Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I shall try to confine my remarks to the policy statement that is the subject of this Motion and not go off-piste into various aspects of election funding, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, did.

I welcome the Government’s Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement, and I am completely mystified by the fuss about it. For several years, the Government have been issuing strategy and policy statements to public bodies. This is one way of correcting a serious imbalance that unelected quangos have created in our constitution. Over the years, more and more public bodies have taken over functions once carried out by the Government, but the accountability mechanisms that acted as checks and balances on those bodies were often weak.

Where bodies such as the Electoral Commission have operational independence from the Executive, such independence must be accompanied by strong accountability —precisely because the Executive have few powers in relation to such bodies. For example, there is no power of direction over the Electoral Commission, for good reasons. Its independence increases, rather than diminishes, the need for effective accountability. The statement is aimed at this accountability.

I am sure that all noble Lords value the work of the Electoral Commission in ensuring that there is full confidence in the electoral system. It is not, however, a perfect institution—as my noble friend Lord Pickles laid out in his 2016 report on electoral fraud. The Electoral Commission was in denial about its failure to deal with electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets. My noble friend recommended—rightly, in my view—that the commission’s accountability mechanisms should be improved.

Many of us still feel aggrieved that the Electoral Commission appeared to treat organisations which campaigned for Brexit in a manner that can at best be described as high-handed. The Electoral Commission was found to be at fault in the case of Mr Darren Grimes, who won his appeal against an improperly imposed fine.

So let us not pretend that this is a body that does not need to be accountable, or that the system originally set up involving the Speaker’s Committee was perfect. The strategy and policy statement, together with a widening of the role of the Speaker’s Committee, was the Government’s chosen course of action. It was debated extensively, in particular in your Lordships’ House, when the Elections Act 2022 was passed. To a large extent, the negative responses to this statement are rerunning those debates. But the plain fact is that Parliament has already decided to give the Government a wide power to issue the statement. The statement in no way changes the statutory remit and duties of the Electoral Commission. It merely sets out the Government’s priorities for the electoral system, which are in themselves uncontroversial. The Electoral Commission merely must have regard to them and report against them.

The Government have been clear that the language of the statement, including the word “should”, does not impinge on the Electoral Commission’s operational independence. They have been clear throughout and have added considerable clarification to the final version of the statement to secure that.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House rightly drew the attention of the House to the draft statement on the back of the views expressed by the Speaker’s Committee and the chairman of the Levelling Up Committee in the other place, during the Government’s second consultation. It is important to note that the meeting at which the Speaker’s Committee reached its views was somewhat unbalanced. There are 10 members of the Speaker’s Committee, including Mr Speaker himself. Of the remaining nine members, five are Conservatives, three are Labour and one is SNP. Three of the Conservatives are DLUHC Ministers, and they recused themselves—so the report comes from a body with an unusual political balance. In addition, the chairman of the Levelling Up Committee is a member of the Speaker’s Committee, and so seems to have counted twice in the balance of opinion.

I urge noble Lords to support the statement. The Government have a legitimate role in setting out policy priorities for our electoral system. Opposing the statement would create an accountability void around an important public body.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, first, I apologise to the House because I will speak for longer than I would normally do in such debates. Secondly, if there are any Latin scholars in the Chamber, it would be useful for the latter part of my speech if they could let me know the plural of “Spartacus”. I hope this will become clear.

This is a bittersweet moment, as the noble Lord, Lord Khan, said. For those of us who participated in the debate on the Elections Bill, the contribution of Lord Judge was truly—and I can use only one word, a modern phraseology—awesome. Whether you agreed or disagreed, it was a joy to sit and listen to it. I happened to agree with it and found it a fascinating experience. I am so sorry that he is not here now.

I said that this moment is bittersweet because in the speech I made after Lord Judge’s, I balanced the difficulties of airing criticism of the Electoral Commission that pertained at that time. I have never been so publicly critical of any organisation as I was on that occasion. I described it as “institutionally arrogant”. Therefore, I have sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, just said—but it applied to a different Electoral Commission. The personnel have changed substantially. I pay credit to its current chair John Pullinger and its previous chief executive Shaun McNally for turning it around to become an organisation it would now be impossible to describe in those words. It is efficient and effective and responds to queries very quickly. I will come to that in a moment.

