Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[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

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[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 Campbell-Savours]

I stood up.

--- Later in debate ---

[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 Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

Those papers are bound to have a value on eBay.

[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.

[Noble Lords]

No!

[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?

[A noble Lord]

Gardner’s Question Time.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[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.