Business of the House
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, this is not really a question to the Leader of the House; it is more an observation about business today and tomorrow. My Bill to end the system of by-elections for hereditary Peers is in Committee tomorrow. It had its Second Reading on 9 September and has sleepily made its way through the procedures of the House. Since 9 September, there were just five amendments tabled, one of which was from me. Coming in this morning expecting a quiet day at the office, I discovered that 59 amendments had been tabled overnight. I make no complaint about that—people use the procedures of the House as they wish to—but I thought it would be for the convenience of the House that I pointed out today that there are nine pages of these amendments for a one-page Bill, which I think is probably a world record. If anyone is thinking of contributing tomorrow, my pointing that out may be helpful, because you will need an hour and a half with a towel over your head to work out the 59 amendments, but we all look forward to getting a successful Committee on the Bill tomorrow.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, has the Leader of the House seen the very damaging publicity to the credibility of the House of Lords arising from the reporting in the national press of the existence of these 59 additional amendments? Is not the Leader of the House and her team rather worried about this? Would it not be wise if she were to prevail on those tabling the amendments to withdraw them to attempt to save the credibility of this institution?
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for a fair amount of what the Minister said. My Amendments 6 and 7 are, I think, about the shortest and, in many ways, the simplest in the Marshalled List. Amendment 6 suggests that mayoral elections should basically be every four years and Amendment 7 suggests that there should be a maximum of two terms.
On the four years, I think the Minister has probably gone as far as she can. It may not be precisely in her amendment, but in truth the Government seem to be saying that four years is a reasonable, sensible term of office for a mayor. It struck me as very odd indeed—I said so in Committee—that the term of office of the mayor was left entirely to ministerial order in the original Bill. In theory that could provide for a term of office of four, five, six, seven, eight or nine years, or any other number you care to think about. It is such a fundamental part of a democracy to know when an election is going to take place that it is essential to have at least some reference to it in the Bill, and I welcome the fact that the Government have put down an amendment. It does not do everything I would like, but in life you do not get everything.
Amendment 7 would effectively limit the mayor’s term of office to two four-year terms. That, the maths will tell us, is a maximum of eight years. I emphasise that the amendment would be in no way retrospective; I do not think that, under the Bill, it could be. It does not say to those people who are directly elected mayors at the moment—I would not dare say this—“Sorry, you’ve had your eight years and you must go”. It would simply apply to the provisions of the Bill.
I submit that this amendment is very important. I have made it plain that I do not like directly elected mayors. I much prefer the parliamentary system to the presidential one, and there are checks and balances built into the leadership of local authorities at present. Leaders can be removed if they are not doing the job properly. It has never inhibited great leaders of local government in the past, as far as I can make out. I must admit that from some of the comments we have heard in earlier debates you would think that local government had been bereft of outstanding leaders. I do not think that Joe Chamberlain did too badly and I thought that Herbert Morrison was not too bad either. Anyway, we have had that debate.
What I know is that the great strength of the present system, prior to directly elected mayors, is that there is a daily check and balance on the performance of the leader, and if they are not good enough they can be removed. We all know that that has happened in local authorities; we probably all have our own examples. The problem with a directly elected mayor, and I do not think that the Bill addresses it, is that once you have elected them—there is one election once, and that is it—there is very little under this system to deal with a mayor who is considered by his or her peers not to be doing the job very well. There is no power of recall.
Perhaps the Minister could spell out what the checks would be if it became manifest that a mayor was not doing the job properly—obviously, short of a criminal offence. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, referred in the earlier debate to checks and balances, but as far as I can see there are none. That is why the amendment is important; again, I will stand corrected if other people have better international examples than I have, but I think in most systems where there are direct elections there is a limit somewhere to the number of times that you can be directly elected. There are good reasons for that, not least that there is an inevitable tendency for directly elected mayors to see the job of the administration as basically to secure their re-election; that tends to develop in their minds and in the operation of many of their staff.
