Wales: Devolution

Lord Wills Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on initiating this discussion. I hope that the House will forgive the intrusion of someone from the north, rather than the west, of the United Kingdom. I promise that I shall be brief.

I can see that the problem of asymmetric devolution has not made life easier for Wales. It is my hope that the work of the Silk commission will feed the discussion as to what tax arrangements are most suitable for the whole of the United Kingdom. We do not live in a homogeneous, single, unitary state. There are substantial variations in need, which have been alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and others who have spoken in the debate. However, it seems to me that our approach, nationally—by that I mean as part of the United Kingdom—is somewhat too fractured. It would be appropriate to pull together the thinking of Holtham, Calman, Silk, and all the other inquiries that are going on into these matters, with a view to taking the step that has been alluded to as the desirable end point by my noble friend of some form of federation for the country. I say “some form” because it is quite clear that the United States form has built imbalance into the prosperity of the different states. However, that need not be the case, as is made abundantly clear by the experience of the Federal German Republic.

Looking at what is happening in Scotland is not necessarily the right way to approach what is to be done in Wales, because the Scottish situation is far from stable. The degree of satisfaction that may arise from the Scotland Act is yet to be determined. It is certainly my view that equitability as between the different nations and regions of this country should be a prime concern and one should not simply address the local difficulties as though they were unique.

It is time to ask some questions of the Government regarding the Silk inquiry, and my noble friend Lady Randerson has done just that. In particular, I should like my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace to indicate when he replies to the debate what the state of the discussion is between the two Governments as regards borrowing. Is it confined to borrowing from the Treasury or does it also encompass the possibility of private borrowing for public intentions? The urgency of that issue seems to have been recognised by virtually all those who have given evidence to the Silk inquiry and it seems that that could be done without seriously upsetting the British economy.

What has been interesting is the extent to which there is an express desire within Wales for greater control over taxation, although I noticed what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, had to say about the down side. However, that could be rectified by making sure that the distribution of public—United Kingdom—funds takes more account of need than is the case with the Barnett formula. I hope that the Government will give some indication as to how they would wish to progress. The postponement of decisions on Barnett is definitely damaging to the coherence of our United Kingdom.

If economic success leads to an increase in the Welsh budget, it should not follow that there should be an immediate reduction in central government funding. These matters fluctuate in the short term and it is important that the infrastructure of the economy should be underpinned and that problems such as the greater rurality of Wales are taken into account and a more equitable solution is produced.

I urge the Government to take note of the inquiry in another place, chaired by Mr Graham Allen, into the possibility of a convention on a constitution for the whole United Kingdom. There is much merit in that. Evidence from the Silk inquiry and of those who have been giving such careful consideration to these matters as they affect Wales should be fed into such a convention. However, it should not be expected to deliberate and come up with immediate results but rather, in the manner of the Scottish convention, take its time to come up with a solution that will satisfy the different parts of the United Kingdom, I know that that goes beyond the ambit of this debate.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He makes an important point. Can he clarify his thinking about this constitutional convention? Should it be literally along the lines of the Scottish constitutional convention or should it have a more demographically representative element and therefore be much more akin to a deliberative assembly, the conclusions of which would not be binding? Which sort of model does he think would be preferable in this case?

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I would hope that we can learn from the experience of the Scottish convention: that it should not be confined to certain political parties; that it should be representative of varying and discrete interests; and that it should be deliberative. The serious groundwork being done by Silk—and earlier by Holtham, Calman, and so forth—should be borne in mind and taken into account. This should not be led by politicians who have come to it with a defined end point; but rather, it should emerge as something like a national consensus following a national debate.

Scotland Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, as an Englishman, I was not going to contribute to this debate. However, having listened to it all, and listened to the Minister’s response, I wonder if he could give the House an indication of whether he understands the damage that this situation is doing to the union. Does he understand that that is perhaps the most fundamental challenge at stake here?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I understand that there is a serious issue here. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, indicated, if we end up telling the Scottish Parliament what to do—my noble friend Lord Forsyth says that that is not what his amendment says but I think that, de facto, that is what it would lead to—that would be a serious position for the union, and it would undermine the whole devolution settlement. That is why I find this a difficult issue.

