Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Rooker Excerpts(14 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord McNally
I think that the Electoral Commission will publish some guidance on the conduct of the referendum, but it certainly will not make any judgment on the question to be put before the people. The one thing that I do remember about the 1975 referendum is that it gave a resounding 2:1 yes vote.
Lord Rooker
According to the Bill, the Electoral Commission is going to produce a leaflet explaining the AV system; it will go through every front door in the country. We would like to see a draft of that leaflet, because that is where the value judgments come in. How will it explain this rigged, dishonest AV system, which is so open to abuse? As I have said, I will be forced to vote for first past the post if that is the alternative.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
I referred earlier to New Zealand, where an official leaflet explaining the system was provided. Afterwards, there was a great argument about whether it had been impartial.
Lord Rooker
My noble friend should turn over the page and see sub-paragraph (2) at the top of page 20. That is permissive, whereas the paragraph that my noble friend read out is compulsory. There is a real problem in paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 about the leaflet and the information. There will be a long debate on sub-paragraphs (1) and (2) of paragraph 9 when we get to it, because what is in the Bill seems quite contradictory to me.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The offences under paragraph 8 are knowledge and ought-to-know offences. Can the noble Lord give some indication, because it will obviously be important to the people involved, of what circumstances will determine whether the sanction is civil or criminal? The offences have maximum terms. What is the maximum civil sanction that can be applied? Who will determine whether it is a civil sanction or a criminal sanction?
Lord McNally
I have been around Whitehall and Westminster only for about 40 years, but during the whole of that time people from the Opposition Benches have stood up and made that speech about various bits of legislation. In fact, as noble Lords opposite will know, the time offered in the other place for scrutiny of the Bill was positively extravagant, matched only by the verbosity and time-wasting of the spokesmen for the Opposition, who used every opportunity to waste time exactly so that somebody at this end could make the complaint that the noble Lord has just made—and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, knows that more than most.
Lord Rooker
When I took this Bill on holiday to read in the summer, it was 153 pages. When it arrived in this House, it was 300. Yet the Minister has the brass neck to say that the other place was time-wasting, when the Bill doubled because of 286 government amendments that were put into the Bill in the House of Commons. Come off it!
Lord Lipsey
Perhaps I might make a helpful suggestion to the Minister to move things on, because we are getting into other waters. He said something incredibly helpful just now: that this is intended to give part of the powers to be exercised by a Secretary of State for Scotland and a Secretary of State for Wales—by a territorial Minister; that is what the noble Lord said, as he will find when he checks in Hansard—and part of them to be exercised by the Lord President. That is perfectly sensible and a very good description. All he therefore needs to do is to agree to introduce at the next stage of the Bill an amendment that makes that clear and we can move on.
Lord McNally
I have been around this Parliament for 40 years and I do not need lectures from the noble and learned Lord about respect for its traditions and for its importance. I did not suggest anything other than something he knows darn well. For as long as I have been here, and long before, Governments have brought in guillotines and Oppositions have complained about lack of time and scrutiny. That is all that I said. That is all that is in Hansard. I am not going to take lectures from the noble and learned Lord about respect for this Parliament and its institutions. I have given my life to this. I believe in it passionately. I respect it as much as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, respects it. No more, no less. But I am not being lectured to or allowing my words to be twisted. I am simply saying something that every noble Lord knows is a simple truth—nothing more, nothing less—and certainly with no disrespect to Parliament.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I have understood the Minister to say that the interventions by Members of Parliament down in the House of Commons were done for time-wasting purposes. I regard that as expressing contempt for their contributions. That is what I was suggesting he might think about withdrawing.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I am surprised that my little amendment has developed into the excitement that we have enjoyed in Committee for the past few minutes. I have one serious point to make. I ask the Minister to reconsider his attack—maybe he did not mean the words, I do not know—on a particular individual at the other end who is a colleague of mine in the opposition justice team. It is an unwarranted attack on an individual. If the noble Lord wants to attack tactics, that is fine, but do not attack an individual, a Member of Parliament, for doing what most of us would consider to be his duty—and indeed what the noble Lord did so well when he was sitting on the Opposition Benches just a few months ago. Before I withdraw the amendment, I ask the Minister to consider—
Lord Rooker
I do not want to prolong this, but this is the result of this place not having a Speaker. In the other place, if anybody down there had said about somebody up here what was said by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, the Speaker would have ruled it out of order. You are not allowed to criticise named Members of this place down in the other place. There is no benefit to it, because we do not get anywhere doing it. We have no Speaker here to stop that kind of immature comment and we ought to have.
