Space Industry

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lennie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, from Labour’s Front Bench I welcome the noble Lords, Lord Parker and Lord Johnson, who spoke earlier, and I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who we will hear from in about 45 seconds’ time. There is a guy, Sanjeev Gupta, who currently rents a one-bedroom flat above a hairdresser’s on Lewisham High Street so that he can work from home. Sanjeev is a geologist, and in his flat he has five computers and two other screens for Zoom meetings. He is helping to direct and control the movements of Perseverance to drill and collect samples to help determine whether there has ever been life on Mars. Compare his endeavour with the Government’s investment in OneWeb, against the advice of experts and the concerns of the space agency. Is this OneWeb investment part of the UK’s global navigation satellite system? If not, what is it? As we have heard, OneWeb continues to manufacture its satellites in Florida. The high-skilled, well-paid jobs will come only if we get our investment and industrial strategy in sync—or are we destined, like Sanjeev Gupta, to rent more flats in Lewisham from which to explore the final frontier?

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Tyler (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have listened with great interest to this very interesting debate. Some powerful contributions have been made, not least by fellow Celts—I speak as a Cornishman. I have a great deal of sympathy with what they are saying, not least in their emphasis on human geography. After all, in the end, all these proposals will not be there for the benefit of elected MPs, or indeed anybody else in the political system; they must be there to serve the people of the areas concerned. It is the human geography that is important. In that context, it is important for all of us who have been MPs to remind your Lordships’ House that when we are elected we are not there just to support, endorse and help only those who happen to be on the electoral register but to support all those who live in the areas concerned. For example, I do not recall ever asking anybody who came to me for help whether they were registered on the electoral roll.

The one thing I found very disappointing about this debate was from the noble Lord, Lord Hain, with whom I have worked in the past and for whom I have a great deal of respect, right back to his radical days as a young Liberal. He of course was a very distinguished member of the Government my noble friend Lord Rennard just referred to; the Government who introduced the first major steps to affording devolved representation at Holyrood and in Cardiff and the powers needed to do a job for those nations. To not see this Bill in the context of the very successful devolution that took place then and that has taken place since is a major disadvantage. I was very glad that my noble friends made reference to that in their contributions.

We Liberal Democrats are concerned about the threat of a disunited kingdom, if I may quote the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. However, we are also extremely concerned that the forthcoming devolution White Paper for England represents a major change too. As we have very unequal representation at the national level within the United Kingdom, we are in danger of a major political and constitutional problem.

My noble friends referred to the long-standing commitment that we have had for a federal constitution for the United Kingdom, which would take account of the needs of the different nations. In addition, however, we have been firmly committed to the principle of subsidiarity, and reference has been made to that in this and previous debates on the Bill. We believe that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the people who will be affected by them. Therefore, we take very seriously indeed the extent to which we have not been able to extend devolution to parts of England.

Those who have been the strongest protagonists for improved and strengthened devolution powers in Cardiff and in Edinburgh must recognise that English citizens are at present deprived. Even though we have a form of devolution in Cornwall, we would dearly love to have the same sorts of powers that are currently exercised in the Senedd or in Holyrood. Incidentally, the point made by my noble friends about the lack of sufficient membership in the Senedd is extremely valid. As my noble friend Lord Rennard just reminded the Grand Committee, that was not what was intended at the outset in 1999.

I believe that this set of proposals, however powerful, has to be seen in the wider context of the whole of the United Kingdom. If the Bill goes through in its current form, with 650 Members for the whole of the United Kingdom, I must assume that the Minister will, in a few minutes, tell the Grand Committee that every additional Member that is allocated to Wales or to Scotland means fewer for the rest of the United Kingdom. It would be irresponsible just to ignore that point.

As has already been said, there are a number of constituencies in other parts of the United Kingdom that are very big indeed—big both in geography and in the difficulty of representing them adequately, and most importantly, as I said at the outset, big in their human geography. It would surely be folly to ignore that particular lead, simply by trying to deal with the problems that may result in rural Wales or the highlands of Scotland.

As it happens, I know both those areas quite well, as I will explain when we come to the amendment dealing with the current constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire—I know that constituency extremely well. I recognise the special case which can be argued for that part of Wales—of its rurality and the difficulty of communities coming together in an area like that—or indeed in the highlands of Scotland. I had the privilege of going to campaign for the then Member of Parliament in that area, and for the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, when he was the long-standing and much-respected Member for Gordon. We may need to take special account of both those areas, and it will be the human geography, as well as the physical geography, that will need our attention.

As my noble friend Lord Rennard suggested, when we come to the next group of amendments—particularly the amendment in my name and his—we may be able to find some way of dealing with such special circumstances. I very much hope so, and I hope that Members on other sides of the House and in this Grand Committee will also see the advantage of coming to a firm decision, but one that is applicable throughout the United Kingdom, to deal with the particular problems which have been referred to at this stage.

