Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

In conducting the reviews, the Departments will have considered the environmental implications. One example that I am about to refer to would have carried no environmental implications. Obviously, the Departments would have considered the environmental implications in every case. Before any action is taken under the powers in the Bill, there will be an opportunity for further detailed scrutiny.

The first question was whether the functions had to be carried out at all. In some cases, the answer was no. We decided fairly rapidly that the Government probably did not need an independent non-departmental public body to deliberate on the purchase of wine for the Government. That is of course an important function that must be carried out properly, but there does not need to be an NDPB to do it.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

One body that is widely thought to be necessary and desirable is a chief coroner to provide leadership to the coronial profession. It would be possible to create that post without creating the kind of elaborate body that the Government are rightly anxious about by designating an existing coroner to have that leadership role with just a small amount of additional support.

[Mr Maude]

We rather agree with what my right hon. Friend says. There is concern that a whole new apparatus and bureaucracy should not be set up, with all the associated costs, which the previous Government’s plans would have entailed. However, we understand the concern that not proceeding with the establishment of a chief coroner would look insensitive, and would perhaps be insensitive in the circumstances. I will say a word later about the detail of our plans in respect of that office.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We have not addressed that in the White Paper. If people want to discuss it in the Joint Committee, they are free to do so.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Has my right hon. Friend read the debates in which the argument was advanced that the House of Lords does its job, and therefore should not be changed in any way? If so, did he think he was reading the right issue of Hansard, or the one dated 1911, or perhaps the one dated 1832?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Whatever their views about the proposals for House of Lords reform that the Government made in the White Paper and the draft Bill, I believe that everybody accepts that the House of Lords is not immune to reform or improvement. My view is that political institutions are always susceptible to some improvement over time, and I believe that that package of carefully considered reforms, which I hope, over time, will enjoy cross-party support, will finally allow us to make progress on something that has been debated for more than a century.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is right in every respect. This is a remarkable visit that demonstrates that the relationship between Britain and the Republic of Ireland is strong, and has probably never been stronger, with the successful devolution of policing and justice that made the visit possible. The scenes on our television screens last night of the visits that Her Majesty made to heal the wounds of the past, but also to look to a very bright future between our two countries, are remarkable and hugely welcome.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Q4. Since it is the people of this country who have paid the enormous bills for bank failures, should not they get some reward for their sacrifice by being given shares when the banks are eventually denationalised? Will the Prime Minister look at the imaginative scheme put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), which is now backed by The Sun newspaper, to do that?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look at all the possible ways of putting the nationalised banks back into the private sector. I personally strongly support the idea of widening share ownership, so we will look carefully at the scheme that the right hon. Gentleman suggests. We also have to make sure that we secure value for money for the taxpayer as we try to fill in the great deep pit of debt that we were left by Labour.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We will announce details in due course. It would have been easy to go ahead and just flash money around, but there is not much money thanks to the legacy of the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. We need to ensure that the money is husbanded and spent wisely, for example by providing advice for groups of public sector workers, of whom there are very many who want to form mutuals, and by ensuring that the advice is made available to as many as possible.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

In his discussions about public sector contracts for small business, will my right hon. Friend talk to the Ministry of Defence about its habit of bundling together contracts for multiple services, which means that an expert calibration firm in my constituency cannot offer the specialised service unless it also offers paperclips and toilet rolls?

[Mr Maude]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will take it up. It is exactly how contracts are bundled up and procurements are undertaken that has squeezed out so many really effective small businesses from the Government market. That is exactly what we now want to change.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

It is a particular irony for those who advocate the alternative vote, as I do, which in the majority of situations will mean that an MP will have secured 50% of the vote—

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will in a moment. I am still dealing with this question. I know that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is going to make a silly point, and I will let him make it in a couple of moments.

It is suggested that we are advancing a system that guarantees that the vast majority of MPs will have 50% of the vote—some of us already achieve that—but then it is said that that provision should be delivered on perhaps a 30% or 35% vote.

