Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

This is a fascinating debate. To pick up on what my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis said, it has been mentioned before in this debate, but it is worth citing what Mr James Callaghan said in the evening after he lost the vote of no confidence. He said: "““Mr Speaker, now that the House of Commons has declared itself, we shall take our case to the country. Tomorrow I shall propose to Her Majesty that Parliament be dissolved as soon as essential business can be cleared up, and I shall then announce as soon as may be—and that will be as soon as possible—the date of Dissolution, the date of the election and the date of meeting of the new Parliament””.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/3/79; col. 589.]" Under the Bill, were it to be passed in this form, Mr James Callaghan would have said, ““I shall now wait for 14 days while I offer the Ulster Unionists tunnels and money, and junior ministerial posts to Mr Bruce Grocott, in the hope that they might then support me””. Should Mr James Callaghan have been of that nature, he could under the Bill have used the 14 days to bribe and cajole to produce another Labour Government with confidence and supply support from the Ulster Unionists and come back 14 days later to say, ““Ha, ha! I can return with a Labour Government and I will hold on until October 1979””. We should ask ourselves: would the public have had greater confidence in Mr Callaghan if he had behaved like that or did they have much greater confidence in him immediately accepting the consequence of what was happening and going to the country? I ask that question because the right honourable Mr Nicholas Clegg says that we are going through all these contortions apparently to increase trust in our parliamentary system, despite the fact that Mr David Laws makes it clear that that is untrue. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard.