Local Elections: Voter ID

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. There will be an independent statutory evaluation of the pilots conducted by the Electoral Commission. That will be published by the end of July, and it will inform the ensuing debate.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, we recognise the validity of the concerns of the EHRC, but we should know by the summer whether the Government were correct in their assessment or whether those concerns were legitimate. Meanwhile, what exactly are the new safeguards to prevent electoral fraud in postal and proxy voting that are being tested in the three pilot areas referred to by the Minister in the Commons yesterday? The Minister also assured my Liberal Democrat colleague there that the number of registered electors who are not permitted to vote in person, for lack of appropriate ID, will be recorded and reported. What will happen if that number exceeds the margin of victory in a particular ward?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right: three local authorities are piloting new procedures for voter ID on postal votes—Tower Hamlets, Peterborough and Slough. I said a little about that in my opening remarks. Some local authorities are not only making people more aware of the incidence of electoral fraud and encouraging them to report it where necessary to Crimestoppers, but are following up after the election—contacting certain electors who have used the postal vote—to make sure that nothing improper has taken place.

With regard to turning up at a polling station and not being able to vote, in one local authority—I think it is Swindon—if you do not have the necessary documentation on polling day you can take along someone called an “attester”, who has the necessary documentation and is registered in the same ward, and if the attester vouchsafes your identity you can then vote.

Elections: Personal Data

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Tyler]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are satisfied that current electoral law adequately prevents the misuse of personal data in United Kingdom elections and referendum campaigns.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the misuse of personal data in UK elections is governed primarily by data protection law. The Information Commissioner has said that she has an ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes, in which she is continuing to invoke all her powers and is pursuing a number of live lines of inquiry. The Government are currently considering recommendations from the commissioner, including some for enhanced legal powers.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the slightly more positive tone from the Minister since our previous exchanges on 28 March, but I particularly draw his attention to the fact that my Question relates also to referendums. Given that the Foreign Secretary panicked and sought to rubbish the evidence of whistleblowers even before they presented it, given that leave campaigners were seeking, obviously, to avert an adverse judgment when they attacked the impartiality of the Electoral Commission, and given that when the Conservative chair of the investigating Select Committee in the other place was asked whether the Brexit poll was compromised he said that we may need a public debate about that, do the Government not recognise that any complacency gives added voice to the demand for the public to have a free and fair vote at the end of the Brexit process?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The last question the noble Lord put to me is a matter in which we will be engaged in the forthcoming debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, where there may well be an amendment of the type that he envisages, and it would be wrong for me to anticipate that debate. So far as his first points are concerned, the Information Commissioner and the Electoral Commission are independent offices, with robust chairmen and chief executives, and I am sure they are capable of withstanding pressure from whatever direction it may come.

Vote Leave Campaign

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The Prime Minister made it clear recently that these are very serious allegations which do raise questions for the integrity of our democratic system. So far as the Information Commissioner is concerned, it is she who is investigating the misuse of data. The Data Protection Bill currently going through Parliament, now in the other place, gives enhanced powers to the Information Commissioner’s Office to get the information that is needed. If more powers are needed, the Government have said they will seriously look at that issue before the Bill emerges from Parliament. But I agree with the noble Lord that, on the whole, we have a robust electoral system and its integrity is amongst the highest in the world, but we need to take every safeguard we possibly can to make sure that it is not undermined by alien forces from overseas.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister recall that, as long ago as 10 March last year, I drew to his attention and to that of the House that the leave campaign then was accused not only of lying in the substance of its campaign but of cheating in the process of delivering it, and I gave examples? Can the Minister explain why the investigation of these increasingly serious allegations has taken so long? He says the law is robust, but this is a very long period indeed in which there has been no satisfactory outcome. It would appear that both the Electoral Commission and the police say they have appropriate resources, but is there a lack of effective electoral law here or are there discrepancies? After what we have seen and heard in the last few days, and given the very narrow result of the EU referendum—for every 17 people who voted to leave, there were 16 who voted to remain—do the Government not recognise that there are continuing public doubts about the integrity of the system, which he has just described as being robust, and which then challenge the legitimacy of the whole Brexit process?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I think it is worth quoting what the Electoral Commission said in its report on the referendum:

“The evidence outlined in this report confirms that, through careful management of the potential risks associated with the timing and profile of the poll, we saw a referendum that was delivered without any major issues and the announcement of a clear, timely final result”.


We will never know if the law was broken and whether it made any difference. My personal view is that it was unlikely, and there are better explanations as to why people voted as they did, rather than that they were targeted by an algorithm.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett]

I had better not go into the payment of favours in your Lordships’ House—it might be a difficult road to travel.

It is odd for a Labour Member to say this, but if noble Lords think it through, they will appreciate it. The historic mission of the Conservative Benches and the Government has been to be sufficiently willing to bend and move with the times, which has been of historic benefit to them. Therefore, I am surprised to hear that the mover of the amendment is in favour of very radical change: namely, a wholly elected House or a substantially elected House. It is odd to advocate a substantially elected House but to want to retain by-elections or inherited peerages. If you had this debate anywhere in the United Kingdom in any forum—from traditional media to social media, in colleges or schools, where many Members of this House attend and make a positive contribution in explaining how our democracy works—people would think that you had lost your marbles if you argued not for the immediate abolition of the hereditary Peers but to continue to have by-elections to fulfil those vacancies.

