Electoral Fraud

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rennard]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend electoral legislation as a result of the report of Sir Eric Pickles’ review into electoral fraud.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

The Government have received Sir Eric Pickles’s review and will carefully consider its findings and recommendations. We are committed to tackling any form of fraud in the UK polls and this report will help inform the debate to ensure that our elections have the highest integrity. We will look closely at the proposals set out in the report and provide a full response in due course.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that a report proposing changes to the way in which we conduct our elections would have greater credibility if it was not simply the work of a former chairman of the Conservative Party? Why does she think that the report did not look into such important issues as the underregistration of voters, which distorts the outcome of our elections and the Boundary Commissions’ processes?

House of Lords Act 1999 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, last week, the Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said in an interview with The House Magazine:

“I don’t think we can justify a situation where you have over 800 peers at the same time as you’re bringing down the Commons to 600 MPs”.

In my view, this Bill is the logical next step towards reducing the size of the House of Lords. It should be easier to agree than many measures that have been considered, because it involves no compulsory redundancies.

It is thanks to the endeavours of my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that we passed a measure of reform in the last Parliament, enabling, as he said, 50 Members of the House to retire since then. But it is a great shame that the other measures proposed in what became known as the Steel Bill were blocked. This was particularly so after the failure to agree properly a programme of reform under the last Government’s measures, despite the House of Lords Reform Bill being passed at Second Reading in the House of Commons by 462 votes to 124. The problem with securing further progress on that Bill was that Labour Party Members believed, possibly correctly, that blocking it was their only hope of blocking the Boundary Commission proposals in the last Parliament, while, on the other hand, David Cameron and the Conservatives appeared to realise only too late that failure to secure progress on Lords reform would indeed be used to justify the Liberal Democrats blocking the Boundary Commission proposals at that point.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord will know very well that the coalition agreement did not tie Lords reform to the Boundary Commission. Boundaries were tied specifically to the vote on AV. Is that not correct?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct in terms of the technicalities of what was in the coalition agreement of 2010. However, it was argued and voted on overwhelmingly by this House and the other place in 2013 that there were many reasons why the Boundary Commission proposals should not go ahead at that point, one of which was the failure to make progress on Lords reform. Reducing the size of the House of Commons from 650 MPs to 600 MPs was not appropriate when we did not reform the House of Lords and make government more accountable in that way.

So now we have to look again at the other measures that were proposed in the Steel Bill, including the ending of by-elections to replace hereditary Peers. Parliamentary by-elections to elect MPs have been a major feature of my political life. However, I cringe with embarrassment at the holding of by-elections in this place in which as few as three Members of your Lordships’ House, who initially inherited their positions here based perhaps upon what their ancestors did centuries ago, choose to elect someone to help formulate the laws of the land from a shortlist of as few as three other people who can be considered by virtue also of what their ancestors may have done.

All of us enjoy showing family, friends and guests around the House, particularly, I would suggest, those from overseas. Some of them come from established democracies and some of them come from places struggling to establish democratic principles. But none of them can understand the archaic way in which we are still choosing some of the people to sit in the second Chamber of our Parliament—supposedly the mother of parliaments. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, not a single woman has ever been elected in this way, as most hereditary peerages descend down the male line.

A year ago, the Guardian published a letter from me saying:

“The election by hereditary peers of the ninth Duke of Wellington (Report, 16 September) to the House of Lords by 21 votes over the Marquess of Abergavenny and the Earl of Harrowby (six votes each) is incomprehensible by any democratic standard”.

On 3 December 2010, in an earlier debate on this subject, I said that,

“the farcical process we have in this House of holding by-elections to elect hereditary Peers brings the House into disrepute. These by-elections have little more resemblance to democracy than the campaign run by Lord Blackadder when he ran the by-election campaign to elect Baldrick in the rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold, where Blackadder was the only elector”.—[Official Report, 3/12/10; col. 1696.]

