Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I share the Government’s objective here, which is to make this process more efficient. At the moment it is not efficient. It is too slow, too cumbersome and there are too many lawyers involved. I therefore share the Government’s objective. However, I also share the concerns so eloquently expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. The Government will abolish any effective inquiry and will introduce a procedure which will ensure that the decision-maker—and here I say to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, that there is only one decision-maker on the opposition amendment: the Boundary Commission—does not hear the oral representations that have been made. The person who does hear those oral representations has no role in communicating to the decision-maker any advice on what he or she thinks of what he or she has just heard. It is absolutely inevitable that the introduction of such a procedure will exacerbate rather than diminish the sense of grievance that has led people to make representations in the first place.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

When the noble Lord mentions the Government’s proposals, is it the case that those proposals will not allow cross-examination at the inquiry?

[Lord Pannick]

As I understand it, that is the position. The opposition amendments will leave that to the discretion of the person who is hearing the representations, which seems to me right and proper. The proposal from the Government at the moment is a sort of legal interruptus in which the person hearing the material will end the process in a profoundly unsatisfactory way—unsatisfactory to the person who made the representations—because nothing arises from that other than communication to the decision-maker who has not actually heard what has been going on.

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[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords—

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I think an intervention is required. The Report rules are such that Members are entitled to speak once to an amendment. There is a problem when a speech is an intervention or an intervention is a speech. However, it would be helpful if people were a bit sparing with their interventions. People ought to realise that they have one turn.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, if the rule is that my intervention denies me the right to speak, I will sit down. It was a very brief intervention and it was for information. I understand the agitation of the Liberal Democrat Whip, but the Liberal Democrats were no slouches in speaking, so I wonder whether I might make a brief speech. If the noble Lord is saying that I cannot do it—

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

The noble Lord may go on.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I thank the noble Lord; I am obliged. I intervened on cross-examination but it was not my interest to worry about cross-examination by solicitors or QCs in an inquiry. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I have been to three inquiries, but they were in the city of Glasgow. They were very fair indeed. People from all walks of life turned up to put their case. Sometimes people would go along and say that they represented several community organisations. No lawyer present would have known how to test the case that was being put—that they belonged to those community organisations—but someone who lived in the community would. It was lay people who sometimes brought out in cross-examination that perhaps they were not, and could not claim that they were, truly representative of the community councils or residents’ associations as they claimed to be. Those lay people had local knowledge.

It is easy to talk about splitting up wards and putting one ward into another. However, often the argument for moving a ward from one constituency into another is based on where the local facilities, such as transport and schools, are. That is often why church leaders turn up where the local churches are based. Therefore, in the course of cross-examination, lay people can paint a picture of the true local situation for the examiner. I would be just a bit worried about discretion. People should be able to cross-examine as of right.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords and noble and learned Lords who have participated in this important debate. It has been a good and helpful debate, with views forcefully expressed but set out in a measured way. There is some agreement that we want to find the best way to achieve effective consultation on Boundary Commission proposals. However, it has also become clear—I made this point when I opened the debate and it was reflected on by my noble friend Lord Faulks—that the issue very much represents a choice of culture. Will we have what is essentially the old system of the local public inquiry—albeit with some timetable improvements; and I acknowledge the efforts made there—or a change of culture towards the public hearings proposed in the Government’s amendment? My noble friend Lord Faulks indicated that our proposal goes with the grain of making arrangements for similar matters to be dealt with.

The process we have set out combines written representations with a new public hearing stage aimed at providing for real public engagement, and involves a counter-representation stage to allow for scrutiny. We believe that that adds up to a comprehensive and rigorous process which learns the lessons of previous reviews and allows us to achieve the key principles of the Bill, whereby constituencies will become more equal and fair and their representation in the other place will be reflected by the time of the 2015 election.

It was suggested by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Lord Woolf, that the representations made at an oral hearing would disappear into the ether. However, it is it is important to recall that not only after the end of the period will there still be an opportunity for follow-up representations, but, in response to amendments in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, there will be an opportunity for counter-representations to be made. It is a requirement set out in the amendment that the Boundary Commission shall give consideration not only to the written representations and counter-representations, but to the record of those who engage in the oral hearings.

The process that we propose is a considerable departure from the original proposals in the Bill. That was acknowledged by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. The Government have listened to the reasonable concerns on the importance of public engagement, not least at the first review under the new rules. We have listened to the argument that our process could be strengthened if there was an opportunity for the scrutiny of arguments put forward by others. We have shown that we are willing to move in the interests of a better outcome, but not at the cost of the key principles of the Bill. That cost would include delays that could undermine those principles.

The opposition proposals—whether those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, or the suggested changes to the Government’s amendments—would, in effect, restore the existing inquiry process. They require a legally qualified chair and a report back to the commissions by the legally qualified person—we have had exchanges on whether there are to be two decisions or two determinations. The opposition proposals would remove the time limit on the number of days an inquiry will last. Those old-style inquiries would take place after the submission of written evidence, as they do now—albeit for a slightly longer period—in order that the parties can send their lawyers and that their legally qualified person in the chair can cross-examine them.

Even the noble and learned Lords among us can imagine that that process is unlikely to engage the general public at large. The work of academics who have researched these issues in depth means that we do not have to imagine what that would mean, because the evidence is in their reports. An in-depth study by Ron Johnston, David Rossiter and Charles Pattie in 2008 stated:

“It would be a major error to assume that the consultation process largely involves the general public having its say on the recommendations. The entire procedure is dominated—in influence and outcome if not in terms of the numbers of representations and petitions (many stimulated by the main actors)—by the political parties”.

There has been a flavour of the political parties’ heavy engagement.

It has also been said that somehow or other the public inquiry system assuages pent-up local demand. Before I came to the Chamber this afternoon, I looked at the last Boundary Commission review of the constituencies for the Scottish Parliament. In the case of East Lothian, Midlothian and the Scottish Borders, the inquiry process, which led to a recommendation from the reporter, who I think was Sheriff Edward Bowen QC, was completely and utterly dismissed by the Boundary Commission. I am not sure what that would do to promote public confidence in the system proposed by the Opposition.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, say that he did not kowtow to the press. He agreed to sponsor me in this House. We had a discussion a fortnight beforehand and I said: “George, try to keep your name out of the newspapers”. He did, but hard as he tried, he could not keep his name out of the papers. He certainly does not kowtow to them, but he does make sure that he is in them.

There is an important principle here about the count taking place in a few hours after the close of the poll. Every political party represented in this House and in the other place depends largely on volunteers giving up their time to help in the political process. Without them, we would not have the political parties or the democratic process that we have. These men and women work months in advance—they are working now—to try to win their party a seat in their constituency or, in Scotland, on the list. They give of their time and sometimes they take holidays in order to do so. They negotiate with their employers to take a holiday that they are due and, when election day arrives, they take the day off. For manual workers and blue collar workers, that means giving up a shift, and they can well manage to stay on till the small hours of the morning and hear the result for which they have worked so hard. Sometimes they are disappointed; on other occasions, they are over the moon. However, it would be different if the count were left until later. It would not be practical for people who are paid an hourly wage to stay on and lose another day’s income. For that reason, it is important that we keep the tradition.

There is also the comradeship that one finds at the count. It is a great gathering place. Perhaps you will not have seen party workers with whom you are friendly other than at a conference and you ask how things are going in their constituency. There is banter and even friendly rivalry between the parties. It is a good time for political people to all be under one roof, and I think it is a tradition that we should keep. For young people, it is a way of learning about the political process—how to take guidance from the agent or how to be a count agent—and to see the process in action.

I do not think it will have been forgotten that the last count at the Scottish elections was an absolute shambles. Electronic equipment had been brought in to do the counting, although everyone was used to manual counting. The machines did not work and, as a result, at certain constituencies the counters and returning officers had to seal the boxes and even the whole building, allowing the workers to go home to rest and come back the following day. I ask the Minister to ensure that that shambles does not happen again.

During the debates on this Bill, I have mentioned the Electoral Commission. I have no reason to pick on the commission but it will have to learn from its mistakes. It had some input into the decision to use electronic equipment at those Scottish elections and, because of that, it was not possible for independent adjudicators to find out what went wrong—in other words, they could not carry out an investigation. The taxpayer had to pay for a gentleman called—if my memory serves me right—Mr Gould to come from Canada to do the investigation, and the cost involved was substantial. That would not have happened had the Electoral Commission had some foresight. My criticism is that it tends to jump in without thinking through the consequences. Therefore, I hope that the counts that take place during the night and the wee hours of the morning continue and that we will learn from the mistakes of four years ago.

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, earlier I raised the concerns that exist in Northern Ireland. I can understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, regarding how the count will proceed in Scotland, where two elections are held on the same day. The position in Northern Ireland is more confusing because we have three elections on the same day. I warned that this could cause confusion and over the past few days I have certainly experienced increasing unease in Northern Ireland about the count following these three elections. Two will be based on STV—one to the Northern Ireland Assembly and one to the district councils—and the third one on AV.

When I raised this matter with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, he said that when he came to respond to this amendment we would get an answer on what priority would be given to the counts for the three elections in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I should like to know in which order the counts for the three elections in Northern Ireland will take place, and whether we will have to wait for the result on AV to come through in Northern Ireland or whether it will come out at the same time as in England, Scotland and Wales.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have received the Minister’s response with mixed feelings. He prays in aid of Lord Gould—it was the noble Lord, Lord Martin, who mentioned Lord Gould—and I remind him that, although the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was shaking his head, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was right to say that Lord Gould recommended that the polls should be separate.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The person I referred to was not the noble Lord, Lord Gould; he was a Canadian gentleman. He certainly was not a Lord.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have a noble friend Lord Gould, whom I absolve of any responsibility for this.

Mr Gould, the Canadian, suggested that the elections should be separated. In fact, the Scottish Parliament took a decision to delay the local government elections for a whole year as a result of that and suddenly it finds the referendum spatchcocked in to create extra problems for it. Although extra problems will be created, they are not in any way as bad as the problems described by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, where the electronic counting came on top of the voting on two ballot papers, one of which was the most confusing I have ever seen in my lifetime—and I have seen ballot papers in the Soviet Union, the United States of America and elsewhere. It was a crazy ballot paper. I hope and expect that these ballot papers will be simpler and that the count can take place.

