Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Adam Afriyie]

The hon. Gentleman is a new Member, and he is spot on. That is why the majority of hon. Members believe that it was right that an independent body set the rates of remuneration. We talked about privilege earlier, and this is a matter not of MPs’ privilege but of the people’s privilege to have an MP who can work, unimpeded by a third party that is unaccountable to the public. If a body can tell MPs how to do their work—which, in effect, IPSA can in its current form—democracy and the people’s voice are undermined.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Perhaps he would like to disabuse my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) of the notion that we are employees. When I came to this House, I wrote to the then Speaker to inquire about the possibility of availing myself of child care vouchers. I was told that it was not possible because I was not an employee, but was regarded by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs as self-employed. That is the distinction.

[Adam Afriyie]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend hits on the key issue, which has not been resolved in the last 100 years, of whether a Member of Parliament is a paid employee with a salary, in which case one would expect a job description. MPs do not have job descriptions; it is therefore semi-illogical that they would have salaries. HMRC is absolutely correct that for most intents and purposes, MPs are self-employed. I will comment on that in a moment, but I am conscious of the time that I am taking.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell]

I have taken enough interventions for the time being. I want to make a few points of my own instead of being forced to respond to questions about hypothetical situations that I have not dealt with.

The Conservative party did not mention fixed-term Parliaments in its manifesto, but we did: Labour had a fixed four-year term in its manifesto. The Liberals, insofar as they had a position—they always have a lot of contradictory positions—had what the Deputy Leader of the House said when he was their spokesman on constitutional affairs, when he urged four-year terms. Perhaps he has had a message from the new leadership telling him to rescind his speeches from when he was the Liberals’ constitutional affairs spokesman. Will he listen? I know that he is very comfortable on the Front Bench—he is built for it—but there is no need for him to change his views on this issue so radically and dramatically as he seems to have done.

So the Liberals wanted four-year terms, the Conservatives had nothing about it in their manifesto and I argue that five-year terms are too long. I agree that we should have had an election in 2007. That would have meant the Labour Government going much sooner. Why am I proposing three-year terms? The Executive always want longer terms, because they want to be in power for as long as they can and because longer terms allow more time for more mistakes and for tough measures to hit the people. There are certainly some tough measures coming from this Government, which might be why they want a five-year term. Regular and more frequent elections hand power back to the people, which is what the people want. They want us kept on a shorter leash. That is what the feeling of hostility to politics, Parliament, parties and politicians that built up last year indicated to me. Triennial elections would certainly keep us on a shorter leash because we would have to go back to the people more regularly. They are suspicious of us; they think that we are out for ourselves and they want to control us more effectively.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is being customarily generous in giving way. Does the experience in the congressional elections in the United States not show that their two-year terms mean that members of Congress, once re-elected, are constantly considering fundraising, canvassing and campaigning for their re-election, thereby undermining the electorate’s faith and trust in them?

[Austin Mitchell]

The US House of Representatives, which is the equivalent to our House, has a two-year term, which is very democratic, but I am proposing a three-year term, which would cause us to go back to the people much more regularly than we do now. The people want to be heard. An outstanding feature of our democracy as it has developed is the people’s desire to be listened to by this place, which they so angrily asserted in 2009. It is frustrating for people to feel that we do not listen. What better way is there of consulting the people? We should do it not through polls but through regular elections, as in Australia and New Zealand, where three-year terms work very effectively.

The people want us to be accountable, and more regular elections are the best way of keeping us accountable. Elections bring a great renewal of energy and contact with the people. They are great for concentrating our role of representing them and voicing what they want in this place; they recharge the batteries. More frequent elections would make us more vulnerable, more amenable and more prepared to listen to the people because we would have to be out there every three years listening to and meeting people and persuading them in a way that is not provided for anywhere else in our system.

This House is a great hiding place: the longer we stay here between elections, the more out of touch with the people we get. They want us to be more accountable and to listen more and they want more frequent contact. We cannot dodge that responsibility or say that reasons of statesmanship or coalition politics require us to stay hiding in this place, out of touch with the people, for five years. The condition of our being here is that we need to renew that contact as regularly as possible.

