Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I rise once more in support of my noble friend Lord Tyler, having also done so on the earlier occasions when he brought forward amendments designed to improve this highly imperfect Bill. As my noble friend has made clear, the objective has been the same throughout: to try to find a way of removing or at least lessening the involvement of MPs themselves in the processes by which a recall petition can be triggered. That central issue was underlined in the report on the Bill that was provided by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, and that report has been much in our minds during these proceedings. No one could expect to be seen to be acting utterly impartially in determining a period of suspension when a heavier penalty will trigger recall and a lesser one will not.
As my noble friend has made clear, he and those of us who supported the amendment have now taken into account a major development that occurred during the passage of the Bill through this House. As my noble friend reminded us, news of a very significant report on the composition of the House of Commons Committee on Standards reached us on the very day that we consider the Bill on Report. It has now become clear that the committee members believe that its composition should be changed to give equal representation to MPs and lay members. Now that the committee has gone that far, it would surely be sensible to wait until the committee has assumed its new form and acquired the greater independent representation that is now proposed before it is given its recall responsibilities. That is what this amendment seeks to do, and I am very glad to support it.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I argued in the previous debate that surely the way for the House of Commons to re-establish its good reputation is for it to take responsibility for its own self-government and its own self-discipline. I am therefore opposed to the propositions put forward in these amendments, and indeed by the House of Commons Committee on Standards, not only that there should be lay members of the committee but that there should be equal numbers of lay members and Members of Parliament and that the lay members should have votes. It seems to me that those arrangements would not be consistent with the House of Commons taking the responsibilities that I believe that it should.
I also suggest that what we are being invited to approve is inconsistent, first with Magna Carta, which established the principle of trial by peers, and secondly with the Bill of Rights, which asserts parliamentary privilege and insists that the proceedings of Parliament should not be questioned or impeached by those who are not Members of Parliament. It may indeed be the case that Parliament has power to set aside Magna Carta—even in its 800th anniversary year—and that it has power to discard elements of the Bill of Rights. I would suggest only that parliamentarians should draw a very deep breath and think very carefully indeed before they do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is always Jacobinical—he has a splendid fury in his reforming drive—but the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has a profound knowledge of parliamentary history. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is not able to be in his place today, is deeply knowledgeable about parliamentary privilege. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, another of the sponsors of Amendment 5, is a very experienced former Member of the House of Commons. I am startled that some of those noble Lords should associate themselves with this kind of drastic change, which, in the present circumstances, when all of us are intensely concerned to see how the good reputation of Parliament can be better upheld, would surely be in effect an abdication of the central responsibility that Parliament has for itself and for its own good conduct. I am deeply opposed to these amendments.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Hughes of Woodside
As ever, my noble friend Lord Maxton is complimentary to me. But, immediately recall becomes a remote possibility, the influence of the press and the media will be enormous. I really do not think that removing any sort of mitigating intermediary between the offence of an MP and a recall petition is the right way to go about it.
We speak lovingly about the need to restore the reputation of Parliament. We speak lovingly and meaningfully about how it is necessary for the highest standards to prevail. If we say constantly that the House of Commons is not fit to control itself, and that it needs people from outside looking in on it to put it right, that does nothing whatever to produce the effect we desire.
I will say just one other thing in passing. When the expenses scandal started—and it was a scandal—it was said that the administration of expenses should be taken out of the control of Parliament itself. So we got IPSA—is it called?—to do that. Has that done anything whatever to improve the issue? All that happened was the press turned on IPSA and said, “You’re worse than the MPs were”. There is no easy answer to this. To imagine that this sort of Bill, especially in its dreadful form, will do anything whatever to improve the standards of Parliament and how it is viewed by people outside is totally mistaken. The only way for that to happen is for MPs to stop the nonsense of accepting that when they get petitions they must say yes to them. They are afraid, apparently, to have any independent views. I accept that as a former Member of Parliament I was subject to the Whips and I would never have been a Member of Parliament without being a member of the Labour Party. I understand the constrictions there are in that. Nevertheless, if we remove entirely any possibility of MPs speaking out for themselves about what may be unpopular causes, that may damage democracy irrevocably.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I was glad to add my name to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Tyler. As my noble friend has made clear, these important amendments differ significantly from those he brought forward in Committee. My noble friend and the cross-party group that supports him have reflected and reconsidered. Our proposals have been revised, cut back and simplified. They have been discussed at some length with my noble friends Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Gardiner of Kimble. We await the Government’s response to them with interest, though not with unbounded optimism.
