Fixed Term Parliaments Bill

The hon. Lady's remarks are on the record to haunt her in future decades. A point against the present system is that it favours richer parties, which can raise funds to fight general elections more than once every four or five years. There may be something in what the hon. Lady says, but only because of the unfortunate way in which we fund political parties in this country. The second reason the present system should be got rid of is that it interferes with good government. It is said that fixed-term systems produce a political cycle in which Governments cause pain—necessary pain, they would say—in the first part of their term, but move to pleasure in the second part. At least that cycle is obvious to the electorate. In a non-fixed term system, things are worse because in effect we have a convention of four-year Parliaments, with all the disadvantages of a fixed term, but with the possibility of periodic panics where the idea that an election might in the offing leads to immobility in government. It might not be a bad thing if the Government were to do less, so perhaps immobility might be a good thing in some circumstances, but it is not good if it prevents the Government from working on particular projects. I have one specific example with which I was involved last summer. The Climate Change Bill got through a Joint Committee in July and was supposed to appear well before the new Session of Parliament. It was supposed to be debated extensively in this House early in the new year. As far as I can tell, no work at all was done on the Bill during the summer; the whole process was massively delayed. It has gone through the other place, but has yet to appear in this place. Having a system of occasional, months-long speculation about whether there will be an election leads to stop-start, boom-and-bust politics. It would be much better to have a regular rhythm. The intervention from the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) was interesting, because another disadvantage of the present system—I am being stared at by a number of Whips at this point—is that it adds to the Government's power over their Back Benchers. The threat to recalcitrant rebels that if they vote the wrong way, they might bring the Government down, leading to a general election, has been heard recently in our political lives. The general election gives the ruling party an interesting threat to make to its own Members—that they might find themselves not selected for the subsequent election.