Elections: Registration

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

Those are very valid points. To put the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, into perspective, I again emphasise that the annual canvass will continue to support the maintenance of the electoral register. Significant work, including public awareness campaigns by the Electoral Commission, will be funded in 2014-15 to manage the transition to individual electoral registration. In both those years, door-to-door canvassing will be used by electoral registration officers as part of a wide suite of powers to encourage people to register to vote. This is a step forward against electoral fraud. Instead of making emotional interventions, it would be good if the Labour Party would endorse it and get on with encouraging people to register.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, all the evidence that I saw when I was the Minister responsible for these matters in the previous Government suggests that the introduction of individual registration, no matter how desirable for other reasons, is going to carry with it severe risks that millions of otherwise eligible voters will fall off the register. That is why, when the previous Government introduced this measure, they locked it into the achievement of a comprehensive and accurate register. It is also why the Conservative shadow Minister at the time said on the Floor of the other place that,

“we agree with the Government that the accuracy, comprehensiveness and integrity of the register … is paramount ... I do not intend to vote against these Government amendments because … I believe that it is right to take this matter forward carefully and step by step”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/07/09; col. 108.]

The Liberal Democrats also supported this approach. Can the Minister please tell your Lordships what new evidence he has seen that has persuaded him that the careful approach adopted by the previous Government and supported by both main parties in opposition is now wrong?

[Lord McNally]

We are going forward by learning from the lessons and experience of Northern Ireland.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

No, I am not taking any more interventions.

Much has been made in this debate of the recommendation in paragraph 61 of the Cunningham committee report, which says:

“Our conclusions apply only to present circumstances. If the Lords acquired an electoral mandate, then in our view their role as the revising chamber, and their relationship with the Commons, would inevitably be called in to question, codified or not. Given the weight of evidence on this point, should any firm proposals come forward to change the composition of the House of Lords, the conventions between the Houses would have to be examined again. What would, could or should be done about this is outside our remit”.

As a member of the Cunningham committee, I was happy to sign that paragraph. The conventions between the two Houses were examined on a regular basis throughout the 20th century and to say that they will be re-examined is no more than a statement of the obvious. What is equally obvious is that how they should be examined and with what outcome was outside the remit of the Cunningham committee. The idea that the Cunningham committee is somehow holy writ and that the conventions and relations between the two Houses would fall like a portcullis at the time of the passing of the Bill is simply absurd.

What is clear is that the relationship between the two Houses has always evolved and will continue to evolve in the future, particularly over the transitional period. The fact remains that the relationship between the Houses is underpinned by the Parliament Acts and the conventions. The House of Commons remains the primary Chamber; nothing in this draft Bill changes that. Nor are we suggesting any short, sharp shock in these proposals; rather, there is what old Fabians will recognise as “the inevitability of gradualness”.

I am interested in the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Wills, Lord Davies, Lord Brooke, Lord Kakkar, and others, about whether codification is necessary. I hope that the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, will look at that issue and take evidence. But there will be a lengthy transitional period of two Parliaments, which will allow transfer of knowledge. Noble Lords would not be prevented from standing for election or being considered for appointment to the reformed House.

[Lord Wills]

As the noble Lord mentioned my name, I would be grateful if I could intervene. I want to be clear on this point on codification. Am I right in thinking that the Government are not ruling out such codification?

[Lord McNally]

We are sending the matter to a committee that will take wide evidence. I hear my noble friend saying that we are ruling it out, which is not an entirely helpful intervention at this stage of the evening, but I do not think that you can set up a commission under a chairman of the independence and distinction of the noble Lord, Lord Richard—and I am delighted that he was willing to take this chairmanship—and then tell him in advance what he can look at. I will go no further. I am sorry. I see the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, who always tries to give a spurious kind of veneer of intellectual credibility to—

Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and my noble friend on the Electoral Commission. I also thank the Minister for the clarity of his introduction. It is clear how, over the years, the register has ceased to be the reference source—the local bible—that it once was. That may be the reason for these regulations and the order. I have also noticed how, in parallel, turnout at elections has plummeted and how the ugly head of fraud has recently been so frequently in the news. Therefore, perhaps necessarily, these proposals must be and are bureaucratic. We have commissioners, commissions, the Cabinet Office, Secretaries of State, the Lord President and local authorities—all evidence of complications.

The ballot is a hard-won right. It is a secret ballot and it remains, I hope, a clean and fool-proof ballot. That is the bedrock of British liberty—the liberty of a free Parliament and of our perception of liberty, equality and justice. In that sense, what is before us is very important. It was right and proper that the Minister declared himself clearly in introducing the legislation and no doubt will do so in replying. We are all equal in the ballot and therefore I see these measures as an enhancement. They have to be good. I assume that every effort is being made by the coalition Government to protect the integrity of the ballot box. That signal needs to be sent out to the nation and to the whole electorate and I trust this Minister to do that. I appreciate the reference made by the deputy commissioner and director of data protection to inherent risks in security. David Smith makes a veiled promise of what seems to me a retribution. I do not cavil with his discretion there.

What of Wales in terms of a national ballot? The city of Cardiff and the county is a good place to go, as the schedule presages, but can the Minister indicate whether there were consultations and other bids? We have but one pilot in Wales. Why not in Northern Ireland? It may be that there is a simple answer that the Minister will give to your Lordships.

I have a question that arises from a recent contretemps. Are electoral registration officers subject to ministerial direction? I know that the Minister does not answer for Wales, but I put the question generally. I recently noticed that Wales Assembly Government Ministers were unable to persuade—I use the word advisedly— an electoral registration officer in the Wales Assembly election to do as they wished. I refer to the day and the time of a count. The Minister may say to me that that is way out, but I put the question to him also in a general sense across Britain—or perhaps it applies only to England. Can he give an answer now? If he cannot, will he please give me a detailed answer by letter? I wish the Minister well in attempting, on this important matter, to make this a better place.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend and all noble Lords who have made important contributions to an important debate. I do not intend to delay the proceedings for long, not least because the Minister made such a compelling case for these statutory instruments that there is little to add. I agree with almost everything that I heard him say. However, I have a few questions. Of course, if he is unable to answer them directly today, I should be grateful if he would write to me in due course.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that it is crucial with this sort of legislation to strike the balance correctly between the efficient discharge of achieving desirable public objectives and protecting the liberty of the individual. As far as I can see, the Government, in this careful approach, have struck that balance well. The House and Parliament owe the Minister and his colleagues a debt of gratitude on the way in which they have approached the matter.

