Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
My noble friend brings back even more painful memories, because also taking part in that election broadcast was Mr Jim Sillars. In fact the late Professor John P Mackintosh, who by coincidence had been my professor at university, actually committed the Labour Party to full tax-raising powers for a Scottish Parliament as well and it took some years to finesse the policy afterwards.
While people probably go and switch on the kettle whenever there is an opportunity to watch a party-political broadcast, I urge your Lordships to take this matter particularly seriously. Seeking and opposing an interim interdict is an extensive and diversionary activity and I urge the coalition to take my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton’s amendment very seriously.
Lord Soley
I think that my noble friend should arrange a special showing of that election broadcast in the House; I would like to see what I missed. On a more serious note, I support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. He has hit on an important point. It is worth remembering that there are different electoral systems within the UK for different elections, so it needs to be made clear that we are separating out the referendum from the party-political agenda. The second amendment is particularly important in this respect. I would have thought that there was a strong case for the Government simply to accept that amendment, although they may want to reword it. I hope that in due course they will say that the principle that my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench is putting forward is right and ought to be protected.
Lord Lipsey
I support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s amendment. The need for it reflects in part the baleful effects of the Government’s plan to have the referendum on the same day as other elections, because inevitably there will be a cluster of party-political broadcasts as part of the campaigns. That means that a ban of this kind is all the more essential because there will be a temptation at times for various parties to include the referendum in those broadcasts. Of course, it is possible that the referendum will not take place on 5 May—we shall see—but the circumstances in which it took place later could mean that the ability to use a party-political broadcast to campaign for or against AV could considerably prejudice the result of that referendum.
Let us take a case whereby the referendum is held at a time when the coalition has broken up, which seems a more likely prospect today than it would have done about a fortnight ago. In that circumstance, the Conservatives would no longer have any inhibition about campaigning flat out for what they believe in, which is that AV is a bad thing, and they could well wish to devote a party-political broadcast—or party-political broadcasts, come to that—to smashing into AV, if only in the hope of defeating their erstwhile friends in the Liberal Democrats on something that they greatly want.
The idea of party-political broadcasts, although they are propagandist things, is that they are balanced; everyone gets a go at one, so they cancel each other out. Within a referendum campaign, however, to allow for party-political broadcasts arguing one side of the case where it is a matter of chance whether or not there is a party-political broadcast arguing the other seems to be an extremely unfair way to conduct the campaign. I therefore support my noble and learned friend’s amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I detect some inconsistency in the Minister. He is using this legislation to introduce new rules concerning loans but he has spent a considerable amount of time this afternoon telling the House that it is not appropriate to use this legislation to change rules in respect of other matters that may arise in the conduct of referenda—for example, expenditure on publicity or the rules governing the donations that authorised individuals may give. Why is it okay for the Government to change the rules here where it happens to suit them and not in those other respects?
Lord Soley
May I ask for clarity? I found the Minister’s comments confusing. He seemed to be saying that, because the rules were not ready, we could not change this, but he was setting aside time or something—I did not understand that bit—so that we could change it at a later date. I think that he needs to explain that a bit better.
Lord McNally
These rules will come into force once the Bill becomes an Act. This amendment merely brings the legislation into line with the new civil sanctions that the Electoral Commission is bringing in for political party operations—civil sanctions that I greatly welcome, because they give the Electoral Commission a degree of flexibility in getting discipline into elections rather than the constant threat of criminal sanctions.
Lord Soley
I understood the Minister to say—maybe I got this wrong—that the civil sanctions were not ready because they had not gone through the other House in time. Is that what he is saying?
Lord McNally
The civil sanctions in relation to the referendum will not apply until this Act is passed. The civil sanctions that are being brought in apply to elections and the conduct of parties in elections. The amendment merely brings the Bill into line with what was done on 1 December, but the civil sanctions in relation to the referendum will not be in force until this Act is on the statute book.
Lord Soley
I declare an interest as one of the parliamentarians who offer advice to the Electoral Commission when it asks for it. It recognises the problems involved in making a bald statement. It seems to me that it faces the alternative of making a very bald statement that the alternative vote is this and the first past the post system is the other, so that both sides are covered in a very limited way, or of getting into descriptions. That is where you hit the rocks, because as soon as you start describing systems you inevitably talk about advantages and disadvantages, even if it is by implication.
