Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have had a rather difficult few weeks. I have had all sorts of discussions with colleagues about what we should do and whether we should divide the House. Until about 10 minutes ago I was going to divide the House. Having heard the intervention from my noble friend Lord Soley appealing, even now there are those who want me to divide the House. Surely something can be done before Third Reading. Can there not be consultations with people in the Commons about what is happening? Can the noble Lord not say something to suggest a basis on which the Government could return at Third Reading? My noble friend Lady Hayter from the Front Bench is shaking her head because she is wedded to this principle, while on the Back Benches, both in the House of Commons and here, there are people who desperately want to get rid of this 10-day trigger.

[Lord Soley]

I again ask the Minister to think this through. The House of Commons has produced a report that has only just come to light and which affects the Bill now. The Government did not know about it until yesterday—

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

It was one o’clock this morning.

[Lord Soley]

It is not a desirable principle to proceed on legislation in conflict with that. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is right to say “Think carefully before you throw something back to the House of Commons”, but we have a duty to advise and warn when information has come to light from the other House. I am sorry for a long intervention. I hope it helps.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I welcome interventions on my wind-up, although I do not want to delay the House. I appeal to Ministers to go away and ask around. This is wrong. It is a mistake. Everybody I talk to in the Commons knows it is a mistake. No one knew what they were doing at the time. The House was fairly empty; you can tell by the vote. It was all done on a free vote, so a lot of people had gone home. It is only here where I understand there are some Whips in operation to make sure that this nonsense amendment is not interfered with. Regretfully—I know I am upsetting some of my noble friends—I beg leave to withdraw my amendment but I do so with a very heavy heart.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

There is another scenario in which the Committee decides on nine days, but a political majority in the House of Commons decides to overturn—that is what the provision requires—the decision and make it 10 days. In other words, the House of Commons itself can take a political decision and completely undermine the quasi-judicial nature of the decision.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend has more experience of this than I have, but he is absolutely right, of course. In any event, the public pressure in a case such as this might be very high, so you have to bear in mind that this will politicise it like mad.

This brings me to my final point: the House of Commons may come to regret this. At best it will be irrelevant; at worst, we will have one or two disastrous cases of the type that I have just described. So, I think we are right. I am always a bit cautious about telling my ex-colleagues in the House of Commons that they have got it severely wrong, but we have a duty to advise and warn. At the end of the day, it is up to the House of Commons to overturn this House. It is a mistake if people say that this House legislates. We only legislate inasmuch as the House of Commons allows us to legislate. If they do not like it, they can always chuck it out.

I end on this note: because I think there will be regrets about this Bill—it will not be the first time that either House has regretted certain Bills or legislation—it may be no bad idea if we put in a sunset clause to send back to the other House. I am willing to do that, but I would quite like to hear whether the Government would consider a sunset clause. We would allow the legislation to run, maybe for five years, and then the Act would cease if we found it to be either unnecessary or very damaging. I end very strongly with the words of Edmund Burke. He was very wise when he said that we give the electorate the absolute power to decide who represents them. Every time we slice away at that, as the case of Phil Woolas did, we do ourselves and the democratic process great damage.

Ukraine

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I fear I start from a rather more depressing position than many Members of this House. I agree with the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. There is a lot in what he said and I think that there was mishandling by the European Union and NATO of a number of the east European states.

I start from the position of trying to understand the Russian position. I have spent some time not only reading the speeches and comments of President Putin, which are liberally sent to me by the embassy—for which, many thanks—but I have talked to the Russian ambassador, who is a very civilised and thoughtful man. If you look at what President Putin has been saying and doing, you recognise that there is a pattern to that behaviour which is trying to reassert control over areas of which he has lost control.

I can understand that in historical terms. Russia did lose out when the Soviet Union collapsed. More importantly, although Russia has a proud history in terms of what it has achieved scientifically, culturally and in other ways, it had a truly tragic history in the 20th century: two world wars, a revolution that failed disastrously and led to millions of people dying from famine or being uprooted and deported, and of course the gulags and all that followed from that. It is a tragic history and Russians feel it very strongly. They feel equally strongly that Ukraine not only should be under their influence but needs to be because of the “fascist threat”, as they play that card. President Putin plays it but many Russians believe it, and the reason they believe it is not hard to find: a lot of Ukrainians fought for the Nazis and were particularly brutal. The reverse is also true: many Ukrainians fought for the Communists and Stalin and were also very brutal. The whole of Ukraine was brutalised throughout the Second World War period.

We can understand all that, but the basic line on this is that you do not just throw over international agreements that you have signed—and Russia did sign, as the noble Lord pointed out, the 1994 declaration which removed the nuclear weapons from Ukraine in return for a guarantee of its borders from the five permanent members of the Security Council: Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States. That is what Russia has broken, because it feels passionately that Crimea should be part of Russia. Actually, that could have been achieved. It would not be an unreasonable thing to develop.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Could my noble friend tell me where in the Budapest memorandum it refers to a guarantee?

[Lord Soley]

I would have to look it up to find the exact place.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

It is not there.

[Lord Soley]

It is a guarantee that force would not be used to change the borders of Ukraine. In return, Ukraine would give up the nuclear weapons on its territory.

In any event, even if my noble friend were right, which I do not think he is, and even if Putin were right to do what he has done, it would be disastrous, because—and I would put this very high on my list of concerns about President Putin—he plays the nationalist card. If you play the card which says, “The Russians in those territories call for my intervention to protect them”, where does that stop? The reason that people refer to Munich is not because they compare Putin to Hitler, or Russia to Nazi Germany—they do not; there is no similarity—but because there is a recognition, which plays very powerfully in the east European countries, that the Germans played the card of coming in to defend the German population and now Putin is using that argument for the Russian population, and that, once you play that card, it is very difficult to control it.

That is why I find this situation depressing. Even if President Putin says to people, “I do not want you to use the nationalist card in east Ukraine”, he has no guarantee that people will not. If they feel strongly that there is a real chance that Russia will regain the territories that it lost and that they will again come under the Russian state, which many of them would like, then you would lose control of it. We have to say, and everybody else in the world is saying, “Well, if you don’t do something about Crimea, and we didn’t do anything about Georgia and South Ossetia, then where does this stop?”. The problem is that, if you play the nationalist card, there are east European states which have real reason to be fearful, particularly the Baltic states—and they are members of NATO.

Please let us take a very hard look at this. I am not intending today to make any suggestions to the Government about the way forward. I agree that it must be a diplomatic way forward, but when people say, as they have been saying quite recently, “Nobody wants a war about this”, I simply remind them that in 1913 people were also going around saying, “Nobody wants a war”. The real danger of this situation is that someone will lose control of it. It is not controllable particularly when you play that nationalist card, so you get all sorts of unintended consequences. I understand the feelings of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours about this, but, frankly, you have to face up to the fact that, if you do not stop it somewhere, you cannot control it and it is right outside your control. We have been round this track before; it is a dangerous track.

The great thing about Russia is, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, indicated, that many things are happening there that are very encouraging and exciting. You can see it moving back towards the more open and free society that we all want it to be. But I simply say that there have been three or four occasions in the past 100-odd years when Russia was doing that and, each time, it tripped over and failed. That is its tragedy, and none of us should underestimate the strength of feeling in Russia about being surrounded and invaded, and about its own inability to be the top power.

The other thing that stands out, particularly in Putin’s comments and speeches on this, is his anger and frustration that the United States is seen as the dominant power and that he is not seen as its equal, which is why he tries to rubbish some of the west European powers such as ourselves and others and why he tries to set himself up on an equal basis with the United States. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, will know, I have been saying for the past two years that you will not get Assad to the table on Syria until President Putin makes him go there. Now that we have just seen the latest military advances of Assad’s armies in Syria, you know that that is right. Putin does not have an interest in settling the Syrian dispute other than under President Assad’s control. That is another one that we have probably lost. We have probably lost Crimea, although, as I have said, you can make a case for that. The tragedy is that it would have been perfectly possible, had Russian diplomacy been up to it, to say, “Look, we want a settlement along that border area that includes Crimea coming back to Russia”. That would have had to be with guarantees for the minorities there, because if I was a Tatar or one of the others in the Crimean peninsula, I would be deeply worried.

I have just a couple of concluding remarks. First, it would be naive in the extreme to think that this will stop here. My worry is that it will continue. We need to face up to that reality. Secondly, and very importantly, the European Union must get real about a foreign policy and a defence policy. One reason we misplayed our hand in east Europe is because we did not have clear policies. I take my hat off to my noble friend Lady Ashton who did a great job on Iran and a range of other things, but we do not have in Europe a foreign policy or a proper defence policy. We still have to rely on the United States. We are in a situation now where there is a leader in Russia determined to assert his authority over the areas formerly controlled by the Soviet Union as it then was. He wants to control those and we have a weak and divided Europe. Where have we heard that before?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

All I am saying is that, as an individual Member of the House, I object. Whether it was agreed by the usual channels or not is of no particular interest to me. All I am saying is that I think it is fair and more civilised that we can dine for a full hour.

I would like now to move to Schedule 2. A particular part of the schedule that is of interest to me is the question of the provision of polling stations, which is a matter of considerable controversy in constituencies throughout the country. Rule 13(1) in Schedule 2 states:

“The counting officer must provide a sufficient number of polling stations and, subject to the following provisions of this rule, must allot the electors to the polling stations in whatever manner the officer thinks most convenient”.

Rule 13(2) states:

“One or more polling stations may be provided in the same room”

Rule 13(3) states:

“In England, the polling station allotted to electors from any parliamentary polling district wholly or partly within a particular voting area must, in the absence of special circumstances, be in the parliamentary polling place for that district unless the parliamentary polling place is outside the voting area”.

Rule 9 refers to the use of schools and public rooms:

“The counting officer may use, free of charge, for the purpose of taking the poll—

(a) a room in a school within paragraph (3)”.

Paragraph (3) of rule 9 then goes on to make provision for schools in England and Wales, and in Scotland.

