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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). The style, tone and content of his speeches are always worth listening to, even though we may not always agree with his analysis. Like many Labour Members, I have not always been in favour of fixed-term Parliaments, but over a long period in politics I have come to understand the reason for them. I always found the excitement of the prime ministerial prerogative enticing and, over the years, we have always been able to persuade ourselves that the argument for it was the overwhelming one. I also remember James Callaghan going to the TUC and singing his famous ditty, ““Waiting at the church””. At the time, I recognised that his political party was on a state of alert, but the rug was pulled from beneath us in October 1978. The argument against fixed-term Parliaments has always been about political advantage but, as we have heard, there has never been a political disadvantage in having fixed terms for local authorities. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said, the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive also operate within a fixed-term context. Given that experience, some of the arguments against the political prerogative of the Prime Minister can be overwhelming. It is not whether or not there is a prerogative to call an election that gets a Government re-elected; it is about the performance and credibility of the political parties during any election, be it at the end of a fixed term or not. So having undergone this Pauline conversion on the principle, I cannot begin to describe my disappointment at this Bill. The Deputy Prime Minister told us, in one of those extravagant flourishes of which he is so fond, that the electoral reforms that he was presenting to us—over the past two weeks, as it turns out—would be the greatest reforms since 1832, never mind the other suffrage legislation in the 19th century, the introduction of votes for women in the 20th century, the reforms removing the financial powers from the House of Lords, or indeed the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies by the last Labour Government. This was to be his Great Reform Bill. Yet what we have before us is a Bill that is being rushed through with no opportunity to consider it properly or to deal with its implications. Professor Robert Hazell of University College London's constitution unit said about that approach in his written evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that the Bill had been"““prepared on an extraordinarily rushed timetable. It was introduced with no prior consultation, no Green or White Paper. Nor has time been allowed for pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.””" According to both the Clerk of the House and the Chairman of the Select Committee this Bill was ripe for pre-legislative scrutiny, and such scrutiny could have sorted out some of the issues raised today. We must ask ourselves why the Bill has been rushed through, as there is ample time for pre-legislative scrutiny. The coalition has already said that it intends to stay with us for five years. Unless its confidence is disguising an uncertainty as to whether it will survive for that long, the Prime Minister has laid out the ground rules for this Parliament: we are here for the duration. Why was there no Green or White Paper? Why are some Liberal Democrats, who wanted to subject everything to pre-legislative scrutiny when in opposition, not pushing harder for this Bill to receive such scrutiny? Surely a minimum of 12 weeks would not scupper the Bill, undermine the principles or erode support. Surely the Government have more confidence in their proposals than that. The establishment of a Scottish Parliament was linked to a debate in this House, a White Paper and a referendum, and a consensus on the proposals was built up. We heard last week that we will have a referendum on the alternative vote. Why are we to have a referendum on AV but not one on fixed Parliaments? Surely the two votes could have been linked. Also, why is reform of the House of Lords being taken slowly yet this reform is being rushed through? As other Members have said, constitutional Bills are not straightforward. I was astonished to hear the Deputy Prime Minister saying that this is a short Bill. It may be a short Bill, but, as others have pointed out, it is long on implications. We do not know whether this will be the case, but we could find ourselves with a conflict between the courts and the House of Commons. We needed to have a discussion about that. We heard from the Deputy Prime Minister today that there might be options to delay, but the only example he gave was the delay of the local government elections in 2001 because of foot and mouth disease. What will the criteria be for assessing whether the Prime Minister should exercise the right to delay? Also, although it has been said that we will have ample opportunity to discuss the Bill and change it over two days of debate in this House, that is no substitute for a proper discussion of, and investigation into, the ramifications of this constitutional Bill. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said—he will be astonished that I have now mentioned him twice in my contribution—the issue of the clash with the elections for the devolved Parliament and Assemblies should not be underestimated. That is nothing to do with the intelligence of the electorate; it is to do with the democratic integrity of those Assemblies and that Parliament. They have their own democratic remit and integrity, and we should not undermine that by overlaying our elections on top of theirs. Frankly, this is a dog's dinner of a Bill. I have seen some dog's dinners in government, but this one takes the biscuit. [Laughter.] The dog biscuit. It would have been a far better Bill if the Deputy Prime Minister had listened to the advice of wiser heads than his own. Frankly, the Deputy Prime Minister is no Lord Grey; he is no Whig reformer. He needs to go back to the drawing board, and he needs to ensure that the Bill that comes before this House on Third Reading is far better than the one in front of us today.