At its zenith, the American system decided that eight years was long enough, and if it is long enough for an American President it is probably long enough for the mayor of a city in the United Kingdom. I suggest that this has been a mistake in previous legislation about elected mayors; it simply has not provided for limits of terms of office, and it is right that we should do so. I think that the Minister even acknowledged that there are some problems that have not entirely been addressed in that legislation. I submit to the House that this amendment is well worthy of consideration.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, in intervening briefly, I make it clear that I am a passionate supporter of the whole mayoral principle. I believe in elected mayors and have done from the very beginning. I saw them in France when I lived there many years ago. I believe that the system works and it is better than other models, so I have no problem with it at all. However, I also support my noble friend’s amendments.
It is more than 40 years since I was in local government but I always felt that very often local government becomes lazy. People do not always get into that position—there are often very good mayors outside the mayoral model that we are discussing, and leaders of local authorities can be there for years doing a perfectly good job—but you often find in local authorities that people simply become lazy, and they should be moved on. However, they have such control over what is going on around them in the local authority that they cannot be moved. The people whom they have appointed are somehow compromised, and they spend more time ensuring that their position is safe than in engaging themselves in the innovation that was talked about by a number of those who contributed to the last debate.
I think that a term of eight years is quite sufficient. It would keep the mayor on his or her toes, and they would want to be seen to be innovative at every stage. In many ways, I think it would avoid the kind of problems that I have heard and read about over recent years when I have looked at what happened in some of the mayoralties. The recent problems in east London in many ways reflect what I am saying: someone had total control and now, fortunately—through the courts, in the end—we have managed to get rid of them. If you have a model that is based on a more limited term, there is less opportunity for those sorts of problems to arise.
Business of the House
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
My Lords, would we not have a more informed debate if a Government Minister was able to answer a question that I and, I am sure, others have repeatedly put in Written Questions and elsewhere: what precisely in terms of numbers is the coalition commitment to establishing the party strengths in this House on the basis of the last general result? What does that mean in terms of numbers for each of the three parties? Although the Leader of the House dealt with the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, very effectively in parliamentary terms, he did not actually answer the question, which was a valid one. If the Government are committed to their repeatedly stated objective of reflecting the last election results, surely we are entitled to know precisely in numbers, including the total number, what that would occasion. If we do not know the numbers, it is very difficult to have an informed debate.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, perhaps I could just add that I have tabled a whole series of Questions to the Chairman of Committees on this matter of availability of resources to the House against the number of Peers to be created. Perhaps the Government might take note of the answers that I am receiving, because clearly the figures do not add up.
Health and Social Care Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
My Lords, the Leader of the House has given us a proper and guarded answer to quite a difficult question. However, does he not agree that this encapsulates the kind of problem which needs to be resolved before we have a directly elected second Chamber? It goes to the heart of one of the issues that has been accepted as the norm by both Houses for many decades but which would undoubtedly be challenged time and again in the event of a directly elected House. I do not expect the noble Lord to give an immediate answer now—he will give a guarded response—but can I try to be helpful and suggest that this is the kind of issue which the committee of my noble friend Lord Richard should look at, and that that may involve an extension of the period of time the committee needs to consider it? But it is clearly issues like this—alongside, in relation to an Oral Question taken earlier, issues like the impact of a referendum in Scotland—which need to be considered by the Joint Committee before we proceed any further.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, before the House approves the Motion, perhaps I may ask the noble Earl, Lord Howe, a question about the risk register appeal, because we now have some dates that change the debate. I understand that the Report stage is to begin on 8 February and that it is expected to complete by somewhere around the middle of February.
Draft House of Lords Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Cunningham. I do so because it goes to the heart of what the debate about reform of the second Chamber should be. It focuses on the powers of the two Houses and the relationship between them, which, in my view, should be considered before we discuss the composition of the second Chamber. My noble friend is a cautious man and he has put down a cautious amendment. I would like it to be stronger. I would like the Cunningham committee to be reconvened so it can consider the new set of circumstances—which is exactly what it suggested in its report unanimously adopted by both Houses— before we go on to the second consideration, which is what the composition of the new second Chamber should be.
