Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

There may or may not be validity in what the noble Lord is saying. Some people may vote positively for a candidate while others, knowing certain candidates, will vote against. It is not a question of either/or.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

This comes back to the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord German where the candidates’ names are on the list. I should like to see the evidence that people are voting against candidates; none has been brought forward that I have seen.

When the last Labour Government introduced the ban on dual candidacy in the Government of Wales Act 2006, Ministers claimed to have done so as a result of the general public’s “considerable dissatisfaction” with dual candidacy. I have heard it suggested again today that an overwhelming majority of people are against it. Let us look at the two surveys referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Gale. I turn first to the Government’s Green Paper. It was suggested by the shadow Secretary of State in another place that an overwhelming majority of respondents to the consultation were opposed, but in fact the summary of responses published by the Wales Office in 2012 notes only a small majority—in fact, it was a majority of one.

Let us look at those who actually submitted to the consultation. The majority in favour of removing the ban were Labour AMs with responses written in remarkably similar language. I would ask noble Lords to look a little more closely at the evidence before they assert, as was done in another place, that an overwhelming majority of respondents thought that it was right to have the ban. Frankly, that is not the case. It is true that the 2006 paper produced by the Bevan Foundation found that a small majority did consider it to be unfair, but the foundation went on to say that any change should be “based on sound evidence”.

Perhaps I may take noble Lords with me to look at some of the evidence. Independent bodies such as the Electoral Commission have disputed the change. They have suggested in evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee that the view is clear that prohibiting dual candidacy in Wales is not something that they are in favour of and is not supported by evidence as necessary. It seems to me that no evidence has been brought forward since then that suggests that such a change is necessary.

An acknowledged expert on this issue is Professor Roger Scully—who has already been mentioned—from Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre. I do not know his politics, but I know that he does not vote for the Conservative Party. He said:

“No substantial independent evidence was produced at the time of the GOWA”—

the Government of Wales Act 2006—

“(or, to my knowledge, has been produced subsequently) of significant public concern about dual candidacy. The claims made about dual candidacy ‘devaluing the integrity of the electoral system’, and ‘acting as a disincentive to vote’ therefore remain wholly unsupported by solid evidence”.

It is a fact, and one recognised by the Arbuthnott commission established by the last Labour Government, that dual candidacy is a feature of mixed-member proportional electoral systems the world over; yet of all the countries that use this system, it is only Wales that has such a ban.

That brings me to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. Taiwan, which I believe he mentioned, Thailand and Ukraine all have a different system where they have two completely separate lists that do not interact; so it does not apply in the same way. In New Zealand, whose system he also recommended, the Electoral Commission has urged against introducing such a ban, so there is very little evidence elsewhere out there that this ban is desirable.

I come to a point that has not been touched on—rather significantly—that, apparently, at the same time as we were saying that this ban was so necessary for Wales when it was introduced for Wales at Westminster, for some strange reason it was not introduced in relation to the Greater London Assembly or to Scotland. At the time, of course, both bodies had regional members who represented the Labour Party, whereas in Wales there were no regional members for the Labour Party. Cynics might suggest that there is something to read into that, but we have not heard any mention of why the ban is only something that is right for Wales, but not right for Scotland or Greater London.