Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Richard Shepherd Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend is simply not right. That is not the current constitutional position. The current position is that for a period of time during which a Government have the confidence of this House, the only person who decides whether there should be a general election—assuming that we have not reached the end of the Parliament—is the Prime Minister, who seeks a Dissolution from Her Majesty the Queen. Members of Parliament, unless they vote down the Government on a vote of confidence, do not have that power. The general public certainly do not have that power.

[Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

The Minister’s proposition was a much disputed one. It was thought at one stage that Mr Major, when Prime Minister, was prepared to call a general election during the difficulties surrounding Maastricht. The argument put by people such as Robert Rhodes James was that it was a matter for the Cabinet as a whole to give the Prime Minister the authority to go to the Queen—a more collective approach. The coarse person, the Back Bencher on the streets—or rather the Benches here—would argue that the Cabinet at the time would have thrown themselves in front of John Major’s car if he went to Buckingham palace, as the last thing the Conservative party could bear at that juncture was a general election. It is a process; that is what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is talking about. The Prime Minister is not the only person who can determine a general election. That is the ebb and flow of real politics, which is what this House is about. That is why, as I am sure the Minister will understand, there is opposition to some of the propositions in the Bill.

[Mr Harper]

I am not sure that I want to conjure up visions of Cabinet Ministers throwing themselves in front of prime ministerial cars, which is not a happy thought—[Interruption.] Some of the comments from Opposition Members are unworthy of them. Let me explain what I do not understand about my hon. Friend’s point. He is arguing, I think, for decisions about the timing of general elections to be a more collegiate effort, rather than just the choice of the Prime Minister—but that is exactly what the Bill does. It takes away from the Prime Minister the power to call a general election by asking the Queen for a Dissolution and gives that power to Members. Two thirds of them can choose to have an early election for any reason, including general concerns about the state of the country, which deals with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. Having this Bill in place would allow that to happen, which cannot be done today. The other way of bringing about an election is the Government losing a vote of confidence. That is why the Government believe that the Bill should be in place; it should not be up to each individual Parliament to decide whether the Bill should remain in force. That is why we oppose these sunset clauses.

We think that the real threat presented by the amendments is that they could create a scenario in which political parties, and specifically the Government party, could choose in each Parliament, even at its beginning, whether that Parliament should be a fixed-term one. As the Bill is currently drafted, both Houses would have to vote in favour of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill kicking into place at any time during the Parliament. I simply do not think that that is a very sensible proposition. It would mean that Governments would have a way of manipulating the timetable. We should think it through. If both Houses have to vote in favour of a motion for a fixed-term Parliament to be in place, a Government with a majority could simply refuse to pass that motion—and we would effectively have given back to the Prime Minister the ability to call an election. That would not be a positive step forward.

It is important to note that when this House and the other place were legislating for the fixed terms of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, it was not thought appropriate to have sunset clauses. We did not give those legislatures the opportunity to pick and choose each time how long their terms of office should be. I do not believe that doing so makes sense now.

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[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman sets me up very nicely for my final quotation. In this Bill’s Second Reading debate—which took place a long time ago, on 13 September 2010, which goes to show that the Bill has enjoyed leisurely progress through both Houses with proper scrutiny in both Chambers—the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said:

“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.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 645.]

Interestingly, we have done the opposite. We were not very keen on them in opposition, but we have become keener on them in government, and this was in our coalition agreement.

[Mr Shepherd]

rose—

[Mr Charles Walker]

rose—

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[Mr Shepherd]

I am startled by my hon. Friend’s line of argument. I did toil through our election manifesto, and I saw no pledge or undertaking at all to have a fixed-term Parliament, and least of all a fixed-term Parliament for five years, so what is his line of argument?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend rightly says that we did not have a commitment to do this, but equally we had not promised not to do it. The case was made to us that there was a good case for fixed-term Parliaments, provision was made for them in the coalition agreement and we brought the measure before the House. When good arguments are made, wise Governments listen to them and introduce these very sensible measures. They do not contradict anything that we had in our manifesto. It is usual for Governments to introduce proposals that were not in their manifesto when sensible arguments are made for them. That is a perfectly sensible proposition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan]

I am delighted to be able to agree with the thrust of the remarks of the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) in relation to the key effect of the Lords amendments, which would extend the power of the House of Lords as it now stands and in whatever future shape it takes, by making sure that the upper House was in a position of dual control with this House on whether there was a fixed-term Parliament. We know from sentiments already expressed in that House—echoed many times in this House—that there is opposition to serious proposals on Lords reform, and in those circumstances I would certainly not indulge any extension of their powers or ability to trespass on the primacy of this House, which is exactly what the amendments would do.

