Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming]

First, I emphasise that all political parties have had members who are responsible for electoral fraud. In Birmingham it has tended to be the Labour party, but that is not to say that any one party is perfect or any one party is necessarily much worse than any other.

I have unusual experience as a Member of the House in that I have drafted election petitions. The best known is the one for Aston; less known is that for Sparkhill, which dealt with issues of personation. When it was passed to some lawyers, they missed the deadline for serving it, and it was never considered in court. So whereas in 2002 it might have been possible to have proven the scale of personation, it was not until the elections of 2004, when there were election petitions in Aston ward and Bordesley Green ward, that he looked substantially at postal vote fraud. To start with, most of the evidence came from the fact that the Labour candidates were found some time in the early morning on an industrial estate in Aston checking that there were three Labour votes on each of the 273 ballot papers because they did not trust each other to mark them with three Labour votes, it being a three-up election, thinking that the person with the most votes gets elected for four years. A number of the ballot papers in the then Springfield ward were cast with only one Labour vote if they were postal votes, so it was reasonable to assume that the Labour candidates could not necessarily trust each other and therefore their reasoning for sitting late in the morning to look at the ballot papers was justified.

In trying to deal with election fraud, the Bill tries to ensure that the people who are on the electoral roll should be there, and that is a good thing to do. What it does not do and where there is a big gap—although I intend this as a probing new clause—is to try to ensure that people cast their own vote. Historically, there has been a tendency at times for there to be a sort of informal proxy. This has gone on for decades; it is nothing massively new. People think that someone is away and somebody else goes to vote for them. That has also turned into other situations where parties cast votes intentionally for people that they do not expect to vote. We have one way of spotting that through tendered votes. For those people who do not know, if someone turns up at the polling station and is told that they have already voted—it could be that the wrong name was marked on the register—they can get a tendered vote, a pink ballot paper, which is put in an envelope, so that if there is an election petition it is possible to consider the tendered votes and see whether they would have made any difference to a narrow election result. The difficulty, as we have seen in Birmingham, is that vans of people can go from polling station to polling station casting a vote in each one. “Newsnight” found out some of the details of that.

Anyone who is interested in these issues must read the full judgment of Richard Mawrey, an electoral commissioner. He has done a number of election courts since, but he was the electoral commissioner who dealt with the Aston and Bordesley Green election petitions. We have to consider how to ensure that elections are honest. We cannot entirely rely on the apparatus of the state to do that. In his judgment at paragraph 150 he says:

“The reaction of the police”—

to the allegations of election fraud—

“can best be summed up by drawing attention to the code name they gave to the complaints of malpractice—Operation Gripe. This indicates better than anything else their view that the whole business was a complete waste of their time and that Mr Hemming and the other complainants were a tiresome nuisance.”

I may be a nuisance at times, but at paragraph 264 he said:

“As set out above, in the course of the campaign the Liberal Democrats asserted on several occasions that the Labour Party candidates and their supporters were cheating. Mr Hemming and his team made their complaints to the police and the police largely ignored them.”

Paragraph 265 says:

“Mr Hemming also complained to Mr Owen, to be told, politely but firmly (and certainly correctly), that the Elections Office could not intervene.”

There are issues there. The elections office has to handle the paperwork of the elections in a way that is seen to be fair. My particular concern at that election was that the 273 arrested ballot papers found their way to be counted, and, most importantly, I as leader of the Liberal Democrats and Mike Whitby as leader of the Conservatives at the time, were not told that 273 ballot papers had been arrested on an industrial estate and found their way into the count. So the idea that one casts a vote and it goes off to an industrial estate, the police arrest it after a little discussion and then take it in is quite strange.

Paragraph 707 says:

“But, when all that is said and done, Mr Hemming was right and his critics were wrong. He said that there was a massive, Birmingham-wide electoral fraud by the Labour Party and there was in fact massive Birmingham-wide electoral fraud by the Labour party. He may have played the part of Cassandra, but like Cassandra his prophecies were true. He emerges from the case with credit which is more than can be said for those police officers who treated his complaints as no more than Operation Gripe.”

But the most important part of the judgment from Richard Mawrey was paragraph 717, which says:

“The systems to deal with fraud are not working well. They are not working badly. The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated.”

With personation, in theory it is possible to appoint polling agents who can stand in the polling station and potentially put the statutory question to people: “Are you such and such a person of such and such address?” If a woman comes in and says, “Yes, I’m Gordon Brown of such and such address,” the fact that that woman—unless she has changed her name by deed pool—is unlikely to be telling the truth is no good reason for the presiding officer not to give her a ballot paper.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting case. Following the incident that he describes, have the police apologised for the way in which they behaved, and have they given any reassurance to him that in future they will treat complaints of electoral fraud seriously?