I am disappointed that the Minister still presses that the count should not be held overnight. I am worried that the chief counting officer will have responsibility for this. As I understand it, the chief counting officer is the chair of the Electoral Commission. What the noble Lord, Lord Martin, said about the Electoral Commission will be echoed by a number of Members in this Chamber. However, it has improved with the recent addition of political members and, I hope, will now be more sensitive.

Notwithstanding what the Minister has said, I hope that the chief counting officer and the chair of the Electoral Commission will have heard this debate loudly and clearly and will recognise the pressure to have the count overnight, not only from this House but also from all political parties in Scotland. Although I accept that, as the Minister said, it may not be best to have that written into the Bill, I hope that it will be taken into account—otherwise the chief counting officer will be even more unpopular in Scotland than Mr Alex Salmond. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 110ZZA and 110ZZB, which are grouped with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for the purposes of this debate. Quite recently, although it actually feels like months ago, these matters came up at a reasonably early stage of the Committee, when the Minister jumped to his feet and said that they fell much more naturally to being discussed under Schedule 1 to the Bill. I do not know whether the Minister—he is not with us this afternoon—hoped then that by the time we got around to Schedule 1, we would have forgotten all about them and let them go. As the Committee knows, on this Bill we are, quite rightly, grinding extremely fine so here they are again.

The amendments concern the steps that the Electoral Commission must take to get the electorate informed. Perhaps I might recap on a debate that we were having last night. The background to this is the very wide lack of understanding of the alternatives to be put before the British people in the referendum, whenever that may come. I illustrate this from a poll with a large sample taken by YouGov in September. It asked people whether they had heard of AV and, if so, whether they knew what it meant. To summarise, one-third said that they had heard of AV and had some idea of what it meant. They did not define what “some idea” meant and, if they were examined further, we might find that that was a rather optimistic interpretation of their true state of knowledge. One-third had heard of AV but had no idea of what it meant. One-third had not heard of AV; they also had no idea of what it meant, which is perhaps not surprising since they had never heard of it. That is a long way from where we would want to be when we get around to the referendum.

I am not using this to make a speech for AV or against it. My position is perfectly well known. I simply make the point that the better informed those participating in this referendum are, when it comes about, the more the result will have legitimacy and stability, because we will be able to have confidence that the people really have reached the verdict they wish to reach, on reflection, and that chance factors have not simply swayed it. This is not the job of the Electoral Commission only; it is the job of the campaign organisations on both sides, of our national media—I thought I might get a laugh for that—of politicians and of those who are not political in the party sense but who are interested in politics.

These are great issues for our future as a democracy and all those have a role to play, but the Electoral Commission has a role. It has been created to play a role and it is right that Parliament should give it some specific guidance on the minimum activity which we expect it to undertake in playing that role. If the referendum were to go ahead on 5 May—and I know there are those in this Committee and the government Front Benches who support that—there will be only some 10 weeks between the passage of the legislation and the day when the people deliver their verdict.

My two amendments are straightforward. First, they ask that the Electoral Commission prepares a leaflet that summarises the meaning of the question before people and what its implications would be. It summarises, in an impartial way—because the Electoral Commission owes its whole role to its impartiality—the arguments for and against AV and for and against first past the post, so that any elector wishing to study the matter can see a short summary of the arguments. That is then distributed to every household in the country so that everybody gets their chance to read it. A fairly straightforward proposition, you would think.

The second amendment is slightly tongue in cheek and says that the leaflet should be examined by the Plain English Campaign. Actually, from my own experience as a journalist on the Economist, I think that an Economist journalist would be an alternative because these are both groups of people who are very used to making sure that the language in which complicated ideas are expressed in order to communicate is clear. It is a serious purpose behind a tongue-in-cheek amendment because the number of people who have a natural grasp of voting systems is quite small, as I have shown. The number of people who understand the issues involved on voting reform is also quite small. To produce language which is generally comprehensible is quite complicated.

I know the Electoral Commission tries hard to get its language right. Indeed, it is contemplating producing a consultative document on a public information booklet—not exactly a leaflet but a booklet on the referendum. I have not studied it in detail but it is the kind of thing which could be done with an examination not just for the content but for the clarity of the language in which it is expressed.

It is perfectly true that there is this draft booklet; it is true that the Electoral Commission is of course planning information activities, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. But we, as parliamentarians, have a right to expect certain things of the Electoral Commission and to lay down in the Bill that it must perform certain functions. This is all going to be done in a terrific rush, and the commission may get into some sort of difficulty, as its resources are not very great for the task ahead of it, so something has to be dumped. If it is in the Bill, the thing that is dumped cannot be the exercise it mounts to make sure that the public are properly informed. In other words, it is right that the intention of the commission be underlined by Parliament and by provisions of the kind that I propose in this amendment, which is a companion amendment to the wider amendment so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Rooker.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

Has the noble Lord put a price on such a leaflet being delivered to every household? How would the Electoral Commission receive the funds for such a leaflet? I imagine that it would be a very expensive proposition because of not only the publishing but delivery to every elector. It would mean that the commission would have to employ part-time leaflet deliverers, which would be a costly exercise in itself.

[Lord Lipsey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention, which enables me to repeat my earlier point. It seems that the Electoral Commission is planning something of this sort anyway, so the cost is not additional to what appears to be planned, unless it is to be dropped down the line.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords—

[Lord Lipsey]

Could I finish answering the noble Lord’s points before I take a further point from him? We have a costing for this referendum. It is not nil but some of us think that it is well worth it. Democracy comes with a price and it is a price that is very well worth paying. On an issue of this magnitude, the relatively small figures that would be involved in an exercise of this kind are part of that worthwhile price.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

It is one thing for an organisation to publish a leaflet. The Forestry Commission or the National Trust could publish a leaflet that organisations could pick up on a voluntary basis. However, it is another thing to publish a leaflet and give an assurance that it will be delivered to every elector—or every elector’s home—throughout the United Kingdom. That is a costly exercise by any stretch of the imagination. The amendment also asks to put into legislation that there shall be a leaflet, whereas the Electoral Commission might say that local radio, or national television for that matter, is the better way to communicate.

[Lord Lipsey]

I am grateful for those points, too. On the latter point, these are not alternatives; they are designed to supplement each other, but a leaflet that can be studied at leisure and revisited has a different impact from that of a television programme, although I agree that they are complementary. As far as cost is concerned, we need to keep a sense of proportion. After all, every household gets a poll card. Nobody thinks, “Oh God, it is so expensive sending these poll cards. People don’t need them to vote. Elections are so unimportant that we could avoid the cost of a poll card in future”. Indeed, I believe that electoral law provides for the political parties to send one leaflet to every household in the country. The noble Lord, who knows much more about the House of Commons than I have ever known, will correct me if I am wrong but I believe that also takes place. We should not think that sending a leaflet to every household would mean great disproportionate expenditure. It is not a major logistical exercise of its kind and will not cause the budget deficit to soar where otherwise it would shrink.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If my noble friend feels that strongly about the matter, he can table an amendment, put the proposition to the House and we can vote on it, if that is the way he wishes to go.

I go further than most Members who have intervened in the debate in terms of the information that I believe should be included in the leaflet. First, it should be set out by the Electoral Commission where it is used. My noble friend Lord Grocott intervened to pose the important question of where AV is used, and the public need to know. Secondly, the public need to be informed that it is not a proportional representation system. There will be a great deal of misrepresentation during the course of the campaign about whether or not this is PR. It is not proportional representation and the Electoral Commission should make that clear. Thirdly, there will be a great deal of misrepresentation over the proportion of the electorate that a candidate is required to have to secure election—in other words, the argument about 50 per cent. Leaflets which refer to the 50 per cent are already being distributed and politicians are going on television stating that there is a 50 per cent requirement. Indeed, Jane Kennedy, a former Member of the other House, has recently written to a number of people in the no campaign drawing attention to inaccurate information which has been put out by the yes campaign. This is only the start; how much more difficult will it get?

There is a need to draw a distinction between the different AV systems because, with the media targeting the debate during the course of the campaign—as they inevitably will—they will draw on the distinctions between the three systems of AV, to which I have referred in previous debates. The Electoral Commission should make it clear exactly which one is being adopted but refer to the other two—one of which is the system used for the election of mayors in the United Kingdom.

The Electoral Commission should also point in its leaflet to the relevance of the need to use all preferences during the course of the ballot that takes place under AV—again I refer to the distinction between the Australian Queensland system and the conventional system used in Australia in federal elections—and that can be done in fairly simple language.

It also needs to be pointed out—this is far more argumentative—that AV does not necessarily lead to coalitions. Factually, it does not necessarily lead to coalitions, and yet the no campaign is arguing that coalitions are the inevitable consequence of the introduction of the alternative vote. That is not the case. It does lead to coalitions in certain circumstances but not in others. There are many issues which my noble friend Lord Davies would argue indicate an element of bias but which I believe should be factually placed before the electorate to enable them to take a proper decision.

Finally, I return to the timing of the referendum, an issue we debated last night. One of my fears is what will happen to the leaflets during the course of the referendum. If the referendum was held on a separate date, referendum leaflets would go through letter boxes all over the country. As it is, because the referendum is to take place on the same day as elections in various parts of the United Kingdom, referendum leaflets will be mixed with election leaflets and many will go in the bin. I am very sorry, but that is the case. Again I say to the Liberal Democrats that they have chosen the wrong date and, even at this late stage, they should revisit the decisions they have taken on these matters and which they have forced upon the coalition.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I would happily support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which would leave out,

“may take whatever steps they think appropriate to”

and insert “must”, but I am worried about the preparation of the leaflets. As I mentioned in my previous intervention, Amendment 110ZZA would provide that,

“The leaflet shall be distributed, so far as is practicable, to all households in the United Kingdom”.

When I asked, no one had put a price on such a project, although it would be a very costly project indeed. Although I have always taken advice from the noble Lord, Lord Newton—in another place, he was Leader of the House, and a very good Leader at that—I must advise him that those health leaflets did not come through in Scotland, possibly because of the devolved arrangements. I do not know whether such leaflets would have gone out under the auspices of the local health board or of a government department, but I worry about legislating that a specific body—namely, the Electoral Commission—publish leaflets and distribute them to every household in the land. That is a tall order for the Electoral Commission. With great respect, some Members of this House do not know just how big or small the Electoral Commission is. There is a limit to its resources.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My recollection—I reflect a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—is that in the days now a bit far off when I was a Member of Parliament, there was a legal requirement on the Post Office to deliver an election leaflet to every household during a general election. We all had supporters who spent hours writing out these things and delivering them to the Post Office. Even now, the Post Office has a universal delivery obligation. All the Government have to do is pay for the production of enough leaflets, give them to the Post Office and say, “Get on with it”.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

Perhaps that is what should happen, but my point is that imposing a legislative responsibility on the Electoral Commission would put a burden on the Electoral Commission. That would be a tall order, although it would be a good contract in these days when there is competition. In the old days, a Member of Parliament got free postage from the Royal Mail. However, the Royal Mail now has competitors that will say, “No, we want to do that job”. Therefore, the Electoral Commission will have to ensure that it is even-handed.