These statutory instruments can play an important part, as we have heard, in tackling the continuing and serious problem of under-registration. Until now, there has been general agreement that the figure of between 3 million and 3.5 million, based on work by the Electoral Commission some years ago, represents the number of people who are eligible to vote but cannot do so because they are not on the register. First, is the Minister aware of the report in the Guardian today that is based on the work carried out by Chris Ruane MP and suggests that the figure may not be between 3 million and 3.5 million but closer to 6 million? Will he commission his officials to contact Mr Ruane to investigate the validity of that figure and report back to Parliament on the findings?

Secondly, the previous Government, as I am sure the Minister is aware, felt that the power in the Political Parties and Elections Act to make such statutory instruments was necessary but was not sufficient. Had we been re-elected, we would certainly have brought forward further measures to improve registration rates. I should therefore be grateful if the Minister could tell us what measures this Government have considered to improve the electoral register over and above those brought in or presaged by the previous Government. Which of those measures that this Government have so considered are they planning to bring forward and when will they do so? If the Minister is unable to answer now, I should be grateful if he could write to me.

Will the Minister also explain why it has taken more than a year to bring forward these statutory instruments? I concede straightaway that, as I am sure he will immediately point out, the PPE Act received Royal Assent in July 2009 and that the statutory instruments that were necessary suffered in what is always the inevitable traffic jam of statutory instruments at the end of a Parliament. The Minister does not need to dwell on that point in his reply. However, this Government do not have that excuse. Given that when they came to power the cupboard was almost inevitably pretty well bare of such a logjam of statutory instruments, and given the importance that everyone who has spoken attaches to improving the electoral register, especially in the context of all the other constitutional reforms that this Government are bringing forward—the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to our extensive debate on these matters in which the question of electoral registration has come up time and again on all sides of the House— please can the Minister tell us why it has taken quite so long to bring forward these statutory instruments? I am quite sure that I will not be alone in hoping for some sort of explanation.

I note that these statutory instruments have been coupled elsewhere with the Government’s intention to rush forward with the introduction of individual registration. I should like to put on record and conclude with my strong objections to this attempt to justify the unjustifiable. The previous Government put in place measures for the implementation of individual registration. That is undoubtedly desirable; there is now agreement, certainly among everyone who has spoken, about that. However, the previous Government tied individual registration to the achievement as far as reasonably practicable—I am again grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for quoting the exact words—of a comprehensive and accurate register. This is crucial. All the analyses agree—I do not think that there is any serious disagreement about this—that the introduction of individual registration runs a serious risk of damaging rates of registration. Desirable as it is, that is a perverse consequence of bringing it in.

To rush forward before the register is complete, comprehensive and accurate, as the Government are proposing, risks rendering an already flawed system deeply more flawed. That would be bad enough, but such damage would have a partisan effect. Although the Minister may try to deny this, most analysts agree that the voters most likely to fall off the register in these circumstances would be more disposed to vote Labour.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[Lord Wills]

I thought that someone would challenge me on this and I am delighted to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler.

[Lord Tyler]

I do not wish to challenge that. I want to draw the noble Lord’s attention to the fact—he is a very fair man—that what he has just said about individual registration and what he said previously about the fact that his Administration failed to bring forward these instruments after the PPE Act in 2009 are in direct contradiction. If it is so vital to improve data sharing so that the register can be more effective and more accurate and so that its integrity can be improved to enable us to move further and faster on individual registration, why did his Administration not bring forward these instruments immediately after the PPE Act?

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. He is fully aware that we are talking about a matter of months. We considered all the advice that we received and we consulted widely. As the noble Lord has raised this point, it is worth reminding the Committee that, under the previous Government, the Front Benches of both the party of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, including the Minister, and the Conservative Party agreed that the timeframe that was necessary to bring in individual registration could not be rushed. Therefore, we set a date of 2015. Everyone agreed with all the expert analysis that that time was needed to achieve a comprehensive and accurate register. That is the reason for the timeframe. There is no good reason for bringing this forward in the way that the Government propose—none.

We will return to these issues in due course, but I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who is also a fair man, did not in his remarks pay credit to the Electoral Commission for the work that it did in improving registration rates in the run-up to the election. He may well be right that it was an interesting general election and that that motivated more people to register and, in some cases, even to vote. However, it was also the case that the Electoral Commission did first-rate work in targeting particularly hard-to-reach groups—groups that are traditionally under-registered—and achieved considerable success. This will give us all hope and the commission deserves credit for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, should have given the previous Government some credit for the measures that they put in place and implemented to drive up rates of registration. The encouraging figures that we have seen recently owe at least something to the work that we did in government. I hope that he is nodding in agreement with this. I am happy to give way to him so that he can put it on the record.

[Lord Tyler]

I give credit to all who can improve registration, but the noble Lord is again undermining his own case. If registration has improved over the past 12 or 24 months, the circumstances that he described of moving towards individual registration could also be accelerated.

[Lord Wills]

I am delighted that the noble Lord has made that point. We set up a process under which there would be an independent assessment of whether the register was comprehensive and accurate—not a guess by Ministers or politicians but an accurate independent assessment. As the noble Lord is aware, under the legislation the Electoral Commission has to report annually to Parliament on progress. Let us see what it says and not rush ahead before we have received such assessments, which are unlikely to show that. I do not say that they will not show it and, if they do, obviously this can be revisited. We put in the requirement for those annual reports to Parliament so that it could make that judgment on the basis of independent evidence and not on the basis of a ministerial whim. When the noble Lord’s party was in opposition, it was very much against that kind of executive whim. I hope that we will see that antagonism to arbitrary action by the state exemplified in its opposition to this legislation.

[Lord Tyler]

I am sorry, but we did not support the timescale that the noble Lord is now describing. In this very Room in Committee, my noble friend Lord Rennard and I argued that we surely could be in a position to accelerate the process in time for an expected election at some point in 2014-15.

[Lord Wills]

With all due respect to the noble Lord, we have to make that judgment on the basis of evidence, but the evidence is not there at the moment. I tried hard in government to put in further measures to improve registration, but for various reasons I was not able to get them all through. I want to know what this Government are doing to bring in new measures over and above what we brought in. That was my first question to the Minister. I have not seen any evidence that this Government are doing any more than the previous Government did, although I am happy to be proved wrong. The improvement of registration rates is vital for the health of our democracy.