In their current form, the amendments are straightforward and uncomplicated. They seek above all to relate the process of recall more fully and directly to those for whom this legislation, whether we like it or not, has been devised—the electors of this country. The amendments would enable electors to exercise their judgment about the case for recall following a decision in the courts. In any worthwhile system of recall, electors should surely occupy the central position, as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, the Conservative Party’s leading authority on the constitution, emphasised so powerfully at Second Reading and repeated today. The famous watchwords of Tory democracy spring at once to mind—“Trust the people”—sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill but in fact coined by his extraordinarily combative and pugnacious father, Lord Randolph, in 1884.
As I have mentioned before, and as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, recalled, my support for my noble friend Lord Tyler’s carefully researched and constructive initiative stems from the work done on the Bill by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member. The committee’s report has featured quite prominently in our debates. Its central point, as far as these amendments are concerned, is that it expressed considerable scepticism about the wisdom of placing a recall trigger in the hands of the Standards Committee. I repeat the key passage of the report:
“The constitutional purpose of recall is to increase MPs’ direct accountability to their electorates: it is questionable whether that purpose is achieved when the trigger is put in the hands of MPs rather than constituents”.
I would add this question: do we not need to guard against the possibility that the existence of such a trigger might create dissatisfaction and disillusion among electors? If that should occur, the Bill—the purpose of which is to strengthen the electorate’s trust in the political system—could end up exacerbating the very problem it is designed to alleviate.
The committee’s report was published on 15 December. The Government’s response, received a few days ago, states that,
“it is important to be careful to respect the disciplinary arrangements of the House of Commons”.
That, of course, is a sound and overwhelmingly important principle of the internal arrangements of the House. It is not, however, obvious or self-evident that the principle should be applied to the procedures that will trigger recall, not least because of the acute danger that decisions relating to those procedures would be unduly politicised, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, argued so strongly at Second Reading.
Is there not a case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider these issues, which bear so directly and powerfully on the workings of democracy in our country, particularly in view of the new report, to which attention has been drawn this afternoon?
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord. He may not have the answer to my question—I perfectly understand that—but he might be helped by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I should really have intervened on the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. What does the noble Lord think would happen in the case of a non-declaration of interest, where there had been a repeated non-declaration of a major pecuniary interest, over a number of years, by a Member? Which committee would now decide on that matter, and to what extent does he think that that committee might be able to impose any penalty?
Lord Lexden
As the noble Lord suggested, I will leave that to my noble friend Lord Tyler, as a former Member of the House of Commons. However, the case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider the issues that these amendments highlight is strong. I incline to that view, and for that reason I support these amendments.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I, too, am a signatory to these amendments. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Lexden, Lord Norton and Lord Tyler. I think that in the part of the country that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, comes from they have a saying: “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.
I sympathise with some points of view expressed by noble Lords on the opposition Benches. I am not an enthusiast for this legislation; I would rather it was not before us for a variety of reasons. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said earlier about the climate that IPSA has created and the difficulties that have arisen because of a loss of confidence. However, as the right honourable Member for Blackburn, Jack Straw, said in evidence to the committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred, and which reported only today:
“It is important that we do not get ourselves into a gloom about this. Politicians have never been trusted. In a sense, in a democracy that is quite healthy … In the middle of the [Second World] war, Gallup surveyed public trust in politicians and it was pretty low”.
I am not indifferent to that: I think it is very important that people should have a high view of politics and politicians. However, as Jack Straw said, it has always been thus. I worry that the solutions that we have put in place will not deal with some of the endemic problems of a lack of trust, not just in politics or politicians, but in our institutions throughout this country, where there has been a considerable decline in public trust across the piece.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, I was grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Gardiner, for meeting us to discuss our reservations about the Bill. However, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, recognised, these are genuine attempts to try to make the Bill better, even if one does not agree with them. That is why I am happy to be a signatory to these amendments, not least because of the experience that I had when I served in another place and was a member of what was then the Privileges Committee—the Standards Committee’s predecessor.
I was a member of that committee when we had to deal with the so-called cash for questions scandal, when two Members of the House of Commons had received significant sums of money for tabling parliamentary questions. The end of that process brought to mind something which I think the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said at Second Reading: that the real mechanism for people to decide whether to recall an MP, which is in place, is of course a general election. I was very struck that, at the end of that process, when two Members of Parliament were found guilty of those offences, in one case the constituents in the constituency where they lived decided not to return that Member of Parliament, but in the identical other case they did return that Member of Parliament. He continues to serve in another place. We had to look at some difficult cases but we were certainly not asked routinely to provoke potential by-elections. That is the issue that most concerns me and which I want to address in speaking to this amendment.
I was always impressed by the genuine desire of members of that Committee on Privileges, from whichever part of the House they were drawn, to maintain the reputation of the House of Commons and get to the truth. I did not sense any narrow partisanship; I worry that we are risking that by putting this mechanism in place. The fact is that Standards Committee Motions are also amendable on the Floor of the House of Commons. I hope that the Minister will address both the pressure that will be placed on members of that committee of a partisan nature in the future and what can then happen on the Floor of the House. Will he say in his response whether that possibility of amendable Motions on the Floor of the House of Commons will continue in this new situation? If so, could a partisan majority not be used to trigger a recall process by increasing a suspension to 10 days, even where the Standards Committee had decided against it?
