Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, the question has been posed as to whether this consultation has any effects on other parts of the Bill. This is the time to say that the question of consultation, which has been completely left aside in Part 3, has consequences a fortiori—and what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The trade unions have supported and are part of the coalition with the NGOs. The voluntary sector is huge, and trade unions are probably a bigger part of that sector than is the rest of civil society. I want to put the point on record that the time for more consultation should apply also to the trade unions, otherwise they will feel discriminated against.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, for the excellent report of his commission, which has performed a service to the whole House and to everybody involved in the debate throughout the country.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for tabling his Motion today. It has performed an extremely useful purpose in concentrating minds, particularly within the Government. I would never say that the Government have been running around like headless chickens, but there has been a great deal of activity over the weekend and into today, to try to find a compromise which will do what a lot of us want. This is no excuse; anybody who heard my speech at Second Reading will know that my views on Part 2 of the Bill are not terribly complimentary.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to serious damage to the relationship between the Government and civil society as a whole. We have an extraordinary position in which on the one hand the Government are saying that black is black and, on the other, pretty well the whole of civil society is saying, “No, it is not. It is actually white”. Who is right in this instance? A great deal of scrutiny and investigation is required. The question is whether it needs a special Select Committee or whether it can be done through the normal processes of this House, augmented by enhanced consultation by the Government with all corners of the House, with everybody outside and with the whole of civil society in the mean time. Is five weeks long enough? Ideally, we would have longer, but we can do the job in five weeks.

We are often told that the purpose of this House, particularly in Committee and on Report, is to scrutinise legislation and revise it. Will my noble friend Lord Wallace give an absolute assurance that, as this scrutiny takes place with the groups in this Chamber and as there is further discussion and negotiation with outside bodies, the Government will be serious and honest—and will not, when we come to Committee, take the typical attitude of all Governments to Bills, which is to defend the status quo and the wording on their Bill, then give way when they are really forced to? As far as Part 2 is concerned, are the Government really going into this with an open mind? It is not just a matter of reassuring the third sector or civil society that the words in the Bill will not harm them, but of taking seriously their view that the Bill will harm them and of looking at ways of changing the Bill so that not only will it not harm them but civil society generally will accepts and be confident that it will not. Are the Government open to change in a serious way on Part 2? That is the fundamental question that we have today. If my noble friend can guarantee me that that is the open-minded approach that the Government are going to take in Committee and on Report, we can be justified in going ahead with the revised schedule, taking Part 2 later on and going to Report in January.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and, indeed, it is today. I speak with slightly less enthusiasm for the Bill than my noble friend Lord Tyler. I agree entirely with the objectives of transparency of lobbying and of the prevention of big money distorting electoral politics. However, asserting that there are problems and dangers in these areas and that something must be done does not necessarily mean that the details of the proposals in the legislation are the way forward. In one respect at least, this is an awful Bill; it is badly written. I often judge new Bills by whether an intelligent person with an interest in the subject, picking it up and reading it, could understand what it is all about. I do not believe that anybody picking this up and reading it could do that. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister explaining lucidly and clearly in Committee the intricacies of Clauses 28 and 29, which seem to be a nightmare.

I declare that I have a lifetime interest in electoral law because I am a lifetime election agent. It is more than 40 years since I started running election campaigns, and I do not suppose that I have finished yet, so I know about election law—and this is election law. We have had a stream of lobbying, ironically, on the Bill from all sorts of people. It seems that the whole of civil society in this country is up in arms. In particular, we have had a focus on the effects that Part 2 might have on charities. However, this Bill is not actually about charities. It is about all the third-party campaigners and campaign bodies. Nevertheless, charities say it will seriously affect them.

The Government’s response is to assert that it will not, but assertion is not enough. When a whole sector is up in arms like that, simply telling it that it is wrong is not good enough. There should be argument and explanation and, I humbly suggest to my noble friends on the government Front Bench, a willingness to look at changing the Bill to clarify it, to amend it and to improve it, is what is required. At the moment we simply have a pantomime argument going on, one side saying, “Oh, yes, it does”, the other side saying, “Oh, no, it doesn’t”, and so it goes on—and as we know from pantomimes, that does not get us very far.

In your Lordships’ House we are often told that our job is to scrutinise, revise and improve legislation. In order to do that, we also need a substantial willingness on the part of the Government to listen and discuss with us around the House how best to revise this legislation—the need for which, it seems to me, is absolutely certain. As I have just said, this is election law, not charities law. What charities can and cannot do is not per se the concern of the Bill. That is defined by charities legislation and regulated by the Charity Commission, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, discussed in detail. This Bill is about regulation of what all third-party bodies can and cannot do in relation to election campaigning.

