Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

These are important matters because one political party is united; I say united, but that may be an overstatement. However, one political party has support for one electoral system, while two political parties—Labour and Conservative—are divided on the issue. Actually, I do not know if the Conservatives are divided on the issue as to whether they support AV or not. Having one political party that is supporting the change—even though it is described by their leader as a “miserable little compromise”—means that these issues of expenditure are important, because if the change is not made, or if the matter is not dealt with by the Bill, you can have one political party spending money on it and the others not being able so to do because they are divided, not because of the limits.

[Lord Grocott]

My noble and learned friend has more experience of reading these Electoral Commission reports than I have, but is it not unusual that the whole thrust of what the Electoral Commission is saying about his amendment seems to be almost entirely supportive of it but does not contain a recommendation? The Electoral Commission makes a clear recommendation for one or two of the other clauses that it is commenting on. Does he have any information that I do not have on the basis on which it makes an argument and then does not reach a conclusion, as opposed to the occasions when it makes an argument and does reach a conclusion?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

First, I agree with the premise on which the question is based; when the Electoral Commission opposes an amendment—of anybody’s; this is not just to do with party—it says so. It does not, however, appear to support amendments; even when it gets right to the point where logically it should support them, it does not say that it is supporting them. All I can do is say that I note the same approach as my noble friend Lord Grocott. I have no idea why it does that.

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[Lord Grocott]

The two amendments relate to an extremely important part of this Bill. The Government were obviously quite right to have a clause in the Bill that, as far as broadcasting is concerned, deals with fairness in a referendum. However, I am glad that we do not have a written constitution. I would be very concerned if someone tried to hand over the way in which we run our country from a constitutional point of view to the lawyers.

I can see that the issue of referendums and how we conduct them is important. I will certainly not go down memory lane, apart from remembering the debates about setting up the first referendum, on the Common Market, in 1975. There were long debates in Parliament about lots of these kinds of issues—about how to make sure that it was fair. I am absolutely certain that we did not get it right on that occasion; we certainly did not get it right from my point of view because I voted no. There is no doubt that each time these things are discussed, we refine and improve the rules relating to referendums.

I do not know what speaking notes the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has, but I hope that he recognises the significance of this, not least—and perhaps in particular—because, if there is any logic whatsoever in the constitutional changes that are proposed by this Government and if there is a referendum on the voting system in the House of Commons, there must surely be a referendum on any proposal to scrap the House of Lords, whichever way one considers the arguments, although the Committee will be relieved to know that I do not have the slightest intention of going into those arguments now. Presumably, if we get this clause right, when another Bill comes down the track that provides for a referendum on an even bigger part of our constitution, we will have rules about fairness that all of us can agree to. We are heading in a direction, whether we like it or not, where constitutional changes will be referred to referendums. I hope that the Government will look at these amendments sympathetically.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for bringing forward this amendment. I agree entirely with the last point that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made that the pattern of using referendums since the 1970s has been to learn, modify and improve. That will probably go on.

The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, gave a very good example of an injunction being brought against an election broadcast. I am always fascinated by the difference between English and Scottish law. When I ask, “What is the difference?”, the answer that I get in the Ministry of Justice is often, “They do it much better in Scotland”. That is just a passing observation. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, still does not trust the Liberals. I really thought that we were beginning to bond. I will have to do more work on my charm offensive.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, was quite right: this clause was brought in as a specific amendment suggested by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to address the guidelines for broadcasters. There is a principle to consider. Would it be right for party election broadcasts for the local and devolved Assembly elections, which will take place on 5 May, to refer to the referendum and/or make any comment on different voting systems? There is an argument that, as a final strap line, a broadcast could say, “Use both your votes on Thursday”, or whatever. We recognise that there is an issue to be discussed. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said, the Electoral Commission has made some comments on this as well.

I am advised that there are defects in Amendment 39AA that would bring in ambiguity. We could perhaps test that. On the second amendment, I suggest again that the noble and learned Lord does not press it and that we have further discussions to see whether it can be improved and clarified. Before the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, breaks open the champagne, I should add that my speaking notes contain lines that I have not heard since “Beyond the Fringe”. They say: “What I am saying does not mean that I agree with his amendment, but nor should it be assumed that I disagree with the amendment”.