I seem to have been here for so long that I could have come in with that Asquith election victory that led to reform of the House of Lords in 1910, but I began my political career by dreading elections because one has to go out and force oneself on people and they may not want that. One has to leap up to them with a handshake and a fixed grin. One has to give them one’s opinions, listen to them and ask them questions—talk to them. That was a nervous ordeal for me and I was terrified, but over time I have come to like elections more and more, particularly if I win. That is another reason why I would like more frequent elections. They are a form of renewal and of contact with the real world that we do not otherwise get in this place.

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[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is always entertaining, and I pay tribute to the fact that on the day the Labour party lost a 22,000 majority in 1977, they returned the hon. Gentleman in Grimsby, but will he tell the House how many people in the Dog and Duck in Great Grimsby have said to him, “I won’t vote for you, Mr Mitchell, because the term will be five years instead of four ”?

[Austin Mitchell]

None, but perhaps people will not vote for a candidate because he is too old and might not last a full term. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the issue is not frequently raised, but there is a feeling, and there was at the end of the previous Government and at the end of the Major Government, that the Government have gone on too long. That is what I want to avoid.

There is a feeling among the public that they want us to go back to them more frequently. They want to meet us more frequently. They want us out there in the streets, canvassing more frequently. That is why I say that more frequent and regular elections are basic to democracy. They put the people in power and they make the politicians prostrate before the people. The people can tell us what they want, and that is what it is all about.

The role of the House, as the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said, is to hold power to account—to hold the Executive to account. We do not do it very well because, with a party majority, the Executive and the Prime Minister drive a steamroller through the House. Mrs Thatcher would shout down at us “Get out of the way,” and we would tremble. With John Major, the steamroller wandered all over the place, but the Executive are still powerful.

The only real way of holding power to account in this country is to put it before the people more regularly in triennial elections and give them the power to throw the rascals out—give them that choice every three years. That is basic to democracy.

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[Andrew Percy]

I hope that politicians on all sides take notice of their electorate at all times. The problem with going to a three-year term is that they may take less notice of their constituents and a great deal more notice of the newspapers. Given that Governments tend to be most responsive to newspapers in the last year or six months before an election, the risk with a three-year term is that the Government would be beholden to the newspapers and chasing headlines for the entire term of office.

On the clash of elections, I have sympathy with those representing countries with devolved Assemblies. I would not want a Welsh Assembly election or a Scottish Parliament election on the same day as a general election, but it is a bit inconsistent for some on the Opposition Benches to suggest that a clash of elections is always bad news, because they deliberately arranged for that by holding European and local government elections on the same day, using two different voting systems. However, that is best avoided. I accept that the case for a general election is a little different and that a general election should be held separately from the elections in the devolved regions.

I have no academic or study to quote on the four-year term; I just feel in my gut that it is the right length of time for a Government. A four-year term is better because it would fit with local government elections and devolved assemblies. The Canadian Government changed from five to four years a couple of years ago, and we have heard about the three-year terms that exist in Australia and New Zealand. For me, four years would be a more appropriate term for us to be in office. There is an acceptance that after being in power for five years, we tend to be a little too detached from the electorate, and consequently end up making bad decisions. However, I cannot support the three-year term proposed by my near neighbour, next door but one, in Great Grimsby. That would throw us into a perpetual state of elections. It is often said about US congressional elections that American Congressmen are in a perpetual state of election, which is why they have so many earmarks and pork barrelling; they have no sooner got themselves to Washington DC than they have to run back to their electorates to try to gain election.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

My hon. Friend refers to the American political system and reiterates my earlier point, but is it not true that at the other end of the scale US Senators, who have a six-year term, can take a broader view of both national and international issues? Very few people say to an experienced American Senator that they are past it or clapped out, or not thinking of the good of the country because they are in their fifth or sixth year.

