Fixed Term Parliaments Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) for introducing his Bill in such lucid terms. It is important for the House to consider such issues anew, and he has brought some fresh thinking to bear on the subject. The only merit in the Bill is that it would provide for a general election sooner than we would otherwise get one, and if it gets into Committee, I would be keen to move an amendment to provide for a general election even sooner than 7 May 2009. The hon. Gentleman's motivation seems to be to cover up for the bottling out by the Prime Minister last October, but the electorate appear to be making their own judgment about that in fairly harsh terms. Indeed, that is not confined to the electorate, but includes many members of his own party, including those in Parliament. There was a similar situation in 1978, when the Prime Minister, Callaghan, could have gone to the country. He chose not to do so in October 1978, and was penalised by the electorate in 1979, when he did not win the general election. People still look back at that period and say that if he had had the election in 1978, he might have won. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman most about the current system giving the incumbent party an enormous unfair advantage. It does, but his system would give the incumbent party an even greater unfair advantage, because it would enable it, from the day that it got into government, to do everything to get the electorate on its side for that fixed date in four years' time. In the United States, the two years before a presidential election is geared to that election. The consequence of having such a system would be that the Government would ruthlessly use all the tools at their command to their advantage.