Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, again this amendment has stimulated an interesting debate, some of which goes into the general principles of fixed-terms Parliaments and some of which foreshadows the later debate we will have on the figure of four or five years. The amendment would omit the date of 7 May 2015 and provide instead that the next parliamentary general election should be held within a range of four to five years after the previous general election. In other words, we would be looking at an election held no earlier than 6 May 2014 and no later than 6 May 2015. As my noble friend Lord Tyler very succinctly put it, that drives a coach and horses through the whole concept of a fixed-term Parliament because it would put back into the hands of the Prime Minister the option of choosing the date of the election which those of us who have supported the concept of fixed-term Parliaments want to move away from. I say to my noble friend Lord Cormack that it would quite easily be resolved because the Prime Minister could do so only if he had the agreement of the Deputy Prime Minister. It would be in the very circumstances where the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister fell out that the chances would be that the Prime Minister would want that option—the circumstances perhaps more graphically, from a literary perspective, expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. As my noble friend Lady Stowell said, the important point about fixed-term Parliaments is that the Government of the day have to face the electorate on a predetermined date regardless of the prevailing political circumstances. Asquith was quoted. I have read this quote several times, and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, did quote him because it gave us the benefit of the intervention by my noble friend Lord Brooke. We can have a quite legitimate debate about what Mr Asquith was saying on 21 February 1911. He said that reducing the Parliament from seven years, as it previously was, to five years would, "““probably amount in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years””.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/2/1911; col. 1749.]" He did not say that the term would be four years, but that legislative working term would be four years. That reflects the comments referred to by my noble friend Lady Stowell that were made by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, at Second Reading. I readily concede that he has misgivings about the idea of fixed-term Parliaments, but he said that if we have them, he prefers five years rather than four years because: "““Even with a term of five years, that shadow extends over the last year of the term and tends to reduce to no more than four years the period during which government policy-making and parliamentary debate can effectively be pursued without too much looking over the shoulder at electoral considerations””.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 971.]." His concern is that if we have a four-year fixed term, it would kick in at the end of three years. Obviously, if we are going to have even more prelegislative scrutiny in the first year, that shrinks the time available to Governments to deliver their programme. My noble friend Lord Norton, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and others have indicated that our recent experience of Governments who have gone for a fifth year has not necessarily always been happy. In many ways, that almost makes the point. The only reason those Governments limped on during the fifth year was that it was not propitious or opportunistic for the Prime Minister of the day to call an election after four years because he thought he was going to lose. If you have a five-year fixed term, clearly Governments can plan for those five years. It may well be that they can do more prelegislative scrutiny in the first year. There will inevitably be an election looming at the end of the fifth year, but you are more likely to get proper planning for five years and a Government not having to go for the fifth year because they do not think it opportune to go at the end of four years.