Electoral Status: Online Access

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sure that we will continue to discuss and debate this matter, but the Government believe that active engagement on registering to vote is preferable. The success of the new individual electoral registration system shows that it is making it easier to register to vote. Between the unfortunate downtime at 10 pm last Tuesday and the close of the registration period on Thursday night, for example, there were more than 453,000 applications.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it is of course welcome that substantially increased numbers of people have registered to vote in recent weeks, but does that not have clear implications for the work of the parliamentary Boundary Commission? It is due to report in September but is now likely to report on the basis of substantially out-of-date electoral registration figures. If the Government can bring in emergency legislation to extend the period during which people can register, surely they must commit themselves—I ask the Minister to do this—to ensuring that any redrawing of constituency boundaries by the Boundary Commission is based on a totally up-to-date electoral register.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sorry to disappoint your Lordships, but I am not going to commit the Government to that. Without the implementation of these boundary reforms, MPs would, by 2020, end up representing constituencies that are drawn up on data that are over 15 years old for all of the UK.

Elections: Campaigning

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

When we perceive that there is action that is necessary to be taken.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Further to the Minister’s comment that it was an “administrative error” that thousands of pounds were overspent in local election campaigns, I suggest that it is a poor defence to say that, nationally, the party spent less than the limit imposed. The question was about the very strict limits that have existed on local spending since at least the 1870s. They were the rules that were breached and surely some attention needs to be paid to this by the Government.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I am sure that all political parties wish to make sure that their spending limits are accurately presented and have done down the decades—not least the Labour Party. Both the Labour Party and the Green Party were fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to report all their 2014 European parliamentary expenditure. We all need to look at how our processes operate.

Public Bodies: Israel Boycotts

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Has the Minister had a chance to check what the Prime Minister said yesterday in answer to a Question about settlements? He said that,

“the first time I visited Jerusalem … and saw what has happened with the effective encirclement of East Jerusalem—occupied East Jerusalem—I found it genuinely shocking”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/2/16; col. 297.]

Did the Prime Minister not speak for many Members of both Houses and indeed of all parties when he said this? Is it not time that we move beyond general expressions of dissatisfaction with Israeli settlement activity and took more concerted international action?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord makes a perfectly valid point, but this is about the role of local authorities. I would gently say to him, with due respect, that local authorities should not pursue their own municipal foreign policy which contravenes international trade agreements. They should instead focus on local issues. The clue is in the name as regards local authorities.

Constitutional Convention Bill [HL]

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Friday 11th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 2 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I certainly have no intention of trying to remove Clause 2 from the Bill but this gives me an opportunity to seek clarification on what it might involve. I did not speak at Second Reading although I have, of course, read Hansard. I am only going to make a few comments that could be construed as a Second Reading contribution. The Bill as a whole has admirable objectives and, I am sure, the best of motives. However, I have severe doubts, to put it mildly, about the practicality of being able to sit down with a rather ill-defined group of people and reach a decision within about 12 months about a document that would effectively stand as the constitution of the United Kingdom and the devolved legislatures.

I will leave that comment aside because I want to concentrate on one area where perhaps there could be some clarity—Clause 2—in which, on my reading of the Bill, there is not clarity at the moment. Clause 2(c) says that the convention must consider,

“the reform of the electoral system”.

My question is: which electoral system? In a way, this illustrates the problem with the Bill, that unless there is clarity and a better definition of precisely what the convention is going to look at, the scope for endless debate and discussion is pretty limitless.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it is very good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, reassert yet again how deeply conservative—I hesitate to use the word “reactionary”—he is on all matters constitutional. I had expected him to object to “reform” rather than “electoral system”.

Clearly, I appreciate that a Labour Party which pursued in this recent election a campaign based on the idea that it could win a majority with 35% of the vote and was then defeated by a Conservative Party which won a majority of the House of Commons on 37% of the vote should want to have a vested interest in our current electoral system. If we are talking about constitutional reform overall, we need to talk about the balance in different parts of the United Kingdom. Perhaps one might then talk about, as he says, the range of different electoral systems that we now have.

