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

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[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.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

I appeal to the Minister to address this matter. It is an important issue for the Committee to consider. We may not be completely comfortable with any of the amendments that are tabled but, whatever else we may think about this Bill, we should acknowledge that it introduces a new disciplinary mechanism for dealing with MPs who are considered to have misbehaved. I emphasise that it is a new disciplinary mechanism. Disciplinary mechanisms have existed for many years, including the election courts, as was said. Inevitably, I suppose, if you introduce a new disciplinary mechanism, there is a real possibility that anomalous situations will arise and that punishments will be either too severe or not severe enough. As has been recognised, the punishment imposed on Phil Woolas was not just that he had to give up his seat but that he was debarred from standing in any subsequent by-election.

The one thing I do like about this Bill is that it acknowledges that even if Parliament and petitioners think that an MP should have to fight a by-election, he or she will not be debarred from fighting the seat. The ultimate authority lies with the MP’s constituents, as it always should. It is for the voters to decide whether or not an individual is a worthy person to sit in the House of Commons. No one else should decide that—not judges or any other group of people. I think that a great injustice was done in this case. I thought so at the time but I particularly think so now that this new penalty of recall has been introduced. To tell a Member of Parliament that he cannot stand for election to Parliament is like telling a writer that he cannot write or a builder that he cannot build. That is what Members of Parliament do: they stand for election to Parliament. I appeal to the Minister to go back to his officials on this point and at least acknowledge that, whatever the merits of this Bill—he clearly thinks that there are many—it can produce anomalies in relation to existing disciplinary procedures. We could end the debate on this amendment rather rapidly if he would indicate that that is the case, as there would be very little else to say.

[Lord Tyler]

I dare to make a brief comment after what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said. I have sympathy with the proposed new clause. It is clearly outwith the current arrangements but it is very relevant for the reasons that the noble Lord gave because it says that the final arbiter in these circumstances should be the electorate rather than a judge. I do not want to repeat what was said earlier but wish to explore whether proposed new subsection (1) of the amendment is relevant to the circumstances that I faced in October 1974. I am afraid that all of us have travelled down memory lane today. I was defending a very small majority in my former constituency. A newspaper was delivered to a large number of households by a pro-apartheid group which alleged that the then Young Liberals leader, Mr Peter Hain, and all those who worked with him or were associated with him in the Liberal Party, including myself as a sitting Liberal MP, were effectively guilty by association of murdering babies in South Africa. That campaign may or may not have been effective.

As I did not have the resources, and because I did not think that it would be fair on my then successful Conservative opponent, I decided not to go to an election court and say that he must be responsible for the relevant leaflet. It had an imprint on it but it was not clear that it had been published by his agent, although it was published by an organisation which was run by a former Conservative MP. However, I thought then, and I think now, that there should have been some way in which those circumstances could be investigated short of effectively seeking to unseat my opponent. I think that some way could be found. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, would agree, but I think that this might fall within his first category. In that case, it would be right that, in the end, the final arbiter might be the electorate rather than a judge in an election court. There is therefore some important relevance in what the noble Lord has laid before the Committee, and I hope that it will be further considered.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am sure that he would not wish to mislead the House. The Second Reading of the Bill brought forward by the coalition was passed by 338 votes at Second Reading in the House of Commons, with large majorities particularly in his own party as well as in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

[Lord Grocott]

I think that, not for the first time, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is rewriting the procedures of the House of Commons. He knows perfectly well that that Bill would not have got through the House of Commons without a timetable Motion—a kind of Motion that his party vehemently opposed when in opposition. I am happy to go through the history lesson of Liberal Democrat policies but, entertaining though that would be, I shall resist the temptation.

Briefly, we also had debates about the great constitutional merits of having directly elected police and crime commissioners. Again, I think that they were supported by pretty much everyone at one stage, but again it cost £75 million to hold the elections. Not so many people now think that it was a great idea because the turnout at the vote was 15%. Then, of course, we had the constitutional innovation supported by all three parties of referenda for directly elected mayors in 10 cities where the good citizens of nine of them said what some of us hoped they would say, which was, “No, thank you very much. We don’t want this at all”. I should say that were I ever to write a book—the House will be relieved to know that I will not—on this Government’s record on constitutional reform, the title I would give it would be I Told You So.

We now come to the Recall of MPs Bill. It is a measure of constitutional significance that will, as the Constitution Committee has said, affect the United Kingdom’s representative democracy. If you are doing that, the very least you would expect from the Government is a clear case for why this important constitutional change is required and what its effects would be. It seems to me that the case simply has not been made. We all know that, in practice, if Members of Parliament have been the subject of severely inappropriate behaviour, the mechanisms of the parties come into operation. Very often, such MPs resign and by-elections follow in any case. The House of Commons research paper on the Bill asks: how many people would have been caught by this Bill had it been an Act of Parliament 25 years ago? The answer is two. It is a Bill of 60 pages with numerous clauses and addendums. Do we really need a Bill of this length and complexity to deal with just two cases? Admittedly, the numbers of who would be affected might go up because of the amendment referred to by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. He demolished the Bill quite eloquently, so there is certainly no need for me to add anything to that.

Let us be under no illusions. The Bill would inevitably affect the behaviour of the Commons, knowing the difference between a nine-day suspension and a 10-day suspension. It is not the difference between a yellow card and a red card; it is the difference between a yellow card and a ban for life. I do not believe that anyone seriously thinks that if the Commons effectively said that there should be a recall, or a recall petition, and if having a recall was advertised all around the constituency, it is pretty much inconceivable that the MP concerned would be re-elected at that or any subsequent election. That may be a good thing, but do we really need this whole recall mechanism and this Bill to deliver that objective?

We all agree that certain behaviour is unacceptable, so let us have no bricks thrown around the debate on that. The House can expel people if it wants to, it can suspend them for as long as it likes, and in practice the parties exercise their own discipline. However, as my noble friend Lord Hughes has just said, it is a short step from unacceptable behaviour to unacceptable policies. My noble friend made that case very strongly indeed. Perhaps I may add a personal additional point. Representing, as I did the first time I came here, a constituency with an electorate of 90,000, in which I had a majority of around 360, and in which the opponent I defeated polled 32,000 votes, I think it would have taken him and his supporters about 10 minutes to get a petition together to chuck me out, had he wanted to do so and had the mechanism been in place. That is particularly the case today with electronic petitions. We simply do not need this Bill and there is a real danger of mission creep.