I want to say a word about the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee, which talks of the Standards Committee taking judgments. The benefit of these amendments is that we would take those subjective judgments out of the process. I particularly agreed with the description that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, gave. He talked about simplicity and objectivity being at the heart of what these amendments seek to do. In particular, Amendment 3 would make the trigger incredibly simple. If you are convicted of an offence, the electors would get to determine whether they wish to keep you. Incidentally, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said a few moments ago about the danger of vexatiousness creeping into the system with groups of people, for whatever motive, trying to undermine good Members of Parliament.
As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it is extraordinary that we are having this debate this afternoon, after this report of more than 100 pages was published this morning. Although I have obviously not been able to read it in any great detail yet, I was struck that the report said on page 5:
“The subcommittee heard from a number of witnesses who were concerned about the extent to which the current system was fair to those members subject to it. While we believe the system is broadly fair, it is clear that MPs do not feel well supported”.
The report also reflected on the Standards Committee itself on page 6, saying:
“The Committee does an essential but sometimes unpopular task”.
That is certainly true; I know from the expressions on the faces of one or two noble Lords who served on that committee in another place that they would agree. The report went on to say that,
“if the House fails to engage with the Committee’s proposals it undermines the Committee’s position but, more importantly, the House’s own standards”.
We have to take those points seriously and I hope that between now and Third Reading, we will have the chance to do that.
By contrast the Government’s second trigger, as it stands, gives Members of Parliament the whip hand. That cannot be in the spirit of what the Government themselves say that the Bill is about. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House made that clear weeks ago but the Government’s response is, to say the least, wanting. In answering, it really would have had to demand that this matter be considered further, before Third Reading in any event. Now that the Standards Committee has published these proposals, that case for better and further consideration of the Bill and its impact on the committee must surely be even more compelling.
There are just six weeks left of this Parliament. We are not yet into the wash-up. We are not yet into purdah. We can, in the time remaining, amend the Bill and put in place a recall arrangement that would command public support—something simple, more objective and more easily understood, which avoids the perception that MPs will be able to make friendly interventions to prevent their own errant colleagues being subject to the process. In that six weeks, we can also look properly at the issues raised by the Standards Committee’s own report. Addressing the issue of lay members—a point that has been referred to by noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—including their number and force, would go a long way towards dealing with some of the issues that I have been raising. Either way, it is not enough for the Government to dismiss such serious and widely expressed concerns out of hand. I hope we will hear a clear commitment from the Minister to come back to this question at Third Reading.
Electoral Registration
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government have engaged in a range of activities on social media and are using National Voter Registration Day as a means of raising national attention. Two of my ministerial colleagues are speaking in parallel at a barracks tomorrow to deal with the problem of underregistration among defence personnel. The Government will also, through the FCO, be attempting to raise the amazingly low level of overseas registration. We are working on this, but I repeat that the Government cannot do all of it on their own. I put something out on Liberal Democrat Voice, my own party’s site, two weeks ago encouraging all our activists to engage with local schools and other bodies. I am sure that the Labour Party is doing the same, in so far as it can.
Lord Lexden (Con)
In view of the success of the work done in schools in Northern Ireland by its chief electoral officer, will the Government encourage his counterparts throughout the country to publicise the details of the work that they are doing in schools and the results that flow from that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have been in active conversation with electoral registration officers over the last year and more. The Government have just provided another £6.8 million for electoral registration officers, targeted on particular areas which have low registration, by and large in the cities. I also stress that the provision of online registration, which has been going now for a year and through which 3.33 million people have already registered, is very much one of the ways we get at young people. Knowing young people, including my own children, I think this is something that young people are likely to register on at the last minute.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I am glad to add my name to my noble friend Lord Tyler’s amendments. It is obvious to us all that he has devoted much hard work to them. As he explained, the amendments arise in part as a response to an important issue in the report on this Bill by the Constitution Committee, of which I have the honour to be a member. He quoted a passage from the report that I will repeat. It is immensely important:
“The constitutional purpose of recall is to increase MPs’ direct accountability to their electorates: it is questionable whether that purpose is achieved when the trigger is put in the hands of MPs rather than constituents”.
This is a Recall of MPs Bill. My noble friend’s proposals, embodied in his amendments, represent a first attempt in this House to see if it is possible to find a way of enabling the electorate to be more fully involved in the arrangements that can trigger recall without breaching the famous Burkean principles that safeguard MPs’ independence of judgment. The amendments further develop ideas put forward in another place. They are probing amendments, as my noble friend emphasised. Of course we understand and accept that more work on these amendments would be necessary before Report.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, and others, I did not take part in the Second Reading debate on the Bill because I felt that Members of the House of Commons know best how to control themselves and the relationship they have with the electorate. However, having heard other speeches, I agree that it is incumbent on this House to consider legislation and to have in mind the view, in particular, of the House of Commons.