The point that I was making, which the noble Lord overlooked, was that Parliament will have an opportunity annually to assess progress towards a comprehensive and accurate register. My concern is not about the speed of individual registration but that it should happen only when the register is comprehensive and accurate. The noble Lord seems to be saying that it should just be done whenever Ministers feel like it. That is the point of disagreement between us. If a comprehensive and accurate register, assessed independently by the Electoral Commission, can be achieved earlier than 2015, that is fine, but all the evidence is that it will not be. If it can be done, then I agree with the noble Lord that we can bring in individual registration sooner, but to rush ahead before the register is comprehensive and accurate will be very damaging. It will be damaging to the register and to the health of our democracy, because it is so transparently partisan to so many of us.

We do not see this as a benign oversight by the Government; we see it as another example of a Government trying to fix the system in their own electoral interest. I know that many people will just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, that’s what politicians always do. What do you expect?”, but we and this Government really should not behave like that. That is why this matter is so important. It may sound like a technical issue to many people out there but it is not; it is about the integrity of the whole system. I hope that when we get to debate these measures we will hear the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, engage with these issues with his customary rigour, fairness and belief in the integrity of the system. He may come to the point where he is persuaded to vote against his Government on this measure because, in my view, that is what he should do.

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Lord is eloquent, but perhaps I may ask him to confirm one thing before he completely rewrites the history of the previous Administration. Am I right in thinking that the Electoral Commission recommended a staged move towards individual registration in 2003? Why did it take so long for him and his colleagues to get round to doing anything about it if it is as important as he says that it is?

[Lord Wills]

I agree. This was a particularly intractable problem, which Governments have looked at and tried to solve over a very long period. We were not in power for the whole of the past 50 years. Other Governments were in power and they, too, did nothing about moving towards individual registration. We tried to move towards it. The problem was that, every time we looked at achieving the desirable good of individual registration, we saw the problems with the register. We took necessary and important steps to improve the register, but I admit that they were not sufficient. I accept that and the noble Lord is right to criticise us for it. However, you cannot try to achieve one desirable good at the risk of creating what I would see as a greater ill, which is damaging a flawed register even more than it is already damaged.

It was not an easy process, but we found a way to do that. It took a huge amount of effort and negotiation with all sides, including the Electoral Commission, which had to be satisfied that it was proper. We found a balance by coupling the two processes. We coupled the improvement of the register so that it became comprehensive and accurate with individual registration. That, we hoped, would put pressure on everyone to drive up registration rates and move within a reasonable timeframe—and 2015 really is a reasonable timeframe; this is not long-grass territory. Therefore, we moved towards individual registration within a reasonable timeframe and, at the same time, tried to ensure that the register was not damaged, or, to be precise, damaged more than it was already.

I hope that the noble Lord will accept that that is a reasonable point of view. We have to be careful with this. I know that the Minister has not tried to do so, but it is wrong to claim—I am hearing this among the background noises—that these desirable and worthwhile measures that he has brought before us today, for which we are all grateful, on their own justify the partisan rush to individual registration. For all their merits, they do not.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his clear explanation of the instruments and I look forward to our future debates on the speeding up of the implementation of individual electoral registration by July 2014. Obviously, this is a hugely important issue and there is much more to be debated—I associate myself with everything that my noble friend said.

I believe that it is a citizen’s duty to vote and I welcome all efforts to maximise the number of people who are registered to vote. It is deeply depressing that there are 3.5 million people and perhaps closer to 6 million people—I, too, read the article in today’s Guardian—who are eligible to vote but who do not because they are not registered. This disempowers the individual and is damaging to democracy. The fact that a huge proportion of those unregistered are probably young and on lower incomes means that those who are perhaps most in need of a voice do not have one. Therefore, I welcome all measures to improve voter registration.

Effective mechanisms must be established to ensure that the maximum number of people are on the register, so I welcome the instruments that are before us today. I welcome the pilot data-matching schemes, especially the one in the Forest of Dean, which I shall watch with special interest. However, the pilots will be useful only if there is proper evaluation.

Like other noble Lords, I am somewhat concerned about the speed of this. Article 5 of the order specifies the date by which the Electoral Commission must produce a report on the operation of each scheme as 1 March 2012. The Electoral Commission tells us that its agreement to this date is on the basis that the pilot schemes will have been concluded by December 2011— I am not sure whether the noble Lord suggested that that had been put back—and that EROs will be able to provide it with information throughout that process. December is a mere five and a half months away and I hope that many of those employees will get some summer holidays, so will the Minister confirm whether he thinks that this timescale is practical? If the time does not prove to be adequate, will it be extended? I should also be grateful for some further information about the evaluation of the projects and for his assurance that he will report back to Parliament on the process. I will be interested to hear the answers to the questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about the way in which these specific projects were chosen.

I say as an aside that last week I had a meeting with one of the deputy election commissioners in India, a vast country where elections are organised for 750 million participants. I was interested to learn and see that the electoral registers there carry photographs of each person who is eligible to vote. I am not proposing that we should adopt that practice but, like my noble friend Lord Wills, I wonder what other ways the Government are exploring of increasing voter registration. Have they considered introducing a system whereby everybody is registered as of right and then opts out of the register should they wish to, so that the system is an opt-out one rather than an opt-in one?

I welcome the fact that no one who is on the register will be removed if they have not signed as an individual elector for the 2015 register, but I note that that will not be the case after the next general election. That could be a matter of concern if it leads to a greatly reduced number of people on the register and therefore weakens our democratic system, which I think is best nurtured by participation. I look forward to hearing the responses from the Minister and to our future debates on this issue.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, in discussions on electoral registration, nothing causes the heart to sink so much as the sight in the Room of the previous Minister, a member of the Electoral Commission and the guru in my own party on these matters. That will in part explain why, in making this response, I now have enough notes to take us safely to six o’clock. I hope that the officials will take careful note if I manage to miss a number of the questions that were asked; I will ensure that I follow them up in writing.