I have to say that the Bill has a lot of the characteristics of a fag-end Bill of a fag-end Parliament. We all know that the reason for the delay is that when the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee considered the Bill in draft, it said:

“We recommend that the Government abandon its plans to introduce a power of recall and use the Parliamentary time this would free up to better effect”.

That is terrific advice and is well worth considering now.

I would like to suggest a way of doing this, because of course we do have a system for recalling MPs—it is called a general election. I am something of an expert on the recall of MPs, having lost an awful lot of general elections. That is something which concentrates the mind. Oddly enough, this coalition Government, which want to introduce recall, have legislated to ensure that we have fewer general elections. It was an astonishing thing to do and it went through on the nod. Five-year fixed terms mean that, whereas since the war elections have taken place on average every three years and 10 months, they will now take place by law every five years. That inevitably raises the need for recall. If that pernicious Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 had been in operation since the war, there would have been 13 general elections instead of 18. This coalition Government therefore think that we have had too many general elections since the war, so no wonder they think we need recall. Why not extend the period between elections so that it is even longer?

I have a simple suggestion to make in line with the recommendations made in the report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which basically says: drop this Bill and bring forward another one. Why do the House and the party leaders not get together and support a Bill to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011? Modesty prevents me mentioning the Bill’s sponsor, but at a stroke it would move us substantially towards more accountability for MPs and would be far better than this Recall of MPs Bill.

House of Lords: Reform

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, those of us—and there are many in this House at the moment—who have been through the various constitutional proposals that the coalition has brought forward in the past year could be forgiven for thinking, “Here we go again”. This is, after all, the third major constitutional proposal within a year, or the fourth if you consider the first Act as being in effect two major constitutional proposals.

This proposal, the House of Lords Reform Bill, comes from the same production company that brought us the referendum on the alternative vote. We are told that the Bill is compensation to Mr Nick Clegg for losing the referendum, so wonderfully won by the no campaign. I dread to think what would be happening now if he had won the referendum; you wonder what kind of proposals we would have to deal with.

The Bill has many similarities with the proposal for the alternative vote referendum. It proposes to spend money that the country cannot afford in order to answer a question that the country has not asked.

[Lord Tyler]

We were told earlier that the noble Lord and his colleagues are absolutely united in opposition to the current White Paper. Can he tell us how united he and his colleagues were in support of Jack Straw’s White Paper, which in all material respects is identical to the present one?

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, when the alternative vote was put to the country—and I suspect that the situation would be very similar with any other proposal—it was overwhelmingly defeated, not only by people in the noble Lord’s party but by people in my party as well. The noble Lord is waving a document around, but I am probably a reasonably good judge of opinion within the Labour Party—the Labour Party was hostile to that document in the country and I suspect that it would be hostile to anything similar that was put before us today.

I need to remind the House that that referendum produced an overwhelming defeat. I have no doubt that those of us who object to this draft Bill will have the same comments addressed to us as were made during that referendum. We will be called dinosaurs; we will be called roadblocks to reform; we will be called the opponents of people who want to mend our broken politics—a phrase which I heard the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, use earlier and which is a favourite of his leader. The AV referendum was supposed to mend our broken politics. I simply say to this House that the public do not think that our politics and constitution are broken in the way that the Liberal Democrats constantly repeat.

I want in the short time available to me to address the fundamental question which keeps coming back but which both Jack Straw—to whom we have already had reference—and Mr Nick Clegg have refused to address: what would the effect be of a directly elected House of Lords on the House of Commons? The clause in the Bill that deals with this must be—and there is a lot of competition for this accolade—about the most vacuous clause ever included in any parliamentary Bill, proposed or otherwise, faced by this or any other House. It states:

“Nothing in the provisions of this Act about the membership of the House of Lords … affects the primacy of the House of Commons”.

That is nonsense; it is palpable nonsense. Every attempt to explain that case away has failed. I shall mention just one or two respects in which it is nonsense. First, this House does not exercise the powers that it has. It is not a question of giving this House any more powers; this House has massive powers already. It chooses not to exercise them in defiance of the House of Commons. Frankly, it is ridiculous to suggest that, somehow or other, 300 democratically elected senators would exercise the same self-control in dealing with legislation coming from the House of Commons. It is clear that they would not. It is also quite clear that it would be ludicrous for an elected senator, faced with a Bill that he or she did not like coming from the House of Commons—let us say that it was the health Bill and let us say that it was a Labour senator and let us say for a moment that it was Senator Grocott, which has a ring to it—to say, “I know the people of the West Midlands have elected me, but I know the House of Commons knows better, so this health Bill is going to go through”. That is inconceivable.

It is also inconceivable, and I say this directly to the Liberal Democrats, that they would for long resist the temptation to say that a Chamber of Parliament elected on the basis of first past the post was somehow less legitimate than a Chamber of Parliament elected under proportional representation. It would be beyond their self-control to resist saying that within moments of the new constitution being enacted.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I have listened with great interest to people who have a great deal more experience and expertise in this matter than I, and I think that we are gradually moving towards a very sensible conclusion. On all sides of the House, we need to express our thanks to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, whose personal intervention has moved us in a sensible direction. That is evidence, contrary to what was being said at earlier stages of the consideration of the Bill, that the Government are listening to your Lordships' House and have moved.

However, it is equally true, and I commend it for this, that the coalition has not been prepared to accept wrecking tactics which would undo what is, after all, a Bill which came to your Lordships' House from the other place, which, as we have already heard this afternoon, we all regard as retaining primacy in our parliamentary system. I very much welcome the constructive dialogue that has taken place during the interval between different stages of the Bill. One of the most important points that has arisen since we were discussing this last week is an emphasis on simplicity. Several colleagues on all sides of the House said that that is an important part of how we can improve legislation. Frankly, on that ground alone, the Government may well be fully justified in seeking to reverse the amendment passed on such a narrow majority last week, because it adds a whole new layer of unnecessary complexity.

By contrast, Amendment 20 has clearly benefited from the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin—two distinguished former Speakers—among others. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, was generous in saying that it seems to meet many of his criteria. I think that his phrase was that it was the nearest to being completely foolproof of the amendments before us. The simplification of Clause 2 also certainly meets the major anxieties that my noble friends Lord Rennard, Lord Marks and I had over the rather cumbersome process originally set out.