During the AV referendum a very effective no campaign was led by Matthew Elliott, who is now leading the campaign to leave the European Union—with good right-wing credentials and a lot of right-wing funding. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is happy about that. But if we are going to talk about the rapidly changing and moving relationship between the different parts of the United Kingdom—for example, what is happening in local government in England concerns many of us on these Benches and is another dimension of this—we need to look at the overall pattern. That clearly would need to include some question of which electoral systems are appropriate for which levels of elections. That is the only point that I am making.

[Lord Grocott]

I am very sorry that the noble Lord no longer speaks in an official capacity on the Liberal Front Bench. I do not know whether he has been demoted or has voluntarily moved to the Back Benches or is moonlighting; I am not quite sure what the position is. It is a novel concept from the Lib Dems—I can understand in the light of the recent general election why they may need the odd novel concept—to say that for them it is a reactionary position to respect the views of the British people as expressed in a referendum. I regard that as a very progressive position. Although I do not mind in the slightest being accused of being a reactionary on the constitution from time to time, it might be at least reassuring if we heard occasionally from the Liberal Democrat Benches, whether officially or unofficially, that they do respect the wishes of two-thirds of the British people in a nationwide referendum.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I did speak at Second Reading. The main point I made was that I thought the Bill was far too ambitious. I am very disappointed to see that the terms of reference in Clause 2 remain pretty well as they were at Second Reading, although I thought the noble Lord said that he would consider the fact that there might be quite a lot to do.

The Economic Affairs Committee of this House spent four months looking at the single issue of the financial consequences of devolution in the United Kingdom and produced an excellent report, which has had quite an impact in Scotland and beyond in making people aware that it is necessary to agree and know the fiscal framework before you set in place further structures of devolution. I do not quite know how it would be possible for this constitutional convention not only to consider,

“the devolution of legislative and fiscal competence to and within Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland”,

but deal with,

“the devolution of legislative and fiscal competence to local authorities within the United Kingdom”,

and,

“the reform of the electoral system”,

and,

“the reform of the House of Lords”,

which we have spent more than 100 years discussing. Furthermore, I looked for the kitchen sink, and the kitchen sink is there, described as,

“constitutional matters to be considered in further conventions, and … procedures to govern the consideration and implementation of any future constitutional reforms”.

The convention has to do all this within a year. It is ridiculous.

Who will do this? The convention will be composed of representatives from,

“registered political parties within the United Kingdom”.

I think there are about 600 registered political parties in the United Kingdom, a point that was made very eloquently by my noble friend in winding up at Second Reading, but that is what we are still left with in Clause 4, along with representatives of “local authorities” and,

“the nations and regions of the United Kingdom”.

In addition:

“At least 50% of the members of the convention must not be employed in a role which can reasonably be considered to be political”.

First, finding such people might be difficult. Secondly, there is the experience that we have had with the Smith commission. One has only to read the Committee debate so far on the Scotland Bill to see the mess you get into when you have a group of people working out what they would like to happen without advice and without the ability to translate that into legislation.

It is also quite an impertinence to suggest that issues relating to reform of the House of Lords are matters that should be decided outside this House and outside Parliament. The noble Lord chuckles, but it would be extremely difficult for people to be educated on and understand the procedures of this House and achieve everything within a year. Although I very strongly support the idea of a constitutional convention with the limited purpose of sorting out the mess that we have brought ourselves into because of piecemeal constitutional reform, we have already determined what we think about House of Lords reform. We spent a large slice of the last Parliament discussing it. As for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, I have always thought of him as a radical and not a conservative, but a radical with common sense, intellect and a practical frame of mind.

It just seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is putting forward a Bill that will discredit the idea of having a constitutional convention and make it very easy for those of us who support having one to be brushed aside by the Government on the basis that what is being proposed in the Bill is unrealistic. I very much hope that Clause 2 does not stand part of the Bill as drafted. If it does, the Bill will have to be consigned to the wastepaper bin, for it does not offer a way forward on determining our constitutional arrangements.

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[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

It is probably fair that I respond to some elements of this debate, and in so doing I thank, first, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. It is a pleasure to follow her and I also thank her for the throat pastilles that she gave me. It was a relief to see that this could be a relatively short Committee stage, so my voice can survive it. However, I can rely on the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Forsyth, to make sure that it is fully debated, in this “Second Reading in absence” debate that we have just had, in many respects.

