Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me an opportunity to explain it. It was clear from the comments made by the Deputy Leader of the other place in May of last year that the decision to extend the Session to spring 2012 was not made in the early days. The working assumption was that we would go forward as we normally do after an election in May and have the first Session running through to the following October or November. It is not giving away any state secrets to say that that was the assumption. We then considered whether it was better to move to a situation where, if we were going to have fixed-term Parliaments, the Sessions should run annually, May to May. An announcement was made in September, which would normally have been between a third and half way through the Session. There was an option to truncate the Session about now, but it was thought that the best thing to do was to go to next year. There is nothing sinister in that; we were totally open. However, this is a one-off change and from next year, Sessions will go from May to May. That is the right way to proceed. I hope the noble Lord will accept that there was nothing sinister in this, but that it was an adjustment made in-year, given that the original expectation was to go through until the autumn of this year.