One problem is that it is all part of election law, which is complex, obscure and widely ignored. Those of us who know a lot about it know how to get around it in many cases—not that I would ever do that. But the Bill specifically amends the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, or PPERA. Having gone back and read that part of the Act again in detail, for the first time in a long time, I think that it is poor legislation. I hope that the Labour Party will not get too much on its high horse about this Bill, because one of the real problems with it is that it is based on the structure and system set out in PPERA, which is frankly not fit for purpose. We are lumbered with it and have to do our best with it—but it will be legitimate in these circumstances to look in Committee not just at what the Bill says but at what PPERA says, to see whether a lot of the vagueness, obscurity and the problems in this area do not actually come from the original wording in that Act. We are told by the Government, or by my noble friend Lord Tyler, that over the past 13 years Part 6 of PPERA has been tried and tested—but it has not. It has largely been ignored; it has never been tested in the courts; and I think that we should subject some of that to scrutiny in Committee. It is complex and difficult to understand; it is full of vague expressions, when clarity is needed; it is untested in the courts; and it is subject to unsatisfactory advice by the Electoral Commission over the years. Those comments apply to PPERA, not just the Bill that we now have to amend it.

The whole thing is poor, flawed legislation. Whether we can make anything sensible out of it, we will find out in the next few weeks. This part of PPERA and these issues have really come to prominence only as a result of the present Bill—because the thresholds and spending limits are being reduced and what is defined as controlled expenditure is being substantially increased. That has put considerable fear among the campaigning organisations, whether or not they are charities, and that is what is causing the problems before us today. I suggest to the Labour Party that the Bill has reached Second Reading and, no doubt, it will pass Second Reading—although it is fair enough to make political points in this debate. But all of us—the Opposition, the Cross Benches and the two government parties, as well as anybody else in the House who is interested—need to get together and try to thrash out a way in which to make this legislation a great deal better than it is now.

I want to talk about constituency campaigning, which has a new emphasis in this Bill. It is a very difficult issue in relation to third-party campaigning, because it is within the confines of a particular electoral area, which is obviously considerably smaller than one of the nations of this country. It is considerably easier, if people have a lot of money, to throw money at a particular constituency and seriously affect the election result. This is a serious problem, and it is no good us pretending that it is not. Yet we live in a changing world, in which political and campaigning energies are more and more being directed into single-issue and themed campaigning groups. At the same time, coming from a different direction is the threat of a large amount of money and corporate power being used in this country; it is not necessarily exactly the same as the super-PACs that are so distorting politics in the United States of America, but the same kind of problem is occurring. It is not easy to find a way in which to regulate all this, and to fit that into the traditional system of controls and regulation that is based on political parties and candidates being regulated. These are difficult areas at national levels; they are most difficult at the level of individual electoral areas, constituencies or even local government wards.

In the past, the system was much stricter. When charities or local groups called all-party meetings and one candidate dropped out, they usually cancelled the meeting, because it was thought that spending money at all in a way that was in any way partisan was contrary to electoral law and should not take place. That is in the past now—but any of us who have been in politics for a long time have scars from individual contests when third-party campaigning has made a difference. We may not have the scars—we may have the victory medals as a result of it—but in our party we tend to have the scars.

I remember in the Nelson and Colne constituency in February 1974, nearly 40 years ago, there was a very tight contest in which David Waddington, now the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, was defending his seat; he held it by about 135 votes. The candidate who came second was Doug Hoyle, now the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, and the Liberal candidate was myself. That election was considerably affected by two lots of third-party campaigners. There were people from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, who managed to divert a lot of Catholic votes away from both of us—certainly from me. The others were the local unions, who used their base in what was then a very strong manufacturing area, with all the local mills and the factories, to make sure that the main opposition to David Waddington was the Labour Party and not me. I am not complaining about it, in retrospect, although at the time I thought that it was pretty underhand. I have changed my mind about these things. I have been out on the streets delivering Hope Not Hate leaflets in Pendle against BNP candidates, and I have contributed funding to those leaflets. So there has to be a balance. Third-party campaigning cannot be done away with or forgotten about. It is here to stay. What we have to do is to get the balance right, and we can do that in Committee.

It is rightly said that this Bill has had a disgraceful lack of scrutiny, and I agree with that. But we are where we are; the Government are not going to withdraw it, and it is not going to stop. So the task before us is to test the Bill rigorously, line by line and clause by clause in Committee. We have to look at workability, which is crucial, as well as proportionality and unintended consequences, and one or two of the principles in it. If we can work together as a House and the Government can work with us, we can make a much better fist of this Bill than we have at the moment.

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[Lord Greaves]

It was not a terrible experience at all; it was all part of the fun of local politics and local campaigning.

[Lord Adebowale]

Spoken like a true democrat.