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[Lord Grocott]

I am sorry, but the Minister is proposing a referendum which will change the constitution. That is what the referendum is about and, as his leader reminded us, it is the most important constitutional change since 1832. I hope that the noble Lord does not think that the questions being asked—it is the first that I have asked—are trivial or “hobgoblins”, or some other phrase. He has constantly repeated the mantra: “Fair votes in fair constituencies”. I do not like tripping down that road by using that language, but I might as well. How about ensuring that it is a fair referendum? That is what these questions are all about, and it would be simply too late to consider them “after we have changed the constitution”. That may be the result of the referendum, although I fervently hope not, and it would be too late to say, “Sorry we got the expenditure rules wrong; we will put them right next time”. If the noble Lord cannot see that the issue needs to be addressed now, before the referendum, I suspect that not just those of us on both sides who have been asking questions, but a lot of noble Lords who have not felt it necessary to contribute to this debate may feel that a straightforward answer is required.

[Lord McNally]

The straightforward answer is that the question will be never ending. We will always be looking at how these things are regulated. We will always be looking at whether the rules can be tightened, improved or made more transparent. The question is whether you can conduct a referendum on a fair and transparent basis under the terms of the legislation proposed in the Bill. It is the opinion of this House and it was certainly the opinion of the other place that we could do that. The questions raised on the opposite side may be reasonable, including the question on the funding of political parties, which again will be an ongoing matter. That is why the Committee on Standards in Public Life is looking at that very issue, and this party and this coalition Government will legislate on the funding of political parties.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I was not sure when the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the Minister envisaged that we should have this debate. If they could identify on which particular issues we should have it, that would be fine. My question—

[Lord Grocott]

I have been glancing through the Bill, because the reference to the crucial issue of the leaflet hit me by surprise. The Minister looks irritated every time I make a suggestion; that seems to be the effect that I have on him. This is what Committee stages are for. Sometimes almost out of a clear blue sky a very important issue arises. It seems that we are not going to debate this now. The only part that I can see immediately thumbing through the Bill that refers to the role of the Electoral Commission is on page 19. It says:

“The Electoral Commission must take whatever steps they think appropriate to promote public awareness about the referendum and how to vote in it”.

I cannot see anything that refers to leaflets. That is quite probably ignorance on my part, but that was the nature of the debate.

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[Lord McNally]

More than one person has commented that the Opposition spent overlong on certain parts of the Bill and then used that as an excuse for not dealing with other parts of the Bill. Just as I have argued with colleagues who have got a little tetchy about the Opposition’s tactics, I know full well that, as one of my old text books used to say, the principal weapon of an Opposition is delay. I do not object to that, but neither do I fail to recognise it when I see it.

[Lord Grocott]

This is a Bill of 300 pages—and I do not apologise for repeating this—which plans to change the constitution of our country. I hope the noble Lord is not arguing that to spend five days—I am speaking from memory now, but I am pretty certain that I am right—on the Committee stage in the House of Commons and two days on Report is an inordinate or generous amount of time. I hope he is not suggesting in any way, shape or form, that the time that we have spent in this House on the scrutiny of crucial groups of amendments is any more than they properly deserve. If he does think that, I would appeal to him to let us know which group of amendments should not have been discussed or were addressing anything other than very serious matters about our constitution. He gives the impression that he is very irritated—perhaps I am wrong, perhaps we are over-sensitive on this side—at every criticism of the Bill, and at any suggestion for any amendment. If that is the way he responds, I suggest he talks to his noble friend Lord Strathclyde, who has the capacity most of the time, at the other end of the scale, for making us think that what we are saying is important—what he privately thinks I do not have the faintest idea but I will give him the credit for giving that appearance—and at the same time being amused, not being tetchy and not being irritable. We could have moved on a great deal more quickly with this amendment. The noble Lord has wasted time.

While I am on my feet, the next amendments after mine are six government amendments. I hope that the noble Lord will not do anything other than a proper courtesy to the House in explaining these amendments in proper detail. I absolutely assure him that neither I nor any of my colleagues, and I suspect any on his side of the House, will accuse him of time-wasting.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I am surprised that my little amendment has developed into the excitement that we have enjoyed in Committee for the past few minutes. I have one serious point to make. I ask the Minister to reconsider his attack—maybe he did not mean the words, I do not know—on a particular individual at the other end who is a colleague of mine in the opposition justice team. It is an unwarranted attack on an individual. If the noble Lord wants to attack tactics, that is fine, but do not attack an individual, a Member of Parliament, for doing what most of us would consider to be his duty—and indeed what the noble Lord did so well when he was sitting on the Opposition Benches just a few months ago. Before I withdraw the amendment, I ask the Minister to consider—

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Moved by

[Lord Grocott]

40B: Clause 7, page 5, line 37, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
“( ) A Westminister parliamentary constituency, as it exists on the day of the referendum, is a “voting area” for the purposes of this Part.”

