Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and his distinguished collaborators have, as ever, tabled very interesting, very seductive, amendments. I examined them with great care because I respect their expertise. Reluctantly, I believe the amendments are flawed. The purpose of the Bill is to do one very simple thing: to remove from the Prime Minister—the leader of a political party—and, by extension, from the governing party, the right to time elections for their own political convenience. I give credit to the present Prime Minister: he has been the first Prime Minister to accept the logic of that position. Hitherto, Prime Ministers—leaders of political parties—have been able to look at the polls and see if they look good in order to be able to say yes to an early general election or no to postponing it. The Government’s objective is to remove that question of when elections should be held from routine partisan political advantage and its consideration. After all, that is already the case in local government; it is the case in the devolved assemblies and parliaments throughout the United Kingdom. This Parliament has insisted that that should be the case, and clearly that is right. This Parliament has recognised in primary legislation time and again that elections are the mechanism by which political parties are held to account. It surely cannot be right, then, that any one party or collection of parties should be able to contrive to time the election for a moment which is propitious for their own advantage. That is the clear principle and objective of this Bill. I invite your Lordships to look very carefully at Amendment 25 in this group. This would undermine the central objective of the Bill by setting up a routine for Governments to instruct their newly elected majorities in the Commons after 2015 as to whether they particularly fancied a fixed-term Parliament or not—for their own party advantage, not in the interests of good governance. There would be an immediate return to the worst feature of prime ministerial prerogative. If the Bill were amended, it would be not a fixed term but a semi-fixed term, subject to the machinations and inclinations of the Prime Minister and party leader of the day, the exact opposite of what the Bill seeks to achieve and what the other place has already voted to do. This Bill is already more flexible than some of us would like. I would favour a superglue fix in the fixed-term Parliament, without extensive opportunities for early Dissolutions, but I accept that a sensible middle way has been achieved. There are already, as we have previously debated, two substantial escape hatches in the Bill allowing for early elections: one where there is a two-thirds majority in the Commons for an early election and one where there is a simple majority vote of no confidence, but no alternative Government come forward within 14 days and receive the confidence of the House of Commons. We have already downgraded the fix to something no more adhesive than Sellotape. The amendments take us even further down the scale. They would turn the Bill into the Blu-Tack Bill or the Post-it note Bill and would not be a fix at all. If we favour fixed-term Parliaments—I was very interested to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, say earlier that he and his party still do—we should reject these amendments because they simply put the status quo, where there is no fixed term and it is left to the party leader, back into law. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, quite rightly reminded your Lordships that no Parliament should be able to bind its successor, and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, joins me in thinking that that is absolutely right. If there is a completely new situation in a new Parliament, of course the long-standing current position will continue, and it continues under this Bill. This Bill does not wipe that away. The position is still exactly as it has been for many hundreds of years. We cannot restrict future Parliaments in that respect, and therefore I suppose it could be said that the amendment is superfluous because in due course, if another Parliament decided to take a different view, it could legislate so to do. The principle of parliamentary sovereignty is not to say that one Parliament cannot make law which will continue to have effect after it has left office. In the past, as we all know, Bills have very often set targets for future Governments. I recall that the previous Government wanted to legislate for future Governments to reduce the deficit by 50 per cent in four years. That was, in a sense, trying to commit a future Parliament. The Climate Change Act, which spent many hours in your Lordships' House, set carbon emissions targets that are deliberately binding on future Governments, although I suppose it could be said that they do not bind Parliament as such. This Bill is similar in its effect in that it takes power away from the Government and leaves it with Parliament. In that sense, it binds Governments, and Prime Ministers in particular, by giving power and flexibility to Parliament. This group of amendments does the opposite, in that it allows a Government to veto a fixed term which does not suit its party advantage. That would surely be a retrograde step. Allowing such a veto is not necessary to maintain the principle that Parliaments do not bind their successors because Parliament could not and will not be bound by this Bill in perpetuity. A future Parliament could amend the Act if it wanted. Surely we should not legislate now for Governments to be able to wriggle out of fixed terms just because it is in their party-political interests to do so. That is the crucial distinction between the Bill as brought forward by the Government and this group of amendments. Parliament should set out now what we think are the constitutional principles now and in the future. Surely in this House we are not seriously arguing that Governments should be given the opportunity regularly to manipulate Parliament, after every election, into choosing whether or not to be subjected to a fixed-term rule. The Bill as drafted provides for a constitutional lock on the length of Parliaments, to take politics out of election timetables. That is its purpose, and it is a purpose I strongly support. By contrast, I fear that the amendments add more politics to election timetables. Imagine the party pressures immediately after a general election when the country and the parties have been subjected to extraordinary partisan argument and controversy. We would be right back into the simple party-political advantage game immediately after that peculiarly partisan situation. On that basis, however seductive the amendments and however distinguished the authors, the amendments, though doubtless very well intentioned, are flawed and I hope your Lordships will reject them.