[Andrew Percy]

The problem with the American Senator term is that a third of the Senate is elected every two years, which means that they, too, are in a perpetual state of elections, so that idea does not carry over completely.

The other experience of more regular elections is that there tends to be a greater propensity on the part of the electorate to re-elect their incumbents. As I am now an incumbent, that is not necessarily something that I would take issue with. I suspect that all hon. Members would be happy to see incumbents re-elected—[Interruption.] Well, yes, perhaps their own incumbency re-elected. I was particularly intrigued by the comments of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby that elections offer the opportunity for politicians to recharge their batteries. That is certainly not an experience I have ever had in an election campaign.

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[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way, and he is making an engaging argument on a threadbare premise, if I may say so. Is not his argument essentially weakened by the fact that there is a mechanism to deal with an atypical event? I refer him to the controversy of 1979 over the Scotland Act 1978. That Parliament had been going for four years, and there was a vote of confidence on 28 March 1979. In other words, four-and-a-half years into that Parliament, the issue was considered of such import to the affairs of state and to the House that a motion of no confidence was tabled. Such a motion can still be tabled under this Bill. Therefore the value judgment between four and five years falls down. It would only really stand if the House had no capacity to dismiss itself and enter into a period prior to an election.

[Chris Bryant]

I have to presume, as does the House, that the Government will go through with all the various provisions that they have laid down in the Bill, and in clause 2 there are two provisions for an early general election: the first determines what happens if there is a motion of no confidence, although it does not say what such a motion is; and the second relates to a motion for an early general election, although it does not say whether such a motion would name the precise date of that election. The Government presume that we will need a two-thirds majority in the House to achieve an early poll, so on the Government’s argument—and, if the hon. Gentleman is going to support the Bill as it is, on his argument therefore—the presupposition is that there will not be many early general elections. Indeed, the Bill, by trying to make it almost impossible to have an early general election, is much tougher than the vast majority of other constitutions that I have looked at throughout the world. That is another reason why four years is better than five. In fact, the hon. Gentleman has helped me to make part of my argument.

In relation to the intervention by the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), I believe that in practice the Bill will lengthen the Parliaments of this country. Since 1832 there have been 45 general elections: the average peacetime length has been three years and eight months, as the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr said; even including the lengthy wartime Parliaments of the first and second world wars, the average has been only four years; and, during the period when the maximum allowable duration under the Septennial Act was seven years, from 1832 to 1911, the average was three years and 10 months. In practice, by fixing elections as “every five years”, we will lengthen Parliaments and ensure less frequent general elections.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is trying to have it both ways. He is arguing that people who are not members of the Government are a bulwark against an oppressive Executive, and I accept that. At the same time, he admits that his own Government—the previous Administration—got it wrong, and I agree. However, this is not necessarily just a numerical issue. We should cast our minds back to the Iraq war debates, when a huge Back-Bench cohort failed to hold the Executive to account on one of the most important issues of foreign policy in our country’s history since the war.

[Chris Bryant]

I think I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In the previous Government we were not always as alive as we might have been to the fact that this House does its job best when it is most free to be able to do so. However, the difference that he has to face is that unless he intends to agree with the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle, he is supporting a Bill that wants to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. That will, in effect, cut the number of Back Benchers, because it does not cut the number of Ministers. My argument is that if we are going to cut one group, we should cut the other. That is entirely in line with the new clause.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer]

I agree. The accurate word is “evading” not “avoiding”. I stand corrected. If people are evading tax, and therefore breaking the law, one cannot expect them to change. It is up to those bodies that enforce the law to enforce it. I am happy to clarify that position. Getting the electoral register to represent everyone who is entitled to vote is not a simple process. However, I am sure that hon. Members believe, as I do, that people should be registered and should comply with the law on being registered.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way with his customary generosity, but he fails to recognise that there has to be a definitive basis for registering those qualified to vote in an election and for distinguishing between them and others who live in the area and are served by a Member of Parliament. He might inadvertently be leading the House in that direction. In my constituency, there are 70,000 electors, but nearly 78,000 residents—the rest are mainly EU migrants. As a constituency Member of Parliament, I will serve those people, but there is a distinction between them and those who are duly, properly and legally entitled to vote for me at an election. He is not making that distinction clear to the Committee.

