Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I of course know that this Committee stage has to finish tomorrow and I am therefore reluctant to make a contribution. However, I am aware of the fact that this is the only opportunity we have had so far to discuss this hugely important issue of the kind of information that the voters will receive and how they will be able to obtain impartial information, if such a thing exists. This is against the background—I assume we all know and can agree on this—that there is absolutely no resonance whatsoever, anywhere in the United Kingdom, about the issues that will be raised in this referendum. The public are either not interested, which I think is almost certainly the case—

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My noble friend is a very experienced parliamentarian, one who knows the grass roots and has campaigned on many occasions. Can he indicate to the Committee whether he believes that there will be door-to-door canvassing on this campaign? How many people will be sufficiently enthused by this issue to go out from door to door? How many public meetings are likely to be held on both sides? Does he see any prospect of people being so interested in this question that they will indeed do that sort of leg work, which is a feature of our elections?

[Lord Grocott]

No, I do not see any real prospect of that happening on any big scale at all and that should be a real concern to all of us. As someone who will be as active as I possibly can be in the no campaign, I am aware of the big disadvantage that the no campaign has, which is that everyone in the country at least knows something about first past the post but next to no one can answer serious questions about the mechanism of this particular form of the alternative vote system. That is why any impartial leaflet trying to tell the public about a system for which there is no evidence they know a great deal about must include the information as to where this is used. If it was not used anywhere in the world, presumably that is a valid factual piece of information to give to the electorate.

I am aware of the time, but I want to spell a point out and get a grievance off my shoulder. One must not bear a grudge, but I am still smarting under the advice that the Electoral Commission gave indirectly to the House, as it went to all Members of the House, when it was commenting on the various amendments as they were going through. The House may not remember Amendment 40B in my name but I do. It was a very simple amendment to allow the results of the referendum to be published constituency by constituency. It was a very simple proposal and I am sorry to say the House rejected it. I am not going to go into the merits of it but I simply want to make this point: in advance of the vote, the Electoral Commission, whose job it is under this legislation to provide information, made a mistake—believe me, the Electoral Commission can make mistakes —in respect of the advice it gave on my amendment.

As I said, my amendment was about publishing the constituency results. The commission said:

“We do not support this amendment … making such a significant change to the rules for the referendum this close to 5 May”.

In other words, it was assuming that the referendum had to be held on 5 May, which is a contentious piece of information to begin with. That is a date chosen by the Government, and the Electoral Commission is not necessarily obliged to give information which helps the Government to achieve this contentious advice as to when the date should be held. More seriously, and perhaps more factually, this piece of information came to the House after the amendment of my noble friend Lord Rooker, giving flexibility as to the date, had been approved by the House. So the referendum, according to the Bill as it then stood, did not have to take place on 5 May; in fact, it could take place any time between 5 May and some time in October, and that is the Bill as it stands.

I do not dispute for a minute the good intentions of the Electoral Commission but it was at the least a contentious piece of advice to Members taking part in that debate. If on a fairly straightforward, simple proposal like that it could be contentious then I would suggest that, for anything that tried to explain how various electoral systems worked and the merits thereof, it would be almost impossible to get a non-contentious document out to the voters.