My experience with the Electoral Commission was that, as Speaker, I had the duty of chairing the overseeing body known as the Speaker’s committee. One of our biggest worries—this is why I am concerned about bringing this into legislation—was that the commission wanted to bite off far more than it could chew. For example, although in the days that we have spent debating this Bill noble Lords have spoken with great passion about the fairness of the Boundary Commission’s appeals process, we previously had to stop Ministers handing over responsibility for the Boundary Commission to the Electoral Commission, as desired by its then chairman, Mr Younger. I had to say to Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Scotland, “Look, they cannot cope with that work”. The commission wanted to provide seminars to train electoral officers that would have involved using a training pack that was copyrighted by an outside organisation, so the cost to taxpayers would have been quite substantial. In other words, the Electoral Commission’s enthusiasm had to be curbed.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

I think that we regard you as at best temporary occupants of the Spiritual and Temporal Benches on the opposite side.

As I look to the opposite side, I see many people who, like me, have enjoyed a career as a result of the great focus of skill that we have in the City of London. I look to those who have represented the City of London, such as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who was for many years my Member of Parliament—I may not have agreed with his politics, but he was an extremely good constituency MP—and to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, who was a City editor.

Without wishing to inflame the views of those behind me, I would say that the City is the City of London. We do not use the term “the City” as shorthand for Birmingham, Manchester or Truro, where I come from. The City is the City of London—the square mile—which is a source of great excellence and a centre of economic prosperity. Of course, some firms based in the City have experienced recent difficulties, but we must not forget that many sectors of activity conducted within the City of London, under the supervision of the Corporation and the guidance and framework that the City of London provides, have continued to prosper. I think here particularly of fund management and of insurance.

The City is the square mile, and we cannot see this great centre of excellence divided as part of a rounding error to make weight for adjacent constituencies with wholly different profiles. To ensure continuing effective liaison among Guildhall, the City Corporation and Parliament, it is important that the City resides within a single parliamentary constituency. That is why I support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter.

I was fortunate to be offered a ministerial position in the previous Government. My formal title was Financial Services Secretary to the Treasury, but the office was commonly referred to in the press and elsewhere as “the City Minister”. I endeavoured at all times to recognise that I had a particular responsibility to speak for the activities that took place in the City. Other centres such as Edinburgh, Manchester, Norwich and Bristol also have great centres of excellence and skill in financial services, but above all else that exists in the City of London and the square mile. I urge the Minister to recognise in this amendment that the City is a very special place. Frankly, it will not be understood in the City or elsewhere if the City is just parcelled out among other constituencies.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I wish to speak to Amendment 81, on Argyll and Bute. I make no criticism of the other House when it debated this matter—far from it, as I served in that House for 30 years—but the different practices that exist in the other House are such that perhaps constituencies and the problems of them in legislation like this are not always highlighted in the way that can happen in this Chamber. Please be assured that bringing up Argyll is not a reason to delay. I just want to explain that Argyll should have the special consideration that the Minister’s former constituency is to be given because of its vastness.

I asked the Library to look at the size of other constituencies along with Argyll and Bute. Penrith and The Border was represented by David Maclean—Lord Maclean as he will now be, as he is about to come here—whom I considered a good friend regardless of the fact that we belong to different political traditions. Penrith and The Border covers 113 square miles. Anyone who has been in that part of the world will acknowledge that Penrith and The Border is a very big constituency, but in comparison Argyll and Bute is 2,751 square miles. Westmorland is 61 square miles compared with the 2,751 of Argyll and Bute.

My noble friend Lord Robertson—an Argyllshire boy, born and bred—tells me that, if you were to measure every inch of the Argyll coastline, the distance would be such that it would take you from Glasgow to New York. The islands are not small by any means. There is Mull, Jura, Islay, Colonsay, Tiree, Gigha, Coll and the beautiful and ancient Iona, where Columba brought Christianity to Scotland.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

In between there is the island of Arran, which, on the basis of the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, ought to be a constituency of its own.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I will take the noble Lord’s word for that.

If the boundary commissioner was to look only at numbers and close proximity, there could be some strange notions because places such as Campbeltown are geographically closer to Ballycastle in Northern Ireland than to Glasgow and other parts of neighbouring constituencies.

I have been neutral for 10 years. When I took the great office of Speaker of the House of Commons, I gave up my membership of a political party, as other Speakers did. Being in a political party is an enjoyable experience. It is not only about political belief, but friendship and kindredship, going to conferences and meeting friends, who are like family. I have given that up, and I know that people would argue that I was in the Labour Party at one time—I do not deny that, and am proud of the membership that I had—but I am arguing for a constituency that, to my knowledge, has never been represented by a member of the Labour Party. In fact, one of the great offices of state—that of the Secretary of State for Scotland—was performed by Michael Noble, who was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Argyll. As a Peer, he then served this House so well after he left the House of Commons—he was a Chairman of Committees—as did the late John Mackay, who had also been the MP for Argyll.

A lovely lady whom we all got on with was Ray Michie, who served the House of Commons so well and also came to this House and served so well here. She used to regale us with the stories of how, when she had to go and see her constituents on some of these islands, she had to get on to an old trawler ship and share the accommodation with cattle.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

As an aspirant politician in 1992, I had the temerity to take on Ray Michie. When I took over the candidacy, the Labour Party was fourth of four parties in the constituency. When I handed it on to my successor, we were fourth of four parties in the constituency.

I endorse all that my noble friend has said, but I could not pass up the opportunity to pay tribute to Ray Michie and, in particular, to her husband, who campaigned for her assiduously during every election by going round the constituency, knocking on doors and encouraging people not to vote for her so that he would not have to make his own tea as she was absent in London. He charmed constituents into voting for her.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I agree with the noble Lord. She was a lovely lady.

Of course, there is fantastic compensation in a Member representing a constituency like Argyll. My fondness for the music of the Highland pipes comes in part from the fact that there are so many tunes, Strathspeys, reels and marches that are named after the romantic places of Argyll and the beautiful islands there.

At the moment, the seat is represented by Alan Reid. I have not spoken to him recently, but I received a note from him in which he encouraged me to highlight my amendment. What is significant is that, when I met Alan, serving in the House of Commons as Speaker, I was a Member of Parliament in my own right. Every Thursday I headed north, as did every other Scottish Member of Parliament. Many a time we shared the rooms at Heathrow airport waiting for a plane. I used to say to the officials of the House of Commons when they annoyed me on a Thursday, “Leave me alone. The call of the north is coming upon me. I don’t want to be bothered”; the only Thursday that I did not leave London was in preparation for the Cenotaph. My duty in that travel was to attend to my constituency in Glasgow North East. I was conscious that, when I would meet Alan at the airport—we took the same plane—within half an hour of my arriving at Glasgow airport I could be at a constituency meeting, yet he had a journey of three hours to get to his constituency. After travelling from Westminster to Heathrow, he would need to fly to Glasgow and then drive for three hours more to get there. I could easily have been at a surgery or attending a parents’ night at a local school while he was still travelling.

There is unfairness in that. With a vast area of mainland, the Mull of Kintyre, Oban and all the other areas and then out to those beautiful islands that I have inadequately described, a boundary commissioner would then have to go landward, further into Scotland, to get the numbers up. That would be extremely unfair on any Member who had to take in Argyll. I know that the term “special case” has been bandied about for several days now, but Argyll should be made a special case.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I support my noble friend’s case about Argyll. I have had a home in Argyll for almost 30 years. The issues that he raises about the complexity of travel cannot be overstated. Most of the roads in Argyll and Bute are single-track roads with passing places. I used to travel up on a Thursday night with Ray Michie. As I pointed out the other night, I would be home in bed before she had even managed to get her car defrosted to do a journey of up to two and half hours to get to Oban in Argyll.

I travelled around the islands a lot, particularly as Secretary of State for Scotland. There are many islands that it would be impossible for the Member of Parliament to visit and come back from on the same day, so the MP would have to remain overnight on the islands.

The unfairness of the way in which Argyll and Bute is being treated in this legislation gives me cause for alarm. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, represented a constituency that was a series of islands. He, more than anybody else, knows the complexity of representing islands. It is an oversight of overwhelming proportions that Argyll and Bute should not be given special status in the Bill. If a boundary commissioner were even to visit the islands and look at their complexity, the commissioner would probably be lost for a month.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Baroness is perfectly correct. She reminds me about the single-track roads. The difficulty is not only in getting around the islands but in getting around the great sea lochs of Argyll, such as Loch Goil. For getting landward from these, it would be easier to go by boat because of the single-track roads.

No noble Lord should be thinking “Well, this is a nice, rural area and it will be just rural problems that have to be looked at”. There are pockets of poverty in these areas, because people cannot travel to their work. There is also a great whisky distilling industry on Islay, which gives a great deal of money to the Exchequer. The present Member of Parliament would have to take representation from the whisky industry and come to this House and the other place to highlight the difficulties that that industry has.

I thank your Lordships for listening to me. My case is not selfish but, knowing the constituency as I do, I think that some special pleading should be made.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 85A in my name, which adds to the list of preserved constituencies the constituency of Telford, which I represented in the other place. The immediate reaction of the House, I am sure, when anyone starts his or her remarks with something like that is to say, “Oh, this is a purely parochial point, and we can think about breakfast or whatever takes our minds off the passing speech”. That is not the case. I am doing so because it illustrates at least three serious weaknesses in the Bill. I do not need to repeat that I think that this is a very bad Bill with little support in the House of Commons, despite the votes which in no way reflect what members of all parties in the House of Commons are actually saying about it.