Lord Grocott
Since the degree to which we are genuine is being tested at the moment, the House will simply have to accept my absolute, total, 100 per cent, categorical—I cannot think of any other adjectives—assurance that when I tabled this amendment, I did so, believe it or not, because I thought that it would be a better referendum if the results were declared by constituency, which is never normally a problem in general elections. It came as a surprise to me that the Electoral Commission thought that there would be all sorts of administrative problems in doing so, particularly—I am repeating myself now, I know—because time and again local elections and parliamentary constituency elections have been held on the same day.
I hope that the Minister’s notes do not say that this is just another silly amendment from the Opposition and that it should be knocked down. I hope that he recognises that there are people who have lived and worked in areas of this country, many of them for generations, who are used to the system under which they are operating and who wish to cast their vote—though not enough of them, I believe, as I fear that the turnout will not be very high. Still, there is a good possibility, although perhaps this is wishful thinking, that the majority will decide that they think the system under which they have been operating is quite good, and they should be allowed to express their own views within their own individual constituencies. That is all that my amendment is trying to do. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker
My Lords, I did not really see the significance of my noble friend’s amendment when I was reading through the Bill, and I missed this.
I am thinking back. I know that we are going to be told that the 1975 referendum was not declared by constituency. If I remember rightly, one of the arguments used at the time was, “It would be very uncertain if MPs who had campaigned on one issue about the EU found that their constituents had gone against them”. I recall it being a bit mixed up. I was part of the no campaign, in that sense—I certainly voted no, anyway. In this case, though, the issue is very personal to the MPs concerned because it is about their voting system.
Take the districts. I used to represent part of Birmingham. The whole of the city gets lumped together, no one gets embarrassed about which way a particular constituency has gone and everything is in the melting pot. It is easier to count when all the constituencies have been lumped together, but where does that leave the Members of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elected on that day? They will be out campaigning. The results will be declared in their constituencies for AV or not. So, you will be covering it up for some so as not to cause embarrassment, but not for others.
I am unaware of a constituency called “the Isles of Scilly”. If I remember right, the Isles of Scilly are part of a constituency on the mainland. That is my understanding. Why on earth are they singled out in this way? On Northern Ireland, I hope that we will not have the argument about there being an east and a west and a green and an orange. We do not want any arguments about which constituency went which way. We do not want any arguments about lumping it all together. You cannot use all these arguments to defend this set of voting declarations. Whichever you use for one is contradicted by the other.
It cannot be being done for the administrative convenience for the Electoral Commission. It is not doing the counting. The counting officers are doing the counting—a well-oiled machine, highly sophisticated in counting votes in this country based on wards and constituencies. I freely admit that a little bit went wrong but not on the counts. Why deviate from that? Why deviate from the tried and tested system that we know works for counting? People know where to go. They know where their counts are. The type of people who do the counting go to the same place virtually every year and are almost on a permanent contract. Why interfere with a system that works? I have offered up some of the issues.
I would like an explanation about the City of London. Normally when there is a count for the constituency, are we referring to the City of London as the city or as the constituency of the City of London, because it is not quite the same, is it? I am not certain. I am a bit out of touch. Is it a constituency or not? I am not certain why the Inner and the Middle Temples should be treated differently. It is reasonable to have an explanation for each one of these because the answer to one has to contradict the answer to another. So I await with interest the response of the noble Lord, Lord McNally.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I support my noble friend Lord Grocott. This referendum is to be about the choice of a parliamentary voting system, so it is bizarre not to declare the results on the basis of parliamentary constituencies. If it were a referendum about how local government is organised, one might see some sense in the stipulations—districts, counties, London boroughs and so forth—that are set out in Clause 7(2). However, those units are irrelevant to the question at issue in this referendum, so my noble friend’s case is self-evidently sensible.