I listened to the debate on this subject in the other House. On several occasions, the Minister referred to the wording in the document we are debating as “benign”. Everything is benign in the hands of those who are benign, but if you happen to be malign you can use the words that may appear benign to others and dramatically change the whole process—that is what I fear.

However, I will give the body of my speech over to something that is the responsibility of several bodies, including the Electoral Commission: opinion polls which are anonymously funded and set out specifically to influence politics in one form or another.

Democracy in this country is strong. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and I agree on many things, but I wish he would not cite a number of things that relate to other matters in one form or another. However, I am not going to take issue with those matters because I will cover an issue on which I think he and I and a number of Members of this House strongly agree. It is the recent YouGov Telegraph poll. As far as I am concerned, it is antidemocratic. We have a strong democracy. We want to maintain it in one form or another. The noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Khan, and I may view differently certain elements of our electoral law, but I think everybody in this Chamber wants to protect the strong democracy we have in this country, the openness that is available for all of us to express views whatever they may happen to be. We can disagree, but we should disagree courteously, listen to the alternatives and then go forward, but you disagree openly. What you do not do is start funding opinion polls where there is no accountable source of money, because there is a risk in going down that path that the whole basis of our democracy falls into disrepute, and the actions that we have seen in recent weeks could be picked up by many other people.

As I think many Members of this House will know, I wrote to the Electoral Commission and the UK Statistics Authority asking them to look at the issue, but not only should they look at the issue but the other four parties—that is “parties” with a small “p”—involved also need to look at the issues. One of those parties is us as legislators. Are the legislation and the regulation correct so that they give the Electoral Commission and the UK Statistics Authority the ability to comment on opinion polls in one form or another?

The second group I shall comment on is YouGov, as the pollsters. I think it has learned its lesson from its experience. I think it was—to put it politely—unwise to accept the questions it put out to the public. It was certainly unwise to accept that the questions were being asked and paid for by an organisation which had no apparent structure. It beggars belief that it could be in a position whereby an organisation was created overnight, it had no evidence of who was funding it and it then went ahead with a set of opinion polls in the form that it did. I think YouGov has learned the lesson, but one comment I would make to YouGov at this point is that when the bills are paid, it should hand over the details of the sources of that money to the Electoral Commission for investigation. It does not have to be a public investigation, but it should be fully investigated.

Then we come to the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that exposed MPs’ expenses. Day after day, it said it was the duty of the paper to identify what the public did not have sight of. If that was the case in 2008-09, one might ask why it is not the same responsibility in 2024 to identify what goes on in private in one form or another.

The British Polling Council has a difficult job— I used to serve as the head of a trade association; you set the rules for members, but there may be recalcitrant members who cannot or choose not to follow the rules—but I think the British Polling Council should look carefully at what has happened in recent weeks. I have already indicated the UK Statistics Authority.

Representation of the People (Overseas Electors etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Khan of Burnley, following his excellent speech. I have just one additional point to add to this discussion. The argument is that these are British citizens and they should be entitled to vote. The thing about the way the rules will work in practice is that they will tend to be older voters, many of whom may even be past retirement age.

The issue I want to raise is frozen pensions. I am particularly pleased to see in his place the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, who is the relevant Minister. We have discussed these issues before. We have a Government who seem to think it appropriate for these people to have a vote, but who do not think it appropriate for them to have the pension increases they have paid for. It is a total lottery. If they live in the US, they get pension increases; if they live in Canada, they do not. If they live in New Zealand, they get increases; if they live in Australia, they do not.

The whole system is irrational—as rational as if the noble Viscount came to this House and tried to persuade us not to pay pension increases to people who live in Yorkshire. They are all British citizens; that is the basis of this proposal. My question for the Minister is, what logic is there in giving many British citizens who live abroad a vote if you are not going to give them their pension increases?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, we were, I think, discussing the statutory instruments that relate to overseas voters and their registration, rather than a range of other matters. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, took us down a series of other paths. I will pick up on two or three of them very quickly. On voter ID, a resolution was passed by this House, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in a previous debate, whereby that process would be reviewed. Equally, the noble Lord made reference to a process that applies in the statutory instrument which is rarely used in this country but is already in law. Therefore, it is not unreasonable that this application should be extended elsewhere.

