My Lords, I very much enjoyed the speech of my noble friend, for whom—I hope he will allow me to say—I have a great deal of affection. I am very interested in the list that he has and will use again; there is great merit in much of it.
I remember the weather on 28 February 1974, and it was shocking—appalling. I think my noble friend said that there was snow where he was; in the constituency where I was working it was solid rain, but I will say that the turnout improved compared to the previous election because it was an election that people thought mattered. The other thing about the weather, referred to by a noble Lord when he talked about the time of year that he would like elections to be held, is that I remember the weather in June 1970—it was gorgeous where I was. As I am about to tell the House on Friday, I cast my first vote in the election of June 1970. It was wonderful weather and it was an election called early by the then Prime Minister—and he lost. That was my first recollection of general elections: you can be very disappointed.
I hope my noble friend will not press his Amendment 8 to a vote, but I would find it difficult to join him if he did, because there is an element of flexibility in this. For more than 100 years, five years has been the standard length of a Parliament, and there is no reason to go beyond that. As he says, in his own experience—he has had a great deal of experience in another place in here—the period between elections averaged about four years. Therefore, without legislating, I think you will find that if you keep the period of five years, in practice events will unfold in such a way as to make it an average of about four years over a period of many Parliaments.