Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I pick up on the specific question of automaticity, I will pick up on one or two comments made by other noble Lords during this discussion. In relation to the timetabling and inadequate consideration, I have sympathy with that view but, given the timing process that one faces in terms of completing a full boundary review, a timetable must be set so the Boundary Commissions from the different countries can go through that due process. In terms of timetabling, that process is set out and, in fact, in this particular piece of legislation, had the agreement of the Electoral Commission and the other Boundary Commissions as well as the other political parties involved in the discussion. The slight foreshortening of the timetable has been agreed, but it means that we need to complete the legislation within a certain timescale. I have sympathy as to whether this should be considered in Grand Committee or on the Floor of the House—no question about that—but the circumstances we face are somewhat different.

When talking about inadequate consideration, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, also talked about trusting or not trusting the Executive. This clause takes the power away from the Government and gives it to the Boundary Commissions in the different countries.

Just as an aside, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made reference to reducing numbers of politicians without any hesitation. It may reflect that I am a sad git, really, but I turned up the extract from the BBC for October 2019. At Second Reading, I said that we should have fewer politicians, not more. On 19 October, Italy voted to reduce its lower House from 630 to 400. Significantly, it also voted to reduce its upper House from 315 to 200, and that is in the process of being implemented.

I seek guidance—and it may be that the Minister can clarify this now or at some other point. I read the Constitution Committee’s report somewhat differently. Paragraph 4, which I have in front of me, says:

“The removal of Parliament’s power to block Boundary Commission recommendations is constitutionally appropriate and therefore welcome.”


Others have cited it, but that seemed to me to be an indication that it was acceptable.

And acceptable it is. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, to whom I always listen with great care, referred to the fact that there had been no discussion—but this is not a constitutional aberration. As the Minister said, in his response at Second Reading, it operates in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I pointed out to him after the debate that it also operates in India. This is a process that has worked for decades in a large number of countries, and there has been no objection. The run-up to the New Zealand election is going on at the moment, and there has been no objection that I have been able to trace.

I had discussions some 10 years ago when, I am afraid, it is probably my fault that I coined the word “automaticity”. I was in discussions with the then Australian commissioner about the Australian process. It works well in Australia, New Zealand and other countries. I have checked with Tom Rogers, the current Australian electoral commissioner, and I thank them both for their help in relation to the details of the process. So this is not some constitutional aberration that does not exist and has not operated anywhere else.

The noble Lord, Lord McNicol, raised the question, quite reasonably, of changing the numbers—from 650 to 600, or some other number—but that would still have to go through primary legislation. I have here the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, to which there has been reference. All those considerations would have to be made to change the existing primary legislation—and, significantly, this is the process that one is following, which leads up to automaticity. We have a judge-led commission process. There is a series of stages that one goes through, which under the current legislation, on page 11 of the Act, are bound by the factors in Section 5. You have to follow certain guidelines. Clearly, if the commissions failed to follow those guidelines as outlined in the rules, it would be perfectly reasonable for somebody to go to court and say that they had not followed those rules—any of the Boundary Commissions. We will come back to certain other elements as well. But it is a judge-led process; it is not some process that has been thought up and is part of a government appointment. It is fully independent. On the actual discussions, I have not heard anything so far that persuades me that automaticity should not be adopted. It is a perfectly reasonable process.

What is significant about the discussions and the comments that we have had so far is that while people have referred to the efforts of the aborted reviews and the associated legislation, not one person has referred to 1969 or 1983, which saw specific attempts by government to interfere with the final stage of the process. This clause and set of clauses find another way whereby Governments cannot interfere with the process. There are quotes in relation to 1969, in particular, in which members of that Government acknowledge that they were operating on a constitutionally unsound basis.