In doing so, whatever else happens around us, whatever we do with Burns and the lead up to decanting, whatever happens in terms of the natural processes of noble Lords leaving this House either under the 2014 Act or by death, the hereditary Peers would retain their numbers. That is illogical, irrational and would cause extreme difficulties as we move over the next seven years to decanting to other premises with noble Lords rationally looking to reduce the numbers in this House. That is why we should wholeheartedly back my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Bill.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I too oppose the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and add to the points already made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. This is in danger of creating yet another myth about the way in which your Lordships’ House could and should be improved. His amendment is upside down and inside out and contrary to common sense.

I can best illustrate that with a practical example. I apologise in advance if this seems somewhat personal or even morbid, but it is the best way in which I can demonstrate the reality of the situation facing your Lordships’ House. Suppose that suddenly and truly sadly both the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, were—heaven forbid—to be called to higher and greater things. There would then of course be two hereditary by-elections. Incidentally, I think that heaven would do well to forbid. The addition to the heavenly host of those particular noble Lords would be a problem for St Peter.

Whatever the nature and size of the electorate in the consequent hereditary by-elections, one factor is certain. Under the present arrangements two new hereditary Peers would be elected from the list of eligible hereditaries. However, they would of course be chosen within the vagaries and vicissitudes of the current system already referred to by noble Lords. The leadership of the Conservative Party—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Young, will be able to elucidate this—and No. 10 could have no guarantee that the additions to the Government Benches were as useful or supportive as the Members that they were replacing. Indeed, they could not even be sure that they would be loyal Brexiteers.

That brings us to the amendment and to the report of the Burns committee. Throughout our debate on 19 December—throughout the House on all sides—there was a general recognition that the unique key to progress would be the active and complete co-operation of the Prime Minister and her successors. Without that, we would not make progress. The Prime Minister is clearly numerate. We already know from her letter to the Lord Speaker on 20 February that she had perfectly understandable concerns about the proposals of the Burns committee. In that letter she makes no direct reference to the central and crucial Burns recommendation of two out for one in. But given what I have already explained in terms of the inevitable consequences of continuing hereditary by-elections under the system that we have—which is so devotedly supported by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness—she would be entitled to be extremely cautious in supporting those colleagues on this issue. Just follow the arithmetic implications of the solemn departure of those two noble Lords. No fewer than four life Peers would have to disappear from the Conservative Benches, by whatever means, before the Prime Minister could have just one new recruit of her own choice. Two would already be wiped out by the second departing hereditary before a further two could justify just one new recruit.

I hope that the Minister, in responding to the discussion today, will be able to indicate to us that the Burns report, far from giving an alibi to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for yet more delay, actually gives us a very strong reason to move forward. If not, frankly, the arithmetic will be nonsense—nonsense in the terms described by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but specifically in terms of the nonsense to the Conservative Benches.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord talks about statistical nonsense, but does he think that the current representation of the Liberal Democrats in your Lordships’ House bears any resemblance to the votes cast at the last election? Is that not nonsense too?

[Lord Tyler]

I was not going to go down that track but the noble Lord is an old friend and I am delighted to dispose of that myth too. My noble friends in this House did not support the deal that was referred to. We were not in that particular discussion. We do not support the deal that was done but we have been unique in being consistent in supporting the case for reform. We supported the case for the 2012 Bill, which gained a majority in the House of Commons of 338—the biggest majority of that type for a big Bill. There was a majority on the Conservative Benches, a majority on the Labour Benches, and unanimity among the Liberal Democrats. I stand four-square behind the reform of your Lordships’ House but until that happens, just as we have to live with these unfortunate facts of life, we have to live with those facts of life too.

[Lord True (Con)]

I was a member of the official group that was tasked to negotiate the details of the arrangement entered into by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, and Lord Cranborne, and there were Liberal Democrat representatives. I remember it well, so it is not actually true that the Liberal Democrats did not assent. The college system that noble Lords should be elected only by members of their party was insisted on by both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, for the understandable reason at the time that they did not trust that the whole House would preserve the balance between the parties. As has happened since, because of the Carter convention, that has been respected. But it is simply not true that the Liberal Democrats were not there at the table.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I can quote Hansard in a different sense, but that is not the important point for today’s discussion. As my noble friend Lord Steel has pointed out, everybody in your Lordships’ House, including some of the most important participants in those debates, anticipated that this arrangement would last for a maximum of a couple of years—that is all.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Does the noble Lord not accept that we have had the Second Reading of this Bill already? He is making a Second Reading speech. The best way that the House could be assisted now would be for my noble friend Lord Trefgarne to desist his mischief, withdraw his amendment to the Motion and get on with the amendments to the Bill.