There is a real problem both for the Electoral Commission and ultimately for this House. How far does the commission offer advice on what should be done by a Government or by this House as opposed to simply stating what the current position is or what it would be if a certain amendment or change was made? There is a case for saying either that Parliament rather than the Electoral Commission should decide all the details or that the leaflet must be agreed by the various parties in advance. It is quite a minefield. There are other people in this Chamber who have been at meetings with the Electoral Commission. I do not doubt that it is trying to do its best, but there is a genuine difficulty as to what powers it leaves to Parliament to define and describe and how much authority it takes in trying to describe without falling into the trap of being biased, however unintentionally.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
I support what the noble Lord has said. A leaflet describing the pros and cons of different electoral systems cannot be factual, as there are values and opinions. The assertion that one voting system means that people will have more than 50 per cent of the electorate’s support is open to argument. Of course you can go into a certain amount of detail about whether a fourth preference is as valuable as a first preference, but the argument is even more complicated than that. Surely the Government ought to consider the possibility that there should be no leaflet of any kind from the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission has chosen two designated organisations, both of which will receive public funds. Why not leave it at that? Why do you have to have somebody listing the pros and cons in a way that will inevitably be attacked from both sides?
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am tempted to ask, as the Irishman did, “Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?”. I cannot at the moment see where Schedule 19C to the 2000 Act, on civil sanctions, gets anywhere near the issue of the leaflet. If we can all discuss anything anywhere in the Bill, I have several suggestions about what we might discuss. We can come back to this later. I think that it is an important issue but it is not covered by this group of amendments. Please can we have some time later to discuss the issue? I sympathise with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is making, but it ain’t here.
Lord Soley
If it was not the Minister, it was someone else and he responded to it. It was the Minister who started talking about the leaflet.
Lord Soley
I would be happy with that. Let me be clear. I was responding to the exchange that took place in which the Minister talked about a leaflet.
Lord McNally
As we drift down this stream, we do, I confess, go into inlets and rivulets.
Lord McNally
I shall not comment one way or the other on extraneous interventions like that, for goodness’ sake.
The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, gave me a slap about getting irritated, but the point is that these election rules and regulations—most of the schedules to the Bill—are straight lifts from existing legislation put in place by the last Labour Government, so it comes as a surprise that people who were Ministers in that Government suddenly find all kinds of loopholes and dangers in that legislation. We have transposed into the schedules existing legislation, bringing it as up to date as we can with this amendment and this clause.
I am not a lawyer but, as far as I understand it, the civil sanctions have been brought in because, as I said earlier—and this is not in my brief but from my understanding of it, so perhaps if I am wrong one of the experts behind me can correct me—the criminal sanctions in the existing legislation were felt to be far too heavy-handed, particularly as they applied to volunteer officers in political parties. A range of civil sanctions were brought in that allowed the Electoral Commission a degree of flexibility, from giving a little advice to an errant officer to applying heavy sanctions. That flexibility was intended in bringing in civil sanctions. The decision on how to apply them is one for the Electoral Commission.
As noble Lords know from briefings sent to them, the Electoral Commission is following very closely these deliberations and listening very closely to the points made by noble Lords on all sides. I have every confidence that, if a point is made that the Electoral Commission thinks is of substance and needs to be dealt with, it will not hesitate to bring this to the attention of Ministers and Members of the Opposition, just as it has done in the past. The clause is a fairly narrow one to make provisions regarding the regulation of loans and bring the regulations under the referendum up to date with the legislation already introduced on 1 December.
Lord Soley
I do not want to continue the discussions that we have had other than to close them down. This is all the fault of my old and noble friend Lord Gilbert, with whom I had the great pleasure to be an international observer at the first free elections in Mongolia, which was quite an experience for both of us—and an even bigger experience for the Mongolians. I should say, in case I misled the House or the Minister, that I did not intend to imply—and I do not think that I implied—that the Electoral Commission was passive, which was the word that he used. I simply tried to describe the dilemma facing organisations such as the Electoral Commission as to whether Parliament should make more detailed rules, or whether they should make them and keep things on a very simple basis. That is a very important debate, but it is one that we get to under Clause 9.
Lord Lipsey
In the same spirit, I think that I misrepresented Schedule 1, and therefore the Minister, because there is a proposal in there on which it would be possible to hang a discussion about a possible leaflet—namely, the public information measures. I apologise for that and ask the Minister to confirm that it would be fully in order for the House to have a proper debate about the very important issues raised about the leaflet when we get to Schedule 1.
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 Soley
I would not have intervened again, except for the way that the Minister addressed his last comment. That was not helpful. It is where he actually makes matters worse. My noble friend Lord Rooker is exactly right. The noble Lord talked about his vast experience but I know of many experiences of both kinds of Government increasing a Bill by piling in extra clauses that then come before this House. It does not help to try and score a party-political point. The other side of the argument is that on the last occasion we debated this—I forget which day that was—I quoted from a Conservative MP’s letter, which stated very clearly that he had only five minutes to discuss an issue of great importance and did not have time to speak at all on the main debate for it. There were members of the Minister’s Government complaining about lack of time.
