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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

I am in entire agreement with my hon. Friend, and I am glad that he did not take us back to the local elections in Leeds—I thought that we were at risk of that. I come to the process of the Bill and how we have reached this point. How did we come to consider a fixed-term Parliament? I am not aware that many of my hon. Friends put this proposal in their election addresses—they may have done if they were Liberal Democrats, but not if they were Conservative. It is not a Conservative proposal in any sense. It got into the coalition agreement late at night, in what would have been a smoke-filled room had not the previous Government banned smoking in office spaces. This therefore took place in a smoke-free environment—a healthy and politically correct room—and late at night it was decided that it would be a good idea to shore up the coalition for five years. The political arguments for this Bill are first class, but it changes the constitution—a constitution that has evolved. Pitt the Elder, a Whig Prime Minister—it is always nice in the spirit of coalition to quote the Whigs—talked of the ““genius of the constitution””. Let us invoke that genius, which has let our constitutional processes evolve and develop. This has not been done because the coalition needed some quick fix to make sure that the next election would clash with elections in Scotland and Wales—that is, of course, an inadvertent result of what has happened. The coalition did not come to this agreement with the possibility of extending the life of a Parliament beyond five years. I am sure that all hon. Members have read the note from the Library pointing out that this legislation will not be subject to the Parliament Act if the other place disagrees, because it extends the life of a Parliament by another two months should the Prime Minister, by order, so wish to do. This is an accidental Bill, thought up in the late hours of the night. It takes away that wonderful flexibility that our constitution has had to meet the needs of circumstances and to evolve. One way in which the constitution was beginning to evolve, which the electorate seemed to want, was that a Prime Minister's resignation part way through a Parliament should lead to a general election. When I knocked on doors in my constituency, people did not tell me that they wanted fixed-term Parliaments, the alternative vote or any of that. However, they did ask who had voted for the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). People in North East Somerset of course knew his constituency, because they are a knowledgeable lot. They asked who had elected him to be Prime Minister. Although the constitution is clear that we can change Prime Minister as often as Her Majesty sees fit, the mood of the country is for that constitutional evolution. That is how our constitution works and how it has done for hundreds of years—at least since the Glorious Revolution. Let us hope that it continues to work like that and that this Bill is amended on the Floor of the House out of all recognition.