Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Dixon Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I suspect that the reason why the Electoral Commission has taken the phone off the hook is that it is suffering from a surfeit of parliamentary advice. I do not doubt that it always welcomes the advice of my noble friend Lord Soley, but none the less, every now and again, it needs a respite. That is why I tend to favour Amendment 109 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston. He said that the words of his amendment are largely to the same effect as those of the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker, but there is an important distinction. The noble Lord’s amendment would not take out the words that the Electoral Commission,
“may take whatever steps they think appropriate to”.
My noble friend Lord Rooker's amendment leads to the more prescriptive approach embodied in the amendment of my noble friend Lord Lipsey. I tend to side with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on this: it may be wise to give a pretty large discretion to the Electoral Commission as to how it handles the matter.
In a way, the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Lipsey demonstrates the difficulty for the Electoral Commission in performing what would seem a pretty simple function of providing information to those who will be about to vote in the referendum. For example, we have already discussed the requirement in my noble friend Lord Lipsey's amendment that it should,
“summarise the main arguments for and against first-past-the-post and the alternative vote”.
My noble friend Lord Davies of Stamford explained in some depth the reasons why that is not easy.
Unlike my noble friends Lord Davies and Lord Anderson, I think it would be desirable to have a phase of information and education to enable electors, as far as possible, to understand from impartial sources the nature of the choice that they will be invited to make. Later, we get into the propaganda war and the clash of the campaigns. At that point, if people have been provided with neutral information, they may well be better able to assess for themselves the merits of the arguments put forward by the two sides in the campaign.
It is desirable that something such as my noble friend Lord Lipsey proposes should be achieved, but I do not doubt that it is exceedingly difficult to summarise those arguments objectively and in an “impartial and unbiased” fashion, as the amendment requires. If it is to be done, it will take time. That is one reason why it is so fortunate that the Committee previously accepted the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker to provide flexibility for the date of the referendum until October. As other noble Lords have said, if we are going to do this, we need to do it properly. It is too good an opportunity to waste. It is too important an issue to be rushed and muddled. If people are, in an extraordinarily rare opportunity, to have the chance to decide whether the existing electoral system should be retained or another put in its place, they need time to reflect carefully on the basis of a secure understanding of the issues. I think that it will be very difficult for that process of information, education and the gaining of understanding to be achieved in the very short interval that now remains before 5 May.
Also, if the arguments are to be set forth by the Electoral Commission in an impartial and unbiased way, as has been suggested earlier, there is the risk that people who are dissatisfied with the way in which the arguments on one side or another are set out will complain and might seek remedy by way of judicial review. The whole process could become very vexed. My noble friend's amendment demonstrates the extreme difficulty of the Electoral Commission doing that job but, none the less, it is a job that it would be good if it were done.
Another difficulty about achieving an impartial and unbiased explanation of the choices to be made is that academic evidence shows that the more people understand about the alternative vote system of election, the less they like it. If you have full information explaining how this system works, the consequence is that people become disposed to reject such a system. It might be claimed that in no circumstances could the explanation be regarded as unbiased. It is riddled with difficulties the more we think about it. There certainly should be unbiased information and clarity in the way the information is provided. These are highly desirable objectives. I do not know whether before tabling his second amendment, Amendment 110ZZB, my noble friend discovered whether the Plain English Campaign is willing to be co-opted, but I am sure it is because it has been a very good servant of us all, including benefits claimants.
Lord Dixon
Why not just send them a copy of the election that took place in the House of Lords in 2003? You could not get a more educated electorate than the one we have here. There were 603 Peers eligible to vote and 423 voted. There were 82 candidates. The successful candidate was chosen after the 42nd transfer of votes or recount, and I am told that one Peer voted from one to 82. I have no doubt that number 1 was a great friend of his, but I do not think 82 was a particular friend. I think that would be the best way to educate the public.
Another thing about new systems is that when the European Parliament was set up my noble friend Lady Quin was the first MEP for our area. If you went into Jarrow shopping centre and asked who the MEP was, people would say “Joyce Quin”. If you went today, nobody would know who the MEP is.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Everything that my noble friend Lord Dixon has just said should definitely go into the leaflet, as should the remarks of my noble friend Lord Grocott. If the leaflet is a little bit longer, so be it. My noble friend Lord Lipsey wants the leaflet to summarise the meaning of the referendum question. I see difficulty in that because one would hope that the question that would be put to people in the referendum would be so succinct and easy to comprehend that it would be incapable of being summarised in the way that my noble friend has suggested. There is a good deal to think about.
