dismissing a Government; it is about stopping a Government being able to dismiss Parliament. This is in the context of fixed terms.

Detailed consideration was also given to the matter in a debate in the other place on Tuesday night. It will receive further detailed scrutiny, first, when the Government publish a Motion in the other place stating the date of the next election and, secondly, when a Bill is introduced. The crucial thing is that there is nothing unusual about requiring a percentage of a Chamber to vote for Dissolution. As we know, in Scotland the figure is two-thirds and in other countries there are different percentages. The 55 per cent was the threshold that the Government thought right for the UK. I have no doubt that further contributions will be made by noble Lords on that subject.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said that it was implicit in the coalition’s proposal that the 55 per cent could be used by the Government for Dissolution only if there was a vote of no confidence prior to that. Is that correct?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I shall not venture into that territory because I do not think that I know the answer to that question. Clearly this is precisely the kind of issue that needs clarification. I entirely accept that.