I will admit five seconds of self-indulgence. I never thought that I would have the opportunity to put my former constituency on the Marshalled List. I would love to see it in Hansard, and so I will have to mention it: the constituency of Telford, comprising the wards of Brookside, Cuckoo Oak, Dawley Magna, Horsehay and Lightmoor, Ironbridge Gorge, Ketley and Oakengates, Lawley and Overdale, Madeley, Malinslee, The Nedge, Priorslee, St Georges, Woodside, Wrockwardine Wood and Trench. No doubt that will be interpreted as gross filibustering; I point out to the House that it took about five seconds.

On the substantive point—much encouraged as I am by the decision of the House to add one more name to the list of preserved constituencies, which gives me a bit more confidence in making my point—the Bill proposes boundary redistributions every five years, which is a bad decision in any case. It was only at the 1997 general election that at long last we got five Members of Parliament for Shropshire. There was a pretty overwhelming case for that happening over a longish period of time. We had always had four, but we were given five. That was welcomed across the political spectrum and by representative bodies across the country. If this Bill becomes an Act we will undoubtedly go back down to four constituencies.

I issue a gentle piece of advice, if not warning, to the government Front Bench. While they may find large numbers of people and Members of Parliament who are in favour of, and can argue the case for, reducing the number of MPs by maybe 50, I challenge them to find any substantial local government area, town, city or county across the United Kingdom that says, “We want fewer Members of Parliament representing us in Westminster”. They never say that, and they certainly did not say it in Shropshire. It will come as no surprise to the House that when a draft set of constituency boundaries under the Government’s proposals was published, goodness knows why, by the Electoral Reform Society—other Members may have seen this; they drew a map of how the country might look if there were 50 fewer MPs—they predictably enough gave us four MPs in Shropshire. If someone had drawn pretty randomly on a map, they probably would have made a better job of it.

I simply mention this to remind the Government of the reported reaction of local MPs and their parties. My good friend David Wright, who succeeded me as the Labour MP for Telford, said:

“The speculative proposals by the Electoral Society are nonsense–and the danger with the Government’s approach is that local communities will not be allowed to have any input in the process”.

If your Lordships are tempted to think that he would say that as a Labour MP, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury and Atcham, Daniel Kawczynski, said that it would be,

“an outrage and simply unacceptable”,

to cut the number of seats in Shropshire, and that:

“The county is actually under-represented in Parliament”.

The Conservative MP for Ludlow, Mr Philip Dunne, said that he supported a reduction in the number of MPs to make Parliament a fitter, leaner place, but added:

“I am firmly of the view that Shropshire deserves five MPs. The county’s growing population justifies five MPs”.

I do not ask the Government to tell me the result of their survey, but I put it to the Liberal Democrats that they should consult their own Members of Parliament as to whether they favour their constituencies being made bigger and, in particular, ask them whether they think that in their own county or city, or wherever the happen to live, there should be a smaller number of Members of Parliament. It would be wonderful if they did that and reported it to the House, but I predict that they will do neither. They would not like the result that they got.

The disadvantage from our point of view, having argued long and hard for five MPs and now being told that we are almost certainly going to get four, and the knowledge that right around the United Kingdom there will be people making points of this kind—“By all means get rid of a few MPs, but not in our area”—should be taken into account by the Government if they have any sense. I have always known that there is a big majority of Members of Parliament, particularly Conservative Members of Parliament, who are totally opposed to Part 1 of the Bill. I increasingly realise that there is a large number of Conservative Members of Parliament who may be in favour of Part 2 of the Bill for everyone else, but not for their own area.

I conclude with this appeal. The three exempt constituencies so far are Orkney and Shetland, which is Liberal, the Western Isles, which is SNP, and the Isle of Wight, which is Conservative, so perhaps in the mood of generosity that we have noticed once or twice in ministerial responses today the Government will take the magnanimous decision, in the interests of harmony right across the House, to exempt a constituency such as Telford, which is, of course, a Labour seat.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support my noble friend Lord Fowler in his amendment, and to support Mr Andrew Turner, the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a Member of a governing party, or a party in a coalition, and find that a proposal is put forward to link your constituency with a part of the mainland for which there is no logical link. He has behaved with very considerable restraint. I have personally appreciated the way in which he has briefed us about the background to those issues.

At Second Reading, I made it clear that I do not like this Bill very much. Ideally, these issues of reducing the size of Parliament and deciding on how the boundaries are achieved would have been done by a Speaker’s Conference and not by a Bill of this kind. Ideally, there should not have been the two separate issues of AV and the reduction of the size of Parliament in the same Bill. That, however, is all water under the bridge. I confess I looked at the Bill with a certain degree of hostility, and perhaps because I am cynical, when I saw that there was an exception for Orkney and Shetland, I thought that that must be a bit of a deal with the Liberals, because that is a Liberal constituency. I realise that that was a wicked and improper thought. The Western Isles, of course, is a nationalist constituency. Then I had lunch today with Mr Charles Kennedy and I said, wrongly, “Of course, your seat is not affected”. He quite rightly pointed out that that was a widely held mistaken belief; although his seat is the largest—Ross, Skye and Lochaber—it is, of course, not exempted because the Boundary Commission simply has that as a size. He is in the same boat as everyone else. I accept that the reason that the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland are made exceptions in the Bill is that, quite rightly, somebody recognised that they are distinctive communities. There are many islands that form part of Argyll which have all the problem of ferries and the rest that affect the Isle of Wight, but the key point is whether it is a distinctive community. Clearly the Isle of Wight is a distinctive community.

I do not wish to detain the House, but I would like to make one other general point. I return to what I had to say about Mr Andrew Turner. All of us in this House—especially those I expect who were Members of the other place—must feel great distress at the way in which the status and standing of Members of Parliament have taken a knock of late. One thing, however, that is really encouraging in all the polls and surveys is that people still hold their own Member of Parliament in high regard, even if they have a jaded view of Members of Parliament as a group.

One of the reasons for that is because the Member of Parliament is seen to be the Member for their area or community. I was a Tory in Sterling where two-thirds of the voters had never experienced or wanted a Tory but, as such, you were respected as the Member of Parliament—their man or their woman in Parliament. Even in the days of the rotten boroughs people came to represent the rotten borough, they did not come to represent a block of so many voters on the map. I support my noble friend’s amendment in the hope that the Government will listen—

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I am sorry to disturb the noble Lord’s thought, but I would also like to say that I have a very high regard for Mr Turner. Andrew is a lovely person and a very hard working individual. It disturbs me that he had only a few moments on the Floor of the House to put the arguments that the noble Lord has put so succinctly. The noble Lord touched upon Argyll, and this disturbs me too—a great island community; I think we are talking about 15 islands—as the same went for Alan Reid, who was unable to speak or had very little say. The noble Lord is quite right that a Speaker’s Conference would have allowed those Back-Benchers to put the case for their communities.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I bow to the noble Lord’s very great experience, not just as a former Speaker but as a parliamentarian. But, of course, we are where we are. The point that I wanted to make was that the identity between communities and Members of Parliament is very important. I am supporting my noble friend in the hope that the Government will recognise that the Isle of Wight has just as strong a case. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, that it should have one constituency; it could have two and still be closer to the criteria set under the Bill than either the Western Isles or Orkney and Shetland.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, the Government, in looking at the Isle of Wight, should also think about this point about the identity between Members of Parliament and constituencies. This is not just a numbers game. If we end up making it a numbers game, we may very well find that the respect, support and influence that Parliament is able to bring to bear through its Members in their constituencies are greatly diminished at a time when we need to strengthen Parliament. That seems to me to be a very retrograde step.

On the other point that the noble Lord made, we have had a long debate about the procedure which in effect is bringing a guillotine to this House. That would, of course, bring all the disadvantages that we see in the Commons, which is why our workload has gone up. It was Robespierre who invented the guillotine and he ended up being a victim of it himself. I venture to suggest that this House may like to consider that example.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

There are all sorts of possibilities. Happily, the Government’s business managers have ensured that we will not be excessively constrained for time as we debate these issues, so we can look forward to many noble Lords opposite helping us to understand, if they will, the case for what the Government are doing.

It is perplexing. Ministers have suggested that the size of the House of Commons has crept up—that phrase was used in previous debates. One hundred years ago, the House of Commons consisted of 670 Members of Parliament; it now consists of only 650, and a few years back, it was 659, as some of my noble friends have already mentioned. It is particularly interesting to see how the ratio of Members of Parliament to electors has deteriorated since 1950. There are now 25 more Members sitting in the House of Commons than in 1950, but in that period the size of the electorate has increased by no less than 10 million. The average electorate per constituency, which was 55,000 in 1950, is 70,000 now.

I do not know how Ministers can with a straight face tell the House of Commons and this House that the number of Members of Parliament has crept up and suggest that we are overrepresented. We are not democratically overrepresented in this country. Unlike the Federal Republic of Germany, we have no länder; unlike in United States of America, there are no states. Indeed, in all of our political lifetime, we have seen a weakening in local government in this country and a diminution in the number of local authorities. If, as the Liberal Democrats have proposed, there should be a large-scale redesign of patterns of representation at the different tiers of government in this country, you could make a serious case for reducing the size of the House of Commons. Unless and until that is done, you cannot.

The Government are setting about reducing the size of the House of Commons in a manner that will be to the party political interest of the dominant party in the coalition, the Conservatives, and, at the same time, increasing the size of the House of Lords in order to increase the majority on which they believe they can rely in this House, with no serious attempt to explain to us what the sound democratic principle can be in those processes. That is to let members of the Government open to the kind of criticism that we are more accustomed to hearing levelled at those who wield power in countries such as Kenya, Rwanda or even Zimbabwe. It will be very interesting as we begin to hear what international observers and professional and academic students of democracy in foundations and think tanks in this country and across the world have to say about the policies that we are experiencing at the hands of this Government.

It is absolutely right to ask two basic questions to try to establish a ground of principle on which to evaluate the Government’s propositions. We should ask: what are the requirements of a properly functioning House of Commons and how many people does it need serving in it to acquit itself of those responsibilities; and what are the properties of a Member of Parliament in his or her constituency? Until there has been a serious, rational and, as far as possible, objective analysis of both those issues, we should resist the suggestion that the number of Members of Parliament should be reduced. As we start to examine those issues, I think that we will find that, so far from there being a decent case for reducing the number of Members of Parliament, there is actually quite a strong case for increasing their number.