My final worry is that a leaflet coming through the letterboxes of the land would on a great many doormats be regarded as junk mail and the chances are that it would not even get read. How the Electoral Commission is to acquit itself of its responsibilities and inform the people of this country about the nature of choice they have to make bristles with difficulty, and I am not at all convinced that we should be very prescriptive or contend that we know best how this should be done. I therefore tend to favour the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Dixon Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Dixon
We are now getting to the main part of the Bill: the constituents. The arguments about alternative vote and first past the post will come with the referendum. I was involved in alternative vote in this House in 2003, when one of the hereditary Peers, a Deputy Chairman, died. There was a ballot to take his place. Some 423 out of 661 Members voted and the candidate who won had 151 votes. There were 81 candidates, 44 first-preference votes and 42 transferred votes—alternative votes. The person who was elected still did not even get 50 per cent of the votes that were cast. Those arguments will come out when we get to alternative vote.
The important part of the Bill is the constituencies. I have personal experience with constituency. The last change in the Jarrow constituency was in 2005. I know a little about the Jarrow constituency; I have lived there for, in a couple of weeks’ time, 82 years. The only time I was out of the constituency was when I was doing my Army service for two years in the Royal Engineers, so I know a little about the constituency. I served as councillor, mayor and MP, and am now in the House of Lords.
The Boundary Commission proposed that the Bede ward—named after the Venerable Bede—in the Jarrow constituency be transferred to the South Shields constituency and that the Pelaw and Heworth ward in Gateshead be transferred to the Jarrow constituency. That proposal looked good on paper because the difference in the size of the two constituencies would have been only 153 voters. Everyone thought that they were doing well to achieve that equalisation between the Jarrow and South Shields constituencies.
The people of Jarrow had no objection to gaining the voters of the Pelaw and Heworth ward, because Pelaw and Heworth used to be part of the Jarrow constituency. In fact, Thomas Hepburn, who was the founder of the Northumberland and Durham miners union, is buried in Pelaw cemetery. For a long time, the members of the Jarrow constituency Labour Party would put a wreath on his grave before they went to the Durham miners’ gala.
The problem that arose was with the proposed transfer of the Bede ward to the South Shields constituency. Now, Jarrow got its name from the Saxon word “Gyrwy”, which means marsh or fen, which it has been suggested refers to the Jarrow Slake that lies along St Paul’s church in Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede had his home as well as at the Wearmouth St Peter’s church. The Venerable Bede was one of early Europe’s most established scholars. I might add that none of that rubbed off on me—I left elementary school when I was 14, I started in the shipyard when I was 14 and three months and the only exam that I passed in my life was my driving exam—so I cannot claim any of St Bede’s knowledge.
On the proposed transfer of the Bede ward to the South Shields constituency, I wrote to the Boundary Commission on 6 January 2005 to make an alternative suggestion. My suggestion was that the Bede ward should remain in the Jarrow constituency, that the Pelaw and Heworth ward in Gateshead should be transferred to Jarrow and that Jarrow’s Whitburn ward, which is on the coast, should be transferred to South Shields. I was pleased to find that my suggestion was accepted by the Boundary Commission, because many in Jarrow would definitely have been upset if the Bede ward had been transferred to South Shields.
The other thing about the Bede ward in Jarrow is that, as some Members may recall, in 1936 some 200 men from Jarrow marched to London for the right to work. The Jarrow march was not for another crust or for more money on the means test—as it was then known—but for the right to work. Most of the men who marched from Jarrow lived in the East ward, which was adjacent to the Jarrow town hall. After the war, the East ward was cleared and most of the Jarrow marchers were transferred to the new estate in the Simonside ward. The Boundary Commission’s proposal would have resulted in the descendants of the Jarrow marchers of 1936 ending up in the South Shields constituency. That would have virtually caused a civil war, as it would have suggested that they were now Sanddancers rather than Jarrow people.
However, the Boundary Commission did not know any of that. The only way that the issue came out was because there was a public inquiry. The Boundary Commission accepted the proposal that Whitburn, which to my knowledge has never had a direct bus service to the centre of Jarrow, be transferred to South Shields and that the Bede ward remain in Jarrow constituency. The difference in the electorate of the two constituencies was 53, as against the difference of 179 in the Boundary Commission’s original recommendation.
I think that it is vital that local residents have some say in how the constituency boundaries are formed. That issue, I believe, is the most important issue in the Bill.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I was going to rise before my noble friend but I am grateful that I did not as I want to make only one brief point. It is partly on what he was saying about the naming as well as the defining of the boundaries, because one of the things I am most concerned about is that so many boundaries will be changed that one of the big issues will be the naming of the new constituencies and therefore the time taken. This part of the Bill will bring in more consultation than is allowed for without boundary hearings but it will also be timed. I therefore support this amendment and I urge the Government to consider, when they look at the timing of this, that one of the most political issues, even after they have defined the boundaries, will be the naming of so many new constituencies. I urge caution on that as that is where, in the words of my noble friend, civil war will break out.