I was wrong, of course, to describe Edmund Blackadder at that point as a Lord; he was merely a voter in that incarnation—albeit the only voter. In that series, Baldrick was later appointed to the House of Lords by Prince George. But if they had both been appointed in real life, their descendants might now be standing as rival candidates, hatching cunning plans to win by-elections in order to get back into this place.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is amusing the House tremendously but he is talking about a work of fiction. I know that the Liberal Democrats have difficulty distinguishing the difference between fact and fiction, but if the noble Lord could stick to fact, I think that the House would find it very helpful.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, having tried to describe to visitors the current system of electing hereditary Members to this place, I know that they think that is a work of fiction.

More seriously, it is now 106 years since the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith promised that the hereditary principle would be replaced by the popular principle in determining the composition of this House. That was agreed then by both Houses. However, having listened a few moments ago to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, I was reminded of the view that perhaps only in this House could over 100 years be considered too short a time in which to consider such a principle. But not for me and my party. And we certainly consider that the 17 years since the Weatherill amendment introduced as a temporary measure the concept of by-elections to top up the number of hereditary Peers has been too long. We on these Benches did not agree with that amendment in the first place and would have preferred to see the Parliament Act used, if necessary, and so we are not bound by any such agreement.

We recognise that some of those who are here by virtue of the hereditary principle continue to make a significant contribution to the work of this House and to government. This Bill does not threaten their position in any way. We also believe that passing the Bill will do little good in terms of limiting the size of the House if the system of prime ministerial and party leader appointments continues in the way that it has done in recent years.

We were promised a further phase of reform following that of 1999—the year I joined this House. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, the Labour Government’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill 2010 promised to end the practice of holding by-elections to keep up the numbers of hereditary Peers. But that provision was, sadly, removed during the so-called wash-up period immediately prior to the 2010 general election. The ending of such wash-up periods when elections are called outside a fixed-term cycle was, in my view, a good reason for passing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

The history of debates in this House about the future of by-elections for hereditary Peers has not been a happy one. Let us put an end to them now by passing this Bill and bringing an end to a process which does no credit to this House, to Parliament generally or to British democracy.

Electoral Status: Online Access

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rennard]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recent technical difficulties regarding online applications to register to vote, what plans they have to enable all eligible electors to check their electoral status electronically.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)]

My Lords, we are conducting an investigation into what went wrong with the website last week. In the light of the findings, we will carefully consider the potential benefits of an online registration checking tool, but there may be other, possibly better, answers, such as filtering out duplicates with electoral management software, to consider as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, after the 2015 general election the Electoral Commission reported that there should be a system whereby people can check online whether they are already registered. Will the Government endeavour to make sure that such a system is in place by the May 2017 elections? In the meantime, will greater efforts be made to ensure that young people who are perhaps still at school are registered in the same way across Great Britain as they are in Northern Ireland, and that students are registered as part of the enrolment process at university, as successfully piloted in places such as Sheffield this year?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord makes some very good points. My answer is yes to the second two regarding encouraging enrolment. As regards the first, I would like to wait for the findings of the investigation before I commit to a timeframe. Clearly, however, there is a need to look at the issue of duplicates, as raised by the Electoral Commission and as the Government have made clear on many occasions. I thank the noble Lord for his constructive comments to me privately about this.

European Union Referendum (Voter Registration) Regulations 2016

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the Motion proposed by my noble friend. As your Lordships may be aware, although this is not set out in the Standing Orders, it is normal practice for your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I have the honour to be chairman, to report on incidents such as this before they are considered by your Lordships. Clearly that was not possible on this occasion, but I have taken the opportunity to consult as many of the members of my committee as possible. None has raised any objection. I am therefore happy to say to my noble friend that I approve of what he proposes and that my committee has given its informal approval for that process. These are what, in other contexts, we have come to call exceptional circumstances. They clearly apply in this case, and I approve of my noble friend’s proposal.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for his kind words yesterday about my knowledge and interest in this area. I also ask him to convey my thanks to the Minister for Constitutional Reform for his most helpful recent letter which was also copied to my fellow officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation. As the Minister will know, we are discussing with his colleagues our recent Missing Millions report, trying to tackle some of the longer-term problems which have been highlighted this week.