[Sir Alan Beith]

rose—

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) first, because he asked first.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am grateful. If the hon. Gentleman loses the vote in the Commons tonight, does he think the unelected House is then morally entitled to defy the expressed will of this House?

[Chris Bryant]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have advocated an elected House of Lords for a very long time, and that is still my position. However, many people, including himself when he was on the Opposition Benches, have argued that the sagacity and wisdom of people down the other end of the building should sometimes be listened to. Whatever system we end up with for the two Chambers, I would simply say that as in most other countries in Europe that have a parliamentary system, there will be a second Chamber with a particular concern for constitutional matters.

If the Bill had made progress as the result of pre-legislative scrutiny, with a Joint Committee considering all of its proposals, or for that matter if there had been two separate Bills, one on the AV referendum and another on parliamentary constituencies, I would agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Gentleman. However, I believe that the Government have abused every single constitutional convention in driving the Bill forward, so I am afraid I am not with him on this occasion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

By its very nature, the system that is likely to operate when such references are made to the DPP will involve extremely short time frames. The point has been well made in the House that it is much better to go to the police and make a complaint, because the police can arrest, interview, search and conduct forensic examinations. If an application is made through a private prosecution or through the DPP, all that is possible is for a person to be taken immediately to court. I have no doubt that the DPP will ensure that he can operate within a time frame that reflects the urgency of the matter concerned.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the fact that Ministers are dealing with the matter, and that they are doing so by using the DPP rather than the Attorney-General as the person to whom reference can be made. Will this be covered in any way by the superintendence responsibilities of the Attorney-General, or will it be clear that the DPP has an independent role in the matter?

[The Attorney-General]

The decision will be that of the Director of Public Prosecutions. As in all matters, if the DPP wishes to consult the law officers in relation to their superintendence, it will be open to him to do so.

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[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that many churches can remain in use while adapting to accommodate other uses? Will he commend the work of English Heritage and its field officers in trying to achieve that, and will he so organise the affairs of the Church Commissioners that they encourage and facilitate this kind of continuing useful worship?

[Tony Baldry]

Absolutely. Increasingly, churches are being put to other uses, ranging from post offices to shops, and from community centres to internet cafés. There are 19,000 churches across the country and in many communities the church is the most prominent public building, so we want to make sure that churches are used as much as possible, rather than just for a couple of hours each week on a Sunday.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the debate and congratulate him on his recent honour.

I want to be clear that the criticism of the speed with which the legislation is being pushed through comes not from us alone. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Clerk of the House of Commons, Professor Robert Hazell of the constitution unit and other academic experts, and the House of Lords Constitution Committee have all criticised not only the Bill, but the way in which it is being rushed through without consideration for the consequences on our constitution, both intended and unintended.

May I deal with an important point at the outset? It has been said that the Bill needs to go through unchanged because it is part of the coalition agreement. The new politics means that we can forget about what people voted for, about manifestos and about the promises that were made before the election. The deal that was done means that the agreement that was reached after the election cannot be touched. However, the Bill no longer provides for a general election if 55% of hon. Members believe that one is needed, as was stated in the coalition agreement. The Deputy Prime Minister made an embarrassing U-turn on that issue, proving that the coalition agreement has no constitutional significance at all. I hope that the other place will pay heed to that.

Our major concern from the beginning has been that five years is simply too long for a fixed-term Parliament. We have argued throughout the scrutiny process for four-year terms. That not only compares well with other Parliaments, but provides a better fit with our current constitutional arrangements. Moreover, we have heard the concerns of our colleagues in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland about the short-term consequences of fixing Parliaments at five years. The potential clash with the Assembly elections in Wales and Northern Ireland and the parliamentary election in Scotland on 7 May 2015 shows a blatant disregard for those parts of the Union.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is keen to ascribe motives that were not present in the decision to make it five years. Will he give some indication of the thinking of the previous Prime Minister in deciding that the Parliament that has just ended should last five years?