I look forward with interest to how the Minister will attempt to square the circle. I am sure he will share with all of us the concerns expressed about the service that can be given to people in areas described in this debate. However, I do not think it necessarily will require a major change between the different nations, and therefore a diseconomy between the attitude that is given to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and to other parts of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, thanks are due in particular to the noble Lords, Lord Hain, Lord Wigley, Lord Foulkes and Lord Grocott, for speaking to this amendment. Between them, they made the essential points. I will not go into too much detail of what I wish to say, but it is about the geography of Wales and Scotland and how that relates to the rest of the UK.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, said that it has been a ruthless, if not brutal, exercise in seeing the proposed move from 600 seats to 650 seats. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made the point that geographic size matters, despite the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, saying that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, should dry his eyes and get on with it. That would be an unwise piece of advice, given the current state of the union in the United Kingdom.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, reminded us of the massive contribution that has come from Welsh and Scottish politicians to the whole of the UK, and it is hard to underestimate the numbers—we referred to Prime Ministers and others—who have come to represent this country.

The noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord McNicol, made the crucial point: the impact that this decision will have upon the survivability of the UK. As we know, the SNP has a majority in Scotland and is promising, or threatening, another independence referendum. In Wales, the mood about whether it needs to strengthen its independence from the rest of the UK is getting stronger. If this Parliament gets this decision wrong, it will have those kinds of consequences. While I am sure that the Minister is thinking very carefully about this, I ask him to bear in mind the consequences on the whole of the UK of the decisions to be made about Wales and Scotland.

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Moved by

[Lord Lennie]

15: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause—
“Electorate per constituency
(1) Rule 2(1) of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act (electorate per constituency) is amended as follows.(2) In paragraph (a), for “95%” substitute “92.5%”.(3) In paragraph (b), for “105%” substitute “107.5%”.”

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, if we did not know it before, we now know that this will be an important issue, and it might go on for a little while. I do not intend to delay progress with a lengthy speech. I want to make what I think are the essential points about 7.5% replacing 5% tolerance levels in the Bill. Incidentally, we can almost safely ignore the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which is coming later, to reduce the size of tolerance to 2.5% as simply ridiculous. It is never going to happen—but I know it will be debated.

So why 7.5%? It would set variance levels against the normal size of constituencies to allow the Boundary Commissions sufficient latitude to determine where boundaries lay. Incidentally, when the figure of 600 constituencies was proposed, 5% tolerance levels were still part of the proposed legislation that never saw the light of day. That would have given a variance higher than the 7.5% based on 650 constituencies, given that the size will significantly reduce. Therefore, the numbers do matter to the argument. This is important to constituents because it will make it less likely that they will move from one constituency to another, allowing MPs, as we heard on the previous day in Committee, to build bonds and relationships with their constituencies.

The reason why 7.5% seems sufficient comes from evidence taken in the Commons Select Committee from Dr Rossiter, who demonstrated that having tolerance levels of up to 8% has a significant impact on constituencies—and after that it is a diminishing return. I therefore argue that 7.5% is a better level at which to set tolerance than, say, 10%, which will be argued by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, because the amount of benefit between 7.5%, 8.5%, 9.5% and 10% is significantly less than on the way up to 7.5% from a 5% tolerance level.

There is a difficulty in the redistribution of, say, 16,000 electors to neighbouring constituencies in the event of one ceasing to exist, and the knock-on effect is felt most in neighbouring constituencies. However, it is not just in these that the impact happens; it happens as a ripple effect across county areas, beyond these into other counties and so on. That impacts on the relationship between constituencies and local authority boundaries and therefore makes it more likely that we will have ward splittings and all kinds of other means by which the Boundary Commissions can set constituencies at the 650 level with the 5% tolerance applying within them.

The ripple effect becomes more of a wave. Therefore, by giving tolerance levels the variation that we seek, you reduce the disruption to electors and the impact on the relationship between elected representatives and constituents, and you increase the political stability that is felt and needed in terms of the ongoing relationships that exist between constituents and their representatives.

In giving this presentation, I am also grateful to Greg Cook, who is a long-time researcher of these things. He has conclusively shown that these variations are not the thing upon which outcomes of elections are decided. This is not a partisan plea from the Labour Party to seek greater influence in the outcome of elections. What determines these outcomes are events that take place as a result of Governments’ and Oppositions’ competence in responding to the challenges that they face: the “events”, as Macmillan called them, not the size of the tolerance levels around constituencies. If you broaden the tolerance levels, you give the Boundary Commissions a greater chance of getting constituencies that are right and felt to be so by communities and their elected representatives.

So I ask the Government, before concluding this position, to think carefully about what works best in the interests of the whole nation.

[Lord Grocott (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, these various amendments remind us of a fundamental and inherent contradiction in a key aspect of this Bill. That is to say that, on the one hand, we are told repeatedly by the noble Lord, Lord True, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that the whole heart and function of the Bill is to provide as near as possible arithmetic equality in the way in which constituency boundaries are determined, and that that is the thing that matters most. Some quite elaborate language is used to describe “fair votes” and “equal votes”; I stopped jotting down the number of times that these phrases were used by Ministers but, when Hansard is available for this Committee stage, I will make a little note of them all, because this is at the heart of the justification throughout.

