Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I join the consensus of concern. I agree with my noble friend Lady Donaghy that this is essentially a women’s issue. I join, too, with the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, in praising the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I have long admired her tenacity and the way in which she has fought for human rights abroad in an even-handed way, be it for Muslims in Burma or Christians in South Sudan. She is no less keen in promoting human rights at home, as is shown by her persistence in bringing forward this Bill after the failure in 2012.

As she has pointed out, there is a danger of vulnerable people being misled as a result of a misunderstanding of the relationship that they are forming. Contrary to their beliefs, their so-called marriage ceremony may be of no legal standing in this country, and all too late at the time of their divorce they find that they are without remedy. For example, Islamic religious weddings cannot be recognised if they take place abroad, but of course a licence can be obtained, just as for non-conformist churches. Aurat, the women’s rights organisation, found in its case studies on Muslim women living in the West Midlands that around 90% who said that they were married were not actually in marriages recognised by our law. The Times of 3 July stated that it is considered that as many as 100,000 couples in Britain are estimated to be living in Islamic marriages not recognised by UK law.

My experience, both as a long-term constituency MP and as a barrister whose practice included some family law, gave me experience of women who came to the UK to marry, often from traditional societies, who accepted without question that the marriage was legally valid in the UK. Often they lacked adequate language skills, were timid and subject to community pressure, and would remain ignorant unless properly advised. The problem now appears to have been recognised by the Home Secretary, who said in March this year:

“There is evidence of women being ‘divorced’ under Sharia law and left in penury, wives who are forced to return to abusive relationships because Sharia councils say a husband has a right to ‘chastise’, and Sharia councils giving the testimony of a woman only half the weight of the testimony of a man”.

Surely there is a danger of a parallel legal system being created. Women should not be subject to that sort of pressure to submit and not pursue their rights under our law. It is therefore all the more surprising that there was such a weak response from the Government in 2012: that every woman has access to her rights under the law of the land. We look forward to a more positive statement from the Minister this morning. I accept that in their Written Answer of 24 September the Government have now conceded that,

“Sharia councils may be working in a discriminatory and unacceptable way”,

and have undertaken to commission a full and independent review. I say in passing that I hope the review will not be of Chilcotian length and will have very clear terms of reference.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Bill will receive a Second Reading, that the question of the legal validity of marriages will be assured, that the principles against our own law—giving more weight to a man than to a woman, intestacy and so on—will be examined and that if these key procedural principles of English and Welsh law are not fulfilled, the proceedings can be struck out. If these practices are not stopped, not only will they continue but they are likely to be extended. I therefore welcome the fact that the Government have now changed their position and recognised that there is a real problem. The principle of equality before the law should be upheld. I trust that the terms of reference of the proposed review will be sufficiently wide to encompass all the concerns expressed so well by noble Lords in this debate.

EU: Interpretation and Translation in Criminal Proceedings

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

Has it gone up since the scheme was implemented? Yes, it has, because the scheme implements a single supplier that will pay interpreters less than they were being paid on an ad hoc basis. That combination of greater discipline in where and when interpreters are hired and at what fee is not likely to be welcome to the interpreting community. That I understand. But it was the previous Administration who initiated an inquiry into the efficiency and effectiveness of the old interpreter system. We have readily acknowledged that this new system has had teething problems, but there is no ministerial interest or MoJ interest in having questions such as this time and again about performance. The supplier has contracted to a high-quality performance, and we intend to keep it to that.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

How is the performance of that supplier adequately monitored? Is there an independent monitoring system?

[Lord McNally]

There is not an independent monitoring system—there is a client. We are the client, and we do not intend to pay good money for a shoddy service. As I have just said, as the client we brought this in because we intended to try to make substantial savings for the taxpayer on a system that we believed was slipshod and expensive in its running. When the new system gets bedded down, we hope that it will give high quality. The monitoring is done by the department concerned, the MoJ, and we intend to carry out our responsibilities to make sure that the taxpayer gets value for money.

Prisoners: Voting

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

One reassuring thing is that I am not aware of any party represented in this House that is looking for us either to withdraw from the convention or to see it break up. My noble friend is right: we are looking to see whether we can put forward a proper and sensible programme of reform for the court. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor spelled out our agenda, as it were, in a speech in Turkey a few months ago, and we will be taking that agenda forward when we take up the chairmanship of the Council of Europe in November.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Does the Minister agree that while there may be a case for asking for an extension of time while awaiting the Grand Chamber judgment in the Scoppola case, which also involves prisoners’ rights, and a case for negotiating with the court on the broad margin of appreciation allowed in the Hirst case, there is no case whatever for defying the court, as a number of Members of the other place seem rather keen to do, particularly at a time when the UK will assume the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers in November? What sort of precedent would that give to defaulting members such as Turkey and Russia?

[Lord McNally]

The noble Lord makes the key point in all this. It looks rather macho to say that we are going to defy the court, but one of the real benefits of the convention over the past 60 years has been that it has levered up respect for human rights right across Europe and continues to do so. If I, any of my noble friends, or any member of the Opposition were to meet marginal observers of human rights and put pressure on them, our words would not carry much weight if they were able to say, “Well, when it got tough for you to accept the decisions, you did not accept them”.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, that the union is threatened, and has been for some time, by devolution. Once you start the process of devolution, it becomes a ratchet, with more and more powers then transferred, in the case of Wales, to the devolved Assembly. That is a very good reason for not supporting the amendment. The Welsh have their own Assembly, whose Members deal with many local matters. I think most people would think that the referendum that is coming up in Wales was very likely to transfer further powers to the Welsh Assembly—it would be very unlikely if Wales said, “No, we don’t want to have these extra powers”.

