Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

My Lords, during the passage of this legislation it has been evident that the Government have been prepared to consider and, indeed, to support amendments which improve the provisions of the Bill. This Bill has been refined and improved by the scrutiny to which it has been subjected both in this House and in the other place. Most notably in this House, we worked with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the amendment in his name, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the distinguished former Speakers, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, to bring forward a new version of Clause 2. We also implemented the recommendation made by your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. However, we have also consistently opposed amendments which would undermine what we believe to be the fundamental purpose of the Bill. The Bill has now been scrutinised at length and there remains one outstanding issue to resolve: whether there should be a sunset provision. This House has now twice inserted a sunset provision, while each time the other House has voted to remove it. The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, seeks to revitalise the amendments to achieve that, reintroduce them to the Bill and impose them on the other place for a third time. The Government agree with those in the other place who oppose the sunset clause—indeed, it has been described as a sunset and sunrise clause—and I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I briefly repeat our objections. The purpose of the Bill is to remove the Prime Minister’s power to ask for a general election at a time that is most politically advantageous for his or her party. As has been expressed in our debates, a number of your Lordships believe that the Bill is simply a ““fix”” for this coalition, but I assure the House that that is not the case. The Government believe that there should be fixed terms and that it should be for the House of Commons to decide on the timing of an early general election and not a Prime Minister. I also remind your Lordships that the 2010 manifestos of both my party and the Labour Party included a pledge to established fixed-term Parliaments. In his speech when visiting the Scottish Parliament in May last year, less than 72 hours after taking office, the Prime Minister made clear how significant a transfer of power this is, remarking that he was the, "““first Prime Minister in British history to give up the right unilaterally to ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament. This is a huge change in our system, it is a big giving up of power … I have made that change. It’s a big change and a good change””." I know that a number of noble Lords agree with that assessment. Indeed, at Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, remarked that this Bill is something of a collector’s item as it is an example of the Government surrendering a significant power to Parliament. My noble friend Lady Stowell also remarked that the Bill will ensure that the Government and the Opposition must face the electorate on a set date whatever way the opinion polls are pointing. In other words, the Bill creates a level playing field and will ensure that the electorate are not left waiting in limbo for a Prime Minister to decide when to call an election. If this House were to support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I believe that it would be reintroducing exactly the kind of politicking that the Bill seeks to end. If each new Parliament had to resolve whether or not to serve for a fixed term—I understand that under the terms of the amendment it would be able to decide that at any time during the lifetime of a Parliament—that decision would inevitably be subject to political intrigue and made in a partisan way. Should a future Parliament wish to move away from fixed terms, it would be free to do so by either amending or repealing the legislation—the way in which most Acts of Parliament are treated if a Government wish to overturn them. Such a constitutional change is no small matter but one that should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, as this Bill has been. By contrast, the sunset amendments would switch fixed terms on and off like a light switch. Parliament would default to non-fixed terms if a simple resolution failed to be tabled or if the two Houses could not agree on the matter. In our view, it is clearly not appropriate for constitutional legislation to be applied or disapplied simply as a result of passing or failing to pass, or indeed failing to table, a resolution. I know that the members of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee had misgivings about the Bill. However, in their recent report, The Process of Constitutional Change, they emphasised the need for proper scrutiny of constitutional reforms. One of their conclusions stated: "““We stress the importance of proper parliamentary scrutiny of all bills, but we do not recommend that any new parliamentary procedures such as super-majorities should apply to significant constitutional bills””." This legislation has been subject to considerable scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament. I rather suspect that if the Government had introduced in the original Bill the kind of provision that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, seeks to insert, the Procedure Committee might have given it pretty short shrift. I do not believe that these sunset amendments would stand up to the scrutiny that one would expect if Parliament were to make an important constitutional change. They would take us into uncharted constitutional waters. They assume that it would be possible for the Prime Minister to regain the option of asking the monarch to dissolve Parliament. However, by failing to provide for the prerogative power to dissolve to be reinstated, we could be left in a position where neither the rules in the Bill nor the previous prerogative powers had effect. Indeed, it is not immediately clear whether it is possible for a prerogative power to be reinstated. Normally, once statute has ““occupied the field”” of the prerogative, the prerogative lapses and it is a long-standing judicial principle that new prerogatives cannot be created. I know that many of your Lordships who supported the sunset amendments have genuine concerns about the Bill and about the concept of fixed-term Parliaments. I respect the views that have been expressed with great passion in a number of our debates. I accept that moving to a fixed-term Parliament is a significant change. Although I believe that this is a change for the better, as it transfers power from the Executive to Parliament, I acknowledge that it is a significant reform and that such reforms can often cause angst. That is why the Government have brought forward an amendment in lieu of the amendments to sunset the Bill. It provides that the Prime Minister must make arrangements to set up a committee to review the operation of the legislation in 2020. Those arrangements would require the committee to consider the operation of the Act and, if appropriate, to make recommendations for its repeal or amendment. This would introduce a statutory requirement for post-legislative scrutiny, ensuring that the reservations that noble Lords have expressed could be considered again once we had real experience of the effects of the Bill. That is why we propose conducting the review in 2020, when we can ensure that the committee’s scrutiny is informed by the experience of one Parliament whose length is fixed from beginning to end. A majority of the members of the committee would be Members of the other place, reflecting both the primacy of the other place and the fact that they would have contested elections whose timing was determined by the Bill. Nevertheless, the amendment still leaves open the possibility of Members of your Lordships’ House sitting on the committee. I believe that this will ensure that the committee’s deliberations benefit from the wealth of experience and expertise on constitutional issues that resides in this Chamber. The amendment gives categorical reassurance that the legislation will be subjected to full post-legislative scrutiny. I hope that noble Lords will agree that this is a much better solution than the sunset and sunrise provisions, which would lead to a great deal of uncertainty with voters not knowing the length of the Parliament they were electing, which could leave the statute book in some form of disarray. I close by reflecting briefly on the role of this Chamber, and in doing so I can do no better than to quote the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. During our debate in June on the proposed reforms to your Lordships’ House the noble Lord said: "““The House of Lords can and does suggest revisions of draft legislation, but it cannot in the end enforce those revisions against the will of the House of Commons. We are a revising Chamber and a debating Chamber, and valuable in both functions, but we cannot prevail against the House of Commons if it wishes to insist. The House of Commons is sovereign in the matter of law-making””.—[Official Report, 22/6/11; col. 1257.]" Noble Lords have raised with the other place the matter of a sunset provision on two occasions. The other place has now twice sent us a clear message that it does not wish for a sunset provision, both times by a substantial majority. If your Lordships again insist on including sunset clauses, we would again be challenging the clearly expressed will of the elected Chamber. We believe that it would be wrong to ask the elected House to reconsider this measure for a third time, yet in this amendment in lieu the other place is providing a compromise that will ensure that the Bill is subject to post-legislative scrutiny, but without the undesirable consequences and uncertainty that come with sunset amendments. I therefore urge noble Lords to accept the compromise put forward by the other place in this amendment and not to insist on the sunset amendments. I beg to move. Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A) Moved by