My advice to the Minister is not to get into this party-political knockabout. A Bill like this, which is very important to the Government but very complex, will inevitably expand over time if it is hurried through in the way that the Government are doing. That is what has happened and that is why all those extra clauses, to which my noble friend Lord Rooker referred, have been added. It also explains why some people on the Minister’s own side who were opposed to certain aspects of it complained about the lack of time in the House of Commons. I simply say: for heaven’s sake, drop this idea that it is all one party’s fault. That is nonsense.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Does my noble friend agree also that the fact that the Bill has been added to on such a massive scale by the Government during its passage through the House of Commons—indeed, we have just been examining a new government amendment—indicates that it was prepared in great haste? Yet at the same time, the Government are insisting that the Bill must move very fast indeed towards the statute book. Can it be right to prepare a Bill so hastily that large-scale improvisations have to be made by the Government in extending it, even as they insist that it is rushed through and therefore skimpily scrutinised?
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Soley
My Lords, I rise in support of my noble friend Lady Hayter. Let me begin by perhaps anticipating the Minister’s response. Despite his commitment to his party as part of the coalition, he will say that it is not possible to do this in the Bill, that the Electoral Commission would not approve and that these young people would not be able to vote in the referendum anyway because the Bill will not allow time for that. He said much the same about the right to vote for prisoners. My reason for rising to speak is to say that this argument is based on a fallacy and that this Bill ought to be something much wider. It ought to be about constituency and voting reform generally, but it is not. It was put together in order to preserve the coalition. That is what it is about. It is concerned with enhancing the coalition’s chances of staying in government for a bit longer. I have to say that that is not good enough.
If the Minister thinks that I am the only person who is saying that the coalition Government are not allowing time for the Bill—they ought to allow time, so that we could consider the wider issue of votes at 16, which is his party’s policy, or indeed votes for prisoners, which is also his party’s policy—let me quote from a letter sent to me and to others by one of his honourable friends in the House of Commons, Andrew Turner, the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight. He says the following in relation to a different part of the Bill:
“Debate in the Commons was so curtailed that I was unable to speak on this subject during Committee Stage and only for five minutes during Report Stage”.
In a sense, that sums up the problem. There is a case for votes at 16, although I will touch on that only briefly, since my noble friend summed up my position in her remarks, just as there is a case for votes for prisoners following the European Court of Human Rights ruling. However, there is no room in this Bill for doing things easily unless—this is the point—the Government accept that the legislation ought to be about reform and not just about preserving the coalition’s position.
Perhaps I may deal briefly with why votes at the age of 16 are important. For many years I have felt that, if you can serve in the Armed Forces, you ought to be able to vote. Also, as my noble friend pointed out, if you pay taxes, you ought to be able to vote. However, the important point concerns the Armed Forces. Secondly, it should be understood that many young people start to get interested in politics at this age. However, if they are not allowed to express that interest, if anything they are put off later. It is no accident that in this Chamber either last Friday or in a previous Youth Parliament, I cannot remember which, the young people voted in favour of votes at 16. I might add something that will encourage Members on both sides: they also voted by a majority of between 60 and 64 for a largely appointed House as opposed to an elected House. There are all those wise young people out there, wanting to vote and to keep an appointed House because they recognise some of the strengths of that. The arguments in favour were interesting because the young people were wise enough to support the concept of, at least, a largely appointed House.
I suppose that we all think of our own backgrounds. My noble friend was remembering where she was for her first election, albeit with some uncertainty. I remember mine clearly. It was in 1955. When I had campaigned in the previous election, I was belted round the ear by someone with a rolled-up poster who told me that I was too young to be thinking about such things. All that did was to reinforce my view that I ought to think about it a bit harder, if only to deal with people who belted you round the ear with a rolled-up poster. There is a genuine interest. Certainly, I was very interested in what was happening internationally. We had come out of the Second World War, which had influenced me very much, as it had so many of us who were born, as I was, just before it. If you grow up under the shadow of dictatorship, you know the importance of democracy. That argument was profoundly important to me. It always has been and still is.
I should not need to exercise these arguments with the Minister, because his party supports this policy and I believe that I am right in saying that he does. The only thing standing in the way is this attempt to get through a Bill that is about the survival of the coalition, not the reform of the parliamentary system. The Government really need to do better on this. It is just not good enough to duck this issue in the way that he ducked the issue of votes for prisoners.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lady Hayter. I came to this issue rather sceptically but changed my mind when I was chairing the Power inquiry, as we took evidence from around the country and heard from young people and their teachers. One thing that this House should have in mind is the alarming way in which we in this country are losing the habit of voting. What we are finding is that young people, if they do not establish a habit of voting, do not turn to it. People would say to us, “Well, they soon start voting once they start having children of their own or a mortgage, or when they start paying tax”—often, they were Members of Parliament. Yet the reality is that, if the habit is not established before, very often people do not end up voting at all.
