Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Carlile of Berriew and Lord Rooker

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 27th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, in relation to my noble and learned friend’s amendment, I have a short but I believe very important question to ask of your Lordships. What is your Lordships’ House here for if it is not this? My noble and learned friend has demonstrated beyond doubt that there is a risk—a measurable risk, not a fanciful risk—that the Electoral Commission might have its independence damaged and impugned if these amendments are not introduced into the Bill. What would the Government lose by accepting these amendments?

I therefore suggest to your Lordships that we have not yet heard any good reason why these amendments should not be sent back. I am unpersuaded by the argument that because some robes are hanging on hangers somewhere in the building, no doubt losing their creases—which is as good an argument as anything I have heard against my noble and learned friend’s amendments—we should not delay matters for another day, which is available. There is an option: the Minister can go and consult his ministerial colleagues and come back to the House in a matter of minutes and say, “I have listened to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge; he has argued a brilliant case and it may well be that he is right”. And if there is a risk that he is right—which is what I believe—we should not let this pass just because it is inconvenient to delay the end of the parliamentary Session.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak, but the fact is that, following what we have just heard, the Order Paper for Tuesday and Wednesday next week has Questions down from noble Lords. It is not as though we are slicing off tomorrow: the Order Paper is there, and it is there for a reason. Somebody worked out, in terms of the management of this place, that the House would sit. People put bids in for Questions, and they are sitting there on the Order Paper. The Minister —to whom I pay tribute for the way in which he has dealt with this Bill—did leave a gap open, which is not completely closed.

On what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, we are certainly going to find out what the mettle of the electoral commissioners is made of, as a result of this kind of legislation. This is going to test those individuals—both the officers and the commissioners—in a way that they never contemplated when they applied for or were appointed to their posts.

I do not want to delay the House, but the other day I was reading—and I have not finished it—David Runciman’s How Democracy Ends. I came across this page where he quoted an American political scientist Nancy Bermeo, who had identified six different varieties—David Runciman called them “coups”—of ways in which things get manipulated. These are two of them. I would just like the Minister to explain how this Bill differs from these two examples:

“‘Executive aggrandisement’, when those already in power chip away at democratic institutions without ever overturning them. ‘Strategic election manipulation’, when elections fall short of being free and fair but also fall short of being stolen outright.”


Now where does this Bill differ from those two definitions?