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[Tristram Hunt]

I am grateful that we have been allowed to discuss the Bill. Today’s debate has been awash with the abuse of peers at the other end of the Palace who have simply being doing their job of scrutinising Government legislation. We should not omit the vital role of the newly ennobled Lord Fellowes in that act of scrutiny, whose contribution was, we are told, to give an hour-long talk in an upstairs room entitled “A life on stage and screen”. Such are the indignities of packing the second Chamber.

I wish to focus on the length of the fixed-term Parliament. We have seen, in the actions of the Government in relation to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, that what drives them is not the good of the nation but the good of the coalition—or the Tory-led Government, as we like to call them. They are always at pains to ensure that the yin and yang of the coalition are in perfect harmony, so, rather than giving people the chance to put away the notion of the alternative vote on 5 May, they are demanding to keep the two parts of the Bill together to keep the coalition happy. And so it is with this Bill. It proposes a Parliament of five years, not four years, because that is what the coalition, not the nation, needs.

Professor Robert Blackburn, of King’s college, London, put it well when he said:

“It is likely that the Coalition’s concern with concretising its political alliance and having the longest period possible in which to implement its tax increases and cuts in public expenditure and then recover sufficient popularity in time for its next meeting with the electorate, has affected its judgement in this matter. In my view, the period between general elections should clearly be four years”.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I do not understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument. If the coalition’s motive had simply been to postpone an election for five years in order to have more time to sort the country out, that could have been achieved by prime ministerial decision. What the Bill does is to ensure that the next Government, and the one after that and the one after that, will be subject to these provisions. Perhaps, some day, the hon. Gentleman’s party will recover enough to form such a Government.

[Tristram Hunt]

Coalition Members really do not understand the difference between the norm and the maximum. We have had this problem with them over many weeks now. The issue is whether we want to move from the norm to the maximum. Across the academic and political communities, we can see—if we look at the work of Robert Hazell, for example—that four years are preferred to five. The view of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—on which I am happy to serve with the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart)—was that most opinion suggests that it would be better for general elections to be held every four years, rather than every five.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

5. What plans the Church Commissioners have for the future of Auckland castle and the Zurbarán paintings; and if he will make a statement.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

8. What consultation the Church Commissioners have undertaken with organisations in the north-east on the future of the paintings of Jacob and the Patriarchs in Auckland castle.

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Tony Baldry)]

I was grateful for the meeting yesterday that was chaired by the Bishop of Jarrow, which the hon. Lady helped to organise. As a consequence of those discussions, it was agreed that the lord lieutenant of Durham will chair a working party to consider over the next three months whether it is possible for the Zurbaráns to remain at Auckland castle.

[Tony Baldry]

The hon. Lady highlights the challenge for the Church Commissioners. I was grateful to her for taking me to visit Woodhouse Close church community centre and the Woodhouse Close church, which is in one of the poorest wards in the country. That demonstrates the Church Commissioners’ need to raise money to allocate to clergy in such parishes. However, we will consider carefully and seriously any suggestions that the local community makes that enable us to retain the Zurbaráns at Auckland castle. She must appreciate, however, that they are a drain on, and not an asset to, Church Commissioner funds.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s decision to initiate some new discussions with bodies that are interested in a sustainable future for Auckland castle and the paintings, but will he recognise that the paintings are a precious cultural asset of the north-east region? In their time and to this day, they make a strong statement about the emancipation of the Jewish community in the UK?

[Tony Baldry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The paintings were a strong and important statement by Bishop Trevor of the Anglican Church’s support for the emancipation of the Jewish community.

The Church Commissioners, by and large, do not possess pictures—we tend to own land and property—but I am in absolutely no doubt of the importance and identity of those pictures, which is why the working party that I mentioned, which will be chaired by the lord lieutenant of Durham, will consider ways in which the Zurbaráns can stay at Auckland castle, but I say that without prejudice to the wider statutory and charitable responsibilities and obligations of the Church Commissioners.

