Fixed Term Parliaments Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) on introducing this important matter. I am not enormously enthusiastic about his Bill, but this issue ought to be discussed and I am very pleased that he has given us that opportunity today. It occurs to me that there is one Member of this House who might have wished that this Bill was already law by this time last year—the Prime Minister himself. Then, he would not have got into the dreadful mess that he got into in the autumn, and which has so fatally damaged his reputation as a politician. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did not introduce this Bill in order to help the current Prime Minister, but he has raised many points today that the Minister is no doubt looking forward to addressing. This is one of those issues that is very much a question of balance. On the one hand, there are the advantages of the present system's flexibility, some of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, as did my hon. Friends. On the other, there is the enormous political power that the current system gives to an incumbent Prime Minister. As I said earlier, it might be that both the larger parties in this House, which have for the last century formed either the Government or the Opposition—