I want to say from these Benches how grateful we are to the Government for acting so expeditiously and properly to ensure that the problems with online registration did not result in people being disenfranchised. Today’s Daily Express headline suggesting that allowing people to vote is somehow “rigging the system” is at least as ridiculous as any of its conspiracy theories concerning the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

Some 242,000 people applied to register to vote yesterday, and more will do so by midnight tonight. But the problem that I raised with the Minister yesterday is that these people were not able to find out easily whether they were already registered, and many of them were. The problems of trying to get people registered at the last minute are the problems that arise from the weaknesses in the system, which have led to the general problem of under-registration. Yesterday, the Minister responded to my point that we really need an online system in which people can easily check whether or not they are already registered. He expressed concern about the creation of a national database to facilitate this. He said that,

“we must guard any solution which results in whole swathes of data unnecessarily being held centrally”.—[Official Report, 8/6/16; col. 751.]

But does he not have concerns that all the major political parties, including his own, already have such a database? All the political parties are entitled to copies of the electoral register in electronic format and they can either aggregate that information or work with any of the credit agencies which also legally have full access to the electoral register. So there are already national databases showing exactly who is on the electoral register.

While there may be some confusion over addresses appearing on those registers in different formats, it should not be hard, for example, for someone to supply their name, postcode, national insurance number or other identification to see whether they are already registered. I raised this issue today with the Electoral Commission. I quote briefly from its email, which is most helpful on this issue. On the question of an online register and checking whether someone is already registered, it says:

“This is a recommendation that we continue to make to Government, including in our February 2016 report, after we received feedback from Electoral Registration Officers, and from electors themselves, that this would be a helpful service. You might already be aware that similar facilities are already offered to voters in other comparable democracies, including Australia and New Zealand”.

Therefore, it seems to me that it would not be too difficult a problem for us to address. We know that in total there may be around 7 million people missing from the registers, and 4 million of them may be young people. I asked in a recent debate why we do not make the electoral registration process part of the student enrolment process. The Minister said that it had been piloted successfully in Sheffield and Cardiff. As it has been piloted successfully there, why can we not roll it out across the whole country? We could make it a universal provision. I have also been pressing, as have many Members of the House, for us to adopt the Northern Ireland model of registering 16 and 17 year-olds as part of citizenship classes at school. The Minister told me that many electoral registration officers are already working with local schools and colleges in their area—but why not all of them? The excuse that Northern Ireland does not yet have online registration is no reason at all for not spreading successful good practice in registering young people across Great Britain.

Finally, I ask the Minister to clarify an issue in the Explanatory Memorandum to this statutory instrument. It states that,

“the Law Commission is currently undertaking a review of electoral law in the United Kingdom and expects to present its recommendations to Government in 2016”.

However, the Law Commission published its interim report on 4 February and made many sensible recommendations for tidying up and modernising our election laws. I have since then been asking for the Government’s response to what the Law Commission said, as the next stages require the Government, instructing parliamentary counsel, to draft the Bill required. The Electoral Commission, I might add, is also extremely keen that this happens. So, what is the Government response to the Law Commission’s report?

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the Motion put forward by the Minister and to commend the Government and the other House on ensuring that full public engagement can take place at this time. I believe that this surge was a result of the just-in-time generation being able to do things at the last minute. We probably have a lot to learn from that. It will be interesting to look at this issue—if one is able to define the 300,000-odd people who elected to register in the last 24 hours. Without this statutory instrument we would be denying the basic human right in a democracy, such as the UK, to vote on such an important issue.

EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, it is impossible to tell at this stage who was unable to register when the site had crashed.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that part of the problem is that many people think the system is automatically registering them when it is not and it should be? A significant part of the recent problem is that people cannot tell immediately whether they are registered. We urgently need an online system by which people can check whether they are registered. Only then will they know whether they need to complete the process.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord speaks with a lot of experience on these things and makes a good point. I agree wholeheartedly with the principle that reducing the number of duplicate applications would certainly ease the burden on citizens and electoral administrators. We are open to all options for reducing duplicate applications. That said, we must guard against any solution which results in whole swathes of data unnecessarily being held centrally.

European Union Referendum: Young Voters

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, associate myself with all those noble Lords who congratulated my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno on securing this very important debate. He really is my noble friend. I spent a great deal of time in the 1990s trying to help him get elected to the other place. I think the closest we came was in 1992, when he missed by just 995 votes. I have always illustrated talks about elections with that to show how important a handful of votes can be in determining the outcome. I failed in my endeavours to get him into the other place, but this debate today highlights how important his contributions to this House can be in raising issues such as this one about the rights of citizens to participate in a democratic decision.

Early in the last Parliament, Ministers stood at the Dispatch Box opposite and spoke confidently about how the level of voter registration in this country was approximately 92%. The last Government published a White Paper on voter registration saying that the level was about 90% and that that compared favourably with levels in many comparable countries. But then the Cabinet Office commissioned some work in advance of the introduction of individual voter registration and it was shown that the real levels of voter registration in this country are in the low 80s, rather than in the low 90s.

I acknowledge that some good action was taken to try to alleviate the problem, including the promotion of online registration. However, much more could and should have been done, but it was not. We know now that two out of three polling stations in the last general election turned away people who wanted to vote—people who were almost certainly entitled to vote but who were not registered to do so and therefore could not. We know that 186,000 people who did register to vote during the course of the last general election campaign did so but did it too late to exercise their votes in that election. So there is a serious problem with perhaps 7.5 million people missing from the electoral registers, and up to 4 million of those are thought to be young people. They will all be unable to vote in the European referendum unless they register to vote by the 7 June deadline.

The problem was made worse by the Government’s sudden decision last summer to bring forward full implementation of the individual electoral registration system and exclude up to 1.9 million people from the voting registers, specifically against the advice of the independent Electoral Commission. The Government appeared to be so keen to remove entries from the electoral register that even noble Lords such as noble Lord, Lloyd-Webber, were apparently flown in from all over the world in a great endeavour to attend the House of Lords and vote specifically to prevent many people who would probably have been entitled to be on the electoral registers remaining on them until the end of this year. We still do not know how many people were really affected by that change, but if the result of the referendum is close, the Prime Minister might regret making it in order to unfairly influence the outcome of the Boundary Commission’s processes in his party’s favour.

Much good work is being done on this issue by the voluntary organisations Bite the Ballot and HOPE not hate. I hope the Minister will not just agree that their work is commendable but actively support all their efforts. They are organising a national voter registration drive in the week before the 7 June deadline. The Government have the capacity, for example, to try to make sure that many more people, including all public sector workers, are reminded that if they are not registered, they need to do so by 7 June if they are to be able to vote on 23 June, or earlier if they vote by post.

As this debate has shown, however, there are many problems with trying to identify and register people in the immediate run-up to any election or vote, so we need to look at solutions such as those put forward in the Missing Millions report, co-produced by Bite the Ballot. I hope the Minister will meet with representatives of the organisations involved in producing that report and with members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation to discuss taking forward some of their 25 different proposals to address the problem of under-representation.

It should be made easy to check online to see if you are registered to vote. All students should be registered as part of the enrolment process for their courses, as already happens in some institutions. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, said, all schools in Great Britain should follow the example of schools in Northern Ireland, where students register to vote as part of citizenship education classes. Young people being notified of their national insurance number should be told at the same time that they should use this information to register to vote, and possibly also in order to assist with their credit rating. Above all, the forms for registration need to be standardised according to best practice, the penalties for non-compliance explained explicitly and the benefits of registration made clear.

