It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin): his was one of the many excellent speeches given in the past two hours.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and to my co-sponsor, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for joining me. I am also grateful to those Opposition Members who sponsored the debate, although, sadly, neither of them could be here today. As a humble
new Member, I say to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) that I have views too, and I feel that on this subject many of them are mirrored by those outside this place, although I entirely respect his views.
I believe that democracy is best when it is unleashed and untethered and it rampages around the country like some wild beast. If we chain it, as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 does, we neuter democracy because we neuter debate. Interestingly, Lord Grocott is doing the same as we have done by bringing in a Bill to repeal the Act. He told me on the telephone yesterday that his views, and those of many Labour Members, mirrored ours on the Government Benches.
Fixed-term Parliaments tend to produce coalition Governments, rather than minority Governments. This being the first, we are in the experimental phase, but we had no pre-legislative scrutiny whatsoever and strong objections were voiced in the other place. I fear that next time we might have three, four or even five parties trying to form a coalition Government for a fixed term. How long would it take to form that Government, if indeed it ever was formed? We have heard today that the electoral period has been extended from 17 to 25 days. If a coalition is formed, and if we mirror what happened in 2010, we will be looking at a period of two months without a Government.
I add one further possibility. What if either coalition party leader is challenged, which is possible? The parties will have to choose a new leader and the Government discontinue in the meantime—in effect, we do not have a Government. Yet here we are saying that Parliament is important.
In forming a coalition as a consequence of a fixed term, principles are sold. Our Conservative principles or those of the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats are sold in the name of compromise, which is necessary for a coalition to be formed. As I said in a speech on Tuesday, this is why I believe this place has been so devalued. No longer do we have clear blue or red water—I will not use the other colour, which I pointed on Tuesday would be rather inappropriate—so the electorate are not so sure what each party stands for. This is where the weakness in the current coalition system lies and it is where I think a fixed-term Parliament would lead us to. I do not necessarily want to pick holes in the Liberal Democrats, which would be ungracious of me.