Perhaps the innocent observer will have missed the fact that all contributions welcomed these statutory instruments. I am extremely grateful for the agreement. I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, a lifelong belief that using your vote as a citizen is one of your most important duties and responsibilities. It is perhaps a sad fact that I was brought up in a household in a constituency that had a 15,000 Conservative majority, yet at every election my mother and father would go out resolutely to vote Labour. Indeed, in those days when having a car to deliver you to the polling station was something of a luxury, my mother used to take special pride in going there in a Conservative car to vote Labour.

I am grateful for the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I am pleased to see him on the Electoral Commission. When it was first established, the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, I and others who had worked for political parties on all Benches argued strongly that in order to make it effective the Electoral Commission should contain people with direct experience of party-political organisation. His service on the commission, given his experience, is a plus, the change being carried through by the previous Government.

The exercise of the pilot and the annual register will be kept separate, so that it will be possible to make a comparison. It is our aim that electoral registration officers should provide information at intervals, so that pilots, and the format and frequency of the reports to the Cabinet Office and the Electoral Commission, will be agreed. There will therefore be regular reports. We have asked each pilot to pay particular attention to that point. Since development work began, we have emphasised the importance of the pilots doing everything that they can to distinguish the impact of data matching and related follow-up activities from the usual impact of the annual canvass. I doubt whether that will be perfect, but it will certainly be attempted.

The Cabinet Office and the electoral administrators already have well developed proposals to evaluate the impact of the pilots and we will continue to work together on them as they develop. With the assistance of the Electoral Commission, we will continue to offer help and guidance on appropriate approaches that we consider will be most likely to produce useful evidence. Therefore, I hope that we are keeping in close contact with the Electoral Commission and the electoral registration officers.

It is always difficult to respond to complaints about either speed or slowness, both of which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, managed to make in a speech that he said was intended to be supportive. We will do our best to make these things work effectively and, as I said, most of the participating organisations will do likewise.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked how the participating authorities were selected. All local authorities across England and Wales were invited to apply to take part in the data-matching pilots. There will be no data-matching pilots in Northern Ireland, which already has individual registration. The individual electoral registration system was introduced in Northern Ireland under the provisions of the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. The Act replaced household registration with individual registration, whereby each eligible elector is required to complete their own electoral registration form.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others made a point with which I sympathise. I am, as I think was the noble Lord, Lord Wills, the Minister responsible for data protection and, when these proposals first landed on my desk from the Cabinet Office, alarm bells rang. I do not feel comfortable about government departments sharing data in a way that could have an impact on civil liberties unless provisions are put in place and I am happy to assure the Committee that we have taken the necessary steps to make sure that those protections are in place. We will follow the Government’s Information Assurance Standard 6 produced by the Communications-Electronics Security Group, the Government’s central information assurance experts. This standard governs the use, storage, transfer and destruction of data. We have consulted over our specific plans with the CESG and those responsible in the Cabinet Office for information security, as well as participating departments. Under Article 4 of the statutory instrument, all participants, including electoral registration officers, must sign agreements to comply with the standards. The Cabinet Office is also providing information assurance training.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked whether there will be a two-way flow of information. The answer is no. Departments will not receive information. This will be a one-way process. However, as I said, I think that when government departments, for the most honourable and meritorious reasons, start sharing information, there is a need for those concerned with data protection to be on their guard. I see in his place my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. I usually refer to him by saying, “An old Liberal once told me”, but I think that in this case I can identify him—to be distinguished, of course, from the young Liberals. My noble friend once memorably said to me that there should be a limit on how much information the state holds on an individual in a free society. I think that that is true and I constantly worry about the capacity of new technologies to cross-reference information in a way that could undermine civil liberties. In this case, I can say that we are taking the necessary steps to ensure that this information is used specifically, in a one-way direction and with the necessary protections in place.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, properly reminded us that, as in Northern Ireland, much of the exercise was to ensure that the system was fraud-free, secret and clean, and that the integrity of the ballot box was protected. I hope that successive Governments will make clear their intention in that respect. Indeed, people have recently been sent to prison for electoral fraud, and rightly so. Anyone contemplating electoral fraud should be well aware that we would use all possible means to ensure that they were prosecuted for it. Cardiff pulled out too late for us to make changes to the order and to find another Welsh example. As a strong supporter of devolution, I am always grateful that the specific matters concerning the responsibilities of Welsh Ministers are nothing to do with me.

Not surprisingly, today’s Guardian article was drawn to my attention. It is not possible to indicate with precision the registration rate in the UK because the size of the eligible population is not known, but the Electoral Commission will soon be conducting research into electoral registration levels in a project funded by the Cabinet Office. The study will check a statistically significant sample of electoral registers at local authority level against the people actually living at these addresses. The work will involve some 5,000 interviews in some 50 local authority areas across Britain.

I have noticed in debating previous Bills that a kind of victim culture has been growing up in the Labour Party that somehow the Government are wickedly keeping 3.5 million—“implied Labour”—voters off the register. No one is being kept off the electoral register. I have always been slightly suspicious of these figures and doubt whether at any time in human history there has been a 100 per cent completed electoral register. Indeed, I am old enough to remember when the register used to be updated twice a year and Harold Wilson used carefully to calculate the dates of elections so that the new register could be used, as the old ones became quickly out of date. Trying to put an electoral register together—

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. As he seemed to miss my comment, I want to stress that I am very supportive of him and these measures. However, is he aware that for all practical purposes, large parts of the country achieve 100 per cent registration and that their registers are comprehensive and accurate? It is not therefore some distant objective that we will never achieve, because some parts of the country are already achieving it. I accept that the Government are trying to reach that objective and I do not think that there is anything wilful about this. However, does the Minister accept that the task is to get all parts of the country up to that standard?

European Convention on Human Rights

Lord Wills Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I join others in thanking my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine for securing this important debate.

Memories fade—not all politicians have as good a memory as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew. He reminded us that the ECHR was inspired by Winston Churchill, was largely drafted by British lawyers and was seen after the horrors of totalitarian tyranny as a way of protecting the individual against the arbitrary power of the state. The Human Rights Act incorporates those protections into British law so that British citizens can seek them in British courts. Yet too often now, these rights are viewed as an irritant by politicians seeking easy headlines and by journalists who are eager to write them.