[Lord Tyler]

I was actually speaking to the amendment to the Motion but I was diverted by my friend down the other end. The amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has promoted is upside down. The case for removing these absurdities is strengthened by the Burns committee report rather than the reverse. That is simply my point and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for bringing me back to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True]

I will not take further interventions. There are serious points to be made against the Bill and some of those that I have addressed remain unresolved.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, very briefly, I am wholly opposed to this whole group of amendments for the very important reason given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern: these are wrecking amendments. If they were going to be pursued appropriately in your Lordships’ House, they should have been raised at Second Reading as an opportunity to vote against the Bill then. I am particularly opposed to Amendment 59, which has been given so much emphasis in the last few minutes and reads:

“Whereas it is no longer intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular basis”.


That is a subjective supposition. It may be true; I do not know whether it is true. What sort of timescale is envisaged? It is not a fact and, therefore, for us to put it into the Bill would be absurd.

If I may take this opportunity, the first person who I think would have reacted to that particular suggestion would be our former colleague Lord Richard. I served with him in a number of capacities but, in particular, through a whole year on the Joint Committee on the then draft Bill brought forward by the coalition. He would not have accepted that as a statement of fact, because it is not a statement of fact. It is a supposition. I therefore hope we will dispose of this whole group of amendments and, in particular, dispose absolutely clearly and without any doubt of Amendment 59, if only to make sure that Lord Richard’s view on this issue remains with us. He was always clear and consistent and argued his case with such conviction; we should at least respect that in this case.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I intervene very briefly on this group in the hope that I can speed things up, because these amendments are clearly designed to wreck the Bill. The vote should have taken place at Second Reading; the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and others decided not to vote against Second Reading. We are now nearly two hours into this debate and we are on the second group of amendments. I conceded the first group entirely to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and said that I would accept his amendment. What is taking place now—I know there have been interventions—is an abuse of this House. To be crystal clear about this, virtually none of the contributions has been about this group of amendments—or very few; there have been one or two exceptions. They have been Second Reading speeches, repeating time after time tired old arguments that are long out of date and have been long refuted.

I very rarely disagree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay; I can think of no other way in which the House could express its opinion as to the overwhelming majority who support this Bill and are concerned about the reputation of the House and this very small part of our constitution. It is part of our constitution that we have elections in which there are 11 candidates and three people entitled to vote—try to defend that. Do not go into the history books and explain precisely why the original 1999 Act was passed in the way that it was. I could wax lyrical on that—I was working in Downing Street at the time. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and others, made it pretty plain—by whatever right they must explain for themselves—that the Labour Government, with our majority of 170-odd and with a precise and unarguable commitment in our manifesto to end the hereditary peerage, would be prevented from doing so. It was made perfectly plain to us that many of the 750 hereditary Peers who were here at the time would not just block the Bill—they were intent on doing that—but wreck the Labour Government’s democratically elected manifesto and programme.

It seems to me that the same thing is happening now, but by different means. A tiny minority in this House are trying to block the overwhelming view of the majority. I greatly respect the procedures of this House. They are terrific in the way that they enable people to make contributions, to table amendments and to speak frequently. It is a great privilege to which we are all party. But to deal with, effectively, just one group in the best part of two hours—after an attempt was made to delay Committee stage—is a clear abuse of this House. If the people who persist in opposing the Bill do not do it by the proper mechanism, which is to vote against Third Reading—Report and Third Reading are to come, quite apart from it going to the Commons thereafter—then their proper course of action is to let the Bill proceed and let it be amended in a way that improves it, not that wrecks it. Then, if they are still not happy—which many of them will not be, I know—it is their right to get rid of it at Third Reading. I think we should expedite this, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will quickly withdraw his amendment and others will not move substantial amendments. I can see that they make the House look ridiculous and, in some cases, make themselves look ridiculous.

European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all who have taken part in this debate. I will try to answer the various questions that have been raised.

I start with the relative costs of by-elections. My noble friend was quite right: I mentioned a figure for Wales, where the total cost of a by-election would be £7.1 million. If there was a by-election in the south-east, it would be £19.585 million. The difference is accounted for by expenses for delivery of the poll. In Wales, this would be nearly £5 million, but in the south-east £13.4 million. I suspect that is because there are more electors in the south-east and it has more MEPs than Wales, which has three. There is a slight increase in the cost of relevant services supplied by the returning officer and a significant difference in the cost of delivering the mailings at public expense—£2 million in Wales and nearly £6 million in the south-east. The difference is, basically, related to the number of voters.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked me a question which he has asked me before about the Law Commission review. I am afraid that the answer is the same as I have given him before: the Government continue to work with the Law Commission on taking forward its review of electoral law.

I return to some of the main issues raised in the debate. I welcome all the contributions. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that this is most unlikely to happen and it is a small window, but it is quite a large sum of money. We therefore believe that this is a proportionate and sensible step to take in order to potentially save a significant amount of public money.

The noble Lord also asked whether a by-election would still take place if the nominating officer was unable to nominate somebody as the list had been exhausted. All the MEPs elected at the last European election represented major registered parties. I think it is most unlikely that a nominating officer would not be able to find anybody from a party to take up a vacancy. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats would be able to find somebody to fulfil that role, and I am sure the same would apply to any other party.