I am alarmed by the position of this Government, just as I was alarmed by the position of the previous Government. We have the constant repetition of the mantra of the primacy of the House of Commons as if that in itself will deliver the primacy of the House of Commons. I have heard Jack Straw say time and again, “Don’t worry, you’ve got the Parliament Act and the financial privileges of the Commons”. I have heard exactly the same from Nick Clegg. With regard to fatuous clauses—I do not want to be too rude in this—I thought the Leader of the House quite wisely read out Clause 2 rather quickly. I will read it more slowly so it can sink in. It says:
“Nothing in the provisions of this Act about the membership of the House of Lords … affects the primacy of the House of Commons, or … the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses”.
If that is not a clause which is wishful thinking, I have not heard one. Why not have a clause saying that the new House shall have a turn-out, at elections, of at least 60 per cent? Why not have a clause saying that the new Senate will cost less than the old House of Lords? If you have wishful thinking clauses, then the options are pretty wide. I support my noble friend’s amendment but I do not think it goes far enough.
Following the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, regarding the date, I have to speak through the Leader of the House to the Deputy Prime Minister, who has been the prime mover of these things, whatever his current position. When a date is set for the committee to report, the phrase “Physician, heal thyself” comes to mind, because we have the precedent of the Clegg committee, which was set up in May last year and took 11 months to report. It had essentially the same remit as the proposed committee, but it had the massive advantage of being much smaller—it had eight members—and if I may say so without causing offence, they were hand-picked to agree. If you have a committee of eight members hand-picked to agree, I would suggest that that is likely to lead to a more speedy conclusion than one of 26 members of widely differing views. At the very least, considering that the Clegg committee took 11 months to make up its mind before anything was presented to the House, I would suggest that anything less than 11 months for the committee that is being proposed would be wishing for something that is probably unattainable.
Why does not the Leader of the House revert to his own good sense? When he set up the Goodlad committee—which was a Leader’s Group—he very wisely did not give it a date when it should report. I was very fortunate to serve on it, and it took, I think, nine months. That was without a date. It did a good job—very busy, hard work—and to expect a committee looking at the future of half of Parliament to report in less time than the Goodlad committee took, and substantially less time than the Clegg committee took, is wishing for an awful lot. I would appeal to the Leader of the House not to set a date and to indicate that the date is by no means binding. I would also appeal to him in his capacity as Leader of the whole House. As he repeatedly reminded us when our positions were reversed, the Leader of the House is not just leader of a great political party, as our leader was and is in this House, but is Leader of the whole House. As such, does he not agree that his prime responsibility to this House on Lords reform is to ensure that the 12 Members who speak for this House on the committee accurately reflect the division of opinion in the House on Lords reform? It is not entirely within his power to do that, but he could give the House advice. In the last poll that I saw, 80 per cent were opposed to a directly elected House. I do not wish to overstate my case, but I suggest that it would be appropriate for nine of the 12 committee members to have the good sense to wish to keep this House free from direct elections, which we know would damage the relationship between the two Houses.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I will express a view that is shared by a minority in House—perhaps a very small minority. I start by saying clearly that I am in favour of a 100 per cent elected House. However, there are consequences to some words in the amendment of my noble friend Lord Cunningham about which we should draw out more information. He refers to the need for the committee to report on the draft Bill by 29 February 2012. In the event that the date were to pass and the committee had not reported but instead sought to report by February 2013, which would be distinctly possible because it will be in the next Session of Parliament, that would have implications both for the introduction of the legislation and the creation of the new constituencies. There must be a timetable. If one takes into account the fact that it is distinctly probable that the Parliament Act would have to be used to secure the passage of the legislation—because on the basis of what one hears, it would be impossible for this legislation to go through without the use of the Act—the Government must already have had in mind a timetable when they set the date of 29 February 2012. We as Members are entitled to know what the timetable is, taking into account the need to create the new constituencies and the fact that the Parliament Act may well have to be used.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
My Lords, one rarely sees an amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker that does not have a huge amount of common sense within it. We all remember what happened at the general election, where people were queueing at polling stations because the flow of people simply could not be accommodated, and we can all agree that at this referendum election there is certainly going to be more confusion than there is at a normal parliamentary election, where everyone understands what is required of them. It is the simplest possible thing to have to do—put a cross by their favoured candidate—and we all accept the result; at least, the vast majority of us accept the result.