Human rights can challenge everyday assumptions in a modern democracy and, in interpreting legislation to protect fundamental individual rights, courts can sometimes reach judgments that upset majority opinion—and, of course, courts here and in Strasbourg can err. However, while the rule of law must command broad respect in society for it to be sustained, this should not come at the price of requiring majority support for every legal judgment. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, set out, this could leave powerless individuals and minorities defenceless. This has been forgotten today by those who oppose such protections for unpopular minorities and individuals and who dislike anything that emanates from Europe on the basic assumption that anything that comes from over there must be damaging here.

As my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine set out so cogently, such views are often based on a toxic stew of misinformation and misinterpretation. As my noble friend Lady Whitaker has reminded us, the Human Rights Act works well in protecting individuals against the arbitrary actions of the state—a mission that everyone ought to be able to sign up to.

The most recent myth—and it is a myth—is that the European Court of Human Rights dictates the interpretation of human rights instruments by British courts. It does not. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, has reminded us, Section 2 of the Human Rights Act requires British courts to take into account Strasbourg case law but no more than that—they are not bound by it. In taking such account when interpreting the Human Rights Act our courts also frequently rely on our common law and other sources of authority. There is a margin of appreciation to British courts to interpret the convention in accordance with British jurisprudence as well as European jurisprudence.

With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks—who is a most distinguished lawyer and, as is evident to your Lordships’ House, I am not—I understand that in a number of early cases—for example, in Alconbury and Anderson—even though British judges determined that they were bound by Strasbourg jurisprudence, they were careful to make clear the room for discretionary judgments. In Alconbury, Lord Slynn said:

“In the absence of some special circumstances, it seems to me that the court”—

this judgment was given in the House of Lords, as the Supreme Court then was—

“should follow any clear and constant jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights”.

In endorsing this in Anderson, Lord Bingham said that the House of Lords,

“will not without good reason depart from the principles laid down in a carefully considered judgement of the court”—

that is, the European court. I am not a lawyer, but the qualifications “in the absence of some special circumstances”, “any clear and constant jurisprudence”, “without good reason” and “carefully considered judgement” signal considerable freedom of action for the British judiciary. On more recent occasions this clearly seems to be the prevailing trend. In Animal Defenders, for example, UK judges have acted as if they are not bound by Strasbourg jurisdiction.

This is not an academic discussion. The Government have said that they want to bring in a new Bill of Rights and they have set up a commission including distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House to pave the way. There is nothing necessarily worrying about that. The previous Government launched a Green Paper—I was the Minister responsible for it—which discussed the possibility of a new Bill of Rights. However, for us, the purpose of that consultation was not to scrap the Human Rights Act but how best to build on it: how sufficient was it; did we need to go further; was there a case, for example, for entrenching further economic and social rights that we have so far taken for granted?

In contrast, the Conservative Party has said that it wants to scrap the Human Rights Act, although it would not withdraw from the European convention. However, if a Conservative Bill of Rights will still incorporate the ECHR then, whatever the detailed tweaking, the question must arise: why bother? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Conservative Party has fallen victim to the occupational disease of politicians—raising expectations in search of short-term political advantage, reckless of the fact that they are doomed to disappoint such expectations in the longer term.

Conservative talk of scrapping the Human Rights Act must give rise to expectations that human rights judgments that have provoked disquiet in sections of the media and the wider population will no longer occur. This is simply not true—not least because many of such cases have resulted not from judgments in British courts but from the European Court of Human Rights. Conservative policy would not prevent such judgments; it would simply force British citizens to go to Strasbourg to seek protections, once again exporting British rights to Europe.

It might be argued that if the Government replaced the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights that simply reworded it, it would not be anything other than a waste of precious legislative time but the damage would be only presentational. But is that really the case? If the Conservative Government tried to deincorporate the ECHR through scrapping the Human Rights Act and then reincorporate it in some other way, there is at least a real risk that the Strasbourg court, to which British citizens would still have recourse under Conservative policies, may well be less inclined to defer to rulings by British courts. In other words, any such legislation would be likely to restrict the margin of appreciation rather than extend it.

It is with relief that all of us who care about human rights see the presence of the Liberal party in the Government. Its members have been admirable advocates of the Human Rights Act. At Second Reading of the Human Rights Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who is a founding father of the Human Rights Act, called the Bill well designed and well drafted. I look forward to his speech later in the debate and to that of the Minister; they have been redoubtable defenders of the Human Rights Act.

There is an important debate to be had but it should not be about replacing the Human Rights Act. As the late Lord Bingham said:

“The rights protected by the Convention and the Act deserve to be protected because they are … the basic and fundamental rights which everyone in this country ought to enjoy simply by virtue of their existence as a human being”.

The debate we now need to have is not about scrapping the Human Rights Act but about how to build on it.

Elections: Armed Forces

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Wills]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to improve the timeliness of the dispatch and return of postal ballots for voters in the Armed Forces.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, building on the work done for the elections held in May 2010 by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, the Government have put in place an initiative to support the participation of members of the Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan who wish to vote in the referendum and elections on 5 May.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that response about the referendum vote. I hope he will agree that the many service voters who want to vote by post in all elections should be enabled to do so. However, he will recognise that deployment in remote areas, particularly in conflict zones, can create serious problems with achieving the timely dispatch and return of postal votes. Can the Minister tell the House whether his Government have continued the work set in place by the previous Government and agree, with the Front Benches of both the Conservative and the Liberal Democratic parties when they were in opposition, to consult on options for addressing such problems with a view to bringing in any necessary legislation by 2012? If they have not set up such a consultation, why not and when will they do so? If they have been consulting, when did the consultation start and when will they be publishing the results?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, we continue to build on the work initiated by the noble Lord. However, as he recognised, there are no simple solutions to the difficulty of servicemen voting in remote areas in battlefield conditions, et cetera, which is why we continue to advise servicemen to use proxy votes where possible as the most efficient way of being able to vote.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Given what I have been saying about the schizophrenic nature of our approach to film, it occurs to me that, should the Committee agree with our proposals, we might come back at Report with a suggestion that an annual report on film be presented to Parliament, perhaps at the end of February each year, so that we can have the opportunity, every year, not only of discussing the place of film in the United Kingdom but of celebrating our ongoing successes at the BAFTAs and the Oscars. I beg to move.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, in rising to support the amendments that my noble friend Lord Stevenson has so eloquently presented and to which I have added my name, I draw the Committee’s attention to my declaration of interests as set out at Second Reading of the Bill on 9 November last year.

