I apologise to the House that, because I have been in Committee Room 10 launching the call for evidence on setting up a national strategy for acquired brain injury, I am afraid I was not able to hear the wonderful speeches that doubtless came from those on the Front Bench—well, on the Opposition side anyway.
I completely agree with what the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) has just said. Yes, I think the people of this country are crying out for a Government who can actually govern. They still were after the general election, and they certainly are at the moment. Yes, of course, the Prime Minister is buffeted, and I think the Prime Minister should be buffeted a bit more, to be honest. What I do not understand is that this is the tiniest, most minimalist check on government that one could imagine. It simply means that a Government, which by definition already has a majority of Members of the House of Commons, should be required to come to the House of Commons to get a vote through to have a general election. It is absolutely minimal.
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In nearly every instance, the Opposition will, of course, vote in favour of having a general election, for the obvious reason that we want to replace the Government. It would be a very cowardly Opposition who would vote against an early general election. Personally, I think five years is far too long. Our five-year rule is about the longest anywhere in the world, and I think it should be four years. In many countries in the world it is three years. I am in favour of having general elections more frequently, and in nearly every instance, the Opposition will want an early general election. However, the problem
with the way the Government have constructed this provision—and this was a problem in the past—is the “good chaps” theory that presumes that everybody will be a good chap. Historically, it would have been a chap, but it would be a good person.
If Edward VIII had remained as monarch through the second world war and thereafter, and was working with Neville Chamberlain, I can perfectly well imagine that they might have come to very different sets of decisions about whether there should or should not be general elections, because I do not think that they were good chaps. I can easily imagine a time when a Prime Minister would lie to the monarch about why they wanted a dissolution of Parliament. The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) who chairs the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, said that the electorate can always deal with that and can see through a politician doing something surreptitious, but I am not sure that is always true. Indeed, I can imagine plenty of nefarious reasons for holding an early general election, either because a Government know of something coming up that the public do not know about, or a set of events that is likely to come round the corner that the Government want to keep hidden from others. That is why I believe we cannot simply have a law that presumes that everybody will always be a good chap in the future.