Now, the location of polling stations in individual constituencies—not only in elections, but particularly in this referendum—has a major effect on turnout. We cannot rely on a postal vote system, which some of us have great reservations about anyhow although it was part of the package introduced by the previous Government. Of course, the Government themselves obviously had reservations about what they were doing on postal voting, but it was felt that those changes would bring greater integrity into the electoral system. The question is, if turnout is affected by polling station location, to what extent can the public indicate where they believe polling stations should be situated?

We know that parish authorities very often make representations to local authorities to secure the location. Also, other organisations within individual communities —schools, church groups, women’s institutes and all kinds of voluntary organisations—sometimes make representations. I have found over the years that very often there is indifference within local authorities to the protests of people who object to the location of polling stations, particularly to where they are inconvenient. I remember that, in my then constituency in the county of Cumbria, on occasions I would go to the local authority and say, “Look, provision here isn’t satisfactory”. Very often the local authority was very sensitive, and changes would be made.

I now live in Maidenhead and when I voted on the last occasion I had to drive a tremendous distance, even within the town, to go and vote. When I got there, I found the polling station split into various sections, all of which received electors coming in from various parts of Maidenhead. I believe that is wrong. The question is: what chance does an individual elector have to influence decisions on the location of polling stations?

My view is that there should be some mechanism that is much more substantial than current arrangements for allowing individual electors and organisations to influence the location of these stations, particularly as their location affects turnout, which is now one of the major issues in Britain’s elections. We are seeing progressive reductions in turnout in both general and council elections, so we must find ways of addressing that problem. One way is to increase the number of polling stations. I hope that, in replying to this debate, the noble Lord might comment on this problem which I think arises in many communities.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I shall be brief, but I want to raise an issue that has troubled me in the past.

The noble Lord will see that the form for a postal vote—form 2—is prescribed on pages 60 and 61 of the Bill. I should say that he might need some advice from his civil servants because I have never had a clear answer to this question. The form requires the person who wants to use a postal vote to fill in the boxes set out in the form. After the individual has filled in their date of birth in one place, a box is provided for the voter’s signature. Next to that box, it says:

“(voter’s signature) IMPORTANT—Keep signature within border”.

That has always troubled me because many people who vote by post are actually old and infirm, and I have never been quite sure what happens if their signature goes outside the box.

In a sense this is not a minor point because I wonder whether that means that the vote may not be counted, which is what happens if you make other mistakes or put wrong entries on the form, or whether it simply means that the signature may not be able to be read by electronic means. I have always assumed that the reason for keeping the signature within the box is so that it can be read electronically. That might not be right, so if it is not, I am not sure why it is so important for the signature to be kept within the border.

I emphasise the point because I am thinking of the comments made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Low. I know that you can get a dispensation for this and you do not have to vote this way, but for elderly and infirm people, or for those whose vision is not as good as it was, there is a real problem about staying within the box—indeed, I have been known to stray outside the box once or twice in my career, but not too often.

Again, I know that the Minister may have to take advice on this, but what happens if a voter filling in a form for a postal vote does not keep the signature within the parameters of the box? Is the problem simply that the signature cannot be read electronically but the vote will still be counted because someone will read it manually, or does it mean that the vote will not be counted? Obviously this question does not just apply to this form, but to others as well.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I support Amendment 75ZB on the River Thames. It is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, because she has put her finger on the problem again, just as she did in the debate on the Isle of Wight. If the Government are really concerned to do the equal voting bit, they need to face up to the fact that the way to do that is to go down the road of PR and get rid of the constituency link. I personally would strongly oppose that, but that is the way in which you equalise votes. In doing that, you destroy the constituency link, which has always been the centrepiece of British parliamentary democracy.

I remember being followed around by a Dutch television team in two general elections. Each time they expressed amazement that an MP had to stand on corners and go out into the constituency to campaign for votes in the local area. Their own MPs, because they were on a list system, could talk about general issues and not relate them to constituencies in the same way. It is a major difference. Now that the Government have accepted—although they might reverse it in the House of Commons—the Isle of Wight example, we should recognise that we need, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, some flexibility in these other areas.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Would my noble friend accept that AV+ is not as strong as a constituency link?

[Lord Soley]

Absolutely. I am no great expert on voting systems, but my understanding is that certain PR systems inevitably destroy the constituency link. I think that the list system is one of those. It is true that AV+ and one or two others allow for the constituency link to be kept, so it need not be ruled out. However, if you are going down the way of full equalisation of votes—that is, a full PR system—it is hard to maintain the constituency link. The acceptance of the Isle of Wight as an exception is a recognition of the importance of community.

All that my noble friend Lord Harris said about London is true. I have spent an awful lot of my life in London—I spent some time in the Mersey area when, for reasons that were beyond me at age five, I was taken from the bombings in London and moved to Liverpool, where I thought that they were trying to get me the second time round because they had missed the first time—and I agree that the Thames presents an interesting issue. I do not wish to dwell on the issue, but my noble friend Lady Hayter made the important point about the powerful impact of such factors on people’s lives. The south and north of the river are very different.