I turn to the specifics raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, before turning to some of the wider aspects that the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Forsyth, raised. It is a fair observation to say that the Bill states the need for reform of the electoral system. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is always very welcome to attend the all-party group, which considered the intention behind this. He might attend it as a radical, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. There will be political theorists studying Hansard, so if the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is describing the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, as a radical, I need to go back to my political study books. The all-party group considered the number of systems that we have, including the changes brought forward in the Scotland Bill, whereby the Scottish Parliament will be responsible for its own franchise and mandate—and, in addition, how they all interact.

The fundamental feeling was that it was right that a convention should consider the interaction of all the electoral systems from the point of view of the voter and not from that of the institutions. In many respects, some of the debates on the role of Parliament and the institutions have been from the perspectives of the institutions themselves and not from that of voters. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is itching to intervene, and I shall give way in just one moment. It is about that interaction, and how they operate; it is about how voters in my former area, for example, see two Parliaments, one elected on a proportional basis in Scotland and one here, where, as my noble friend Lord Wallace said, the Government were elected on 37% of the vote. The noble Lord asked me whether I referred to the electoral system of the United Kingdom Parliament, but that can only be a partial system, unless he is referring to the by-elections of hereditary Peers in this House.

[Lord Grocott]

Surely nothing in the noble Lord’s proposal is from the perspective of the voter rather than the institution. There is surely no more effective way in which to discover the perspective of the voter than to hold a referendum whereby the voter gives the clearest possible response.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

Clause 4 indicates strongly that the composition of the convention is to be citizen- led. If the thrust of the proposals is to consider how the systems that we operate interact, including the systems of this Parliament—and, if we are moving towards reviewing the functions of this House, how it is subsequently elected—it is legitimate that it is part of a constitutional convention that is citizen-led.

I widen this now to the overall aspect. The noble Lord Forsyth, asked if I had reflected on the Second Reading. I had reflected, first, about those who said that the remit was far too broad and therefore that it was impossible for it to be successful and those who said that it was far too specific and did not even address first principles. I reflected, and I think the broad areas of the terms of reference meet most of the areas where the debates that we have had over the last month have drawn real focus on the need for consideration of how all these reforms are being held together. So yes, for devolution and for legislative and fiscal competence, there is the Scotland Bill, although it needs to make its passage. There is the Wales Bill and there are changes within England—and then, of course, there are the legislative changes to taxation for Northern Ireland. None of the thinking behind this proposal would set any of that back. The whole fundamental reason that the convention is necessary is there is no thread holding everything together. That has been a consistent element of all the debates on the Scotland Bill, for devolution in England, for the Northern Ireland taxation Bill, which this House considered, and with the forthcoming Wales Bill. The fact that there have been considerable delays to the presentation of the Wales Bill shows that there is not that coherence across the whole of the piece.

When it comes to the devolution of legislative fiscal competence in England, it is the same point. Part of the difficulty has been looking at the fundamental principles of the areas to be reserved, what is the right tax balance et cetera. This is again rehearsing the Second Reading debate, but it is necessary—

Electoral Register

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have just emphasised that nearly 3 million have applied to register since December. There is movement on and off the voting register all the time, as the noble Lord well knows. We are doing everything we can to make sure that movement in the next few weeks, as over the past three months, continues to be positive.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, since this is all about establishing the identity of people who are eligible to vote, at this stage in the Parliament, five years in, will the Minister acknowledge that one of the numerous mistakes this coalition Government have made—it would take too long to list them—was the early decision to get rid of national identity cards, which would have solved this and many other problems relating to migration and other matters about which this Government have made such a mess?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his normally generous comments. The sheer heavy weight of the Labour Government’s ID proposals seemed to me and many of my colleagues to make it an unavoidable failure. There is a debate about the shift to a digital relationship between the citizen and the state, which we will have to have, and about convenience against privacy, which we need to have as we move forward. My right honourable friend Francis Maude and others working on the Government Digital Service have made a good deal of progress in that regard.