As far as I am concerned, we have here a process that is tested in other countries. It is independent. It goes through a whole series of stages of independence and due consideration. It operates within a set of principles outlined in the existing legislation. There is clear evidence that Governments have interfered with the process on previous occasions and therefore it is appropriate that we should remove that from the system and introduce something that has been constitutionally tested in other countries.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, might also refer to what happened when he left in 1992, when the then Conservative Government more or less doubled expenditure on the Boundary Commissions in order to expedite the process and to try to bring forward a review earlier than might otherwise have been the case in an attempt to save their skins. People might say that it did them a fat lot of good in 1997 but it was an attempt by a then Conservative Government to alter the process.

I am inclined to disagree with these amendments in principle, but I may be willing to support them if the same kinds of flaws remain in the Bill as were contained in the previous legislation from 2011. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, that it was with the aim of preventing gerrymandering and because of these flaws that I was one of the movers of the crucial amendment in the House of Lords that halted the boundary review in 2013. A cross-party group in the House won approval for our amendment and this then achieved a clear majority in the Commons, which had the effect of blocking the implementation of that review. I have no regrets at all about that.

The Bill before us now is better in many respects than the one introduced at the beginning of the coalition. The plan for 600 MPs was a bad one when the so-called payroll vote remained so large. Reducing the number of MPs, while maintaining the same number of Ministers, Whips and PPSs, would have given greater power to the Executive and weakened the legislature when we should be moving in the opposite direction. That problem is addressed by retaining the number of MPs at 650. This change will also reduce—at least marginally —the disruption involved with boundary reorganisation and which is proposed to be every eight years, as opposed to every five, although perhaps 10 would be better.

However, two significant problems remain with the Bill and they are relevant to these amendments. If not addressed, I think that Parliament should still be given the final say over implementation. The first problem relates to electoral registration. The Electoral Commission has reported that 9 million people may be missing from, or inaccurately included on, the electoral registers. This is a very high proportion given that the registers contain around 47 million names. The potential figure of perhaps 6 million people completely missing from the registers is far higher than was suggested to Parliament when it approved the 2011 legislation, and the missing millions obviously greatly distort the work of drawing up boundaries properly. I await with interest the Government’s response to the discussion on Amendments 11 and 24 relating to automatic voter registration.

The second major flaw with the process proposed is that it is unnecessarily disruptive. Whether inadvertently or otherwise, it will allow for small population changes in one constituency to trigger massive changes in many others throughout the remainder of the relevant English region, or in Scotland, or Wales, not just in neighbouring constituencies. This problem can be addressed, as the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee concluded in its excellent report in March 2015, by allowing perhaps 7.5% or 8% flexibility. A little more flexibility in the 5% margin allowed for variation to the quota for each constituency would enable more natural constituencies with sensible boundaries to be created, with fewer constituencies proposed that cross county boundaries, for example. Perhaps more importantly, more flexibility would help ensure that the entire map of constituencies is not ripped up whenever a review takes place. The Government should note that the Liberal Democrats are not under the same constraints as in 2011 to support aspects of the Bill such as the principle of 5%—which was very nearly changed to 10% to secure the passage of the Bill, but the compromise was not made.

A good process, with fair rules, using independent commissioners, should not be halted, varied, or expedited according to the whim of the party which can control a parliamentary majority. However, when so many people are not included properly in the electoral registers and there is the likelihood that the process will be unnecessarily disruptive in a way that would particularly disappoint many good constituency MPs, the case remains for Parliament having the final say.

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[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

The word of the day seems to be “automaticity”. The noble Lord, Lord True, wants to remove any political interference or influencing from future boundary reviews. But as the noble Lord, Lord Young, eloquently said, this is the one area where any future Government could use political influence or interference, with the Executive slowing down the implementation of such future boundary reviews. You cannot pick and choose your automaticity. If it is good enough to remove Parliament from the ability to debate, question and vote on the boundary review, it is good enough to remove any possibility of the Executive delaying the implementation of a boundary review, especially if they do not like it. I offer another word of advice to the Minister. I seriously suggest that, apart from adopting this amendment, the Government should look at getting the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, back on to the Front Benches.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Young, on the exemplary way in which they have introduced their amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Young, suggested that I might follow on from some of his detail. I do not want to bore the Grand Committee with excessive detail, but I will make one or two further observations on the process.