Teachers were telling us that already, in schools, there is talk before age 16 about why the vote is so important and about the history of the vote. Then there is a gap, where a substantial number of our young are still not staying on at school to 18, so when they leave school there is a period of non-participation in the public arena. They do not vote, so they never establish the habit of voting. We should move from knowing about voting at school—understanding its history and its importance in our firmament and why it is at the heart of our democracy that people should vote—to harnessing that while people are still young and interested. That is vital.
Hearing from young people who were clearly interested in how their country worked and in the issues of the day, yet then hearing from teachers about the terrible loss of interest between the ages of 16 and 18—sometimes, it is as long as four years before these young people get the chance to vote—was a lesson that convinced me that people lose the habit of voting. We should take this opportunity to reform the system as soon as we can. I know that many people, certainly among the Liberal Democrats, share this view. We should be harnessing that interest in politics before it is lost. Now is a good time to do it, when we are in the process of engaging in some reform of our electoral system.
Lord Soley
Would my noble friend bear in mind that at age 16 you can serve in the Armed Forces and you pay taxes? That is a good dividing line.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
That is one factor. One could say, for example, why not 17? That is the age at which one can be on the front line in our armed services. One can make a plausible, or semi-plausible, case for reducing the age from 18 to 17, then to 16, but although there are pointers at each little watering place and stopping point along the way, in my judgment there is no sufficient reason to say that one should stop at 16.
I have heard the argument in favour. Of course there are some points to be made for it, but in my judgment it would be wrong in general and, in response to my noble friend Lady Kennedy, certainly wrong to have the change on a matter that is, frankly, of little or no interest to the younger generation—the nature of the voting system. It would be a bad precedent and, if it is to be justified at all, a bad starting point for the younger generation.
Lord McNally
These shafts of wit will throw me one of these days. In the mean time, I address the problem with this proposal. I am surrounded by parliamentarians of great expertise, who know that there are two kinds of Bill. There are the Christmas trees, which people hang things on—I have hung many a thing on a Christmas tree Bill and had great pleasure doing so—but then there are the clear, simple Bills, whose beauty and simplicity are their major strengths. As has been said on this side of the House since this debate began—it seems like years ago, but apparently it was only four parliamentary days ago, as we gallop into Clause 2—this Bill is about fair votes on fair boundaries. All the other things are interesting and will undoubtedly continue to be debated as this Government carry forward their constitutional reform agenda.
The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is constantly asking to see the big picture. Tomorrow I am speaking to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Legal and Constitutional Affairs, when I will give the constitutional big picture, or big vision, from this Government. I hope that the noble Lord will come along. In the mean time, what we are trying to do is to keep this Bill clear and simple in its objectives.
Lord Soley
I invite the noble Lord to remember his Christmas tree. There are only two things hanging on it—one is the Liberal Party and the other is the Conservative Party. It would be better if he just admitted it and then we would all know where we were coming from.
Lord McNally
That Christmas tree lifts the spirits and lights these gloomy days.
The amendment seeks to amend Clause 2 to enable 16 and 17 year-olds to participate in the referendum. As I have said before, the amendment is similar in intent to one tabled in the Commons, which was lost by 196 votes to 346. Then as now, the Government’s position on the franchise and in all other aspects relating to how the referendum is run is that we should follow the arrangements for parliamentary elections unless a particular circumstance is presented by the referendum that would require us to adopt a different approach. There is no requirement here to depart from the standard approach to the voting age of 18 that applies in those elections. The Government have no current plans to lower the voting age. I recognise that there are different views on whether the voting age in this country should be lowered to 16, but if we are to have a debate about reducing the voting age it needs to be had in relation to elections more generally. The passage of this Bill is not the right platform on which to discuss that issue.
There is a wider debate to be had about the voting age more generally and we need to consider the arguments for and against. I recommend that, when there is a Bill to bring the voting age down to 16, tonight’s Hansard should be required reading for anybody persuaded in that Bill. My noble friend Lord Newton, to whom I can almost say “Welcome home”, is right—this Bill is not the right forum for that debate. I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Lord McNally
As Lord Peart used to say, “Not next week”. I am not looking forward as far as that. On the question of the 16 year-olds, according to this amendment we would also need to identify all those who are now 15 but who will be 16 on 5 May. Registration officers have no power to do that and it would be a real practical burden to do it in such a short timescale. I could not quite work out whether the noble Baroness was backing off individual registration. This Government are certainly not doing that.
Lord Soley
The noble Lord misquoted me. I certainly did not say that this was the wrong sort of Bill for the proposal; I said that he would say that the Electoral Commission would have difficulties with it. I would like to know—as, I suspect, my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer would like to know—whether that is true or not. Secondly, I said that it would be difficult to deliver this proposal in such a way that the votes could be put into effect. Those were the two things that I said and that was what my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer was asking about.