I do not want to speak for excessive length at this stage of the evening. We will have further opportunities to examine these matters as our discussion develops so, for the time being, I will not weary the House any longer.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I have listened to the debate on the amendment, and it is the amendment to which I wish to speak, not the Bill in its entirety, although I have expressed concern about some parts of the Bill. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Maples. We shared membership of the House of Commons around the same time. He mentioned finance, the cost of the running of the House of Commons. It might be worth mentioning that when he came into the House in 1983, Denis Healey, now the noble Lord, Lord Healey, was the deputy leader of the Labour Party. The funds available to him were such that he had to share one researcher with another member of the shadow Cabinet. Everyone agreed that that was unjust, and the Short money has now been increased to a fantastic amount.

That Short money goes on to the costs of the House of Commons. When I left, the Conservative Party in opposition benefited greatly from Short money—I think that the noble Lord would acknowledge that. That was so much so that when the coalition was created, there was deep concern among members of the Liberal party that they would not get a share of the Short money, because that would have a profound effect on how they got researchers for their Front-Benchers. I do not know how they got on with that argument. When noble Members talk about the cost of the House of Commons increasing, they cannot have it every way. You do not get democracy for nothing. Everybody praises the great Portcullis House.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Perhaps I may give an illustration of the poverty of the Opposition at that time. When my noble friend Lord Foulkes and I were in Denis Healey's team, I once travelled with my noble friend Lord Healey, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for Defence. We wanted to go to South Africa, which was highly in the news. My noble friend had to travel in economy class with Air Zambia. Those were the straits we were in at the time.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I agree with the noble Lord: it was ridiculous, and it has improved, especially for the Leader of the Opposition.

When we talk about finance, it should be remembered that in the other place, every honourable Member has the equivalent of two and a half members of staff. That does not come cheaply. Then there are premises. If we were to supply Members’ staff with premises here in Westminster, the most expensive square mile in the world, it would be far more costly than allowing them to go to their constituencies to get premises. They cannot get any old premises; there must be security because we have already had members of staff attacked. There has even been a fatality, as one noble Lord on the Liberal Benches will be able to testify. When we talk about the cost of computers and broadband, it should be remembered that it is not free.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker]

I am reluctant to intervene on a former Speaker, but I can assure the noble Lord that when my majority was 495, I dealt with everything. I answered everything and I did not use any subcontractors whatever because that is what people expected. I still did that when my majority was 18,000 because that was how I worked. Every MP does the job in a different way. I do not think that rules can be laid down in the way in which the noble Lord is setting out. However, I agree that I am 10 years out of date now.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I agree with the noble Lord, but if a Member of a devolved Parliament was paid to deal with health, prisons and social work, while the noble Lord quite rightly would not turn a person away he would find a way of notifying his constituent that the democratic process meant that some matters were devolved to another elected Member. That is the point I wanted to make.

As a trade union officer I noted that no two officers worked in the same way, and it is the same with Members of Parliament. What I am trying to say is that there are ridiculous practices and that I have highlighted one of them. There is no point in honourable Members saying that they are overburdened when they create rods for their own backs.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have to say to my noble friend that I am slightly disturbed by his comments about petitions. If I remember rightly, my noble friend’s constituency was an inner city seat in Glasgow, but what if he had been in a seat in rural Scotland and the village school was about to close and 500 constituents wrote to him about that closure? It would be a highly contested issue in that part of the constituency. Does my noble friend not feel that perhaps in those circumstances each of the 500 petitioners should receive a communication from their Member of Parliament? It makes them feel that they are participating in the debate and that their Member of Parliament is actually responding and not just taking them for granted.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

All I can say to my noble friend, as he has called me, is that if three of the names on the petition were from the same household and they were sent three individual letters, something would be wrong. I say as well that something would be wrong if £13,000-worth of envelopes were being used. The point I wanted to make was that something was wrong with that.

Let me make another point about pressure. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the noble Lord, Lord Graham. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will remember, he was our Chief Whip between 1979 and 1981. I was sad to see him leave the House. He kept us until 10 o’clock on a Thursday night in the Commons. I know that to be the case because a whole load of us went up to Glasgow on the sleeper train. For years now, unless it has changed since the last election, debates on a Thursday are non-voting. That begs the question: is every Member of Parliament right there in the House of Commons, to which they were elected, on a Thursday, or are they elsewhere? I would hazard a guess that they are elsewhere. I am not criticising them because that is their business, but the case has been put that there are more pressures on this generation of Members of Parliament than there were on the old.

There was a fairly hefty pressure on Members of Parliament, if they were lucky, to leave on a Thursday. The Minister could not even take the sleeper train because of the distance to his constituency. He would not have been able to get back by the Friday. I was lucky enough to get to mine by the following morning. Also, constituency engagements were such that it was not pleasant to travel overnight. You would have surgeries and meetings with various organisations.

There are other amendments that I can comfortably support, and I know that this is a probing amendment, but there is no point in us being here if we do not express our views. I do not see that we need great academic bodies to do a study on whether we should have a reduction of 10 per cent.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said. My amendment talks about eight years. I address my remarks to the Minister. The purpose is to give new Members of Parliament a chance to get at least two years serving in the House. If I look around, at least 20 noble Lords have served in the other place. I think they will all readily acknowledge that you do not learn your craft as a Member of Parliament within one term; far from it. I am stating the obvious that, apart from London Members of Parliament who have other pressures and difficulties, every Monday every Member of Parliament has to be on the road leaving their wife or husband and family to travel down here to London. In some cases that is a considerable distance, through all sorts of weather. When they come to the House they work with enthusiasm for what they do.

I was always impressed by Members of Parliament who raised such things as Adjournment debates about the problems of other countries, such as famine or the loss of civil liberties and civil rights. They got no votes for that. They did not do that for selfish reasons; they did it because they wanted a better world. It will be a very sad day if, as soon as a Member of Parliament arrives at Westminster, they worry about whether they will hold that office after the next election. I do not think that there will be any difficulty finding Members of Parliament to serve for the five years about which the Minister is talking.

In all the time that I have been in Parliament, everyone has always said that they want a good cross-section of the community, which is a good thing. I remember the Falklands debate in which former soldiers from every side of the House talked about the adrenaline when on a troop ship. They had come from another life, and the whole House, including young Members who had never been in the forces, were able to enjoy that.

I was on the Floor of the House when two former miners from the north-east of England described what it was like to be in a coalmine when the dust was flying and there were all sorts of dangers. They held that House in the palms of their hands and every Member listened. During a debate on hanging, I listened to Conservative Members who had represented people who were being defended against the chance of being sentenced to capital punishment. My point is that there were people from every walk of life.

I would not like to say that we do not want young people who leave university, work for an MP and then become a Member of Parliament. There is a place for them, but if the House becomes completely full of young researchers who had worked for MPs and then got a parliamentary seat, that would not be the representative body that we need in our Parliament. It would be far from that.

At the other end of the ladder, the ladies in this House have rightly argued that we need more women in Parliament. There was talk about all-women shortlists in order to get more ladies into Parliament, which is right, but will we get a lady who is typical of someone in my constituency, such as a home help with two children? She would have to say to her husband, “Well, I have got a chance of going into Parliament”. Her husband might say, “But you could get promotion in the health service. You will only get one term out of this”.

I know that someone might say, “The electorate can take you out”, but every Member of Parliament takes that chance. I used to cringe when people said to me, “You’ve got a safe Labour seat”. I did not have a safe Labour seat. You fight for every vote and you support the people in your community. In a marginal seat—I have seen this happen—where a Member of Parliament comes in with a majority or 23 or 24, they can build up the support and are willing to do that, but the boundary commissioner coming around with a pencil and cutting up the map is perhaps something that they would not want. We have people who were successful in business and are now retired and well off. We will also have young people. I do not think they should be barred, but if that was all of them we would not have people from every walk of life in our Parliament. Here in your Lordships’ House we make every endeavour to get people from every walk of life. We have judges, QCs and engineers like me who are able to talk about the engineering industry. We will lose that.

What kind of strain are we going to put on Members of Parliament when, as family men and women, their children say, “We want to go to the pictures. We want to have a day out”? The husband or the wife comes up the road on a Thursday only to get a phone call saying that there is a difficulty over employment, or in the local hospital or local authority. The day out for the children is spoilt. I know that from my own experience. I was raised as the son of a merchant seaman. My father was never in the house because he had to earn a living. I was determined that, whatever time I had in Glasgow, my children would be with me. That meant taking them to all sorts of rallies, ward meetings and trade union meetings. The poor wee souls were bored out of their skulls, but there was a promise that afterwards there would be a trip to the pictures, a museum, or something more enjoyable.

My case for this amendment is that it is not about delay or any other argument. We go into schools through the efforts of the Lord Speaker. I do not think that there is a noble Lord or a Member of Parliament who would refuse a visit to a school or college or would say that politics is not a good and rewarding thing to be in. Not one of them would do that. It is my understanding that this House has a scheme through which we encourage young people to get involved in Parliament. How can that encouragement tie in with putting forward a case that you are going to get only one term?

A lot has been said about the Executive and Ministers. I know the difficulties with Ministers because they want to talk. That is why I enjoy being in the House of Lords: because I did not get to speak for 10 years. Ministers want to talk all the time, but each and every one of them is doing an important job, and the law officers look after a department. How will it be if, within five years, there is a chance that their boundary will change? Sometimes unworthy things can come to the fore with boundary changes. Sometimes Back-Bench parliamentary colleagues might say, “Well, John can’t turn up because he is a Minister, you see, but I am free to come to your meeting”. “Don’t vote for John when we have the boundary change”, does not have to be said because the strong hint will have been put.

From a party political point of view, I used to be in the Labour Party and now I am on the Cross Benches. I enjoy this neutrality, but I also enjoy the workings of every political party because I have sat in the Tea Room with colleagues sometimes until one or two in the morning. I know especially the workings of the Labour Party. The minute boundary changes are on the horizon, I can hear the phrases yet: “You had better start getting the delegates in. You had better go to your trade union. You had better go to your Co-op and your affiliated societies and get them in”. It is not good for democracy if you are doing that every five years. I will tell you what will happen. I used to read stories about the ward bosses in Boston, and we will get ward bosses in our cities, and, indeed, in our spread out rural areas, who can deliver the votes. That, to me, is not what parliamentary democracy is about.

I say only this to the Ministers, and I do it with the best of intentions; we want good people from every background and every possible age group, so give them a chance of serving for at least two terms as parliamentarians.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend Lord Martin of Springburn has just made a very important contribution to this debate, because he knows what will happen in the real world in the event of the Government going forward with the five-year principle. My noble friend spelled out all the experiences that I know many Members of the other place, on all sides of the House, had during their political lifetimes, whereby, when they were confronted by Boundary Commission inquiries, all kinds of abnormal things would happen in their constituencies—often things that they did not even comprehend.