The success of “The King’s Speech” at the Oscars, at other awards ceremonies and at the box office this year has been widely celebrated, as indeed has the success of other British films. These are tremendous achievements. “The King’s Speech” was a tremendous achievement for the writer, the director, the actors and everyone involved in its production, and that includes the UK Film Council. As Iain Canning, one of the producers of that film, said, the film,

“wouldn't have been made without the UK Film Council”.

As we have heard and as your Lordships will know, the UK Film Council is now no more. It was abolished last year by the Government by press release. It was hard to understand why the Government took that decision last year, but it is even harder to understand today when we see the tremendous success of these films in which the UK Film Council has played such an important role. The UK Film Council was a flourishing public body competing in a ferociously competitive marketplace. It has helped to treble the turnover of the British film industry in the past 10 years. It supported the development of new filmmakers, funded imaginative and innovative British films, and ensured that British audiences could have access to all the glories of the cinema, with a wider choice of films made available to audiences throughout the country.

So why did the Government do this? In what last year the Observer rather charitably called an,

“impassioned defence of his decision”,

the Secretary of State explained that it was “simply not acceptable” to use taxpayers’ money to fund an organisation that pays its top eight executives more than £100,000 each. That was the justification that he gave. However, the Secretary of State was wrong in saying that. In fact, there were only six such executives, and if that was to be the criterion for scrapping the UK Film Council, why hand its functions over to the British Film Institute, whose latest accounts submitted to the Charity Commission show that seven of its staff received remuneration packages of more than £100,000? That is seven—one more than the number of people in the UK Film Council receiving such packages. It is not clear whether this exercise will save money overall and I would welcome any comment that the Minister may have about whether we will see any savings from bringing those two bodies together.

I entirely accept that no organisation has a right to an eternal existence but, if politicians are going to butcher successful organisations operating in a world of which they seem to have very little knowledge and understanding, they would be well advised to have good reasons for doing so. That is all the more important when the organisation in question depends for its success on a very rare combination of skills: a commercial eye for an audience, an intimacy with the medium, a human empathy with creative artists, the ability to nurture and to develop them, and an inspirational excitement about the cultural and economic benefits which film can offer and which my noble friend Lord Stevenson so eloquently set out. Such organisations are very hard to create and when they work as well as the UK Film Council was working, they should be cherished, not arbitrarily destroyed.

This organisation was scrapped without consultation, just through a press release, and, as far as I am aware, Ministers have not even had the elementary courtesy at any point since then to say anything in praise of the UK Film Council's remarkable achievements, not even about its role in the creation of “The King’s Speech”. I note the contrast with the debate which we had earlier today when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, under assault from all sides of the House, still found it possible to pay tribute to all the good work done by the Youth Justice Board. By contrast, Ministers who take responsibility for this in the other place—I obviously make an exception for the Ministers on the Front Bench in this House who are completely blameless in this respect—have not even had the elementary courtesy to say one word in tribute to the organisation which, apparently, they have so arbitrarily scrapped.

Why should the exceptionally talented people who work for the UK Film Council hang around working for a public body when they all have so many other options—much more lucrative options, in most cases—and when they are treated with such discourtesy by the Secretary of State who will determine the future of film in this country? I understand that the haemorrhaging of talent has already begun. Able and experienced professionals are leaving the public sector for other jobs and no doubt more will follow. Successful organisations such as the UK Film Council exist in a fragile ecology and politicians meddle at their peril.

Of course, there are profound challenges facing film in this country but this casual and ill thought-through decision is not the way to meet them. My noble friend Lord Stevenson has already said that last year the British Film Institute and the UK Film Council discussed a merger and both sides decided, after lengthy discussion and after securing legal advice, that there would be significant problems in making it work. That is not surprising. They are very different organisations. One is essentially a cultural organisation and the other is an industrial organisation. They may sound as though they are all in the same industry and they both have the word “film” in their titles, but culturally, organisationally and in terms of their focus they are very different organisations. It is not surprising that they should have found a merger difficult to work through. That is not difficult to understand at all. It is entirely predictable that much the same sorts of problems are now being encountered in trying to bring these two organisations together. I hope that all responsible Ministers are taking an active interest in the discussions between the BFI and the UK Film Council and can find a way of making this merger work.

Amendment 65A draws attention to some of the unease that has been created by how the functions which have been discharged by the UK Film Council will be discharged in this new era. All mergers, all kinds of takeovers, whatever you want to call this current process, are difficult in every industry and every business. It is notoriously difficult to make them work successfully. I hope that Ministers are not just standing by and relying on all the talented, highly motivated and able people on both sides of this debate to bring this off themselves. Ministers may have to intervene to bring about a successful conclusion and I hope that they will do so.

In responding to the amendment, I ask the Minister to say whether the Government will ensure that the UK Film Council’s research and statistics unit will carry on that essential work long term. I understand that the funding is guaranteed for one year but will they ensure that it is carried on long term? Without a market intelligence function like this, the BFI will be making decisions in the dark. I should be grateful if the Minister could tell the Committee what estimate has been made of the impact of not funding film exports. Film exports under the guidance of the UK Film Council have grown by 92 per cent. As my noble friend Lord Stevenson has already said, in 2008, film exports amounted to more than £1.3 billion. At a time when the Government are placing so much of their hopes for economic recovery on growth in exports, why are they taking away the support function from such a crucial industry? Can the Minister name other crucial industries where support for exports has been similarly scrapped?

Can the Minister also say who will take over the UK Film Council’s role in opening up film to as wide and diverse an audience as possible? How will the BFI demonstrate a strategy which reflects its new responsibility for the entire film sector and not just BFI-related exhibition and distribution? What can the Minister say to assure this House that the BFI will be committed to representing the interests of the film industry as a whole as well as the UK Film Council has done in the past? That is crucial as technology and the economic structure of the industry are changing very fast. What can the Minister say to reassure the film industry and this House that the BFI will address effectively such key issues as film theft, piracy, pay-TV platforms, which are especially important now that Sky has become so market dominant in acquiring film rights for television, and the smooth transition of the film industry to new digital models? As I have already said, the BFI has essentially been a very successful cultural body, so what can the Minister say to reassure everyone that it can successfully take on this complex and demanding new role?