[Graham Stringer]

I have not come to that point yet, but there is an overlap. Some recent immigrants are Commonwealth citizens and entitled to vote in general elections. It is a complicated matter. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but there is some overlap between people who are entitled to vote and people who are part of the recent immigrant community.

Another large area where there is under-representation and, probably, unlawful activity associated with it relates to houses in multiple occupation and private landlords. For different reasons—sometimes voting abuse, sometimes to conceal the number of people living in houses of multiple occupation—landlords prevent their tenants from voting or hinder their attempts to do so.

The hon. Gentleman previously mentioned recent immigrants. Registration is low among those in black and ethnic minority groups for a number of reasons. Sometimes it is because they do not understand the system or are frightened of it, and sometimes, as was mentioned previously in the case of poorer sections of the community, it is because the levels of functional illiteracy are higher than one would want. That means that many of the forms end up in the bin, because they cannot be understood. There are different estimates, but generally in this House—and not just on the issue of electoral registration—we ignore the fact that probably about 22.5% of the adult population in this country are functionally illiterate and find it difficult to deal with forms.

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[Gavin Barwell]

Well, there we go. The hon. Gentleman is suggesting, with his customary eloquence, that we go even further than the hon. Member for Swansea West did. I think he is arguing that we should use the whole over-18 adult population as the basis for deciding the boundaries. Indeed, in an earlier intervention, he said that he had a significant number of asylum seekers in his constituency who, although they were ineligible to vote, still gave rise to casework.

There are many different proposals for ways in which we can develop these figures. My point about the hon. Member for Swansea West’s amendment is that we cannot come up with a definitive figure. We can start with the census and take into account the electorate, and we can then use other data sets to refine that information, but we cannot come up with an accurate figure.

My own view is that we should stick with the current basis, which looks at the published electorate, but that we should also take action to deal with under-representation, which affects certain parts of the country more than others. The hon. Member for Swansea West talked about poverty, and the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who has now left the Chamber, referred to work carried out by the Electoral Commission that showed that the transience of the population—the churn—was the key factor. There are certain groups within the population, including the black and minority ethnic community, young people and people who live in the private rented sector, that are much more likely to move frequently, and that is the main causal driver of this problem.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulty in the past 15 or 20 years has been that the Boundary Commission has not been guided by Government regulations specifically to look at future population changes? That has been an important factor in making many, if not most, of the constituencies in this country out of date almost as soon as they are created.

[Gavin Barwell]

That cuts to the point of one of the amendments, which deals with the frequency with which we carry out the reviews. That is an important point, because if we had more regular reviews, they would be based on more recent data, and we would not see such dramatic changes. If we had a review every five years, we would not see significant changes in many of our constituencies.

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[Austin Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The present system of redistribution was devised by the Conservatives. Now, finding themselves in electoral danger, they want to scrap it to protect themselves and remain in power in this tenuous coalition.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman is a comic turn. Does he agree, however, that he was not so voluble when in 1970—as he is old enough to remember—a Labour Government were the only Government in history to shelve significant boundary changes for party political reasons? He was probably also not as voluble at the time of the 2005 election, when the Conservative party out-polled the Labour party in England and Labour had many dozens more seats than the Conservatives. Was that fair, or was it gerrymandering?

[Austin Mitchell]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is trying to outdo my comic turn by putting me in the House of Commons well before I was actually here, but he is entitled to do that.

I am voluble now because of the threat to democracy that is implicit in this whole process. As one of my hon. Friends said earlier, that is what is waking up the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition. It is easy enough to organise a redistribution for 650 Members, but if there are only 600 pieces in the jigsaw, the implication is that every boundary in the country must be changed. That is what is waking up the Liberal Democrats, because they tend to win seats through intense community work and community politics involving cracked paving stones and late buses, and they must have a community to work to. That settled community will be disturbed by the redistribution, and the Liberal Democrats will lose seats. Their amendments suggest that they are now waking up to that fact.

