Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I really was up first and I merely want to ask the noble Lord this question. He has made a very moving and appealing speech. Before he sits down—

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[Lord Hart of Chilton]

Well, I shall. The relevance comes as a result of the Boundary Commission’s work deciding numbers and constituencies upon the raw data from the electoral register. As I have said, if the electoral register is wrong and produces wrong data then the Boundary Commission and its findings in terms of constituencies and numbers will also be wrong. That is the relevance.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I apologise for getting the procedure wrong. My point was rather similar to my noble friend’s. The noble Lord has given by way of response, as a justification for riding a coach and horses through our procedures, an argument about the Bill and its provisions. What is at stake here is not whether his opinion is different from the Clerk’s, but that our convention has been that we accept the Clerk’s advice. Can he explain why he is prepared to ride roughshod over that, with all the precedents that it creates and the difficulties that it will cause for the House, which is nothing whatever to do with the substance of the Bill?

[Lord Hart of Chilton]

I explained, I hope, a moment ago why what I am saying is relevant to the particular proposals of the Bill. It is for the House to decide its procedure. In the sense that I have found it completely compelling that it is relevant, it is for the House to decide, in due course, what the outcome of the debate should be. If the view of the House is that what I have said is irrelevant, out of scope, nothing to do with the Bill at all, then the voting will take place accordingly. If, however, there are people——and I suspect there are many—who agree with me then they will vote to the contrary.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, I was sorry not to be in the House on Tuesday when tributes were paid to the departing Leader. What was said was very well said, I wish I had been there to say something too.

When my name appeared on this amendment, I was summoned by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to explain myself. There was a little bit of the headmaster’s study about it, but it was done with his customary style and charm. I will explain to the House why my name is on this amendment in exactly the terms that I explained it to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. It is for reasons that are to do with Scotland. I believe that the largest threat at the moment to the constitutional settlement in these islands is the secession referendum in Scotland next year. The First Minister of Scotland is an extremely skilful politician, and one needs to be very careful of being complacent about where the public opinion polls are. The Scots, who are extremely good at grievances, have in the boundary changes and the changes to the number of constituencies, a very real grievance. Unusually for the Scots, the grievance is real. The reduction in the number of constituencies in England will be 6%, in Scotland it will be 12%.

When we were debating the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, I argued several times that we should take due account when we were considering the size of constituencies and the size of the franchise—the 5% either way—we should take account of peripherality and sparsity, the distance from London, the difficulty of the MP’s job, and the difficulty of getting round the constituency if it was an enormous one. I remind noble Lords that the coastline of Argyll is longer than the coastline of France. If we look at the results, we see that leaving aside the four island constituencies, the two Scottish island constituencies, and the two on the Isle of Wight, the average Scottish constituency fetches up considerably larger than the average English constituency. This seems to be a perverse reading of the principles of peripherality and sparsity.

I do not wish to see this proceeded with in advance of the secession referendum in Scotland. It would be perpetually argued in the campaign that the numbers show Westminster less and less willing to listen to Scottish concerns and that defending Scottish interests requires secession, something I profoundly disagree with.

I remind noble Lords that the suggested reduction to 52 seats in Scotland is on top of the reduction from 72 11 years ago. The number went down in 2005 to 59, now it is to go down again to 52. The reason it went down in 2005 is to do with devolution. Once we have dealt with the secession threat, once we have secured the right result on the referendum, we need to come to the West Lothian question, but I do not believe that any of us in this House believe that the right answer to the West Lothian question is to make it more and more difficult for Scottish Members of the United Kingdom Parliament to do their job. I think that most of us believe that the right answer is to have Scottish MPs not voting in the Westminster Parliament on matters where they would be voting only on English, Irish or Welsh law. If we succeed, I think that we will have a chance to come back to the question. That is the moment when we should consider how many Westminster seats there should be for Scotland.

Urged by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and because I have great respect for the clerks, I have considered very carefully the question of relevance. I admit that I have considerable difficulty with a definition of “relevance” which is so narrow and so far removed from what the outside world would understand. The subject matters of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act and this Electoral Registration and Administration Bill are inextricably intertwined. The argument was explained most clearly in our earlier discussion in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. The intertwining is particularly close during the present transitional phase as regards registration. Every constituency in the land is changed by the PVSC and it seems quixotic to use data which are so out of date and will be so radically altered by the new registration arrangements. The matters clearly are closely connected. We see from the quotation from Erskine May circulated with the Leader’s letter that amendments relating to the purposes of the Bill, if it has only one or two purposes,

“or touching on matters closely connected with them”,

can be considered as relevant. I cannot conceive of anything more closely connected than the issues that we are talking about now.

Were we in the House of Commons, and were we being guided by Erskine May, there would be no question but that this was an admissible amendment to the Bill. After deep thought, I am encouraged to stick to my guns by the advice that we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, when she told us of her experience in handling such tricky matters in the other place. I was heartened by what she said. She urged us to rise to our responsibilities. It is for us to decide; we cannot delegate that task to the clerks to decide for us. It is for us to make up our minds, and it is in that spirit that I maintain my support for the amendment and hope that the Committee will vote for it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I was intrigued as to why the noble Lord had put his name to this amendment. I was particularly intrigued, because of his background as a very senior civil servant whom we all held in very high regard, as to why he would go against the principle, which has been upheld in this House, that we accept the advice of the clerks. The noble Lord is arguing is that, where the players on the field do not like the result, they should have a vote on whether they agree with the referee. The noble Lord prayed in aid the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, for whom I have even more regard—indeed, I voted for her as Speaker in the House of Commons—but the position in the other place is completely different. They have a Speaker, and I say to the noble Lord that, if we go down this road, we may very well end up with such a situation in this House, which would be a very bad thing indeed.