I also join my noble friend in his mild but firm stricture on the intervention of the Electoral Commission. The proper responsibility of Parliament is to ensure that the system put forward in this Bill is well designed. The expedience for the Government of ensuring that the referendum takes place on 5 May must be a secondary consideration. I would have hoped that the Electoral Commission would also want to make it its priority that the system that it is there to oversee and to administer is appropriately designed. I am disappointed that it has not done so in this case.
Lord McNally
I stand by the case for administrative convenience, but the fact that there will be a national vote, not individual constituency decisions, is the important issue. In fact, I had forgotten, until the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, helpfully reminded me, that the referendum in 1975 was not declared on a constituency basis, partly because the whole point of a referendum on an issue such as this is to get a national decision. These provisions are designed to make the voting process easier and more straightforward.
Lord Rooker
I accept that. However, the referendum in 1975 was to make a decision on whether the country—I repeat, the country—should stay in the EU or not. On 5 May next year, the issue is whether 650 individual constituencies should use a different voting system.
Lord Rooker
Of course it is. Therefore, people are entitled to know at a local level. While the noble Lord is on this point, I should say that only the count is affected here. If there is a delay in the count, so what? The Electoral Commission cannot delay when the voting take place, but what happens after the close of polls and the way that the votes are counted is what my noble and learned friend is on about. If it takes another half a day to count the votes and divide them, so what? That cannot delay the poll. It cannot affect the target date of 5 May, can it?
Lord McNally
I am not sure that I accept the argument that there is an overwhelming interest in knowing the results of a national decision constituency by constituency.
Lord Rooker
Perhaps MPs should have a free vote when the Bill returns to the other place. Let them decide; after all, they are the ones with the supreme vested interest. There is no interest more vested for an MP than their constituency boundaries and knowing what their constituents actually feel.
Lord McNally
As the noble Lord said, they have a vested interest. I want to make a national decision in the national interest.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Rooker Excerpts(14 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Rooker
Does the noble Lord, Lord McNally, agree that the answer to the question, “How long is the grass?”, is, “Can you see the giraffe”?
Lord McNally
I had not noticed the noble Lord come in. I was so relieved that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was not here that I had forgotten about the noble Lord.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Rooker Excerpts(14 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Kennedy referred to instilling the habit of voting. My fear is that the subject of this referendum will instil the habit of not voting. I certainly do not detect any overwhelming interest from the younger generation in the alternative vote or in any other technical form of voting in this country. If they do not vote on the first occasion when they are given the opportunity to do so, the danger is that they will form a habit of not voting. That is the real problem.
The genesis of this whole thing is the Faustian pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Liberals have this magnificent obsession with structures. It is not an obsession that a great number of people in this country share but they consider it the unfinished business of Lloyd George. They were prepared to do anything to change the voting system, while allowing the Conservative Party to have free rein in all its attacks on our welfare system.
I cannot imagine young people for a moment being interested in going to this vote. From over 30 years as a Member of Parliament in the other place, trying desperately to get people to vote in difficult parts of the constituency—we sometimes had, alas, a very sad turnout—I cannot imagine even a tiny proportion of those individuals bothering to vote and, if they do not, I certainly see no serious interest or enthusiasm among younger people. That is my starting point.
However, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayter. She led me along a silken path with her felicitous words until I was almost persuaded; alas, not quite. I have form in this, because many years ago I promoted a Private Member’s Bill in the other place to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18. I was before my time, as it were, because it was before that view became a consensus. Sadly, the Bill was talked out, but there was a very logical case to move from 21 to 18 at that point because, about then, the legal age of majority had been changed—I believe that it was by a royal commission—and it was wholly consistent with that that the voting age should also be reduced from 21 to 18.