It is a bit late in the day, but I can tell the Liberal Democrats that they will lose out. The AV part of the deal, which was supposed to benefit the Liberal Democrats while the redistribution was supposed to benefit the Conservatives, will not be carried, because it will be defeated in the referendum. Then the Liberal Democrats will ask themselves, “What have we got out of this coalition? We have abandoned all our faiths, we have sacrificed everything we believe in, we have allowed massive cuts to the detriment of British society—and what have we got out of it?” The answer will be “Peanuts. Nothing.” Their only resort, if they are to prevent themselves from being thrown out in the election following the redistribution, will be to throw out the Government and stop the redistribution.

I estimate that the Liberal Democrats will belatedly begin to wake up to that fact in about 2013 or 2014, and then they will become a disruptive factor within the coalition. I am trying to prevent them from ending up in that situation—[Interruption.] No, my heart bleeds for them. I am very sympathetic because it is tragic watching them betray their principles one by one in order to cling on to power and to get bums into ministerial cars and on to ministerial Benches—but if that is what they want to do, let them. I am trying to help them by persuading them to vote for amendments 127, 341 and 38. [Interruption.] No, I am a decent man. I would have voted Liberal in 1951, except that I did not have a vote because I was too young, but I wore a Liberal rosette on my meat round. That is the full history of my association with the Liberals—it ended in 1956 with the invasion of Suez—and now I am trying to protect them.

In conclusion, we should support these amendments in order to prevent the brutality of a process that would be damaging to British democracy and the community and that would create an unsettled situation for Members of Parliament. I spent many years in New Zealand, and we had much more regular redistributions when I was there—every five years, I think. That was before proportional representation came in. The seats could be made much more equal, but as a result of the changes no Member of Parliament knew five years ahead whether he would be representing the same area, or whether some bits would be shipped out and others would be shipped in because of boundary changes, and therefore the seat he would be representing would be totally changed. I want to prevent that situation from happening here. We represent settled communities that have clear boundaries, and we should not disrupt them in this fashion just for the electoral purposes of the Conservative party.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I am happy to take as many interventions as possible, but the hon. Gentleman has to grow up. Just grow up: we are having a proper debate about clause 1. As the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) said, this is really the old politics. Let us debate the merits of clause 1.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I hope that we can introduce some civility into this debate. The shadow Minister really should raise the level of the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) raised a valid point: it ill behoves the right hon. Gentleman to lecture us on referendums on far-reaching constitutional issues when his party not only reneged on a solemn promise made at the ballot box to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, but guillotined the relevant Bill, forcing it through this House.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am happy to compare the record of Labour Governments on having referendums and making constitutional changes—changes with agreement and proper pre-legislative scrutiny—with that of this coalition Government or any previous Conservative Government.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I greatly appreciate my hon. Friend’s contribution. Yet again, he has managed to introduce an issue that is important to people in both our constituencies.

Let me stress that amendment 1 is not a wrecking amendment, although some members of the Government may wish to portray it as such. It is supported by Members on both sides of the argument about the alternative vote. It is not intended to, nor will it, lead to the killing of the AV referendum; it merely seeks to create a level and fair playing field for the referendum, and to demonstrate the respect that the House should have for the devolved Administrations of the United Kingdom.

As Members will know, it is rare for an issue to unite Labour and Scottish National party politicians, and rarer still for them to be joined by Welsh and Northern Irish colleagues. However, that is the feat that the Deputy Prime Minister has managed to achieve, and I am grateful for his ability to bring us all together in that spirit. The amendment seeks to address the genuine anger that is felt in the three devolved Administrations. The fact that a joint letter has been sent by the three First Ministers to the Deputy Prime Minister expressing that anger should not be forgotten.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s argument. He clearly concedes that the electoral arrangements and voting systems which may change in future will apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Will he also concede that there is a precedent for the Government’s legislation? In 1998 there was a referendum on future constitutional arrangements and the establishment of the Greater London authority and the Mayor, at the same time as the holding of 32 separate London borough elections.