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the amendment could not be simpler in its objective. It would shorten the Bill, and is about how the election will be conducted and declared. It refers to Clause 7(2) of the Bill, which says, in defining the various voting areas, that they shall be,

“a district in England … a county in England … a London borough … the City of London … the Isles of Scilly … a constituency for the National Assembly for Wales … a constituency for the Scottish Parliament … Northern Ireland”.

My amendment simply deletes all that and replaces it with the most commonsense way to consider and declare an election relating to the House of Commons: to say that the results will be declared on a constituency basis. It basically replaces 10 lines with two.

I am emboldened in moving the amendment, not least by the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in his responses in various other clauses, where he has repeated time and time again that his intention is to follow as closely as possible what happens in parliamentary elections in all the details of how this referendum is conducted. I could quote any number of examples, and that is precisely what my amendment does. For example, in the debate the other day on whether voting in the referendum at the age of 16 should be allowed, the noble Lord said in rejecting the amendment:

“Then as now, the Government's position on the franchise and in all other aspects relating to how the referendum is run is that we should follow the arrangements for parliamentary elections”.—[Official Report, 13/12/10; col. 464.]

That is precisely what I am doing with the amendment.

Noble Lords may ask why. What is the point of having elections conducted and returned on the basis of parliamentary constituencies? The clue is in the Title to the Bill: the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill. My reason for moving the amendment is that the Bill goes to the heart of the relationships between constituents and the Member of Parliament. That is what it is about, and why I and others are so concerned about it in many ways.

I will concede, perhaps the only concession I could make to supporters of the alternative vote system, that the proposal has the merit of not disconnecting Members of Parliament with their constituencies. I have long believed—and this is why I support first past the post more than any other system—that, to use the cliché, the jewel in the crown of the system of parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom is that there is this close link between Members of Parliament and their constituencies.

I am not criticising AV in suggesting that the results should be declared on a constituency basis. I am saying that the constituency results are important. Of course, I freely concede that the most important result of a referendum is to know what has happened nationally. You total the votes up and see who has won and who has lost; that is basically what happens. As I have said, however, this is about constituencies and the verdict of people in their constituencies. During the referendum, if noble Lords ignore the national picture for a moment, we are in effect saying to people, “For generations, your parents, grandparents and perhaps in some cases great-grandparents have returned Members of Parliament from this area”—which we hope is a coherent area, but we will come to that later in the Bill. “Are you happy with how you have been choosing your Members of Parliament? Because some people are saying that they are dissatisfied with how that is done”.

By returning the results in individual constituencies, you are at least relating the conduct and outcome of the election to the very heart of what this change in our constitution, should it be carried, is about. It is, frankly, pointless and irrelevant to do as the Bill does: to declare results on the basis of boroughs in the United Kingdom, for example. What on earth is the basis for that? Does it tell us whether the borough of this, that or the other voted for or against the referendum? Nor do I understand the significance of declaring one constituency for the whole of Northern Ireland.

[Lord Tyler]

As the noble Lord knows, I share his view about the connection between a representative and his or her constituency. He and I take that seriously. I am sure that he has looked at the evidence given by the Electoral Commission, to which many tributes were earlier paid for its independence and the care with which it is preparing for this. Therefore, does the noble Lord note that it summarises its view on his amendment by saying that it would create an unnecessary risk to the successful delivery of the scheduled elections and referendum? That is pretty specific. Will the noble Lord address that point? We are sympathetic to his general point. Our concern is the practical issue.

[Lord Grocott]

I will address that point precisely in a moment. I am currently simply pointing out that, in relation to a normal parliamentary election, to have the various categories of electoral district as laid out in the Bill offers meaningless figures. It is particularly confusing in Scotland and Wales, where the results of the referendum debate—which is, I repeat, about parliamentary elections—will be based on the constituencies of the National Assembly for Wales and the constituencies of the Scottish Parliament. I do not know too much about Scottish politics, but I do know that the constituency boundaries for Scottish parliamentary elections are different from the constituency boundaries for the House of Commons. It is suggested that that is not the appropriate area in which to consider and declare the results, but it simply makes the whole operation more confusing if they are declared on a different basis.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, rightly drew my attention to the wording of the report by the Electoral Commission. I do not think that I have ever been referred to by the commission before, so this is a moment in my life—I do not know about anyone else’s. I have to say that I have a fair bit of concern about what the commission has said, and I hope that when he sums up the Minister does not simply repeat it but gives some credence to the points that I am making. The commission says that:

“Amendment 40B seeks to change the voting areas for the referendum so that they are the same as UK parliamentary constituencies”—

the simplest possible proposition, of course.