What the noble Lord proposes here would be desirable in any event, if we were just going through the same system as we did at the last general election, but given that we are going to have polling stations where there is more than one decision being made and where electors will confront, for the first time, the option of the alternative vote and have to understand what is involved, there is bound to be confusion. I predict with complete certainty that, should we go down the road to AV, there will be far more spoiled ballot papers than there normally are—that has been the case with every move away from first past the post. Staying with the referendum, there will be people who will seek the advice of polling clerks. I do not know what the law is if they seek that advice. Are the polling clerks expected to explain what the choice is, or are they supposed to keep quiet about absolutely everything if a potential elector is confused?
I hope that the Committee will accept my proposition that this is going to be more complicated than a general election. I hope that the Committee will accept the evidence of their own television sets that, at the last general election there were polling stations that simply could not cope with the number of electors coming at a particular time. It must therefore follow, surely, that we need to make special provisions for this very unusual election where there is bound to be more confusion. I cannot be confident that there will be large numbers of people voting, but we need to allow for that and we clearly were not allowing for that effectively at the last general election. Amendment 115 is presented with characteristic simplicity and common sense in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker and I strongly support it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I want, very briefly, to remind civil servants, when they are drawing up the wording as currently set out in the Bill, of what happened with the ballot paper in the first mayoral elections in London. We had made recommendations as to what should be on the ballot paper; the civil servants basically took over the agenda and wrote the question; I objected very strongly, but of course as usual, I was overruled on the detail; and the result was that a lot of ballot papers in the first mayoral elections in London were wasted because of the framing of the question.
Wording is crucial and I think it has to be politicians who decide on that wording, because it is only we who understand how electorates respond to certain language. Therefore, I hope that a debate takes place within the department about whether the current wording in these areas of instruction is right and whether the wording that my noble friend wishes to introduce for the benefit of people voting in the referendum might be better. The Minister should take this as a very serious amendment: it might not be the final wording, but let there be a further debate, because if it does not take place, the danger is that the events of the first mayoral elections in London may well be repeated.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, there is one problem with this schedule, which I want to refer to briefly. I am sure that it will make us wonder, in the light of us looking at it in some detail, whether there perhaps should have been one or two amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, I think wrongly, that there had been no discussions on this schedule at all.
The real problem with this schedule is that we can sense in it that the parliamentary draftsmen—whom I do not blame, as it is a very difficult job—think that it is about the procedure relating to any election. The whole point is that this is not any election. It is fundamentally different, so far as the voter going into the polling booth is concerned, from all the elections that he or she is familiar with, where they know that there will be names there and have, obviously, put their cross by the favoured candidate. However, this is about asking a question and it will not do, for a number of reasons, simply to lift huge chunks that are clearly from existing legislation—I do not blame the draftsmen, as I have said—about the conduct of elections, thinking, “Well, we can just lift this and stick it in and this will be okay for a referendum to change the constitution”.
I shall give one example. I do not know the answer to it but it is quite significant. A relatively small part of this schedule has the totally innocuous information about the,
“appointment of presiding officers and clerks”.
We all know the job of a clerk in a polling station, but I submit to the Committee that in a referendum on changing the voting system, that clerk is likely to be presented with difficulties that clerks in polling stations simply do not face. The elector will go in, thinking that he or she is voting principally for a local government candidate. Certainly, in the areas that I am familiar with, it is on who should be their local councillor. They will then be presented with a second ballot paper which will ask the question:
“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the ‘alternative vote’ system be used instead?”.