We have had previous debates about very large geographical areas in Scotland. Orkney and Shetland might have only 30,000-plus electors, but they have three Members of Parliament—two in Edinburgh and one in Westminster. The same principle applies to Wales. It seems to be almost overrepresented as things stand today, and I sincerely hope that the Government will resist the amendment.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I was advised by a veteran politician to begin every speech with the word “finally” because it excites expectations. Wales is clearly the big loser in this proposal. The Select Committee for Welsh Affairs, an all-party committee, came out unanimously against it. It will be seen in Wales as making us a poor relation. It represents a wholly insensitive way of looking at Wales. Far from what the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, suggested—he seems to be against devolution as such—we will not put the clock back. Indeed, devolution, moving in the way that Welsh and Scottish people want it to go, is a way of avoiding separation. Of this, finally, I am sure; this insensitivity which the coalition Government have shown will indeed be a threat to our union.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, the contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is the only contribution that we have heard as yet from the Back-Benchers on my left. The case that he puts is not so much the case for union as for uniformity. He may or may not recollect the preamble to the Act of Union 1536 in relation to Wales: that the country, dominion and principality of Wales shall be incorporated, annexed and united within the greater realm of England. Some people thought that an end had been put to the Welsh nation then. How wrong they were. It seems to me that the noble Lord still takes a pre-1536 view of the situation.

Many noble Lords have stressed the central point that the changes contemplated to seats in Wales are on such a massive scale as to be injurious on account of that scale alone. It is not a question of how greater they are than other parts of the country, but how much they represent the totality of seats—in other words, a quarter of the seats of the principality of Wales. In the whole of the United Kingdom, I believe that 7.6 per cent of seats will disappear. In Wales, it will be 25 per cent. That point has already been made with great eloquence and accuracy by other Members.

In addition, in losing a quarter of its seats it follows in reason that the disruptive effect—the knock-on or domino effect—on the 30 seats that remain will be much greater, and proportionally greater, than in any other part of the United Kingdom. There can be no doubt about that. The effect generally might be that each and every one of the 30 seats essentially loses its identity.

For a short period of eight years, I had the great honour of representing the county of Cardigan in the other place. Cardigan is almost as old as Wales itself. The old community from the estuary of the Dyfi to the estuary of the Teifi with Cardigan Bay on the west and the Plynlimon range on the east was created and hammered out on the anvil of time. It has distinctive characteristics. I will not go through them now, but some of them are very noble and some perhaps not so noble. The late Lord Elwyn-Jones used to say of the times he had in assizes in Cardiganshire that on the whole a Cardiganshire jury was against crime. He said, “Thank goodness they weren’t dogmatic about it”, but be that as it may.

I have no doubt that the Welsh scene in terms of parliamentary constituencies will be changed out of all recognition. The question has been raised by many—it was raised by my noble friend Lord Rowe-Beddoe in our debate a fortnight ago—of what the perception might be in Wales of what is happening. I believe that it will be a corporate and national reaction. It will be the feeling that Wales has been pointed out for special punishment. People say that it is one of the most anti- and non-Tory countries in the world. I think I am right in saying that the Ballot Act 1872 made it no longer necessary for tenants to vote in the presence of their landlords. Since that Act, the Conservative Party has never won a majority—I do not mean an overall majority; it has never been the leading party—of seats or votes cast for it in Wales. That will perhaps be the perception of Wales in relation to the Conservative Party.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

That case has been argued, and we have had specific debates on that and an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. What we have said—and I think I have said it about three times already, this afternoon and in Committee—is that the Government have put into the Bill two exceptions in places with extreme geographical situations and no ready link to anywhere on the mainland. In the rest of the United Kingdom we are seeking one vote and one value.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, will tell me, if I let him intervene, why a vote in Swansea should be worth more than a vote in Aberdeen.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Because, historically, there has been a Welsh exception and no exception elsewhere. The Minister is crucifying Wales on a mathematical altar and deliberately reducing the voice of Wales in Westminster.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The simple answer to that is that there was an exception in respect of Scotland under the 1986 Act. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, mentioned that the 1986 Act said that there would be no fewer than 35 seats; the same Act said that there would be no fewer than 72 Scottish seats. Yet the last Labour Administration repealed that. I do not criticise them for that—indeed, I supported it. The number was reduced by some 18.5 per cent.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I originally planned to make a very straightforward speech in support of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Lipsey. I will not rise to the helpful and interesting trail that my noble friend Lord Maxton has dragged along the ground about ID cards, but his analysis is accurate. We would have had a much clearer database that could inform the electoral registration process and much else besides. However, I will not go down that road.