Lord Rooker
I should like to bring my noble friend Lord Anderson around to supporting my noble friend Lady Hayter because, while I am sceptical as well, this is not about votes at 16. It is about allowing the people who will be 18 at the end of a fixed-term Parliament to vote for the voting system that will be used then. If it were not for the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, which gives this some intellectual credence—and it is the same gang bringing in that Bill—we would not be asking the people who we know will be 18 at the end of this Parliament to choose the voting system. This is not about votes at 16, so my noble friend can support my other noble friend if this matter is pushed.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
I look on my noble friend’s intervention with considerable respect, as I do all the matters that he raises. Clearly, he raises an important point. The essence of what I was saying is that, whereas from 21 to 18 there was a logical stopping point, I see no such point in going from 18 to 16. Indeed, I ask rhetorically where it will stop. The real reformers—the people trying desperately to be radical—will ask, “Why stop at 16?”. It may not perhaps go down to babes and sucklings but next they will suggest, incrementally, “Well, having had 16, why not 15 because we want to encourage people to take part in politics?”. They will ask, “After all, this is a newly politicised generation; did we not see schoolchildren on the streets last week?”. Yes, but I am not sure whether those schoolchildren—we are now, I think, meant to call them school students—were or are likely to be worried about alternative votes, or a voting system of STV, or whatever it is.
Lord Rooker
There is an easy solution to that. I think it is the case—I do not have children but I was at the DSS—that when you are 16 you are issued with your national insurance number. You are known about on the system. It would be easy for the DWP to know where all 16 year-olds are because it would be about to issue their national insurance numbers. That argument, with respect, is not a valid one.
Could the noble Lord also address the London issue? He skated over that when talking about the second election. The greatest density of voters in this country is in the 100-odd constituencies in London—the capital of the country, where there is no other election next May. The damage to possible turnout because there is not another election could be catastrophic. The 15 per cent who will not be voting are not evenly spread over the country. Has the noble Lord thought about that?
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
I take the noble Member’s point. However, the concentration of the media—the London-centred media—makes it highly likely that London is the least likely part of the country to be unaware of what is happening, or not to have been stimulated by the press, including television and radio, into recognising the importance of the issue. I envisage that being the proper possibility in other parts of the country, where other elections are happening. It is conceivable in Scotland, for example, that the voting system for Westminster will not be regarded as the first priority; rather, the structure of the Scottish Parliament and which Government will take their place in Scotland will. So, I do not altogether go along with the noble Lord.
The suggestion that national insurance numbers could be used would be unlikely to lead to an outcome that carried much conviction.
Lord Rooker
Forgive me but that was not my point. The noble Lord was saying that we could not get 16 year-olds on to the register in time. The fact is that they are on a register now. It would be very easy to transfer them to the electoral register. It is known in government, electronically, where they are because they are about to be issued with an NI number. I am not suggesting that the NI number is used for voting but it would be very easy to put them on to the electoral register.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
I would be interested to hear the views of the Electoral Commission on that. I do not regard myself as an expert on these matters but I doubt it is quite as easy as that, given that the timing for the Bill becoming law is decreasingly clear.
My final point may not carry so much weight but I believe that our 16 year-olds are increasingly very interested in politics, which is why I want to see a change in the voting age. However, I do not believe that in a few months’ time they are likely to be able to discriminate between different electoral systems when they have not been thinking about voting. It is highly improbable that even their teachers would be in a position to give them guidance on the virtues and merits of different electoral systems. We have heard arguments being put forward on the Benches opposite and conflicts between the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others about the merits of the supplementary vote as opposed to the alternative vote, or various kinds of alternative vote. Without prior discussion or only the most minimal educational input on this issue, it is extremely improbable that 16 year-olds would add greatly to the authority of the decision to be taken next May, if that is the date decided upon. Therefore, for the three reasons that I have given, I would prefer to see the system of voting change and for subsequent referenda to follow the electoral register.
House of Lords: Working Practices
Lord Rooker Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Lord Rooker
My Lords, the title of the debate includes the words, “the case for reviewing”. I think that the case was made before we started. Therefore, we can limit the evidence we have to give because the Leader’s Group will look at it in some detail. I do not think that we can escape the fact that questions will have to be asked about what we are here for. It will get inexorably linked with the other debate that we are going to have. I have been here eight years. Some of us on the informal groups—last year, I had the privilege of being on one of them—asked: how do you get any change in this place? That was the starting point. Who do you go to? What do you do? What is the infrastructure to get some change? We discovered that it was not there. In the other place, there is more of a structure. I was told about the Procedure Committee, but others advised me that that was not the proper route.