I put it to the Committee that many people will be going into a polling station for the first time. I am not patronising people or saying the electorate do not understand these systems, I am simply making the straightforward point that the change in the electoral system to the alternative vote system is not high on people’s radar, as we all know from our own experience. I would be very surprised indeed if no more than one elector then left the cubicle where they were about to vote and asked the clerk who distributed the ballot papers what they were being asked to vote on. That is perfectly plausible and indeed an almost inevitable consequence of what is happening.
I asked the question—I do not know the answer—whether it is within the law for the clerk to give advice to the would-be voter about what the alternative vote system is. I assume it probably cannot be because presumably I could be a clerk if I applied to be one and I know what I would tell them about the alternative vote system. So presumably it would be completely out of order for clerks to give advice in that way. If that is the case and a confused elector goes to the clerk on desk and says, “I am puzzled about this second ballot paper, I understand the first one”, at the very least I would suggest that in the appointment of clerks and counting officers on page 33 a script should be offered to them out of courtesy. They would need to know what to say to someone who came to them with that question.
I doubt whether the Leader of the House when he sums up will have given any thought to this as it is only a small part of the Bill but it illustrates the point that you simply cannot lift the rules that apply to every other kind of election and apply them to this most fundamentally important election of changing the way we vote and thereby changing our constitution. So please can we be told whether there is any law relating to what clerks can do when faced with this question? If there is not, should there be or, at the very least, should there be guidance as to what should happen in the polling station when this kind of eventuality arises?
Lord Campbell-Savours
As my noble friend was speaking, something dawned on me which has not been referred to in any of our previous debates, and I cannot see it marked under Schedule 2 in the list of referendum rules under Part 1.
What happens in the circumstances where in the referendum campaign the “no” vote and the “yes” vote decide to put huge hoardings up outside polling booths, saying vote “yes” or vote “no” or whatever? It might well be that some rather keen, over-eager young turks who think that they can push their case might erect rather aggressive advertising material outside polling stations in the referendum to push their case. One would have thought that under Schedule 2 there would be some restriction on the kind of material that could be used in the vicinity of a polling booth.
On advice from the clerks, I wonder if the Minister might care to comment on what the position is and, in the event that it is not covered, perhaps he could say so and perhaps on Report we could return to that matter. There are circumstances in which precisely that could happen. There are some very strange people out there who do very strange things and they may well turn up during the referendum campaign.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
Amendment 56A, in my name, covers much same ground as the two amendments that have been briefly discussed today, so I do not intend to speak to it when we reach it. My suggestion is that the Boundary Commission should be required to report by 2017. It is not a date that I have picked out of thin air; it was chosen in anticipation of the time that a Boundary Commission would normally take to complete its work. Lest the Committee should think that I am a Johnny-come-lately on these issues, I point out that I am an obsessive. When you have had the experience, as I have had, of representing a constituency with an electorate of around 90,000 when your majority is around 360, you look very closely at parliamentary boundaries.
As soon as I saw in 2009 that the Conservative Opposition, as they were then, were thinking of reducing the number of MPs, my mind flew to how the boundaries would be drawn. I asked the then Minister—a splendid Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bach—in a Written Question how long it took to conduct a boundary review. He said in his Answer of 3 November 2009 that the previous boundary review for England had taken six years and eight months and that for Northern Ireland it had taken three years and five months. I know from my experience of various Boundary Commission changes—many other people in this Committee will have had the same experience—that consulting local people and discussing whether their community should be split, joined or divided is a lengthy process. The job has been very well done by Boundary Commissions in the past and the time taken has been reasonable.
Although I knew that the Conservative Party was likely to go ahead with its pledge when it came into government, I did not think that it would substantially short-circuit the period of time required for a proper boundary review. I have proposed 2017 because I anticipate that the Bill will become an Act this year, which will give the Boundary Commission six years to do its work. I do not think that is an unreasonable period.