However, I do not entirely disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, when he says that rivers can unite. I do not know whether this was just an experiment, but there was an interesting attempt in the early 1980s—by, I think, a group of companies connected with the river, including, if I remember rightly, Thames Water—to form a group of riparian MPs comprising those of us whose constituencies fronted on to the water. It was felt that the river’s importance was not truly recognised. I was enthusiastic about that, but I have to tell the noble Lord and others that the attempt failed. That was a great pity. In my case—I was representing Hammersmith at the time—the group ended up dealing with all the house-boat people. I distinctly remember having meetings on house-boats near Cheyne Walk. I do not know whether my noble friend was there at the time, but this would have been in the early 1980s so I guess probably not.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I certainly recognise that. I also recognise that this is a bicameral House and I hope that it stays as such. One of the jobs of a bicameral House is for the second Chamber to revise what the first Chamber has done, and that is particularly important on constitutional issues.

I return to the core amendment. I want to speak only on Amendment 73, but there is a wider point here that affects some of the others. There is great diversity in this group of amendments, and it might have been better if some of them had been separated out. Those tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler, might have been better as a separate group because there is quite a bit in them that is separate from the others.

I want to focus on Amendment 73 in the name of my noble friend Lord Kennedy, where he suggests replacing the word “may” with “shall”. Many people in this Committee will recognise that the wording of a Bill and the use of words such as “may” is critically important, because it carries legal weight. The word “should” is not very different from “may” and, I say to my noble friend, not much better.

This point is important because it relates to some of the other amendments in this group. Why do we not use “shall” in relation to my noble friend’s amendment? It is a stronger commitment. The Minister will know that, in several other places following this, “shall” is used. The obvious example is in rule 6 of the new schedule, which states:

“There shall continue to be … a constituency named Orkney and Shetland”.

The Government want that to be legally enforced, so the use of “shall” is essential. In rule 5, however, as my noble friend has picked out, “may” is used. In other words, it states:

“A Boundary Commission may take into account...special geographical considerations”.

The Explanatory Notes to the Bill and many of the things that Ministers have said from time to time indicate that they also regard the things listed in rule 5(1)(a) to (d)—that is, special geographical factors, local government, local ties and the inconvenience attendant on such changes—as very important. Schedule 2, the measure that is driving them forward on this Bill, says:

“The electorate of any constituency shall”—

so there they are using a very strong form of wording that has strong legal force. However, back over the page, as I say, they use the much softer “may”, which does not have that commitment.

I am after an answer from the Minister because this question affects other parts of the Bill—certainly some of those affected in this group of amendments—but I am trying to focus on one for the sake of clarity. There is in fact no reason why we should not also use “shall” in rule 5. If we are all saying, as the Government have done, that we want these things to be taken into consideration, the use of the word would not undermine the use of “shall” in rule 2(1)—

“The electorate of any constituency shall”.

It would simply instruct the Boundary Commission in a much more forceful way to take into account the factors that Ministers and Members on all sides of the Committee say are important. I do not see why we should not ask the Boundary Commission to do that.

The Minister might well say that it could bring up legal challenges. I understand that that could be a problem. We do not want lots of reviews by the courts of such things. Having said that, there is no way that we can assume that these factors are not important. Nor is there any reason to assume that the number of challenges in a court of law would necessarily be different if we used the softer “may”. That does not rule out a legal challenge. It might make it more difficult to win but it does not rule it out, as I understand the law.

I will focus my comments just on this one point, but it is very important because it runs throughout the Bill. I understand why the Government, for party political reasons, have locked themselves into “shall” for the number of seats in Parliament. What I do not understand is why they cannot also use “shall”—the stronger legal version—for issues that they say are important and we all say are important. This is perhaps the best example. My noble friend Lord Kennedy has drawn attention to that discrepancy. The Minister needs to explain why we cannot have a straight change to the Bill here, so that it reads:

“A Boundary Commission shall take into account, if and to such extent as they think fit”,

followed by the four factors.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in response to my noble friend Lord Kinnock, ignored one simple issue; the Bill introduces a cap on seats. Once you introduce a cap, there is no flexibility. Whatever responsibilities, powers and so on you give the Boundary Commission, it will always have that in mind in whatever decision it takes on any boundary in the United Kingdom.

I will come to the wording of this rule in a minute, but I will first reply to something else that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said. In his preamble to dealing with the amendment, he addressed himself to the parliamentary channel and those who are listening. In so far as he did so, I will equally do so. He appeared to be in order because no one objected. It is important for people who are watching the parliamentary channel to understand that we are sitting here now at half past midnight—we may well sit all night—because some of us believe in a very simple principle. Because this is a constitutional Bill, the process by which it is being dealt with in Parliament is the wrong one. There has been no Green Paper, no White Paper, no prior scrutiny of draft legislation and no consultation with the political parties. A number has simply been pulled out of the air, inserted into the Bill in the middle of frantic negotiations over the formation of a Government, and handed to parliamentary counsel or the people who write legislation to produce it in the Bill, which now has to be rammed through both Houses of Parliament.

