European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Wigley

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said that he could not see how any reasonable person could possibly object to these amendments. I hope that I will be able to open his eyes just a little. We have already heard, even in the extended debate on this proposal, just how easy it is to slip into outright campaigning. It seems to be impossible to separate the facts from the campaigning. They say that there are facts, political facts and campaigning manifestos. I happen to have written a few campaigning manifestos in my time. I know what wicked statements they are, and I am very glad that I have left all that behind me and now simply write works of fiction.

The amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Blencathra, and others call for an official report—but could any official report ever be worth the paper it was printed on? For instance, an official report at the start of this year that talked about immigration policy in Europe would not have known how events were going to impact on it, and would presumably have looked totally different six months later. The noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Hannay, ask us to gaze into the future of agricultural policy. What will happen if we vote to leave? It depends who is making those decisions after we leave. You do not have to be a political seer to suggest that there is a strong possibility that, if we decide to leave the EU, we will not even know who is going to be Prime Minister six months after that vote. That is the political reality.

[Lord Wigley]

Does the noble Lord not accept that the Prime Minister himself, when he comes to a judgment on whether to recommend the package he will have renegotiated, will be making some assessments—presumably quantifiable—of the implications of that renegotiation? Is it not reasonable that those who are asked to vote on this have as much information as possible?

[Lord Dobbs]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord that they should have as much information as possible. However, as well as known unknowns there are also unknown unknowns—as someone once said—which are completely dominant in this area. As far as the EU is concerned, it is the unknown unknowns that have come to the fore and gained strength in recent months and years.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Wigley

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

The noble Lord touches on a fundamental here. The implication of what he is saying is that if Scotland voted for independence it would undermine this Bill because of the complexity of issues that would arise. Surely that is not his intention. By accepting the amendment in my name, he would have the flexibility to deal with it.

[Lord Dobbs]

As I have said, I think that the issue would go far beyond the scope of any one single Bill. He and I, I hope, will be fighting on the same side of the barricade in order to retain the United Kingdom which we both value so highly.

The noble Lord, Lord Williams, said that he cannot even imagine what our responses would be in various situations. That is precisely the point: we cannot imagine them. We should not therefore try, because, in trying to do so in the form of legislation, we would inevitably get things wrong. I certainly do not think that we need to make that effort at this stage. In that spirit of understanding, I ask that the amendments be not pressed.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Wigley

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

It is very simple, and I was about to get on to that. That is why the date in this Bill is very flexible. The Bill says that the referendum must be held any time up until the last day of 2017. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has spent so much time instructing us, this is not the last time that this Bill and the measures for this referendum will come back to this House.

Dates are difficult, which is why the Bill has a very flexible date contained in it. However, I believe that, to put it this way, while many people might understand why the House took the view that it did on the previous amendment, I suspect very few would understand why we would twist and turn the Bill around to pass this amendment. It is unnecessary and perhaps misguided.

[Lord Wigley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving away, and I understand part of what he is saying. However, were Scotland to vote yes, although that may be an unlikely outcome as things stand, would he accept that for the period after the referendum, perhaps even up to 2016, when independence would become a fact, it would be difficult to hold the referendum on the EU?

[Lord Dobbs]

I like to deal with the practical world, rather than hypotheses, and the Prime Minister has already said that he needs this time to undertake the fundamental renegotiation that is behind all this. That is why he is going to campaign at that referendum on the basis of staying in, not getting out. He has already started that process of renegotiation, which will take time. There is no chance, in the practical, real world, that we could encounter a situation in which this referendum would be begun before the date that the noble Lord suggests. So this is really an unnecessary amendment, and I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing it.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity of having at least put the point on the record that there is an issue here to which we may well return on later amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, indicated. I am grateful to noble Lords who have participated in this short debate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Wigley

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, as one of the four Members whose name is attached to the amendment, I am aware of the feelings that some have harboured about the appropriateness of tabling such an amendment and, in particular, of pressing it when, in the opinion of the clerks, it might be out of order. I am therefore glad to have the opportunity to outline why it was and remains my feeling that the amendment is essential.

Two distinct issues are at stake. The first is whether the amendment is in order. If it is, the second is whether it should be passed. If a majority of Members of this House were to have indicated that they did not believe that the amendment was in order, I would of course have accepted that willingly. Unfortunately, we are required to debate both issues together, which, frankly, is rather unsatisfactory.

If passing the Bill made it impossible for the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 to be workable as intended when it was enacted, it would surely not only be in order but a duty on us to table consequential amendments to the Act either to make it workable or for parts of it to be repealed. It would be most unfortunate if our perceived Standing Orders prevented us from addressing such an eventuality.

We surely cannot detach the content of the Bill from its consequences. If the implications of passing the Bill were to make the constituencies Act incapable of fulfilling its original objectives, we should flag up those dangers to give the other place an opportunity to overcome the difficulty. If that is the case, it must be in order for us to suggest ways in which those difficulties can be resolved.

Therefore, central to the question of whether the amendment is in order is the basic issue of the effect of the Bill, if passed in its present form, on that legislation. I contend that individual registration would have far-reaching implications for the application of the constituencies Act in practice and, in the extreme, could materially undermine its purpose.

When he introduced the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill for its Second Reading on 6 September 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Nick Clegg, stated categorically:

“New rules will demand that every constituency is within 5% of either side of a single size”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/10; col. 37.]

He described that as a “strict requirement”. That strict requirement is reflected in the Act as finally passed. Schedule 2 states categorically:

“The electorate of any constituency shall be … no less than 95% of the United Kingdom electoral quota”.