Anyone who has been an MP knows that boundary redistributions are pretty uncomfortable and difficult processes, as are the consequences of Boundary Commission proposals, which often mean colleague fighting against colleague from the same party for nomination for a seat. If you believe in first past the post, as I strongly do, you obviously have to accept that constituencies should be broadly similar in size and that they should be reviewed, because populations and their distribution change. However, they should not be conducted with phenomenal regularity.
I think I am right in saying that the House of Commons has an unusually, if not unprecedentedly, large number of new MPs. When they have settled into the euphoria of becoming a new MP—and it is a pretty euphoric experience—they will discover that they had not bargained for the fact that within a few months someone will come along and change the boundaries of their constituencies, probably substantially. That will put them in conflict with neighbours and all the rest of it. What is more, that will happen every five years. I almost plead with the Government for their own sake that that is not a good idea. You will not make MPs of whatever party—this is not a Labour Party partisan plea—very happy if you put them in a continual state of uncertainty about the democratic base on which they stand.
Lord Campbell-Savours
It is not just the sense of insecurity; it is the fact that it will influence the quality of entrants into the House of Commons because people make a judgment when they seek to be candidates. It is an important issue for many MPs.
Lord Grocott
I can see my noble friend’s point, although I am not sure I agree. There will always be a lot of people who want to be a Member of either of these Houses—quite rightly because it is a wonderful privilege. There is no shortage of people who are keen to stand, for all the hazards of elections—and I know all about the hazards. I simply put it to the Government that it is not unreasonable to suggest that we should have a reasonable period of time—six years was my suggestion—before the next boundary review, not least because we have only just had the last one. The 2010 general election was fought for the first time on new boundaries. That was pretty unsettling, as it always is. The Government are wrong to propose another one so soon. If they want to change the mechanism of elections, obviously they can do that. They have a majority that will enable them to do that. If they want this Bill to become an Act, in whatever amended form, they will probably get away with that as well.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Campbell-Savours
Those were two very useful interventions and I agree with them both. The reality is that this is an extraordinary Bill. It is the first time in my 30 years in Westminster that we are considering a Bill when we know that the Government—the Conservative element in the Government—are by an overwhelming majority opposed to the provisions in the Bill. I bet that if we were to have a free vote in the House of Lords, no more than a dozen Conservative Members would vote in favour of the referendum provision. In other words, this is a totally artificial debate. The Liberals are opposed because they have always been opposed. The Conservatives are opposed because they do not like AV at all and do not want any change from first past the post. To be frank, those on my own Benches are relatively divided on the issue.
Lord Grocott
Just for statistical reference, my estimate is that 70 per cent of those on the Labour Benches are in favour of first past the post.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I would call that relatively divided. The point is that this is a totally artificial debate. It would be really worrying if the turnout were to be only 13 per cent of the electorate. That was the figure that I picked, but if the overall turnout were to be as low as 18 or 19 per cent—as it was in some wards in Manchester that I checked on last week—you could find that approval in some parts of the country was as low as 10 per cent, representing only one in 10 voters.
My noble friend has come forward with the politically reasonable suggestion that there will obviously be varying decisions in the various parts of the country. She is saying that there must be a majority in every part of the kingdom, but I would add the requirement for a threshold set on approval of the question, which we shall no doubt come to on Report.
Lord Grocott
If my noble friend is right—and he has been right on far more things over the years than he has been wrong—we really are wasting our time on this Committee stage. It has felt like that from this side of the Chamber throughout. It is unlike pretty well any other Committee stage I can think of, when the normal response from a Minister to anything other than a completely ludicrous amendment would be to say, “Well, we don’t really like this amendment much, but there is something in it worth considering, so I am quite happy to discuss it”.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Is not one advantage of the threshold to which my noble friend Lord Rooker refers the fact that you could then permit a very low turnout? You do not need a high turnout if you set an approval turnout, as my noble friend’s amendment would have provided for. I cannot understand why the Government agreed this between the two parties. It would have been far easier to secure a low turnout with a 20 per cent approval threshold, for example, which would have pleased us all. Why did they not agree that?