As regards Scotland, I am not that familiar with what happens north of the border, but I understand that due procedure was followed. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, implied that if we pass these regulations, it would prevent that happening. It would not. We would still have to go through the list member by member before the provisions in this regulation were activated—namely, having exhausted the list, there would not be a by-election; there would be a nomination.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, tempted me to answer a hypothetical question: what would happen if, for whatever reason, we did not exit the EU? That is a hypothetical question which is beyond my pay grade to answer. However, these regulations would remain on the statute book unless they were revoked, which would be an option were that eventuality to arise.

It was implied in some of the remarks that it is undemocratic to allow the party machine—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to it—to fill a vacant seat. These changes are modelled on the process that his Government agreed to fill MEP vacancies in Northern Ireland, and have been used already to fill a vacant seat there. I am not sure whether allegations of undue use of the party machine were made by the Labour Party at that point.

Another hypothetical question was asked: what happens if UKIP becomes unregistered, or if it does not have a nominating officer? If it does not have a nominating officer, the nominating officer cannot nominate somebody, by definition, and there would then be a by-election. That would happen if the party became unregistered.

I was asked what happens to a vacancy where the MEP has changed party. As I think I said from a sedentary position, the vacancy is filled by the next person on the list of the party that won the election at the previous election. I think that is the right thing to do democratically because that is how people voted at that election—they voted in those numbers for a Conservative Party or Lib Dem candidate. When that candidate is no longer fulfilling that post, I think it is right that the party that got the requisite number of votes at that relevant election should fill the vacancy.

As paragraph 4.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states, the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 is being amended to enable the changes to be made to the 2004 regulations. This is, as it were, a paving Bill, if I can use that term, for the substantive regulations that we are debating.

I detected no fundamental opposition in principle to what the Government are doing. There were a number of very interesting questions which I have done my best to address.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, it would seem from what the noble Lord is saying that we are all prepared to accept a short-term solution to this problem. However, does he accept that in the longer term it could not be a solution? He described the question of my noble friend Lord Rennard as entirely hypothetical. Has he not noticed that an increasing number of people, even Mr Farage, think that Brexit might not happen? It may be, of course, that in his case, since he says he is skint, he is beginning to think that his continuing MEP salary might be rather desirable.

However, can the noble Lord, in his usual fashion, give us an undertaking that, if there is a possibility that this ceases to be a short-term problem and becomes a longer-term one, we should at least expect the Government to produce some form of contingency plan beyond March 2019? He surely must accept that this provision before your Lordships cannot be allowed to stand for ever. That is undemocratic. It does not even really meet the requirements that his party has set out in the past for truly democratic representation in the European Parliament. If, this time next year, we find ourselves still not sure whether we are going to be exiting from the European Union, surely a responsible Government should look again at what should be put in place of these regulations.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is very plausibly trying to tempt me further down a route that I embarked on, probably ill-advisedly, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I think that I can best shelter behind paragraph 7.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum:

“Following the EU Referendum, the UK will be leaving the EU and it is not expected that the UK will be participating in the next elections to the European Parliament in 2019 (the date of the poll has not been confirmed”.


It then goes on to say that, while we remain a member of the EU, we have to return MEPs. I can go no further than what I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—that if these regulations are approved by both Houses, they will govern the position of any vacancies where a party list is exhausted. In that unlikely event, there are European elections next year and the list would be refreshed. However, as the Government’s policy is to leave the EU, I shall venture no further down that path or I will get into real trouble, except to say that these are sensible precautions given that, following the EU referendum, the UK will be leaving the EU.

House of Lords: Membership

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

As the noble Baroness said, my noble friend sat through nearly all the speeches in that debate. I can say that she will be having a discussion with the Prime Minister to discuss both the Burns report and the debate that we had in this House, and the Government’s recommendations or views will be known in due course. I hope the House will understand that there were only three sitting days after the debate on 19 December. We have been back after Christmas for only three days. The Prime Minister has had personnel matters on her mind in the meantime. So I think the Government are entitled to a little bit of time before they come out with their views.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

In the discussion to which the Minister has just referred, will he and his colleagues make it absolutely clear to the Prime Minister that a very large majority of the speakers in that debate on 19 December made it absolutely clear that the proposals of the Lord Speaker’s committee are wholly dependent on the Prime Minister accepting the principle that was inherent right through the report that there must be two out before there can be one in? Will the Ministers on the Front Bench make that clear to the Prime Minister? If she is not prepared to respect that, how can we expect anything to come from this exercise?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

In the analysis of the speeches in that debate, by my calculation, only nine out of 95 contributors were opposed to what was in the recommendations. I think that is as near a consensus as you are ever going to get in this House. I have to say that I thought the noble Lord struck a slightly different tone in his wind-up speech from that of his noble friend Lord Newby. Winding up for the Liberal Democrats —despite what the noble Lord has just said—he referred to Burns as,

“a temporary expedient … a process appropriate for the membership of a gentlemen’s club”—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2100]—

and an “incestuous” process that runs the risk of leading to our abolition. That does not sound to me like wholehearted support for Burns.

Democratic Political Activity (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL]

Lord Tyler Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Tyler]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, coming from a rather ecclesiastical family, I like to start with a text:

“There is a broad consensus that election law is fragmented, confused and unclear, with … poor guidance from the Electoral Commission. Conservatives are committed to strengthening electoral law”.