I cannot allow the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, about the north being disadvantaged because of the south. However, the point that I want to make about the amendment is that it is accepted throughout the House that there are inadequacies with the current level of electoral registration. I have not heard any noble Lord arguing that the electoral register is currently a perfect piece of data collection. It is inadequate. There are significant shortfalls. Reference has been made to the report done by the Electoral Commission in March 2010 The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain. Noble Lords can see that that is clear in terms of the number of people who should be registered but are not. But the significant point and the one that I want to make which has not been made so far in this debate is that the shortfall is variable.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Does my noble friend agree that one of the variables is the zeal of the local authority officers responsible for that?

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

It is not only a question of the zeal, but of the budgets that they are allocated and the way in which that resource is used.

If noble Lords look at the register, they will find that there is a shortfall that is variable throughout the country and in different types of area. If we accept, as no doubt the noble Lords opposite all do, that the objective of this legislation is to create fairness across the country, the Bill has to address the shortfalls in electoral registration and, in particular, the variables between different parts of the country.

In the Electoral Commission’s March 2010 study there were a number of case studies in various parts of the country. One was in London, in Lambeth. It has a population of 266,169 and a population density of 99.2 persons per hectare. There is an ethnic minority population of 50.4 per cent and worklessness of 16 per cent and so on. In particular, figures were quoted for the percentage of households that were in the private rented sector and the percentage of residents who had moved in the past 12 months.

In the London Borough of Lambeth, 17.7 per cent of those on the register had moved in the previous 12 months. That is a substantial degree of turnover and churn. In my experience of being an elected politician in London for many years, that degree of churn and turnover was a particular facet of many parts of London. It would be true of many other inner-city areas and parts of the country, but it was not uniform. It was not uniform in London and it is not uniform around the country. Therefore, without the sort of amendment moved by my noble friend—or an alternative because there are a number of other possible ways of addressing this—the Bill is in danger of institutionalising poorer representation in certain sorts of area.

I looked at the paper produced by London councils in the past few months which examined the 2001 census. This paper tries to ensure that next year’s census will be a better one. Yet even if we use the census data as the source of information about what the population and the registered electorate ought to be, there are problems. Kensington and Chelsea—not, I have to say, the typical example of a rundown inner-city area—had the lowest response rate in the country to the 2001 census. Its response rate was 64 per cent. I suspect that the good residents of Kensington and Chelsea might not be interested in filling in the form about the census, but would probably make considerable efforts to make sure that they were on the electoral register to return MPs of a particular colour to Parliament. The point is that there was that degree of poor response even to the census in that part of London.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My credentials are that I was an elected councillor for the ward of Golborne in north Kensington. My noble friend will have to be a little careful in talking about Kensington and Chelsea as an affluent borough, when the northern part of Kensington has some of the areas of highest deprivation in the country. It was a cauldron of social movement, with fair housing and the first legal advice bureau with Peter Kandler. It was an area of multi-deprivation, so there must be considerable variations within the one London borough from the affluent south to the relatively disadvantaged north.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Indeed, that is the case. The interesting issue about that, since we were talking earlier today about the importance of community, is that that is one area where we now see parliamentary constituencies straddling local borough boundaries in London. I think that the MP for the area that my noble friend described is Karen Buck, who also represents part of Westminster. It is a bad idea to cross London borough boundaries; I suspect that we will return to that at a later stage in this Committee. However, my point is about the degree of underrepresentation. I picked on Kensington and Chelsea because, apart from those pockets which my noble friend knows so well, it is not regarded in most people’s minds as being an area of acute deprivation—although parts of it are.

The figures are: in Hackney, there was a 72 per cent response rate; in Tower Hamlets it was 76 per cent; in Hammersmith and Fulham, 76 per cent; in Camden, 77 per cent; in Southwark, 77 per cent; in Islington, 78 per cent, and in Lambeth, 79 per cent. The point is that the work which has been done where there are concentrations of poor response, either to the census or to electoral registration, demonstrates a number of characteristics. First, the highest non-response rates come from those who rent from a housing association or a council. There are higher non-response rates: where the occupants are from black, Asian or mixed ethnic groups; where the household contains a single-parent family; where the average age of the people in the household is 70-plus; and in areas with higher income deprivation scores.

I am not making any moral judgment about people in those households. I am only reflecting the research that has been done, which demonstrates that there are certain socioeconomic characteristics suggesting, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey has identified, that there will be lower rates of registration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey]

I apologise for the vagaries of the Marshalled List, which mean that I am on my feet twice running. This, again, is a slightly exploratory amendment but it has a serious purpose. The intention behind it is to suggest that, if we are to equalise anything, there is quite a strong case for equalising not electorates but population of voting age. This issue has come up from time to time during our discussions. It is not necessarily a question of either/or; it would be possible to arrive at a figure for equalising which contained an element of both. I may well put down a formula to that effect on Report but I shall not try it out now because I think that it would be a little hard on the Hansard writers.

First, I should say that there are big differences between large constituencies in terms of population and large constituencies in terms of electorate. To take an obvious example, which noble Lords will be able to relate to after our earlier discussion, the Isle of Wight is by a long way the biggest constituency in terms of electorate but it is only the third largest in terms of population. In Regent’s Park and Kensington North, the population of the relevant age was 146,000, which is nearly double the number of registered voters. For Kensington and Chelsea the figure is 135,000 compared with 65,000 registered voters—that is, more than double the electorate. There are 45 seats in which the electorate is less than two-thirds of the population.

