Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

One can understand that. It is a little difficult in legislation to draw the line between what people do in their public official capacity and what they may do in their personal capacity. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s thoughts on whether this legislation is well framed to meet the circumstances of today.

My noble friend also drew attention to the prohibition against paid canvassers. I must confess that even after decades of political activity, I was unaware of this prohibition. It seems to me that it is quite commonplace, in all political parties, for people who are paid employees—paid functionaries—of the political parties to engage very actively indeed in canvassing and in the organisation of canvassing. Again, it would be helpful to hear from the Minister whether he has any concern that this prohibition, which has been long established in election law—at least since 1983—is in fact regularly and routinely ignored and whether it is sensible simply to re-enact it for the purposes of the referendum by transferring it from the 1983 legislation.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps it would be helpful if the Minister could assure us that when the law in this whole area is being further revised, the 1983 Act and its provisions might well be subject to reconsideration. We are not tying him down, but there are sections of that law which now look a little dated and it might be worth considering them more widely.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has done the Committee a good service by drawing our attention to the possibility that what we have seen is a cut-and-paste job. We have seen the transference of slabs of the 1983 legislation into this 2011 legislation. It would be helpful to know just how much thought has gone into this and whether the Minister thinks there is any case for reviewing these schedules before the Bill comes back on Report to make sure that he and his officials are entirely happy that in all aspects they make good practical sense.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I would like to have heard in the debate more references to the distinction between targets and caps, because that is essentially what we are debating. I agree with my noble friend. I was listening to the intervention of my noble friend who moved the amendment, and the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who referred to the new constituency that would be created being the maximum. It would be a huge constituency that would be utterly unmanageable, where the issue of accessibility would simply have gone out of the window, which is why I asked the noble Lord, Lord McNally, how he understands the relevance of accessibility. That constituency would have no proper representation. It would not be possible in the context of the size of the constituency that would be created. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, have proper representation.

However, I wish to use paragraph 5(b) to the proposed new schedule, referring to,

“local government boundaries as they exist on the most recent ordinary council-election day before the review date”,

as a peg to draw attention to the conversation that took place at one of my dinner engagements last week. Someone raised an issue, and I suddenly thought, “That is particularly relevant to what we are discussing in this House”. The whole process in which we are involved is, we are told, essentially about equalisation. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, keeps referring to votes of equal value. That is a very interesting principle. The question is: where, when and in what circumstances do you apply that principle? I want to draw attention to other circumstances where that should equally apply, if you take the word that everyone is using, “localism”, into account. I want to see whether this localism—a sort of bottom-up principle—applies to this area.

I want to give as an example what is going on in Westminster, where we now sit. We are within the area of the Westminster local authority. I have here a list of all the wards within that authority. I was wondering how far this principle of equal votes of equal value applied in Westminster. I simply draw the attention of the House to what is going here. If we are prepared to have flexibility here in Westminster, why can we not apply the same flexibility throughout the whole of the United Kingdom? In every ward in Westminster there are three councillors. There are 20 wards. I want to draw attention to the variation in electorates within the council area where the Houses of Parliament stand. Knightsbridge and Belgravia has an electorate of 6,400, Tatchbrook has 6,400, Churchill 6,500, West End 6,600, Marylebone High Street 6,700, Little Venice 7,100, Maida Vale 7,200, Warwick 7,200, Vincent Square 7,300, Abbey Road 7,300, Bayswater 7,400, Church Street 7,500, Regent’s Park 7,600, Hyde Park 7,700, Bryanston and Dorset Square 7,800, St James’s 7,900, Harrow Road 7,900, Queen’s Park 8,100, Lancaster Gate 8,200 and Westbourne 8,300.

It seems that in Westbourne, the 8,300 electors voted in three councillors; but if you live in Knightsbridge or Belgravia, the 6,400 electors vote for three councillors. Where are votes for equal value there? We are dealing with the budget of one the largest local authorities in the country. I understand that Westminster’s budget is greater than those of some government departments. What about votes of equal value? Councillors elected to those wards are taking decisions on the use of these vast resources. I find it incredible that—guess what?—the largest electorates to elect the three councillors are in the Labour wards. So, built in to the arrangements for this votes-of-equal-value principle is an arrangement in Westminster whereby Labour voters are penalised and the individual voter has less influence on the expenditure of Westminster City Council. So much for votes of equal value.