That is on the one hand but, on the other hand, of course, we have—as has been mentioned from time to time—the section of the Bill dealing with protected constituencies, where precisely the reverse applies. It says that mathematical accuracy is an irrelevance and that what matters are geographic matters and cultural issues, as well as issues of accessibility, natural boundaries and the rest. For the avoidance of doubt, I emphasise that I totally agree with there being constituencies in that category. All I am saying is that some of the common sense that has led to that decision should be applied to the other 645 constituencies in the United Kingdom.

Even if you take barriers and natural boundaries—the sea is one, of course—the best that Ministers could ever say was that they are all islands, but of course some of them are made up of several islands. While the sea is a barrier, so is a mountain range or a river estuary, when it is difficult to get from one side of the estuary to the other. There is nothing in the rules that prevents you having anything other than constituencies that go across river estuaries because you have to keep to the precise mathematical formula.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Lennie Excerpts

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

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I want to refute the calumny that I am participating in this debate only to go down in parliamentary history as one who was present at the first-ever hybrid Grand Committee of the House of Lords. It is not true. Indeed, it goes contrary to my strongest principles because, as a noble Lord said earlier, this Bill should be on the Floor of the House; it is constitutional, but it goes beyond its constitutionality.

We should consider the scale of the change in the Bill, the degree of disruption that it will cause if it is put into effect in full, the ruined lives down the other end of the Corridor—going from 600 to 650 helps, but it does not help as much as not having a 5% variant—the disruption it will cause and the loss of confidence among the population because they will not know who their Member will be next time round. This is really large-scale stuff—and that is without getting into the issue, which I do not intend to cover this afternoon, of whether this is in fact a gerrymander. No doubt we will have a chance to discuss that later in Committee and on Report. So I am not participating just to be in a hybrid Committee. I wish we were not in a hybrid Committee but on the Floor.

The second calumny is that I am intervening on this amendment only because the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I are such comrades, if I may use that word in the House of Lords. We are great veterans of the 2011 attempt to persuade the Government of the points, or most of the points, that I have just made. That attempt narrowly failed, due to a piece of stubbornness on David Cameron’s point of view. It is a great pity that those measures went through—they had to be ditched anyway—but it gives us a chance to have a second, more sensible, go. Unfortunately, I do not think that the Government have succeeded in doing that.

As I say, my noble friend Lord Foulkes is a comrade. He knows that we disagree on electoral reform. The idea that electoral reform would necessarily destroy the relationship between MPs and their constituents is nonsense. It was shown to be nonsense by something that nobody round this table other than me will remember: the Jenkins report on the electoral system. I remember it quite well because I was on the commission. Those noble Lords who remember that will remember that it had most constituencies represented by a single Member, as now. There were some additional Members to deal with discrepancies in the amount of support that each party needed to elect somebody, but they were on a county basis; they were not asked to represent the whole country at large or any of the things that go with other proportional systems, so there is no necessary link between electoral reform and whether you go ahead with this sort of system. It should be debated on its own complicated merits. I suppose I had better come to the amendment about now.

At the moment we have the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which implies that elections take place every five years. It makes sense to me that you should have a fixed gap between a boundary review and an election—they should come in that order. If you had 10 years under the present system, that is what would happen. It would come at the same distance before an election each time. Eight years tells you nothing. It means that sometimes you will have a boundary review immediately after a general election, so you will fight the next election on completely outdated boundaries. The time after that will be just before an election, so no would-be Member of Parliament will have time to get to know his electorate. It is a complete absurdity. It is so absurd that I can think of only one argument that the Minister could use to defend it, which would be to say, “We committed in our manifesto to get rid of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act”—and I recognise that that is the case.

However, do not be surprised if the Prime Minister and his party do not in the end show the enthusiasm that they have shown so far for the proposition that they go back to the old system where the Prime Minister calls the election every time. I should say, first of all, that the record of Prime Ministers calling elections when they have that discretion is bloody awful. I go back to Jim Callaghan, who I was then privileged to be an adviser to, funking autumn 1978 and going for 1979 and therefore making Mrs Thatcher possible. I understand why he made the decision, but I think he was wrong—and I think he thought he was wrong. More recently, Theresa May, befuddled by the opinion polls and having adopted a policy for social care that was bound to lead to at least a 10-point drop in the Tories’ reckoning, went for an election that was the end of her.

Even more recently, not the Prime Minister but the leader of the Labour Party, in the face of irrefutable evidence that his party would be massacred if it went to the country under his leadership, nevertheless decided that his party should vote for an early election, thus handing Boris Johnson the easiest victory in electoral history. My experience of politicians is that they do not much like choosing election dates anyway. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act, for all its defects, seems to be basically right, so if we keep that, we will keep five-year Parliaments and one review for each 10-year stretch.

