Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly sensible point, although I always caution hon. Members not to equate local elections in England to elections to the devolved Administrations. There is a substantive difference in the amount of spend that is allowed, and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland devolved elections use the same formulas for election spend. Perhaps it was an oversight of previous Governments not to address the valid point that the hon. Gentleman makes. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has said, we are prepared to admit that we did not achieve all the legislation that we would like to have achieved, although if we were to ask the electorate what was the most important thing that we could have achieved, fixing that would not necessarily have been the top priority. Reference has been made to the issue of Prime Ministers handing over power to their party or other parties. I think that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford misunderstood the difference between the House being adjourned and the House being prorogued. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, if the House is adjourned, existing legislation is not lost. If it prorogues, however, all legislation except public Bills falls and the legislative process must start again. That is why it is important that when the Parliamentary Resources Unit produces its next brief for Conservative Members it should spend some time getting those details correct. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, and several other Government Members, asked for examples of when Prime Ministers have succeeded leaders of their own party in that office. Obviously, Prime Ministers from both main parties have succeeded without general elections and without the need for the House to prorogue. That happened in 1957, 1963, 1976, 1990 and, of course, 2007.