Of course, an MP represents everyone who lives in a constituency and not just those who have a vote, so it would seem fair that some allowance should be made for that in terms of workload. This is particularly the case as lower registration tends to be correlated with people with particular kinds of problems, the most obvious being black and ethnic minorities, who are about 30 per cent less likely to be registered but are likely to give rise to a great many problems, such as immigration matters relating to their families. Therefore, there really is a case for taking population into account. The second thing—

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Does my noble friend agree that certain constituencies have a disproportionate amount of asylum seekers because they are designated by the Government as areas to which asylum seekers will go? I will give an example. I found that in my constituency surgery perhaps two-thirds of the people who came to me were not on the electoral register because they were asylum seekers. I concede that many of them were sent to me by solicitors, who no doubt hoped to obtain some form of financial assistance for them. Be that as it may, it means that certain constituencies have a far greater workload for their MP.

[Lord Lipsey]

My noble friend is right. It says a lot for his assiduity, and for that of most Members of another place, that they are prepared to work very hard for people who will never have the chance to vote for them. Those who are cynical about Members of Parliament should bear in mind that remarkable and cheering thought.

I turn to another fact that I had not realised before I prepared for this debate. The system that I propose for discussion in this amendment, whereby constituencies are equalised by virtue of population rather than electorate, is more common in other countries than the use of electorates. Britain has a jolly good constitution; we love it very much and certainly I am not knocking it. However, we should consider this. It is not a silly idea for a system that no country uses. Lewis Baston of Democratic Audit states:

“Most countries use some measure of total population to serve as the basic measure of constituency size, either total population or a modified population such as voting age population … or citizen population. Britain is a member of a minority, albeit a significant minority, of countries that use registered electorate”.

He states that the ACE Project shows that half the countries of the world use total population and one-third use registered voters as the population base. No doubt there are all sorts of ingenious combinations of the two. Countries that use population include decent democracies such as Germany, perhaps slightly less decent democracies such as Italy, and Hungary and the Czech Republic. That is a pretty good list of countries that think the population measure is right. If we are internationalists, we should consider whether we could learn from them, as my other argument suggested that we could.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will reply to this debate. I should be astonished if he did not stand up and say that estimates of population are to a degree inaccurate, which of course is right, and are to a degree out of date. That is also true, although it does not mean that if we decided to go down the population route, it would be beyond the wit of the Office for National Statistics and others to produce more up-to-date estimates of population for this purpose than they do at the moment.

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[Lord Corbett of Castle Vale]

My understanding on this matter is that prisoners will be able to vote either by proxy or by post. Where they do not have permanent home addresses, and many will not, they can use the address of the prison.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I yield to no one in my admiration for the right honourable Jack Straw as both a former Foreign Secretary and a former Lord Chancellor, but can my noble friend say whether Mr Straw has attempted to make any calculation of the aggregate of fines that this country would incur if all the relevant prisoners were to take us to the European Court of Human Rights?

[Lord Corbett of Castle Vale]

My noble friend has reminded me of a point that I meant to make. At the moment there are 2,500 outstanding claims of compensation by prisoners being denied the vote, which, if they were proceeded with and accepted, would cost the taxpayer £100 million to meet.

This is not the time or place to debate at length the merits of votes for prisoners, but surely it is time that this outdated sentence of civic death upon prisoners was removed. It was imposed under the Forfeiture Act 1870, although in my opinion it should never have been, and it has lingered for far too long. As I said earlier, the European Court decided in 2004 that the blanket ban on the ability of convicted prisoners to vote was unlawful and should be removed. I much regret that the previous Government did not obey that judgment, and welcome the fact that this Government plan to do so.

It is all about enabling prisoners to take civic responsibility, which chimes in well with the extra emphasis by the Secretary of State for Justice on better attempts at rehabilitation to reduce the expensive and alarming rates of reconviction. Up to 70 per cent of prisoners are reconvicted within two years of release, surely the most enormous waste of taxpayers’ money going.

It is time for change and time to ensure that the number of prisoners anticipated under the proposed government legislation be entitled to vote, and those prisoners on remand from wherever they are on the electoral roll should not be overlooked when the maths is being done by the Electoral Commission to determine the new constituency boundaries.

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I should perhaps say that I am president of the Citizenship Foundation, although I do not speak for it. Surely we could deal with the point raised in this amendment by an amendment to the Bill that says simply that prisoners serving a term of four years or less shall be entitled to vote. That would take care of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, seeks to address in this amendment. I should be interested to know whether the Minister would be amenable to that being brought forward at the next stage of the Bill.

This is a very important issue. For years we have put off grappling with the question of the prisoner vote. I think we would all say that one of the main badges of citizenship is the right to vote. We in this House all agree that rehabilitation is essential and that we do it rather badly in this country. To that extent—I shall finish on this point—we talk about punishing prisoners by denying them the vote, but I think that we punish ourselves much more by, in effect, outlawing prisoners from normal citizenship and thus, in my view, destroying any real prospect of any effective rehabilitation. Therefore, I hope that something can be done about this and that it can be done in time for it to be part of the Bill.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I hope the Minister will concede that this is an important point, and perhaps he can truncate this debate by offering to have a cup of tea with his officials and my noble friend. I see that there are problems, but it is clear that the Government will have to respond in some way to the determination of the European Court of Human Rights, which has said, in terms, that the matter cannot be delayed for much longer. Indeed, the Government have said that they will respond. We know that there could be substantial expenditure implications if they do not respond and a multitude of applications. However, I see some problems in practice.

