Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Simon Hart Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

Polling days for parliamentary general elections

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 5, at end insert

‘save as provided for by subsection (2A) below.

(2A) If a day before 7 May 2015 has been appointed under section 2(6) as the polling day for an early parliamentary general election, the polling day for the subsequent parliamentary general election shall not be 7 May 2015, but shall instead be set by reference to subsections (3) and (4) below.’.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 10, page 1, line 8, at end insert

‘, no notice being taken of any early parliamentary general election as provided for in section 2.’.

Amendment 11, page 1, line 9, leave out subsection (4).

[Simon Hart]

Amendment 1 was tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, who apologises for not being here in person.

I hope not to detain the House for too long. Amendment 1 is a probing amendment, which the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee agreed should be tabled to ensure that the Bill was technically sound. Clause 1(3) and (4) provide for the clock to be reset if an early general election is called, and for the date of the next scheduled general election to be shifted to four to five years after that early election. Those provisions, however, do not seem to apply to the next general election, which is scheduled to take place on 7 May 2015. The Bill seems to require an election to be held on 7 May 2015 even if an early election has been held before that date, perhaps only a few months before—although I suppose that depends on how it is interpreted. The Government have made clear their policy that the clock should be reset each time there is an early general election, and I do not suppose that they mean to make an exception for 2015.

I appreciate that the Government have already announced that the next general election will be held on 7 May 2015 and not before. Can the Minister reassure us that, in the unlikely event of an early general election during the current Parliament, the Bill as it stands would not require a further election to be held on 7 May 2015? If he cannot give that reassurance, is he prepared to accept the amendment? That would make it crystal clear that if an early election took place before May 2015, the date of the next election would be four to five years later, not in May 2015.

[Chris Bryant]

It is a great delight to see the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). It is always odd when constituencies contain bits of the west and bits of the south and bits of the north, all aligned with each other. May I just notify the hon. Gentleman that I shall be in his constituency on Friday evening? Now I have got that out of the way. He will be glad to know that I shall be addressing a Labour party meeting—although I am sure he will be welcome to come along if he wishes.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s argument about amendment 1, I entirely agree with him that the drafting of the Bill is deficient in this regard. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has done a remarkable piece of work in the short time it was given to do its work, and I am glad it has been able to come up with this amendment. I had worried that there was not going to be a Committee member to move it, because neither of the two Committee members whose names are attached to it is present this evening, which is a shame.

I also want to speak to amendments 10 and 11 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Lord Chancellor my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), and myself. Amendment 10 would amend clause 1 by adding that “no notice” should be

“taken of any early parliamentary general election as provided for in section 2.”

That is basically to say that, notwithstanding that there might have been an early general election, the next general election will be on the date that had already been specified.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that one of our primary objections to the Bill is that it refers to five-year Parliaments rather than four-year Parliaments, which we would prefer, we none the less subscribe to the belief that it is good for parliamentary democracy to have an expectation about when the next general election will be, and for Parliaments to be for fixed terms, especially because our broader electoral system is now analogous to that of the United States of America in that we have local elections on a four-year cycle, Assembly elections in Wales and Northern Ireland on a four-year cycle and the parliamentary elections in Scotland on a four-year cycle. We know the dates when they will take place in perpetuity into the future, so it makes sense to have the same pattern and rhythm in elections to this House. That is why we have advanced this amendment, which, in essence, would mean that we would not start the clock again. Consequently, we would know whether elections were going to coincide with certain local elections or elections for the devolved Administrations. That is a better model than the slightly haphazard manner in which we may proceed if the Bill proceeds unamended in this respect.

There is one other advantage. The Government have written to the devolved Administrations about the fact that the next general election would coincide with their elections in 2015 unless the Prime Minister brings our general election forward by two months or delays it by two months, and the Minister has written asking them whether they think it would be better to have a new power added giving them the right to delay their elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by six months. I have spoken to various Members of the Welsh Assembly, including the First Minister, and he is clear that it would be wrong suddenly to change the date of the Welsh Assembly elections because Parliament had decided that its elections were to be at a certain point in 2015, thereby either prolonging the next Welsh Assembly by six months or shortening the one thereafter by six months. Moreover, if we are deciding that the best time of the year to have elections is the first Thursday in May, it would seem wrong suddenly to decide that everyone else should have to get out of the way and have their elections in November. Also, just shunting the devolved Administrations’ elections away by a month or two months is likely to harm those elections substantially, because I do not think that voters want to come out very regularly, within a month or two of another general election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman was hypothetically pessimistic earlier. Now he takes the opposite approach: he is being hypothetically optimistic. The Government’s view was that we could have that early general election and the Government could be returned with a large majority, and we think the public would expect that Government to govern.