The noble Lord referred to postal votes in Australia and other parts of the world arriving after the actual polling date. I think I am correct in saying that in many of those domains, such votes have to be date stamped before or on the actual election day, so there is no extension to the election period by that application.

Returning to the SIs themselves, in any process of trying to extend the entitlement to vote, there is a risk that you reduce the level of security of voting. That is inevitable. Whether it is postal votes, an extended period of voting, votes abroad or whatever it may be, there is an increased risk. The question is, how do you find that balance between extension and security of the ballot? These SIs apply the process that was established under the Elections Act a few months ago. Therefore, I do not see a particular issue with them.

On the question of trying to achieve some form of financial largesse, I wish that the noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Rennard, had been present—as I think my noble friend Lord Mott and other noble Lords will have been—at meetings of overseas Conservatives, who were certainly not promising vast quantities of money in return for the opportunity to vote. It was just a genuine desire for the opportunity for a vote in a country to which, as the noble Lord, Lord Khan, acknowledged, those people who are most likely to register do still feel committed.

The concentration is naturally on national elections, but we should also be conscious of local elections. As the Pickles report identified, if those have insecure systems, you are far more likely to end up with a corrupt and influenced local authority, many of which have huge budgets, than at a national election, where it would be much more difficult to overturn the result by the levels of registration, which, to be honest, I expect. However, if the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, is taken up—Members of Parliament having constituencies around the world—I am sure that a number of people would be happy to represent Spain, the Canary Islands or France, for example, rather than some of the domains they have in this country. I say that in respect of all sides of the House, not necessarily this side alone.

I will not be supporting the amendment. I approach all these matters with great consideration because they are important, and my reasoning is twofold. First, as I see it, these SIs implement the process that was approved by the Elections Act. They do not result in an undue threat. There are other processes and aspects of election law which are far bigger threats than this. Cyberattacks have been referred to, as has AI in one form or another, along with dubious registration and intimidation.

Two aspects are particularly important. First, as I think Members on all sides of the House agree, electoral law is a complete mess and needs to be consolidated quickly, so that we do not face the problems we do. Secondly, there is the burden imposed on elections administrators, which has also been alluded to. When I was young and an election occurred, you registered and did everything months or years in advance. Now, there is an elections event, which takes place over three weeks, and everything is concentrated into it. We should not underestimate the burden imposed on elections administrators in any number of different ways. If our elections system fails, it will be because our electoral law is inadequately clear—it is a mess—or because the administrators just cannot cope.

It is for those reasons that I will be supporting the Government’s Motion and not the amendment.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, appears to accept that this proposal constitutes a threat to our electoral system, but he says that there are far more severe threats and therefore, among other reasons, he will not support the amendment. I congratulate my noble friend on raising this issue; he is right to do so.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has done, I would like to point out the danger that this proposal could lead to a vast amount of work for electoral registration officers, as we have seen already. It is certainly quite a weighty SI. I go back in history to the time in the late 1960s when Roy Hattersley first made a concession in this area. Since that time, this thin end of the wedge has been increased and expanded massively.

I would like to hear from the Government whether there has been evidence of fraud as this overseas franchise has developed over the years, and the extent of that fraud. As has been rightly pointed out, the further away you are from the UK geographically, the more likely it is that it is very difficult to verify statements that you make. You can get a friend, perhaps of long standing when you have been abroad for a long time, to do that.

General Elections: Party-political Spending

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord will be reassured that a process of consultation went on in regard to uprating these spending limits. Members of the Parliamentary Parties Panel were first consulted by the Cabinet Office in 2020. Since then, we have uprated the limits for local government elections, which I believe has passed without problem. In September 2022, the Government again wrote to members of the panel. There is a need for change; some of these limits have not changed for over 20 years. We are simply restoring the levels that were previously set out in law by Parliament.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to the last question, the accusations of providing money in dubious circumstances have applied to all political parties, unfortunately, at one point in recent years or another. I refer my noble friend back to the answer that she gave. She identified that the limits have changed in local government; we are now looking at limits in national elections. Does that not confirm that it is about time that we looked at consolidating all election law so that we do not have to deal with these things in different stages? I am not asking my noble friend to make a commitment to do so, but I ask her to acknowledge and take the message back.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that the procedure for uprating spending limits has to be done through multiple statutory instruments because different procedures are attached to different limits for different elections. I know that he has been a great advocate for simplifying and consolidating electoral law. I am sure that he will continue to advocate that, and I very much look forward to engaging with him on it.