The point is that the Bill is confusing. People cannot see the point of it. The NCVO, the Countryside Alliance and the National Trust are not organisations prone to hysterical statements about government policy; they are considered organisations that think very carefully about what they are going to say in support or in critique of government policy, and not one of them is for the Bill—not one. My e-mail account is full of people saying that this is wrong. It sends the wrong signal about how we value the opinions of people who do not have the privileges that we have to pontificate about the nature of democracy. It insults those people who gather, with or without money, to influence the people whom they put in the other place and who are paid to sit here. It does not create an understanding of how public policy works and how social change should happen in a civilised country and it does not shed enough light on the true nature of lobbying in this country. That is the truth of it.

Frankly, I think that we should start again. I do not think that it is so much a case of a pause or a chilling effect; it will be a freeze, let us make no mistake about that. There will be people who will be frightened by the contents of the Bill. We may well joke about the cost of lawyers. I happen to run an organisation that employs 3,000 people—some people would call us large and well resourced. I tell you now, with all due respect to noble Lords, that lawyers frighten me, not just because they are expensive, but because they do not always bring clarity. You think twice about whether you are going to campaign when you are faced with the complexity of Part 2. Part 1 will, frankly, provide plenty of loopholes—as has been pointed out by a number of noble Lords—and therefore an industry in advice to industry. We know that.

I do not want to hold up the House any further, other than to say this. My concern is not whether charities or not-for-profit organisations are held back; they have more organisation than the people I am really concerned about. I am not that concerned, even, about whether the Bill will impact on the industry of lobbyists. They will find a way around it—certainly as the Bill is drafted, they will have a field day. My concerns are for the people who do not have access and do not understand how this place or the other place works but who have concerns about how their community and how society work, who want to make a difference and who deserve to be heard. Those are my concerns and they should be the concerns of this House, the Government and society.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am conscious of a number of meetings with ACEVO, the NCVO and a number of other organisations over the past few months—and we are continuing to consult them. So we are not just about to start; we have been consulting.

I was quite surprised that no one had looked at the list of registered third parties for controlled expenditure for the 2010 general election, which seems to be a relevant part of the background. There are 30 of them on the list that I have here; six of them are in the field of animal welfare, which is hardly surprising—and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is nodding at me as I say this. There are two major unions. Among others, there is an interesting body called the Young Britons’ Foundation. I Googled several of these bodies just to discover them, and perhaps I can read something for those noble Lords who think that American campaigning has not yet reached Britain. It says that the foundation,

“was launched in July 2003 at a conference of the Young America’s Foundation in Washington, D.C., and it has said that it aims to ‘import American political techniques into the UK’”.

On the most recent knowledge that I have, its advisory board included,

“representatives of the Heritage Foundation … US Competitive Enterprise Institute and American Conservative Union”,

and a number of other, similar bodies.

[Lord Greaves]

I was very confused by the quote that my noble friend read from the Electoral Commission, which refers to “political campaigning”. The existing PPERA and the proposed wording as amended in the House of Commons on Report in this Bill do not refer to political campaigning at all. Clause 26(2)(b) now says that,

“the expenditure can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success at any relevant election for … one or more particular registered parties … one or more registered parties”,

and so on. This is about electoral campaigning. It seems to me that the dividing line is between general political campaigning on the one hand and electoral campaigning seeking the success or non-success of a particular party or candidate on the other. What my noble friend has just read out seems to muddy the waters. This will be an absolutely crucial discussion in Committee.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was about to come to precisely that distinction because it seems to me to be the nub of what we will have to discuss when we deal with Part 2. There is a line to be drawn between the promotion of policies and the promotion of the success or defeat of particular parties or candidates. Policing the line between informing and educating the public during a campaign, promoting particular policies during a campaign and, on the other side of the line, supporting or opposing particular candidates or parties during a campaign, is the point on which we need to focus during Committee and Report. I am concerned that this is not an easy line to define. We want to make sure that there is as small a grey area as possible. At the all-Peers meeting, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, quoted a leaflet which had been put round his constituency the day before he lost an election which had a very large headline saying, “We are not telling you who to vote for”, and then a lot of small print which did. That is the sort of thing that we will have to look at in detail.

This measure is not aimed primarily at charities. Indeed, of the 30 organisations on the list, three are the campaigning non-charitable associated bodies of charities, but none is a charity. Charities should not be caught by this measure. After all, charities law limits how far charities can become involved in partisan campaigning. Charities should be involved in political campaigning. I recommend that noble Lords look at the list to see how far we can come to an agreement on the borderline. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, talked precisely about the borderline between current activities and controlled activities, and the chilling effect of having an uncertain definition of that. However, that is where we are. From the discussions I have had with people over the past few weeks, I have the slight impression that a large number of charities had not actually read the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act until this Bill was produced. Having looked at the language of that Act, a number of charities are telling us that they are not happy with that language as it stands. We have entered a discussion that we should perhaps have had earlier. The Government started on the assumption that the language of PPERA was fine because we had—

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, it might be better if some leading politicians went on much longer holidays and never came back.