That would also avoid unnecessary disruption. Every time constituencies change, as ex-Members of the Commons have told us so eloquently this afternoon, there is considerable disruption. There is a tremendous problem that may do for these plans in the end. It is perfectly true, and if Ministers were honest they would admit it, that on the whole this change is probably slightly biased in favour of the Conservative Party. But that is one thing. It is another thing when the Back-Benchers are going to see the Chief Whip every week and saying, “We can’t have an election, look at what’s been done to my constituency. We only held it last time because I had so many supporters in Borrowstown and now they’ve been moved off to that fat, useless Tory Member for Bugglestown.” That is why they did not do this last time. It was not a matter of principle or because they saw that they were wrong, or even because of what the Lib Dems might have done about it. It was because it was rightly causing bedlam on the Conservative Back Benches.

This may seem to those who advise the Prime Minister like a bumper wheeze for getting a few extra Conservative seats. I promise that, before the next election, they will be eating their words and the Prime Minister will be saying, “Who the hell got me into this? Haven’t we got anything better to do than deal with Back-Benchers who feel that they’re going to lose their seats and it’s our fault?” There is no worse accusation to be made against a Government than that they are knifing their own party in the back.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I have enjoyed the speeches so far in this debate. I come here as a former chair of the political parties parliamentary panel of the Electoral Commission. We had something to do with elections and it is our fault that MPs had those reviews and the consequences of them. It seemed to me that the most important thing to the MPs whom I and other parties dealt with at the same time were the lines on the map: “Where will my majority be most or least affected?” So the co-operation between parties was immense in many respects in drawing up the constituencies, because it was a question of trading these voters for those voters and so on, to protect each other’s majorities and therefore the relationship.

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Moved by

[Lord Lennie]

11: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Impact on constituency boundaries: automatic registration
Within the period of 18 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Boundary Commission must review and report on the impact on constituency boundaries of the introduction of automatic voter registration, including for attainers.”

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, we were about to find out during the adjournment what my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours will say about this amendment, but he quite rightly got cut short by the clerk. The amendment calls for the now rather beleaguered Boundary Commission to conduct another independent review of all the consequences of automatic registration, from improved numbers of electors, to absence of democratic participation and everything in between.

This issue has gone to and fro for some time between the major parties without any party being able to point to conclusive proof that theirs is the right position. I am particularly grateful to the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, which produced a report on this issue and in broad terms supported automatic registration. It said in its second key recommendation:

“The Government should pursue further modernisation of registers, including piloting automatic registration for attainers and introducing assisted registration to prompt eligible voters to register when accessing other public services.”


We are talking about up to 9 million people—more than 100 constituencies-worth of voters—who are currently unregistered. They are mainly in rented accommodation, from the BAME community, from poorer households, students or vulnerable community members—people whose votes matter and who should take issues to their constituency MP and have them looked at, but do not participate in democracy. When they are surveyed, they all say that they want to participate in the democratic process, register to vote and vote, but they do not take the action to do so. It seems that this is pushing at an open door.

I think that the Conservative Party generally feels that this conflicts with their policy of individual registration, which has been around for a few years now. I do not think that individual registration has increased democratic participation in our country. Therefore, something is missing in attracting people into democratic participation. It is our view that it should be reviewed and looked at. We should look at all the evidence. People should come to give their views. The Boundary Commission would not hold an opinion on this, but it would hold the review. At the end of the review, we can take a decision, one way or another, about whether automatic registration should apply or be piloted throughout the land. However, we would need to have the evidence before us to make up our minds on automatic registration. I beg to move.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24, which is in the same territory as that which has just been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, but this is not tickling the Boundary Commission’s fancy; it would require government action. It is particularly influenced by my serving as chairman of the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, on which a dozen Peers served and toiled over several months to produce its report. As an interesting point, I looked up today that between us we had contested at least 47 parliamentary elections and I do not know how many local government elections.

The decision to introduce individual electoral registration in place of head-of-household registration was the major feature of the Act that we were looking at. This is not the time to have a fulsome debate on that report: that is for another day. The report was published on 8 July and the Government have got until today to respond; they have less than six hours. Bearing in mind what we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, there is a chance that we might get something at 9 o’clock tonight—is there not—depending on who is responsible for this. We look forward to that, and that debate on another occasion.

The concern of the Committee on the state of the accuracy and completeness of electoral registers was our number one item of our six key recommendations. The polling district and ward registers affect constituency electoral boundaries: they are the building blocks. Our recommendations include: piloting automatic registration for attainers—that is young people over 16; introducing assisted voter registration—we heard a little about that in the earlier amendment; greater use of data matching; civic engagement and public engagement, particularly in respect of young people and under-represented groups. The UK looks closely at international experience, where other countries have a far greater percentage of the population registered to vote. It was good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, speak earlier today commending overseas experience. We should not be frightened of it.

