UK Parliament / Open data

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

The answer is the same as I gave a moment ago to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay—we believe there should be fixed-term Parliaments for the future and that this Parliament should be subject to the same rules, including of course the rules that would trigger an early election. Of course, there is no guarantee that either of the coalition parties will be in power after 2015 and that is why we reject the case that this is somehow our own self-interested political fix. We believe that this ought to be implemented for future Governments, including ones where we may not be in power. It was very interesting that when my noble friend Lord Rennard challenged the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, as to whether, when this Bill is enacted with the five years as proposed, a future Labour Government would amend it to four, he was not able to give a definitive answer that they would. However, it must be recognised, too, that even under fixed terms, Parliaments come under pressure, both in their earlier and in their later years. We have had a number of speeches to that effect. At the beginning of the term, new Governments are understandably keen to start implementing their ideas, but there is increasingly a tension between that and the desire to allow more parliamentary scrutiny. If we go back to the 1970s and 1980s, there was very little pre-legislative scrutiny. We have come under some considerable criticism for not having had more pre-legislative scrutiny in our first year and it is inevitable that we are going to move to having more. If that is the case, it will limit the ability of the Government of the day to bring forward more legislation during the first year of their term of office. Moving to the final year of a term of office, my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry indicated that in his experience five years was right, given all the pressures that were on a Government, in order to get a legislative programme through. There are real advantages, therefore, to five years. I regret that what we have been asked to do in some respects with four years is to fit a quart into a pint pot, with a squeeze at both ends. At the other end of the term, the predictability of the election date may limit some of the hurly-burly of anticipation that up until now has inevitably attended the speculation as to when an election will be called. However, at Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, albeit opposing the principle of fixed-term Parliaments, made it clear that if there were to be a fixed-term Parliament, he thought that a four-year term would not leave enough room for sensible policy-making and a good parliamentary debate before a forthcoming election began to cast what he described as its distorting shadow. The noble Lord’s concern was that if we had a four-year term, it would start to disrupt the parliamentary business as we approach the end of three years. The noble Lord, Lord Butler—who is in his place, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him—has also expressed strong reservations about the principle of fixed terms, and indicated that his experience also lends him to the view that five years would be more effective than four. That experience was shared by my noble friend Lady Stowell, when she was in government as an official. Clearly, if we have four years, it shrinks the time available to Governments to deliver their programme; especially if we are going to have even more pre-legislative scrutiny. Some of the arguments against five years insist that precedent in our own system favours a four-year term. In fact, if we exclude the elections since the war that took place after less than two years, the average, I think, is between four and a quarter and four and a half years. The fact of the matter is that elections that are called at the end of four years are often examples of the Prime Minister of the day seeking to give his or her party a political advantage. It was not that they thought four years was the appropriate length of time, or that the term had come to its natural break, but that it was a judgment for them—as my noble friend Lord Dobbs indicated—as to when they thought they could win. If they thought they could, that was when they went. Indeed, on the second day in Committee, my noble friend Lord Dobbs said: "““I am afraid that these decisions have nothing to do with the astrological significance of the figures four or five. It has simply been a matter of self-preservations””.—[Official Report, 21/3/11; col. 495.]" I think that when an election has been held after four years, it has been because it has been more electorally convenient for the party in power than for any great reasons of measuring accountability or suiting the political biorhythm—a view that I think is shared by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. In holding up this practice as a standard for fixed terms, the advocates of four years are arguing strongly for the very enemy that the Bill is seeking to combat—that of political expediency triumphing over the national interest, with parties holding an election after four years when they see it as expedient to do so. We are trying to take that power out of the hands of the Prime Minister and give it to Parliament. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said at Second Reading, for that reason this is a ““collector’s item”” of a Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, clearly wishes to intervene.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
727 c805-7 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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