I have asked the Minister a series of questions. Would he care, in winding up the debate on this amendment, to answer them or undertake to let me have replies before next Monday? I understand that he might not have the information with him now, but I would like to know about the Cabinet Office’s code of practice on consultation.

On the security of tenure, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Grocott for having to disagree with him on the basis of his response to my earlier intervention. I believe that individuals often consider their likely period of tenure in the House of Commons prior to being elected. They have it in mind for all sorts of reasons. I cannot count the number of times over recent years when I have asked people, “Would you go into Parliament?”. I have asked people whom I thought were worthy and who would make good MPs. They would say to me, “I will never touch it. I wouldn’t go near the place”. That is invariably because they are wary of the insecurity that arises, particularly now, after the expenses inquiry. Every time an IPSA story appears in the national press, whereby it is being criticised for its lack of sensitivity in its treatment of MPs, and when MPs are being attacked almost daily both in regional and national newspapers and their integrity is often undermined by journalists, perfectly honourable people are put off the political process. It is that, along with the prospect of a brief tenure in Parliament, which I believe influences the judgments that people make.

I also know of former MPs, not only in here but outside, who have lost their jobs. When they have left Parliament, they have found that no work is available outside because they have the lost the skills or knowledge that would be required for them to practise their trade, skill or professional work. People also have that in mind when they consider whether to enter. It is a question not only of what they think as individuals but also of what their families think. Many people have been stopped from going into Parliament on the basis of a spouse or family view as to whether the family can take the financial or the employment risk. That is the case even under present arrangements, whereby there is at least an acceptable term between boundary reviews and changes. Under the Government’s proposals, it will be far worse. The Government are bringing into that calculation all those considerations of insecurity, which will turn families off and whereby they are more than likely to say to an aspiring MP in the family, “Please don’t do it. We just can’t afford the risk”.

That is basically my case. I argue that what is being proposed is wrong, that the period is too short and that the insecurity that it will breed should not be entertained. My final view is that it will influence the quality of people who are attracted to going into the House of Commons. My noble friend says, “Well, there will always be people who want to go into Parliament”. There are always people who want to go on to councils, but the quality of some local authority representation in the United Kingdom is absolutely appalling.

To be frank, there were people in the other place when I was there who I would have had difficulty voting for myself—we know who we are talking about. Some of them, frankly, were not fit to be in the House of Commons, but they got there. If the Government want to create a House of Commons to which more and more people seek nomination who are not of sufficient calibre to enter the place and do a good job, they are making a very grave error.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, listening today to the noble Lord, Lord Martin, confirmed my long-held view that the voters of the Black Country are by far the most sophisticated in the country. The noble Lord expressed concern that the consequences of this legislation would be the introduction of ward bosses into Glasgow. I first arrived in the Black Country 40 years ago, and I can tell him that we knew all about ward bosses then. It made your job a lot easier if you were trying to get reselected because you knew who you had to go to and who you had to keep sweet. If they have not yet got around to that system in Glasgow, I am very surprised.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

They are certainly getting into that system—they probably visited the noble Lord’s constituency—but my point is that it would become more intense.

[Lord Gilbert]

I am obliged. My second point is that we all come here with different experiences. I have heard many glowing references to the work of the Boundary Commission and the inquiries and hearings that it had. As far as I am concerned, it is a damned waste of time. It never took a blind bit of notice of anything that was said. Even when, as was always the case in Dudley, the Conservative MP for Dudley West and I as the Labour MP for Dudley East made identical recommendations, these people again took no notice of them whatever. Unsurprisingly, the extremely distinguished Conservative Member for Dudley West wanted all the Conservative voters and I wanted the Labour voters; it seemed to be an extraordinarily simple arrangement that could easily have been accommodated, but the commission never paid any attention to what we had to say.

Thirdly, on a slightly more serious point, I make no imputation—if I have the Minister’s attention; how kind of him—that the Government are trying to derive party advantage from these proposals. I have disagreed with some of the proposals before in the Bill, but these are the only ones that I find profoundly dangerous. I really hope that the Minister will go away and look at them. The idea that you pick everything up by the roots and look at it every five years, and the consequences—I forget which of my noble friends said this—for both parties, where people would be squabbling for selection at the next election and the election after that, would be very serious. I hope very much that the Government will think again.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I thought that I was taking an intervention. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. The Government will not get off that lightly.

The Government should be reminded of the relevant sections in the very well written report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I understand that the report’s recommendations were carried unanimously by the membership of that committee. All parties subscribed to the principles set out in paragraph 11, which states:

“We regret the fact that this Bill has not been subject to either pre-legislative scrutiny, or to prior public consultation”.

That is to say, Liberal Democrat and Conservative Peers all support that statement.

The report continues:

“We conclude that the Government have not calculated the proposed reduction in the size of the House of Commons on the basis of any considered assessment of the role and functions of MPs”.

My noble friend’s proposed inquiry would do precisely that. It is fair to ask the question: why 600? Why not 590? Why not 500, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has suggested? Why not 550? Why not 700 or 800? All the coalition Government have done is pick figures out of the air and say, “Yes, the Liberal Democrats want 500; the Conservatives want 600. Let’s settle on that figure”. That is not the basis on which the size of what is perhaps the most important Parliament in the world should be decided.

We then have to consider the whole issue of Lords reform. Until we know what the arrangements for an elected House will be, how can we even begin to comprehend the nature of the relationship that will develop between individual constituents—because there may well be individual constituents—and Members of an elected House of Lords, and the extent to which that will impact on how many MPs there should be in the House of Commons? That matter has not even entered into the discussions that have taken place prior to the introduction of this legislation.

There is also the whole question of population, on which I intervened during my noble friend’s speech. I have pondered over the Christmas Recess on why population should not be taken into account when, particularly in the inner cities, many of the people who come to MPs’ surgeries would be excluded from the electoral register. I cannot see why those groups who are excluded should not be taken into account when one is deciding the workload of a Member of Parliament and the size of any constituency.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Lord makes a valid point about people who are not on the electoral roll. I think of my previous constituency of Glasgow North East, to which the Home Office decided that a large number of asylum seekers would come. Not one of them, with the problems that they had, was turned away. Moreover, almost every asylum seeker had a lawyer who would also make representation to me as the local MP. It got to the stage where 90 per cent of the cases coming to surgeries were those of asylum seekers. Only those who were Commonwealth citizens as well as being asylum seekers were entitled to go on to the voters’ roll.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That intervention by my noble friend is extremely significant. That matter has not been taken into account by the Government. I know that there were problems in Glasgow, because I have been reading about them. There was a huge campaign that was referred to a few weeks ago by my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock to deal with the whole issue of registration, which threw up the particular problem to which my noble friend referred. Indeed, the Democratic Audit paper on further findings on equalisation, which no doubt most Members of the House will either have read or will want to read prior to our debates in the future, deals precisely with this issue of population. Mr Lewis Baston says:

“Approximately half of the countries that delimit districts use ‘total population’ as the population base for determining equality across electoral districts. Another third of the countries employ registered voters as the population base”.

Several European countries use citizen population as the relevant base for determining population equality. Lesotho uses the voting age population as the base and Belarus uses the number of voters in the previous election, although that would not be particularly helpful here, would it?

The facts are that countries can use census material and population statistics as against registered electors, particularly when we know that the registered electorate, as far as the purposes of this Bill are concerned, are based on a register that is effectively out of date and which excludes, as my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton was saying only a few weeks ago, some 3.5 million people. Some 3.5 million people are excluded from the register. Why cannot the great proportion of those be included on a register by changing the basis on which the register is drawn by moving it over to a more population-based system?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord will get an opportunity to reply.

That does not mean to say that that is not an important issue. We have debated it in the context of Part 1. As the Committee will know, the Government are committed to taking forward the proposals already set in train—by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, himself—on individual registration. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has also indicated that there will be a pilot scheme to allow local authorities to data match with other sets of data to try to get a better understanding and a better way to identify those who are not on the electoral roll.

To think that to fight an election in 2015 on an electoral roll that has as its basis the electorate in the year 2000 is in some way better defies rational consideration. What the Bill proposes—a rolling review every five years and efforts which we are making which, I think, will be widely supported across the Committee, to encourage individual registration and to identify where there are people who ought to be on the electoral roll but who are not—is far more likely to have an effect for the general election of 2020 than setting up a committee of inquiry that might take ages to report and then to have legislation following on the back of that. We are more likely to achieve what is a perfectly laudable and proper aim of ensuring that as many people who are entitled to vote as can be are on the electoral roll by the way that we are going about it. That is more likely to lead to success.

The noble Lord’s amendment also questions whether equally weighted votes should be given priority over other factors. We are aware of and sensitive to other reasons—the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and others mentioned the importance of local ties and communities—for proposing exceptions to the principle. An identity with or affiliation to certain areas of community is something that many people feel to be of considerable importance. Those of us in this House who have been Members of the other place feel that in particular. We acknowledge that there is a strength of feeling, and we would certainly want those with a local interest to make representations to the Boundary Commission in relation to local ties and for the Boundary Commission to be able to take them into consideration. The Bill will allow for constituencies to vary in the number of electors by as much as 10 per cent—that is, 5 per cent either way—of the UK electoral quota. That will allow the commission to take local factors into account. We will no doubt debate possible exceptions: I am sure that amendments have already been tabled to allow us that debate.

Another issue raised was workload. It is not the case that workload is a factor taken into account by the Boundary Commission at the moment. One speech suggested that somehow the Government excluding that was another manifestation of evil. It would be a judgment of Solomon for any independent inquiry to work out what is a relevant workload for a particular Member of Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, mentioned the high asylum-seeker numbers in the constituency which he formerly represented with great distinction. I remember as a Scottish Minister once visiting his constituency on an asylum-seeker issue; I know precisely what he means. However, as a representative of a landlocked constituency, he never had to deal with an oil tanker carrying 84,000 tonnes of crude oil crashing and spilling its oil in the middle of his constituency. There are different things which different Members of Parliament have, by the very nature of their constituencies, to deal with. It would be more than a judgment of Solomon to try to weigh up what the different workload was for different Members of Parliament.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I did have the Forth and Clyde Canal to worry about.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

And the mind boggles as to what kind of issues that may have given rise to. That probably just proves the point that every person who has been a Member of the other place can say why their constituency was that bit different.