I do not support military action against Syria, and I hope the Government will listen to the overwhelming balance of views in your Lordships’ House today, which range from people who are cautious, do not want to go ahead very quickly and think that the Government have not quite got it right, to people who take the view that I do: it is likely to be a disaster at any time.

I am sorry to be speaking against the policy of my leader, the Deputy Prime Minister and other of the leading members of my party, including my noble friend Lord Ashdown, for whom I have great admiration, but when my noble friend says that the choice is between action or no action, to act or not to act, the problem is that his view of action is military action and nothing else. As various noble Lords have said, military action ought to come after everything else has been tried. The other point about action or no action is that if you take no action for the time being, you can always go back to act in future; once you have taken military action, there is no going back whatever. If it turns out to be disastrous, you are lumbered with the consequences for ever.

The pulling back by the Government in the past few days has been a good thing. It has clearly been in response to public opinion; I think that it has been a response to an opinion in the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats as well. It has also been a response to what has been happening in the House of Commons among the politicians. Of course, the press will always try to personalise it and say that it is a big victory for one side or the other. I think that it is a victory for the House of Commons which, as a body, has been responsible for this being pulled back. In recent times, people have said, “Parliament is a waste of time, the House of Commons is toothless and not like it used to be”, and so on, but from time to time we get events and crises when the House of Commons, in particular, can rise to say, “Thus far and no further; we want a change”. I think that this is a victory for democracy as much as anything else.

As for public opinion, we should be concerned about it not just in this country but in the world—in the Middle East and the Arab world. The Minister, in introducing the debate, said that the Arab League was all on board. Yes, the Arab League stands for the Sunni establishment, by and large, in the Middle East; it certainly does not speak for some other countries and, in particular, I am not sure that the leaders of the Arab League speak for the Arab street.

One problem is that while Sunni opinion throughout the world may be watching and may be not too concerned about things at the moment because there is an evident dictator, a brutal sectarian dictator who is a version of Shia, once it goes wrong, if only 1% of the hundreds of cruise missiles that may be launched lose their way and hit a hospital or a residential area, the television pictures will be around the world within 24 hours and opinion can change very quickly indeed.

As far as Muslims in Britain are concerned, I have no doubt that British action in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan have played a central role in radicalising people. There are two aspects to this. Most of the ordinary Muslims in Britain come from the south Asian subcontinent. They are mainly Sunnis and mainly attend the mosques of a moderate variety of Islam. People I have spoken to recently in my own area in Lancashire have commented that what is going on in Syria is dreadful, the chemical attack was appalling and Assad is a bad man, but that when western countries go in to try to sort things out, they almost always seem to make things worse. I do not think that there will be lots of people out on the streets in demonstrations, like there were 10 years ago when a lot of us went on the big march. I do not think a lot of Asian people will do that at the moment, but the problem is the small number of individuals who for various reasons—their contacts, their psychological disposition or whatever—are subject to radicalisation. I have no doubt that if the missile attack on Syria takes place, it will almost certainly contribute to serious radicalisation and possible future serious incidents in this country.

Elections (Fresh Signatures for Absent Voters) Regulations 2013

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I congratulate the Lord Chairman on his optimism in estimating the timing. In moving the Elections (Fresh Signatures for Absent Voters) Regulations 2013, I shall speak also to the National Assembly for Wales (Representation of the People) (Fresh Signatures for Absent Voters) Order 2013. These measures arise from consultation with electoral registration officers and others on timing and the most convenient way to handle the transition from the current system to individual electoral registration.

The fresh signatures regulations amend provisions concerning the requirement for absent voters to provide a fresh signature at five-yearly intervals for the purposes of UK parliamentary, local government and European parliamentary elections in England, Wales and Scotland. The order concerning the National Assembly for Wales makes similar provision in relation to elections to the National Assembly for Wales. The purpose of the instruments is to move the timing of the absent voter signature refresh due in January 2014 in Great Britain, and that due in Scotland in January 2015, so that both are held in August 2013. This will avoid the refreshes that are scheduled to take place during the transition to individual electoral registration taking place at the same time as canvass activity by electoral registration officers, which could result in confusion for electors.

The Electoral Administration Act 2006 provided for the use of personal identifiers by absent voters to strengthen the security of absent voting. Under the Act, applicants for a postal or proxy vote must provide personal identifiers—their date of birth and signature—which are retained by EROs. Postal voters are required to provide these personal identifiers when voting by post at subsequent elections. Returning officers will carry out checks on the personal identifiers provided at elections, and if they do not match with those originally given the postal vote is deemed invalid.