We were surprised to learn that the completeness of registers is no better under IER than under the old system. It cannot be right that only 85% of the eligible population is registered, while in Canada it is 96%. In Northern Ireland, where IER was introduced much earlier, back in 2002, completeness was reported to us as being only 74% in a 2018 survey. You would think that having had the experience of that for 16 years, we would be getting a more complete register there. It is evident that IER has not enhanced completeness.

The IER system has led to much event-led registration. On the cusp of an election we heard that 3.85 million people applied to register to vote between the MPs voting for an election on 29 October 2019 and the last date when it was possible to register, 26 November. Only half were subsequently added to the register, as half of them were already registered. Nevertheless, 2 million people were added to the register in that brief period. It cannot be right that our hard-working electoral officers—we met several of them—have to cope with all these registration events alongside the plethora of activity in organising an election and the increasing multitude of postal votes.

This late registration has meant that the registers immediately after the December 2019 election are perhaps as good as it gets under the old registration that we now have. It is in line with the committee’s view that the Government have agreed that it is the register of 2 March 2020 that is to be used for the electorate for the 2023 review. This amendment is to make certain that, as well as endeavouring to maximise the register so that everyone entitled is able to vote, henceforth the constituency boundaries will be based as near as possible to 100% of the eligible population rather than the 85% or so that it is at present.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who tabled these amendments. They have provided an opportunity to discuss the merits of not introducing automatic voter registration and for me to update the Committee on what initiatives the Government are undertaking to improve the completeness and accuracy of the electoral registers.

The Government are not considering introducing automatic registration, for reasons of principle and practicality. On principle, we believe that registering to vote and voting are civic duties; it therefore follows that people should not have these duties done for them or be compelled to do them. There is also the principle of individual responsibility, which is why we introduced the individual electoral register in 2014. Automatic registration is not compatible with the idea that it is each eligible citizen’s responsibility to register to vote. An approach based on individual responsibility also leads to the outcomes that we all want to see. After the introduction of individual electoral registration, the registers for the 2017 general election were the largest ever. There is also some evidence from overseas to suggest that those who register themselves are more likely to vote.

Coupled with that individual responsibility, a more general duty falls on society as a whole, and on all of us here, to explain the importance of registering to vote. The Government welcome and share in these efforts to encourage people to register and to participate fully in our democracy. The Government’s online registration service does exactly this, supporting citizens who want to register by making the registration process easier than ever. Satisfaction with the Register to Vote website is consistently above 90%.

On the practicalities, we have many concerns about automatic registration. I will briefly outline five of them. First, it is almost certain that an automatic registration system would lead to a single, centralised database of electors. We are opposed to this on grounds of the significant security and privacy implications of holding that much personal data in one place, as well as the significant cost that such a system would imply.

Secondly, any system automatically registering citizens who, for example, are applying for a driving licence, a passport or universal credit could present accessibility challenges to those citizens who do not use any of those services.

Thirdly, there is currently no public service whose application procedures capture all the data required to determine eligibility to vote—name, address, age, nationality and immigration status. This means that any so-called automatic system would still require significant amounts of human intervention.

Fourthly, electors have faith in our current registration system. The results of an Electoral Commission survey on the 2019 general election found that a net 78% of those surveyed were satisfied with the registration system. Of the 10% who were dissatisfied, 9% said that people should be automatically registered to vote and 1% said it should be compulsory.

Fifthly, we should also take note of the experience of other jurisdictions that have introduced automatic registration. Registrations may have increased, but so have concerns about errors and inaccuracies. For example, shortly after the introduction of automatic registration in Canada in 2000, the General Election Post-event Overview reported that,

“a majority of candidates and political party representatives indicated a low degree of satisfaction”

with the preliminary lists of voters generated by the national register, and that returning officers reported having

“to deal with widespread or major complaints about the preliminary lists of electors, indicating that the accuracy of the lists did not meet their expectations.”

Before I move on from Amendment 11, I reiterate what I said in the previous debate about the risk of damaging the independence of the Boundary Commissions, were they to be asked to do this work. They would be taking on an entirely new function, publishing a report on the potential impact of the policy. More than that, it would almost certainly damage the Boundary Commissions’ reputation for impartiality and independence. I just wanted to make that clear.

The second amendment in this group is the one tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Shutt of Greetland, Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Janvrin and Lord Wills. It would require the Government to lay before Parliament proposals to improve the accuracy and completeness of the registers. I want to reiterate what my noble friend the Minister said recently and what the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said this evening. The Government are totally committed to ensuring that we have as complete an electoral register as possible and we are working to that end. Between 2014 and 2018 the register rose from 86% to 89%, but the Government are not complacent and we will continue to work to improve that.