At this point, it is important to emphasise that the sole purpose of the legislation is to give new responsibility, new power to Parliament, rather than to reinforce the current opportunity of the Prime Minister of the day—who is, after all, a party leader; we should never forget that—to pick and choose the most favourable date for an election for his or her party. There was some confusion last week on that point. By legislating for a parliamentary safety valve to enable an early election to take place within the normal five-year period, the Government are right to insist that that must be on the basis of cross-party support in the House of Commons. We should not revert to a No. 10 partisan fix.

It is important for us all to recall that we do not elect Governments in this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, perhaps led us slightly astray on that point. We elect Parliament, which then gives or takes away confidence from an Administration. Therefore, the simple decision of the head of a Government that he or she can no longer continue personally to lead a Government is not the critical issue. The critical issue is: what is the decision of our Parliament and, in this case, the primary House, the House of Commons?

Last week, there was some anxiety—some amusement, in fact—about the special circumstances of October 1974 and May 1979 and the fact that such circumstances might not provide a proper opportunity for an early general election and for the people to speak. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in his place; he should be reassured. If the Bill had reached the statute book then, I am convinced that an early general election would almost certainly have been triggered by the House of Commons in those circumstances. He would have been elected and I would have been unelected. I think that the Bill proves able to deal with the circumstances we were discussing last week.

[Lord Grocott]

I was not intending to speak but it is just too tempting. I am delighted to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, thinks that a key determinant of our constitutional arrangements should be simplicity and simple solutions. That is slightly ironic coming from someone who spent several months arguing for the alternative vote system but that is now behind us. I merely put it to him: is not the simplest proposition of the lot for Governments who have lost the confidence of the House of Commons by a majority of one—a simple majority—to go immediately to the country without this 14-day formulation?

[Lord Tyler]

No, my Lords; I think that that is over-simple. It does not give the House of Commons a proper, responsible role and I think that there would be circumstances in which it certainly would not be appropriate.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, as a Conservative, I am extremely reluctant to see Parliament at any stage fiddling about with our constitution, and I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, that if it is not bust, why fix it? Having said that, the coalition quite clearly finds it necessary as part of its agreement to have a five-year fixed Parliament, and if that is what it wants to do, so be it. I have a little trouble in understanding how a Government continue to govern when they no longer have a majority in the House of Commons, but that is another issue. I do not think there is any strong reason why this legislation should go through in perpetuity. I do not see what is wrong in returning to the status quo ante. There seemed to me to be nothing wrong in the way the system worked, and I do not know why we should therefore be trying to commit future Governments to five-year fixed Parliaments just because it is convenient for this coalition Government to have a five-year Parliament this time round. Therefore, I will be more than happy to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I strongly agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I want to make a pretty brief point. The trouble is that when I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, he almost tempted me to a Second Reading observation. I was astonished by his last argument, as I understood it—he must stop me if I am factually wrong at any point—that he was elected in February 1974. Did he lose his seat in October 1974?

[Lord Tyler]

Yes.

[Lord Grocott]

I thought so, so his view is that after the February 1974 election there should have been a fixed, five-year Parliament. I can see where he is coming from, but I know he is a Liberal Democrat, so I know his argument will be based on deep principle rather than on any short calculation. I think he needs to think again about the repeated mantra that this measure strengthens Parliament, weakens Governments and strengthens the people. I cannot understand that argument. How on earth a Government who are guaranteed five years, except in the very tightly drawn exceptions, can in any sense be said to be weakened in respect of Parliament, much less weakened in respect of the public as a whole, by this Bill is beyond me.

Surely we can agree on one factual point, and I would beg the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, to concede this. The Bill will obviously reduce the number of general elections. By law, it certainly cannot increase them. The possibility for the public to express their opinion on the Government will be reduced; that is surely unarguable. We now know enough after five days of debate that this Bill is designed to strengthen the Government. It is in the national interest because it would give them a secure five years. No wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted it.

You are subject to paranoia quite early if you are a lifelong member of the Labour Party, but I cannot help being a little paranoid about the commentariat, if that is the right word, who had only one story in town under the last Labour Government, which was: “This Government are too strong. We must strengthen Parliament and the public. Governments these days are too domineering and powerful”. But on the day of the general election, the whole argument suddenly shifted and the chatterers were absolutely convinced that the crucial thing was strong government. “We must not have too much of this democratic stuff. We need a strong Government so we will bring in a Bill to guarantee them five years, barring some convoluted exception in Clause 2”. Those exceptions include the absurd one that even if the Government lose a vote of confidence, they can still chatter on for another 14 days to see whether they can survive.

I want to make a simple point. As far as I can see, the objective behind the Bill is that, somehow or other, over the years Prime Ministers have been abusing the power to call general elections. For those who like looking at tables, as I do because in this House we are all anoraks to varying degrees when discussing issues of this kind, I refer them to British Electoral Facts by Colin Rawlings and Michael Thrasher. On page 139, there is a table headed:

“Reasons for Holding General Elections 1832 to 2005”.

It is pretty comprehensive. Looking at the list indicating when Prime Ministers have determined to hold general elections, I defy anyone to find a frivolous or absurd reason why they called an election when they did. Let me quote briefly from the list. In 1931, we had an early general election:

“Resignation of the Labour Government and formation of a National Government by James Ramsay MacDonald who six weeks later asked for a Dissolution in order to obtain a new mandate”.

Is that stupid or frivolous? Obviously, I think it was a pretty disastrous period in our history and he is not my favourite Labour Prime Minister. In 1955:

“Sir Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded by Anthony Eden who immediately asked for a Dissolution”.

Is that a stupid or indefensibly partisan reason for calling a general election? In 1966 there was a:

“Request by the Prime Minister for a Dissolution to obtain a renewal of the electors’ confidence in the Government and an adequate parliamentary majority”.

That is a perfectly valid and sensible thing to do. Again, I defy anyone to find anything in this list that is a bad reason for calling a general election.