[Thomas Docherty]

According to my recollection, all 32 London boroughs held elections on the same day. Regrettably, on 5 May next year elections will not be held in the whole United Kingdom. I believe that there will be no elections in some 20% of England.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reinforcing my point about the level and fair playing field. Given that he has just made my argument for me, I look forward to him joining us in the Lobby.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that excellent point. I cannot go into great deal in the short time available to me, but I can point out that—as I am sure my hon. Friend already knows, and as Members in all parts of the Committee have mentioned—there have been very different turnouts. Elections to the Scottish Parliament have typically attracted a turnout of about 50%. I fear that, important as local government issues are to the parts of England involved, the turnout for those elections will be nowhere near that—which, again, reinforces my argument about the level playing field.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I am happy to take lessons from the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones). Having been a London borough councillor for eight years, I am sure that we can discuss our knowledge and experience of various elected bodies. However, I must disabuse the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) of his belief that I was making his point for him. The point that I was making was that the people of London were quite able to make decisions in respect of the election of London borough councillors and long-term constitutional decisions, by way of a referendum, on the same day. That is the point that the hon. Gentleman is avoiding.

[Thomas Docherty]

As I am sure my nationalist colleagues will remind me, I should be nervous about making the mistake of, perhaps inadvertently, comparing the Scottish Parliament to a parish council. I urge the hon. Gentleman, as part of the respect agenda, to tread carefully when making analogies between borough councils and the Scottish Parliament.

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[Caroline Lucas]

Many millions of people in this country will be looking at what some Members do in the Committee this evening, and they will be looking with a degree of perplexity, given that what we hear many Members might do runs counter to what was in their manifestos.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; she is being very generous. If there was a groundswell of popular support for the single transferable vote, surely the Liberal Democrats, just after the election but before they entered the coalition Government, would have been able to persuade the Labour party to push through primary legislation to deliver the single transferable vote. However, that was not possible because, quite frankly, the single transferable vote is not generally supported by the voting public of this country.

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[Caroline Lucas]

I agree, and I very much hope that Liberal Democrat Members will follow us through the Lobby to support this amendment. Even if we do not win the vote tonight, this could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If some Members are not willing to put their bodies where their mouths are, and are not prepared to fulfil the promises in their manifesto, we cannot be surprised that people lose faith in the political process. This amendment is about restoring faith in the political process; it is about trusting the electorate and delivering on promises to treat them a bit better.

My primary concern as we consider the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill is that it is the public who should choose our voting system, not the politicians. That ought to be a principle around which we can all agree. We can argue about whether to adopt AV-plus, first past the post, the single transferable vote or the additional Member system, but the principle should be that it is for the people to decide.

[Mr Jackson]

Does not the real-world experience of the single transferable vote system show that deals are made by politicians in smoke-filled rooms after elections, after the people have had the opportunity to make their choices? One has only to look at the anecdotal evidence from such systems across the world to see that, in reality, the ordinary voter, having cast their ballot, is shut out from the business of governance. That is the result of the STV system.

[Caroline Lucas]

That is an argument against STV, but I keep stressing that what we are talking about is the right of the public to choose the system. When they have that right, we can have the debate about whether STV does or does not lead to decisions being made in smoke-filled rooms. The hon. Gentleman’s assertion is rather ironic. He is concerned about what goes on in smoke-filled rooms, and perhaps he does not want the public to make any decisions on this. He does not want the fresh air of public opinion to be waved over our debate tonight, but that is exactly what should happen. That is why the public should decide.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

We appear to have lost coterminosity entirely in Scotland, and that is an issue because the situation there is making it extremely difficult for people to have more engagement in politics and a better relationship with their elected representatives. When I tell people, “I am your Westminster MP, but this person will be the candidate for that part of the constituency, although not in your sister’s area, which is not that far away,” it is difficult to make them understand. We also have local government boundaries, which are completely different again.