I think that my noble friend has, as the noble Lord said, totally underestimated the number of students who would seek to apply to Scottish universities. It only stands to reason that if you can get free tuition at the St Andrews university but would have to pay £9,000 at Durham, you are more likely to apply to St Andrews. The notion of quotas has never been particularly welcomed.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

When the noble and learned Lord speaks at the end of this debate, I urge him to think hard about this, and maybe go away and consult before taking a final position. The Government have got themselves into quite a mess and alienated a lot of their friends over some of these constitutional provisions. The case for pre-legislative examination has been made very strongly. Above all, the Government should recognise that they are entitled to put this box around their own negotiations. They had to listen to some people who said, “You can’t possibly give up the right of the House of Commons to pass a vote of no confidence”. That was, again, a foolish suggestion but they moved away from it. Any pre-legislative committee would certainly have exposed that that was not workable. The more flexibility that is put into fixed-term Parliaments, the more likely they are to get general acceptance, and the more likely they are to win support in a referendum.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support this amendment, primarily because it will give the Government a chance to reconsider a key part of the Bill. The case for a fixed term of four years is not beyond argument, although my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and many other noble Lords have made a good case for it being so. However, I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said at Second Reading: whether a term should be of four or five years is in the end “a question of judgment”. That judgment should be informed by principle. I have struggled hard to find any principle advanced by the Government in favour of the Bill. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, at Second Reading seemed to base the argument primarily on precedent—on what had happened in our recent history, in several countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and so on.

However, there is a principled argument for the Government’s position. It was put forward, for example, from the Cross Benches, by the noble Lords, Lord Armstrong and Lord Butler, from all their experience of serving the state over many years. It is an argument rooted in the importance of stability for the governance of this country. This is not a negligible argument, but it comes up against the argument that accountability should be paramount. That is a judgment that I support. More importantly, it is a judgment that almost all noble Lords who have so far spoken in these debates have favoured. It is overwhelmingly, as we have heard, the view of all the experts who have given evidence to both Houses of Parliament. The search for an accommodation between the principles of accountability and stability is fundamental to the constitutional arrangements of all modern democracies. The question that still has not been adequately addressed in all the parliamentary scrutiny of this legislation is: who should make the decision about how best to make that accommodation?

Today we have heard the case for greater consultation. Even if the Government did not take the decision in favour of five years quite as casually and self-interestedly as the account given by Mr David Laws MP suggests, it is still a fact that there has been no public consultation on this fundamental issue. This legislation seeks to determine the shape of future Parliaments, yet those most affected by it—the voters of this country—have not yet been asked what they think about the judgment that the Government have made. They should be asked. We have heard a great deal about the views of academic experts and politicians; what about the people we all serve? I am not in favour of referendums in general. I am certainly not in favour of a referendum on this point. However, I am in favour of the Government embarking on one of the many forms of public engagement that already exist—exercises in deliberative democracy and so on. They are available to the Government, who should now take advantage of them.

Listening to all the rhetoric of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister, you would think they believed in the greater engagement of the public in policy formation between elections. Here is an opportunity for them to put some substance into all this airy rhetoric. If your Lordships support this amendment, I fear it will not change the Government’s mind on how long a term should be. This Government have shown very little inclination to listen to your Lordships’ House on all their measures of constitutional reform. However, the amendment will at least provide an opportunity for taking a pause. My noble friend Lord Grocott made this case persuasively at the start of this debate.

If the Government can take a pause to consult widely on measures such as NHS reform—profoundly important as they are—surely they can do the same with this important measure of constitutional reform. I hope that your Lordships will give the Government an opportunity to do so.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I set out in Committee three reasons why I felt strongly that a fixed-term Parliament of five years was more appropriate than one of four years. I shall not repeat those arguments at length. However, since I made the first argument there has been even more discussion about the principle of pre-legislative scrutiny, and there has been a considerable demand in this House and elsewhere for more pre-legislative scrutiny. A five-year fixed-term Parliament in many ways incentivises a Government to have more pre-legislative scrutiny than has previously been the case. If a Government feel that they may be in for only four years, and there was a four-year fixed-term Parliament, we would have rather less pre-legislative scrutiny than would happen if they knew they would last for five years.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, who said earlier that there is a clear danger that a four-year Parliament would not provide much time in the first year for pre-legislative scrutiny, and we all know that in the last year of almost any Parliament there is perhaps more attention on campaigning than on legislating. This would mean that in a four-year fixed-term Parliament perhaps only two years would be devoted to serious legislative work. Many people believe that in the model of the United States, which has a four-year fixed-term, there are only two years of effective governing and two years of campaigning.

