Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for his amendment, which would provide for a minimum of five parliamentary Sessions in every five-year Parliament. I have a lot of sympathy with the spirit of what is proposed, but I will explain why I do not think that it should be enshrined in statute. I accept that having five annual Sessions in a five-year Parliament makes considerable sense. Indeed, under this Bill is it likely that the Parliament elected in 2015 will have five Sessions. The only reason that this Parliament is likely to have four—I will deal with this in more detail in a moment—is the transition to fixed terms and spring state openings. It would not be appropriate to put the amendment into statute; the current arrangements should remain. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, recognised, even if the Bill did not exist, it would still be possible to change the length of a Session. I will answer the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. It was very obvious that the decision to move to spring 2012 was not taken in the early days of this Government. By the time the announcement was made in September, the Bill had already been published. I cannot remember the exact date; it must have been around the time the Bill got its Second Reading. I am being told that in fact it was the same day. That might explain why the Bill did not have pre-legislative scrutiny. I know that I have not answered this point to the satisfaction of the Opposition, who will come back to it time and time again. However, we wished to have this Bill in the first term. It was not in order to get this Bill through that we decided to extend the Session. It is very clear that the reason for the extension was that we wished to move to an annual Queen's Speech in May and therefore an adjustment was required. We could have reduced the length of this Session, but to have done so half way through would have caused a number of difficulties. That is why it was decided, as a one-off, to extend this Session until spring 2012. There is nothing sinister in that. Most of our legislation would have been passed in any event. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, indicated that there is provision for carry-over. I pause to reflect that the fact that this Session is longer may bring a ray of hope—with reference to the previous debate, I believe that hope was the last thing to come out of Pandora's box—to Members whose Private Members’ Bills are so often frustrated because there are not enough Fridays in the Session to get them through. To suggest that this is a sinister plot on the part of the Executive is grossly misplaced. The purpose is to get into a position where we can have annual Sessions that begin in May. It will be our intention thereafter to have Sessions that run from spring to spring. It is not appropriate to enshrine this in statute because there may be a case where, if the Bill is enacted, an incumbent Government lost a vote of no confidence and a new Government was formed within 14 days. It is possible in such a scenario that it would be felt that the Session should come to an end and that there should be a new Queen's Speech. Nobody would think that that would be unreasonable in the circumstances. It might be very difficult then to fit in five Sessions. That is why it is better not to stipulate in statute that there should be five Sessions in any one Parliament. A Session might begin after an election in February and come to an end in May, which would not make much sense. It would have to be brought artificially to an end to ensure that the requirement of five Sessions was met. Having annual May-to-May Sessions will ensure that the final Session of the Parliament is more likely to be much more meaningful and worth while than one which, for example, begins in late November and lasts until the wash-up in late March. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, says, ““We’ll see””, but nothing could be less exciting or satisfying than what we experienced in the wash-up last year when we tried to deal with so many Bills that had barely got anywhere. Parts of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which had had only a Second Reading in this House, were passed with only the briefest scrutiny. It had some pre-legislative scrutiny, but no scrutiny in this House. I hope that noble Lords would agree that at the end of the day actual legislative scrutiny is more important than pre-legislative scrutiny.