Electoral Commission

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, on 28 June and on previous occasions in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, agreed with me that our legislation on elections and referendums was not fit for purpose. But today the Minister has repeated the Answer given in the other place by the Minister for the Constitution. In the fourth paragraph, he said:

“That electoral rules have been breached is rightly a cause for concern, but that does not mean that the rules themselves were flawed”.


Are the Minister and I correct—and I think we are—or is his honourable friend the Member for Norwich North in the other place correct? We cannot both be.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On several occasions, I have repeated a statement that my party made just over a year ago:

“There is a broad consensus that election law is fragmented, confused and unclear, with two different sets of legislation and poor guidance from the Electoral Commission”.—[Official Report, 7/6/18; col. 1403.]


As the noble Lord knows, a number of inquiries are under way that I do think we need to wait for before we decide how best to legislate. I am aware of the strong views of the Electoral Commission that the current level of sanctions is too low.

There are the DCMS inquiry into fake news, which we need to wait for, and the Intelligence and Security Committee’s inquiry into the activity of the Russians in the referendum and recent elections. There are ongoing investigations by the Electoral Commission into the referendum, and a court case is still pending. We have just had a very interesting report on referendums from UCL. I am not in favour of delay, but it makes sense to have the reports of the various inquiries that I have just referred to before we decide how best to proceed. I make it clear that the Government take extremely seriously what has been reported in the investigation out today.