[John Hemming]

There was no apology. They did start going down a different route, but they then started prosecuting people for offences that were not offences. There was one case where they prosecuted someone for what they thought was postal vote fraud, but they made the mistake of not checking whether the votes were cast to work out whether there was a chance that there was postal vote fraud. Most people indulge in electoral fraud to get more votes and be elected, but if someone assists someone else in filling in the forms for a postal vote and the vote is not actually cast, one can assume that there is no offence. A person was prosecuted for that. There has been no apology for it.

I am more concerned about the fact that we are doing nothing to control personation. I want to draw a distinction between actions that enable the system as a whole to act to prevent personation and actions that enable political parties to do so. Issuing an election petition is very difficult. Again, it is worth reading the judgment. The prosecution in Birmingham took place in the Birmingham and Midland Institute, in a room that could accommodate possibly 300 people, and there were often 200 people there watching the election court’s proceedings. It was the best entertainment in town at the time, and many people who saw it would accept that as a fair description of the situation. Whatever processes are put in, there must be a facility that allows them to be transparent and enables the political parties to be involved in challenging them through an open and transparent judicial process in an election court.

At the same time, it is useful to have processes that allow the police to get involved. In Birmingham it was clear that 4,000 people’s votes were stolen in the Bordesley Green ward. There were three local election votes and one European parliamentary vote, so basically 16,000 votes were stolen. That involved threats to the postman, who was told, “We’ll give you £500 if you give us your box of postal votes or we’ll kill you.” It is an offer you cannot really refuse. One letter box was actually set on fire in an attempt to stop postal votes reaching the electoral office. There was a semi-riot involving 200 people, because obviously when this sort of thing goes on the tension goes beyond what we would normally have in rows about unparliamentary language and people start fighting in the street instead. Those are the sorts of issues that arise.

Business of the House

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I appreciate that the Procedure Committee published its report on our sitting hours only yesterday, but is the Leader of the House aware of the desirability of the Government’s responding to the report soon so that we can have a debate before the summer recess? Will he use his offices to see that a debate on sitting hours, whether in Government time or in Backbench Business Committee time, takes place sooner rather than later?

[Sir George Young]

The whole House is grateful to my right hon. Friend and his Committee for their report on sitting hours. I encourage all hon. Members to read it. The Government will of course seek to make an early response to facilitate the debate to which he has referred. I see an advantage in dealing with the section of the report on Monday to Thursday sitting hours at an early stage. I will report back to him and to the House if time for such a debate can be found before we rise for the summer recess.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman has probably given the subject headings for the submissions he will put to the Procedure Committee. It is not for me to determine the outcome of this inquiry, but I look forward to hearing what the Committee has to say, because all of us have felt for some time that the matter is worth looking into.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is the Deputy Leader of the House aware that the Procedure Committee would be delighted if the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) were to come along and give evidence to us? He is hereby invited to do so.

[Mr Heath]

I am happy to act as a conduit for that invitation, and I hope it will be accepted.

Business of the House

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I wait patiently for questions about next week’s business, but they are pretty hard to find. Let me go through the issues that the hon. Lady touched on.

The Government are consulting on equal marriage, which the Labour party did not consult on, or indeed do anything about, when it was in government for 13 years. The consultation is under way; it has not finished. Along with other issues that involve matters of conscience, it seems to me perfectly proper that this matter should be subject to a free vote on this side of the House, and that is what we plan to do.

We had a statement on Beecroft on Monday. We have also had BIS questions, a large chunk of which were all about Beecroft, and I am not sure that the Leader of the House can usefully add to what has already been said.

The hon. Lady asked about the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which has been published. The Bill, which will be debated when we come back, sets out the Government’s proposals on the subject. Of course the Government will listen to the House if it proposes amendments to the Bill. For her to ask me to rule out any Government amendments is to say that we should be denied the opportunity of listening to the views of the House, including those of Opposition Members, so of course we will be in listening mode on that issue.

On VAT on static caravans, the Chancellor announced a number of measures in the Budget to address anomalies and loopholes. We extended the consultation period on the measures to 18 May, and we are now considering the consultation responses, including the petitions that hon. Members have presented to the House. The Government will respond on the issue of static caravans later in the summer.

On not supporting in the Division Lobbies that which Members may have supported in early-day motions, I would just remind the hon. Lady of the incident with the post office closures in the last Parliament. We tabled a motion that very closely resembled early-day motions that had been signed by Government Members, and then, miraculously, they were not in the Lobby when the Division was called. I therefore think she needs to be cautious about that.