Under electoral law, electoral registration officers are required by 31 January every year to write to absent voters whose signature is more than five years old—in other words, long-term absent voters—to request a fresh signature to ensure that up-to-date signatures for absent voters are kept by EROs. Long-term absent voters, I suspect, include a number of people in this Room, certainly me, as I am never quite sure whether I will be in Yorkshire or London when it comes to voting. Many of us will be affected by this. This is important, given that a person’s signature may change over time and a postal vote cast at an election may be declared invalid if the signature on the postal voting statement does not match that held by the ERO on the personal identifiers record. Dates of birth do not change or degrade, so those are not required to be refreshed.

The Government have discussed with electoral stakeholders the timing of absent voter signature refreshes in Great Britain in 2014 and 2015 during the transition to IER. As noble Lords will know, we have provided that the 2013 annual household canvass period, which would otherwise have taken place between July and December 2013, will now run from 1 October 2013 and result in a revised register being published by 17 February 2014 in England and by 10 March 2014 in Scotland and Wales. Noble Lords will remember that we discussed this previously. Thereafter, the Government’s plan is for the transition to IER to begin in the summer of 2014 in England and Wales, with the first transitional canvass published at the usual time for revised registers—by 1 December 2014. Following confirmation that the referendum in Scotland will be held on 18 September 2014, the Government intend that the transition to IER there will take place after that poll. The 2014 canvass period in Scotland will be postponed to begin on or around 1 October 2014 and finish with the publication of the first transitional canvass there early in 2015.

There was a general concern among electoral stakeholders that combining an absent vote signature refresh with canvass activity during this period could be confusing for electors. Electors, for example, could receive from their ERO a letter that confirms their registration and explains that no action is needed to remain registered and to retain their absent vote but at the same time be asked to provide a fresh signature for absent voting purposes, where failure to respond means the loss of the absent vote. Therefore, having the refresh before these letters go out will provide a more logical and understandable sequence. The Government have listened to the views expressed by the EROs and agree that the interests of voters would be better served by moving the signature refresh scheduled for January 2014 in Great Britain to take place before the 2013-14 household canvass.

After discussions with the Scottish Assessors Association, we propose that the signature refresh scheduled for January 2015 in Scotland should also be moved to 2013 to avoid the possibility of it occurring at the same time as IER activity by EROs there in January 2015. The signature refresh in January 2015 in England and Wales is to be left unchanged as this issue only arises only for Scotland. The instruments we are considering today make the necessary amendments to electoral law to provide for the signature refreshes to be moved as I have outlined above. It may be helpful if I briefly explain the changes made by the regulations.

Regulation 2 amends the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 to provide that absent voters for UK parliamentary and local elections in England and Wales who would otherwise be requested by the electoral registration officer to provide a fresh signature in January 2014 will instead be requested to do so between 1 and 19 August 2013. Regulation 3 similarly amends the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001 in relation to absent voters for UK parliamentary and local elections in Scotland, although it applies to such absent voters who are due a signature refresh in 2014 or 2015. Regulation 4 makes provision for these changes in relation to absent voters in Great Britain and Gibraltar by amending the European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004.

The National Assembly for Wales order follows very similar purposes. I hope that noble Lords will accept that it may not be necessary to go into similar detail on the National Assembly for Wales. I fear that on one or two occasions I did not check in my notes when I should refer to England, England and Wales or Great Britain and Scotland. From my notes, I think there is at least one occasion when I referred to Great Britain when I should have referred to England or England and Wales, for which I apologise. Nevertheless, I hope that noble Lords have followed me through the intricacy of these regulations.

These instruments make sensible and appropriate changes to avoid any potential confusion for absent voters in the transition to individual electoral registration, and to ensure that signatures are updated for absent voters ahead of the polls in 2014 and 2015 across the whole of Great Britain—and in this case, it does mean the whole of Great Britain. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I rise to talk briefly about this order and then I will ask my noble friend one or two questions. The Electoral Commission has asked us to ask for certain assurances from the Government. The explanation given by my noble friend covers what it has said but others may refer to that. The proposals as set out seem entirely sensible as a practical way of getting to grips with the very complex and quite large number of processes that local electoral registration officers have to carry out to introduce individual registration. Moving the date of the five-yearly renewal of postal voters’ signatures seems sensible.

While we are talking about postal voters and signatures, it seems a reasonable opportunity to ask my noble friend where the Government stand on a number of related issues. I hope that he will bear with me on this. First, what was the result of the first round of getting fresh signatures after five years, which I think started earlier this year, in January, and took place in the spring before this year’s local elections? I am interested in the proportion of people throughout the country who have postal votes. My noble friend can define “country” as he wishes. I am interested in England but also in knowing what happens in other parts of the United Kingdom. What proportion of the people who previously had postal votes submitted new signatures, and so maintained their registration, and what proportion fell out for whatever reason? I am interested in whether that information is available at the level of electoral registration authorities—that is, local authorities and district councils.