Ministerial Visits: Travel Costs

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Lord’s question. I recall a ministerial meeting in the Foreign Office when we all discussed which was the cheapest cheap airline that we had travelled on. As I recall, David Lidington, who had travelled on Wizz Air, was the winner.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

As this is the responsibility of the Cabinet Office, can the Minister update us on what is meant these days by “collective ministerial responsibility”, given that, as my noble friend Lady Hayter said, we hear that there are to be two separate Budget Statements this year? It seems to me and many others that, although there are fundamental irreconcilable differences between the two parties of the coalition, the Lib Dem members will not do the honest and genuine thing, which is to say that they cannot agree with this Government, resign from their portfolios and stop using ministerial cars, red boxes and so on.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all well aware that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is deeply committed to the idea that a two-party system is the only way to have democratic government. I have just been reading the Spreckley report on the 1974-75 referendum and I simply remind him that the Labour Government suspended ministerial responsibility and collective responsibility because the Cabinet disagreed on it.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it is the job of Parliament and this House to be clear in our language as far as possible. I was wondering whether I had time to rush out and check a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. In all my years in public life, the word “petition” has always involved collecting names and presenting them on a list to whoever you are petitioning. That was certainly the case in the other place, and I assume it is in this House, although I have no experience of it. Should the Government not be minded to accept this amendment, it would involve a redefinition of the word “petition”. A petition involves petitioners, and petitioners are not anonymous people who cannot be traced.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I have been a little confused by this as well. I imagined that when people signed the petition, they would be crossed off the electoral roll—that would be the proof that they had signed. There would be no question of checking the signatures; it would be a question of checking the electoral roll. I would be grateful if my noble friend could fill us in on that.

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[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment, which is milder than the one we considered in Committee. It is a reasonable, moderate and sensible amendment, and therefore I tend to fear that the Government may not look at it very favourably.

The principle seems crystal clear. One of the few good things in the Bill, which otherwise I dislike intensely, is that it gives the final word to the electorate, which is where it should be. That is what I think is at fault with so much of the rest of the Bill: it has all sorts of complicated procedures that intervene between an MP and his or her constituents. Quite properly, a judgment is made every five years at a general election and, in my view, that is the way it should have rested. There are numerous other mechanisms within parties’ own disciplinary procedures which could enable most of the evils that it is alleged are identified by the Bill to be addressed.

However, as I said, the one good thing in the Bill is that it allows a Member of Parliament, even after a recall petition has been carried, to at least stand in his or her own defence in a by-election. That option does not exist following decisions of the election court. The MP—all too easily, it seems to me—is not only thrown out of Parliament but prevented from asking the electorate to give their judgment on the merits or otherwise of their having been thrown out of Parliament. It may well be that the electorate will endorse the decision of the court—in this case, the election court—and say, “Yes, you are right. It is wrong for this person to continue as the Member of Parliament”, but at least they should be given the option. When you introduce, as the Bill effectively does, a new sanction on Members of Parliament who misbehave, or are deemed to have misbehaved—that is, the recall system and the recall petition—then it seems to be a matter of common sense, if not common fairness, that we should consider whether this new mechanism is applicable to existing disciplinary offences or other existing offences. That is the point.

Therefore, this very moderate amendment simply says that, in future, within a period of two years a Secretary of State should be able to consider and report to Parliament whether this new recall petition procedure should be available to the election court as part of its machinery of penalties. If not, all sorts of anomalies might arise. If you bring in a new penalty for a similar category of offence, clearly consideration should be given to whether it should be introduced for older offences and older penalty mechanisms.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)]

Does the noble Lord agree that the power of the electorate has already been pre-empted in the first place? What he said is perfectly right, in my view, but it has happened too late to bring constituents back in again with a vote or with an opinion, because their power has been pre-empted.

[Lord Grocott]

What the noble Baroness said is right to the extent that the whole mechanism of this Bill is doing as she said. But I suppose I am looking for some mechanism whereby it could be made a little fairer and across the board. I am not even doing that; I am saying that the Secretary of State should report to Parliament so that it can judge whether these offences, as determined by the electoral court, should have available to them the penalty of a recall system, which Parliament appears determined to impose. That is all that is being asked by this amendment, and my noble friend put it very well. I rest my case.