I turn to the specific point raised by the noble Lords, Lord Touhig and Lord Elystan-Morgan, about their concern about the union. I am as passionately concerned about the union as they are. The important point to remember is that the reform means that a vote in Cardiff will have an equal value to a vote in Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh or London. To me, that does not undermine the union; giving an equal value to a vote in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast and London will, we hope, bring the union closer together. The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke, indicated that she brought forward an order that was of significant cost to the Labour Party in terms of the number of seats in Scotland following devolution. Indeed, if this Bill goes through, there will be a further decrease, but I have to be honest and say that I do not really remember the rafters falling in in Scotland. Indeed, people thought that it was important. My party argued within the Scottish Constitutional Convention that there ought to be a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs at Westminster if we got a Scottish Parliament dealing with a whole range of domestic issues. When it comes to workload, how are we going to evaluate the workload of an English MP vis-à-vis a Welsh MP or a Scottish MP? Is there going to be a differential? I do not think that anyone has suggested that we should have different MPs in terms of their quality.

The question of the Scottish Constitutional Convention which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked me to address was partly addressed by my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart. The noble Lord’s mind is perhaps playing tricks. It was not facilitated by a Labour Government prior to legislating for the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Constitutional Convention was established under a Conservative Government. It not only did not include the Conservative Party; it did not include the Scottish National Party either. That was through no fault of the convention, I hasten to add, but because those parties chose not to join it.

There is no way in which I can say that the number of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament was a consensus arrived at by all the parties. One day, I will perhaps tell the House how the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and I reached the number of 129 but if I do—“Not now” says the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—it probably means that the number of 600 will hit the heights of scientific measurement compared to how that was done.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord talked about a group. I am presuming that all parties belong to this group and not just the Liberal Party. It was the way the noble Lord phrased it. Forgive me: I will not press my noble and learned friend.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I can possibly help. I have said on the Floor of this House that it was the case when I was Speaker that the Electoral Commission had to report. There was a weakness in the Electoral Commission in that it would not allow former party agents in its membership. As a result, although there were former chief executives of local authorities, you never got someone like Jimmy Allison—God rest his soul—who used to be the wily agent of the Labour Party in Scotland. As a result, it was agreed that there would be an informal committee to give the type of advice that was needed when there were proposals for delivering leaflets and meeting the electorate. We all know that when you meet the electorate, sometimes you have to face an Alsatian dog, and when you get by the Alsatian, you get a Rottweiler. The chief executives did not really know about that, but Labour Party agents did.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I sat on the committee with the Speaker in which we discussed those matters, and I remember the setting up of the informal committee. Since then a Bill has been passed which allows former politicians to sit on it. Happily, your Lordships have answered all the questions so I have not been put in the embarrassing position of doing that which I am not allowed to do, which is to press the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, because he is supposed to be pressing me in the course of this debate.

I have set out the reasons for this amendment. It is a very important amendment because it requires a justification as to why it is two and a half years, why we should not wait for an up-to-date register, and why gaps of five years are suggested. Those are the questions that this amendment raises. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, can a local authority or the Electoral Commission speak with accuracy regarding steps being taken by a local authority? The amendment says that,

“every local authority has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible”.

That does not mean that it has to be so exact that, as in the days when I was in engineering, you have to be half a thou within your measurement. The amendment says “all reasonable steps”.

I know through experience that the Electoral Commission is a well resourced body. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, had this experience, but it even said that it wanted copyright for a teaching pack to teach returning officers how to carry out their duties. That is the extent to which the Electoral Commission goes into these matters.

Talking about accuracy, my thoughts go back to the days when Strathclyde region was on the go and the famous poll tax was a big worry for every Member of Parliament in the west of Scotland. Strathclyde region took in the whole of the west of Scotland. People were deliberately staying off the electoral register. It was not a case of the man or woman of the house coming to the door and forgetting to say that one of the sons was working offshore but was resident in the household and therefore the canvass could be inaccurate to one person in a family because of the wrong information. This was particularly single people making sure that they stayed off the register to avoid the poll tax. It used to be called the community charge. That was a nice phrase. We called it the poll tax because that was what it was.

Mr James Woods was put in charge of electoral registration for the whole of Strathclyde. All the Members of Parliament for Strathclyde met him and said that the voters roll would be inaccurate. When it came to appeals and the Boundary Commission, a big matter would be the number of people on the electoral roll. He told us all, “Here is what I’ve done. Come and visit my department. I do a canvass and then I do a second canvass and if we suspect that there are people who are taking their names off the electoral roll, we make inquiries”.

There was also the question of people having two homes. Sometimes a wife would register in one home and a husband in the other to avoid a double poll tax. Mr Woods assured us that he was putting a high and accurate return on to the electoral register. It would be reasonable for the Electoral Commission to interview someone such as Mr Woods and ask, “What are you doing? What facilities have you got? We want to visit your premises and see what you are doing”. That would be good enough to give a certificate.

It must be remembered that people used to speak with fondness about a local authority called Saltcoats down on the Ayrshire coast which had the cheapest rents in Scotland—the reason being that it had no direct works department and was a small local authority. The local authority was so small it would even meet if it had to hire a foreman gardener. Local authorities such as that are no longer with us. Local government has been streamlined. There is often a criticism that some chief executives in local government get paid more than the Prime Minister of the day because of their large responsibilities. I do not wish to go into that as I would stray from the amendment but all local authorities that I know of in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland would be well able to hire a highly competent electoral registration officer who could easily convince the Electoral Commission to give the local authority a certificate to say that it is working to ensure an accurate register. If the Government had a worry about the Electoral Commission, it need not be the Electoral Commission but someone else. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned certification; certification is given to shipping, factories and other bodies.

[Baroness Thornton]

This is my first intervention in the Bill. I am pleased to join my happy band of colleagues to, I hope, help with the discussions. I want to get involved in the issue of voter registration in this part of the Bill because of my work with young people, particularly excluded ones, in a variety of charities and also because I am from Bradford. My title is Baroness Thornton, of Manningham. I suspect that Manningham in Bradford probably has one of the lowest records of voter registration in the whole of our city, for reasons that we will discuss in the next series of amendments.

We know that those who are absent from the registers are likely to be drawn from the same social groups as under-registered voters in previous decades. This is not a new issue. Variations in registration levels by age, social class and ethnicity have long been recognised and it is predominately densely populated urban areas with significant concentrations of mobile young people that have the highest levels of under-registration. That is why I, along with other noble Lords, support amendments pressing our concerns for different groups of our fellow citizens.

The Electoral Commission’s March 2010 report The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain highlights that matter. The report states that,

“there are some grounds to suggest that geographical variations in registration levels may have widened since the late 1990s. Available data sources suggest that registration rates in London appear to have stabilised, and may even have improved slightly, since the late 1990s. By contrast, English metropolitan districts appear to have experienced a clear fall in registration levels. Canvass response rates show a similar pattern. In 1996, the average canvass response rates for metropolitan districts were 93%, significantly higher than the 87% achieved by the average London borough. However, by 2004 the average response rate among London boroughs had risen slightly to 89%, while it had fallen to 84% in the English metropolitan districts. Despite improved response rates among metropolitan districts in 2008, the 90% average remained just below the 91% figure achieved by London boroughs”.

As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said, if the electoral roll is to be frozen as at 2010, how much more inaccurate will it be in those areas of the greatest vulnerability by 2015? We know that more than 3 million people are not on the electoral roll. How many more voters would the coalition Government find it acceptable not to appear on the electoral roll by 2015? I think that the Minister needs to answer those questions, given that millions of people—young people, ethnic minorities and people who live in rented accommodation in areas of high density—will in effect be disfranchised by the Government’s proposals.

Our amendment suggests, quite reasonably I think, that the Electoral Commission should ensure that the local authorities that have responsibility for the canvasses that produce the electoral roll should do their job as effectively and as efficiently as possible. I cannot see what is unreasonable about that. Indeed, our suggestion seems entirely proper, so I am surprised to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has a problem with it, as I cannot think what that problem would be. We need to get those 3.5 million people back on our electoral rolls and then—although, as my noble friend said, this is a different matter—to consider voting. I support Amendment 54A and I hope that the Government will do so as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

I most certainly can. What is more, I can go a bit further. At our meetings to discuss how to handle the Bill, there was a clear view that we should not filibuster. I say that categorically and give my word of honour. There was not one occasion when anybody supported the idea of filibustering. What we have seen this afternoon, sadly, is the reverse of a filibuster. A government party—or two parties—refused to take part in a serious debate about the constitutional matter of a Government taking on themselves the power to change the size of Parliament. That is a major issue. I do not want to make it directly relevant to this debate, which is becoming slightly off-side. I will simply say—and I will leave it on this point—that in a situation where a Government are allowed to change the size of a Parliament, you cannot deny that it is a major constitutional issue. The voting system is not. The voting system and even registration are not major constitutional issues. They are very important but they are not constitutional issues in the sense that changing the size of Parliament is.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

Compared to the noble Lord, I am still an apprentice in the procedures of this House, but should we not be talking about the amendment before us? That might be the best thing to do.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend still thinks that he is in his previous role. If he was in that role here, he would have ruled me out of order, which would be quite right. However, we do not have that system.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Lord was the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He would never have allowed any Minister in the Labour Party to tell Members not to speak. That would have been an invitation for them to speak.

[Lord Soley]

I am not sure that I wholly agree with that. I certainly would not encourage people to speak, but let us be clear. Whips at all times have said, “If you speak on this from the other side, you will be here very late tonight. Alternatively, we won’t get the Bill passed in time”. What matters to the Government, on this Bill more than any other, is time. That is what this is about. We need to be very clear about it, which is why I say that what happened earlier was a filibuster in reverse. It was a silent filibuster, if you like. That does not alter the fact that, on this issue, my reason for arguing and the reason why we diverted is precisely that the registration of citizens is important in the voting process. In the context of a Bill that is incredibly important constitutionally because of the power to alter the size of Parliament, you cannot argue that this is irrelevant. It is an important part of it.