“The voting areas currently in the Bill reflect the voting areas for the scheduled elections on 5 May 2011, the polls for which are to be combined with the poll for the referendum if they take place on the same day”.

That is a statement of fact, but now comes—for me, at any rate—the contentious bit:

“We understand”—

this is the Electoral Commission, the independent body to which the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord McNally, have paid tribute—

“that it is the Government’s intention that the referendum should take place on 5 May 2011. We do not support this amendment as making such a significant change to the rules for the referendum this close to 5 May would create an unnecessary risk to the successful delivery of the scheduled elections and the referendum”.

Bearing in mind the unprompted mini-debate that we had earlier about how neutral the Electoral Commission could be, were it to provide a descriptive leaflet of AV on the one hand and first past the post on the other, the commission’s comment on this amendment rang alarm bells in my brain. It is not commenting in any shape or form on the merits of the argument that results should be by constituency; it is commenting on the basis of whether this would be convenient to the Government, who want the referendum on 5 May 2011. That is a pretty inappropriate thing for the Electoral Commission to say. By all means it could say, “The Government want to do this but of course that’s none of our business; they might change their mind”.

What is even more significant and concerns me, although I cannot believe it to be true, is that the Electoral Commission appears not to have seen the result of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker and carried, which gave the Government all the flexibility that they might need to deliver the Bill in a timely way with proper scrutiny. As it now stands, the Bill says that the referendum does not have to be held until October next year, which would give plenty of time for the oddity in the way that these election results are declared to be rectified.

This is not rocket science. Having a general election on the same day as local elections—maybe this is helping the Government, I do not know—is a tried and tested operation. To repeat myself, I am suggesting that the referendum should be counted just like general election constituencies. I have not done an exhaustive list, but we know that this year’s general election was held on the same day as local elections, as were those in 2001 and 1997. I am certainly not likely to forget the election in 1979 that was held on the same day, when the electorate decided that I should spend more time with my family; that is an election that I will not forget in a hurry. The idea that somehow the electoral administrative machinery cannot cope with dealing with results by constituency on the same day as local elections seems to be negatived by experience.

I am concerned that the Electoral Commission, no less, should be advising us to turn this amendment down—and I hope that I have demonstrated that it is at least worthy of consideration—on the grounds that it does not meet the Government’s timetable. When the Minister comes to respond to this, I hope that he does not use that argument. As I said when I intervened on my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer earlier, I feel a bit hurt by all this, or maybe he should, because when he proposed the amendment earlier today he was able to quote the Electoral Commission as broadly agreeing with what he was saying but it did not recommend that we should vote for his amendment. Now it broadly disagrees with what I am saying but it is telling the House to throw it out—and, by implication, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, obviously takes it very seriously. Perhaps I should not take this personally.

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[Lord McAvoy]

I do not want to raise the temperature again, but nevertheless this point has to be made: does that intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, not indicate clearly that there is no filibustering going on, there is no organisation and what is happening here is genuine scrutiny?

[Lord Grocott]

Since the degree to which we are genuine is being tested at the moment, the House will simply have to accept my absolute, total, 100 per cent, categorical—I cannot think of any other adjectives—assurance that when I tabled this amendment, I did so, believe it or not, because I thought that it would be a better referendum if the results were declared by constituency, which is never normally a problem in general elections. It came as a surprise to me that the Electoral Commission thought that there would be all sorts of administrative problems in doing so, particularly—I am repeating myself now, I know—because time and again local elections and parliamentary constituency elections have been held on the same day.

I hope that the Minister’s notes do not say that this is just another silly amendment from the Opposition and that it should be knocked down. I hope that he recognises that there are people who have lived and worked in areas of this country, many of them for generations, who are used to the system under which they are operating and who wish to cast their vote—though not enough of them, I believe, as I fear that the turnout will not be very high. Still, there is a good possibility, although perhaps this is wishful thinking, that the majority will decide that they think the system under which they have been operating is quite good, and they should be allowed to express their own views within their own individual constituencies. That is all that my amendment is trying to do. I beg to move.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I did not really see the significance of my noble friend’s amendment when I was reading through the Bill, and I missed this.