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[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, my observation is simply on the practicalities of this. I do not know what would happen in these signing places, the number of which we have just agreed should be extended to a maximum of 10. What would actually happen to them in weeks two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight? Surely, the overwhelming evidence shows that, with the kind of build-up that is being described by my noble friend Lord Howarth, anyone who wanted to sign this petition would, I imagine, have built up to a sufficient level of frenzy that they would be virtually queuing at the station where the petition could be signed. Certainly, they would have dealt with it by week two or week three. There is an idea, somehow, that we need to keep these stations open for 10 weeks. For heaven’s sake, consider a general election campaign, until this dreaded Fixed-term Parliaments Act came along, about which I have expressed opinions in the past. Normally, there were five or six weeks of intense campaigning, which constituted a general election campaign. That was more than enough for most of us, I think. As far as I was concerned, I found it exhausting.

We know, from the evidence, about postal voting. Experts such as my noble friend Lord Kennedy on the Front Bench will no doubt know more about this than I do. Is not the evidence overwhelming that people either cast their postal vote within a day or two of receiving the ballot or they do not do it at all? I think exactly the same principle would apply to this. I think it most unlikely that this Act, as it will become, will come into operation very often, if at all, which makes the whole operation seem rather a waste of time. Assuming, however, that it comes into operation, I would safely predict that the poll clerks in these up to 10 signing places would be sitting there reading newspapers for weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. I can see no conceivable practical reason, let alone in the arguments that my noble friend has advanced, why we need such a long period for signing.

[Lord Soley]

I want to emphasise what I said in my intervention. Bear in mind that when Bobby Sands starved himself to death, there were constant displays outside all sorts of places relating to government in Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. If we have this, there will be something similar. It will not, I hope, ever be as dreadful as that period again, but do bear in mind a very important point: people get sentenced for offences as a result of a political situation.

I shall give another example, which has been given here in the past and concerns the First World War and conscientious objectors. There is a whole range of issues on which, in the past, Members of Parliament have committed offences which are illegal and get them into trouble with the law. Under this legislation, it would result in their losing their seats. If you want to look at a situation, of course it is easy to identify ones where MPs fiddled their expenses. That is the easy option. However, when they are linked into a political-style offence, it is a very different ball game and there are all sorts of dangers. To my mind, that is a much bigger danger in the whole of this Bill, not just this individual question of three or eight weeks.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside and his wide-ranging speech. I am very glad that my noble friends on the Front Bench have tabled Amendments 21, 22 and 23.

What is provided for in this Bill is trial by petition. The petition process will be the trial of the suitability of a particular Member of Parliament to continue to represent his or her constituents in the House of Commons. A Member of Parliament thus placed on trial deserves a fair trial, just like anyone else who is arraigned.

The principle of fair trial goes all the way back in our history to Magna Carta. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, alluded to Magna Carta earlier today. Many of us have been very conscious, particularly in recent days, of how we should measure our democratic and political standards against the precepts and standards initiated in our history through Magna Carta. It derives from common law and the Bill of Rights, which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, also referred to this afternoon. It was most importantly articulated in recent decades in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The principle of equality of arms, which my noble friend Lady Hayter espoused, means that each party should be placed in a position in which they are able to present their case in a manner that does not put them at a disadvantage by comparison to their opponent. The process must be equitable and neither side should be privileged.

Of course, trial by petition is not trial in accordance with any known court procedures or court rules. There are no safeguards provided in the legislation to ensure that there is fairness for the MP whose conduct and future is in question in the process of recall. But we should, as long as possible, in designing these procedures seek to uphold the principle of fairness: it is fundamental to our democracy and the rule of law. It is extraordinary that the Government have presented us with the Bill in which, as I understand it—I am ready to be corrected by the Minister or any other noble Lord because the legislative drafting is often quite impenetrable—there is no limit to the number of accredited campaigns that can be run to seek to unseat the Member of Parliament. Each of them will be entitled to spend up to £10,000. There is no limit to the number of non-accredited campaigners who can be in the field, each of them entitled to spend up to £500, and there is no bar against funding to support the campaign against or indeed in favour of the Member of Parliament coming in from abroad. The system that Ministers are presenting to Parliament has been stacked against the incumbent MP who is having to defend themselves and whose future is in question. A system so weighted and inherently unjust must be unacceptable.

