Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

To be fair to my hon. Friend, Mr Deputy Speaker, he was speaking to the amendments that we are discussing. He made the assertion that our proposals would suit this particular Government during this particular Parliament, but that is simply not the case. If the Prime Minister wanted to ensure that this Parliament ran for the full five years and that the general election took place on 7 May 2015, he would need to do only one thing—namely, not approach Her Majesty the Queen to seek a Dissolution before that date. We could thereby achieve a five-year Parliament for this Parliament, but we want to make a change to our constitutional processes—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) does not agree with it—to remove from Prime Ministers the ability to choose the date of a general election. The second part of my hon. Friend's question effectively suggested that a sunset provision would be a good thing. Under our democratic system, the public elect Members of Parliament for a term. At the moment, they do not have a choice about when the general election will be; the sole decision about that sits with the Prime Minister. The Bill seeks to give that power to Members of this democratically elected House. I would have thought that my hon. Friend, as a champion of parliamentary control of the Executive, would welcome that proposition.