Once upon a time I was a barrister and I did a fair amount of work on the criminal side. All too often one’s clients were of no fixed abode, so how is one going to determine the constituency in which the prisoner votes? That is one obvious problem. Equally, prisoners are more likely to come from socioeconomic groups that might be determined among the population but are not on the electoral register because they are alienated and do not bother to put themselves on the register. Therefore, there are problems in deciding which will be the relevant constituency in this matter.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, from the information that the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, has given the Committee this evening, it sounds as though my noble friend is going to have to have a cup of tea with Mr Jack Straw if any advance is to be made on this matter.

Legislation

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I think there is general agreement around the House about the necessity to legislate less, but the problem is—and I have heard this throughout my time around Whitehall and Westminster—that although Oppositions have the absolute determination to legislate less, when they get into government they find that every department has at least two or three, or perhaps even more, good ideas they want to legislate on. Indeed, every Secretary of State who followed my noble friend’s advice would start reading in the gossip columns that he was for the chop, because he was a do-nothing Secretary of State. It is a dilemma, but my noble friend is pointing us in the right direction.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Did I overhear the noble Lord correctly, when he said that the Government were committed to improving the quality of legislation by pre-legislative scrutiny? Tired people make tired laws. How does he reconcile that with what the Government are doing today?

[Lord McNally]

Because sometimes, my Lords, the procedures of the House do not allow for non-tired Lords, but I cannot believe that a piece of legislation the total number of hours for which it has been scrutinised by this House will, at some time tonight, exceed the total time for which it was scrutinised in the other place has been subject to any abuse whatever on this side of the Chamber.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lady Hayter. I came to this issue rather sceptically but changed my mind when I was chairing the Power inquiry, as we took evidence from around the country and heard from young people and their teachers. One thing that this House should have in mind is the alarming way in which we in this country are losing the habit of voting. What we are finding is that young people, if they do not establish a habit of voting, do not turn to it. People would say to us, “Well, they soon start voting once they start having children of their own or a mortgage, or when they start paying tax”—often, they were Members of Parliament. Yet the reality is that, if the habit is not established before, very often people do not end up voting at all.

Teachers were telling us that already, in schools, there is talk before age 16 about why the vote is so important and about the history of the vote. Then there is a gap, where a substantial number of our young are still not staying on at school to 18, so when they leave school there is a period of non-participation in the public arena. They do not vote, so they never establish the habit of voting. We should move from knowing about voting at school—understanding its history and its importance in our firmament and why it is at the heart of our democracy that people should vote—to harnessing that while people are still young and interested. That is vital.

Hearing from young people who were clearly interested in how their country worked and in the issues of the day, yet then hearing from teachers about the terrible loss of interest between the ages of 16 and 18—sometimes, it is as long as four years before these young people get the chance to vote—was a lesson that convinced me that people lose the habit of voting. We should take this opportunity to reform the system as soon as we can. I know that many people, certainly among the Liberal Democrats, share this view. We should be harnessing that interest in politics before it is lost. Now is a good time to do it, when we are in the process of engaging in some reform of our electoral system.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Kennedy referred to instilling the habit of voting. My fear is that the subject of this referendum will instil the habit of not voting. I certainly do not detect any overwhelming interest from the younger generation in the alternative vote or in any other technical form of voting in this country. If they do not vote on the first occasion when they are given the opportunity to do so, the danger is that they will form a habit of not voting. That is the real problem.

The genesis of this whole thing is the Faustian pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Liberals have this magnificent obsession with structures. It is not an obsession that a great number of people in this country share but they consider it the unfinished business of Lloyd George. They were prepared to do anything to change the voting system, while allowing the Conservative Party to have free rein in all its attacks on our welfare system.

I cannot imagine young people for a moment being interested in going to this vote. From over 30 years as a Member of Parliament in the other place, trying desperately to get people to vote in difficult parts of the constituency—we sometimes had, alas, a very sad turnout—I cannot imagine even a tiny proportion of those individuals bothering to vote and, if they do not, I certainly see no serious interest or enthusiasm among younger people. That is my starting point.

However, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayter. She led me along a silken path with her felicitous words until I was almost persuaded; alas, not quite. I have form in this, because many years ago I promoted a Private Member’s Bill in the other place to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18. I was before my time, as it were, because it was before that view became a consensus. Sadly, the Bill was talked out, but there was a very logical case to move from 21 to 18 at that point because, about then, the legal age of majority had been changed—I believe that it was by a royal commission—and it was wholly consistent with that that the voting age should also be reduced from 21 to 18.