As my noble friend Lady Hayter pointed out, three or four political parties could join to try to unseat a Member of Parliament for the particular party that happens to hold the seat for the time being.

In our present fragmented condition of politics, three-way, four-way, even five-way marginals are part of the reality of life. There will be intense national interest. The amendments of my noble friends are right. They provide for equality of arms in terms of the capacity to spend for and against the petition. In the provision in the amendment on permissible donors, they would keep out foreign money, pretty largely. They will ensure that donations for and against the continuation of the Member of Parliament are aggregated, so it is essentially a yes/no binary campaign. There are just two campaigns.

I am puzzled—and I have not understood, from our previous proceedings—why, under this legislation, only donations of more than £500 are regulated. Unless I am mistaken, I think under election law donations of more than £50 in other contexts are regulated. I would be grateful to be advised on that. Possibly I have that wrong.

As I understand it, the definition of a permissible donor still allows donations from people living abroad but registered on an electoral register in the United Kingdom. They do not have to be registered on the electoral register in the constituency in question. Equally, businesses that are perhaps registered abroad, based abroad, carrying on the greater part of their business abroad but also carrying on some part of their business in this country are also eligible. They do not even have to be carrying on their business within the particular constituency.

The Electoral Commission offers us reassurance that these recall petitions and campaigns will be essentially local constituency affairs. I beg to differ. I think there will be not only intense national interest; I think there could even, in certain circumstances, be international interest. I think that we have to put in place the strongest safeguards we possibly can to ensure equality of arms and to ensure the process of petition campaigning is not inherently unjust because of the advantages it gives to one side against the other—that it gives to the petitioners against the Member of Parliament.

Although it may well be the case that these amendments do not do everything that we would ideally wish, I support them because they will go a long way to mitigate the worst inequities in this undesirable process.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, those who have been patient enough to watch these proceedings at Second Reading, in Committee and now on Report might have detected certain differences of opinion between the Opposition Front Bench and the Opposition Back Bench. Those noble Lords with forensic skills will have spotted that that is certainly true. The difference is that the Front Bench think it is a good Bill, and many of us on the Back Bench think it is a bad Bill but recognise that this is not the Chamber which throws Bills out, even were that possible.

However, on this issue of fairness of campaign funds between the two sides, there is absolute unity between the Front Bench and the Back Bench of the Opposition. I thought that that fact alone, given that we have been pretty frank about our divisions during the course of the passage of the Bill, might give a little pause for thought to the Government, as two groups of opposing views on this issue are united in what needs to be done. The reason is one of incredible simplicity, it seems to me: a petition campaign is a binary choice. There are only two options—you either sign the petition, or you do not. It is an absolutely fundamental principle of electoral fairness, the possibility of a just contest, a fair contest in our democracy for at least 100 years—I suppose since secret ballot times in the 1870s, or whenever it was—

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

May I ask my noble friend about binary campaigns? It is not. It is a single-issue campaign. You can decide to sign the petition, which has an effect. But if you do not sign, you are not taking part at all.

[Lord Grocott]

I suppose the point I was making was that there are only two possible things that you can do in relation to someone asking you whether you will sign a petition.

I hope this is not really arguable from the Government, but if you have two sides in a democratic contest and one side has got colossally more money than the other, then you simply cannot have a fair contest. You see a lot of discussions where, much as we spell out our arguments, in private we might acknowledge that the other side has a bit of a case. I frankly admit that a lot of decisions in the Bill have been grey rather than black and white: for example, whether you have eight weeks or two weeks to sign the petition and whether there are 10 petition-signing locations or two or three. These are all gradations and grey areas. However, I cannot see a grey area that enables us to have a different opinion as to whether two sides in a two-sided contest should have anything other than broadly similar amounts of money that they can spend, with a clear limit on how much. That is all that needs to be said. I just hope that anyone who cares about democracy and democratic choice—which includes all noble Lords I can see, scanning round this House—should be able to acknowledge that that is something that the Government really must concede on, because it is a matter of simple justice.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, again, this debate has ranged fairly widely. I am happy to discuss further with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside, the level at which abortion law should be dealt with. I remember that some years ago the most obscure protocol to the treaty of Rome was added to a revision negotiation by the Irish Government, which said, “Nothing in this treaty shall countermand Article 39”—I think it was—“of the Irish Constitution”, which meant “Keep off”. About six months later, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow asked that this should be devolved. As soon as we are into multi-level government, the question of what level you do things at—at which level you decide that prisoners should have the vote, to take a hypothetical example—begins to be contested among the different levels. We now have several levels, and I am happy to talk about that further.