Lord Grocott
There are fruitful lines of discussion here for Report stage, and if they can lead to unanimity across the Chamber—which is what I sense we are moving towards—let us look forward to that day.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Campbell-Savours(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
My Lords, I was rudely interrupted by the usual channels, who adjourned the House just as I was on the point of delivering my remarks. I shall try to pick up the morale of the whole debate by opening out this time. We are debating whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. What I really want to say, perhaps more than anything else, is that any observer watching the debate on this clause so far would have noticed one thing above all else—that there was absolutely no real detectable enthusiasm whatever for having a referendum: and if we did have a referendum, there was certainly no enthusiasm for the choice of having the alternative vote.
We are having a debate about a flagship Bill of this Government. It is more than a flagship Bill; it is a major constitutional Bill. Indeed, as Nick Clegg has said, it is part of the most ambitious programme of constitutional reform since 1832. Three members of his party at the moment want to be part of this great constitutional Bill, the greatest since the Great Reform Act. I am absolutely certain that if my Government had brought forward a great constitutional Bill, not only would a fair number of people have wanted to take part in the debates, they would do so enthusiastically. It does not happen very often—we have the statistics and it happens only once every 170 years, or however many years it has been since the last huge reform, according to Nick Clegg. That has been noticeably absent. The overwhelming majority of the speakers have either been very strongly in favour of first past the post, as I am, or else they have been people like my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker who, while not being supporters of first past the post, have given so many good reasons why the option that is being delivered to the electorate is a very bad one. That is something that any neutral observer would have to report on. I do not know whether that will change during the passage of the Bill, but I doubt it.
I have to say that I was slightly fearful of contributing a lot to this debate, because I acknowledge that I am one of life’s anoraks when it comes to looking at electoral systems, and I really do not want to be labelled as an anorak, although I have not got past first base on being an anorak. Another thing was really noticeable in, for example, the exchanges between my noble and very good friend Lord Campbell-Savours and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. It scrambled my brain, and I do not know what it would have done to the electorate in the course of a referendum. That is one of the many, many reasons why this is a bad Bill and this clause is a bad clause. Although the debate is important and significant, it has been in some parts almost unintelligible, certainly incredibly detailed. Now, if that is the case when we are discussing it among people who acknowledge that we are in a tiny minority of the electorate who are actually very interested in these things, how on earth will that be a substantial debate in the country? You can just imagine the near impossibility of getting some of these arguments over to the electorate. Of course I am not saying that it is because the electorate are dim, of course I am not saying that. I am saying that it is of no great concern to people, and if it is of no great concern to you, you do not apply yourself to the arguments. That is what I confidently expect will happen as and when this referendum takes place.
We all know that we have the authority of the Electoral Commission in its report, which is in a pile of documents in my office. I am sure that Members on the Front Benches will have read it cover to cover. The report states clearly that the public simply do not understand AV. Noble Lords may check it. If any of the proponents of AV are happy, as my noble friend Lord Snape has said, to go down any road that they are familiar with in any part of Britain, in any constituency, they should ask the public what they make of AV, let alone the single transferable vote or whatever else is on the menu.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On that question of understanding, when I asked MPs how AV worked, the great majority did not know or gave a completely wrong explanation. So if MPs do not understand it, how can we expect the great British public to understand it?
Lord Grocott
As we know, my noble friend is a reformer who supports change, and he is honest enough to acknowledge just that. The debate that we are having—the subject that we proposing to spend a large sum of money on and put to the public—is basically of interest to only one or two university departments. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who is sound on a lot these issues, in his place. If I was the parent of a university-age son or daughter who was thinking of taking politics, I would say, “Go to the University of Hull”.