We should do all that we can to ensure that everyone entitled to vote in the referendum can do so. We must also work to make sure that everyone entitled to vote is registered to do so in the future.

Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, two very different arguments are being advanced today about the purpose of this statutory instrument. The government position, if I may paraphrase it, is that it is simply a tidying-up of the voting registers. However, the position of most of the parties and of the independent Electoral Commission is that it is wrong in principle to remove people from those registers prior to elections in much of the country next May, and in particular in advance of the start of the Boundary Commission’s work on drawing up new constituency boundaries. All the measures just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, are welcome but could not be done within the next five weeks, before the Boundary Commissions start work on the new boundaries based on the electoral registers as of 1 December 2015. That date cannot be changed.

The Government’s position must be called into question because of the suddenness with which they laid this order before Parliament, at almost the last possible moment specified in the legislation, only a few days before the Summer Recess, without consulting any of the bodies with elections next May, and in the face of unequivocal opposition from the Electoral Commission, which advises us independently on such matters.

Three years ago, work by the Cabinet Office showed that our electoral registers were far less complete than we had been led to believe. We now know that today’s registers are no more complete than they were then. Perhaps 8 million people who should be on them are missing. The evidence for this—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs—is that we know from the census figures how many people there are aged over 18 in the United Kingdom, and we know that there are far fewer people on the voting registers. The advice of the independent Electoral Commission is that, even with these 1.9 million people included, there may be another 8 million who exist but are not yet included. The Government are seeking to make that problem worse by removing from the register up to 1.9 million people who are currently on the register before the end of this year.

In our debates in the House about electoral registration and administration almost three years ago, it was generally recognised that there is a small but not very significant problem with a few people who are on the register but should not be. There is a much bigger problem, however, with people who should be on the registers but are missing from them. This House decided, after much debate and on the basis of the government amendment, that the appropriate date for finally removing people from the electoral register if they had not completed the individual registration process was 1 December 2016. Much is made in our debates in this place about the need for compromise and consensus, and the date of 1 December 2016 was agreed as a compromise to allow the process of individual registration to proceed. At the same time, the compromise amendment, which came from the Government, gave specific power to either House of Parliament to say no if a future Government sought to speed up the process in the way that is being proposed, which would exclude a significant number of people from the voting registers, unless it was convinced that the process of individual electoral registration was so successful that it could be brought forward.

We know that the electoral register is no more complete now than three years ago. It is suggested that none of these 1.9 million people are real people and that they should not be included on the electoral rolls, but that is not the case, as is evidenced by the fact that the other 8 million people, who we know exist, should be on the registers but are missing from them. Many of these 1.9 million people will have voted in the general election in May, and it is possible to check from the marked registers who actually voted in that election. The Government have acted with suspicious and unseemly haste in suddenly proposing that these people be excluded from next year’s elections and, perhaps most importantly, from consideration when new constituency boundaries are proposed.

Part of the problem is that many of these 1.9 million people do not understand that they need to return the forms that are sent to them. The forms do not properly explain the obligation to co-operate with the process or the benefits in doing so. Independent research by the Electoral Commission shows that most people believe that the electoral registration process is automatic and does not require any action at all on their part. Most people not on the register do not know that they are not on the register and will not receive polling cards telling them how to vote in a future election.

Those of us with experience of canvassing in elections—and there are many of us across the House—know that more than one or two calls at the door are required in order to speak to every individual within a household, especially if those calls are being made to properties in multiple occupation and when people are unlikely to be at home. It may be cheaper and easier for some returning officers to have to deal with fewer people on the voting lists, but that would be the wrong priority because it would mean effectively excluding many people from the democratic process. The Electoral Commission advises us from its independent viewpoint that it is not safe in democratic terms to remove these people from the electoral rolls prematurely. If the Government were, as they say, simply seeking to improve the accuracy of the electoral registers, they might have consulted the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the London Assembly or local government in advance of proposing changes to the registers that will be used for elections next year, but they did not, and they have subsequently not received backing from any of those bodies.