However, it never occurred to me for a moment that the noble Lord would bring Scotland into the argument. He takes as his title, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. Kinlochard is at the bottom of the loch by which I live; I look at Kinlochard. I have to tell the noble Lord that the people in Kinlochard are not beset with the question of how many Members of Parliament represent them. In fact, their view of Members of Parliament is probably best not repeated in this House. To argue that the nationalists will use the legislation to exploit opposition to the United Kingdom is utterly ridiculous. Alex Salmond wants there to be no Members in the House of Commons from Scotland and to argue that he is going to be concerned by a reduction in the number of Members is ridiculous. To be fair to the SNP, it has always accepted that in return for more powers—which they call devo-max—there should be a reduction in the number of MPs. This is a wholly spurious argument. If the noble Lord had said that he was supporting this amendment because he thought it would help the Labour Party to win the next election, I could have understood the argument, but I have to say that his argument cuts no ice with me at all.

What is the origin of this? How have we got into this mess? Why are we faced with this problem? The answer is that the Deputy Prime Minister is cross. He is cross that, despite repeated warnings, his Bill—which was not properly thought through—crashed on landing in the other place. He said something quite extraordinary the other day. Before he had even heard the Prime Minister’s speech which is to be made in Europe, he said that he was going to go to Europe in order to translate the Prime Minister’s speech on Europe from double-Dutch to Dutch. What we are seeing today is that the Deputy Prime Minister is capable of going from cross to double-cross, because that is what this is. It is a double-cross.

[Noble Lords]

Shame! Withdraw!

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I certainly will not withdraw. There was a clear commitment which had nothing whatever to do with House of Lords reform. I have sat in this Chamber and have gone along with things that I did not like at all, such as the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, the boundaries Bill, the coalition agreement and the deal on AV. All these things we went along with on the basis that there was a bargain which was in the interest of the nation. At no stage, as my noble friend Lady Browning pointed out, was the issue of House of Lords reform in any way attached to the question that we are considering today. The Prime Minister is being cheated by his Liberal colleagues.

I want to oppose this amendment because, to me, it breaches three important constitutional principles. The first is collective responsibility. We have Ministers in this Government who are Conservatives and Liberal. When I was in the Government, I understood that if you were a member of the Government and you did not agree with their policy, you resigned from the Government. You do not take the Queen’s shilling and then go through the lobbies and vote against the Prime Minister. That is what is going to happen tonight and it is an absolute disgrace.

The second principle is the one which I have talked about—maintaining the self-regulation of the House of Lords. The third is the integrity of the Boundary Commission decisions. I have told this House before that when I was Secretary of State for Scotland I had to sign a Boundary Commission report which destroyed my constituency as a Conservative opportunity in 1997. There were other factors in 1997 which may have added to my defeat. I freely acknowledge that, but it never occurred to me for a millisecond not to sign off that Boundary Commission report, because it is an absolute principle that people should not play politics with parliamentary constituencies and boundary matters.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I know that noble Lords opposite are thinking back to Mr James Callaghan and all that, but that was a long time ago. In those days, there was a very big row about it as I recall. Of course, it could be argued that a deal was done by the coalition whereby they got their AV referendum, and I may say the Prime Minister risked the future of the Conservative Party as a party of government by agreeing to that. The Liberals believed that they could win it and the voters gave their answer; yet here today we have the Liberals still trying to gerrymander our constitution. That is what is going on here because they voted for the legislation which has been approved by Parliament that gave an instruction to the Boundary Commission. The right thing to do now is for both Houses to approve the Boundary Commission proposals. That has been the precedent and this is an attempt to gerrymander our constitution for political reasons because it has occurred to the Liberals that they might very well evaporate at the next general election. All they have to hang on to is the thought that they might be able to hang on with the benefit of incumbency. Of course, if we had fair constituencies, many of their people would not have that incumbency and they would lose their seats. So they are putting their own party interests before the democratic interest, dressing that up as some kind of defence of democracy and linking it with House of Lords reform.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord. Could he, with his experience as Speaker in the other place, clarify the comparison being made, which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to as persuasive—that somehow the Speaker’s ability to disregard the clerks’ advice at the other end of the corridor is analogous to this House as a whole disregarding the clerks’ advice? Surely that is not the case, because the convention in the House of Commons is that the Speaker’s ruling is not challenged.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Lord is quite right. However, it is not only the Speaker who gets advice from the clerks; as I said, the Chairman of Ways and Means and the chairmen of committees do as well. It is done on the basis that of course, as the noble Baroness said, a matter can be given an airing. A Speaker can put forward an amendment as a safety valve for the House, to allow the matter to get an airing, while possibly knowing that the amendment will be defeated. However, as one noble Lord said, there is no way that a Speaker or his advisers would allow a situation where the guts were taken away from a piece of legislation that had previously been passed. If we pass this amendment, we are allowing someone to say, “I wasn’t happy with the last piece of legislation, so I will create an amendment and look for a near kindred piece of legislation to latch it on to”. That is not a good way to run a Parliament.