Lord Grocott
My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours asked which AV system, but no doubt there is a specialist MA course on that. Does that not give us some of the answers? A few university departments quite properly consider these things, as well as one or two writers for the Guardian newspaper, which seems to think that this is the way that you can solve most of life’s ills, and I assume that these debates take place at branch meetings of the Liberal Democrat party. They must be a lot of fun. I am sorry that I missed them.
Lord Grocott
We are spending millions of pounds on dealing with, as far as the public are concerned, a non-existent problem. That is one of several reasons why I am not sure it is worth proceeding with the Bill, let alone endorsing Clause 1.
On the Government’s defence of the Bill, I should make one or two observations that are fair. Perhaps the most serious is that there has been no attempt, so far as I can see, even to address the issue that Nick Clegg raised: that this is part of a great reforming programme. There has been no attempt to relate what we are doing in this Bill to what is happening on any other constitutional reform measure. This is particularly true when considering electoral systems.
You would not think that somewhere down the track—I hope, or expect, a long way down the track—a Bill will come forward about Lords reform. We are already told that the electoral system to be used is proportional representation. What form of proportional representation? I really do not know. There are far more forms of it than there are of AV. I did not know about all the alternatives to AV until my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours got cracking on it. He will be a joy to listen to when we discuss the various forms of proportional representation in detail. Whenever I have had a debate with proponents of proportional representation—I have had several—and whenever I thought I was close to winning the case for first past the post, their rejoinder was always the same: “Oh, it’s not that kind of proportional representation that we are in favour of. It is some other kind”. So those private debates and discussions go on.
I would really like to know from Members on the Front Bench opposite, before we proceed any further with the Bill, how many different electoral systems they think it is proper for the United Kingdom—a country of 60 million people—to have. We already have five different systems.
Lord Grocott
I think that is a very honourable and honest thing to say. I was not so much referring to what he had said so much as to the debate between the two of them. I do wish that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, with his characteristic honesty on these matters, would gently, while we are debating things over here, move forward and whisper in the ear of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who constructs his near total defence of the AV system on the idea that it guarantees that MPs would have majority support. I do not know who is right. Is there another division among the Liberal Democrats on this particular issue? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord McNally, could address that. I do not know whether he is responding to this debate or not. He is not. He looks relieved as he says not.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I was listening to a “News at Ten” bulletin the other day and there was a discussion about AV. Again the newscaster referred to it requiring more than 50 per cent. We have to get the story out to a lot of people that the 50 per cent issue does not arise under AV. The national media still keep peddling this story.
Lord Grocott
I am not surprised. During the time in office of the previous Labour Government, the national media frequently said that Labour had a majority in the House of Lords. They do not know the difference between “majority” and “largest party”: we are used to that. My concern about the constant reference to a majority is more fundamental. I simply report to the House that I was not as clever as some of my friends who ensured that they represented seats in the Commons where there was majority support in election after election. I had that luxury on only one of the four occasions when I managed to convince the electorate that I should be their Member under the first past the post system. I cannot remember the figures. They were about 42, 44 or 46 per cent: then in the end—bingo—it was more than 50 per cent. I did not think that it was of any great significance until I started reading some of the debates in the run-up to this one.
I assure the House—and if any noble Lord wishes to intervene, they are welcome to do so—that I do not know whether I had 50 per cent of the vote. I had to check it because I am now a fully paid-up member of the anorak society and had to know the facts about my own electoral history. It does not make a shred of difference. First, your voters do not know whether you have a majority. If I did not know, I am sure that they did not. It does not make a scrap of difference to your work as a Member of Parliament. The notion that it is vital for Lib Dem, Conservative or Labour voters in constituency A, B or C to have a Member of Parliament of their party is wrong, because 99.9 per cent—and that is a low estimate—of the people who come to you when you are a Member of Parliament do so irrespective of your party or theirs. They come to you with exactly the same range of issues whether you have a majority or not.