I believe that this amendment is very dangerous indeed, and I am pleased to have heard the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, state that, if passed, it would in fact be illegal. That is because of the Bill of Rights 1689. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has investigated this and we will hear from him later. This amendment is dangerous in respect of the rights and privileges of the House of Commons. Quite frankly, I am getting fed up with the attacks being made on the House of Commons and its Members. All these attacks which describe them as shysters and people who concerned only for themselves do extreme damage not only to the House of Commons but to parliamentary democracy itself. People should remember that Parliament is the protector of the people against unfair government. We and the House of Commons are the protectors of the people. It is therefore very important that we should not denigrate the position of MPs. I believe that this amendment does exactly that. It is unnecessary and it denigrates the position of the House of Commons.
In effect, the House of Commons will decide whether an issue about a Member of Parliament should go to the electorate in a referendum, and I believe that that is the correct way. The amendment suggests that the House of Commons itself is not fit to do that. I repeat: that will undermine the position of the House of Commons itself, of its Members and, indeed, of Parliament. I cannot accept a situation where 500 people who are completely unqualified and lack knowledge, for some reason that is not really injurious to Parliament and to the House of Commons—this has been explained by many speakers in the debate—can introduce a position where judges can interfere in the decisions of Parliament, which of course should be sovereign. If we take away decision-making from Parliament and the House of Commons, they really will cease to be sovereign. For that reason, if the amendment is put to a vote—although I am sure that it will not be—I will vote against it.
Electoral Conduct
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I can hardly conceive of circumstances in which I would find myself seriously at odds with my noble friend Lord Alderdice. No one has a fuller understanding than my noble friend of the situation in Northern Ireland and of how stability can be preserved there. I almost invariably agree with his views on the affairs of the Province, in which I take a particular interest, and I am largely at one with my noble friend again this evening.
The report before us is a formidable document, based on wide inquiry and careful research. It is all the more persuasive because it does not overstate the problems with which it is concerned. In paragraph 9, for example, the report makes it clear that,
“the UK is not out of step with international good practice. Taking a wider view, the UK is also performing well in a European and global context”.
The report’s introduction emphasises the overwhelming importance of preserving free speech. It endorses the fine description of free speech produced some years ago by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, to which my noble friend Lord Alderdice referred. The report reminds us that,
“free speech must not be misused in the name of political freedom or prejudice and intolerance as a political weapon to instigate hatred”.
The report is a balanced and measured document, which keeps the issues of discrimination and racism in proportion but rightly recalls some truly dreadful incidents, to which my noble friend has already referred, that have occurred at recent elections. They remind us that everything possible must be done to diminish the possibility of similar occurrences in future. No one should be satisfied with anything other than the highest standards of electoral conduct in all parts of our country.
Of course, that expectation is a comparatively modern phenomenon in British electoral history. Until the late 19th century, rowdiness, riot and rudeness were the chief characteristics of British elections. Disraeli had to endure unbridled anti-Semitism in the 1830s and 1840s before he became the representative of the comparatively well behaved and courteous electors of Buckinghamshire, although he rather enjoyed answering back his would-be tormentors from the hustings.
The days of uncontrolled misconduct are firmly over and none mourn their passing. Nevertheless, elections are and will always remain highly charged occasions in which strong feelings will be vigorously expressed, often in indecorous language. The report fully accepts that. Its aim is to prevent the kind of crude, base insults and racial intolerance which have on some recent occasions inflicted appalling distress on candidates and their families, undermined good community relations and damaged the reputation of British democracy. Now the very rapid expansion of social media, particularly since the last election, creates new and formidable challenges, to which my noble friend Lord Alderdice also referred.
In those respects, the coming election—now just a few months away—will be a testing time. We need to consider strengthening our arrangements to guard against the extreme campaigning, to which the report refers in paragraph 38, which has the potential to “fracture communities”. The recommendations it makes to try to avoid such an eventuality require the most careful consideration by the Government and political parties.
It is more than a little disquieting to find in the report considerable disappointment with the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In the report’s summary, it is described as having,
“neglected its responsibilities and lost some of the good practices carried out under its former guise as the Commission for Racial Equality”.
There are more strong words of criticism in paragraph 23 of the report. The report’s first and most important recommendation is that,
“the EHRC produce a plan for engaging in work on electoral conduct and specifically that it continues to update and issue the election toolkit which embodied good practice, providing clarity in what can be complex legal and procedural matters”.