Prisoners’ Right to Vote

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Is my hon. Friend not being a little unfair to the previous Government, who, after all, had done a lot of detailed work on how they would eventually implement this provision? Is it not fairly clear that if the Government are saying to somebody, “You must be in prison, and you must abide by the law and the decision of the court,” they can hardly add, “But we will ignore the decisions of the courts”?

[Mr Harper]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. The previous Government accepted that the law needed to be changed and brought forward a number of proposals to enfranchise prisoners, but they simply did not have the gumption to do anything. As ever, they left it behind for somebody else to clear up.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I have had no indication what would happen in that situation. I assume that the Government would accept such an amendment, because they cannot afford to delay the Bill. I would point to other amendments in the group that refer to the referendum period and are consequential on it.

The real reason for avoiding the combination of polls with referendums is fairness. Whatever the merits of combining referendums with elections throughout the referendum constituency, all voters should at least be treated the same. It is obvious from the date on the table at the moment that voters are being treated differently in different parts of the country.

When the then Prime Minister, Mr Blair, was contemplating holding a referendum on the euro on the same day as Welsh and Scottish elections, Professor Larry LeDuc, one of the world’s leading referendum academics, made it clear that he could not recall one similar case of such differential treatment of a referendum electorate. I challenge anyone to find an example of a serious country putting a serious decision to its people in a referendum when there is such different treatment of electors.

Professor LeDuc thought that the UK proposal was probably unique and volunteered this opinion:

“The effects…would not be uniform across the country. It would likely produce considerable distortion with regard to turnout, the nature of the campaign, and a variety of other matters that might be difficult to determine in advance. The referendum, if it occurs, would be a different sort of political event in England than it would be in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I can’t think of a case parallel to that anywhere else.”

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

There is an obvious reason for that. In the United States, where it is common practice to combine referendums with a series of elections, there is a system by which almost all elections are held on the same day in all states. That situation does not exist here. Parts of our country have devolved Assemblies and others do not.

[Mr Jenkin]

We have come to a strange pass when Liberal Democrats hold the United States up as a model of democracy. Another point is that the United States has not changed its voting system. It has used the one it inherited from this place: the plain, straightforward, vanilla, winner-takes-all system. Perhaps that is why US democracy works so well. In fact, I do not know any academic authority that would hold up the US as a model of running referendums, and I will come back to that in a moment.

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[Mr Davidson]

I think that the hon. Gentleman has just entered the Chamber, so he may have missed my saying that we agreed that we would not take a position; otherwise I would be speaking to that position. However, we took the view that it was important—indeed, vital—that political stakeholders in Scotland should be consulted by somebody, because that had not been done by the Government, so we gave people the opportunity to express their views. I am glad that in such a short time many strong views were expressed. To be fair, some people expressed one view and other people another, but there is an opportunity for all those views to inform the debate. The hon. Gentleman will agree that it is regrettable that we have not had longer to discuss those views.

Speaking as the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, I was initially agnostic about AV, and in many ways I remain agnostic about the principle of AV. I oppose the single transferable vote and other forms of proportional representation, but I could live quite easily with AV. I am much more concerned about the context in which the proposal has been introduced. It was in my party’s manifesto, so it must be a good thing and should be supported. [Interruption.] It is early in the Parliament. I am in favour of the principle of a referendum, but it was never proposed in my party’s manifesto that it should be held on the same day as the Scottish elections. There has been some interesting illumination of why that is the case by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

I want to make my views known on two points: why we are having the referendum, and why so soon. As the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made clear, the Conservatives have agreed—I am sorry if I am not quoting her exactly—that the referendum was the price they had to be pay for tackling the economic crisis. To put it in simpler language, it is the reward to the Liberals for supporting Tory cuts. That is basically why this is happening. Cuts would not go through and would not necessarily command a majority in the House if the Conservatives did not have the support of the Liberal Democrats, who have signed up to a vicious set of proposals on cuts and public expenditure to obtain the reward of a referendum on AV.