That brings me to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. He said that the other House voted on the Bill. It is true that it voted on it, but there was no real debate in the House of Commons on this matter because of a contractual agreement between two parties to a coalition. That contractual agreement means that there is no free debate between two major parties in British politics: the Liberal Democrat party and the Conservative Party. If there are people watching the parliamentary channel, they might for once stop and think that there may be an explanation for what is going on in the House of Commons. I have put it in my language; I am sure that all my noble friends could put it in theirs if they so wished.

I move now to the comments of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, who referred to 318. I do not think 318 was a cap, was it? It was a target.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I will be even briefer than my noble friend. I agree very much with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. This is not the time to go into detail; that will happen when the Bill arrives. Like my noble friend Lord Dubs, I agree with the principle. There is no great problem in deciding who deals with this. Normally the home address should be used for registration, otherwise it is a matter for the local MP and occasionally for a solicitor.

There is a more important issue to address. Perhaps the Minister should refer this to the Electoral Commission. If it is the Government’s intention to give the vote to prisoners, there is a case for instructing the Electoral Commission to look at the problems of registering to vote. The registration process needs to be thought about in advance. In one sense, the problem is like that of other groups who cannot easily register. Prisoners are a captive population. Complications will come over where their home addresses are. There will be particular complications for the fairly small number of very large prisons that have a large percentage of people with no fixed address. I remember that when my noble friend Lord Rooker was a Minister, he arranged for people to give a non-registered street address so that they could have the vote.

There are many complications inherent in what the Government are proposing. I will support them and when the Bill arrives I will spell out some of the issues. At this stage, I simply say that there is a lot of sense in warning the Electoral Commission. As an adviser to the commission, I should do that too, and I will, but it would help if it came from the Government too. If the Government are going to do this, they should start to think about the complexities of registration.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I have one question for the noble Lord, Lord McNally. Would it be possible through secondary legislation to put an enabling power in the Bill whereby this section of the Bill could be amended in the event that the wider law on the right of prisoners to vote was to come into being?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is quite right. I am waiting for that point to be answered, but, then again, there are a number of points that are not answered.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may marginally disagree with what my noble friend has just said. He said that a Labour Government would have to have in mind the way in which we have been treated. The reality is that a Labour Government would not do it, because we think that it is wrong and unprincipled. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, should understand that, and that is what is making us very angry.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is right, although I thought that I said “any future Government”, not particularly a Labour Government. Any future Government could come in and simply say, “We are going to change the size”. That goes back to the previous amendment, on which I do not want to dwell but where I quoted from Andrew Tyrie’s booklet produced for the Conservative Party and referred to things that were said by other members of the Conservative Party in the intervening period; that is, that the figure of 120 over 10 years was too many, too fast, but that 60 over five years was manageable. My noble friend intervened with a question, but the real question is: should this Government win the next election, will they then go for the other 10 per cent? It is in the booklet; it is not a secret. There was considerable discussion of that figure. The Deputy Prime Minister said that he wanted the House to be reduced by 150. It is legitimate to ask whether the Government think that it is wise even from their point of view to have a system where the Government of the day get elected, look at the size of the House of Commons and say, “Well, we could have done better if we had this number” and then legislated accordingly. If in five years they are here, fighting such a proposal late into the night, they will not be feeling as they are feeling now and going around saying, “Oh, this is a filibuster. We don’t like it”. They will say, “This is an abuse of the constitution”. Every one of them will be doing it, the Liberals more than anyone else. This is where the Liberals say one thing in one place and another in another place.

[Lord Soley]

I thought that the noble Lord was agreeing with me, but I might be wrong. Let us make no bones about it: if we are going to lay out the welcome mat to any future Government, not just a Labour Government, to be able to legislate on the size of Parliament, we are breaking one of the principles that we all observe when we check international elections. We are going against what is said in the European Union, the United Nations and the Commonwealth about checking elections. We all look at that as international observers for those bodies, yet here, all of a sudden, we are saying, “No, it’s all right for the Government to legislate for the size of Parliament. It doesn’t matter at all”. Of course it matters.

This Government might think that cutting the number MPs will be popular. Up to a point, they are right, but the problem is that they are playing the role of the overly powerful Government. It is not just the Public Bodies Bill and powers which they have taken which are over the top—Henry VIII powers are used in so much legislation now. I would be the first to concede that Henry VIII powers were taken to some extent under the Labour Government, but it is happening much more now—the Public Bodies Bill is virtually a Henry VIII Bill. But it is not just that; it is also putting enough new Members in this House so that the two political parties which form the Government, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, have a near-majority over the other political party. In other words, we are in danger of breaching that constitutional principle which we have all followed for years: that no political party should have a majority over the others here. I understand fully that the Government do not have a majority over the Cross Benches and the Labour Party jointly, but they certainly come very close to having a majority over the Labour Party. That differs greatly from what happened previously.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

They have it.

[Lord Soley]

My figures may be slightly dated, but, either way, it is profoundly dangerous. I will end on this note—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend puts his finger on a critically important point, which I want to cover, along with other related issues, in Amendment 59.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Before my noble friend sits down, will he comment on the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who said that there had been no debate on the figure 600 at Third Reading in the House of Commons? I have with me Hansard from 20 October 2010. It shows that the debate started at 5.29 pm—

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am intervening on my noble friend; I was asking him to comment on this matter. The debate started at 5.29 pm and ended at 9 pm. That was under a guillotined proceeding on the Bill.