I will update noble Lords on the work going on to this day. I share with many in both Houses the ambition that every eligible elector who wants to be, should be included on the electoral register. However, the Government strongly believe that the individual must make the decision to engage with the democratic process themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, pointed out that people have reasons why they do not want to engage. The Government have an important role in making the process as easy as possible to ensure that there are no barriers to registration. That is why the Government have been working hard with electoral administrators to improve the accuracy and completeness of the registers through initiatives such as online registration and reform of the annual canvass process.

I will highlight a few pieces of work in this area. The introduction of online registration has made it simpler and faster for people to register to vote. It takes as little as five minutes. This improvement benefits all electors, including groups that have traditionally experienced barriers to making an application to register. From my own experience, I know that many local authority librarians will help people who do not have the IT knowledge that some of us might have.

The Government, working with partners, have developed a wide range of resources to promote democratic engagement. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, that this is putting too much on to electoral registration officers. This is the bit of work that they like doing. I know that from my experience of working with many electoral officers over many years. They are passionate about making sure that as many people as possible in their communities are engaged in the democratic process. Events are aimed at electoral registration officers, civil society groups, teachers and others to encourage people, particularly young people, to get involved in the process.

We are also in the process of implementing changes to the annual canvass of all residential properties in Great Britain. That will improve its overall efficiency considerably. This will allow electoral registration officers to focus their efforts on hard-to-reach groups. Many noble Lords mentioned these groups. It is interesting that it is the local electoral registration officers that often know who these groups are and how to communicate with them. Electoral registration officers also play an important role in helping to make the registers accurate and complete. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, is right that it is not just about completeness but accuracy.

When thinking of another group of people where we know it is difficult to keep it to one name on the register, we can look at members of the Armed Forces as well as students. They are another group of people that I know well. The Government are also analysing the impact of the new student electoral registration condition which requires higher education providers in England to comply with ERO requests for data and obliges them to work with local authorities to promote electoral registration among their student communities. This is yet another piece of work that is being done locally that will increase the numbers on the roll.

I hope that provides noble Lords with sufficient assurance that the Government are dedicated to improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers, while maintaining individual electors’ liberty to choose to register of their own accord. I therefore thank noble Lords for their amendments but invite them to withdraw or not move them.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, given the time, I will concentrate not on what previous speakers have said, but on what the Minister contributed in her response. The practical measures that she has outlined do not appear to have impacted on the 9 million missing voters. There may be a shuffling between students here or registrations there and so on, but there are still 9 million people who could, and want to, participate but do not do so because they are not registered in the process. We need a step change, moving away from well-motivated and well-meaning electoral registration officers, student leaders and others in institutions, to get to where we need to be, with a marked increase in participation at the next election. This legislation will not happen every single year or Parliament. It is a one-off parliamentary opportunity to make a real impact on the missing voters.

This issue is not going to go away. The Committee has heard the passion on it from the members of the noble Lord’s committee. I believe this will come back at the next stage but, in the meantime, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Lennie Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a welcome Bill and the noble Lord, Lord True, is to be congratulated on moving its Second Reading. It is certainly welcome compared with that which the Tory-led coalition Government proposed—but all things are relative. Then, the Tory Government proposed a reduction to 600 MPs while their coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, had suggested in their 2010 manifesto that they would reduce the House of Commons by 150 Members. It is little wonder that they want to move on from their 2010 position, and that the Tories cannot resist the pressure from their own Back-Benchers and have torn up the proposals that would have seen the reduction to 600 Members.

The reduction to 600 Members by the Tory-led coalition would have happened just as we were preparing to leave the European Union and during—I hope—our post-Covid-19 phase. That we have been spared such a fate is a relief I share with my noble friend Lord Grocott. Had Parliament lost its right to have the final say, that would have been passed into law and done and dusted without a glance back by the then Government.

That said, as noble Lords have heard, there are still matters in this Bill with which we on the Labour Benches disagree that need to be considered in Committee and beyond. A 5% variance either way from the norm of about 72,000 electors leaves a little room for manoeuvre—something between 68,000 and 75,000 constituents—but a 5% variance causes the most disruption to seats, compared with either 10% or 7.5%. Academic studies of reviews in 2013 and 2018 show that this was the case. It was stated on both occasions that a wider margin would produce more coherent, fairer constituencies. Why do the Government not want to allow the Boundary Commission sufficient leeway to deal sympathetically with any circumstances it may find? We have heard from Wales, Scotland and England that it will find those circumstances. There are factors that the Government cannot wish away—mountains here, rivers there or motorways built. They divide or unite constituencies. Natural factors that combine constituencies can now cause separation.

Can the Minister explain why the Government want to maintain the narrow channel for manoeuvre with the plus or minus 5% tolerance level? It has been recognised, rightly, that there are particular circumstances in Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles, the Isle of Wight and Ynys Môn but they are saying that there are no other places in the country that have similar or comparable circumstances. We disagree. There are other places in England and Wales that deserve more sensitive treatment than the Bill allows. My noble friend Lady Gale reminded us that, especially in Wales, valley and hills naturally separate constituencies and make communities feel a sense of belonging. The effect of this limitation would be to split more wards and make the coherence between local authority boundaries and constituency boundaries less than it is currently.