In the coming years, Ministers—I direct my remarks to Ministers in the other place—will be judged by how far the film industry measures up to the benchmark now set by “The King’s Speech”. Ministers may move on to new jobs in Government or to none but the Ministers responsible for this decision now risk being remembered as the politicians who carelessly and needlessly destroyed an important part of the infrastructure of the British film industry. They now have to prove that what they have put in its place will be an improvement. I very much hope that they can do so. These amendments give the Government an opportunity to offer reassurance that they now understand that. I hope that they will take it.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Stevenson and join him in congratulating those who won the Oscars. I perhaps should not forget the BAFTAs, which are more local and also well worth winning, as the same pattern of achievement was there.

I want to address the Committee on this amendment as I had the very good fortune to be the first person designated as the Minister for Intellectual Property, a role which I know that the new Government have also taken on as a ministerial post. The enjoyment from that role came from being involved not only in helping to drive forward businesses but in assisting in the development of cultural industries. I was under no illusion while doing so that Governments do not create business; they simply do their best to set out the conditions in which business might be able to thrive. The advantages of doing that are that, certainly in this country, we are unlikely to make much of our living doing many of the things which we have traditionally done, but we make a very good living from being successful in the creative industries.

Elections: Voting Arrangements

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, on securing this important debate. I declare my interest in these issues: I was the Minister responsible for them in the previous Government. I will focus my remarks on the voting arrangements for service personnel, although some of the improvements that can be made will also have implications for British citizens living overseas. I want to focus on the armed services because when men and women make such sacrifices for their country, they must be able to have an effective say in their country’s future. The Government must do everything possible to enable them to do so.

There are two elements to ensuring that service men and women can vote. First, they have to be registered. Secondly, when they do vote their vote has to be able to be counted in time. Both pose particular problems for services voters. They are often more peripatetic than other voters, which can cause problems with registration and deployment in remote areas, particularly in conflict zones; and can create serious problems with the timely return of postal votes. Much work has been already been done in both areas. The period for service declarations was extended to five years under the previous Government to help accommodate the volatility of life in the services. There are annual electoral registration campaigns targeted at service personnel and their families, and each unit has a unit registration officer.

We can see the results. During the time of the previous Government, the number of service personnel serving abroad who are registered to vote increased from around 36 per cent in 2005 to 48 per cent in 2008. An MoD survey carried out not long after that estimated that in 2008 65 per cent were registered to vote. This is still far too low and much more must be done to increase registration rates, just as more needs to be done to increase registration among the 3 million or so voters who are eligible to vote but cannot because they are not on the register. I hope the Minister will respond to this debate by telling the House how the Government are building on the work of the previous Government to increase registration rates further.

Once registered, all service personnel serving overseas can make use of proxy votes to ensure that their votes can be counted. They are not disenfranchised. However, when I was the Minister and I consulted representatives of service men and women and their families, they made it clear that many were uncomfortable using proxy votes and wanted to ensure that postal votes could be used. In my view, the Government should do everything possible, consistent with the integrity of the ballot, to enable voters to vote in the way that they wish.

The electoral timetable, for good reasons, means that postal ballots are issued only relatively close to election day, and therefore there can be serious problems with the timely return of postal ballots. The previous Government took action to address this problem. A great deal of excellent work was done by first-rate experienced officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Defence. A bespoke postal voting scheme was set up for the last general election to expedite postal voting in Afghanistan, and a process was established to produce a long-term solution. Before the last election, I secured agreement from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties that, whatever the outcome of that election, a consultation would be launched in July 2010 on the options for additional voting channels for service personnel and their families. This consultation was to have concluded by the end of November last year. The aim was then to reach conclusions on the way forward in the light of that consultation by spring 2011, and to bring forward legislation in 2012—in good time for the next general election.

I recognise that there is a wide variety of views on how best to proceed. As the Minister I heard, for example, suggestions for automatic registration for service personnel, for counting military votes on a longer timetable after polling day, and for the electronic distribution and remote printing and counting of ballot papers. All of these suggestions had merits and drawbacks but they were all worth exploring further. I became convinced that the answer lay with the internet. The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, referred to this as well. Enabling voting by internet would require changes in electoral law—which is enormously complex—and must satisfy, crucially, any concerns about the integrity of the system. However, none of these problems seemed insoluble, not least because the security of the internet is becoming at least as robust as the security surrounding traditional methods of voting. Just as importantly for the credibility of any changes, the security of the internet is increasingly widely accepted. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell the House what progress the Government are making with this consultation and bringing forward the legislation necessary for any changes.

Finally, I want to touch on the referendum, which the noble Viscount referred to. At the moment, I understand that the proposal is to issue postal ballots on 18 April. That, as the Minister will appreciate, leaves very little time for them to reach personnel deployed in remote areas and be returned in time. While there may well be good reasons—and there are—for such a late issue of postal ballots for a general election, I cannot see why that applies to this referendum, where the contents of the ballot are known now. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister could outline the measures he is taking to ensure that all voters in the armed services, no matter where they are deployed, will receive postal ballots for the referendum on AV in good time for them to be returned by the due date.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, on that last point, perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, should look behind her and ask why the Labour Government did not deal with that apparent anomaly, but I will have a look at it. It seems strange that you can vote in one referendum but not in another. I sincerely hope that the Welsh people will turn out in good numbers and vote yes in tomorrow's referendum.

The key thing about this debate—I congratulate my noble friend Lord Astor on securing it during the first year of a five-year Parliament—is that many of the issues raised are good, should be studied and, I hope, be considered by the Government with urgency. I will deal later with the specific issue of the military vote, although it is significant that more than half the speakers devoted most of their remarks to it. I take on board the priority that the House gives to addressing that matter.

Of an estimated 5.5 million British citizens resident overseas, only about 30,000 vote. We must address that issue. As my noble friend Lord Roberts pointed out, for all the efforts made, only about 500 soldiers in Afghanistan voted, out of about 10,000. That disengagement of the military is not healthy. I take on board the points that have been made and will return to them.

The point about postal voting and the election timetable has been made. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, that, although proxy voting is an alternative, it is not one that all electors want. Therefore, it is right that we address the issue of the postal vote. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister said last September that the Government have noted the Electoral Commission’s view, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and my noble friend Lord Roberts referred, that an extension to the electoral timetable would be an advantage. The Electoral Commission has said that a longer timetable for Westminster elections could be created by bringing the key deadlines into line with those used for the majority of elections currently held in the UK. That would mean that the election timetable would begin 25 working days before polling day.