Recall Petitions: Voter ID

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, there are many reasons why those people did not vote at that time. The Electoral Commission made clear in its interim report that it was satisfied, and it said that it needed further time for further evidence. Let us wait until November, as we said in legislation that we would, when we will get both the qualitative and the quantitative evidence.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I do not agree on this occasion with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and her comments about recall petitions. As I understand the law, there is a requirement that 10% of the electorate sign the petition, but the petition stays open ad infinitum until the conclusion of the period, despite the fact that the 10% threshold may have been met after five, six or seven days. Is there not a need to review the recall petition legislation in order to avoid unnecessary cost and duration of this process?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, my Lords, I think my noble friend is wrong in this case. The Government feel that recall petitions should remain open even when the 10% threshold has been reached, mainly because if somebody gets a letter saying that they have a right to sign a petition, it should not be closed until the time given in that letter, and they should have their right to sign.

Elections: Voter ID

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We took the good practice from Northern Ireland that has been in place for 20 years and we thought that it was correct and right for the integrity of our democratic system to bring it across the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the comment that my noble friend made in relation to the Electoral Commission report, which is due in the next few days, but is she aware of the Democracy Volunteers report, already published, which would appear to indicate deficiencies in terms of communications and publicity, particularly with the ethnic communities, and also, as indicated previously, that certain returning officers did not have adequate information as to what photo ID was acceptable at polling stations?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am certainly well aware of that report and we will take into account any comments made and any evidence in it. We will also be doing quite a lot of talking to people who went into those polling stations and taking their views as we move through the review. What I have to say is that some local authorities were exceptional at reaching out to their communities in many different ways in order to ensure that people had full access to their polling stations We need to use that best practice across the whole of the local government sector.

Voter Authority Certificates

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

It does not sound like normal practice. If the noble Baroness would like to give me some further details, I will look into it. I cannot discuss an individual case.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank noble Lords on all sides who supported the passage of the Ballot Secrecy Act, which was given Royal Assent a few moments ago. Further to this particular Question, can I ask my noble friend to re-emphasise the fact that those people who return, having previously been refused the ballot, will be recorded as well, so that there will be a clear record not only of those who are turned away but who return?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, I am happy to repeat that: those who return with voter ID will be recorded.

UK Citizens Resident Overseas: Verification

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I beg noble Lords’ pardon—I should have said that they will need to be registered electors. Only those who have a genuine reason for doing that can do so. UK electors registered in this country or overseas, and UK companies, trade unions and other UK-based entities are the only people who can give donations. There can never be a way of checking where the money comes from. How would you do that?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, relates effectively to the security of the ballot in one form or another. All parties in this Chamber and in the other Chamber have in recent months given their active and willing, I hope, support to the Ballot Secrecy Bill that was finally passed in the Commons last Friday. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all parties for their active support for that legislation, which secures, in another way, the secrecy of the ballot. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister has any further information in relation to the progress of that Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. As he said, the Bill was passed, and I am very pleased it was passed. I thank him for everything he has done in making sure that it got to the Commons. The next stage is Royal Assent. I am sorry that I do not have a date yet for that, but I think it is a good Private Member’s Bill and I look forward to it being given Royal Assent.

Leasehold Charges

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question; I do not know what is being done, but I will certainly get an answer. I know from personal experience that these pods can work very well, particularly for homeless people. In the short term and in bad weather, in local communities—even next door to local authority town halls, et cetera—they can give the shelter that is required during difficult times for very vulnerable people. However, I will get an update.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Many of the freeholders of the leasehold properties are councils, including Southwark Council, where I live. Many of the leaseholders have extreme difficulty in getting information on the nature of the charges. Will any guidance, or stronger, issued to freeholders and managing agents be clearly applicable to local councils as well?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right, and the department is fully aware of these issues. I cannot talk about an individual case, but we recognise that too many landlords are failing to provide sufficient information to leaseholders, who should have a right to that information, as stated in their lease. The Government do not think that existing requirements go far enough to enable leaseholders to find out about these issues, and we will take action to support and empower them in the future.