As for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s temper, I am amazed that the hon. Lady has the audacity to raise that, in the light of the somewhat irrational behaviour at times of the previous Prime Minister.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

May we have a debate—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House is getting a little over- excited. First, it is seemly if it does not do so. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Procedure Committee, is an extremely senior Member of the House—one might say he was a cerebral and celebrated figure—who should be heard with courtesy.

[Mr Knight]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am obliged; I did not realise.

May we have a debate on reducing unnecessary animal suffering? Has the Leader of the House seen the recent remarks made by Professor Bill Reilly, the ex-president of the British Veterinary Association? He said that it was “unacceptable” to slit the throats of cattle, lambs and chickens without first stunning them. Given that this unacceptable practice is rife and is even used in cases when the customer does not require it, when are the Government going to take action?

[Sir George Young]

I refer my right hon. Friend to the reply that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) last week. I explained that the Government’s view was that it was much better that an animal be stunned before slaughter, but that there were certain sensitive religious issues involved. There is some evidence that the incidence of non-stunning exceeds that required for religious reasons. I do not recall the exact words that I used a week ago, but I think I am right in saying that I told my hon. Friend that the Government had the matter under review. I will ask the Home Secretary to write to my right hon. Friend to bring him up to date with our proposals.

Business of the House

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

We welcome the new career that the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) is developing as a tipster. It will be interesting to see how well the horses that she has commended to the House actually perform.

The hon. Lady raised—yet again—the subject of the Health and Social Care Bill. It is interesting: we have had three Opposition day debates on the Bill, and I still have not the faintest idea what the Opposition’s policy is on health. Nor, apparently, does the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). He turned up the other day to support the amendment tabled by a Back-Bench Liberal Democrat, but disappeared when the time came to vote on the Labour party’s own motion. Perhaps he had not realised that the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats had ended, some two years ago, in failure. Perhaps he, and indeed the hon. Lady, should heed the wise words of his former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, who wrote today:

“Labour will get back into government by having a better plan for the future, not by opposing changes which are working well.”

[Interruption.] Lord Adonis clearly thinks that they are working well.

The hon. Lady asked about the risk register. As she knows, we are awaiting the detailed judgment of the tribunal before deciding what further action the Government might take.

The police are operationally independent of politicians, and rightly so. The Home Secretary will be at the Dispatch Box on Monday, when she will be happy to answer questions.

As the hon. Lady may have noticed, the Chancellor will be making a Budget statement on Wednesday. I think that the best thing to do is to put to one side the speculation in the papers about what he may or may not do, and then come along on Wednesday and listen to the real thing.

The hon. Lady mentioned child benefit. Is it fair for someone earning £20,000 a year to pay, through his or her taxes, for the child benefit of someone earning five times as much? That is the question that she needs to address. As for growth, she will be aware that the International Monetary Fund has pointed out that growth in this country this year is three times that in France and twice that in Germany.

Finally, the hon. Lady always obsesses about the relationship between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, but when even The Guardian reports, as it does today, that Labour is in “turmoil”, we know something must be going very badly wrong with the Opposition, and when another report uncovers that morale at Labour HQ is

“even worse than the dark days under Brown”,

we have to wonder how bad it has to get before the hon. Lady stops worrying about the coalition and starts to focus more on the chaos in her own party.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

May we have a debate on avoiding false economies? Has the Leader of the House seen the report released this week that states that at the current rate of progress it will take local authorities some 11 years to complete the backlog of road repairs? Is he aware—he ought to be—that potholes are dangerous for cyclists and damage car suspension systems? What more can the Government do to ensure that local authorities complete roadworks diligently and speedily?

[Sir George Young]

As a cyclist, I am all too aware when there is a pothole on my route into the House of Commons. My right hon. Friend may have seen a recent statement by one of the Transport Ministers that said that, following last year’s severe winter, additional resources were made available to local authorities to address the pothole issue, and I think I am right in saying that the resources for local authorities over the next three years are higher than in the preceding three years before we took office. I shall, of course, pass on my right hon. Friend’s concern to the Secretary of State for Transport in order to see what can be done to make my right hon. Friend’s ride around his constituency more comfortable than it clearly is at present.

Code of Conduct

Greg Knight Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

We now come to the debate on the code of conduct and on all-party groups. Motion 5 relates to the report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges on the revised code of conduct, which will be debated together with motion 6, which relates to all-party groups. Mr Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of Mr Charles Walker—

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

And Lorely Burt.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

And Lorely Burt. I call Mr Kevin Barron to open the debate.

Backbench Business Committee

Greg Knight Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for his preamble. In the light of what he has said, why do the Government consider it inappropriate to leave this motion until after the Procedure Committee has reported?