The Government need to show some willingness to move on these issues. If we agree that registration is not as good as it ought to be in this country and accept that at the moment the Electoral Commission does not have as much power and authority as one would like it to have to instruct local authorities, there is a duty on the Government to do more to make sure that representation on the electoral roll is as good as it can be. I would expect leadership from the Government on that. I would expect them to stand up and say, “Yes, we will do this and we will discuss with other political parties how to deliver it”. That is the sort of statement on which we need to get some cross-party agreement for a very important Bill.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, “more haste, less speed” is a maxim that every Lib Dem Minister in the coalition—and, perhaps, other Ministers—should pin up above their desks in large Day-Glo letters. We can see that the dynamic behind the Bill—and the reason why the coalition seeks to thrust it through as fast as it can—is the ambition of the Deputy Prime Minister to establish himself as an effective constitutional reformer and his anxiety that he does not have much time in which to do it. How very much more important it is to get it right than to do it hastily. That is why my noble friends were quite right to table this amendment which would place some restraint on the Boundary Commission process.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, talked about the Electoral Commission and the art of the possible. We ought also to consider what it is reasonable and realistic to expect the Boundary Commission to do. As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said in his opening remarks, the proposition in the Bill that the Boundary Commission will submit reports for the redrawing of effectively every constituency in the United Kingdom in a short period of some two and a half years before 1 October 2013 is not a sensible thing to undertake to do, and I do not think that it is a proper thing to undertake to do. While there are all sorts of reasons why it would be very difficult for the Boundary Commission to do that satisfactorily, not least because it would be impossible for the citizens of this country to have the opportunity to make their representations on the process in this abbreviated timescale, there is also the factor of electoral registration. This amendment, which focuses particularly on the indispensability of having a decent level of electoral registration before we draw the boundaries of the new constituencies, is absolutely right. You can reform electoral systems and constituency boundaries as much as you want but it will be a hollow process if you fail to ensure that those who should be the beneficiaries of these reforms—the citizens of this country—are in a position to benefit from them. If you merely reform without ensuring that people will be able to exercise their vote under your reformed system, it is effectively a case of “Hamlet” without the prince.

The reasons for declining turnout at successive elections over a considerable period of our modern history are mysterious and it is a very difficult phenomenon to understand. There are a number of proximate causes that we can see. The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, drew the House’s attention to the decision by a significant number of people to drop off the electoral register when they saw the poll tax heading towards the statute book. Certainly, more of them did so after it had become law. That is one reason why, since the late 1980s, the electoral register has not had the respect and integrity that it had before then. There are other factors. We will see some new factors that will cause imperfections in the electoral register in our own time. One of them will, I fear, be the effect of housing benefit changes because more and more people, particularly tenants of private rented accommodation, will be on the move because they cannot afford to continue to live in the same place in which they were living. That will impair the electoral register; so will rising unemployment, particularly among people who have been employees in the public sector. They will also be on their bikes and on the road, trying to find work in new places. All that makes it more difficult to ensure that we will have an adequately up- to-date and comprehensive electoral register. Therefore, the pressure that this amendment would introduce into the system is extremely valuable.

I refer to another reason why we should be worried about what may happen to registration. Here I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, as I am not confident that, as he said, local authorities will necessarily have the resources to employ more electoral registration officers. We are going to see very draconian reductions in local authority budgets and they will find it very difficult to do anything that is not mandatory. Anything that is discretionary expenditure will be difficult for them to take on board.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

Given the size of local authorities, it is not a question of having more electoral officers but of having a specific official to look after electoral registration. That person in turn would give an account of his or her stewardship to the Electoral Commission. That is different from employing more people, and it is not the point. It will be a sad day, given the size of local authorities in the United Kingdom, when there is no official in charge of electoral registration.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I certainly share the noble Lord’s hope that that will indeed be the case, and it is important that it should be, because it will be more difficult for the regime which this amendment envisages to operate if local authorities do not have registration officers in place doing their work energetically and with adequate resources. It is something on which we will need to keep a careful eye. I do not have quite the confidence that he does that that will necessarily be the case.

I should like to make just one observation on paragraph (b) in Amendment 54A, in which my noble friends have proposed that the Boundary Commission should submit reports every sixth year, rather than every fifth year, after 2013. That is wise for a number of reasons, but at this time of the evening I shall mention only one of the reasons. If constituencies are to be redrawn—and perhaps quite radically redrawn—at pretty frequent intervals, it creates problems for political parties. If political parties have to be re-formed election by election—and we know that they will all have to be re-formed in the period between 2013 and 2015, if the election is postponed for that long, and at quite frequent intervals thereafter—that creates a lot of difficulties for political parties.

We know the problem—I suspect that all political parties share this problem—of securing an adequate membership. We need a degree of stability to ensure that political parties can perform their role. Healthy, thriving political parties are a precondition for healthy, thriving local government and for healthy, thriving parliamentary democracy. So I do not think that we want to cause upheaval in political parties any more frequently than is really necessary. Of course the Boundary Commission reviews need to be of sufficient frequency and of a regularity to ensure that they adequately reflect the changing composition of the population of this country. That is essential and we all acknowledge that. It is a question of judgment and of striking a balance between that imperative and what I think is also very desirable, which is not to keep on throwing the system up in the air and destabilising political parties. For that reason, the modest change that my noble friends have proposed—having reviews every six years rather than every five years—makes good, practical sense.

Scottish Parliament (Constituencies and Regions) Order 2010

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

The homogeneity of communities must be at the core of our thinking. The concept of solidarity, community interest and pride in local areas, as a number of my local colleagues have mentioned, is extremely important. At this time it would be folly to ride roughshod over that concept.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I first apologise, as I was unavoidably delayed. I have listened to my colleagues and friends. The case put on consultation is so important. A boundary change was to be brought in in the city of Glasgow in 1983. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose—I think that is who it was—mentioned the Scotland Act. The original boundary report said that there should be no more than 71 seats for Scotland. The case that Glasgow had to put in the old city hall, the Candleriggs Hall, was that it was to be no less than 71, which meant that the city of Glasgow would lose not two seats but one. That meant a great deal, as the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will know.

Consultation was so important then, as it is now. We had a QC, the late Hugh Martin, whose brother George was in the House. Hugh put the case, and he won because the presiding sheriff accepted his arguments. At the lunch break, when we still did not know the result, we went to a restaurant and had what they call in Scotland a “fish tea”. There was Donald Dewar, myself and Bruce Millan, former Secretary of State, and we agreed to pay for Hugh Martin’s lunch—it was the decent thing to do. I tell you, it was a lunch worth paying for, because we won. Even Donald Dewar, who was known to watch his pennies, weighed in with the bill.

In the west of Scotland, unfortunately, we have had sectarian problems, and we have managed to overcome them. A late colleague of ours, Frank McElhone, was a great leader in overcoming those problems. When he asked his honourable friend for Rutherglen, the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, if the community organisations could come along, the Union of Catholic Mothers and the local Orange Lodge put the case in Frank McElhone’s constituency. That was bringing the sectarian groups together and calling for unity. They were unified that day, and they won.

I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, has said about distance. I was a union officer both in Argyll and in the Highlands, and I had not realised how lucky I was, living in Glasgow, that I could get from A to B in a short time. To go from Fort William to Inverness was a major journey in itself for a lowlander like me, and there were places further north that were even more difficult to get to, yet these places are encompassed in the same constituency boundary. The law officer himself knows this; it was a surprise for me when I went to Orkney and I spent the night on the ferry. I had not realised that it would take so long—on the map, Orkney looks so close to the mainland. In fact, I met the noble and learned Lord there the other day when I was up there.

It surprises me that the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, had a slogan throughout the general election that every vote should be equal and therefore we should have equality among the constituencies. Constituencies that are represented in the other place by Liberal Members are so far spread, yet no one even approached them and said, “Look, by putting this argument, you are destroying the argument for us to be good representatives for far-out constituencies”.

The noble Lord has mentioned Argyll. We in the west of Scotland are so fond of our country. It is lovely that within three-quarters of an hour you can go from Glasgow to the banks of Loch Lomond, but from the outskirts of Helensburgh to Campbelltown is such a distance that you could actually drive from Glasgow to Fort William quicker. By the time that you get to Campbelltown, you are further south than the town of Ayr, which my noble friend knows about—yet it is all the one constituency. This document says that it is giving us consultation, but the other place is saying, “You are not going to have consultation”.

I go back to my native city of Glasgow. People would go into Glasgow and think, “Well, it’s just one big city”. That is as naïve as going to London and saying that it is just one big city. Since I was 14, I have lived most of my life in Springburn. It is a far cry from Shawlands; it is a different world. The people of Partick feel differently from the people of Parkhead. They are different communities. In the old days they used to be boroughs in their own right, with their own police officers. I come back to what the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, said. There was an area called Grahamstown, which was named after his ancestors. In my younger days I stayed in the borders of Grahamstown and the Anderson district. The Anderson district is a far cry from the Gorbals, although the sketch writers never quite got that right. They did not know the geography of Glasgow.

I know from my experience of going to Boundary Commission hearings that even those Members of Parliament and those communities that felt they had lost out always felt, at the end of the day, that they had been given a good hearing at those boundary change tribunals. It would be a very sad day if we just threw numbers into a computer and said, “There you are. That is what your elected representatives have to fight for”.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I will make a short intervention. I was born in Dagenham—made in Dagenham, effectively—which was then part of Essex and is now in occupied Essex, since it is occupied by the London Borough of Havering. I am interested in the debate on this order. I say to noble colleagues from Scotland: be thankful that, whatever this order and the Bill in the other House say, at the moment there is no question of boundaries crossing the Scottish-English border. I ask you to keep that in mind when it comes to other nations in the United Kingdom. Cornwall is a Celtic nation. I ask for noble Lords’ support when the other Bill comes to this House. There is a possibility of boundaries crossing the Tamar river. I ask the Government to take that into consideration as they think about the Bill before it crosses to this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, that is clearly beyond this point. People from different political parties took different views.

I would also like to reflect on what was said by Professor Ron Johnston, who is a professor of geography at the University of Bristol whose research interests include electoral and political geography. On oral inquiries, he said that they are,

“very largely an exercise in allowing the political parties to seek influence over the Commission's recommendations—in which their sole goal is to promote their own electoral interests”.

Far be it from me to suggest that that was what happened, but I just ask noble Lords to wonder whether there might have been something of that when people needed to get lawyers—even if they had to pay for their lunch—to argue their case.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, we were not alone in bringing in the big guns. The Liberal Democrat Party had an eminent QC called Ming Campbell. I do not know whether he got a lunch, but our QC got a decent lunch anyway.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I take the point that one could not say that the Union of Catholic Mothers and the other organisation to which he referred were in any way partisan.