[Lord Rooker]

I should like to bring my noble friend Lord Anderson around to supporting my noble friend Lady Hayter because, while I am sceptical as well, this is not about votes at 16. It is about allowing the people who will be 18 at the end of a fixed-term Parliament to vote for the voting system that will be used then. If it were not for the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, which gives this some intellectual credence—and it is the same gang bringing in that Bill—we would not be asking the people who we know will be 18 at the end of this Parliament to choose the voting system. This is not about votes at 16, so my noble friend can support my other noble friend if this matter is pushed.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I look on my noble friend’s intervention with considerable respect, as I do all the matters that he raises. Clearly, he raises an important point. The essence of what I was saying is that, whereas from 21 to 18 there was a logical stopping point, I see no such point in going from 18 to 16. Indeed, I ask rhetorically where it will stop. The real reformers—the people trying desperately to be radical—will ask, “Why stop at 16?”. It may not perhaps go down to babes and sucklings but next they will suggest, incrementally, “Well, having had 16, why not 15 because we want to encourage people to take part in politics?”. They will ask, “After all, this is a newly politicised generation; did we not see schoolchildren on the streets last week?”. Yes, but I am not sure whether those schoolchildren—we are now, I think, meant to call them school students—were or are likely to be worried about alternative votes, or a voting system of STV, or whatever it is.

[Lord Soley]

Would my noble friend bear in mind that at age 16 you can serve in the Armed Forces and you pay taxes? That is a good dividing line.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

That is one factor. One could say, for example, why not 17? That is the age at which one can be on the front line in our armed services. One can make a plausible, or semi-plausible, case for reducing the age from 18 to 17, then to 16, but although there are pointers at each little watering place and stopping point along the way, in my judgment there is no sufficient reason to say that one should stop at 16.

I have heard the argument in favour. Of course there are some points to be made for it, but in my judgment it would be wrong in general and, in response to my noble friend Lady Kennedy, certainly wrong to have the change on a matter that is, frankly, of little or no interest to the younger generation—the nature of the voting system. It would be a bad precedent and, if it is to be justified at all, a bad starting point for the younger generation.

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I want to say two things. The thrust of my main argument is that, without doubt, 16 year-olds have a sufficient knowledge and understanding of the world to have a valid opinion on this referendum and to be able to make a valid decision about it. Moreover, a 16 year-old today has a level of sophistication significantly greater than 18 year-olds of even 20, but certainly 30, years ago. You have only to see the parliamentary youth debates on TV to witness a standard of debate unthinkable in teenagers of a previous era. If 16 year-old students and younger can demonstrate on the streets and know what they are demonstrating about, which they do, then they are certainly able to participate in this referendum.

My second point concerns public indifference to politics, and specifically to Parliament. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. While the voting age remains at 18, it is all too easy for schools to slide out of providing education about Parliament. However, if 16 year-olds were able to vote in this referendum then not only would the teachers become enthusiastic about a reality that took place while their pupils were still at school, but the students themselves would feel they had a real stake in their Parliament and would demand the education on voting systems and on Parliament to go with it.

The referendum is a highly appropriate moment to test out voting at 16. It is a specific issue, though one of paramount importance, and, crucially, it is about Parliament. The voting age was correctly lowered in 1969 from 21 to 18. Now it is time to put our trust in 16 and 17 year-olds as well.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for raising this issue, which has been raised on the Floor of this House many times. I am also grateful to him for the way in which he explained the inordinate delay that there has been over the years, which frankly could have been avoided if the nettle had been firmly grasped. The noble Lord mentioned a letter that I wrote to him, which was consistent with what I have contributed to both consultations and, indeed, on many occasions—that one reason for removing the vote as part of a sentence is that that would enable the judge to add that penalty for a particular crime. It is interesting that most of the comments that we see in the press on this issue refer to certain types of prisoner who have committed certain types of crime being given that penalty of having the vote removed. Personally, I would have no objection to that, provided that the measure is adopted as quickly as possible, because too many elections have passed without this happening. Everything possible ought to be done to enable those prisoners who are qualified to take part—whether that is according to the crime or whether, as appears likely, the Government will put a time limit on it—in the referendum and the other elections likely to take place next year.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It is difficult to see what would happen if a judge were to be given discretion to impose the loss of the civic right of voting depending on the particular type of crime. One simply asks this question: if, for example, a prisoner were guilty of shoplifting, which would normally have a very short sentence at most, is that crime one that would make him forfeit those civic rights? If there is a form of assault, is that to be one? There would be infinite argument about how the judge should exercise that discretion. Surely it is better to have a blanket bar if there is to be a bar at all.

I have enormous admiration for my noble friend Lord Foulkes. We served for over a decade in the same team in opposition and I had great admiration for his assiduity—fertile in invention was perhaps the way that we always thought of him. However, I thought, with respect to him, that he appeared to be arguing against himself. Having suggested four years in his amendment, for the reason that he gave, he then appeared to be arguing in favour of no bar at all. I will reread what he said but for the life of me I could not see any consistency.

I confess that my predisposition is, in principle, to be in favour of a bar, but I reluctantly accept that those who have committed crimes and therefore forfeit a number of their civic rights should not also forfeit the civic right to have a vote. That puts me not in the liberal club, although perhaps my noble friend Lord Foulkes was trying to follow our party’s new line of trying to attract dissident Liberal Democrats into our fold. I will not follow that line. In spite of my predisposition, I accept the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. Indeed, it has to be accepted—the sooner the better. The only question that remains is the length of sentence that there should be. There has been far too long a delay, as the noble Lord said.

I, too, have heard, perhaps on the same grapevine, that the Government will shortly make an announcement and that they favour four years, without any discretion for the judge. If that be their response, though, there is surely a case for consistency. If it be the case in respect of a general election, surely the Government should now act in the spirit of what we are told they will be announcing shortly and say that the same principle should apply to those who are currently serving sentences. If they will, and I suspect that there is the will for this in the House and in Parliament as a whole, they can ensure that whatever length of time they choose is in operation by the time of the referendum, whenever that may be held, be that 5 May or some other date.