Finally, I shall say why I strongly support this amendment. I would have much preferred that the Bill had not been introduced. I would have much preferred that we could at least have agreed on four years, but this is a compromise in the classic tradition of the Cross-Bench Peers. It simply provides that if after the next general election, which obviously I hope will deliver a majority Labour Government, the Government want to persist with this procedure that we are probably going to be forced to accept, they will need a resolution of both Houses in order to do so. I would love my party, should it be re-elected, to commit itself to abolishing this legislation. But as my noble friend Lord Howarth made perfectly plain, I am realistic enough to see the temptation for an incoming Prime Minister to say, “Yippee, I’ve got five years”, under the Bill as it stands. Why on earth would he want to get rid of that power? What is all this stuff about the Bill being about weakening the powers of Prime Ministers? It would be very difficult indeed, particularly since all incoming Governments have ambitious legislative programmes and want to get cracking quickly. So it is very unlikely that unless my party commits itself to repealing the Bill, we will indeed go on with it for ever and ever.

This amendment is a clever proposal. It gives the Government what they want, which is something I do not find easy to accept, but it requires every subsequent Government to make a conscious decision to stick by this piece of legislation as a requirement of our new constitution. I strongly support the amendment.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, preceded me because it gives me an opportunity to congratulate yet another sinner on repenting when I hear from him the admission that Ministers occasionally give us honeyed words and assure us that action will be taken when, in the 13 years in which he had a very responsible role in government, there was very little action even in discussing this issue, let alone consulting on it.

I shall make two or three quick points in support of the amendments that my noble friend Lord Marks and I have tabled. First, I recall very well indeed the night of 28 February 1974. In an enormous, scattered rural constituency with snow threatened, pouring rain much of the time and a lot of wind on Bodmin moor, we managed a turnout of 83 per cent, but that was in extremely difficult circumstances. This is true of many rural consistencies in which there are big distances to travel from the place of work to get to vote. There are very difficult circumstances in many villages when the only place where you can have a polling station is the village school, so it is closed for the day. That practical point has not yet come up in the debate. It may be true in urban areas too, but I do not have the same experience. There are practical problems about the insistence on Thursday as polling day that we should address.

The other point that I shall address very briefly was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and supported by my noble friend Lord Cormack. I am a practising member of the Church of England, by which I mean that I am never going to be perfect but am practising all the time. I recognise that there are people in all the churches who would find it difficult if Sunday were the only day. That is why our amendments specifically refer to the possibility of two days. Of course, it is also true that Saturday is a day for other faiths, as indeed is Friday.

I am chair of the Faith and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths College, so I take a particular interest in the way in which we are now a multifaith community. We should recognise that in the way in which we address this issue. That is why I am very strongly of the view, as my noble friend Lord Rennard said, that it would be preferable to have the choice of two days, but they should be shorter days. I also recall that on 28 February 1974 one presiding officer was so exhausted by the end of the day that he did not properly perforate the ballot papers. Since I ended up with a majority of nine after six recounts, I think that the long day is another factor that we should take into account, and a shorter working day but on both days seems to be something that we should look at very carefully.

I have some sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about the insistence on moving towards more and more absent voting, both proxy voting and postal voting. On balance, it is preferable to try to extend voting in person and to make that as easy as we can, not just for reasons of potential corruption and fraud but because it is part of one’s civil responsibility to come together as a community to vote. I hope that is true.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred to the briefing by the Electoral Commission, and I should say en passant that I am a member of the informal advisory group of politicians of all parties who give guidance to the commission every so often. Its summary is in effect that at this stage it would be premature to insist on moving towards weekend voting, which is really why my noble friends and I have put it not in a prescriptive way but in an advisory way that we should be moving in that direction. It is disappointing that although there have been pilots for so many other aspects of improving access to the voting process, there has been so little attention to or consultation on this issue. Incidentally, I endorse the point made by the commission about the number of advantages in advance voting. This is not an either/or. They are both quite useful ways in which we could get more people to go to the poll to cast their votes.

There is an interesting opportunity here. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will at least be able to indicate that he will not adopt the attitude of the previous Government, which was personalised, illustrated and characterised by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in his honeyed words but with mighty little action. Before we get to the definitive moment to which my noble friend referred when we will know the shape of the new constituencies in October 2013, I hope that more work will have been done to consult all interested parties and to conduct pilot schemes to see whether a two-day weekend polling period with shorter hours each day would not suit our fellow citizens much better than plumping again for a Thursday, which is so inconvenient for so many and causes so much disruption.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I echo what my noble friend Lord Howarth has said about how much better debates on major constitutional reform are when we get contributions from all parts of the House, which has characterised the debate on this amendment. I welcome the fact that we have had the opportunity to discuss this amendment even though I have real anxieties about it. Perhaps it is a sign of a simple mind, but one of the tests I put to constitutions is the extent to which they are straightforward, intelligible and as simple as possible, which is one of the many reasons why I am so strongly in favour of first past the post.

While I do not doubt for a minute the good intentions of people who think that we should have a couple of days to vote, there would be a problem. It would just extend the development, which has undoubtedly occurred in most of our lifetimes—I do not want to be rude in characterising it in this way—towards a kind of rolling election as opposed to an election day when the nation makes a decision. In part, a rolling election is very much as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said. I know that under a Labour Government there was substantial development of postal voting. In effect, we have at least two election days, if not a longer period. There is the crucial day when the postal ballots go out and people react to that. Then there are the days between the postal ballots and the election day when more ballots come in, which makes it a kind of rolling election.

I feel a certain nervousness about extending the election over two days. At least it might mean that a lot of the drama will undoubtedly be removed from election day. Perhaps I am wishing for days that have passed to think that that drama can ever come back. The February 1974 election was certainly profoundly dramatic for me because it was one of the many elections that I managed to lose and there were several recounts into the middle of the night. We were pretty tired over that period, but that is part of the drama of an election night.

What would happen between the two polling days? Perhaps we would all sit in limbo. Again, I am trying to avoid crudely partisan points, but occasionally I cannot manage that. A rolling election period would be made worse by more complicated election systems. I genuinely respect the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who has participated throughout. If the AV vote is passed, it will inevitably mean that counting will occur on the day after. It is inconceivable that an AV vote could be counted through the night of an election day.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, this amendment is one of a group. Now that the amendment has been moved, I assume that we can speak to the amendments in the group, of which two stand in my name. I have no intention of saying anything about Amendment 12A, which would require a 50 per cent turnout in order for the referendum to be carried. Technically, I could probably push it a little further but I accept that my noble friend’s amendment is an improvement on that and that it is probably more acceptable to the House, so I do not intend to say any more on that amendment.