A number of weeks ago the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) rightly lampooned the democratic credentials of the other Chamber, and yet now he wants to extend its control over the democratic proprieties of this Chamber and over whether there is certainty on when there will be a general election. I fully agree with him that those of us who believe in fixed-term Parliaments face a predicament with the Bill, because many of us believe that four years is the natural term for a Parliament. It was the natural term that this Parliament chose for the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments, and it was right that they were comfortable with it, but because Parliament is opting for five years, those assemblies will also have to shift to five years, which I do not believe is the natural rhythm for fixed terms.

Nevertheless, it would be a bit much for someone like me to use the fact that I believe in four-year terms, in addition to believing in fixed-term Parliaments, to vote for rupturing the nature of the Bill. As someone who is proudly in the Irish Labour tradition, I have great regard for Jim Larkin, who once said that the purpose of politics was to keep narrowing the gap between what is and what ought to be. I believe in fixed-term Parliaments. Unfortunately, the only choice we now have is five-year terms. In future, I hope that other parties will be elected with a mandate to alter that fixed term to four years and that future Parliaments will do that, but I believe that we will reach that stage quicker by voting for fixed-term Parliaments now and amending the length of the term in future. If instead we get to the meaningless point of having a Bill that is a fixed-term Parliaments Bill only in name, rather like the two-hour dry cleaners that tells customers to come back next Tuesday because “two-hour dry cleaners” is just the name of the shop, that Bill will not fulfil its purpose in any real way.

In relation to the amendments, there is a curious idea that both Chambers would decide on whether there would be a fixed term, but there is uncertainty on when those resolutions would be laid and who would lay them. The references to the Prime Minister in some of the amendments relate only to moving the date of an election back by up to two months, and I think that some people have misread that and think that it means that the resolution would have to come from the Prime Minister, but it would not. It seems that we would be left with a curious situation in which anyone could seek at any time to move such a resolution in either Chamber and create various difficulties that would simply add to the political mess and to the uncertainty on whether we have fixed terms.

I also agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda in his criticism of the Bill’s provenance and the fact that it came about not to fix the term of Parliament, but to fix this Government. It was intended to create a fixed-term Government and a fix for this Parliament. For that reason it is wrong and it is bad. However, the amendments would have the effect of prescribing legislation that would have every Parliament begin with a Government using their majority to fix the term in a way that suited them. He said that any Government worth their salt would do that early on in the term, and presuming that an Opposition worth their salt would oppose it, we are left asking what the point would be and what such legislation would achieve, other than an unedifying procedure each time a recently elected Government appear to fix the terms on which they will govern which the Opposition resist. The whole idea of a fixed-term Parliament Bill is to ensure that there is no political speculation or contention on those issues. Looking at the nature of some of the other clauses and amendments, I do not believe that the Prime Minister is ceding as much power as some hon. Members have said.

This is an unusual and uncomfortable experience for me, but I concur with the Government on these Lords amendments. Unfortunately, on this occasion I have to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda while fully agreeing with his basic, continuing underlying criticism of some of the background to the Bill.

[Mr Shepherd]

I agree with a lot of the points made by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). I am conscious that this a Bill to fix a Parliament: that is the purpose behind it, plain and simple. The difficulty that the House of Lords faced and that we face in this House—it is the reason I voted against the Bill on Second Reading and otherwise—is the incoherence of the constitutional change that these amendments, to some extent, address.

We are embarked on almost reckless constitutional change with no overall coherent view of what we want. I know what I want, and I rather suspect that the hon. Member for Foyle knows what he wants—a democratically elected, accountable House of Lords. That raises all sorts of subsidiary questions as to which has primacy and which does not. We have here a fix, without any view as to what the constitution is going to be, that has involved nothing other than the coalition partners bringing forward a Bill that contains certain propositions that do not relate. I appreciate that we have had all the debates about four years as opposed to five years and the rhythm of the process. We have had the AV referendum, which was again unrelated to how the constitution was going to look.

That is why the Lords tabled these amendments. In a sense, they are not serious amendments—serious in the sense of how they prick this process and bring in a wider consideration of what the constitution should be, to whom is it accountable, and how we make these changes. Essentially, this fixed-term Parliament proposal is “back of the envelope”. Do we really want a five-year fixed term when we might have had only four years? I think that that was the position of the Labour party in its manifesto, and the position of the Liberal Democrats. The joyous thing about it is that we did not have a view, other than against, in our election manifesto.

[Mr Harper]

I want to pick my hon. Friend up on his point that this has been done on the back of a fag packet.

[Mr Shepherd]

I did not say that—I said an envelope.

[Mr Harper]

Yes, forgive me—it was the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) who said it was a fag packet. This Bill was introduced in July last year. It was fully debated in this House and in the other place, and it is now almost a year later. One cannot in any sense agree with my hon. Friend’s proposition that the parliamentary debate on and scrutiny of this Bill has not been thorough and well thought through.

[Mr Shepherd]

I am sorry, but my point was not as the Minister so kindly describes it. My point was that we are talking about a constitution. The problem for everyone, not only in this Chamber but out there too—the people—is what are the forms and proper norms by which we should conduct our business, electorally or otherwise.

