Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Tempting though the honeyed words of the noble Lord are—that seems to be the phrase of the night—he knows full well that it would be wrong of me to anticipate a hypothetical situation regarding that committee other than to confirm that it is proposed that there will be a Joint Committee to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny. It would be wrong for me to speculate on what that committee will propose, because that is some way down the track, or what the Government’s response would be. My noble friend Lord Marks indicated that the previous Government brought forward legislation that fundamentally changed the relationship between the judiciary, the Executive and Parliament, and did so without a referendum. That might be thought to be a far more fundamental and far-reaching constitutional reform than the one we are considering. With the exception of the proposed referendum on the alternative vote, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, introduced in this House before the wash-up, had a plethora of constitutional measures, none of which, other than the AV referendum, sought to have a referendum attached to it. While I take on board the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on the Constitution Committee’s consideration and view on this Bill, the committee did not, as he confirmed, recommend that there should be a referendum. If one reads the Constitution Committee report from the previous Session, when I was a member, one detects a great reluctance to go down the route of referendums—or referenda, in deference to my noble friend Lord Cormack. The items on the list read out by my noble friend Lord Marks, including the abolition of the monarchy and the secession of one of the nations from the United Kingdom, are of a different order from what is proposed in the Bill. This country is, after all, governed by a system of representative democracy in the other place. We in Parliament are basically entrusted with the power to make important decisions on behalf of the people of this country and, in the other place, by the people who are elected to make these decisions as representatives of the people. There must be an exceptional reason to ask people a direct question in a referendum, and I do not believe that the case has been made this evening for that exceptional high threshold to have been reached in respect of the Bill. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.