If only for the reason of consistency—even though, like the great mass of public opinion, I suspect, I am not personally convinced of the case—I accept that we must follow the European Court of Human Rights. Pace the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, we cannot pick and choose the judgments that we follow. In following them, we should endeavour to attain consistency in the various elections that our people will be involved in.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I support the amendment. It is a timid one but it is the only one we have, and I will wholeheartedly support it. There is a paradox, is there not, about one aspect of the punishment of someone who has put themselves outside society being to keep them outside society? Surely the very heart of rehabilitation is to get a prisoner thinking once again that they relate to the society that they have offended against—to bring them back inside the “big society tent”, if you like. It seems to be a self-injury to have the rule at all, although I can perhaps understand how the law is as it is out of respect for public sentiment, however wrong that sentiment may be. With that, I will simply say that I endorse and support what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

I suspect that there is indisputable logic in what my noble and learned friend says.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, the House is entitled to be puzzled by the inability of the Minister to say whether an announcement will be made before Christmas. Either the Lord Chancellor said that it would be made or he did not: which is the case?

[Lord McNally]

If the Lord Chancellor said it, he must have been speculating.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, at the risk of sounding immodest, I think that this has turned out to be a very worthwhile debate, if only for the last exchanges. I do not mean the fact that my noble friend Lord Rooker crept in through the long grass and was not seen by the noble Lord, Lord McNally; I am referring to the question whether, when the Lord Chancellor said that there would be an announcement by the end of the year, this referred to a government Statement or to the product of what was earlier described as fertile imagination. However, this has been an interesting debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, there has been an inordinate delay. From these latest exchanges, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will realise that, if there is a huge further delay, there will be deep concern. My noble friend Lord Anderson said that I was arguing against my own amendment, but he, having argued against lifting the ban, went on to accept it. At least I managed to persuade him.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I hope that my noble friend will allow me to clarify my position. I said that my predisposition is to be against lifting the ban but that, because I realise that a change has to be made under our obligations to the European Court of Human Rights, with some reluctance I accept that the ban must be lifted in one way or another.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Exactly. I rest my case.

That brings me to my noble friend Lord Browne, who not only represented a prison in his constituency but who as an advocate represented many prisoners—all of whom were innocent. He gave an erudite explanation and reminded us that the European Court of Human Rights is not part of the European Union but a product of the Council of Europe—a much wider grouping, and with United Kingdom involvement. He hit on an argument that I wished I had thought of, which is that the blanket ban is exceptionally random. It depends on when the prisoner is in prison. If they are not in prison when there is an election, they do not lose the right, but they lose it if they are in prison when there is an election. That is probably the strongest argument of all, which my noble friend Lord Browne put in a gentle and impressive way.

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, said that my amendment was timid, while my noble friend Lord Bach said that it went too far, so it seems to me to be just about right. There were some questions about its practicality. I do not think that there would be difficulty in giving prisoners the vote; the postal vote provision would enable them to vote.

Justice: Magistrates’ and County Courts

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I take note of that advice. One of the objectives in the Government’s review of sentencing, which will be published shortly, is to ensure that a proper volume of work goes through the magistrates’ courts.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Apart from the inconvenience to the public, is there not a danger that, when justice becomes less local, justices will not be able to reflect the prevalence of certain offences in their district in the sentences that they give? Is there not also a danger that good justices will be lost to the system because of the extra travelling time involved?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, to a certain extent those are concerns, and we will keep them under close review. However, we live in a more mobile age and justices will be given assistance with travel costs. The longest journey to court—this is an extreme under the new proposals—will be 40 miles, and most journeys will be much less. I understand the concerns but they do not outweigh the fact that, as the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said:

“It is obvious that a number of courts in different parts of England and Wales no longer fulfil any sufficiently valuable public purpose”.

Referendums: Constitution Committee Report

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, in his scepticism about referendums. I also join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in his concern about parliamentary democracy—a theme which has been echoed by many others in the debate. I also join the broad, overwhelming consensus for congratulating the framers and writers of this report. For me, it is like a very good textbook covering all the areas, but with the added element that it is a textbook written by practitioners who know the how of things, and how parliamentarians and the people respond.

The report covers a range of arguments for and against, some of which are contradictory. Referendums settle an issue; no, referendums do not settle an issue. The answer is that you choose your referendum. Some do, and some do not. It could be argued that the referendum on the Northern Ireland settlement was quite decisive and the extremists were unable to mobilise against it as a result. The same might be said about the recent referendum in Turkey on constitutional matters where the military, however tempted, would find it difficult to stand against such a substantial majority. However, the recent referendum in Moldova, which was boycotted by the opposition, solved absolutely nothing. Were a referendum to be held in Sudan next year, one wonders whether the results would in fact lead to closure in respect of constitutional changes within Sudan.

Obviously, if opponents do not like the result of a referendum, they can rerun it—as we saw, for example, in Denmark, where the second referendum, with rather cosmetic changes, was accepted, and also in Ireland. There must be a degree of scepticism.

