Electoral Registration

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maclennan of Rogart

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the last point is one that I will take back, as we are certainly considering how best to encourage all this. The new citizenship programme for study, which has now been agreed to be taught from September 2014, stipulates that pupils should be taught about parliamentary democracy and the actions that citizens should take in democratic and electoral processes to influence decisions locally, nationally and beyond.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the announcement by my noble friend. However, can he say how that money is to be distributed a little more precisely than he did to tackle the problem, as identified by the Electoral Reform Society, that some 800,000 young people are not registered to vote who are otherwise entitled to do so? Is the money to be directed towards the local authorities, which have responsibility for ensuring that people are registered? Will he indicate how the Government will check up on the effectiveness of what they are doing?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the money is being allocated among local authorities according to the results of the confirmation dry run, which showed that we are getting up to an 80% level of confirmation, and indeed sometimes up to 85%, from data matching. However, there are a number of local authorities, including Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, where, because of the transient population, registration is much lower. Places such as those, where people move frequently, and others with a large number of students or private landlords will be granted large amounts of money to target those groups.

Electoral Registration

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maclennan of Rogart

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord knows that we are working extremely hard across the board on all this. In the confirmation dry run on data matching, the two boroughs that came out with less than 50% successful data matching were Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea—not exactly the areas with the lowest level of income in the country.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)]

My Lords, since the Electoral Commission report in April 2011 indicated that some 17.7% of the eligible electorate were not registered at that time, and my noble friend has indicated that he does not have centrally held information about funding allocated to electoral registration, could he not invite local authorities to indicate to the Government how they are handling this and what money is still required in order to make sure that individual registration is completed by the time of the next general election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my right honourable friend Greg Clark made a speech to the Association of Local Authority Chief Executives only last week in which he spoke about the provision of targeted additional funding to those local authorities that are shown in the confirmation dry run to have the greatest difficulties. There are now a number of local authorities where, on the data matching, we are already above 85% confirmation, and that is much better than we had initially thought.

Scotland: Director General for External Affairs

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maclennan of Rogart

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is an extremely good political intervention that I trust will appear in the Scottish press tomorrow. The devolved Administrations work best when they work constructively with the Westminster Government. That is how government should operate. Different Governments need to work constructively together. I know that there are those who know the Scottish First Minister better than I do and think that he is a very provocative populist who likes provoking the Westminster Government. That is clearly part of what is going on.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

While acknowledging that the origin of this post was with the Cabinet Secretary, since it was announced it appears that surreptitious steps have been taken by the Permanent Secretary in the Scotland Office to go much beyond the role of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive. Will my noble friend agree to accept the advice given by the leaders of the three major parties in Parliament that Sir Gus O’Donnell should now institute an inquiry into the conduct of this role and, in particular, examine whether the purpose, as set out on the Scottish Government website, to develop Scotland’s constitutional framework, is being stretched beyond its original purpose into the dismantling of the United Kingdom’s constitution?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, again, the Scottish First Minister is highly skilled at stretching issues to the absolute outer limits of what is acceptable. This is clearly being played in Scottish politics in that way. We discussed the question of the senior civil servant in the Scottish Executive last time. I simply stress that at the end of the day the Scottish Executive are responsible to the Scottish Parliament, and through it to Scottish voters. Scottish voters want to be concerned about what is happening in the management of health, education and the Scottish economy when they look at the Scottish Government, and may not take kindly to a Scottish Government who spend too much of their time on extraneous issues.