Voter Identification Regulations 2022

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

As far as I know, in England there is a photograph on a driving licence. In France, your driving licence with a photograph is acceptable for voting. There must be a way forward. In my opinion we are complicating this rather simple issue.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I will pick up on a number of points in relation to comments made during this debate, particularly by our two Northern Ireland colleagues. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and I have sat on virtually every committee, if not every committee, related to voting and voting legislation since I have been a Member of this House. At no point in any debate has any contribution we have received from any person from Northern Ireland said, “Do not go for photo ID”. There has been no such representation, nor any to say that we should revert to a position without photo ID, as was indicated previously. If there were problems in Northern Ireland, clearly we would have had representation from students, some civil community groups or whatever, saying, “Revert to the position we were at before”. But in the seven years I have served in this House—and I believe I have served on every single review of electoral law—we have never had such a submission from Northern Ireland.

I move on to the observation by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in relation to students. Oh, I feel so sorry for them. After all is said and done, we will have elections in May and there is the Easter holiday between now and then. In my former life I was chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association. Noble Lords may wonder what on earth that has to do with this debate. My members operated late-night licensed locations. All people who attended were required to produce proof of ID. Ask any pub company how many managers are holding passports, driving licences and other forms of photo ID every Monday morning because clientele in pubs and bars have left them there. The reality is that students carry their ID with them on a regular basis, because they are used to producing them in very regular circumstances.

Both the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said that the introduction was being rushed. In recent years we have moved from a rigid electoral roll system whereby the new election rolls were registered sometime between August and October to a system in which people can now register on a very rapid basis. I think the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, will agree that I have been a regular supporter of reducing the workloads of returning officers. As an event at elections, we now get a surge in registration by people who think they are not registered. Actually, two-thirds of them are registered and that workload could be removed with read-only access. That surge is because people are suddenly conscious of the upcoming election.

If you ask the relevant organisations—the AEA, the Electoral Commission—when they are going to launch their advertising campaigns in relation to the May elections, no sane marketer would say, “We are going to launch the advertising campaign in November or December”, because people’s minds are on Christmas and other similar arrangements. You launch an advertising campaign to make people aware that they need some form of ID—whatever it may happen to be—in January or February, which is what is actually going to happen. You do not spend millions in November or December. Therefore, it is not rushed to say that you are going to launch that campaign in a few weeks’ time.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, quoted from the Electoral Commission’s comments. I would take a quote from the second paragraph rather than the first. Referring to the statutory instrument, it says:

“This detail has enabled us to start developing the guidance that electoral administrators will need.”


Start? We have had the example in Northern Ireland for 20 years, and there is barely a difference between the two in England and in Northern Ireland. Start? Even the difference of interpretation of the Tory party manifesto—whether it is an ID or a photo ID—indicates that it has been a policy of this Government for the last three years. Start? We passed the Elections Act some seven months ago, so in fact there is no reason why the vast majority of the paperwork—in preparation for distribution to everybody—to be used in the marketing campaigns that will be launched in January or February next year should not already be prepared.

This statutory instrument gives effect to something that was debated at length months ago. Many of the contributions that I have listened to this afternoon have repeated some of the arguments that were made then. In conclusion, I am going to cause embarrassment to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, by saying that I found many of her comments as constructive as some of my colleagues did. As far as I am concerned, for the reasons I have identified, on this occasion I am going to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. There is no reason for a fatal amendment at this stage; it is not justified—as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde identified—and we should be supporting the statutory instrument and vote for it this evening.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with what my noble friend just said. Almost every word that has been uttered during this interesting debate underlines the feeling that I have had for a long time that it would be a really sensible thing for us to go back and re-examine the case for an identity card. It would have many other uses. We are bedevilled by immigration problems. An identity card would be one document that everyone could carry, and I commend it most warmly to the House.

Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the instruments so clearly. She has already answered one of my questions.

I have always been in favour of combined authorities and the devo deals that we have been seeing. I realise that this is beyond the scope of these instruments, but it has brought new dimensions of government and administration to swathes of the countryside. I applaud that. This has been happening not only in urban areas but in rural areas too. Can the Minister indulge us by updating the Committee on where we are on devolution deals—on Cornwall and Yorkshire, for example? I simply do not know. I am happy for this to be done in writing, particularly as it is beyond the scope of these instruments, if she cannot do so now.