[Lord Soley]

I do not have detailed knowledge of that matter, but I know that my noble friend pays great attention to these things. I also know, not least from letters that I and, I think, others have seen, that Conservative MPs complained that insufficient time had been allowed to discuss issues relating to the size of constituencies. I shall give way to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I just hope that I know enough about this issue to be able to give him an answer.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

This is a bad clause. It is not bad simply because of its content but, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions, because it has been drawn up in a way that is designed to meet a short-term political problem and has not been dealt with in the way in which a constitutional reform of this type ought to be dealt with. The Boundary Commission of all things, given its implications for the future of MPs, constituencies and constituents, ought to have been given far more detailed consideration, but the Bill has been brought forward in just a few months following the deal between the two political parties. It is a good example of bad law. It comprises a constitutional change that is underpinned by Boundary Commission reports that were necessarily drawn up in haste. All the things we have heard about the electoral register and the whole electoral registration process indicate the detailed work that should have been done on the Bill in a proper constitutional way either by committee beforehand or through an inquiry. Instead, it has been hastily drawn up and placed before us at short notice.

I have worries about the Electoral Commission and the Boundary Commission being able to complete this task in the necessary detail in the time available. It troubles me that when you rush something like this, you could well get into difficulties with it. I remember the previous time when we tried to change how votes were cast and push things on the Electoral Commission that it was unhappy about. My Government were in power at the time, so I have to accept some responsibility for this. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the policy, it resulted in considerable problems on the ground.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

There is a part of this debate that has not been answered, and this is the only opportunity that we have to discuss it—that is, what happens in the event that the public petition over the recommendations of the Boundary Commission by using legislation that the Government say they intend to introduce? What happens if the boundaries were to be changed in my former constituency and 10,000 or 15,000 people went down to the town centre in Workington, signed a petition, gave it to their MP and said, “We object to what has been decided and we want it to be revised”, and the Boundary Commission has taken its decision? I still do not know what happens in those circumstances. I am not exaggerating. It is quite possible that that will happen. It could happen in any constituency in the United Kingdom. I wonder whether my noble friend might give thought to other cases as well.

[Lord Soley]

To some extent my noble friend anticipates me. I was thinking not just of that example. There will be a number of possibilities here of problems on the ground, and there will be either legal challenges or else what we had because of previous attempts to legislate in a rush in areas such as this: confusion, uncertainty and alienated electors who feel unable to vote in certain circumstances. There will be big problems. The point that my noble friend has just made highlights a classic example of them. As I said, there may well be legal challenges. I am sure the Minister will say, understandably, that in that case the courts will decide the matter because that is their role. However, he has to accept that because this Bill is driven by a particular timetable, that timetable may not be met unless the Government ignore the courts’ decisions. I hope that the Government are not prepared to go down that road.

I simply say at this stage that if you put forward a clause such as this, the duty on the Government to look at it in considerable detail is important. I know that Members opposite have sometimes grumbled about time and, dare I say, even got paranoid about it. However, I had better not use that word after the confusion in the previous exchanges, which I assume did not apply to me, although I shall have to read Hansard to make sure. There is a genuine problem, and it is not something that can be just airbrushed out.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Given that the Electoral Commission does not have this power, was it not highly irresponsible of it to push individual registration on local authorities when it knew that it could not enforce it?

[Lord Soley]

There are two views about individual registration. I understand the argument, but this is not the time to have it. I accept my noble friend’s underlying point: if we are going to give the Electoral Commission the power to enforce in some way or to put heavy pressure on the local authority, we will need to think through some of these underlying issues, because there is a legitimate argument on both sides of the point that he has just raised—even though I have one particular view, which I suspect is the same as his.

Let me go back to my main point. If we are going to make sure that local authorities maximise registration, we really need to ensure not only that they have the time to do it but that we, as a Parliament, put the pressure on them to do it. Given that there is some acceptance that the Electoral Commission cannot enforce this as fully as one would like, the Government need to say that each local authority will be asked to demonstrate that it has maximised the registration on the voters roll in its area and that it will be asked for evidence of that, where there is a track record of its having a lower registration than other, similar authorities. That could be done in part by accepting these amendments, but there really needs to be some leadership from the Government on this issue.

The debate before the dinner break was on the crucial issue—it is a central issue for me—of the constitutional factor. We will return to that when my amendment comes up, which I suspect will not now be tonight. I hope that it will be on Wednesday. All of this is in the context of a Bill that is doing the very thing that I have said before that the Government are doing: presenting us with the image of a Government who do not care too much about the quality of our democracy and are determined to drive through the changes. In that sense, they have become an overpowerful Government. You can see that in the Public Bodies Bill or in this Bill, where they are determining the size of the House of Commons at the same time as they are increasing the numbers in the House of Lords to a position where they almost have a majority. All these things are deeply worrying. There is a massive increase in the use of Henry VIII powers, about which all the members of the Regulatory Reform Committee, including me, expressed their acute concern in their report on the Public Bodies Bill. All these things are coming together. The Government, simply in terms of their own image, need to demonstrate that they are taking these matters more seriously than they seem to be at the moment.

