Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that issue. I did hear what the Deputy Prime Minister said about the upper House. Most unusually—because in the spirit of coalition I usually find that I hang on every word of the Deputy Prime Minister in almost entire agreement with it—I had to divert from him on that occasion. I have always thought that Governments make a mistake when they think that they will always be in government, and therefore that it ought always to be easy to pass legislation. I think it ought to be difficult to pass legislation, because we will not always be in power, yet we represent 40% of the electorate. Labour will not always be in power either, yet it represents 40% of the electorate. Those large minorities ought always to be taken into account—and the one power that they have is the power to delay. It was a great mistake of the previous Government to allow our proceedings to be so truncated. That means that now the present Government are, regrettably, doing the same on constitutional issues. That is the inevitable consequence of what happened between 1997 and 2010. I would like to see the House of Lords maintain its ability to delay. ““Filibuster”” may be a good word. I am hoping that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will give us a definition of ““filibuster””. He has given us regular definitions of the word ““gerrymander””, and it is rather an expertise of his. I hope that ““filibuster”” may be defined later on. I think it important that that right to delay be preserved, and that the House of Lords should have it. As I have said, that House has the crucial constitutional function of protecting our constitution from what Lord Hailsham referred to as elective dictatorship. I do not think that we have elective dictatorship, but I do not think that it would be impossible to get to it, and that means that we must preserve some elements of the constitution on which the House of Lords will have the final say, as if on an Act prior to 1911. I said that I thought the new clause was a test of the Government's seriousness about the Bill, but another test of that is in new clause 5, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) will speak to shortly. It is broadly the same test, but the other way round. It says to Her Majesty's Government, ““If you think that this is really for only one Parliament and that is the be-all and end-all, so that it really is about coalition and keeping two parties that were mistrustful but are now devoted partners together, the Bill will not be needed in its current form for future Parliaments.”” It seems to me that Her Majesty's Government are in an either/or situation; they are between a rather friendly Scylla, which is me, and the perhaps more hostile Charybdis, which is my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. If they think that the Bill is not a serious Bill but is just for the short term of coalition, they will reject my new clause, but that means that they ought to accept my hon. Friend's new clause, as he is saying that it is clearly a short-term Bill that should last only for the duration of this Parliament. They must consider that in their response.