Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on advancing his amendment before I got to the Table Office when I would have tabled exactly the same amendment. His alacrity is in the interest of the whole House, and he is right to have tabled his amendments, as I hope to lay out. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), who always speaks with an independence of mind, which compliments both the House and his electors. He is right that this is about the entrenchment of Government. This measure is not proposed because there has been some grand constitutional convention that has consulted the country about the appropriate length of the Parliament and has consulted academics or voters; it is simply here to entrench this Government at least until May 2015. That is primarily why it exists. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said that he felt—I was not sure whether he said in his waters or in his guts—that four years was better than five, and he is absolutely right. If one looks at the contributions made by most constitutional experts, as the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills asked us to do, all have said that four years is a better term than five. It is also right to say that the process that has been gone through for the Bill is inappropriate. The Government have often said that in the first Session of a Parliament it is difficult to consult on Bills, because Parliament suddenly needs something to discuss. My argument would be that that is not the time to bring forward constitutional Bills. There may be legislation on other matters which has been well adumbrated in manifestos and well discussed, but it is wholly inappropriate to proceed with constitutional Bills without pre-legislative scrutiny and some attempt to bind together all the political parties so that there is an agreement that this not just a settlement for one Parliament or for five or six years, but one that will stand the test of time and last several decades. The hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) said that this is a good idea because it will prevent the Prime Minister from being able to choose the date of the election. That is not true. The Bill makes it clear that the Prime Minister will always choose the actual date of a general election. It is perfectly possible for the Prime Minister to make sure that there will be a general election, as laid out in clauses 1 and 2, because Prime Ministers can, if they wish, engineer a vote of no confidence, precisely as happened in Germany in 1982 under Chancellor Kohl, and in 2005 under Chancellor Schröder. There is no reason why a Prime Minister should not choose to do that.