Secondly, to what use are the signatures put when people send in their postal votes? Is the information available, or will it be available, on how many postal votes are not counted due to the information on the postal vote statements, which are submitted with the postal votes, not matching? That is, if the signatures on the application for postal votes, whether it is the original application or the refresher we are talking about today, do not match the signature that is submitted with the postal vote; or, indeed, if the dates of birth or the electoral numbers do not match, which is quite possible. Is that information known? In other words, do we know for each election that takes place how many postal votes are not rejected or even counted but are put to one side and not put into the count? Clearly, that is an indication of people losing their vote, either because they have made a mistake or because of electoral fraud. Given that this is the basic reason why signatures were introduced for postal votes, it seems to me that having that information would be very useful.

Thirdly, if the returning officer in an election is concerned that discrepancies of the kind I have just been talking about could be a result of electoral fraud, is the Government’s advice to him to investigate those further, to refer them to the police or just to put them to one side and ignore them?

One of the things that I have been going on about in your Lordships’ House for some time is the need for a system to inform electors if, for any of the reasons we have been talking about, particularly discrepancies regarding signatures, their vote is not being counted. If an elector does not know this is happening—for example, if there is fraud they may not know that they are being defrauded, or if there has simply been a mistake—they are being deprived of their vote for reasons that might technically be their fault but are certainly not deliberate on their part. That does not seem very fair. I understand that the Government intend to give advice to returning officers on this matter. Can my noble friend tell me when that might be done?

To put this in context, in the county council elections this year in my own borough of Pendle, which is part of Lancashire where there are six county council seats, the operation of the elections and the counting of the votes took place at borough level. In total, 302 postal votes were returned but not counted because either the signatures or the dates of birth did not match. My noble friend said that dates of birth do not degrade or change. I am not sure what “degrade” means in this context, but it is a nice word. However, it is not entirely true because people born in third-world countries, including Pakistan, may not know their date of birth, so what they put down may be a bit arbitrary. Often they write 1 January of the year in which they think they were born, but they might not even give that date. Dates of birth may not be known and people do not get them right all the time.

There can be a mismatch of signature, a mismatch of the date of birth, or both, or the ballot paper may have been returned in an envelope whose number did not match. As noble Lords will know, it is a complicated system. There is a little envelope and a big envelope and they must both have the same number on them. No fewer than 61 postal votes were rejected because they were wrong. In fact, quite a lot of votes come back in the wrong envelope because, for example, an elderly couple might mix up the envelopes and ballot papers. People on the ground will keep those to one side and try to match them up as best they can. Even so, some are not counted. It worked out at around 4% of all the postal votes that came in. That was the position in just one recent election.

These are important and interesting issues that need to be tackled if the exercise we are considering in these regulations is to work as efficiently as it might. I look forward to what the Minister has to say. He may not have all the information to answer all these questions today, although I did submit them to him earlier. However, I would be grateful for a letter and for him to place a copy in the Library of the House.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her compliment, although the compliment I have really liked over the past two or three weeks has been from those who have said that they find it difficult to believe that I could have sung at the coronation because I look far too young. I am sorry that she missed that one.

These regulations are important because we are all concerned to get the transition to individual electoral registration right. We will in time bring some further regulations back to the Committee. While many of them seem incredibly technical and complex, it is important that we manage to end up with a new register that is as complete and as accurate as possible. The integrity of the electoral register is also an important matter.

I remember many years ago my noble friend Lord Greaves raising in the House the question of postal vote fraud in open elections and getting a very dusty response from almost all Benches on the grounds that this was not considered a serious problem. It is now a good deal better understood that this has, in a number of highly localised areas, been quite a serious problem that was not fully picked up and has not attracted the level of prosecution that one really ought to have seen. However, it is one that these identifiers are intended to pick up.

I will try to answer some of these difficult questions. On dates, and when one does the write-around and the canvass, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, will recall that we had a discussion as to when it was most useful to do the house-to-house canvass, and I wrote to her in the spring to point out that I had in some ways misled the Committee by suggesting that March was a good time to go around house by house, because there was deep snow in Saltaire past Easter Day. Whatever we do, there is never a perfect answer, but we are trying to do our best on all of this.

I will try to answer some of my noble friend Lord Greaves’s questions, and then promise that I will write to him on others. He will of course know that many of these statistics are not collected centrally. Electoral registration officers are local appointees and the administration of voting is still a local authority matter.

[Lord Greaves]

I am told by my local electoral registration officer that there is something called a Form K, which I have never seen, which is submitted after an election. She is in the process of doing it now for the county elections, I think, and it does include a lot of this information. I presume it goes to the Electoral Commission.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I hope that it does. I will do my best to investigate and come back to the noble Lord on that.

I am told that approximately 150,000 postal votes have been rejected at each recent national poll across Great Britain—I hope that does mean across Great Britain—because one or more of the personal identifiers on the postal voting statement did not match those originally submitted or because one or more of the identifier fields had been left blank. Statistics on rejection rates are recorded by returning officers and are submitted, perhaps on Form K, to the Electoral Commission for collation. Although figures for the May 2013 local elections are not yet available, I understand that the Electoral Commission plans to publish information on turnout once all these data have been received and collated.