Until 1986, there was no timetable for any part of the process of boundary reviews. The 1986 Act introduced one change: to identify the point at which each review should start. Later legislation introduced timetables for each stage with one notable exception, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra has just said, which is the concluding stage. If we have moved to a position where we should identify the timing for each stage in the process, it would be sensible to do so for the conclusion as well.

As I have said, there is just one stage that has no timetable, but it is worth looking at the justification for “as soon as reasonable”. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, has said, it is just 27 lines with vast quantities of pages thereafter. The argument made to me on previous occasions was, “Well, the maps have to be prepared; we have to ensure that we have got the wards right and all the rest”. As already identified in an earlier debate, however, all the political parties spend their time throughout the process trawling around the edges of every single ward—and nowadays even the polling districts—with a view to ensuring that the right arguments are put forward and the right boundaries are set.

There is absolutely no reason why much of the work cannot be done in advance. The noble Lord, Lord Young, has identified many of the timescales, but it is worth while looking within the process of each review. When a review is brought forward, the initial recommendations are tabled by the boundary commissioners. Some 50% of those are changed, meaning that 50% are not. Some of the changes are agreed across the political parties. In the last abortive review, all three parties put forward exactly the same proposal for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. This means that officials can start working if there is excessive work, which I am not convinced that there is, since the councils have much of the detail anyway. Given the way the review process works much of the preparatory work on maps, street identification and the like can be done well in advance.

From 50% of the initial recommendations being changed, depending on which review you look at you might get down to changes of perhaps 8%. There was one review where the final stage resulted only in the change of the name of Yvette Cooper’s constituency. There was an argument about whether two locations or three should be identified within the constituency name, rather like that of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

There is an enormous opportunity, in this day and age, for a large amount of preparation. Most of the data is already computerised. It is readily available: you can go on the web and look for the ward map or constituency map. I could do it for any constituency in the country within 30 seconds. It was suggested that it needs a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Young, identified the timescales. I must admit that when he showed them to me, I cynically observed that they seemed to be getting longer, despite the advances in technology associated with the process.

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[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased that we are all paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland and the membership of his Select Committee, and their advisers, for their excellent review of the workings of the electoral administration legislation from 2013, and I shall stay awake until midnight waiting for the government response to their excellent report. In any event, I look forward to it being debated properly in the House.

The committee achieved cross-party consensus on the crucial issue of automatic voter registration. The principle of fair boundaries, with MPs representing roughly equal numbers of people entitled to vote, requires a complete electoral register, but we are far from achieving that.

Even if the principle of automatic voter registration is accepted and is implemented as far as possible, there will still be gaps and inaccuracies. However, introducing it would be a significant step towards increasing the capacity of people legally entitled to vote and to take part in elections or referendums.

It would also mean that constituency boundaries will be more likely to reflect actual populations and those legitimately entitled to vote. At present, only those people who are already included on electoral registers count for the purpose of drawing up boundaries. We know that those now on the registers are not representative of all those entitled to vote, especially young people, private sector tenants and, perhaps especially, people who rely on the widespread misconception that they are registered to vote automatically.

I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing last week that there is a legal obligation to comply with the registration process and for his undertaking to try to ensure that all registration forms make this clear, as many people do not understand the fact of these obligations. However, in a reference to automatic voter registration, he suggested that the problem was that no single dataset had been identified that could be properly used. It seems to me, however, that several different datasets could be used to contribute to the process of automatic voter registration.

Last week, the Minister highlighted the problems of checking nationality. Nationality is specifically included in passport information, so every time someone obtains a new passport, perhaps with a new address, they should be included on the relevant electoral register, without having to check whether they want to opt in to the right to vote. The right to vote is fundamental. Whether to exercise it is as matter for the individual, but they cannot do this unless they are registered.