Many of the people who will be removed from the registers are in urban areas and in London in particular. The London Assembly debated this very issue, overwhelmingly rejected these plans and asked us to do so as well. It may be argued that making changes to our democratic processes and the rules for the conduct of elections are not our business, but it was our business that insisted three years ago on the date of 1 December 2016 for full implementation of the new voter registration system, not the date that is now proposed. We agreed then with a government amendment that the date could not be brought forward if either House objected. What is now proposed follows from the fact that we have a Government who were elected with the support of less than 25% of the electorate. Instead of trying to increase that level of support, the Government now seek to remove people less likely to support them from the voting registers. Most importantly, in the long run, they seek to ensure that in future there will be fewer constituencies that can be won by their opponents. They seek to make the system less fair, not the other way round.

It is clear that many, if not most, of the people to be removed from the electoral registers are young or living in the private rented sector or may not have English as their first language or are simply the least literate. Those people who would be omitted from the register are concentrated in urban areas and they are known to be less likely to vote Conservative. I suggest that the biggest reason for the proposed change is to ensure that more Conservative parliamentary seats are created in future while people who do not vote Conservative are represented by fewer MPs.

[Lord Dobbs]

I promise not to interrupt again, but this is a very important point which goes to the heart of this matter. The noble Lord has talked at great length about all of these people who will be disenfranchised. Can he please identify a single real person? Otherwise, we have to dismiss this as simple hyperbole. It is a little rich for us to have a lecture from the noble Lord’s mouth about electoral advantage as he is well known for his love of electoral advantage. Can he please nominate a single, real, living, flesh-and-blood individual? If he could identify one, I would welcome changing my mind.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, as I was saying only a few moments ago, it would be technically simple and easy to prove the existence of these people. As the noble Lord will know from his vast experience of elections, the marked register of exactly who goes to a polling station and marks their X on a ballot paper is publicly available afterwards. Returning officers know these people—there are 20,000 of them in the London Borough of Lambeth alone—and it would not be difficult to look and see how many of them actually voted. We know that there are very few people on the register who should not be there compared to the millions whom we know, from independent advice, are missing. They do exist.

The primary purpose of the Government’s proposal is to change the way in which the Boundary Commissions would propose new constituencies. This is happening now because the four UK Boundary Commissions all have to work on the basis of the electoral register as it is on 1 December 2015. If up to 1.9 million people are removed from the registers, there will be fewer constituencies in future which are unlikely to return Conservative MPs. It is as simple as that. The proposal is grossly unfair. We know that millions of people in these categories are missing from the electoral rolls, and their existence should be taken into account if we really want to have fairness in terms of constituencies of equal size, which is a Conservative manifesto commitment from the last election.

The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 specifically gave either House of Parliament the power to say no if a future Government sought to bring forward the agreed date for full implementation of electoral registration. The electoral register is not any more complete, in terms of including all those who should be on it, than it was then. It would be much less complete if this proposal, which undermines democratic principles, goes ahead. We should not let it.

Constitution: Gracious Speech

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Labour Party’s continuing interest in constitutional matters, as reflected in its choice of subject for this debate.

In the period before the election of the last Labour Government in 1997, I was the joint secretary of the committee examining constitutional reform that was established by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties and chaired jointly by the late Robin Cook and my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart. That committee demonstrated then that cross-party work in opposition could help to deliver real measures of reform when a Government are then willing to act to improve the health of our democracy. Contrary to the view expressed a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, I believe that the committee agreed a coherent programme. Our work helped to prepare for the rapid introduction of legislation for the creation of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the London Assembly, all of which use forms of proportional representation, as well as the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law and the establishment of freedom of information legislation.