The fact that the Bill could vote down proposals and the loss of such power are indicative of the Executive’s hostility to accountability. Why do the Government not feel that Parliament is the appropriate body to have the final say on proposals? Currently it serves as the last resort, but that would be removed by the Bill. It is not as though Parliament has stood in the way of change. The Bill increases the power of the Executive over Parliament. The fact that Parliament will lose the power to vote down proposals is indicative of the Executive’s hostility to accountability in Parliament. In fact, the only time in recent history that might have happened was when the Tory-led coalition supported changes to reduce constituencies to 600. Why do the Government feel that the Order in Council is a better, preferable system than Parliament having the final say on proposals?

In summary, the Bill is a welcome improvement on the previous Tory-led attempts to reduce Parliament’s size, but it still has some way to go to become a good piece of legislation. The Labour Party will bring forward amendments for consideration in Committee and we will seek to serve that purpose.

Parliament and Central Government: Relocation

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Labour Government were last in power—some time ago now—we pledged to devolve power down to the nations that make up the UK. What plans do this Government have to establish a people-led constitutional convention to consider the future shape and extent of necessary reforms—including the location of the capital if that becomes necessary?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

That is exactly why the Government are concentrating at the moment on the devolution which is happening, bottom-upwards.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly about devolution in England, particularly the devolution in the north-east of England that is almost upon us. Before I do so, I want to introduce a commercial for the north-east. The Great North Run will take place on 11 September this year. It is a half marathon and a fundraiser. I will be a starter and, I hope, a finisher too. If any noble Lords want to make a contribution, particularly those who might be interested in becoming the next Lord Speaker, I have a webpage, and cash is also acceptable. I am running for St Oswald’s Hospice in Newcastle, so all the funds will go there.

Back to devolution. History was made on 15 May this year when the North East Combined Authority, consisting of seven authorities in the north-east, voted to agree the deal with the Government that will see an elected mayor in exchange for the transfer of a range of powers on transport, economic development, skills and so on. It was not quite a unanimous vote—that would indeed have been a historic day—but it was a very high majority vote, and I shall say no more about that. The important point is that it will allow the north-east region to begin to compete for global investment and funds that it has simply not been able to in the past. I remember that when the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, was Business Secretary, he used to say that when he went on trade missions batting for Britain, London would be there batting for London, Wales would be there batting for Wales and Scotland would be there batting for Scotland, but no one was there specifically batting for England, let alone for any of its regions.

My view is that city regions are the future in this country and probably worldwide, and they will be the powerhouses that drive the economy. They will be competing for global funds on what will hopefully be a more level playing field than before. However, that has significant constitutional implications. Our constitution is in a state of change, and we have heard many speakers talk about that in this debate. We are not clear where it is going to end up. That will depend partly on whether deals can be done, agreements can be reached, people accept terms of trade and so on.

I recall being at a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on devolution before the last election that was attended by the then Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Hague. He said that there would be a constitutional convention looking at the implications across the whole of the country. When pushed to say when that might happen, he was vague. The only thing he said was that it would not happen before the election. That election was some time ago now, but there is still no sign of that necessary constitutional convention being established to provide the intellectual rigour, which was talked about in an earlier speech, that is necessary as we go through the process of constitutional change. We need to know where we intend to end up as a nation, rather than ending up there by some sort of default process.

The north-east is a resilient place. Cars are now built where coal was once mined. People sail and surf where ships were once launched. Newcastle United has been relegated—it will be back. Sunderland is to be congratulated, as is Middlesbrough: Sunderland survived and Middlesbrough got promoted. It sticks in my craw to say that, but it is a fact. We are an export region—that is what we do. We make things and sell them abroad, mainly in Europe but across the world. However, for the last 10 years or more, our major export has been talent from the region, which leaves because it sees that it has no long-term future in the region. It comes south, goes abroad and worldwide, and the loser overall is the economy of the north.

The success of devolution will in part be measured by whether it can help to reverse that trend and stabilise that region, and see that the talent that is in the north and that comes to the great universities and places of learning there, where skills are developed, stays in the north and in the north-east. You can expect the term “devo-more” to be part of the future political lexicon for many regions across England, particularly in the north.

Perhaps the Minister will address two questions in his summing-up. First, do the Government have plans, even possibly a date, for when they will fulfil their prior promises about a constitutional convention? Secondly, we in the north-east want Heathrow built—we want the link. We were told that a decision would be made in the summer. Could we fix on the 24 June as a good date for an announcement on that issue?

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by offering my congratulations, too, as one relatively new Member of the House to another, to the noble Lord, Lord Cooper, on his insightful and persuasive speech. He revealed some personal insights, one of which was that the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, who was sitting next to him, had introduced him to the delights of Diet Coke during his time at the LSE. If he wants to further his interest in Diet Coke, he may have heard in my maiden speech that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, an expert in this area, is producing a book, now retitled The Ring-Pull Diet. Signed copies are available at a very reasonable cost and Christmas is coming, so see me afterwards and I will do what I can for you.