Now these piecemeal bits are coming forward whereby the Lords make the absurd proposition that it should have a role, as an unelected House, in determining when an election should be. That is clearly absurd, and to that extent I am sympathetic to the Government. However, I am very opposed to a five-year Parliament. There has been no testing on that. A parliamentary majority in this House will now determine that we have a new form of constitution that the hon. Member for Foyle is apparently happy about on the basis that it is only temporary and we might have a different, and therefore proper and better, version at a later stage. We have to deal with where we are here and now. We want a proper constitution, I would argue. I think that that is the position of the Labour party. I know that a good many Government Members also want a constitution that stands the test of time. No one from outside has really been invited into the supposed consultation.

The Deputy Prime Minister has not even come to argue for his position. That truly trivialises the whole process. I have gone on about that before. However much I am thrilled with the presence of the Minister, it is absurd that those who make these propositions cannot come here and argue for them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman feels strongly about this matter, but he is drifting from the point of the Lords amendments. I know that he is setting the context, but that context is getting a little too wide. I would like him to narrow his speech back to the amendments.

[Mr Shepherd]

I am trying to use the amendments to explain and understand what the Lords are doing. I appreciate that I may be going too wide, and I am sorry if that is so, but that is the purpose behind what I am doing. It is in that context that I am going to vote for the Lords amendments. They are absurd; there is no question about that in my mind. It is absolutely absurd that the Lords, who are not democratically elected, should be setting out such amendments. The very writing of the amendments is extraordinary for a place that we are told is full of very intellectual and clever complacents. It is extraordinary that they should even be looking into this. However, I did not open this discussion; the coalition opened it, and it did not do so in a rational or reasonable way. I am trying to find an argument to support the amendment so that I can vote against what is an improper process. It is as simple as that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want those on the Government Front Bench to understand my point. They are careering on. They held an AV referendum, but apropos of what—whether one was for it or agin it? I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that AV is not on the amendment paper.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he is out of order. He is making points directly to his party. I would appreciate it if he kept to the amendments before us and did not range far and wide. There are other Members still to speak and other amendments still to cover. I know that he knows he is out of order because he keeps telling me that he is. I have been very generous to him, but it stops now. Please come back to the amendments.

[Mr Shepherd]

I am obliged for the courteous and pleasant way in which that was said. Mirror, mirror on the wall, I know that I am—[Laughter.]

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I wonder whether I may risk leading him astray. How does he think a fixed five-year term for this House stands alongside the proposals for a 15-year term for some peers in the other place?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) and I can both guess whether he should go down that line. I think the answer is that he should not. Can he please come back to the amendments?

[Mr Shepherd]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. There was no way that I was going to rise to that fly. We will get back to the substance of the matter.

These are ridiculous proposals from the House of Lords—on that I agree. To that extent I am with the body of the House, which, I hope, feels that this is almost an impertinence. That impertinence is qualified, of course, by the fact that the Lords are the second Chamber, and that as it stands—other than in matters of money, as I understand it—they have all the rights of a second Chamber to make or change legislation. They are wrong to table the amendment, but they are right in the spirit of it. I hope that it is in order to suggest such a thing. My proposition is that they are right in the spirit of it because it is the only way in which they can attack this matter.

I hope that this cheerful Chamber will look askance at the Minister and his colleague, the Deputy Leader of the House, who are sitting on the Front Bench and trying to seduce us into thinking that there is some immaculate constitutional conception behind the Bill. There is not. It is the raw politics of “We want to be there for five years, in the hope that something turns up at the end of the fifth year”. That is what it is about, and we know it. I urge the House to vote for the Lords amendment, and damn them.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Fixed-term Parliaments: constitutional vandalism.

[Mr Cash]

This was not in our manifesto. The people who voted for us certainly did not vote for fixed-term Parliaments.

In 1940, as I have said, the Government won the vote in May, but the public would not countenance that Government remaining in power for another day. That was what got rid of Neville Chamberlain, and Leo Amery said:

“In the name of God, go.”—[Official Report, 7 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1150.]

[Mr Shepherd]

Quoting Cromwell.

[Mr Cash]

There was a similar example in the Cromwellian period. There are great events taking place in the world today, and the whole question of the sustainability of government ultimately depends on the continuing will of the people as a whole. The idea of fixed-term Parliaments is intrinsically wrong, because it defies the gravity of the views of the public at large. If the public were to turn against fixed-term Parliaments, under the Bill they could not succeed because fixed-term Parliaments would have been entrenched by statute, which would be upheld by the judiciary. That is fundamentally an attack on our sovereignty and the sovereignty of the people of this country. That is why I object so strongly to the whole idea of fixed-term Parliaments, whether of five years or four. It is unconstitutional, wrong and prevents the people from being able to demand a general election irrespective of the views of a Prime Minister or a coalition that is cobbled together despite the views expressed in the respective manifestos.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.