Exactly; that is a very fair point.
Our own beloved Mark Darcy, a BBC journalist who is really an ornament of the constitution, put it very well when he said that there was a danger under the Act of Parliaments
“oscillating between hyperactivity and torpor” .
We appear to be at the torpid end of this Parliament.
I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I regret that you cannot join us and make a speech.
We recollect your coruscating arguments during the passage of the Bill, but we accept that you are of course now completely neutral.
I just think that five years is far too long. We have experienced a very front-loaded Parliament. The best evidence of that has been the recent explosion in the number of Back-Bench debates, compared with the number in the early part of the Parliament. I welcome Back-Bench debates, but they are taking place not through the kindness of the Government but because there is no majority in the House to do anything that would make a real difference. In my experience, the very best Conservative and Labour Parliaments have been four-year Parliaments, and the very worst have lasted for five years—in particular, our 1992 Parliament and Labour’s 2005 Parliament. Towards the end, five-year Parliaments get weaker and weaker.