[Mr Heath]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that question. Having already said what a splendid fellow he is, I am happy to address the issue that he raises. We expect the Procedure Committee’s conclusions to be of great value, as they have been on a number of other topics. I want to emphasise that today’s motion is not intended to pre-empt the review—[Interruption.] Well, it simply does not. It makes three changes that need to be made this Session in order to take effect before the next elections for members of the Backbench Business Committee and therefore before the completion of the review. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, those changes arise in part from points made in evidence to the Procedure Committee’s inquiry into the 2010 elections and that Committee itself envisaged changes as regards minority parties being made in advance of the review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

Of course that is the case. These elections will determine the Backbench Business Committee not for the term of the Parliament but for a year. If the Procedure Committee happened to report after the next elections and there was a change to procedure, the elections afterwards could be run on the new system. There was absolutely no need to prejudge the Select Committee report, apart from the fact that it might have resolved matters differently from what the Government wanted.

[Mr Knight]

May I place it on the record that the Procedure Committee will in no way feel inhibited by what is determined today? Does my hon. Friend agree that what the House decides today it can later decide to undo or amend?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s comments. Nobody who knows him will think that this sort of ploy could possibly affect what his Committee does.

I turn to one of the most appalling aspects of today—the whipping on the Conservative Benches. There is no question but that this is House business, and there is no question but that it is Back-Bench business. By convention, such votes should not carry a Whip; they should be free votes. There is no way that the Executive should try to instruct the House how to organise Back-Bench business affairs, but Conservative Members were told last week that we would be on a three-line Whip to vote for this outrageous motion. After protests, the Whips Office reduced it to a one-line Whip. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) laughs, and of course he knows why the Whips Office did that: to keep Back Benchers away from the House. I have received a very nice text from a Member saying, “I’m out working in my constituency. Aren’t the xxx Whips very devious?” That is very true.

After our protests, then, the Whips Office reduced the vote to a one-line Whip, but that is not a genuine free vote, because Members here will still be instructed how to vote. This is wrong, should not be happening and flies in the face of the coalition Government’s pledge to restore trust in Parliament. Even worse, I understand that Ministers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries are on a three-line Whip to vote through this despicable motion. The very people who should have no interest in Back-Bench business are the ones who are being told to vote for the changes. I am more than happy to take an intervention from the Leader of the House if that is not the case. [Interruption.] I see he does not want to intervene. This really is going back to the bad old days.

Business of the House

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman is right that, as the Localism Bill went through Parliament, the Government resisted an embargo on wind farm development within a certain distance from residential units, and we have resisted it subsequently. I will raise his concerns with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Whether to approve applications for wind farms at the exciting locations the hon. Gentleman mentions is a matter for the local authorities. I am sure that they would take on board the support for them that he has just enunciated.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

May we have a debate on making better use of our natural resources? Is the Leader of the House aware that later this year the country could be in the ridiculous situation of having some areas suffer drought while others are awash with water? Is it not time we had a national water grid?

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend will have an opportunity to raise that matter next Thursday. I remind him that in December we published the water White Paper, which sets out a more resilient approach to the water shortages he refers to. Next Wednesday we will debate a Bill that will enable investment in water infrastructure, particularly in London, in order to improve the quality of water and the reliability of supply.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

The Government will respond in due course. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and I generally support the thrust of the Committee’s report, but we will respond in the normal way, shortly after the Hansard Society seminar on e-petitions, which I welcome. That is due to take place on 6 March.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that many of us feel that the Government should be congratulated on introducing for the first time an e-petition system that can trigger a debate in Parliament? However, does he also agree that any new system needs examining, refining and improving in the light of experience? Because of that, will he try to secure a Government response to the Procedure Committee’s report as soon as possible, so that the House can debate this matter sooner rather than later?

[Mr Heath]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee for their work on this matter. No system in the world is incapable of refinement and improvement by looking at it over time and I am grateful for the points he makes. I did not think there was any doubt in what we have consistently said. We have said that e-petitions are eligible for debate once they reach the threshold, not that they will necessarily be debated. The system is working well, but the Procedure Committee has made some fair points on how we can better manage the process in the House. We will certainly respond to the Committee as soon as is appropriate.

Early-day Motions

Greg Knight Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I do not think I can really take any interventions at this point, because of the time.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Heath]

I will give way to the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, because he has a role in taking this matter forward.

[Mr Knight]

Let me place on record the fact that I am here listening to the debate; I am not here as an advocate. I am happy to give an assurance that I will take hon. Members’ views back to the Procedure Committee.

[Mr Heath]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who rather pre-empts the final comment that I was going to make. I was going to ask him and his Committee to take this matter forward. I now know that when I make that request, the answer will be in the affirmative, for which I am grateful.