However, I do intend to say a couple of words about Amendment 12B, which is not as printed on the Marshalled List. The gremlins got into that somehow. The way in which it is written in the Marshalled List makes no sense whatever. It basically states that the referendum will not be carried if 25 per cent of those who have voted in the referendum have voted yes. Obviously, by definition, if only 25 per cent of the people who have voted in the referendum have voted yes, the referendum would not be carried. The amendment as it stands is nonsensical, which is why there is a manuscript amendment that contains what I intended to say—that the referendum would not be carried unless one in four of the electorate voted yes.

I try to take a common-sense approach to legislation in a debate about a major change to our constitution. We have already decided that the electorate are not the real electorate but the people who are on the electoral roll; they do not include the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who are not on the electoral roll. However, leaving that aside, I simply suggest that 25 per cent—one in four—of the total electorate should vote yes in order for the change in our constitution to take place.

I have done this at the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, in Committee. He is looking startled and I am not surprised. He put forward an objection to my amendment that required a 50 per cent threshold on turnout. He asked what would happen, given the 50 per cent threshold, if 49 per cent voted yes in the referendum and no one or less than 1 per cent voted no. He is looking puzzled. The point that he made is that, in those circumstances, according to my amendment, the referendum would not be carried. I hope that I am carrying the House with me at this stage. I am not even carrying the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, with me, which is particularly worrying.

I shall try again. His objection was to my 50 per cent turnout threshold—in other words, the referendum would be dead if half the electorate did not vote. He asked what would happen if 49 per cent of the electorate —which was wildly optimistic from his perspective—voted yes and no one, or one or two, voted no. He said that in those circumstances my amendment would be grossly unfair to the yes campaign because, despite getting 49 per cent of the electorate’s vote, it would not carry. That was his point. Has the penny dropped?

[Lord Tyler]

The penny dropped a long time ago—many hours ago. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is wrong about the arithmetic. I was talking about the circumstances in which 45 per cent voted yes and 4 per cent voted no, so there would be no qualification. However, if 44 per cent voted yes and 6 per cent voted no, then it would carry.

Once you get into this game, the noble Lord’s colleague in the other place, Mr Christopher Bryant, was absolutely right to say:

“I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman about thresholds in referendums because, broadly, they are not a good idea”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/10; col. 846.]

In fact, with one exception—the Scottish case—thresholds in referendums are a new development in our constitution and I honestly think that we should give them very careful consideration. Mr Bryant was right: this is just as much a change to our constitution as the big changes that we keep being told that this referendum is introducing.

[Lord Grocott]

I am quite hurt. I have brought forward an amendment that precisely meets the noble Lord’s objection, which was—I repeat—that a huge number of people could vote for the yes campaign and it would still not carry if it was less than 50 per cent of the total turnout. So—having established that point, I hope—I have therefore brought forward this amendment which meets his objection. It states that it would require 25 per cent of the electorate for the yes vote to carry, which obviously completely removes the problem he identified in relation to my 50 per cent turnout threshold.

After my long preamble, far longer than I had intended, perhaps I may point out that all the amendment suggests is a change in our electoral system—which the Liberal Democrats, throughout my adult life and probably before then, have been saying is what the electorate is desperate for. I say simply that it would be a good idea if you could get one in four of the electorate to vote in favour because that would validate the referendum. Apparently, they are resisting that commonsense proposal as well.

We are in a silly position, unless someone wants to intervene from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I cannot believe that even Liberal Democrats would argue that if only three people voted in the referendum—two in favour and one against—that would be a valid basis on which we could change our country's constitution. If any of them thinks that that would be fair, right and sensible, will they please intervene? I am not filibustering; I want to get this over with as much as anyone else does. If they cannot tell me, the only difference between us is the level at which the threshold should be. In the absence of any intervention, I must assume that they are in what is, frankly, a silly position.

That would not matter to me too much, were it not for the fact that this referendum will not necessarily be the last one of this Parliament, because I have to take Nick Clegg at his word, confusing as that seems at times. He has described this as just part of the greatest reform package since 1832—greater than women's suffrage, universal adult suffrage, or anything of that sort. We have two more Bills coming down the line: one to establish fixed-term Parliaments and the other to abolish the House of Lords in its present form and replace it with a fully elected House.

It seems that, under the Bill, if three people in the United Kingdom vote in the referendum—two in favour and one against—we change the constitution. I ask those noble Lords who say that this is not as important a constitutional issue as abolishing the House of Lords in its present form the following question. Would any of them be happy with a referendum, should it come—and my word it ought to; it would surely be indefensible to have a referendum on a change in the voting system but not on one which effectively abolishes one of the two Houses of Parliament—on a two, one vote in the country? Or do they think, as I and other noble Lords do, that there should be a rather more convincing demonstration of the public will on abolishing one of the two Houses of Parliament? The danger of the present situation is that we have no threshold, which means that the precedent will have been set that future referenda on changing the constitution, however big that change may be, could be done on a very small turnout and a very small yes vote.

It is late, I do not intend to press this to a Division, but I am intrigued to discover that there is no one, apart from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Tankerness, who is highly skilful and whom I assume will respond to the amendment, can explain that. I assume that the noble and learned Lord has a graphic explanation as to why he would be comfortable with a very low turnout and a very low yes vote changing our country's constitution.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am not sure whether my noble and learned friend’s amendment is the best way to encapsulate the basic philosophy of this part of the Bill, as far as this side of the House is concerned. It has to be acknowledged that that philosophy is very different from the philosophy of the side opposite. However, the amendment is certainly an attempt to do what is, surely, consistent with our philosophy, which is that the best way of determining constituency boundaries is broadly to follow how it is done at present. That is to say that it should be on the basis of guidelines—and they are guidelines—within which a Boundary Commission, in public consultation with local people, determines what the boundaries should be. To me, that is a flexible way of determining boundaries while totally accepting that one of the key factors ought to be, as the Government keep insisting, having as close to equality as we sensibly can get in the electorate in each constituency. Essentially, however, it is a bottom-up system with flexibility.