I have two words at the top and the bottom of my notes, which I would ask the Leader’s Group to think about. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours knows what I am going to say. The words are “trial” and “pilot”. Do not come back with anything that looks like it will last for ever because the House will not buy it. To be honest, that is my experience. Offer every suggestion that comes to the House on a trial basis, perhaps until the next Parliament, for the whole of a Parliament or for a Session, depending on the menu. I do not think that the Members of this place, who are by and large more experienced than me, if I may put it that way, and slightly more conservative with a small “c”, want to buy a lot of change. But trial and pilot should be offered and we can see how we go. The way to get change is quietly.
I am very pleased that the third report on governance is encompassed in this. To be honest, I had no involvement in that whatever. Like everyone else, I read the report when it was produced and it worried me more than the other two. I say that because people in this House who have experience on outside bodies that are governed by codes of practices and procedures for appointment and governance and finance do not recognise what they have read in that report. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and her team were right to bring those matters to the House and I hope that they will find some favour with the Leader’s Group. But at the least they should be put to the House because, in the end, Peers have to decide these things.
I think it would be whistling in the wind to think that, if we ever get elected Peers—I do not want to get into that debate—they will arrive here and not use the powers. The restraints we put on ourselves will go out of the window, a point touched on by the Leader of the House in his opening gambit. If we are going to have some rules, we have to codify them, otherwise it will be absolute chaos.
I am not going to speak for long so I shall make just a couple of points. The issue I raised last year in the debate on the Queen’s Speech was about having flagged up the bits of Bills that have not been looked at before arriving here from the Commons. That idea came to me while I was driving home one day when the House was not even sitting. I would have had a job explaining that to Bill Cockburn and his committee, who asked us what we did as Peers—how we clock on and clock off and so on. I was thinking about how we could make Bills better. I realise that someone has had a look at this suggestion and I know that it is not as simple as it appears, although it has a seductive appeal. I realise that sometimes a clause of two lines can bring in a schedule that might be 50 pages long. Which bits would you say were not debated? Generally speaking, if there is an elephant at the door, we recognise it, and therefore I think we can recognise the parts of the Bill that have not been debated or scrutinised, and then we can choose whether to look at them. We may decide that it does not need to be done, but those parts need to be flagged up in a systematic way. I cannot believe that there is not a way of doing that, and it is important.
For Bills that start in this place—personally, I do not think that they should, although that argument is not going to carry the day—certainly we need different procedures. Some major Bills have started in this place. The Climate Change Bill started here because I brought it to the House, as did the 2002 police reform legislation. It is true that politically contentious Bills generally do not start over here, but some major ones do, and we need to take a serious look at that.
The idea of a pre-legislative committee is also important. I do not want to criticise parliamentary counsel, but there is some slipshod work being done in Whitehall—under pressure from Ministers to get Bills before Parliament. Sometimes they say, “Slip it into the Lords first”. I have been there when these discussions have taken place. Parliamentary counsel say, “We’re not quite ready”, and they are told, “That’s all right. Put it in the Lords. They can sort it out because they have got more time and are more flexible than we are”. That is not an effective way to produce good legislation for our fellow citizens. It would be a power to parliamentary counsel if we had that kind of committee.
I would not have raised the next issue if it were not for what happened today—and I have sat through all the debates today, including on the Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Cope, might say that we all failed, but no one was brave enough to stand up at the beginning of the Statement and say something when one of our Members took 25 per cent of the time available to the whole House.
Lord Rooker
Only after the event, and that is the difficulty. The argument for taking Statements in Grand Committee is powerfully made. Five minutes were taken up by one person when there are only 20 minutes for questions because there is no mechanism for getting some order into the system. If there was, I would not say anything, but going into Grand Committee is important.
