Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, I have listened to the discussions today—and indeed on this subject—with anything but joy in my heart. I have been struck by the contribution that this Bill is making to the pile of legislation that this coalition Government have already brought to Parliament and which we are still ploughing through. The Attlee Government at one time had the record for the number of Bill pages the legislation presented in one year—2,288. I am sorry to say that the Thatcher Government some years later outstripped that with 2,581. My fear is that the present Administration may well be running well ahead of that. It is not only for that reason that I am very unenthusiastic about the Bill—all the more so when I see the problems that we are now getting deeper and deeper into. I shall comment on those quickly. I respect the extent to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has taken part in well considered detail in all the discussions. However, his last point does not take account of the fact that the proposed new clause moved by my noble friend Lord Cormack specifies in clear terms that the provisions are beyond doubt to be recognised as no-confidence motions. Moreover, they are so cast that they do not impose any real burden of judgment on the Speaker at all. He is certifying something that is as plain as a pikestaff as already set out. Even so, I commend the provisions in the proposed new clause as being better than those in the Bill, but I wonder whether we need to be going through any of this at all. The attempt to define in detail what it has to fulfil reminds me of the task of definition and how difficult that is. It is now 15 years since I chaired the steering committee of the Tax Law Rewrite Project. We were engaged in the task of rewriting, reclassifying and redefining almost everything on the existing tax statute book. I know from that experience how harsh it is. We really need not put ourselves into this morass. The impact of the no-confidence motion has always been recognised. I cannot think of a past example in which somebody has repudiated the attempt to dissolve a Parliament because of the passage of a no-confidence resolution. You can sometimes get into great mistakes by trying to define too much in too much detail too often. I have no enthusiasm for the fixed-term Parliament proposition, but, if we have it, I do not see the need for this kind of detailed definition. Let me go one stage further back. We have survived many decades and a whole series of varying circumstances, but without any equivalent of the fixed-term Parliament provision. On different occasions, the Prime Minister, the nation and Parliament have had to make up their own minds as to whether the circumstances being exercised or exploited have been properly reacted to. This has worked. I hope that I may not astonish the House still further by drawing attention to a completely different episode in my past. I found myself in Mumbai in the Indian state of Maharashtra at a time when the governor—who most of us will know—was considering the circumstances in which he would choose the winner of the next election. The situation that he faced was not a two-party competition, but a three-party competition, between the Congress Party, the BJP and a third party which was operating in semi-partnership with the BJP. He had to decide on what basis a victory was to be judged and which of the winners he was to invite to form the next Government if it came to that. The point is that he spent an entire evening with me discussing the precedents facing Her Majesty in the 19th century in handling quarrels between the two major parties and the Irish as the third party. He found his study of those precedents valuable in guiding him to judge what might or might not emerge. It is easy to laugh and ask, ““What on earth is Lord Howe up to, asking us to apply our attention to Indian constitutional precedents?””. However, it is a serious point; the governor was building upon the experience that has enabled us to recognise a decision of no confidence. It is more clearly specified in the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. However, I doubt we need any of it at all. I doubt whether we need to have a fixed-term Parliament. It might be a security guarantee for a coalition, which we are not very accustomed to. I cannot now invite us to revisit the Second Reading of this Bill. It is here. We have to try to keep it as simple and as straightforward as possible and to that extent the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Cormack is better than the alternative. I am not very happy with either of them. However, I do not think that we will gain much profit by examining the detail to that extent. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, pointed out, conventions can be very valuable. Conventions enable us to decide which way in the end to go, in the light of our past experiences. I suggest we approach this much more safely and wisely upon the basis of conventional judgments in the light of our experience as parliamentarians over a very long period. It is upon that basis that I do not have much enthusiasm for any of the provisions in this Bill. The one to which my name is attached—though not much of a qualification —is the most sensible so far. Upon that basis I commend it as being the least unattractive of what we have before us.