I join the debate with my personal experiences. Apart from the referendum on Sunday opening in Wales, in which I played a minor part from exile in London, I played some part in the referendum in 1975 on the Common Market. It was clear—who can doubt it?—that the Cabinet wanted to avoid reaching a decision on the issue because it was deeply divided. There were heavy voices within the Cabinet speaking against the European Community, so a “god out of the machine” device—a referendum—was used in the hope of solving the issue. The status quo in 1975 was that we were already in the European Community, so there was a major premium among the populace in voting for the status quo, which was an important matter. But has it closed the issue? It had not closed it by the time Tony Benn and others said, “Let the people decide”. The people decisively decided in 1975 and there were no major changes between then and 1983, but Tony Benn and others were not reconciled to Europe. Even now, there may be 60 or 70 members of the Conservative Party in the other place who would withdraw from the European Union tomorrow if that were possible. There is not closure.

I recall speaking with Edward Heath on the yes platform in 1975 against my noble friend Lord Kinnock; and yet I was with my noble friend in a later referendum, in 1979, on devolution in Wales. We were sceptical about the motives of those in favour of devolution and we used the argument of the slippery path to independence and so forth. I confess that we pressed for a referendum and for the 40 per cent floor as a tactical device at that time. Who can doubt that in most of these issues it is tactics that prevail and dominate? The result of that 1979 devolution debate in Wales was a massive majority—four to one—against the Government’s devolution proposals. In 1997, however, broadly the same proposals, with some minor administrative changes, were put before the people of Wales and there was a vote in favour.

What had changed? The proposals had not changed. The context had changed. In 1979 there was a highly unpopular Labour Government at the fag end of their life and there was great scepticism among the people. They wanted to give the Government of the day a black eye. In 1997 there was a popular Government led by Tony Blair. All the media appeared to be in favour of the proposals in 1997. Yet, even with all the media attention, there was a 50 per cent turnout and the vote was 25 per cent for and 25 per cent against. Had it been 24 per cent in favour and 26 per cent against, would that have led to closure?

Similarly, although the vote on the Quebec question in Canada was against, it is not a dead issue. The proponents of “Québec libre” will keep seeking a referendum in the hope that one day there will be a narrow majority and then there will be closure.

Of course, the key difference in Wales was who was making the proposal in 1997 as against the position in 1979. Had there been a 40 per cent or 30 per cent turnout instead of 50 per cent, would that have changed the legitimacy of the result? There is no going back in Wales now, but it was on a very narrow majority. It was almost like the Ryder Cup, going to the last tee. It could certainly have gone the other way.

My own experience has also included campaigning for a yes vote in France on the Maastricht treaty. It was clear to me at the time that the details of the Maastricht treaty played virtually no part in the debate. The real issue was whether you liked President Mitterrand. On the platform, I was asked about immigration and various farm subsidies, which were virtually irrelevant to the subject under discussion. Compare that with the French referendum in 1968 put forward by President de Gaulle on an administrative question. The actual subject played little or no part in the result. It was a good opportunity for the people of France to reject President de Gaulle, and he resigned fairly shortly after that. Then there was the first Irish referendum on Lisbon, when the key issues for the no campaign were abortion and neutrality, which had nothing to do with the Lisbon treaty. Of course, much of the debate was dominated by one very rich individual; just as one fears that on a referendum now, Mr Murdoch, a non-citizen, will play a major role.

So what are my conclusions from these experiences? First, referendums do not necessarily settle matters. One thinks of the 1983 suicide manifesto of my own party with respect to Europe. Secondly, even if there is a yes/no question, the debate may focus on irrelevant questions. Thirdly, the referendum may be used, as the committee says, in an ad hoc manner and as a tactical device. It is absurd of the Government, in their rather slim and inadequate reply, to argue otherwise. The referendum may often be a partisan manoeuvre; the result clearly depends on the context and who asks the question and when. In Sweden, in respect of the European Union, there was a fairly fixed majority against joining, but there was one brief window of opportunity, which by chance happened when the referendum took place. So it depends when the question is asked. This is wholly relevant to the question that will be posed next May on the alternative vote; the context is likely to be one of cuts and it is very likely that the coalition parties will lose substantially, particularly the Liberal Democrat party. There will be a fairly half-hearted advocacy by the Government and, effectively, the Liberal Democrats will be taken for a ride. It is very likely that the referendum on AV, because of the timing and the cuts, will be lost and lost massively.

Do these reflections rule out referendums as an instrument for decision making? No, not necessarily. They may be justified when the rules of the game are in question. One thinks of House of Lords reform, which has been a Liberal Democrat obsession for some time. It is likely that if there were to be a referendum on House of Lords reform, there would be very little interest or participation beyond the M25—or whatever is the English expression for beltway. How does one interpret low participation? On further devolution in Wales, there is a commitment, but devolution is a process. Does one have a referendum on each of the incremental changes? The suggestion that there should be referendums on council tax increases is absurd. It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas. Who is going to vote for a council tax increase? As for the surrender of sovereignty argument, it was put forward as a populist gesture. The truth is that QMV has often helped this country and it has been very much in our interests, so this is rather a silly pledge to please the anti-Europeans.

Overall, I remain sceptical about the case for referendums. I would certainly hear arguments in particular cases, but they should be used in our constitution very sparingly, if at all.