I find all this pretty astonishing. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are, I acknowledge, in their different ways normally on the same rhetorical side, at least in these arguments, and say that they do not agree with top-down solutions. How many times have I heard that on other subjects, not least the health service at the moment? The Liberals pride themselves on localism. A great chunk of the coalition document is about the importance of localism and local communities.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, how does the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, manage to suggest that the amendment to which he is speaking is not a top-down solution and is not prescriptive, if he looks at its proposed sub-paragraph (2)(b)?

[Lord Grocott]

What, that,

“no district or borough ward shall be included in more than one constituency”?

In my book, that comes under the great heading of common sense. I recommend that to the Committee as being splendid. It is not exactly severely top-down and not nearly as top-down as what is in the Bill, where, irrespective of boundaries, the history of communities, mountain ranges or rivers—if we had any deserts, they would no doubt be subdivided into several constituencies—there is what I call a top-down solution, which aims simply at precise numerical conclusions.

There is no doubt about where I think the determinations of our boundaries should come from. It is precisely as I have described. However, an essential ingredient of it—we are not yet there in the Bill and I am certainly not going to talk about it now—is the crucial importance of local inquiries in which local people can participate. I have sat through nearly all our proceedings on the Bill and, as ever, my noble friend Lord Rooker has encapsulated why we are where we are. As he rightly said, it is the certain knowledge that we are not going to have these local inquiries that makes this Committee stage so important. This is the only point at which sensible local opinion can be expressed at a national level.

I am sure that some will correctly and energetically argue that the views of local people should be taken into account. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, will do so when we come to the debates on the county boundaries in Cornwall. Like everyone else in this House, I have been getting lots of e-mails and messages from people in Cornwall and there is almost an air of desperation in them. I was prompted to think that by the comment of my noble friend Lord Rooker— that this was essentially the local inquiry going on now, precisely because the people of Cornwall know perfectly well that, if we decide in Committee that county boundaries will be ignored, this will be their last chance to have anything sensible to say about that. To me, that is an indictment of the approach that the Government are taking, which is—I know that they will deny this and find ways of explaining it—essentially to end local community involvement within flexible rules, not within rigid rules, to determine local constituency boundaries. I plead for more flexibility.

I will not trespass too far on to other legislation, but when I thought about it I realised that this desire to make all the rough edges smooth, to apply a straitjacket to our constitution and to make it all work according to rigid rules seems to be an almost pervading view of the Government in a lot of the constitutional legislation that they are bringing forward. I do not know whether that goes right across government. In fairness, the Liberals have been quite consistent about this, but we are now saying that constituency boundaries should be very rigidly drawn and shortly we will be told the dates of all future general elections—presumably until the sun swallows up our planet. Every five years there will be a general election, come hell or high water, on a precise date. There will be no flexibility. I will not go into those arguments, but, my word, I will want to develop them when we reach the Bill about fixing the term of Parliaments.

I think that I am right in saying that the Liberal Democrats are very keen on us having a written constitution, which will lay all these things out and, of course, lead to the interpretation of the rules being adjudicated on by the courts. The beauty of a lot of our electoral and constitutional arrangements—this certainly applies to the drawing of constituency boundaries—is that they have been flexible. They apply the greatest principle that you can apply in any constitution, which is the principle of common sense. They allow for rough edges not to be smoothed out. This is particularly true in the case of the four nations that are the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. We all know that it is a slightly unusual arrangement, whereby one of the four countries totally dominates all the others numerically, but there are all sorts of accommodations, one of which we shall come to later, in respect of Wales, which is severely affected by the Bill.

I cannot write a constitutional doctrine explaining how the British constitution operates in relation to the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, but I can say that it has worked pretty well, that people are pretty free within it and that they understand the system in which they operate. If there are a few anomalies here and there, so be it. I fear that what we are seeing in the Bill in relation to constituencies and constituency boundaries is yet another step along the road. I may be alone in this; I have been called a constitutional conservative by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who, sadly, is not here. If that means someone who believes in common sense in the operation of the constitution, then I plead guilty. My noble friend’s amendment passes the test of common sense for me. It allows flexibility locally and that is why I support it.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Thursday 20th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

I am not sure whether that was an intervention or an extension into a new speech. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, has agreed with the principle I have advanced, but he has taken it into a different development. I accept that, in his inimitable way, he has made a speech to develop the point I was making. I accept too that he has a perfect right to do so, but although it was very interesting, it was not exactly what I wanted to say.

[Lord Grocott]

I am not intervening on the noble Lord and I do not expect him to respond, but we are in the Committee stage and he has raised an issue that lies absolutely at the heart of one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Bill. I could not believe it when I saw that a paragraph in this Bill is headed “Exempt constituencies”, although the word used may be “Excepted”. Without any attempt to relate them to any other part of the Bill, two constituencies were going to be exempted just like that. As soon as I saw that, I must say that I and a number of noble friends thought, “This Bill has a very big piece of hybridity in it”. It has all the basic characteristics of a hybrid Bill because one group is being treated separately for no discernible reason. The Bill gives no explanation of why it is being made into a category.

That is a weakness in terms of how Bills ought to be drafted. Here let me say quite clearly, especially knowing that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is to wind up the debate, that I do not object in the least to the Western Isles or to Orkney and Shetland having their own constituencies because of their characteristics. I fully support that and think it is absolutely right, but as soon as you trespass into that kind of territory when drafting legislation, it is obvious that there is not a single constituency in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland that could not make a case for their unique characteristics to be treated as a constituency in its own right and being one of the excepted cases. It is bad drafting and bad politics because it would be so easy to put down an amendment for every single constituency.

I am sure that, at his convenience, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, could draft a clause that would allow for Orkney and Shetland quite properly to be a constituency in its own right. He could write it in general terms, which is how you should write legislation, and it would probably include a number of other exempted constituencies, but at least there would be some rationale for what is being done. There is none in this paragraph as it stands. It is yet a further example, but a particularly glaring one, of why this is a bad Bill that has been badly drafted.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the amendment could not be simpler in its objective. It would shorten the Bill, and is about how the election will be conducted and declared. It refers to Clause 7(2) of the Bill, which says, in defining the various voting areas, that they shall be,

“a district in England … a county in England … a London borough … the City of London … the Isles of Scilly … a constituency for the National Assembly for Wales … a constituency for the Scottish Parliament … Northern Ireland”.

My amendment simply deletes all that and replaces it with the most commonsense way to consider and declare an election relating to the House of Commons: to say that the results will be declared on a constituency basis. It basically replaces 10 lines with two.