In other words, the all-party inquiry is very strongly of the view that the EHRC should do at the next election what its predecessor body did in the past.
Since the report was published, those involved with the all-party inquiry have continued to express concern about the approach of the EHRC. Critics give the impression that in the absence of the kind of EHRC initiative they believe to be necessary, standards of electoral conduct may be seriously impaired. But there are some who seem to take the view that the role of the EHRC has been largely superseded by the Electoral Commission. This is an issue that needs to be clarified and resolved.
Clear codes of conduct, such as that produced by the Electoral Commission and agreed with the Statutory Parliamentary Parties Panel, have in the past few years come to occupy a significant place in the arrangements designed to combat discrimination and racism. The political parties produce internal codes of their own. The report contains a number of proposals to secure more effective enforcement of those codes through training, disciplinary action and other means, such as a common framework accepted by all parties for reporting discrimination during elections.
The list of recommendations directed at the political parties is a long one and perhaps there is a danger of seeking an unduly elaborate set of requirements. It is hardly realistic, for example, to imagine that party officials would be able to vet every single leaflet before it is issued during the coming campaign. What is important and pressing, surely, is that the parties make their codes crystal clear as the election approaches, and explain how they will be enforced.
I have ceased to be involved with the central organisation of the Conservative Party—no longer known as Conservative Central Office but as Conservative Campaign Headquarters. In the tightly organised era of Mr Lynton Crosby, there is unlikely to be any lack of resources to ensure adequate training for candidates and agents or for the enforcement of a rigorous code of conduct. The Conservative Party makes no secret of its intention to mount a hard-fought, remorseless campaign at a time of heightened concern about race relations. That makes it more important to keep standards of conduct high and to bear down heavily on any breaches of them in a manner that commands public confidence. The same, of course, goes for the other parties.
We know that the Electoral Commission’s essential role in this area is much valued by the political parties. The commission is in the process of revising and updating its code of conduct for campaigners. It is a pity, perhaps, that the commission does not seem to have supplied a background briefing note for this debate. It would be hard to overestimate the advantages of having one single code of conduct to which all parties fully subscribe in place of the present plethora of individual party documents. Perhaps the time has now come to consider that. When the inquiry into electoral conduct was announced last year, Mr John Mann MP, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Anti-Semitism, said that he hoped to see considered thought given to a transparent, workable and enforceable framework on electoral conduct which can be agreed by the political parties. Surely that is a goal worth striving to achieve.
Electoral Registration
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, a watching and eager world has my noble friend Lord Wallace to thank for this debate. We are considering the outcome of the all-party inquiry, which my noble friend kindly recommended to me in the closing stages of our debates on what is now the Electoral Reform and Administration Act 2013. My noble friend said on 23 January last year:
“I would suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, should pursue the question of an all-party inquiry into this rather neglected area, not leaving everything to the Government here”.—[Official Report, 23/1/13; col. 1130.]
Governments the world over tend to hold exclusively to themselves those matters from which glory or credit can be extracted; other matters can happily be placed in other hands. So perhaps it was, to some extent, in this case.
I took the sensible course in response to my noble friend’s suggestion. I passed the baton immediately to the skilful, learned and scholarly hands of my noble friend Lord Norton. Having done that, I enlisted as a humble foot soldier in the impressive little platoon which he assembled to undertake the all-party inquiry so generously suggested by my noble friend Lord Wallace. I turn to the summary of the recommendations of the inquiry, with which the short and incisive report—thanks to my noble friend Lord Norton—concludes. The first of them states:
“A Cabinet Office Minister should be given specific responsibility for co-ordinating all Government Departments to increase radically the take-up of overseas voting”.
Who is the individual referred to here? The fuller version of this, our first recommendation, reads:
“At the moment, Lord Wallace of Saltaire answers in the House of Lords for the Cabinet Office and also does so for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That appears to us to be a pertinent combination in terms of departmental responsibilities”.
As to the duties that my noble friend will acquire by accepting this recommendation, as I hope he will, our report makes it clear that he would have,
“responsibility for British nationals living overseas and for ensuring a co-ordinated approach within Government. This should also encompass ensuring effective communication between the Electoral Commission and the FCO”.
No good deed should go unrewarded or, as some say, unpunished. The all-party inquiry, which my noble friend set in train, has found unanimously in favour of vesting in him the crucial task of bringing together the disparate strands of responsibility within government so that a really effective campaign can be undertaken—driven with the energy for which my noble friend is renowned—to establish arrangements for the first time under which our fellow country men and women living abroad for fewer than 15 years are, in the words of the report,
“encouraged, in the same way as citizens resident in the UK, to ensure that they are registered and exercise their right to vote”.
How glad my noble friend will be that he initiated the all-party inquiry.