On the question of getting fresh signatures after five years, we do not hold this information centrally. I hope it will be considered helpful that, according to my team, one ERO spoken to has told us that in his or her area in 2012, out of nearly 22,000 electors sent a postal vote refresh notification, some 1,800 did not respond and 565 said that they no longer wanted one. That gives noble Lords a level of the turnover in 2012, for which there are many reasons. In 2013, of 21,000 electors sent a postal vote refresh notification, some 4,355 did not respond and 934 said that they no longer wanted one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord. There were a number of questions and some of the answers are coming at me from the Box faster than I can absorb them. I was asked whether it would be inconvenient for the signature refresh to be run during August. We recognise that it is not ideal, but it is essential that absent voter signatures are refreshed before the earliest time that EROs may start the 2013 annual canvass, which we have previously agreed will be from 1 October. For reasons that I have explained, the Electoral Commission has indicated that it is content with the policy objective and the drafting of the signature refresh regulations. We will, of course, monitor very carefully how this goes through, and if there is too much difficulty or too much failure to respond, we may have to adapt and try again. I rehearsed previously the reasons why we wish to start the household canvass earlier.

We are managing this transition very carefully and actively. I stress again that we see this as an all-party concern. We all want to achieve a new register that is as accurate and complete as possible in England, Scotland and Wales.

[Lord Greaves]

Will my noble friend confirm that if an elector gets a form before 19 August but returns it after 19 August because they have gone on holiday or for whatever other reason that will not debar them from continuing to have a postal vote and the form will be dealt with properly if they return it at the end of August or in September?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, under the instruments, EROs will have the flexibility to write out absent voters in the period from 1 to 19 August 2013. In line with the existing provisions for signature refreshes, EROs will give absent voters six weeks to respond from the date they are written to, with a reminder sent if necessary after three weeks. That seems to me to cover most of the people who are likely to be written to, although I have promised my wife that after the 2015 election I might take her on an eight-week cruise around the world.

Lobbyists: Register

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There is a voluntary register of public relations companies, which was established in the wake of an earlier inquiry in 2009. However, one of the three bodies that joined that register has now left it. Even within the public relations industry, they disagree among themselves as to who exactly one should be regulating.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there is nothing wrong whatever with people and organisations lobbying Members of Parliament and, indeed, lobbying Members of your Lordships’ House, much as though many Members of this House might prefer it not to happen? The important thing is absolute transparency and clear rules about the use of money.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I agree very strongly. We all need to defend the usefulness of representational groups, advocacy groups, think tanks and others in contributing to our information. We all get lots of e-mails from those groups as we approach legislation and other things. That is a desperately important part of the open, democratic political process—so long as we are sure that we know what is going on and that it is transparent.

The Big Society

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Greaves]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they propose to encourage people to participate in the Big Society.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, in view of what I may find time to say later on, I should remind the House that I am a member of Pendle Borough Council. I originally put down this Question for Short Debate what seems quite a long time ago in order to probe the Government and to ask them about community organisers and how those would work, and I will do that in the later part of my speech.

What is the big society and what does it mean? A lot of people ask that question, but not many people seem to know. Is the big society about residents looking after a little park at the end of their street or taking over a swimming pool, or is it about transferring the running of a Jobcentre to a private company? What is it?

I turned to what I thought was perhaps the definitive book on the matter, The Big Society, written by Jesse Norman MP, in the hope that it would be a manual that would tell me what the big society is. The book is an interesting, discursive popular survey of philosophy, economics and sociology that ranges over Plato, Socrates, Adam Smith, Keynes, Edmund Burke, Amartya Sen and, it seems, hundreds of others—a huge kaleidoscope of ideas picked from here, there and everywhere. At one stage, the book asks, “What exactly is the big society?”, but it does not seem to me to answer that question, although I enjoyed reading it. The book is certainly not about the big society as people think about it, which involves local volunteering, perhaps replacing state provision with community provision, competition in public services and so on. Rather, in setting out to deconstruct conventional market economics and centralised systems of state provision, the book arrives at a new sort of postmodern conservatism. At that stage, I realised that, although an interesting book, The Big Society would not be terribly helpful for me as someone who is not particularly interested in redefining conservatism—although, thinking about the Members of the Conservative Party in your Lordships’ House, I wondered just how many of them would give time of day to Jesse Norman’s book. He talks about institutions, competition and enterprise as being at the heart of the big society; I believe that the book is rather confused, but it is an interesting read.