I am emboldened in moving the amendment, not least by the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in his responses in various other clauses, where he has repeated time and time again that his intention is to follow as closely as possible what happens in parliamentary elections in all the details of how this referendum is conducted. I could quote any number of examples, and that is precisely what my amendment does. For example, in the debate the other day on whether voting in the referendum at the age of 16 should be allowed, the noble Lord said in rejecting the amendment:

“Then as now, the Government's position on the franchise and in all other aspects relating to how the referendum is run is that we should follow the arrangements for parliamentary elections”.—[Official Report, 13/12/10; col. 464.]

That is precisely what I am doing with the amendment.

Noble Lords may ask why. What is the point of having elections conducted and returned on the basis of parliamentary constituencies? The clue is in the Title to the Bill: the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill. My reason for moving the amendment is that the Bill goes to the heart of the relationships between constituents and the Member of Parliament. That is what it is about, and why I and others are so concerned about it in many ways.

I will concede, perhaps the only concession I could make to supporters of the alternative vote system, that the proposal has the merit of not disconnecting Members of Parliament with their constituencies. I have long believed—and this is why I support first past the post more than any other system—that, to use the cliché, the jewel in the crown of the system of parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom is that there is this close link between Members of Parliament and their constituencies.

I am not criticising AV in suggesting that the results should be declared on a constituency basis. I am saying that the constituency results are important. Of course, I freely concede that the most important result of a referendum is to know what has happened nationally. You total the votes up and see who has won and who has lost; that is basically what happens. As I have said, however, this is about constituencies and the verdict of people in their constituencies. During the referendum, if noble Lords ignore the national picture for a moment, we are in effect saying to people, “For generations, your parents, grandparents and perhaps in some cases great-grandparents have returned Members of Parliament from this area”—which we hope is a coherent area, but we will come to that later in the Bill. “Are you happy with how you have been choosing your Members of Parliament? Because some people are saying that they are dissatisfied with how that is done”.

By returning the results in individual constituencies, you are at least relating the conduct and outcome of the election to the very heart of what this change in our constitution, should it be carried, is about. It is, frankly, pointless and irrelevant to do as the Bill does: to declare results on the basis of boroughs in the United Kingdom, for example. What on earth is the basis for that? Does it tell us whether the borough of this, that or the other voted for or against the referendum? Nor do I understand the significance of declaring one constituency for the whole of Northern Ireland.

[Lord Tyler]

As the noble Lord knows, I share his view about the connection between a representative and his or her constituency. He and I take that seriously. I am sure that he has looked at the evidence given by the Electoral Commission, to which many tributes were earlier paid for its independence and the care with which it is preparing for this. Therefore, does the noble Lord note that it summarises its view on his amendment by saying that it would create an unnecessary risk to the successful delivery of the scheduled elections and referendum? That is pretty specific. Will the noble Lord address that point? We are sympathetic to his general point. Our concern is the practical issue.

[Lord Grocott]

I will address that point precisely in a moment. I am currently simply pointing out that, in relation to a normal parliamentary election, to have the various categories of electoral district as laid out in the Bill offers meaningless figures. It is particularly confusing in Scotland and Wales, where the results of the referendum debate—which is, I repeat, about parliamentary elections—will be based on the constituencies of the National Assembly for Wales and the constituencies of the Scottish Parliament. I do not know too much about Scottish politics, but I do know that the constituency boundaries for Scottish parliamentary elections are different from the constituency boundaries for the House of Commons. It is suggested that that is not the appropriate area in which to consider and declare the results, but it simply makes the whole operation more confusing if they are declared on a different basis.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, rightly drew my attention to the wording of the report by the Electoral Commission. I do not think that I have ever been referred to by the commission before, so this is a moment in my life—I do not know about anyone else’s. I have to say that I have a fair bit of concern about what the commission has said, and I hope that when he sums up the Minister does not simply repeat it but gives some credence to the points that I am making. The commission says that:

“Amendment 40B seeks to change the voting areas for the referendum so that they are the same as UK parliamentary constituencies”—

the simplest possible proposition, of course.

“The voting areas currently in the Bill reflect the voting areas for the scheduled elections on 5 May 2011, the polls for which are to be combined with the poll for the referendum if they take place on the same day”.

That is a statement of fact, but now comes—for me, at any rate—the contentious bit:

“We understand”—

this is the Electoral Commission, the independent body to which the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord McNally, have paid tribute—

“that it is the Government’s intention that the referendum should take place on 5 May 2011. We do not support this amendment as making such a significant change to the rules for the referendum this close to 5 May would create an unnecessary risk to the successful delivery of the scheduled elections and the referendum”.

Bearing in mind the unprompted mini-debate that we had earlier about how neutral the Electoral Commission could be, were it to provide a descriptive leaflet of AV on the one hand and first past the post on the other, the commission’s comment on this amendment rang alarm bells in my brain. It is not commenting in any shape or form on the merits of the argument that results should be by constituency; it is commenting on the basis of whether this would be convenient to the Government, who want the referendum on 5 May 2011. That is a pretty inappropriate thing for the Electoral Commission to say. By all means it could say, “The Government want to do this but of course that’s none of our business; they might change their mind”.

What is even more significant and concerns me, although I cannot believe it to be true, is that the Electoral Commission appears not to have seen the result of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker and carried, which gave the Government all the flexibility that they might need to deliver the Bill in a timely way with proper scrutiny. As it now stands, the Bill says that the referendum does not have to be held until October next year, which would give plenty of time for the oddity in the way that these election results are declared to be rectified.

This is not rocket science. Having a general election on the same day as local elections—maybe this is helping the Government, I do not know—is a tried and tested operation. To repeat myself, I am suggesting that the referendum should be counted just like general election constituencies. I have not done an exhaustive list, but we know that this year’s general election was held on the same day as local elections, as were those in 2001 and 1997. I am certainly not likely to forget the election in 1979 that was held on the same day, when the electorate decided that I should spend more time with my family; that is an election that I will not forget in a hurry. The idea that somehow the electoral administrative machinery cannot cope with dealing with results by constituency on the same day as local elections seems to be negatived by experience.