Interestingly, the Constitution Committee in the other place agreed with the Government’s approach. Its report concludes that a newly elected Government should have a full term of office, and that the Government would present its programme to Parliament through the Queen’s Speech, which, of course, is traditionally considered to be a test of confidence. We think that in that situation the Government should have the right to carry out their programme for the full five years, and it would make little sense to ask the voters to go back to the polls when they had sent out a clear message.

I accept that that is a debatable point—we had a significant debate in Committee—but let us look at it from the public’s end of the telescope rather than our own. If we were to have an early general election, because the Government had lost a confidence vote or because there had been a general sense that we should have an early general election, it would seem a little ridiculous if the public had made a clear choice, sent a Government into office with a significant majority, and then a few months later were back doing it all over again.

I think that, on balance, the Government’s decision and the current drafting of the Bill make sense. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, on behalf of the Select Committee, to withdraw his amendment 1 and I urge the hon. Member for Rhondda, just for once, to think about whether he really wants to press amendments 10 and 11 and potentially force the British people to undergo election after election in close succession—something which neither he nor I would want to achieve.

[Simon Hart]

I am much encouraged by the Minister’s comments and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3

Dissolution of Parliament

Amendment proposed: 8, page 2, line 29, leave out ‘17th’ and insert ‘25th’.—(Chris Bryant.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt]

Coalition Members really do not understand the difference between the norm and the maximum. We have had this problem with them over many weeks now. The issue is whether we want to move from the norm to the maximum. Across the academic and political communities, we can see—if we look at the work of Robert Hazell, for example—that four years are preferred to five. The view of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—on which I am happy to serve with the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart)—was that most opinion suggests that it would be better for general elections to be held every four years, rather than every five.

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that fixing the term at five years automatically favours the Government of the day, whereas it can of course have the opposite effect. Does he agree with me, as did some of the witnesses who appeared before our Committee, that by tying themselves into a five-year fixed term, the Government might find that the election coincides with a rather dismal period in the opinion polls, giving great advantage to the Opposition? I thought that that evidence was given to the Select Committee—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but his intervention is getting rather long.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

I start by thanking the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for early warning of his visit to my constituency next week. I extend the invitation to him; if he does not find the speech to the Labour group in Tenby going as well as he would like, he is always very welcome in my house, as he well knows.

Ministers are well aware that of all the constitutional measures going through Parliament, I find this one to be undoubtedly the most attractive. I have to say that I have found it ever more attractive as the debates have played out. One reason is that Wales provides a living example of fixed-term Parliaments. If my voters and electors are anything to go by, there is a very relaxed attitude towards whether it will be four or five years before they are asked to go to the polls.

There seems to be an increasing amount of synthetic frustration being expressed—not by all Members, but by some Opposition Members—about the potential economic, social, cultural and constitutional damage that can be done by this measure. If the experience of Wales is anything to go by, that is a very long way from the truth. The public are completely relaxed about whether they are required to follow the pattern adopted by the Welsh Assembly or the proposal before us tonight.

I referred in an earlier intervention—on the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), if my memory serves me right—to witnesses appearing before the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. Although there was a general tendency for those witnesses to err in favour of a four-year fixed term, there was certainly no significant alarm bell sounded about a five-year fixed term. Simply citing a number of other examples across Europe and the rest of the world in an attempt to suggest that this would have devastating effects in the UK simply does not wash. There are plenty of examples in the UK—Wales is one of them—to confirm that.

The argument I have heard repeated over and over again by the shadow Minister and others is that this measure will result in our having the longest fixed-term Parliament ever, to which I say, “So what?” If the public and my electors, in common with electors further afield in Wales and elsewhere, are as content as they seem to be, so what? If it results in settled and sound government, we should have nothing to fear from it.

Let me end my brief speech by saying that we have heard no evidence, either in the Select Committee or during today’s debate, to suggest that a five-year fixed term would pose any constitutional, economic, social or any other dangers that need trouble the House or, much more importantly, the voters who put us here.