When that committee was established, we agreed that it is dangerous for any one party to propose on its own what it considers to be reforming changes to the constitution. That is why I am so committed to the principle of a constitutional convention, as currently proposed in the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed. The experience of the Scottish constitutional convention, in that same pre-1997 period, also showed the benefits of the involvement of civic society, working with people in all parties committed to making our country more democratic, enabling home rule, devolving power and making government at different levels more representative of the people who vote for it.

The Labour Government who were elected in 1997 failed, however, to deliver on their manifesto promise of a referendum on proportional representation—something very different from the system offered in the referendum four years ago. After introducing proportional representation for the 1999 European Parliament elections, progress on constitutional reform then faltered. The late and very much missed Lord Jenkins of Hillhead referred, in a report commissioned by the Labour Government proposing an alternative electoral system for Westminster, to the rich cornucopia of fruits delivered to the Labour Party in that 1997 landslide which caused a diminution of its interest in voting reform for the House of Commons. It is regrettable that the efforts put into the Jenkins commission by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, as he has just referred to, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, were spurned by those in their own party who probably considered at that time that the Labour Party had become invulnerable in general elections. They could not think that now.

Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes made by my own party in its 27-year existence was its failure at that time to accept the Labour Government’s offer of the alternative vote system, which was clearly being made as an alternative to the promised referendum on a proportional system. I begged my noble friend Lord Ashdown, who was leader at the time, not to reject such an offer. However, when the AV system was offered to the people four years ago, the referendum clearly killed off the prospects of adopting it as the sole means of electing Members of the House of Commons in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the election last month of another majority Conservative Government with a minority vote of just under 37% has again awakened interest in the subject of voting reform, at least among those parties that between them received over 63% of the vote, but also among those who do not want to see one-party states established in the parts of the UK towards which more power is now being devolved. I suspect that it was the distorting effect of first past the post in Scotland last month that has particularly caused some figures within the Labour Party again to consider voting reform. It simply cannot be right that 50% of the vote for the SNP in Scotland entitled it to 95% of Scottish MPs.

I noted carefully some of the contributions made in the debate on the gracious Speech by some Labour Members of the House. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws, spoke then and today of her work with the Power commission, which recommended moving away from first past the post and giving the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds, and made significant suggestions for the reform of the funding of political parties—all of which should now be addressed in a constitutional convention. In that debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea, said:

“We are in a constitutional mess”,

and that,

“we have to look again at the voting system that produces such a result”.—[Official Report, 1/6/15; cols. 229-30.]

I always listen with particular interest to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, although we have often disagreed in the past about the issue of voting reform. The noble Lord described himself in that debate as having been a “Neanderthal” or “dinosaur” when it comes to first past the post, but he agreed that we must look at the issue again, and in a comprehensive way, through the vehicle of a constitutional convention. The noble Lord, Lord Elder, who is much respected, speaking with what he described as “fear and trepidation”, acknowledged that,

“the present system, which has given absolute power to a Government with only just over a third of the votes cast and denies effective representation to other parties which have polled millions, is no longer fit for purpose”.—[Official Report, 1/6/15; col. 222.]

I could not put it better.