The creation of a powerful co-ordinator within Government is our first recommendation because so much turns upon it. Our report states:
“British citizens living abroad are effective agents in spreading British influence. Many nations recognise and treat their citizens overseas as a major asset. The United Kingdom is not among them”.
A recent report in the Economist revealed that of the 193 UN member states, 110 have formal programmes to build links with their citizens abroad. The UK is not one of them; it should be. Attitudes will not change without the consistent and determined pressure that a co-ordinating Minister would bring. Our embassies and consulates have always been left to decide how—indeed, whether—to encourage British nationals in their countries to register to vote. Our report notes:
“We found little evidence of a notable effort by them to engage in a voter registration drive or to make efforts to mark elections in the United Kingdom. Whereas the embassies of some nations appear to have a tradition of hosting receptions on their national election days, there appears to be no such tradition on the part of UK embassies”.
We propose that the co-ordinating Minister should instil a proper sense of duty in our posts throughout the world. In the words of our report, we recommended,
“following the practice of some other countries in emphasising the importance of the nation’s citizens overseas and stressing the value of their votes and commitment to the United Kingdom … Our citizens living overseas should be made to feel valued. That is an essential prerequisite for encouraging them to vote”.
The need for a co-ordinating Minister grows ever stronger as the problem of underregistration gets worse. The latest figure of registered overseas voters available to us when we finalised our report in March was 23,366. That is alarming enough, out of a potential total of around 3 million, but by June, the figure had dropped to 15,848. The Electoral Commission has set itself a target of 100,000 new registrations by the time of the election next May, in accordance with one of the recommendations of our report. The briefing that the commission has provided for this debate suggests that it is seeking assistance from a wide range of organisations, including universities, pension providers and financial advisors, as well as the FCO. This is surely to be welcomed. The existence of a co-ordinating Minister would surely be invaluable to the Electoral Commission in this endeavour.
Our neglected and forgotten voters abroad should be given the means of becoming full participants in our democratic life. That is what so many of them want and we should feel proud that they do.
Deregulation Bill
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I would like to comment briefly on this amendment. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for not being here at the start of his remarks.
There may be grounds to believe that this is an issue more of access than of supply. According to Leonard Cheshire, 10% of the British population have mobility issues and 2% use a wheelchair, but no British region has fewer than 19% of homes with disabled-friendly front doors, and London has 36%. There appear to be reasons to believe that the homes exist but that disabled people are not living in them.
I would like to touch briefly on research by the highly regarded organisation, Create Streets, which has shown that, in an urban environment, the results of lifetime homes standards requirements tend to be fewer houses and more flats, which is the opposite of what most people in this country want. If the issue is one of access rather than supply, might it not be better to require local councils to ensure an adequate supply of new homes and of new disabled-friendly homes and to take responsibility formally for ensuring that disabled people are housed in the right homes?
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment but there is not much else left to say, so I shall be brief. Like the noble Lord, Lord Best, we welcome the work on standards and the inclusion of these matters in building regulations. We are grateful to Leonard Cheshire for its very helpful briefing. We welcome the fact that the lifetime homes standards and the wheelchair accessible standards have been recognised in building regulations, but like Leonard Cheshire and noble Lords who have spoken, there is a concern that those standards are optional, and that, moreover, a hurdle has to be gone through for a local planning authority to be able to require those as a planning condition. My noble friend made a telling point about the capacity of local planning authorities to address those issues.
I conclude on one point: this is not only a quality-of-life issue, although it is very important at that level; it has economic ramifications. Unsuitable accommodation means the likelihood of more trips and falls, more visits to the A&E and hospital, and more cost. I hope that the Minister can assure us that there is a way through this process to address the real concerns that have been raised today.
Hansard Society: Audit of Political Engagement
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Audit of Political Engagement published by the Hansard Society in April 2014.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, while some of the findings are more positive compared with those published in the previous survey in 2013, there remains a number of results that should concern us all—for example, regarding the accountability of MPs and perceptions of Parliament. The Government, politicians, the media and many others in society all have a role to play in engaging people in democracy and overcoming a number of significant challenges to us all that are highlighted in the audit.
Lord Lexden (Con)
I declare my interest as a trustee of the Hansard Society, which is proudly celebrating its 70th anniversary, having been founded in the latter stages of the Second World War by one of the most remarkable of independent MPs, Stephen King-Hall. I pay tribute to my noble friend in the Cabinet Office for renewing its financial support for the widely respected Audit of Political Engagement. Does my noble friend agree that above all the audit underlines perhaps the greatest challenge that we face as a democratic body—namely, the widespread disinclination to cast votes in general elections, particularly marked among the young, which we must all labour to correct?
Coalition Government: Constitution Committee Report
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, no one, I think, will seek to deny the importance of this report. I was very glad to be able to contribute in a small measure to the work on which it is based as a member of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been granted a place on this committee two years ago.
