Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Lord Sentamu

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, this follows an amendment that I moved in Committee, which included the general duty on the Electoral Commission, as included in this amendment. It was pointed out that in doing that I had not tackled one of the main problems that beset this area, namely that the legislation seems not to allow people who arrive at a polling station on time but have not cast their vote by 10 pm to cast their vote by the expiry of those hours prescribed by the legislation. Therefore, I drafted this amendment so that they should be permitted to vote. To remind the House; in Committee there was general agreement that the chaos of May 2010, when 1,200 eager citizens were denied the right to vote—in one of the most advanced democracies in the world—must never happen again. Many moving words were spoken about that.

The Electoral Commission also inquired into that, as you would expect. In its initial report it asked for legislation. It has produced a briefing document that summarises the position in the report, saying that,

“we recommended that the Government should urgently change the law so that people who are … in the queue to enter the polling station at the close of poll are allowed to vote”.

If I could pick one phrase out of that, it would be “urgently change the law”. When I picked up the Electoral Commission’s briefing for these debates, I expected that at least it would offer me some support in trying to do that. That was perhaps naive, because in between its initial report and now, the Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear that he is not in favour of legislation on this subject. I do not like to ascribe motives or to deduce cause and effect, but in the briefing the Electoral Commission went rapidly from calling for an urgent change to saying that the change proposed in my amendment would be significant, that it could be open to different interpretations, that there was insufficient time to consider its full implications, and that the Electoral Commission was unable to support it.

If the Electoral Commission did not like my amendment, given that it wanted urgent legislation it would have been perfectly sensible for it to have proposed a substitute. There is Third Reading to come, and if the matter remained not cleared up we could have debated it then. However, the Electoral Commission has not proposed a substitute. Here we have a situation, only the facts of which I describe, of a body urgently seeking a legislative amendment, an indication in the press that the DPM is against it, and a legislative vehicle to deal with the situation, and what is commission’s reaction? It shows all the urgency of a tortoise on valium.

You cannot spend long in either House without discovering that the Electoral Commission does not always command the total confidence in its activities which Members of both Houses would hope for. To some extent that is right, because the commission must not be a puppet of Members in either place. However, I detect an underlying lack of confidence that this is truly an efficient and fit-for-purpose body. The commission’s reaction in this case seems somewhat to underline that charge and suggests that it has validity.

I say nothing more than that the time has come for the Electoral Commission to up its game. I am sure that tonight Ministers will be absolutely delighted to hide behind the commission’s coat tails and will therefore not embrace the amendment or put forward a preferred amendment of their own. I should be highly delighted to be surprised. I beg to move.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, the incident referred to by the noble Lord happened in my province, Sheffield. Had that happened in Africa or India, we would have said it was scandalous that people had been in the queue for three hours but, because the voting had to stop at 10 o’clock, were told to go away. There would have been an outcry that people had been queuing for hours and were denied a vote. For me, the purpose of the law is to state public policy. This amendment is a statement that such an occurrence must not be allowed to happen again, and the regulations should make that clear. If you do not prescribe it now, the same will happen somewhere else. The African saying, “People in Britain have watches, while in Africa we have time”, might come true in the end.