I want to raise an issue which I know from some of the speeches is controversial. By the way, I agree with everything that has been said, but the role of the chair, particularly at Question Time, is not an unimportant matter. Between 2005 and 2007, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, was the Leader of the House and I was the Deputy Leader, I had responsibility for Question Time. I have kept all the daily papers from that time. I have got them in a box, and I know exactly who got called, when they were called, and their party, for every Question Time for those two years. I can produce the figures. They were difficult to do, but nevertheless I kept all the papers because I just walked out of here and chucked them into a box.
Lord Rooker
No, no. There was almost a competition between us. My noble friend Lady Amos would say, “I once got 36 supplementary questions through. How many did you get today?”. I usually managed 24 or 25 supplementaries in half an hour, which is pretty good going when you think about what happened during the Statement today. I want to repeat a point I made last October in the debate on the Queen’s Speech. There is a serious problem in that with the expertise in this House and the range of Questions that can come up on a daily basis—we are not constrained like the other place—I think that there are hundreds of Members of this House who are reluctant to try to ask a supplementary question. That is because the method of doing so is to enter a bear pit.
I have no experience of it. In fact, last week I stood up for the first time ever and asked a supplementary question at Question Time. I had never done it before, and it was an easy one because no one else stood up. However, it can be a bear pit and many people just will not do it. But if you were to ask them whether they had something to say, they would reply, “Yes. I had a good point to make but I wasn’t prepared to join in. If I could have been called, I would take my luck with everyone else”. I know that this is a tricky one because, in a way, it would give the chair the authority of the Leader. It is important because I do not think there is another legislature anywhere in the world where the Executive decides who is asking the questions that scrutinise the Ministers. That is intrinsically wrong for a start. It has got to be a bad principle in terms of democracy. The Government decide which Member can ask the Government a question. I know it is done fairly because for two years I supervised it myself, but it looks wrong. The Lord Speaker could do it in terms of the blocks as people stand. My noble friend Lady Jones is not here, although I am pleased to see my noble friend Lord Grocott in his place.
When I referred to this last October, I said that I had not done any research on it, but I did say that we keep hearing from the same noble Lords at Question Time. After that, someone did some work on the figures, and we had them today. Over a whole Session, half of the supplementary questions—over 1,500 of them—were asked by 8 per cent of Peers, which is 57 Peers. The same people asked all those questions because they are prepared to bully and shout and intimidate others into sitting down. That cannot be conducive to proper scrutiny at Question Time. A few people dominate, and we know who they are because we see them all the while—the same 57 people ask half the supplementaries. So I appreciate the fact that that research was carried out.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
I would be interested to ask how many of them are women. I think that women are particularly intimidated by the way in which Question Time is conducted.
Lord Rooker
To be honest, there are quite a few women among the 57 Peers, but I do not want to go down that road, and I have reached the end of my time. I just think it puts people off.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Can I ask my noble friend where the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, comes in?
Lord Rooker
Many who would stand up if they could be called are put off, and they are world experts in the variety of issues that this House deals with. Peers should be asked about this, and I am pleased that when the Leader talked about how the silent majority were going to rule, I think that that is what he was referring to: those who are not here as opposed to those who speak. There ought to be some questionnaires from Leader’s Group asking people what they think before proposals are brought back to the House for decision.
I shall finish with my two key words. When decisions come back, pilot them and trial them. That way, we might make a bit of progress.
Lord McNally
I know what the votes were. You know what the votes were. I am just giving you the statistics.
I close this debate as Deputy Leader of the House and a loyal No. 2 to my noble friend. I am pleased to say that we approach our task today with a complete unity of purpose. I am delighted that he has given such priority to the reform of working practices so early in this Parliament. I am also pleased that he has chosen to do so in a way which benefits from the groundwork prepared by his predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. This debate and the announcement of the immediate setting-up of a Leader’s Group to look into the matter in the first few weeks of this Parliament means that the reform of working practices is more than a declaration of intent: it is work in progress. I am delighted to say that my noble friend has persuaded the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, a former chairman of the Constitution Committee, to be the chair of the Leader’s Group. He will lead it with the independence and rigour that it demands.