Reference has already been made more than once to the wise words of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth—always in my view the surest guide on constitutional matters—who on this occasion is being kept, like the best wine, until last. He pointed out in the committee’s first evidence session that,
“this is the first time that we have had a coalition that has been the product of the arithmetic of the general election … we have not been in that circumstance before; we have had coalitions, but where one party has been dominant and could have governed on its own”.
Our past coalitions, dominated by one party, operated reasonably contentedly according to procedures fashioned under single-party government that the smaller party or parties within them were in no position to alter in any marked degree. Now a new pattern has been set. I am less sanguine than my noble friend Lord Strathclyde that it will not be repeated. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord O’Donnell, that the likelihood is considerable. In any future coalitions, as in this one, a single party is unlikely to be in a dominant position. The electoral arithmetic will be decisive. It is as a result of the election of hung Parliaments—which, in the past, never ushered in a coalition Government at Westminster—that such Governments will almost certainly come into existence in future in peacetime.
The report is therefore significant and timely because it addresses the implications of this major change in our constitutional landscape. It puts forward clear answers to the chief questions that have been cast into such sharp relief by the experience of this first coalition Government of the new type. Like my colleague and noble friend Lady Falkner, I would like to touch on a few of them, returning for the most part—I hope I will be forgiven—to matters that have already been the subject of comment in this debate.
The report gives short shrift to ideas that have recently gained currency in some academic circles that would encumber the process of coalition-making with unnecessary votes of approval in the other place. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, I do not think that we should add new requirements when long-established procedures work just as well for coalition Governments as for single-party ones. Any Government’s first Queen’s Speech provides a time-honoured test of whether they command the confidence of the Commons—and that is enough. I was glad to hear my noble friend Lord Tyler endorse that. Similarly, the committee concluded that no special arrangements are needed to provide sufficient time for coalitions to be assembled. Some 12 days are currently available, as the report points out. If a fortnight is sufficient to concentrate the mind of a condemned man, politicians—conscious, one hopes, of their duty to the nation and their sovereign—ought to be able to manage with two fewer days.
In its deliberations that led to this report, the committee devoted more time to the issue of cabinet collective responsibility than to any other. This has come up several times already in the debate. It aroused more concern than any other central constitutional question because of the cavalier manner in which it has been treated all too frequently in this first coalition Government of the new type.
There is the opposite danger that collective responsibility might come to be invested with an aura of sanctity. Undue veneration would be contrary to our traditions. Collective responsibility is a doctrine that has been set aside in the past, as the report notes, giving three 20th century examples. There are others. Even Mr Gladstone, the most unbending of constitutionalists, was capable of taking a highly pragmatic and flexible view. When one of his Cabinet colleagues voted against what became known as the Third Reform Act 1884, he reminded the offender of the elementary rule that Cabinet members should vote together, but added that,
“it would be most unfortunate were the minds of men at such a juncture to be disturbed by the resignation of a Cabinet Minister”.
As so often in constitutional affairs, it is surely all a matter of balance and degree. Frequent breaches of collective responsibility must be expected, as we have heard, to damage the reputation and diminish the authority of a Government, particularly if they come unexpectedly, out of the blue, and without being preceded by any collective Cabinet decision to set the doctrine aside. That danger has been amply illustrated in the past four years. It could be significantly reduced by following the recommendations in this report. The key passage has been quoted before, but it bears repetition:
“Where it is clear that no collective position can be reached on an issue, a proper process should be in place to govern any setting aside of collective responsibility. Such setting aside should be agreed by the Cabinet as a whole and be in respect of a specific issue”.
The report goes on to urge that such a process should be introduced now and operate for the rest of this Parliament. Recent events have perhaps added to the significance of that particular portion of the report, and perhaps at the end of the debate the Minister will tell us whether we can now look forward to an announcement that the necessary arrangements will be established. In my view, it is the most important contribution that this first new-style coalition could make to assist the provision of good government by coalitions that may follow in the future.
The report has attracted favourable attention not only in this House but outside it. George Jones, emeritus professor of government at the London School of Economics, has described it as “an historic document”. However, it has not yet, as we have heard, attracted comment from the Government, who have had it in their hands for three months. Their formal written response ought to have been delivered in April—but sadly, as we have heard from previous speakers in the debate, delay is far from unusual. I cannot recall a single government response to the report of a Constitution Committee inquiry that has been delivered within the prescribed period in the time that I have been on the committee. Last week, my noble friend the Leader of the House accepted that we need,
“prompt and accurate replies to … Questions for Written Answer”.—[Official Report, 8/5/14; col. 1574.]
I trust that he takes the same view for Select Committee reports.
No one connected with the Constitution Committee can fail to be struck by the consistently high quality of the service members receive from the committee’s staff and legal advisers. Sensible committees do not draft. The preparation of this report proceeded in the usual faultless manner under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington. I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to her at the end of her distinguished chairmanship.
Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Lord Lexden Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, I say amen to nearly everything that has been said here today. An opinion poll over the weekend asked voters how many of them knew the names of their MEPs, Members of Parliament or local councillors. It is amazing that fewer than half were able to name some of those people. That might even go for us in this Chamber. Democracy itself seems to be endangered at the present time. When people feel remote, when they feel that their votes and voices do not count, that is a very dangerous situation. We are talking not only about registering people to vote. We are talking about ensuring that they know something about the democratic process and that they know something about the policies, needs and opportunities of the society in which we live. Their hands must be on that pencil not just to say, “Ah, another voter”, but as somebody who has thought things through, because if we do not have this re-igniting of democracy, then we are in very great danger in elections this year, next year and after that.
It is an immediate and urgent situation to try to get young people in particular to vote. My noble friend Lord Tyler has mentioned how few—25% and then half that 25%—feel that they count at all in our society and in our democracy. Therefore, we have somehow to re-inspire people. What often gets young people to vote is the inspiration of a teacher, a lecturer or a friend—someone who tells them, “Look, your vote could count. Your vote is necessary”. When I was starting with Bite the Ballot, of which I am delighted to be the honorary president—or the honorary grandfather or great-grandfather by now—a small team of young people said, “We are going to do something to engage young people particularly in the democratic process” and they did. They had debates in Parliament and they were crowded. Young people who previously knew nothing at all about certain policies were inspired and became part of that movement.
The high spot we had recently was National Voter Registration Day on 5 February this year. On that one day a small team managed to register 52,000 people to vote. They were young people who were not interested before, but in schools, youth clubs, colleges and supermarkets there were 400 volunteers organising on that day. Some of them were not even old enough to be registered themselves; they were just so keen. Somehow, we have to see this re-igniting. Sometimes, the goings-on in Parliament as televised just turn people off. They think, “Is that what it is all about? Is that what it means? Why should we bother?” We have a responsibility here and in the other place to make people feel that they have confidence in the people they have elected and that they want to play a part in that process.
I must not speak for too long—I am a Methodist minister so I am allowed to do that sometimes—but I should like to refer to Northern Ireland which has automatic registration. It is dead simple. Somebody will go into a school, and the names, addresses and birthdays of the pupils will have already been collected. There is now a link between schools and the electoral offices. Attainers and those who are already 18 years old can register automatically. There are in England—my figures are as up-to-date as possible—3.2 million pupils in state-funded secondary schools. There are at least 216,000 in Wales and a further 290,000 in Scotland. That works out at some 800,000 new people eligible to be on the electoral register every year. If only they could be automatically registered. There could be an opt-out because some might have religious convictions and say “We don’t want to vote”. There would be an opt-out if they wanted one but otherwise they would be on the register. I hope that someone with a wee bit of inspiration and imagination would go to their schools or colleges and explain the procedure to them.
Bite the Ballot went into so many hundreds of schools and colleges. I did not think anybody could do all that but a small team managed to register 52,000 people. How many more could be registered if there was automatic registration? We have modern technology, digital channels, YouTube and ordinary television channels that could be used by the Government to share this inspiration in what is really a desperate situation. We want young people and others to exercise their vote and say “We have influence”. If people feel that they have influence and that their votes and voices count, there could be a great revival of democratic accountability and feeling here in the United Kingdom.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I am not a Methodist minister and shall be very brief. I support very strongly the comments made by noble Lords about the importance of action in schools. Like them, I have been greatly impressed by the results of the initiative in Northern Ireland. Speaking as a strong unionist, particularly where Northern Ireland is concerned, I would regard it as an absolute tragedy if lessons that could be usefully drawn from that part of our country went by the wayside and here in Great Britain we failed to profit as we might. I hope that my noble friend will consider very carefully that which Northern Ireland might have to teach us in this matter. He is noted for his open-mindedness and there is perhaps merit in a little further consideration of what has happened in Northern Ireland.
He will be unsurprised that I listened with great interest to the comments he made on the implications of these regulations for British subjects living overseas who are eligible to vote here. I gained the strong impression from what he said that the effect of the changes will be to assist the efforts that some of us, including my noble friend Lord Tyler, are encouraging to seek greater registration among British citizens living abroad who are currently eligible to vote. I know my noble friend supports those efforts, too.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their various contributions. I will take all the thoughts back with me. Let me start by saying that we are all concerned about the problems of low registration. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, really talked about two different problems: we are mostly concerned here about problems in getting young people on to the register. There is another problem, which is people who actually do not want to be on it. We have all been through some of the estates where a large number of people are not on the register and quite strongly tell you—as they put their bull terrier on to you—that they do not want to be on it. That is of course another part of the problem.