Someone else told me that this is going on all over the country.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The situation in the constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster is even worse than my noble friend has suggested. It is a constituency where underregistration is particularly extreme. It is thought that the registered electorate in that constituency is only some 60 per cent of the 16-plus population. So we are talking about extremely skewed patterns of electoral representation in both local government and the Westminster constituency of this part of London.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend has referred to an issue that I intend to raise. I do not know whether we will be going at eight o’clock or nine o’clock tomorrow morning, but we may well get to the amendment where I wish to raise that issue. I have some important information to place on the public record about the population of the Westminster area and we can perhaps deal with those matters later on.

On the Westminster statistics, when I was in conversation today with others I was told that Westminster has by no means the worse differential in its electorate; there are parts of the country where some councillors are elected in wards with half that number of people on the register. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Garel-Jones.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend is, as always, very wise. It would have been greatly for the convenience of both Houses of Parliament had this legislation been segmented and introduced on the sensible basis suggested by my noble friend.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, was very interesting, because that is the question that is being asked by many Members on that side of the House, but they never intervene during the course of debate. We would welcome an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran. Perhaps he would like to embroider his comments, because he would be speaking on behalf of all his colleagues on the Back Benches.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I think I could even be persuaded by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, to sit down a little earlier than I otherwise would in anticipation of hearing him develop his thoughts at rather ampler length. I think that the whole House will look forward to that.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It is a grossly insensitive and, politically, a remarkably stupid thing to contemplate. I add one further point. My recent observation of the working of the Boundary Commission was in Norfolk, on the question of whether there should be unitary status for Norwich within the county of Norfolk. The difficulty that we got into was, in part, because the Boundary Commission took so much longer than the timescale to which it had been tasked. It simply could not get the job done on the timescale that the previous Government wanted. It might be wise for this Government to study that instance and learn a lesson from it. If this process is pushed through with the kind of haste that is intended, all kinds of grievous consequences will follow. It is a waste of an opportunity for reform.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I do not want to labour the issue of timing, other than to say that I support vigorously the amendment moved by my noble friend. However, I implore Ministers to listen to the wise counsel of the noble Lord, Lord Wills. He probably knows more about electoral registration than any other Member of either House. He was a Minister throughout a period when it dominated his agenda. Ministers in this Government would do well to consider carefully his words on the whole issue of why the existing register is useless for the purposes that they intend to use it.

I want to ask Ministers questions based on the 14th report of the Select Committee on the Constitution from the 2003-04 Session, Parliament and the Legislative Process. Paragraph 15 of Chapter 3 refers to the arrangements for the handling of legislation. I raise this issue because it deals with the question of consultation. I am trying to secure from the Government some more information on the extent to which they consulted on the time that is set out in the Bill for dealing with the Boundary Commission review. Paragraph 15 says:

“There is an extensive gestation and drafting process before a bill is laid before Parliament … Proposals now are regularly put out for consultation and there is an established framework for that consultation”.

Paragraph 16 goes on to refer to a,

“Code of Practice issued by the Cabinet Office”,

which,

“stipulates that there should be a consultation period of twelve weeks”.

My questions are about that consultation period. When did it start? When did it end? Who was consulted? Where is the information that came back as a result of that consultation? That is highly pertinent to today’s debate. All I ask of Ministers is whether we can have that information. If that is the process that should have been undertaken, and recognising that there has been a short period between the election and today, some of us, including me, might wonder whether that code of practice was complied with. If it was not, let us have a full explanation of why not.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, who has certainly done his homework and research very carefully indeed. Have I been advised correctly that the type of AV system that the Government propose should be used for elections to our House of Commons is found elsewhere in the world only in Papua New Guinea and Fiji? Has my noble friend, in the course of his research, found any lessons of more general application from those two laboratory experiments, which may be useful for us to think about as we consider an appropriate system for use in this country in the future?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have identified those areas, but I think that the more relevant results are those in Queensland in Australia and in Scotland, which we will go through in some detail as we proceed on the Bill.