I support the Bill. There has been some extraordinarily persuasive and experienced commentary on the Bill in this debate, and I am not going to amplify or repeat what has been said. Rather, I shall concentrate my remarks on an area that I have some experience of in past life, which is organisation, campaigning and so on, in political arenas. The three areas that need attention are to do with money, as noble Lords have mentioned, with scrutiny of what goes on and with the preparation that is under way—or perhaps not under way—in the Bill that is likely to be upon us soon.

In preparation for this debate I had some discussions and correspondence with the Electoral Commission, among others, to seek its view, as the country’s guardian of electoral behaviour, on what it thinks its role should be and what the role should be of returning officers, or petition officers as they will become when the Bill is upon us. It takes the overall view that the Bill will lead to little, local matters. That is slightly worrying, because of course these will be local affairs. They will be locally organised petitions, subject to whether local constituents decide to sign them, but they will not be little, local difficulties; they are going to be hugely intense, under the scrutiny of all, and the media of the country will play a major part in determining the direction of travel for a decision on whether to recall.

To think that this is just a local matter and therefore that much of the responsibility for the organisation and delivery of these recall petitions can simply be left in the hands of an unsuspecting, unprepared local petition officer, is wrong. It would be unfair for the Bill to place public servants of that sort in that position without giving them the right level of support, guidance and training. Indeed, we should perhaps take the responsibility from them—I do not mean this to offend any current returning officers or future petition officers—because they really will not know what has hit them when one of these petitions is upon them.

I also take the view that these petitions will be very infrequent. I did a little research and the best that I can establish is that in 100 years or so of recall facility in the United States, only two national recall enactments have taken place. There have been lots of others at local and under-federal level, but not many at national level. So we are not going to have a whole body of experience to draw upon in refining this law as time goes on as we do at other elections—local, European, national and so on. Petitions will be rare and intense and it will therefore be even more important that we get the terms of the Bill and the rules of the game right, in detail and known before we hit the petition trail.

Money matters in campaigns—perhaps not as much, but almost as much, as people on the ground matter, in terms of organisation. It is hugely influential and important. If we did not understand that before, the Government have just passed, through statutory instrument, a significant increase in candidates’ expenditures. They slipped it through in preparation for the forthcoming general election—without, so far as I can see, any discussion at all.

I spent quite a lot of my working life, a couple of years or more, with others, including my noble friend Lord Kennedy, who is on the Front Bench, trying to find to find a way, between the parties, to restrict money as a factor in the way that campaigns are run, and trying to limit campaign spending way down to a level that means money is not seen as the evil that it can become in the process of campaigning. Discussions went on between all the major parties over a number of years. Everyone was in favour of it, but in the end every party found a reason why the particular proposal at that particular point did not suit their circumstances or need, or the time in the electoral cycle, or whatever other position they may have taken, and it all came to naught.

The Bill concerns me. I raised with the Electoral Commission the issue of spending limits and how they may be applied on the for and anti sides of petition campaigns. It is quite right, as my noble friend Lord Grocott said, that the MP who is the subject of such a recall is going to be an unloved, lonely and very vulnerable figure. His or her ability to raise significant sums of money to mount a defence against recall will be very limited indeed. The pro-recall campaign in any area will have far greater opportunity, capacity and resource to draw upon, and unless we find some way of limiting the total amount of money that each side can spend, it will not be an open, robust and fair process but will be extremely tilted against the MP. I suggest that we need to look, in Committee, at some means of setting an absolute cap on what can be spent by both sides. That implies that there will need to be a responsible person on each side—presumably the MP on one side and someone akin to an election agent, that sort of figure, on the other side—through whom, and only through whom, expenditure can be committed to the campaign.

The issue of scrutiny was raised, in part, in earlier contributions. This will be about the conduct—and should be about only the specific conduct—in response to which the petition has been drawn up in a constituency. How we can find a means to control other factors—and many noble Lords have indicated that that is a concern—should the Bill become law, is important. We raised this again with the Electoral Commission, which did not really have any advice to give. It referred to the recent Scottish referendum and so on, and how it was impossible to control the angles from which people came to that decision. But recall is a one-question issue and a specific matter about which nothing else should count except for the specific conduct, whatever it may have been, at that point in time. So if there is to be literature, or if there are to be websites or campaigning groups set up on other issues to do with MPs’ voting records, or other records, or other experiences during his or her time, we would need to find a way of ensuring that they cannot affect the outcome of the case.

Finally, it will involve a significant amount of skill and training to prepare people in the various roles established by the proposed legislation. My personal view is that the body that should be responsible for the preparation in detail of these matters—not just as an adviser offering guidance and a code of conduct but as one with an active, participative, hands-on role—must be the Electoral Commission. That is a further matter that we should explore in Committee.