This has been a stimulating debate. Thanks to the customary enthusiasm that noble Lords have for this subject, nobody need fear that the Leader’s Group will be wanting for inspiration, advice or input. It is not my intention to set out the Government’s views on the suggestions that have been put forward by noble Lords—they are House matters for the Leader’s Group to reflect on—but I shall make brief mention of a few individual contributions. Many noble Lords paid tribute to the ad hoc working parties chaired by the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Filkin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, which originated from the Lord Speaker’s work in this area. The Hansard report for this debate will provide an excellent first evidence paper to the Leader’s Group.
Looking back even over the past 18 months, we have made a number of advances in this House’s ability to scrutinise legislation and to hold the Government to account. We have adopted an additional set of arrangements for scrutinising fast-track legislation, based on the recommendations of the Constitution Committee, which should ensure that the House has at its disposal the information it needs to give proper consideration to such Bills and to the case for fast-tracking legislation. We have introduced a new procedure for scrutinising national policy statements, an innovation intended to enhance the House’s ability to scrutinise government policy formulated under the Planning Act. We have put in place a panoply of procedures for exercising the new powers that the House now wields in respect of European Union policy and legislation as a result of the Lisbon treaty and the entry into force of the European Union (Amendment) Act. We have conducted successful experiments with Question Time for Secretaries of State. They were successful, and have not been abandoned. We just, at the moment, do not have any Secretaries of State in this House—hope springs eternal, as they say. We also have a new approach to scrutinising Law Commission Bills, which I very much welcome. I could go on. My point is simply that we have been steadily adding to the armoury of tools at our disposal, and I am confident that the Leader’s Group will both refine existing practices and propose new ones.
Lord Rooker
I am not aware that the House debated or voted on any of the examples the Minister just gave. Something has been missing for change, and this is why we were advised not to go down the Procedure Committee route. No one is asking the Leader’s Group to put the whole agenda forward but, when it has considered issues, it should bring to the House not just recommendations about those issues that it agrees with, but other issues for the House to decide. We do not want to be told that the Leader’s Group has agreed all these things and to be asked whether we agree with them. What about the things it may not have agreed with? The House might have a view and therefore it must make the final decision about what goes on the agenda, not the Leader’s Group.
Lord McNally
This House is its own master. The Leader’s Group will report to it, and there will be full discussion and a full debate. I gave a list of procedures that have been put to—oh! I have been passed a note; I have always wondered what these notes said.
Queen's Speech
Lord Rooker Excerpts(15 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Rooker
My Lords, I congratulate the new Ministers and I wish the coalition well. In fact, I hope that it works. Leaving aside the fact that the arithmetic did not provide an alternative to which the words “strong and stable” could be remotely attached, if it works—and, as I say, I hope it does—it will knock on the head once and for all the media threats to the British people at election time about what might happen if they vote the wrong way. I can see that work, and it is important.
I have supported fixed-term Parliaments a lot longer than I have supported proportional representation. I would have preferred four years, but I will vote for five because three is too short and six is too long. Five years is about right. My main reason has always been economic. If one looks back through the years, the UK economy has suffered massively over the decades by the manipulation of the economy to the electoral cycle as perceived by opinion polls and then the manipulation of the economic cycle to the electoral cycle. I cannot prove it, but I know that those factors have been taken into account over the decades, much to the detriment of the economy.
Fixing the term means that there has to be a built-in constraint to ensure that it works as intended and is not abused. A coalition breaking up mid-term does not mean, and should not allow, an abuse by the Prime Minister to go for a dissolution after perhaps a period of minority rule when the polls look good. There has to be a constraint built in. I will not go down the arguments. I will vote for a constraint and there will have to be a debate about the kind it will be. I would not support a simple majority, as happens now, because it is wide open to abuse within the system of a fixed term. Any constraint should have widespread support.
I also support a smaller House of Commons, which I said when I was a Member of that House. I would aim for 500 MPs, not 585. There is a built-in ratchet in the present system. With every boundary review it grows. The formula is such that it will never decrease, which is a problem. We are a UK Parliament and there should be a single quota for all constituencies. That should be the same throughout the UK. Everyone knows that under the present arrangement, and that of the past 20-odd years, there has been a built-in bias in the system which favours one party over another.