As I said, the Electoral Commission's views are on the table, and I know that the Government are working on the issue with a sense of urgency—not in time, of course, for the referendum on 5 May. Again, the Electoral Commission is planning guidance to administrators to prioritise postal votes, particularly postal votes going overseas.

Several noble Lords mentioned electronic voting—

[Lord Wills]

Before the Minister leaves the point about the referendum, is he saying that it is impossible for the Government to issue postal ballots for the referendum before 18 April?

[Lord McNally]

No, we will not do so. I will come back to that.

A number of countries have moved to e-voting but some have stepped back from it—in particular, the Netherlands and a number of states in the United States—because of the security issues that were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Patten. One problem is that e-voting is vulnerable to attack and to fraud. On the other hand, I have actually voted electronically in a pilot scheme in local elections seven or eight years ago. I voted in a St Albans local election from my office in London. Although there is not a great deal of enthusiasm for e-voting at present, I think that if we are to have the in-depth study that this debate urges, a study of e-voting would be worth while. Voting in UK embassies is not easy, given the constituency basis of our elections and the need to get ballot papers to cover all parliamentary constituencies.

Let me use the last few minutes on the military vote, because I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Patten, that the military covenant is important and the right to vote on time and in secret should be addressed as part of that covenant. I will certainly take that message back. It is important that we try to encourage our service personnel to vote. The Government are making every effort to encourage participation in the vote on 5 May, not only in Afghanistan but in other British service areas where the British Forces Post Office will make voting in military locations a priority.

As I said, the Government are introducing an initiative for voting on 5 May. The deadline for new postal vote applications and changes to existing votes for the referendum is 5 pm on 14 April. The chief counting officer for the referendum has directed electoral administrators to prioritise postal votes going overseas, to ensure that they are sent out as soon as possible after the deadline for new postal vote applications has passed, with the first issue of postal votes to take place not later than 18 April. That issue will include postal votes for members of the Armed Forces. Why 18 April? Many areas will issue combined ballot packs and so will need to have election papers included with the referendum ballot. Also, 14 April is the last date for registration, and we will need to send out postal votes after that date in case of any change in details—a point raised by the noble Lord.

I say frankly and honestly to the House that on a wide range of the issues raised, such as the 15-year rule which was raised by my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord Lester, I do not think there is a rationale—I almost feel I am back to why the AV Bill provides that there should be 600 MPs—for the figure of 15 years, five years or 20 years. However, I think that it is certain that, in a world where many more people work abroad, the issue should be properly looked at. I say to my noble friend Lord Lexden that Disraeli’s most famous intervention into voting was to dish the Liberals in 1867 and then bring in a more radical franchise in 1868.

I leave the House with the message that the issues raised tonight are very substantial. They have been raised at the right time in this Parliament by my noble friend Lord Astor and other noble Lords who have spoken. I will make sure that my right honourable friend Nick Clegg and his colleague, my honourable friend Mark Harper, in the Cabinet Office, who have responsibility for these matters, see the Hansard of this debate. It will carry with it my very strong endorsement that we should carry forward the momentum of what the noble Lord, Lord Wills, was trying to do towards the end of the Labour Government and that early in this Parliament we should have a really radical look at voting for our overseas residents and, very importantly, for our military. I hope that will be the lasting value of this debate.

Bill of Rights

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Wills]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights will consider the option of repealing the Human Rights Act 1998.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, the commission will investigate the idea of a UK Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. We will make a statement to Parliament on the precise terms of reference of the commission in due course.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, the very careful words that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has just used appear to open the door to repealing the Human Rights Act. I wonder whether he recalls what he told this House on 7 October last year, when he said that,

“if at the end of this Government's term there was no Human Rights Act, there would be no Tom McNally”.—[Official Report, 7/10/10; col. 217.]

Can the Minister clarify the situation for the House and say whether he still agrees with me that the Human Rights Act provides essential protections for the rights and liberties of the individual in this country and does so by enhancing the protections already available under the European Convention on Human Rights? Will he stick to his commitment to resign if the Government move to repeal the Human Rights Act?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, when I was studying politics at university, I remember a chapter in the book about the man who forgot Goschen. That was Lord Randolph Churchill, who threatened to resign so many times that in the end the Prime Minister of the day accepted the invitation and replaced him with Viscount Goschen. I am well aware that we have a Viscount Goschen in this House. I think that you can threaten to resign too many times in a political career.

I do not think of the decision to go ahead with a commission on the working of the Human Rights Act as any dark plot to repeal it. Again, I have called the noble Lord in aid so often today, but he knows that when he was in office, he took a similar look at the effectiveness of the Human Rights Act. That is what we will do. In all I do, I shall ask the question asked by the late and lamented Lord Bingham, “Which particular human right do you intend to repeal?”

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

That is quite right and we would deal with it. However, I am suggesting that we have discussions about it without preconditions. I am grateful for the intervention of my noble and learned friend. He raises another issue that we can take on board when we look at the matter. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is not the only one who supplies lifeboats, although he is not here today.

[Lord Wills]

I am afraid that I am baffled by the Minister’s position. Perhaps that is what he intends. Will he clarify exactly why he is resisting the proposition put forward by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

That is a very good example of why it will be necessary to have a full debate in both Houses of Parliament. I am sure that Members in the other place want to go back to their constituencies and consult their constituents before taking part in such a debate. When they do, I hope that both they and Members of this House will bear in mind the message of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that what we are discussing is not a heinous directive from Europe, but respect for the European Court of Human Rights, of which we were key architects when it was set up.

[Lord Wills]

What consideration has the Minister given to deliberative mechanisms such as citizen jurors for engaging public opinion in the way that my noble friend Lord McAvoy has just suggested should be done?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, that is not a question for today. We should wait to hear the Government’s decision and then go through the normal parliamentary processes and consultations. That will take place all in good time. It would not be appropriate for me to make commitments at this Dispatch Box about either the timing of, or consultation around, another Bill altogether. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that his best support has come from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, who thinks that this is half a loaf, and from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who thinks that it is going too far. I suggest that this is not the basis for pressing an amendment. The Government accept that they are legally obliged to lift the blanket ban on prisoner voting in UK parliamentary elections. However, accepting this amendment and allowing a category of prisoners to vote in the referendum would pre-empt Parliament and prevent it following the proper course of debating prisoner voting in both Houses when the Government have come forward when their proposal. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.