Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

How grateful I am for all that. I know that the Minister will have listened to it all. To go back to my point, the noble and learned Lord is making us choose between five and four years, but the arguments that his Government put forward are all on the accountability side. That is what makes the case being advanced so absurd. Again, in the evidence that the Deputy Prime Minister gave to the examination of the Bill, he said in justifying it that, "““it is an unambiguous judgment on our part that reducing the power of the executive, seeking to boost the power of the legislature, making the legislatures more accountable to people ... collectively introduces the mechanisms by which people can exercise greater control over politicians””" How could he have been trying to justify the Bill as giving more accountability in a process that left the electorate with less ability to get rid of Governments, because there would be fewer general elections? What is so odd about the Government’s position is that they rely upon accountability and then propose something that produces less of it. We heard a number of very impressive speeches. I particularly mention the speech that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, made. He went through the evidence and, with respect to everyone else, demolished the case in favour of a norm of five years. By my calculations there were five speeches, apart from that of the Minister, in favour of five years. I include in them that of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who I detected was in fact in favour of four years but said it should be five years for the first term. I respectfully suggest that we should not listen to his extremely well put siren song. To paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, he was saying that we will just have to succumb to this awful argument that is being advanced. He is not nodding but I feel a sense coming across the Room on that. Do not be persuaded by that argument; if five years is wrong for the future, it is certainly wrong for the present. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, described it as a point of principle. I remind noble Lords that the point he referred to was not on whether we should have fixed terms but on whether they should be of five years. To quote David Laws again, he says that Andrew Stunell, "““mentioned that our own policy was for four-year… Parliaments. … Osborne made the point that five-year parliaments were better … We made no objection to this””—" a point of principle lost in a second. What will their point of principle be tomorrow on it? I would not rely heavily on it.