Finally, I will refer briefly to the absence of any proper democratic accountability in the current proposals for mayors to control combined local authorities. The present proposals will in effect provide for one-party states, which cannot be good for the governance of those authorities. That is why my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Tyler are tabling amendments to the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill to provide for elections on a fair basis, so that representative bodies will be able to hold such mayors properly to account in an open and democratic way.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I agree that the sunset clause would have been preferable; but this could be helpful, although it may well be that there is insufficient experience after a period of five to six years to enable a satisfactory review. It might possibly have been preferable if the amendment had provided that, so long as the Act remained on the statute book, the Prime Minister had to arrange for a review to take place in the first year of each Parliament. I fear, however, that the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, could be unhelpful in that it risks stirring up Zac Goldsmith and others who think as he does and want constituents to be able to launch the process of recall between elections simply because they dislike the politics or the personality of their Member of Parliament. That would be an immensely dangerous thing for representative government. I am rather surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, should be giving his name to something that could prove so rabble-rousing. I am grateful to him none the less for putting forward this amendment.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the sentiments expressed by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. I very much hope that the Minister will perhaps, in this short debate, explain to us how the Government think this legislation should be reviewed, given the many potential traps within it that have been outlined during the various stages of our debate. A little earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tried to entice me and others to support his amendment on the basis that the Labour Back Benches agreed with the Labour Front Bench. I have never found the proposition of the Labour Back Benches agreeing with their Front Bench automatically to be an enticement to support the arguments that they have put forward. In relation to this Bill, I have noted that, on occasions when the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench are agreed on a piece of legislation, but across all parts of the House great reservations are expressed about how the legislation might actually work in practice, as opposed to in the theory of the party leaders—who perhaps in haste have agreed to introduce measures such as this—we should keep that legislation under proper review. We always talk about the need for more post-legislative scrutiny, and I would very much like to hear from the Minister how the Government think that might be undertaken in this case.

[Lord Grocott]

I would have preferred the amendment of my noble friend Lord Soley, but this one is eminently sensible. The idea of a review after six years appeals to me. I put in an early bid to be a member of the reviewing committee, so that I could have the great pleasure of pointing out that the whole operation really was a waste of time, and being able to employ my favourite phrase: “I told you so”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rennard]

It presumably works when I agree with the noble Baroness’s arguments. Sadly, I may not on this amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

There may have been others when the noble Lord did.

As we said earlier, the idea of reviewing the Bill—in that case it was to see how it fitted with the cases taken to the electoral court—seems entirely sensible. It is a new part of our democratic structure and one that could impact both on how MPs see their role and how constituents view their ability to hold MPs to account. While the Act is new, we will need to see whether it achieves the aims set for it. We must also review whether, as we fear and as the House has heard, big money could enter the equation; or, failing that, whether local electors who participated in a recall feel empowered by it or cheated by it, or that it was not what they expected. Anyway, we think that all Bills should be subject to some post-legislative scrutiny to ensure that they solve whatever they were set up to meet, and we support a review once the process has been used.

What surprises me is that the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Tyler, who is not in his place, should want a review in the hands of a committee with an in-built Commons majority. As my noble friend Lord Kennedy said just now, we foresee a bigger role for an independent organisation, the Electoral Commission, in reviewing the workings of the Act, should it ever be used. Therefore, I am particularly surprised that an eminent academic, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, does not want a more vigorous and independent look at the operation of the Act. I am equally surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who in Committee argued for an independent trigger out of the hands of MPs, now wants a review conducted by a Committee with a majority of MPs. Sadly, he is not here to explain himself.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Finkelstein]

It may be that he or she would be deselected by their party but I did not really understand the relevance of the argument, even though I comprehended what my noble friend was trying to say. A Member of Parliament can stand in the by-election caused by this trigger. I cannot, nor can any noble Lord, compel a political party or anybody else to support them in that by-election. If they have a good case and feel that they want to put it to a by-election, they can. It is not the business of the Bill, or indeed the mechanism, to consider whether they might hypothetically have the support of a political party in that by-election appeal.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

Will my noble friend not consider that a by-election cannot be an anti-recall petition in the 85% of constituencies where a majority of votes are cast against the sitting Member? It can hardly be an anti-recall petition when it is assumed that the number of opponents of the MP at the previous election normally greatly outweighs the number of their supporters.

[Lord Finkelstein]

I understand the point that the noble Lord is making. It is not a pure mechanism, merely on recall; that point has been made by other Members. But it is a better mechanism for testing the broad support for the Member than a counterpetition which, under this proposal, has only to reach 10% before it cancels the petition in favour of having the by-election at all. The by-election is a better mechanism for the Member of Parliament’s attributes to be debated and considered by the electorate than a counterpetition, which would not even have the merits of constituting the whole of the constituency.