I will not delay the Committee long. I had one more substantial question related to today’s orders and regulations. I appreciate that they are largely about first past the post for combined authorities and local government, which is consistent with the referendum held on voting systems under the coalition Government. However, in the United Kingdom today, we have myriad different electoral arrangements, particularly in Wales, where we seemingly have some anomalies, such as the voting age for local elections now being 16 while for police and crime commissioners it is 18. Can my noble friend the Minister say something about the Government’s thinking across the board?

Westminster retains some important legislative and administrative rights in relation to electoral arrangements, which now seem to be a smorgasbord of different positions, particularly in Wales, where the Senedd elections are done by a form of proportional representation—the additional member system—while police and crime commissioner elections are first past the post. Local government is now partly first past the post, but local authorities can, if they want, go down a different route with the single transferrable vote. There are some inconsistencies. Can the Minister say something on that? I am most grateful.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, may I pursue a slightly different issue, in relation to the Gould principle? As the Minister identified, these instruments would first be implemented on 4 May next year. I raise this not solely because of these orders and regulations but in relation to the recent change that, in England, moved the requirement for signatures for nominations for local government elections from 10 to two. This change was actively supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, from the Labour Benches, and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, from the Liberal Democrat Benches. We welcomed the change, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it cannot apply to by-elections before 4 May because the Gould principle has been applied.

For the benefit of my noble friend, I identify the Gould concerned as Ron Gould, rather than the other Goulds it might be. For the sake of brevity, this is a limited quote from the Gould report of 2007. It said, on the question of six months:

“If, as proposed, a Chief Returning Officer is appointed for Scotland”—


the Gould report related to Scottish elections—

“a clause might be added to the provision permitting the time period to be waived by the CRO following an assessment of the legislation’s operational impact.”

When the Secretary of State made a report to the Commons on the Gould report, he said:

“Provided suitable safeguards can be found, as Mr. Gould’s report encourages, I am prepared to accept that recommendation for elections to the Scottish Parliament.”—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/07; col. 166.]


That recommendation was that six months would apply but could be waived in certain circumstances.

I am concerned that we are seeing, in effect, a concreting and misinterpretation of that six-month rule, when it is not necessary on some occasions. It would be helpful to EROs and government in general to speed up that process. I am not asking the Minister to comment in detail at this stage on the Gould report and the principle, but I want to put on record my concern about what was originally intended to be a flexible principle and is now beginning to develop into an inflexible one.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I start by referencing my interests as a councillor in Kirklees and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I will speak about three areas: the principle of the proposals, the practicalities and accountability. I appreciate that the passing of the Elections Act made these changes inevitable and I am not opposing them today, but it is worth pointing out some of the consequences of what is being done.

The Minister cited the 2019 Conservative manifesto commitment, also mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum,

“to support the First Past the Post system”.

It does not say anything about changing back to first past the post. The 2011 referendum was not about all elections having the alternative vote system, only parliamentary elections, so citing that example for this instance is not fair—it does not support the argument. If the Government want to make a change, they should just say so and not try to fluff it up with stuff that is not accurate.

The Explanatory Memorandum also states that moving to this system

“makes it easier for the public to express a clear preference”.

I suppose it depends on what is meant by “a clear preference”. I would not consider 40% a clear preference, which is more than likely the outcome of the changes being made. In my view—and, I think, in most people’s—a clear preference would mean a person achieving over 50% of the vote, one way or another.

The only European country that uses first past the post is Belarus. Here we are, regressing to an electoral system so out of favour in European democracies that it is used only in a dictatorial country where the election was overtaken by a coup. I suppose what I am saying is that it is a backward step.

The third principle being argued here is that first past the post reduces complexity. Voters are cleverer than we give them credit for. They can vote in many different ways. I think I have attended all the mayoral elections in my part of the world, and the number of spoiled ballot papers, which is the example used in the arguments for these changes to say that the method is difficult, is minimal. More often than not, spoiled ballot papers show voters expressing very clear views about the election altogether—I will not quote some of the comments I have seen. It is not about failing to understand the voting system; it is about not being happy with how it is done at all, or the purpose of it.