I am concerned that the Electoral Commission, no less, should be advising us to turn this amendment down—and I hope that I have demonstrated that it is at least worthy of consideration—on the grounds that it does not meet the Government’s timetable. When the Minister comes to respond to this, I hope that he does not use that argument. As I said when I intervened on my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer earlier, I feel a bit hurt by all this, or maybe he should, because when he proposed the amendment earlier today he was able to quote the Electoral Commission as broadly agreeing with what he was saying but it did not recommend that we should vote for his amendment. Now it broadly disagrees with what I am saying but it is telling the House to throw it out—and, by implication, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, obviously takes it very seriously. Perhaps I should not take this personally.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, in contrast to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, I have found that young people are very interested in the way in which we elect our Members of Parliament and feel as cheated as many other members of the electorate about the way that the system works. I was with 120 sixth-formers on behalf of the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme on Friday, and I assure the noble Lord that they are extremely interested in this issue and indeed many others. I agree with the noble Earl that many of them would like to express an opinion.

The issue today is the one addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws: what is the appropriate time to make this change? How can we do it? How soon can we do it? Can we do it before May? There are two major problems about the otherwise very persuasive case that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has put before us. The first, I am afraid, involves the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He is my good friend in these matters; he so often provides me with ammunition. Those who might be voting in a referendum on 5 May 2011 will not just be the 16 and 17 year-olds who will become 18 before 2015—they will also include the 14 and 15 year-olds. The logic of the case that is being put from the other side is that if we are trying to identify those who will have a vote by 2015, we have to include those who are 14 and 15. That is the case that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made just a few minutes ago.

[Lord Grocott]

I must caution the noble Lord, if that does not sound too presumptuous, against assuming that the Bill, which has not even arrived here, to extend the parliamentary period to five years—I think that that would be about one and a quarter years longer than the average Parliament since the war, in an attempt to increase substantially the length of this coalition—is as good as an Act of Parliament. We simply cannot have this debate on the total assumption that a Bill that has not yet arrived has become law.

[Lord Tyler]

It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, to change the whole basis on which others on his side of the House have been arguing. The case was made a few minutes ago that those who are going to vote in May 2015 will be 15 or 16 next year. They could also be 14. That is the simple point that I am making—no more than that.

There is another practical problem. It is almost inevitable, I believe, that the referendum will take place on the same day as some other elections—others may take a different view on which other elections. It would be ridiculous to have a completely different electorate for two different purposes, with the referendum in one ballot box—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

That is very wise. I bet that he comes out of his course sensible on Lords reform.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I should say that my daughter also studied at Hull, but she is absolutely staunchly in favour of AV. She had the right influence from the noble Lord, Lord Norton.

[Lord Grocott]

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours asked which AV system, but no doubt there is a specialist MA course on that. Does that not give us some of the answers? A few university departments quite properly consider these things, as well as one or two writers for the Guardian newspaper, which seems to think that this is the way that you can solve most of life’s ills, and I assume that these debates take place at branch meetings of the Liberal Democrat party. They must be a lot of fun. I am sorry that I missed them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

I would not have taken so long if I had not had so many interesting interventions. I am afraid that I will have to toss this back at the noble Lord. If the Lib Dems are so convinced, as they have been telling me ad nauseam over the years, that the British public are crying out for electoral reform, why on earth are they desperately putting the referendum on the same day as other elections, in the hope that they might get 30 or 35 per cent of the electorate to turn out? I understood that the public were queueing up to take part in any opportunity to get rid of the old, discredited system, as the Lib Dems call it. I am afraid that that is another theory that has been tested under fire and found wanting.

This clause will stand part of the Bill. It has limped along, drawing no enthusiasm from any of its proponents. I understand that there are always dilemmas about whether you can support your own Government in office. I do not criticise anyone, but I have no doubt what would happen if we had a good old-fashioned secret ballot on the Bill, nor about what would have happened if a secret ballot had been held in the Commons before they sent the Bill here. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, knows this as well as I do. He is well versed in the machinations of the higher echelons of parties—at least he was when I knew him—and he knows perfectly well that this is a friendless Bill and that this clause is certainly a friendless clause. I hope that we will remember that when we continue debating the Bill.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has been rather unfair on his noble friend Lord Lipsey, who gave an excellent and much briefer speech in support of Clause 1. I will follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, by being brief and to the point. I will concentrate for a few minutes on the issue of turnout, which has been a constant concern of all of us across the House this evening—and rightly so, because we are all anxious to look again at the involvement of our fellow citizens in the way in which we vote.

There have been one or two trips down memory lane this evening, and I hope your Lordships will indulge me for a couple of minutes. On the last wintry day of February 1974, in a very scattered rural constituency in Cornwall, 83 per cent of those who were registered to vote turned out. In those days, there were many fewer postal votes, so most voters went to the polls. Why? Because those very wise Cornish men and women knew that the result would be very close. It had been relatively close at the previous election. They were right: I had a majority of nine, which, even in those days, was thought to make mine a rather unsafe seat. In subsequent elections I did better. I confess to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that I cannot remember whether I constantly got more than 50 per cent of the vote, but I certainly did on one or two occasions, and I built a majority of 9,000. What happened?

Queen's Speech

Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Grocott

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I have heard so often from those Benches the expression that the public are in support of something because the polls show that and because a large majority of people voted for those parties. That is what people do at general elections. They do not vote for every jot and tittle of the manifestos; they vote to support the judgment that they believe to be nearest to their own view. That is what happened. I say this honestly and sincerely to friends on the opposite side of your Lordships’ House: it is important that they, too, recognise what the electorate said on 6 May, as we have, because people recognised, in the light the economic legacy, that a different response was required. The Labour Party has not yet woken up to that reality.

I yield to no one in my respect for the former Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon. I have the greatest respect for her, but, honestly, her speech on Tuesday did not do her justice. Sarcasm does not suit her. It was a very ungracious speech. It is amazing how quickly former Ministers, bereft of their advisers, fall into the trap of silly oppositionitis. Take the example that has regularly been mentioned today that the new Government have a complete and guaranteed automatic majority in your Lordships’ House. That is to suggest that Members on the Cross Benches have no influence and no say in what happens in this House. That is simply not true.

[Lord Grocott]

I shall be brief. Can the noble Lord confirm that, if the Liberals had always voted with the Labour Government in the past 13 years, every single Division—bar one or two at the most—would have been won? The Government have a majority in this House and to suggest anything else is to distort the language.