Fixed Term Parliaments Bill

When I was a member of the Government, I did not know the date of the general election until after everyone else seemed to know. When the hon. Gentleman says that only the Government know, perhaps he means that only the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's closest advisers know. I am not sure that that addresses the issue. Under such a system, everyone would know that there was to be an election on a fixed date in four years' time, but only the Government would have the resources to manipulate things to their advantage. I am thinking particularly of Government propaganda. The amount of money that the Government spend on advertising has been shooting up, and one can imagine them organising their advertising budget in the three or six months running up to the fixed election date. They would have an even greater advantage under such a system than they have under the present system. It is possible for the Prime Minister to take a raincheck after local elections, in May, and decide whether to have a general election in June. That happened twice in the 1980s, and reflected the opinion at that time. I am not sure that it would work to change the system in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests on the basis that it would make things fairer for everyone. I also have a difficulty with the claim that the Bill would promote good governance by ending stop-start cycles and boom and bust. I wonder how consistent that is with the policy of the hon. Gentleman and his party of wanting proportional representation, which would make it much less likely that we would have a strong, single-party Government. The likelihood of having a strong, single-party Government—if that is what he is keen to have—would be more undermined by a PR system than it would be helped by the Bill.