That was the official statement of the Conservative Party in June this year, just a few days before the general election polling day. For the governing party—and it is still the governing party, albeit in a minority—to do nothing about that situation in this Parliament would be extraordinarily irresponsible. I am here to help.

The context for that statement was, of course, the continuing saga of the discrepancy between the control regime for local, constituency campaign expenditure, on the one hand, and that for national party election expenditure on the other. This is the most urgent of many problems that my Bill seeks to address. At this time on a Friday I am anxious to keep my remarks brief and, in particular, to avoid too much repetition from the debate on 10 March 2017, when my similar Bill in the last Parliament received its Second Reading. I have reread Hansard this morning, as, I am sure, have other noble Lords, and I stand by everything I said during that debate.

However, I remind your Lordships’ House, as the Minister did on that occasion, that this Bill owes its origin to a cross-party initiative in 2013, based on the analysis and recommendations of the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2011. Here I should say how disappointed I am that the noble Lord, Lord Bew, is not able to be with us. He has had a slight accident and has sent his apologies. He would, of course, be contributing in his usual very effective way as the current chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

My approach has always been collaborative and remains so. If, for example, the House, the other main parties and the Government share the view of the Conservatives that there is “a broad consensus” on the need for reform, I will be only too happy for my Bill to become the vehicle to deal with the most blatant defects in electoral law. On 10 March the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said the time was ripe for,

“incremental reforms that achieve cross-party support”.—[Official Report, 10/3/17; col. 1622.]

Given the consensus suggested by that statement in June, I now submit that progress could and should follow as a matter of urgency. It would surely be unthinkable not to tackle the problems identified before another general election—or, indeed, another referendum.

In the debate in March I referred to the fact that since 1883 there have been firm rules to prevent individuals and organisations pouring excessive sums of money into constituency campaigns to secure the election of individual candidates. I am delighted to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury here, because, of course, it was Old Sarum that was always given as the example we should all refer to in that connection.

In past elections the noble Lord, Lord Young, and I were often warned by our agents that if we did not check every single sum, every penny spent seeking our election, we or our election agent could end up in court.

The recent practice, by all parties, of their national campaign concentrating an ever increasing percentage of investment in a limited number of target seats, bypassing those local limits, has led to the investigative exposure, notably by Michael Crick and Channel 4, of what the Times subsequently described as “election fraud”. The report Elections for Sale?, published recently by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, spells out in detail the consequences of this weakness in the law. I am sure that we all recognise the potential damage to the integrity and reputation of our political processes that is involved.

In March, I also expressed sympathy for the various individual MPs whose whole political careers could be at risk from that uncertainty in the law. The partial conclusion of the legal process since then has scarcely clarified the situation. Obviously, I make no reference to any outstanding legal action, but I am sure that Members of your Lordships’ House share my determination to make progress on the reform for which the Conservative Party was arguing in June. As long ago as 2010, my own party was arguing for much greater clarity in the apportionment of election campaign expenditure.

My Bill indicates in Clause 19(3) the national campaign activities which should now be separately recorded and capped as relating to the individual constituency. Its provisions include:

“(a) sending unsolicited material falling within paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 which is addressed to any person registered, or entitled to be registered, in the register of parliamentary electors for any particular constituency;


(b) making unsolicited telephone calls to such persons; or


(c) displaying digital advertising to persons based on the postcode in which they reside”.


If any Members of your Lordships’ House should think these are trivial matters, I draw their attention to the brief that gives us some figures on the expenditure by the major parties in these sorts of attempts to woo electors. We do not yet have the figures for 2017 but in 2015, the Electoral Commission reported that the total expenditure of all parties was £37.6 million but of that figure, £15.2 million was for material unsolicited by the elector. I submit that that very substantial amount of money is sent, as it were, to bypass local constituency campaign controls.

I am by no means wedded to the exact method by which we should do this. If we identify and regulate these activities, we can obviously find the best means by which they can be controlled. It is really important that the local candidates and agents should take on this responsibility, because I believe it is for them to take the full weight of that for money spent on their behalf. The key issue is to make sure that there is an appropriately increased cash limit. That, too, is something we can look at in the context of the Committee stage.

There is a similar consensus, I believe, that the rules governing the financing of campaigns for referendum outcomes must be re-examined. The fact that just 12 male millionaires—I do not know why that is significant, but it seems to be—provided the vast majority of private funding for the two campaigns in 2016 should surely give us pause for serious thought.

In the March debate, I and other speakers also referred to the huge sum invested by the DUP in that campaign. Curiously, every single penny of it was spent on the British mainland, where the DUP is not an active political party. Because the sources of political donations to Northern Ireland parties have been permitted to remain secret in the past, no doubt for some good reasons, this now raises serious concerns about transparency. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, made substantial reference to that anomaly in the March debate. Ministers could, and should, have dispensed with this out-of-date exclusion years ago. Now that the DUP is in cahoots with the Government, this mystery should surely be cleared up. In our March debate, the Minister reported that efforts were being made to regularise and standardise the arrangements for the whole UK. Have they been successful?