Public Services: Security of Provision

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maclennan of Rogart

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not fully briefed on the exact details of my honourable friend Paul Burstow’s diary. We have of course been concerned with ensuring that the services provided by Southern Cross should be maintained. There have been various negotiations. Southern Cross confirmed in an announcement to the Stock Exchange on 27 September that it had reached agreement with its principal landlords and that it would transfer the group’s care home leases to its landlords and the related business and assets for the operations of those homes to its landlords or alternative care providers.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, does not Southern Cross illustrate that it is not only small and medium sized companies that need to be watched? Is there a continuing process in respect of the larger companies that are providing comparable public services?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one or two of the providers of public services in the private sector are now among the largest companies in Britain and the world. Noble Lords who read the financial pages may know that G4S has just taken over another major multinational company. Liberata, a back-office outsourcing firm, nearly went bankrupt in 2008, partly because of its pensions liability, and had to be restructured. It is now partly owned by its employees and partly owned by the Pension Protection Fund. The Government, as with all others in such circumstances, do get engaged in trying to re-establish companies in difficulty that are playing a valuable role.

Superannuation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maclennan of Rogart

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for moving the amendment and I join the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, in sending good wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. However, I fear the amendment as drafted goes too wide, as was implicit in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. It might have the effect of reinstating the veto, which it is the purpose of this Bill in large measure to withdraw. I am glad to recognise what was said in another place by Tessa Jowell and the inconsistency of that, as I see it, with the amendment tabled.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in sending our best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. I served on a committee with her when I first became a Member of this House and have been very fond of her ever since. We look forward to having her back with us. She played a useful and constructive role in our Grand Committee discussions.

In Grand Committee we discussed the question of the balance of pay with trade unionists and I remarked at the time that we need to understand how many low-paid civil servants there are and to construct a scheme which is as fair as possible to the lower-paid. As the noble Baroness will know, one of the elements of this scheme is that all those earning under £23,000 who are offered redundancy will be treated as if they were earning £23,000. So built into the compensation scheme are limitations for the small number of civil servants who are paid £150,000 or above and much greater benefits for that large number of civil servants who earn below the medium wage. I hope that this has the sympathy of all Members of the House because it is part of what this scheme is intended to achieve.

Although this amendment seeks to amend Clause 3, to some extent it contradicts Clause 1, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, pointed out. The Government are not therefore able to accept it as it is not entirely clear what its implications would be. As I have already made clear, the Government are committed to full consultation with the Civil Service trade unions over the long term. However, the recent history of changes proposed to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme both by the previous Government and by the coalition Government shows that a requirement to reach agreement can lead to stalemate where the Government of the day are unable to implement the changes that are necessary or agreed with the majority of unions.

So in practice the drafting of the amendment may not have the effect that the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, would want it to achieve. It does not just apply to changes in the compensation scheme but rather to the scheme as a whole. I am sure I do not need to tell noble Lords that the Government would not want this to be the case. Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity that the noble Baroness’s amendment provides to emphasise yet again our commitment to meaningful consultation and our determination on the other hand not to allow any union to have a complete veto over changes that may be proposed to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. This is an important point which we take as seriously as the noble Baroness does and we are determined that it is the lower paid civil servants who will have the most generous benefits, as we have proposed in the current scheme. We have therefore pushed this scheme forward and are puzzled by the resistance of one of the unions to a scheme that seems to us to be better for the lower-paid than the alternatives that that union seems to prefer.

Superannuation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maclennan of Rogart

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Grand Committee

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, this is clearly a justified probing amendment, but would not suitable to be in the Act. In any event, it will be overtaken by events rather soon, but I would wish to hear from the Minister as much as he is able to say. If it is necessary to postpone a full answer today because these issues have not been fully resolved, I hope that before the next stage of the Bill the Government will be in a position to give indication about redeployment and reskilling.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I recognise the concerns which lie behind the amendment. Again, we have inherited from the previous Government the published protocol, to which reference has already been made, and the determination, where possible, to build a leaner and more efficient Civil Service. In the nature of the case, many of the civil servants about whom we are talking are outside London, so there will have to be a variety of different schemes aimed at local circumstances. There will have to be a certain amount of outsourcing. The Cabinet Office is responsible for the protocols and the staff working on the protocols remain hard at work late in the evening. I am assured by those behind me that the director in question is responsible for pay and pension policy, employment policy, trades union issues at a national level and, until last month, diversity and well-being issues.