The referendum is coming soon, because the Liberals trust the Conservatives no more than the rest of us, and they want to make sure that they are getting the reward sooner rather than later, lest they are simply fobbed off and it does not arrive at all. They do not want to be taken for mugs, so they want to make sure that the opportunities for the referendum are pressed quickly before negative publicity attracts too much opprobrium. In those circumstances, the fact the AV referendum is taking place as a reward for Tory cuts means that certainly in Scotland big campaigns will be run on the basis of saying no to the Tory cuts, no to the coalition’s dirty deals, and no to AV.

The way in which that will spill over into the Scottish elections will undoubtedly be beneficial to my own party. It will be immensely damaging, thank goodness, to the Liberals. The Conservatives, who are essentially irrelevant in Scotland, will not suffer much damage, because they cannot go much further down. No one can argue in those circumstances that holding the referendum and the elections together will not contaminate the Scottish elections. Admittedly, that benefits my party—and I look forward to that—but it means that the AV referendum will not be conducted on its own merits.

Returning to the lack of consultation with stakeholders, I am genuinely shocked by the fact that the coalition Government chose, as far as I am aware, not to ask anyone in the Scottish Parliament or in civic Scotland what they thought of the idea of having the AV referendum and the Scottish parliamentary elections on the same day. That was entirely a top-down decision. We have heard a great deal about a new politics. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether that was an approving heckle, or just a heckle, but I accept that the Member concerned is demonstrating that he is still alive. The fact that there was no consultation or discussion at all very much harks back to the old politics of drive and control, and shows immense contempt for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and—[Interruption]—the Northern Irish Assembly; I knew that there was another one. To add insult to injury, it is my understanding that the AV referendum will be described as the senior poll to be given priority when decisions are made about counting, publicity and all these other things.

To hold Scottish parliamentary elections on the same day as the AV referendum is bad enough, but we have been told that those elections will be subsidiary to the referendum, which no one particularly wants. It is not the first choice of anybody, as far as I am aware. It is coming about simply because of the shabby, shoddy and disgraceful deal that I described earlier. That really is an insult—

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

It was in your manifesto.

[Mr Davidson]

We were never promising it on the same day.

Let me deal with the question of contamination. Many previous speakers have indicated the way in which they believe the debate will be contaminated in Scotland because of the spill-over. As time goes on, the main focus of debate will not be on the minutiae of the AV referendum; it will be on the impact when the AV referendum is lost by the Liberals. Will the coalition split? What price will they then demand as a reward, because what they got as a reward before will have come to naught? That will be a matter of immense focus, certainly in Scotland, and I am sure elsewhere. The collapse of the coalition only a year into a Government will be of considerable significance, not only in Scotland, but in Britain and across the world. That will be the main focus of attention and will overwhelm the coverage of the Scottish election.

Some of my colleagues, particularly the Alliance Member, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long), spoke about the difficulties of joint campaigning on the referendum. While MPs never usually take the fact that something has been said already as an excuse not to repeat it, on this occasion she has said it perfectly adequately so I will refrain from doing so. But there will also be—a point that she did not touch on particularly—confusion about costs. There will be two elections in Scotland, one for the first-past-the-post seats and one for the list seats, and then there will be referendum. People involved in both those elections will be campaigning on behalf of their parties in both elections and on the yes and no side, and there will be cross-cutting cleavages. The process of allocating expenditure will be almost impossible, I should have thought.

Many of us in Scotland are aware—I am glad to see in his place the right hon. Member for Ettrick, Lauderdale and Tweeddale—is it?

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There are two parts to our proposed question. The first part asks people whether they want a change from the current, first-past-the-post system; and for those who do, the second part offers the options of the alternative vote, the additional member system, and the single transferable vote, to be listed in order of preference. Our amendment is needed, because it is contradictory for the coalition to be talking about electoral reform while seeking to offer little more than a Hobson’s choice, between AV and first past the post.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I have every sympathy with the hon. Lady’s amendment and the argument that she is putting forward. However, before she starts to attack the coalition, she must surely recognise that there is no possible coalition of parties that we could join in carrying through the present House of Commons a referendum that would allow people the choice of the single transferable vote, desirable though that would be, and her one-Member party in this House certainly cannot achieve that objective.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but perhaps I am more optimistic than he is. I hope that the power of argument might just wake up our fellow Members.