It troubles me, as it troubles other Members, that, particularly in the previous debate, which was so clearly on a matter of acute constitutional importance, virtually no one took part—except one Liberal Democrat Member—from the government Back Benches. I know, and I challenge the Government to deny this, that all the Back-Benchers from the political parties in the coalition have been instructed not to speak on that issue because it would take up time. I challenge them to deny that the Back-Benchers have been whipped not to take part in debates that add to the time on this Bill. That was particularly true in the previous debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

I am delighted to hear that. I am sure that Members did not receive e-mails or letters of that type. However, I challenge the Front-Benchers again to give a clear indication that they did not tell Members on their Back Benches not to take part in the debate in a way that would add to the time taken on the Bill. I want to hear that.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

They are refusing.

[Lord Soley]

All I know is what I have been told. I respect people’s privacy, and I respect individuals who say that it has not happened; I am sure that people on this side would say the same. But I also know, from all my experience in Parliament and in this House, that it happens in all parties—I am talking not just about my party but about all parties, including mine; I have seen and heard it happen in all of them—that a recommendation goes out that you do not take part because that will use up time when a Government are worried about time on their Bill. We all know that that is what this Government are worried about. I would be less concerned about that if this were a conventional Bill, but on a constitutional Bill this is profoundly serious.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

It may well be achievable but on the basis of a deficient register. That is at the core of our complaint. We do not accept that the review should take place on the back of a deficient register.

I do not challenge my noble friend Lord Soley, but I do put it to him that when the Electoral Commission tells him that registration rates in London have gone up, that is at variance with the statistics that have been published by the Office for National Statistics in Wales. The director-general wrote to Chris Ruane, a Member in the other House who has led the charge on this issue over recent years. He has tabled hundreds if not thousands of Questions, and has a library of statistics that is of great interest to those of us who take an interest in these matters. In June of last year, the director-general of the Office for National Statistics in Wales wrote to him:

“I have been asked to reply to your question asking what the electorate was in each year since 1997 in the 100 parliamentary seats which have had the largest decrease in the number of electors on the register since that date … This is the latest year for which comparable data are available”.

One can look at where the London boroughs stand in this table of the bottom 100. I will start from the bottom of the table. Kensington and Chelsea, the Cities of London and Westminster, Regent’s Park and North Kensington, Holborn and St Pancras, Hampstead and Highgate, Hammersmith and Fulham, North Southwark and Bermondsey, Islington South and Finsbury, Brent East—I intervene at this stage to suggest that they are not doing well in London, despite what the Electoral Commission might say—Wimbledon, Vauxhall, Tottenham, Lewisham, Deptford, Islington, Hackney. There are more that I could reel off.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, tells us that the problem does not necessarily arise in the way that we suggest because many of these are safe seats where people do not think that it is worth voting. I argue that most of the seats in London that I referred to are highly marginal.

[Lord Soley]

The figures that my noble friend gives are very important. I will look at them and draw them to the attention of the Electoral Commission to get its response. Without being sure what we are comparing here, it is difficult to be confident. The statement about the London boroughs was, to the best of my memory, that registration had gone up and stabilised. That was in the last report of the Electoral Commission. I do not know what date the statement related to, but I am happy to take on board the figures and ask for an explanation of them.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may tell my noble friend exactly what the figures relate to. The percentages were calculated using the mid-2007 population estimates for parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom of those aged 18 and above and the number of people registered to vote in parliamentary elections on 1 December 2007. We have a clear description of what we are talking about. No doubt the Electoral Commission will pore over our contributions to this debate and respond to us accordingly.

I turn to the position of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. He knows that I have huge respect for him. We have worked on many issues over the years. However, I found his intervention extraordinary. It was almost like the intervention of a government Back-Bencher in the House of Commons desperately defending the position taken by the Government when clearly there is a deficiency in that position. What he is arguing essentially is that it would be acceptable for the Boundary Commission of England and Wales to set boundaries and to change those boundaries on the basis of every local authority having not taken,

“reasonable steps to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible”.

That proposition is ludicrous.

I suspect that the Government will resist this amendment because they know that local authorities will not have the resources available. The issue has been raised by my noble friends, and I have discussed the Bill with a number of electoral registration officers in the past month, to which I have referred on previous occasions. They make it absolutely clear when I speak to them discreetly that they are very concerned about what might happen to their budgets in conditions of declining local authority expenditure. I cannot see how the Government can assure us that we will gain the high levels of registration that are required when they know that they are subject to these cuts. They know equally that local authority budgets are not ring-fenced, and I hold our own Labour Government responsible for that. We allowed local authorities to proceed on the basis that those budgets would not be ring-fenced. If we had decided to ring-fence them at the time, we might not be arguing as we are arguing today. We are arguing in fear of the fact that we know that electoral registration levels will not be as high as they should be.