The simple fact is that people’s votes are not equal. They should be. That ought to be a guiding principle. I realise that MPs will complain that they cannot cope. Frankly, they will. Even with my 500 MPs, the quota of constituents for each would be only 88,000. I understand that the Government plan to have around 575 MPs, which would mean a quota of around 75,000. After a boundary change in 1983, my former constituency increased from 52,000 constituents to 76,000. Without all the resources that MPs have today, I managed to keep an eye on the Government and to bring my constituents’ problems to the Floor of the other place. I was, of course, a full-time MP, for which I do not apologise.
The key for the Deputy Prime Minister is to stop the wide variation in the size of seats, which is crucial. If it is left to the Boundary Commission, it will fail. It should not be charged with it. The rules have to be changed. I would not allow a variation of more than 5 per cent in total, plus or minus 2.5 per cent. It has to be as rigid as that in order to give the votes an equality of value throughout the country. I would warn him not to let it be left to political organisers who could fix those boundary changes even when they are held in public. All of us can have a view on this. That place down there is the people’s Commons. It is not the Members’ Commons. Therefore, although we do not have a vote, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said, we have got a view to put forward.
I will not go into the alternative vote. I made my position clear in the debate on 24 March. I oppose it on its own. I want a system that encourages people to vote for what they want as a first priority. The alternative vote does not do that. In fact, it makes tactical voting even worse because of the second part of the vote. It is not proportional. I will not support it and I hope that we can amend it as it goes through the House.
On Lords reform, electing Lords on proportional representation will make a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber far more representative of the people than the Commons. We should accept that, and the penny will drop soon enough. To be wholly or mainly elected means that we tear up the Parliament Act and do not use the conventions but the full powers of this House. Why should it be so constrained if it is fully elected? There is no argument for that. The reason for the constraint is the non-election of Lords. It is self-denying ordinance: we are not elected, therefore we must not use all the powers.
As ever, the answer is that we must clearly set out in legislation the powers and functions of a second Chamber and only then look at the composition of the House. It is cheap and immature politics to constantly talk only about the membership of the House without discussing these other important matters about a second Chamber. As I heard someone say earlier, it is time to visit the 2006 Joint Committee report on conventions of the UK Parliament. That report alluded only to the present state of play and said that if there was a change of composition and of the procedures, it should be revisited. That is absolutely crucial. I, too, ask: why would people stand for election if they do not know what the powers are? Why should the public vote for them when they know that they cannot vote them out at the next election because they are there for only a single term? However, all those issues are secondary to the functions and powers of the House. I would demand that at a suitable time we make that clear.
On Tuesday, I was very pleased to hear the Leader of the House refer to the workings of the House and to hear what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said today. I will say what I intended to say—I know that it has been mentioned by others, but when there is a good story it is worth repeating. It focuses in on the difficulties that some Ministers will have in discussions that will take place if they can quote what has been said. I know that that is important.
In my view, the job has been done on the workings of the House for the three Leaders and the Convenor. It is well known that last October the Lord Speaker hosted a seminar on the strengthening of Parliament, which resulted in three unofficial reports that were not led by the Lord Speaker. There was one on the scrutiny of primary legislation, one on non-legislative procedures and one, which should frighten everyone here who is involved in outside activities either in non-departmental public bodies or the private sector, on governance and accountability arrangements in this place. It is devastating to read the report of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy.
All members of the groups acted in a personal capacity—everyone makes that absolutely clear—and their reports were sent to the party leaders and committee members in March. I would like—we may be able to get this—to have those reports considered properly by the relevant committees of this House. They should look at the recommendations—nothing is perfect and they could be changed—and, whether or not they accept them, the reports should come back to this House for it to decide whether it wants to make any changes; it should not be a question of a committee saying, “We are not going to put this to the House because we do not agree with it”. There will be plenty of opportunities to do this.
The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and other Members who participated in the process have also raised these issues today. If we really want to strengthen Parliament, the ingredients and the menu have been provided. The reports are not secret; they were placed in the Library well before the date of the election. I am gratified to learn that the chairs of the three working groups have been invited by the Government to have discussions about this. I wish them well and I hope that we will get a positive outcome.