Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, I am not here to speak on behalf of these experts. In my closing remarks, I picked up the point made by my noble friend Lord Blencathra that there has been a lot of opinion on this from people who have had experience, including former Cabinet Secretaries and Chief Whips as well as those in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly who favoured five years when given the opportunity to do so. Some of them have indicated that they would quite like five years to be put on a more permanent footing. The evidence suggests that they have had practice and five years is what they have concluded is probably the right period of time. So again I invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.