We discussed some of what we are discussing now, in not dissimilar terms, on the then Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, in which the Government were very much concerned in particular about the possibility of foreign money coming in through various umbrella groups and intervening in and influencing election campaigns. I recognise that there is a potential problem here, but we think it can be contained.

Here as elsewhere, in drafting the Bill, we employed the regulatory regime for campaign spending and donations drawn from existing electoral law. The proposed campaign rules for recall petitions follow those for referendums. In referendums, you have to report your spending at the £500 limit. In recall campaigns, £500 buys you a very small amount of activity. It does not seem to us that the image which the noble Baroness depicted almost, of a gentleman arriving from Switzerland with plastic bags with cash in them to distribute to various local householders, is a likely one; or, if it were to happen, that it would not appear in the Guardian or the Mail very quickly. We therefore think that £500 is the de minimis amount.

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[Lord Grocott]

The Minister may or may not be right about the proportion on either side. The principle is surely that there should not be a massive disparity and that the legislation should provide for that. That is the point.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am merely talking about the difficulty of having one accredited lead campaigner on either side. That takes us too far into the referendum campaign. The question of how one gets towards agreeing one accredited campaigner will need, I suspect, a good deal more than eight weeks to sort out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I cannot give that assurance at the moment. Between now and Third Reading we have some time, as he well knows. Of course we continue to consider all matters, but at the moment I am not persuaded.

We do not see the question on Amendment 23 as entirely justified. The argument for an accredited campaigner in a referendum, as was said before, is that they are then rewarded with a substantial government grant to support the campaign. That will not take place in this area.

Perhaps I may finally stress that permissible donations for accredited campaigns will also follow the same rules as others. They will be reported and controlled. If I may refer to Amendment 24, which we will discuss next, I see value in ensuring that the Electoral Commission in particular has access to the information necessary to assess the appropriateness of the spending and donation rules. We will be debating this in the next amendment. The question of how far in we pull the Electoral Commission is one to which the Government are live and sympathetic.

[Lord Grocott]

Before he sits down, I really need to have it from the Government’s mouth that the Minister’s fairly lengthy response is basically saying that the Government are relaxed about the possibility of one side in a two-horse race having vastly more expenditure than the other, and that they are not prepared to make any rules to prevent that happening. I just want to hear it from the Minister because this is a very serious point. If that is the Government’s position, it is his responsibility to the House to say it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I understand that. It is a one-horse race, of course. The other does not have a horse at all, so to speak. The Government are not prepared to designate a single lead campaigner on either side. We are not persuaded that an overall limit is practical or measurable, but that is one of the things we will come to in Amendment 24. There are several issues in this, as I well understand, including the question of foreign non-permissible donations, which we will come to in Amendment 24.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the sentiments expressed by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. I very much hope that the Minister will perhaps, in this short debate, explain to us how the Government think this legislation should be reviewed, given the many potential traps within it that have been outlined during the various stages of our debate. A little earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tried to entice me and others to support his amendment on the basis that the Labour Back Benches agreed with the Labour Front Bench. I have never found the proposition of the Labour Back Benches agreeing with their Front Bench automatically to be an enticement to support the arguments that they have put forward. In relation to this Bill, I have noted that, on occasions when the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench are agreed on a piece of legislation, but across all parts of the House great reservations are expressed about how the legislation might actually work in practice, as opposed to in the theory of the party leaders—who perhaps in haste have agreed to introduce measures such as this—we should keep that legislation under proper review. We always talk about the need for more post-legislative scrutiny, and I would very much like to hear from the Minister how the Government think that might be undertaken in this case.

