Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I believe that earlier this week the Prime Minister described himself as a, ““Pragmatic liberal conservative Eurosceptic””—he used different arrangements of those words in different arenas, as is his wont. In addition, the amendment presumes that not only this Parliament, but a second one will run for a full five years. If that was not the case, choosing to specify dates in June and November 2020 would be particularly bizarre, as they might fall two years into another Session. This is where the following statement by Lord Armstrong of Ilminster is correct, although I confess that I do not quite understand the first bit:"““It is all Lombard Street to a China orange that the time will come when a premature Dissolution would be to the manifest benefit of the country””.——[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 July 2011; Vol. 729, c. 1088.]" I think that that is true. If we consider the recent history of the United Kingdom, we see that even on occasions when the Government had a decent majority, such as in 1964 and 1974—although the latter situation was more complicated—they decided to hold a new election because they felt that they needed a mandate to deal with a specific set of issues that had not arisen at the previous general election. I believe that that will happen again and that it will be in the interests of Parliament to have the greatest degree of flexibility to allow it to happen, if not to encourage it to happen. That is why this amendment, in trying to entrench not just one fixed term, but two—in the interests of the coalition rather than the country—is misguided. As I said, the amendment adds nothing because post-legislative scrutiny, a fixed part of the way in which we carry out our business, will apply to this legislation. The Minister, charming as he is, tried to assert that fixed-term Parliaments are used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as in relation to local government elections and so on. However, these do not seem to have been very fixed in the past few years. Indeed, in the short time that he has been in power he has already changed the term for the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the local government elections in Northern Ireland. Now the Government have just decided that there will not be a fixed term for the police commissioners, because the first term will be slightly shorter than the second one, as the Government are not going to be able to get their legislation through in time to have elections next May and so the first elections will take place next November. So I am profoundly sceptical even about the ability of the hard-line fixed-termers, such as him, to deliver a fixed-term Parliament, because of the way in which politics works. I wish to make a few comments about the specifics of the amendment. It states:"““A majority of the members of the committee are to be members of the House of Commons.””" I do not believe that the Government consulted anyone in the Opposition on this amendment. I am sure that had the Minister done so, he would now be leaping to his feet to defend himself—it appears, therefore, that he has not sought a consensus on this constitutional change. If consultation had taken place, we might have made some suggestions about how to constitute such a committee. It might have been better to state from the outset that it should involve Members of the House of Commons. I think that we should return to the practice of the 15th and 16th centuries—I am sure I have one hon. Member on my side here—which was that Joint Committees of both Houses should have two Members of the House of Commons for every Member of the House of Lords. I admit that that was at a time when there were perhaps 60 or 70 Members of the House of Lords and 480 or so of the House of Commons, whereas they are getting towards having double the number we have in this House. None the less, while this is a democratically elected House and that is not, it would make more sense for the majority from this House to be 2:1. I note en passant that one Member of the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform—not from the Opposition side of the House—pointed out that having such a large number of members of a Joint Committee makes it very difficult to do serious business. It is quite difficult with large Select Committees, but with 24 or 26 members of a Joint Committee of both Houses, it is phenomenally difficult to make progress.