Last week the Minister said that

“the sacrifices and battles that people made across the generations to secure the right to vote for every citizen mean that it is vital that it should be enjoyed.”—[Official Report, 3/9/20; col. 501.]

The Chartists and the suffragettes demanded the right to vote, not the right to opt in to a register if they happened to know that this was needed and how and when the relevant paperwork must be completed. These amendments are about removing unnecessary barriers to facilitating that fundamental right to vote.

The DVLA database, for example, may not contain details of nationality, but if someone is already properly included on the electoral register, then when they notify the DVLA of a change of address, their electoral registration details could and should be automatically transferred.

Some databases, perhaps including those of the DWP, universities registering students or those held by the Student Loans Company, may include details of nationality. Where it is appropriate for people on such databases to be included in electoral registers, this should be done automatically, without further ado about inviting them to apply to register and to opt in to a basic right—the right to vote.

Finally, I will put to the Minister one very clear proposal that would be a step towards automatic voter registration and could be easily implemented. It was made in the recent report sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, written by academic experts at the University of East Anglia. It was included in the “missing millions” reports produced by the APPG on Democratic Participation, for which I have been an officer, and it was supported by the House of Lords Select Committee looking at electoral registration issues.

Will the Minister undertake to promote the practice of ensuring that all 16 year-olds should be automatically registered to vote when they receive their national insurance number? This is a simple and very achievable proposal that could greatly improve registration levels of young people, enabling them to vote as soon as they reach the age at which they are entitled to vote. The Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and the Electoral Reform Society have all supported this. I suspect that there may be some opposition within government to improving the completeness of the register, in spite of what we are told. But this practical proposal may enable cost savings to be made in the registration process, and it should be seen as a necessary step, given the difficulties of canvassing young people, particularly in the current Covid crisis, or engaging with them in school.

Much excellent work has been done on this subject by Dr Toby James, professor of politics and public policy at the University of East Anglia. I hope that the Minister and his team will study the excellent report that he helped to produce for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, and respond positively to this idea in particular, before we have to consider further amendments on the issue of automatic voter registration on Report.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I am going to start with an element of agreement with a number of others who have spoken. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, for his excellent chairmanship of the committee, which produced an excellent report and brought people together in any number of different ways.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his charming request to me to put my name to Amendment 24, from which I demurred. The reason I did so was specifically highlighted by the introduction and opening comments from the noble Lord, Lord Lennie. I subscribe to the key recommendations of the report, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, referred and which he quoted in part. Recommendation 2 refers to,

“further modernisation of registers, including piloting automatic registration for attainers.”

That is all one phrase. The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, managed to pause before he moved on to “for attainers,” because this is in some people’s minds an automatic commitment to move on to automatic registration in general, and I do not support that.

I do support, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has just suggested, assistance/automatic registration for attainers, because it is absolutely crucial that we get people involved in the community and the politics of society from an early age. That is the reason why attainers are so important. And I recognise that there are other groups—no question about it—that should be registered. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, made reference to Canada and identified that I had referred to Australia earlier in the debate. When I had the conversation with Tom Rogers, the current commissioner, the other day, he talked to me about how Australia has increased its level of registration. We did not take evidence from Australia, but the Government should look at it.

However, the Government have introduced a series of measures and efforts to ensure that registration improves. Although the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, was right in saying that the register is not more complete, it is more accurate, and that was the evidence that we received in relation to registration. For those who are not economically deprived, the availability of online registration has been proved to be an enormous boon—hence the surge in applications at the general election. Many of them were not valid—they were duplicates and the like—but they were important.

We talk about getting people involved by ensuring that they are registered. One of the other points on which I disagreed with the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, was when he said that people when asked say that they want to participate. Well, the vast majority have the opportunity to register online, and they do not—and, even if they do, I have just checked and the figure for turnout at the last election was 67%. If you ask the question, “Do you want to do something?”, the automatic response, unless you phrase it carefully in polling research, is going to be, “Yes.” It is like motherhood and apple pie— nobody ever sins. So one has to take that in context.