Then I thought that I had better read the other standard tome, which is Phillip Blond’s book Red Tory. His book makes no mention of the phrase “big society”, I think because it was written early last year before the big society became an important term. Again, he has deep insights into the dehumanising consequences both of traditional capitalist structures and of centralised bureaucratic state provision. He comes up with the solution of co-ownership of quite small-scale public sector organisations so as to include both employees and citizens in the control of them. However, again, it is really about trying to redefine the Tory party and what it stands for, which is not really what I am about. I am looking for the big society as put forward by this coalition Government.

I come back to what most people think the big society means: community and neighbourhood empowerment, involving changes in the system to devolve power from the centre to communities and to local government; involving people in what happens in their area, which very often can be done through informal changes to the way in which things work—I certainly have a lot of experience, over my life, of trying to help to achieve that; and opening up public services to competition, charities, social enterprises and the private sector, which gives some of us very serious concerns that the result may be major disruptive changes to the way in which services are provided. What I really want to do is to come back to how the Government propose to stimulate local involvement in local communities, with perhaps local people running local facilities and local services.

That really comes down to the community organisers, which the Government said would be employed, or provided, in different communities in the country. David Cameron talked about a “neighbourhood army” of 500 full-time community organisers—which, at one per constituency, is not a lot; as those of us who have been involved in community work and development and politics over the years will know, that is very thin indeed—who would be backed up by 4,500 part-time volunteers.

Having done some research for this Question for Short Debate, I find that this work has now been put in the hands of an organisation called Locality—which I now know rather more about than I did—which is a sort of third sector quango-type body that does various work and is a federation of about 600 different organisations. In addition, an “Institute of Community Organising”—the ICO—is being set up to oversee the work after 2015. Indeed, there is quite a lot of stuff explaining what that is all about.

An organisation called Urban Forum—of which I had not previously heard—is also involved in this work. A community organisers briefing on the Urban Forum website sets out that:

“According to the Coalition Government community organisers will play an important role in delivering the Big Society by building community spirit, encouraging local community action, increasing the effectiveness of existing community groups, creating new groups and social enterprises and generally empowering communities to tackle the issues that matter to them. The Office of Civil Society has stated that the policy is based on the principles of Saul Alinsky and Paulo Friere”.

So far, so good. Alinksy, of course, is the man behind a lot of similar work in the United States.

Looking further on the Locality website to find out what was happening, I found that I had to go to something called “Jess Steele’s blog”. There is a lot on her blog. Indeed, the Locality website says:

“Jess is the director of innovation at Locality and leads on the Community Organisers project”.

It seems to me a bit odd that most of the information about what is going on is on someone’s blog. I have a huge printout of the blog, with which I will not detain your Lordships. It is quite entertaining, and a lot of it is arguing with other people in the community development and community organisation sphere about exactly how things should work.

A number of projects that have already been decided include 11 so-called kick-starters, which are based on existing respected community organisations. The interesting thing is how far it will be possible to extend that through existing respected organisations and how far in some areas there might be trouble because there are not suitable organisations to take on the work.

The Government are setting up a new system. Clearly, they are keen on generating new community involvement in the areas concerned, yet I find it strange that the same Government have just closed down, or are in the process of closing down, a system of generating community involvement that was set up and funded by the previous Government. I refer to the systems of neighbourhood management. There was previously a series of neighbourhood management pilots in different parts of the country, mainly in disadvantaged communities, and a separate series of neighbourhood management schemes funded under the housing market renewal scheme. Some of those were good, some were bad and some were very good, but there was a lot of experience there and a lot of involvement by residents, which has simply been discarded.

One Government came in and set up schemes to try to involve residents in their communities and did a lot of good work; another Government have come along and have withdrawn the funding from that. I speak from the experience in my own area of east Lancashire, where most of the neighbourhood management schemes have been completely closed down, although in Pendle we are trying to keep some of them going on a skeleton basis. Nevertheless, systems that exist and which have involved and enthused residents have been closed down. Perhaps in a year’s time one of these community organisers will come along and try to set it all up again. Yet if you have been involved with something and it has closed down, and somebody else comes along and says that they have a different sort of scheme, that is not how to generate enthusiasm and permanent support from residents.

I shall finish with some questions that I want to ask the Minister about community organisers. If she cannot answer them all today, that is fine. I am sure that she will write to me. Are all the areas that will have community organisers what Alinsky in America called poor communities, or will they be spread about everywhere? Can we have the terms of reference of the appointment of the community organisers, particularly the ones who have been appointed already? What do their terms of reference say that they will do and how will they do it? There is a real fear that they are top-down people telling other people what to do. To what extent will they build on existing initiatives and practices where they exist, like the ones that I have been talking about? How are they to be chosen and how are they being chosen? Are the posts being advertised and are people being appointed in a proper manner? What is the relationship between elected councillors going to be? What is the funding going to be? What monitoring evaluation and spread of good practice will there be? If the Minister cannot answer all those questions, that is fine, but I am sure she will write and answer them in due course.