I am thinking back. I know that we are going to be told that the 1975 referendum was not declared by constituency. If I remember rightly, one of the arguments used at the time was, “It would be very uncertain if MPs who had campaigned on one issue about the EU found that their constituents had gone against them”. I recall it being a bit mixed up. I was part of the no campaign, in that sense—I certainly voted no, anyway. In this case, though, the issue is very personal to the MPs concerned because it is about their voting system.

Take the districts. I used to represent part of Birmingham. The whole of the city gets lumped together, no one gets embarrassed about which way a particular constituency has gone and everything is in the melting pot. It is easier to count when all the constituencies have been lumped together, but where does that leave the Members of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elected on that day? They will be out campaigning. The results will be declared in their constituencies for AV or not. So, you will be covering it up for some so as not to cause embarrassment, but not for others.

I am unaware of a constituency called “the Isles of Scilly”. If I remember right, the Isles of Scilly are part of a constituency on the mainland. That is my understanding. Why on earth are they singled out in this way? On Northern Ireland, I hope that we will not have the argument about there being an east and a west and a green and an orange. We do not want any arguments about which constituency went which way. We do not want any arguments about lumping it all together. You cannot use all these arguments to defend this set of voting declarations. Whichever you use for one is contradicted by the other.

It cannot be being done for the administrative convenience for the Electoral Commission. It is not doing the counting. The counting officers are doing the counting—a well-oiled machine, highly sophisticated in counting votes in this country based on wards and constituencies. I freely admit that a little bit went wrong but not on the counts. Why deviate from that? Why deviate from the tried and tested system that we know works for counting? People know where to go. They know where their counts are. The type of people who do the counting go to the same place virtually every year and are almost on a permanent contract. Why interfere with a system that works? I have offered up some of the issues.

I would like an explanation about the City of London. Normally when there is a count for the constituency, are we referring to the City of London as the city or as the constituency of the City of London, because it is not quite the same, is it? I am not certain. I am a bit out of touch. Is it a constituency or not? I am not certain why the Inner and the Middle Temples should be treated differently. It is reasonable to have an explanation for each one of these because the answer to one has to contradict the answer to another. So I await with interest the response of the noble Lord, Lord McNally.

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[Lord McNally]

That is a merry thought, but no. We will resist this amendment and we urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, any neutral observer would say that this is a simple and straightforward proposition that the results of a referendum about parliamentary constituencies should be counted and declared on the basis of parliamentary constituencies. It is not rocket science and it is not complicated. It is common sense, and I think the Minister knows as much. What has been established in this debate—I had not realised how clearly it would be established—is what a complete dog’s breakfast the list of counting districts is in the Bill. I will not go through the list again, but it is pretty random. It is a case of: wherever you can find a returning officer, let us have an election counted and declared. It is of no significance, no interest and no consistency that I can see.

I remind the Minister that we do not hold referenda or make decisions in this House on the basis of convenience for the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission’s report is essentially saying “It is not a convenient way of doing it”, which was the nub of the argument that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, presented to us—that it was much more convenient to hold elections on the basis of these various randomly selected electoral areas as determined in the Bill. I believe that my noble friend Lord Howarth made the point that it is treating a national referendum on changing the constitution as being a secondary event on the day—“Oh, we’re counting borough elections, so we might as well count the referendum within the same electoral areas”. If I may say so, all the arguments on any kind of coherent principle have been on one side, and the arguments for convenience have been on the other. Indeed, he admitted it was for convenience and I do not think I am misrepresenting him.

[Lord McNally]

It is for the convenience of the electorate.

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[Lord Grocott]

I would have thought that the convenience of the electorate and certainly respect for the electorate would be in constituencies, which is what the Bill is about. We should let them know the result of their own votes, and we are not telling them that. I find this particularly astonishing from a Liberal Democrat, and from other Liberal Democrats here, who have been telling us for as long as I have been in politics that people have been queueing up to change the electoral system in this country—that they are desperate to get rid of it. I would have thought that they would have looked forward with pride to a returning officer in their constituency or their former constituency declaring the massive support within their area for the alternative vote system of elections. They may not, of course, and it seems to me that doubts are growing as I look at the faces opposite. However, if the Minister is really saying that we should not do it on this basis, I am afraid that it has been characteristic, and it inevitably builds up frustration, that we make perfectly sensible, straightforward, logical proposals here which are in the interests of the electorate, and they are dismissed in a few sentences. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.