Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-30
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I always enjoy following my noble friend Lady Noakes. I frequently disagree with her, and I am afraid I will disagree on certain issues this afternoon, but she is a meticulous parliamentarian and we are very fortunate to have her with us I speak with a certain sense of nostalgia. I made my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. I damned it with faint praise, but of course, as a new Conservative Back-Bencher, always anxious to be compliant, I gave it my support No Parliament can ever bind its successor. What we are doing is not in any sense without precedent and it is entirely acceptable that we should seek to take this unhelpful legislation off the statute book. I would have preferred a straightforward repeal. That I could have supported without any real reservations. After all, in the 2010 general election, all parties but the Conservative Party pledged themselves to fixed-term Parliaments and even the Conservative Party was not outright hostile to them. In 2019, both the major parties —Conservative and Labour—pledged themselves to repeal. That would have been good Of course, in the old system which we are seeking to return to, there was no magic wand for any Prime Minister. I intervened on the noble Lord, Lord Newby, to remind him that 2017 was not exactly a resounding success for our party. I have vivid memories of 28 February 1974, which was the first election at which I had to defend the seat I had won in 1970. If noble Lords remember, there was great controversy as to whether that election should take place. I remember attending and speaking at two heated meetings of the 1922 Committee in another place. In the first meeting, everybody seemed to want a general election on 14 February, apart from Sir Stephen McAdden and me. At the next meeting, we had withdrawn our opposition, knowing we had lost, and the election was called for the 28th. The Prime Minister of the day was roundly criticised for his slogan, "Who governs the country?". "You do", he was told, "That is what you were elected to do on 18 June 1970." We all know what happened: an inconclusive election but a real defeat for Edward Heath, who never came back as Prime Minister While in this context I can accept this Bill and give it my support as far as the abolition of fixed-term Parliaments is concerned, unlike my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley, whose speech I listened to with fascination and much approval, I cannot support Clause 3. William Wragg, the chairman in another place of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, had it right that this is unnecessary. To me, it smacks of the naughty schoolboy who has been rapped on the knuckles by his teacher then pulling the teacher’s chair away so that he falls to the ground. It is an act of spitefulness at worst, humorous revenge at best, but constitutionally, it is unacceptable and wrong. I was glad to hear my noble friend Lord Lisvane—I deliberately call him that—in his excellent speech make some very powerful points in this context If this clause remains in the Bill unamended, like the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I will not support it, because it has dangerous precedence. The reason why I think that is in effect summed up by three reports published by your Lordships’ committees in the last 10 days. I here associate myself very much with some of the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. There is the report from the Constitution Committee, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, will speak later, on the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill. However, the title of the report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee says it all: Government by Diktat: A Call to Return Power to Parliament, as does the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee: Democracy Denied? The Urgent Need to Rebalance Power between Parliament and the Executive. We are at a dangerous crossroads. There is a real danger of Parliament becoming the creature of government. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, talked in his very interesting speech about the separation of powers. We do not have separation of powers such as they have in the United States; here the Executive are drawn from the legislature. Therefore, there is in every parliamentarian’s thinking, "Do I go against my Government? Do I break ranks with the Official Opposition?" The most troubling development of my 51 years in Parliament has been that what was a vocation to public service has become a job. Far too many entering Parliament do so feeling that they will fail if they do not get on to the Government Front Bench. There is that dichotomy and tension. In that tension, it is easy for a Government to try to use Parliament rather than be accountable to it. There is an enormous difference between those two states We should never forget, in the immortal words of Edmund Burke, that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We in Parliament have a duty to be eternally vigilant, to hold the Government to account. We in this House, quite rightly, have very limited powers; we can seek only to ask people to think again. However, while I accept the basic premise of this Bill without opposition, Clause 3 is fraught with danger. When we come to Committee, we must ask the other place to reflect on it and what it implies, and to think again.