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Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Here we are in the second week of the great Liberal Democrat benefit sitting with a measure that is even sillier than the ones we brought in during the first week, with another fix from the gerrymander unit at Cowley street—I do not know why they do not just call it Tammany hall and have done with it—to try to fix the constitution to keep the coalition in power. We have all been dreadfully mealy-mouthed about this measure, saying that it is a constitutional measure and that we should consider it seriously and make changes, but we are kidding ourselves. It is not a constitutional measure at all. It is a post-nuptial contract. Here we have two parties in a loveless shotgun marriage that do not really trust each other, so they are bringing in a Bill to make divorce more difficult. That is what it is all about. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) spoke about building trust, but the whole point of this Bill is that they do not trust each other. The Liberal Democrats do not trust the Conservatives—they fear that they will be dumped when they have made themselves sufficiently unpopular by betraying all their principles, all their friends and all their supporters—whereas the Conservatives are afraid that the Liberal Democrats will get cold feet and pull the plug on the coalition because they cannot stand the heat of the cuts, because the alternative vote is defeated leaving them with nothing left to show for the thing or because they want to stop redistribution. Because of that lack of trust, we get this rather silly and unnecessary Bill, and I certainly hope to vote against it tonight. The leader of the Liberal Democrats said that we could be absolutely confident that the courts would not be able to interfere, in the same way as he told us that we could be absolutely confident that the cuts would not damage the poor and would not hurt the north. He said that we could have absolute confidence in all that but I am ceasing to have any confidence in the Deputy Prime Minister and his declarations of absolute confidence. The simple point about the courts intervening is that we do not have in the Bill a definition of a vote of confidence. What is a vote of confidence? The courts could well rule on that. As it has to be certified by the Speaker, the courts could rule on the question of whether the certificate is valid. Most importantly, I am against the Bill because it extends the life of a Parliament. That is the exact opposite of what we need to do. The average Parliament lasts about four years and has done so since the war. It has lasted for three years and eight months if we date it from 1832. Four years was the period envisaged by Asquith when the Septennial Act 1715 was repealed by the Parliament Act 1911. Four years was the period in the Liberal Democrat agenda. The policy paper for the 2007 conference, ““For the People, By the People””, argued:"““Liberal Democrats have long argued that parliaments should last for a fixed term of four years.””" There we are—that is a clear statement. I ask the Liberal Democrats if there is any principle they are not prepared to betray. They have already betrayed their preference for proportional representation in favour of the alternative vote and now they are betraying their preference for four-year Parliaments. Four years was also the term that the Labour party envisaged when it was in our manifesto, although I must admit that I did not read it; I did not even remember that it was in our manifesto. I do not read much of the manifestos but as it was in one, we should have some deference for that, I suppose. Why should we extend the term to five years? Is it because the Government are so afraid that the vandalism that they are doing to the benefit system, with the cuts to welfare, and to the economy will make them so unpopular that they will have to sit things out for five years? Is it because they will not be able to face the people before then? That is the only reason I can think of for extending it to five years. I would like parliamentary terms to be reduced not to four years, which seems to be the opinion of the wiseacres, but to three. We should contract the terms and have triennial Parliaments as was the case at the end of the 17th century before they were extended to seven years.