I have another reason. I think that the Government are not prepared to secure the high levels of registration in the inner cities that are essential to make registration work. When we dealt with the Bill on electoral registration, I talked to electoral registration officers the first time the Labour Government tried to push through individual registration in the teeth of opposition from some of us. This was about 2006 when my noble friend Lord Bach was in Committee. He will remember the amendments that I moved to try to block individual registration. The fact is that parts of Britain’s inner cities are completely inaccessible to electoral registration officers. There are no-go areas in Britain’s inner cities. There are places where you cannot send canvassers. You cannot pay them to go into those areas because they are frightened of violence.

When I raised that problem on a previous occasion, people said that it did not arise. Why do they not go into the inner cities and talk to the people who have to knock on doors, ask the questions and hand over the forms? There is a real problem here. I had a number of conversations with electoral registration officers and I felt so angry that I wrote to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, when it was inquiring into the Electoral Commission a few years back, to complain that the commission had failed to consider that matter when it was pushing electoral registration on Members of Parliament in the hope that they would get Parliament to approve individual registration. It got it in the end because the Government backed the recommendation.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

The noble Lord is labouring this for another reason. Does he bear in mind that his own Members in the House of Commons complained about lack of time? Not only did they complain about the lack of time, they also produced evidence from Conservative councils about lack of time. Does he also understand the crucial point here is that this is a constitutional Bill? We have a situation where a Government are changing the composition in terms of numbers of the House of Commons without either an independent assessment first or the agreement of all the parties. That is what makes the Bill much more serious than he is pretending at the moment.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does the noble Lord not recognise that Conservative Members of the other place are asking us to block the Bill because of AV? They are asking us to block the Bill.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I rise with one intention only: to ask a specific question of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and ask him to deal with it in his response. In asking it I should declare an interest as one of the political panel drawn from all the political parties, from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who act as advisers and information givers to the Electoral Commission.

At the moment the Electoral Commission believes that it is possible to hold these elections on joint dates without problems. Along with everyone else, however, it acknowledges—I think this was the key point made by my noble friend Lord Rooker—that problems could arise; and if they do arise, that will have a major impact on how well the referendum—or indeed the elections, but particularly the referendum—is held.

If in the course of events the Electoral Commission decides that it is not able to conduct a referendum in a manner that is acceptable to both national and international standards, will the Government put off the referendum to another date? That is an important question and I hope the noble Lord will address it with some care.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I want to follow that specific question. I am pleased that my noble friend was able to intervene before me. It is not just a question of whether the Electoral Commission would recommend that the date be changed; it is whether the Government for other reasons might wish to change the date of the referendum. I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that in 2001 a Government had to defer elections due to the foot and mouth crisis. All over the country, returning officers were arguing with their local authorities that it would be impractical, because of problems at polling stations, to carry out polling on that particular day. In addition to the question asked by my noble friend, I would therefore like to know what would happen in those circumstances.

In Clause 4(7) of the Bill there is reference to,

“Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (postponement of poll at parish elections etc) does not apply to any polls taken together under subsection (1)”,

and subsection (1)(b) refers specifically to,

“a local referendum in England”.

So I think that we should have some assurance about what would happen in the emergency circumstances that might arise.

I had to leave the Chamber for personal reasons during the course of a couple of speeches, but I understand that reference was made to our alleged inconsistency in these matters. I would like to draw the House’s attention to the then Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill which was considered by Parliament earlier this year—a Bill produced by the then Labour Government. Under Clause 29 of that legislation we find my noble friend's amendment. Under “Referendum on voting systems”, it states:

“A referendum is to be held, no later than 31 October 2011, on the voting system for parliamentary elections”.

In other words, we showed in our Bill the flexibility that my noble friend seeks to establish in this Bill. Our position is perfectly consistent with the position that we took earlier this year.

I am very pleased to see a large number of Cross-Benchers in the Chamber today. The other day we debated an aspect of this Bill, when some of us were a little concerned that the Cross-Benchers had perhaps not been able to hear the debate. That is the insufficiency of consideration that has been given to the effectiveness of the electoral system proposed in this Bill. There is a lot of evidence out there to suggest that the optional multi-preference election system under the alternative vote system—which applies not in Australia generally in its federal Parliament arrangements, but only in one state, Queensland—is flawed. There has been a lot of academic work to prove that. In later stages of the Bill I will bring forward evidence, on the basis of international evidence which we have been able to collate, to dismantle systematically the case made for that system.

Even this morning I received a paper on STV which applies under the Scottish system for local elections. The interesting thing about STV in Scotland is that when a by-election takes place there it triggers an AV election. In other words, within the United Kingdom we have examples of AV operating which have not been fully considered by Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, drew my attention to that the other day—he nods his head. What happened in those 32 by-elections in Scotland will be of great interest to the House when we produce that information. This morning I received a document, whose authors are Professor David Denver of Lancaster University, Dr Alistair Clark of Belfast and Dr Lynn Bennie of Aberdeen, on the operation of the STV system in Scotland—not on AV as it applies in individual constituencies when there is a by-election.

More work needs to be done on the electrical system proposed in the Bill before Parliament finally decides what the system should be. Furthermore, in the event that we proceed with the system proposed in the Bill, there should be time for a full public debate before any referendum takes place within the United Kingdom.