Thanks to the amazingly diligent investigation of Carole Cadwalladr and the Observer, we are also aware of the role played by Cambridge Analytica last year. Mr Arron Banks claimed that its artificial intelligence gave the leave campaign “unprecedented levels of engagement”, and he went on to claim it “won it for leave”, yet we still do not know, and apparently the Electoral Commission has yet to discover, who paid for those services. Was it the shadowy US billionaire Robert Mercer, who is said to own the company? Assistance in kind, like donations, from a foreign source raises serious issues. The Brexiteers thus stand accused of both lying and cheating.

Anyone who has read Dark Money, the product of very extensive research by Jane Mayer of the New York Times, will recognise just how dangerous it is for the UK to follow in the footsteps of the US by ignoring the influence of those with vast resources who want to play politics with their fortunes. In our debate in March the noble Lord, Lord Young, said:

“I agree that it would be better if all parties were less reliant on large donations and we had a broader base of membership donations on which to rely”.—[Official Report, 10/3/17; col. 1621.]


Here, too, there would seem to be growing consensus. There are suggestions in my Bill for the reallocation of the current very large amounts of state funding which could be redeployed to assist this.

In the interests of brevity, I do not want to reiterate all the points I and other noble Lords who supported me in March made in support of urgent attention to these issues. Indeed, the very comprehensive briefing note from the Lords Library sets out all the proposals in this Bill. I have only one correction to make in an otherwise impeccable account. In the second full paragraph on the fourth page—perhaps we could benefit from having pagination and numbered paragraphs—there is a reference to personal development grants totalling £2 million per year. I could do with one of those myself. I think I should also reiterate the point made in the previous debate, and underlined in the Library briefing, that my colleague Nick Clegg never objected to the reallocation of the very considerable existing sums of public state funding but considered a net increase undesirable in the austerity conditions of 2011.

In the current Bill, I do not suggest that the various proposals in Clauses 10 to 16 are implemented all at once but that in Committee we should look at which option would seem to be most advantageous. I am also making some suggestions about savings in the very large sums that the Government currently spend supporting various political initiatives, not least in their own advertising budget.

I am assuming that noble Lords have read the Hansard report of our previous debate, so we do not need to deal with all the points addressed then. Clearly, different priorities apply to each section of my Bill. I simply respond to the generous offer the Minister made to the House on that occasion. He undertook to facilitate discussion with the relevant Minister or Ministers to explore the potential for consensus and cross-party agreement. That has not happened in the intervening months.

The Minister sought to break the deadlock; it has not been broken. Given that remarkable Conservative change of attitude in June, with that claim of a broad consensus, I submit that the opportunity offered by my Bill should be grabbed by the Government as a sensible way forward. The Committee stage will provide a chance to explore commonly agreed priorities.

I repeat that I am only too willing, as I have been throughout this long period of gestation, to work with fellow reformers across parties. The public are looking to us to address some of these obvious discrepancies as a matter of urgency because politics has been brought into further disrepute by the inadequacy of the law. That was what was recognised by the Conservative Party in June. We must review with care those things which endanger the integrity and reputation of our electoral system. This too would fulfil the Government’s repeatedly stated willingness to proceed incrementally.

Throughout our debate in March, on all sides, there was a plea for consensus. That is the critical word today—that was the word that was used by the Conservative Party. It said that there is a broad consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Young, will, I am sure, be equally responsive, supportive and positive today. Again, I hope he will undertake to continue in the role of facilitator, for which he is so admirably well qualified, and I look forward with great optimism to his reply to this debate. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to a number of noble Lords who have come again on a Friday. I am afraid we have taken rather longer than on the previous occasion, but I am full of pride for the way in which we have been able as a House to look at these issues on a consensual basis, if I may again use that word. I was particularly delighted that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury referred to partial affections. I have always loved that phrase, and I have always wanted to work it into a speech in the House in some way, but he has gazumped me. If my wife is still listening to this debate—she is very patient—I should make it clear that as far as I am concerned some partial affections are still entirely acceptable.

It is extremely important that we pick up one of the last points made by the Minister. Politics is a reputable pursuit. I know on a number of occasions we may find it difficult to persuade the media of this, and on the whole the public sometimes have difficulty with it, not in relation to individuals, on the whole, but as a collective. Therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the Minister said, there is a very considerable case for looking again at small contributions to political parties being treated in a similar way to making contributions to charities. That would be a small sign that public life is a reputable pursuit in this country. Politics is not just a dirty game. I will come back to that point in a minute.

I am grateful to the Minister for repeating his agreement that we should have some more discussions about what could be incremental and what consensus there may be. As my noble friends Lord Whitty—he is my noble friend in this context—and Lord Wrigglesworth said, it was a very firm commitment in the discussions arising from the Select Committee on Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding that the Government should look at that again, and the House endorsed that very strongly. Therefore, although a general election has intervened, I hope that that will still happen because I think we can make some progress.

On a couple of points of detail, I have not, my Bill does not and the proposals that have come forward from the Committee on Standards in Public Life have never said that there is one absolutely clear way forward. What we have said is, for goodness’ sake, let us look to see whether there is some way forward. I illustrate this with a point about the Royal Mail. I am told that the distribution of election addresses in June this year cost the state £42 million. There is an illusion out there which is shared by the Daily Mail and some other ignorant parts of the media that somehow or other there is no state funding of politics in this country, but £42 million is a lot of money. If you add to that the £100 million or thereabouts that the Government spend each year promoting their policies, not all above the threshold of impartiality that I was referring to just now, that is a lot of money too. It is important that we should make clear that none of us has suggested a huge increase in demand upon the taxpayer. We are just saying that we should try to make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent more wisely and in a way that they would accept.