Mr Clegg acknowledged in that Second Reading debate that our existing registers are woefully inaccurate and that the inaccuracies are not geographically evenly spread. He cited inner cities and coastal areas as having particular problems. He put that forward as a reason for,

“accelerating the shift to a system of individual, rather than household, registration”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/10; col. 40.]

The extent of the inaccuracy has been estimated as representing 6.5 million eligible voters not on the current registers. The Electoral Commission itself accepted a year ago that as many as 6 million people could be excluded. The level of registration of students is particularly bad. In the Commons debate at Second Reading of this Bill, the register in one ward in Aberystwyth—both a seaside and a university town—was cited as having only 56% accuracy.

The Government’s remedy for that is that the last canvass under the existing system will be up to the spring of 2014 and that thereafter there will be a transition to the new, individual registration system. The register on which the 2015 election will be fought will therefore be a hybrid. It will consist in part of people who have been registered under the old system, which Mark Harper MP, the Minister introducing the Second Reading of this Bill, described as a “carryforward” provision. He anticipated they would make up two-thirds of the new register and that people who had been registered individually one-third.

It is my contention that a register composed in that way will inevitably contain distortions. Some socioeconomic groups within society will respond more positively than others to the invitation to register individually. It would hardly be surprising if illiterate or less educated people were slower in responding to the new system. Older people might well respond on their own behalf but younger members of their household—who previously had been entered by the head of the household—might not respond, particularly if they are away at university. There is every likelihood that introducing individual registration for one-third of the register will have a differential effect in geographic, age and socioeconomic terms.

When individual registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, it initially led to a reduction of 11% in the registration levels; this was subsequently retrieved and higher levels were achieved, but that took time. This could not conceivably be accomplished before the election in 2015, a matter of months after the new system has been introduced for one-third of the register. It allows totally inadequate time for registration officers to undertake the checks, including matching every elector on the register against the DWP’s customer information database. The additional costs of introducing this change will amount to £108 million, reflecting the complexity of the transition. It is my contention that an accurate and comprehensive transition just cannot be achieved by 2015.

In order to underline the complexity of the process proposed by the Government for 2014-15, I draw to the attention of the House the words of the Minister, Mark Harper MP, at Second Reading of this Bill on 23 May last year. He said:

“At the end of the canvass, the EROs will send personally addressed individual electoral registration application forms to individuals who appeared on the electoral register produced at the end of the old-style canvass, who have not been verified individually and whom electoral registration officers do not believe to have moved … That will be a robust process”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/5/12; col. 1181.]

For “robust process” I would suggest the words, “Herculean task”.

The effect of all this will inevitably be that the registers on which the 2015 election would be fought would be substantially different from those on which the Boundary Commission undertook its equalisation process. It is totally inconceivable in practice that every constituency will be within 5% of the UK quota. On the proposed new basis there are no fewer than 63 constituencies in Britain which, as things stand, are between 4% and 5% below the UK quota. A proportion of these will inevitably pass the 5% lower tolerance figure, and such constituencies will be in default of the provisions of Schedule 2 to the 2010 Act. The effect of the electoral registration Bill, as it now stands, will be to frustrate the purpose of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011.

The British Academy forum discussed these changes and, in an article last year arising from that forum, Professor Ron Johnston and Professor Iain McLean commented:

“The introduction of IER is likely to have a considerable impact on how representative constituencies are, and therefore on the fairness of the British electoral system ... The potential impact of IER is greater than it might otherwise have been because of new rules for the definition of constituency boundaries laid down in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011”.

They go on to warn of,

“an under-representation of urban areas in the new electoral map”,

and that,

“changes arising from the interaction of the new rules for defining constituencies with the introduction of IER will contribute to a considerable alteration in the nature of British representative democracy”.

That is why we should think carefully about the changes that this Bill will introduce and why we should ensure, to the extent we can, that in rushing the combination of changes we do not trigger a third act—the act of unintended consequences. Incidentally, there will also be consequences for the devolved elections in Wales in 2016, and no doubt in Scotland, if it is still part of the union.

The logic of the situation as proposed in the amendment is that the elections on the new equalised constituencies should not be introduced until after the Boundary Commission’s submissions, due on 1 October 2018. That would allow for the purpose of the Bill—for individual registration to be introduced in a coherent, timely fashion. It would allow registration officers to do their work without the frenetic pressure that the current proposals imply, and would produce a comprehensive register on a unified basis, not the hybrid register now being proposed.

The House of Commons needs to think again on this most fundamental matter, central to the working of democracy. Passing this amendment would give it an opportunity to revise the proposals in a coherent manner, and I urge noble Lords to support the amendment in the Lobby.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said, this matter involves many different aspects, some of high principle, some of good practice and some of base politics. It should be about fair voting, of course. “One voter, one equal vote” is a formula so simple and so powerful that it has underpinned every democratic system that has ever been. That is why I believe in it, and others do too; many people have welcomed that concept.

Somewhere along the line, though, something seems to have changed, and a fundamental principle has somehow been sacrificed during the summer rains. Our Liberal Democrat friends have been wholeheartedly in favour of fair voting. I excuse noble Lords on the Labour Benches of that, of course; there was a time when their forefathers and foremothers stood shoulder to shoulder at Peterloo and marched with the Chartists through the streets of our cities—but then, as Mr Blair kept insisting, the Labour Party is not what it used to be. I wonder whether noble Lords can remember what the Chartists’ demands were. They were universal suffrage—