I am not necessarily saying that we have to change the situation in Scotland immediately; we are learning to live with our different boundaries. However, there is absolutely no need to walk into the situation that I have described. A simple change, backed up by the evidence, to a four-year fixed term, would cure the problem. I hope that the Government will at least consider the issue again—and quickly, so we can get it out of the way.

Obviously, there are other issues. I am not qualified to comment on the detail of some of them, but they are important and we need to spend time on them during the passage of the Bill. I hope that at last the Government have heard the question.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I fear that the hon. Lady is perhaps underestimating the sophistication and intelligence of her constituents and those in the rest of Scotland. The evidence seems to suggest that when elections have coincided—for instance, the local elections on 6 May this year and the county council elections previously that coincided with general elections—people have been discerning and have made separate decisions. I would vouchsafe that that was the case in Scotland.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am not suggesting that people cannot make separate decisions, but there are practical difficulties. However, over and above those difficulties—which we saw clearly in 2007 and because of which we have taken a step to move elections apart—the overwhelming objection is that we would be in danger of drowning or swamping the important issues of the different legislatures. That is important for what we have built up under devolution. I may now be an elected representative in this place, but those of us who fought hard for devolution did not do so to see everything disappearing in the way that it would in such elections. That is why we should simply amend the Bill to have four-year terms. Then I would be much more supportive of it than I am in its present form.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

I am delighted that you have called me to speak in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, given that I sent a copy of my contribution away to my local newspaper earlier today saying how magnificent it would be. I was getting a bit concerned that I was not going to be able to make it and that there would be a bit of an error in the local newspaper.

Two issues are covered in the Bill, and I shall deal with them separately, as the Government should have done. The first is the alternative vote, on which my party, in its manifesto, was committed to having a referendum. For that reason alone, I will back a referendum.

However, let me remind hon. Members of the voting systems in Scotland. For the general election, we have first past the post; for the European elections, we have proportional representation; for the Scottish parliamentary elections, we have both first past the post and an element of proportional representation; and for local government elections, we have the single transferrable vote. In my opinion, that is a car crash of electoral systems, which leads to nothing but confusion, particularly for elderly voters in my constituency.

Like many other hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, I have long held the view that first past the post represents the best system for delivering proper representation and proper governance to a country. Most important, as many other hon. Members have said, politicians cannot hide in first-past-the-post systems. Despite my private feelings, I shall vote to give the public the choice, but I will also campaign to retain the first-past-the-post system.

Three issues concern me about the Bill. The first is the Deputy Prime Minister’s position. He has delivered a consistent message about our rotten political system and the new politics that he wishes us to pursue. His attacks have been against both the system and the parliamentarians in it. I disagree with that analysis. The problems that the House has had in the past were created by flawed individuals, not flawed systems.

Secondly, I am deeply concerned about the coalition’s plans for AV in the Bill because, as has been said many times in the debate, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats put the case for AV in their manifestos. I am therefore baffled about why it is in the Bill, unless there is a more cynical reason: to place the alternative vote referendum alongside the changes to constituencies to create a smokescreen to cover up the gerrymandering of our constituencies in this Parliament.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I respect the hon. Gentleman, who is making a powerful speech, but does he not find it perverse and unprecedented in recent parliamentary history that his party not only went to the electorate at the general election in favour of an AV referendum, but legislated for it before the election, and yet will vote against that policy tonight?

[Mr McCann]

We are happy to resolve that problem. All the Government need to do is decouple the measures. We will vote for the AV referendum separately, and against the constituency measure. It is in the Government’s —the hon. Gentleman’s people’s—hands to resolve the matter. However, I will vote against the Bill.

Liberal Democrat voters will still harbour some disappointment about going into coalition with the Conservatives, but nobody should be under any illusions about the duplicity of Liberal Democrats in the affair. Before the election, we had to listen to the nauseating lectures of the Deputy Prime Minister, who told us that his was the only party that had in no way been tainted by the troubles of the previous Parliament. That was not the case—it is factually incorrect—but we were led to believe that the Deputy Prime Minister would arrive on his white steed and there would no longer be any dirty deeds or skulduggery in politics because the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) would save us all. That stomach-churning hypocrisy pales into insignificance when we consider the Bill.