That is where I very much agree with the Minister about the role of the Electoral Commission. I think the powers of the Electoral Commission should be strengthened. It is one of the specific issues that I have put in the Bill, and it has received a great deal of support in the past.

I return to the point about the reputation of politicians and politics. As the Minister said, the Committee on Standards in Public Life—I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Bew, is not in his place because he might have been able to refer to exactly where it has got to—has been asked by the Government to look at the intimidation of candidates and those active in our public life. I welcome that as extremely valuable. That inquiry into the extent of abuse this year and, I think, during the referendum is very important.

Although I welcomed the rather repetitive, if I may say so, contribution of the noble Lord, Lord True, I am disappointed that he did not take the opportunity today to apologise for the outrageous, abusive attacks by supporters of Zac Goldsmith on the former Member for Richmond Park. But that is a footnote. In the meantime, I seek the Second Reading of the Bill.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, assuming that Brexit actually happens—the Minister will have noted that Donald Tusk says that we do not have to do it—does the Minister not recognise that there will be a considerable increase in the workload of our House of Commons Members of Parliament, but, at the same time, a wonderful saving in costs when MEPs such as Mr Nigel Farage and his freeloading UKIP Members are abolished and removed from the European Parliament? Is this not a good opportunity to change the Government’s mind?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Yet again, we have a plea from the Liberal Democrat Benches to go back on an agreement which they were party to. When we passed the legislation in this House, the date of 2018 was endorsed by members of the noble Lord’s party. Basically, this is special pleading to revisit a measure that, if everyone was sensible, they would put their minds behind this and just get on with it.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Tyler Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, very sincerely on his persistence and on his success in the lottery—or raffle or lucky dip. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord True, has just said, it is not a ballot in the true sense; it is yet another curious anomaly that we should perhaps deal with on another occasion. I and my colleagues will be pleased to give constructive support to the Bill and, with the unusual two-year Session that we have, hope that it will make progress to the other House and achieve cross-party endorsement there.

The noble Lord gave a very clear account of the Bill’s purpose, which I do not need to repeat. However, it is surely necessary to provide some historic context to dispel some misrepresentations, some of them mentioned again today.

The invention of hereditary Peers’ by-elections was the product of the so-called Weatherill amendment in May 1999. In effect, this was grasped by the then Labour Government and the Conservative Opposition in your Lordships’ House as a short cut to try to prevent last-ditch filibustering over the former’s limited reforms of the composition of this House. It was a simple agreement between the two parties, with no involvement by the Liberal Democrats. I do not think that there was even any participation—formally, at least—by the Cross-Benchers, despite its very considerable significance for their Benches. Cynics could describe it as a two-party stitch-up.

The then Leader of the Liberal Democrat Peers, my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, challenged the need for that amendment in the debate on 11 May 1999 as follows:

“There are many noble Lords who could make a valuable contribution to a post-Royal Commission House, if that turns out to be not wholly elected. But their future should be as life Peers, not as residual elected representatives of the hereditary peerage”.


Even more relevant to today’s debate, he went on to express serious scepticism about the claims that these fudged provisions would be strictly temporary. With his proverbial prescience, he said:

“The noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, referred to them as ‘temporary provisions’. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor made it plain today, using strong words, that this would last only through the transitional House and that the transitional House would be brought to an end in the next Parliament”.


I underline those words. He continued:

“However, if I were a betting man I would lay long odds that if Amendment No. 31 is carried, there will still be hereditary Peers in this House in 10 years’ time and possibly for much longer”.—[Official Report, 11/5/1999; cols. 1098-1100.]


This two-party fix was intended to last for perhaps 18 months; it is long past its sell-by date 18 years later.

I have some sympathy with the objections of some of the remaining hereditary Peers—if they do not regard it as an insult, perhaps I could refer to them as the “remainers” in this context. They were, after all, given explicit assurances by very senior government Ministers, supported by the Conservative Opposition, that this curious anomaly would stay only until the proposed full, comprehensive, democratic reform was implemented. I refer to the argument put forward, not least by my noble friend Lord Rennard and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, about the notion of “binding” agreements being totally irrelevant. In that context, it was an intention of the then Ministers that in the following Parliament further reform would take place. It was not, in the same sense, a binding resolution on this or indeed the other House that every succeeding Parliament would have to fulfil those obligations. In that sense, I think that that “binding” suggestion was illegitimate.

However, the Blair Government failed to deliver on their various manifesto promises in that respect and, as has been mentioned, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was a very distinguished member of that Government. Therefore, he must also acknowledge that, if the coalition Government’s proposals of 2012 for Lords reform, backed by all parties, had been followed through, this anachronism would have been removed and there would be no necessity for his further attacks today.