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[Sir Alan Beith]

The hon. Lady is making a constructive contribution, but she must face the fact that, if she were successful in carrying her amendment, there would not then be a majority in the House in favour of a referendum at all. That is surely not an outcome that she would want.

[Caroline Lucas]

I find that incredibly disappointing and defeatist—[Interruption.] Well, it might be said that, had the terms of the coalition agreement been different, and had different priorities been at the top of the list, we might not have found ourselves in this situation. I believe that the role of politicians in this House is to do what we believe to be right, and I believe that it is right to give people this choice. That is what will be respected by the electorate.

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[Mr Harper]

I think that my hon. Friend is anticipating the referendum campaign. Tempted though I am, he would not expect Ministers to be drawn into a debate about the merits of different electoral systems at the Dispatch Box. That will take place when we have the referendum. However, he made a good point about the need to engage in a good debate about the issue. The Electoral Commission did say in its research findings that some members of the public had trouble with language when it came to the use of the words “Parliament” and “House of Commons”. Thinking back to the previous debate and the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), we in this House should consider members of the public who do not take an enormous interest in, or spend a great deal of time on, these issues, important though we think they are. We need to make sure we address those people, and not just ourselves.

It is very important that the referendum question should be clear and simple to understand. The Government welcome the commission’s helpful report. I have read it carefully and, based on the evidence that the commission presented, we have decided to accept its redrafted question.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I must, on the grounds of language simplicity, draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the Welsh version in Government amendment 231. Although my understanding of Welsh is not as wide and deep as I would like it to be, I have not often seen the abbreviation “DU” used for “United Kingdom” in Welsh. I therefore wonder whether it would be at all familiar to most voters, and whether it would not be better to spell out “United Kingdom” in Welsh.

[Mr Harper]

I am very interested in my right hon. Friend’s views. Having a great deal of respect for the Welsh language, and being frank about my inability to speak it, I did not want to abuse it by reading out the Welsh version of the question. I did not intend to do that, and I am not going to do so. I have taken the precaution of talking to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales. He is a Welsh speaker, and he has consulted a number of colleagues. We do not think there is a problem with the language. The Electoral Commission did highlight one potential problem to do with the yes/no question and words such as “should” and “should not” in Welsh. It felt that there was a risk but that, on balance, this was an improvement. We have taken its analysis on board and we have accepted its drafting rather than changing it, because if we were to change it we would have to go through another process of assessing the accessibility.

The Government consider that the new version is no less neutral than the previous one. We do not think it alters in any way the choice that the question puts to the public, but we do think it is clearer and easier to understand, which is why we have accepted it. Our amendments therefore insert the new question into clause 1 in English and Welsh, and it is replicated in English only in the form of the ballot paper, which is addressed in schedule 2. This is supported by members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and I hope the House will support it as well.

Let me make a point about amendment 7, to which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) spoke. It refers back to the point to which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) drew attention. They were both right that many Liberal Democrat colleagues support either the single transferable vote or some other form of proportional system, whereas most Conservative party colleagues do not. The nature of a coalition Government is that we have to reach a compromise, however, and the compromise we have reached is that Conservatives have agreed to put the choice to the public and Liberal Democrats have had to accept that although they have a vote on a system that they prefer to first past the post, that is not everything they would have hoped for. It has been rightly said that there is not a majority in this House in favour of putting a referendum question to the public on proportional representation, and I think Liberal Democrat colleagues have been entirely sensible in reaching a compromise—as, I think, have Conservative colleagues as well. We on the Government Benches are clear that we want to put this question to the public. I agree with the hon. Lady that the public, not politicians, should choose the voting system. We are going to give that choice to the public and see whether they want to stick with the existing system or change it.