The Boundary Commission will be given the task of making arithmetical calculations and equalisations, and placing seats of 76,000 first, second, third, fourth and fifth in their deliberations, except in constituencies that have an area that exceeds 12,000 square kilometres, and except for the Shetland islands and the Western Isles. When I saw the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) after the details of the Bill were released, the smile could not have been taken off his face with a blowtorch because he will get that free run at the next general election.

The primary beneficiaries of all the exceptions are the Liberal Democrats. We should remember that the Deputy Prime Minister said in a speech on political reform on 7 April 2010 that only the Liberal Democrats could be trusted on political reform.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

The hon. Gentleman will have to allow me to say that I consult my colleagues about the whipping arrangements that would apply. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) is speculating about whether the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is worried about something. My advice is for him to worry about how he and his party are going to vote and we will worry about how we vote.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Straw]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but then I want to make some progress.

[Mr Jackson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I am glad that the sinner is repenting. Does he regret the use of the guillotine on so many important Bills during the last Parliament? In the Housing and Regeneration Bill, for instance, which I was involved in, more than 200 Government clauses were tabled between Second Reading and Report, so Members were not allowed proper analysis and oversight of that important legislation. [Interruption.]

[Mr Straw]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) says that there were no guillotines, as they were programme motions—but they come to the same thing.

Let me say to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) that I regret the use of guillotines full stop, but sometimes they are necessary. However, I sat in the House in opposition for 18 years, and the first Bill I sat on—the Housing Bill, in early 1980, 30 years ago—was the subject of the most ruthless guillotining, and that on a major measure. There are plenty of other measures of profound importance that were also the subject of guillotining.

My view, both in government and in opposition, has been that the House—certainly over the 30 years in which I have been in it—has not got right the way in which it should deal effectively with legislation on the Floor of the House, and I think that there is a better way. We need to provide for more time, but if we do that, the quid pro quo needs to be limits on speeches, so that people can constructively take part. We also need to look at something that I facilitated on at least one occasion, which is ensuring that when the business is subject to programming or guillotining, some Opposition and Back-Bench amendments can also be the subject of votes. I put those proposals before the House for consideration.

I have set out our view on many of the proposals that are, and will be, the subject of a broad consensus. As I have said, on every proposal that the Deputy Prime Minister brings forward, we shall seek constructively to work with the Government to achieve consensus. However, it seems that consensus was the last thing on the mind of the governing parties, when one turns to some of the elements of the coalition agreement. In his first speech as Deputy Prime Minister, outside the House, the right hon. Gentleman told the nation that he proposed to secure the biggest shake-up of our democracy since the Reform Act of 1832. He described the Reform Act of 1832 as a “landmark”, from

“politicians who refused to sit back and do nothing while huge swathes of the population remained helpless against vested interests. Who stood up for the freedom of the many”—

we have heard that phrase before—

“not the privilege of the few.”

Well, not quite, Mr Speaker, for the truth is that even after the passage of the Great Reform Act of 1832, huge swathes of the population—92% of the population—remained without a vote, helpless in the face of vested interests. The Reform Act of 1832 gave the vote, a limited franchise, to the property-owning class, of whom there were remarkably few, and deliberately ensured that nobody else had the vote—no women, no working men; just 16% of men, and no women whatever.

Let me also say to the right hon. Gentleman that had the Great Reform Act been the landmark in democracy that he suggested—I do not know where he got that from; certainly not even from Wikipedia—none of the agitation of the Chartist movement that followed would have been necessary. Those of us who know a little bit of history will remember that it was the wholly dashed expectations of 1832 that fired up the great Chartist movement. However, the comparison with 1832, if not appropriate, is certainly heavy with unintended irony, for, however limited the effect, the first Reform Act at least extended the franchise. The programme to which the right hon. Gentleman has signed up will reduce the franchise, as I will explain. Some reform!