Sadly, despite the best efforts of the then Sir George Young—now the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham —that Bill failed, even with a record 338 majority in the Commons for its Second Reading. It was not defeated, despite some post-truth claims, not least in this House. It was actually supported by majorities in all three major parties, but the Labour Front Bench decided to play silly party games with Conservative rebels, refusing to agree to any timetabling of its Committee stages.

There are some Members—and they have been vocal today—who are still clearly awaiting that wholesale reform. I have always been committed to a major reform with cross-party support, so I understand their position. However, those purist supporters who are awaiting wholesale reform, and are using that as an excuse not to make any incremental changes to the way in which this House is composed, seem to be taking a completely ludicrous position in an Alice in Wonderland world. Taking the view that maintaining this absurd anachronism helps to gain and maintain support for full democratic change is an illusion as well. I do not believe that that tactic holds water any longer.

Clearly, the overloaded agenda of Brexit ahead of us means that Parliament will not have time to process anything comparable to the cross-party proposals of 2012.

I do not believe that any tweaking, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Cope, would be accepted by the electorate. I do not think that the public would see that as a real improvement and I do not think that we in this House would feel comfortable with such a minor change.

However, I believe that the continuation of this now totally discredited and outdated stitch-up does nothing to enhance the reputation of the House of Lords. It is surely time for it to go. In particular, I hope that the Minister was listening very carefully to his noble friend Lady Berridge. It is a clear priority for the Government to take an initiative in this respect and give full support to the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, not least in regard to gender and ethnic equality. I support the Bill.

Local Government Elections

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, my intentions in taking part in the debate are dual. First, I want to endorse and support the concerns expressed by my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Rennard. But secondly, as always, I look forward to the Minister’s contribution with great interest; that is my principal reason for being here. I plead with him to adopt his now-usual practice of going off-piste. I do not know whether that expression was used in last night’s debate on the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, but I was told that the Minister was particularly helpful to the House when he left his script. At one point, he said:

“I return to my script”.—[Official Report, 6/9/17; col. 2050.]


After that, things became less interesting, so I hope that he will adopt his previous attitude this afternoon.

I am reminded by my colleagues’ contributions of my own campaigning experience. It is important to recognise that no parties have found it easy to get the clear guidance they require on the issue of treating. I recall one of my first campaigns in Cornwall; I am not sure whether it was the successful or less successful of my early attempts to get elected to the House of Commons. On arrival at a small village on one of those wonderful Cornish hills where one went in at the first floor, the committee room seemed very quiet. There was nothing much going on and one rather sleepy person ticking some things off. I said to my wife, “It doesn’t look very busy here”, to which the sleepy individual replied, “You wait ‘til you see what’s going on downstairs.” Downstairs, seven or eight people were busily producing pasties and putting clotted cream on saffron cake. The significance of it was that they were not treating the electorate, because the two essential credentials for anybody applying for refreshment were that they had already voted and would help with knocking up voters later. Treating helpers is still a rather vague issue. I have not been so well-fed on the campaign trail since then, and indeed have never had to succumb to so many cups of tea—but in Cornwall in those days, one had to. One was always offered a cup of tea but not always the rather necessary forward motions that were required thereafter.

There is a very serious issue which I know the Minister understands: the coming together of a number of concerns about the electoral process, electoral law and the reputation of the whole of our democracy. I know the Minister shares our views on that because we have had many such discussions. The issue that my noble friend Lord Greaves referred to may be a comparatively small part of the overall picture, but at a time when Parliament and the body politic are having a reputational crisis following the referendum—and with the current state of interest taken by the public, particularly young voters, in how they are represented and, frankly, how for the past 10 years the media have approached the whole process in which we are engaged—there is a crisis. It is not good enough to say, “Well, we’ll get round to this one day.”

I refer to the answer that the Minister gave to my question yesterday. I asked, rather naively, whether the Law Commission report would result in a response from the Government,

“soon, shortly or in due course”.

In his inimitable way, the Minister said:

“It is more likely to be in due course”.—[Official Report, 6/9/17; col. 1951.]


It is now quite a long time since the Law Commission made important recommendations, to some of which my noble friend Lord Greaves referred. It was in February 2016. At the time, there was a specific recommendation that we needed a single electoral law. That is particularly appropriate given the recent experience of the Conservative Party with the differing treatment of national and local campaign expenditure. The Conservative Party itself expressed considerable concern back in June at the way in which two quite different statutes were involved in the process, and the lack of clarity and difficulty that all involved had with that.

The Minister, who I suspect is on our side on this, must somehow persuade his colleagues not just in the Cabinet Office but in No. 10 that, despite all the pressures from Brexit—indeed, perhaps because of them—Parliament must be given an opportunity to look holistically at bringing the electoral law up to date. The example that my noble friend gave is but one of many that cause media, public and local concern. The Minister is an adroit political manipulator and influencer in our curiously cumbersome political system and I beg him to do everything he can. He has been so effective in the past in getting people to take issues of this sort more seriously and give them greater priority. Yes, of course Parliament will have a full agenda but that does not mean that we cannot do anything else. The result of the efforts on Brexit and the extent to which the public are prepared to accept it may depend on the reputation of our political system, local and national. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some comfort that these issues are not being swept under the carpet but will be addressed with the priority that they require and deserve.