[Lord Grocott]

I would have preferred the amendment of my noble friend Lord Soley, but this one is eminently sensible. The idea of a review after six years appeals to me. I put in an early bid to be a member of the reviewing committee, so that I could have the great pleasure of pointing out that the whole operation really was a waste of time, and being able to employ my favourite phrase: “I told you so”.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I am now trying to think what would tempt the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, to vote with us. It does not work when I say the same thing as our Back-Benchers; it does not work when I say the same as the Government. I am not sure that I am ever going to get him into our voting Lobby.

Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Grocott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on Parliament of the next general election date having been fixed as 7 May 2015 since the enactment of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it is a little too soon to reach definite conclusions on fixed-term Parliaments. The Government believe that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act has a number of benefits. It curbs prime ministerial and, therefore, executive power by preventing the Prime Minister of the day from calling an election on his or her own schedule. It has also assisted with Parliament’s work planning. The Prime Minister of the day will be required to appoint a reviewer to evaluate the Act in 2020.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister shared the nation’s palpable sense of gloom this morning when the broadcasters and the newspapers united in reminding us that there are 100 days of campaigning left until the general election. Do fixed-term Parliaments not inevitably lead to inordinately long election campaigns, as many of us predicted, and, I am afraid, to the past its sell-by date House of Commons that we have at present, with very little to do in either House? Does the Minister at least acknowledge that there is a growing view, on both sides of this House and in the Commons, that the passing of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was a serious mistake?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord may perhaps have missed the report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee last year, which stated:

“Our evidence has overwhelmingly argued that the greater certainty about the length of a Parliament provided by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is a positive development, and in particular has created opportunities for better planning by the Government and Civil Service”.

I cannot understand why he prefers the situation of 1964-66, which led to the putting off of decisions and the devaluation of 1967; the two elections of 1974, which led to a Labour Government entering into an IMF programme; the dithering by Mr Callaghan in 1978; or that wonderful experience in 2007 when Gordon Brown kept changing his mind as different opinion polls came out. That was not good Government.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

But there are no limits to the number of organisations that are able to mount such campaigns. The Minister is rejecting the amendment that my noble friend has proposed, but he does not seem to have any other safeguards.

[Lord Grocott]

I put the question in a slightly different way. If the Minister is confirming what I think that he has been saying, it is really alarming. I was most interested in the earlier parts of the Bill. Whereas we all know that in a local election campaign for a particular Member in a particular constituency, there are controls over what each candidate can spend which have been there since about the 1870s, I think that that—not the figure, but the principle—is understandable, because a number of different choices are available: Labour, et cetera. In the case of whether there is or is not to be a recall, there are only two possible positions: you are for it or against it. You may be for it or against it for a variety of different reasons, but the decision to be made is binary, there are two choices.

It seems to me so fundamental as to be hardly worth stating that there must be a balance between the expenditure on the two sides of that simple argument. Is the Government’s position that there is no need to worry about that and that, on a range of different issues, one side in what I repeat is a binary decision can spend vastly greater sums of money than the other? Are the Government comfortable with that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am saying on behalf of the Government that there can be more than one registered campaign group on either side or on both sides of the recall petition.

[Lord Grocott]

I just wanted to hear from the Government Front Bench that in this choice there could be vastly bigger sums of money spent on whether there should be a recall—or on whether there should not. As the Minister knows, I am not at all keen on the Bill, but I am keen that if that decision is made, there must be some equality of expenditure between the two sides of the argument. I find it incomprehensible if that is not the Government’s position.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have some experience of fighting elections in which I was fighting with an infinitely smaller budget than the other candidates. We are content that there should be more than one registered campaigner on either or both sides. In one recall petition, one side may have several groups and the other may not; in another, it may be the contrary side. That is the Government’s position.

[Lord Grocott]

So the answer to my question—the Minister can either confirm this or not—is that under the Bill, one side of the argument could spend vastly more than the other. Is the answer that yes, that is the Government’s position?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is a precedent in electoral law for limiting the number of people who can be involved. Even at a referendum, where a lead campaigner is appointed, multiple campaigners can also separately campaign for one side or other, subject to the spending limits. So even in a referendum, others can come alongside for the game. We are not persuaded that the tighter limits and much tighter controls proposed are desirable or necessary on this occasion.