Secondly, I pointed out in Committee—I thought that perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wills, would have said something about this—that there should be consistency in the way in which you conduct elections in terms of how you regulate constituency election expenditure. The previous Labour Government brought in rules that kick in four years and seven months after a general election and last for 60 months after the previous general election. In other words, the rules last to control expenditure at constituency level in general elections only for the final six months of a five-year Parliament. As we said in debates a year or two ago, it is not logical to have rules controlling constituency expenditure in that last six months of a five-year Parliament unless there is a five-year fixed-term Parliament.

My third argument relates to our recent debates of great controversy. However, we decided in legislation that reviews of parliamentary constituency boundaries would take place every five years. The principle of revising constituency boundaries to take into account shifting population is recognised by all parties. However, the frequency with which that takes place is the subject of some dispute. Revising constituency boundaries more frequently than every five years would have many disadvantages and would certainly be unpopular in another place. The reviews of constituency boundaries should be synchronised with general elections.

There is, however, an additional argument that points in favour of a five-year fixed term. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are about to begin five-year terms, and this is likely to become the norm for future elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. There is no appetite at all in Scotland and Wales—

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I am not sure that last Thursday would necessarily have been thought to be in my party’s interest. I shall not rehearse all the arguments for the coalition but we heard the comments of my noble friend Lord Dobbs, who has been there when some of these decisions have been taken. As he indicated, the question has been: can we win? No doubt all parties think that they are right for the country but clearly the decision is taken for partisan reasons—when they think they can win. If one looks at 1983 and 1987, it is interesting that Mrs Thatcher, as she then was, did not hold an election exactly after four years—or at least she did in 1987—but she made the decision in 1983 after the local election results had come through. If I recall correctly, that was when I was first elected. The Dissolution took place the week after the local government election results in the first week in May, when she quite clearly saw that that would be to her party’s advantage.

It is also suggested that Parliaments that have gone to five years have been destabilising—I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, used the expression “an awful fifth year”—but in many respects the term has been self-selecting, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra indicated. There have been fifth years under Governments who did not have the confidence to go to the country after four years because they did not think that they could win, having run out of steam and lost their way. No doubt they thought that if they carried on for a final year something might just turn up. That is not a very good argument for saying that five years would not work. I shall pay a passing compliment to the Government of whom the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, was a member. I suspect that if the Government elected in 1997 had gone into a fifth year, that year would still have been very purposeful. The noble and learned Lord shakes his head but I think that he may be doing a disservice to his party.

As my noble friend Lord Rennard pointed out, it is also interesting that when the Government gave the devolved Parliament in Scotland and the Assembly in Wales the opportunity to change their election date to avoid a clash with an election in 2015—the offer was to hold an election between the first Thursday in May 2014 and the first Thursday in May 2016—in each case they opted for a five-year term. They could have gone for four years and six months or three years and six months but they opted for five years, and that Motion was, I think, assented to by the leaders of all parties, including the Labour Party, in both the Parliament and the Assembly.

The question that has been raised, not least by the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Pannick, is: how do we ensure accountability? Accountability can come in many ways. It is not just in parliamentary general elections that parties and politicians are accountable. My noble friend Lady Stowell talked about some of the ideas that came out in the Power inquiry to try to engage ordinary people in the political process. The point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in what I thought was a very thoughtful contribution, that five years is very often required for an assessment to be made of the effectiveness of a Government’s early policies and for people to make a proper and informed decision after there has been an opportunity for those policies to feed through.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his espousal of these methods of public engagement. I, too, was pleased to hear that espousal from his noble friend Lady Stowell. Can he explain to the House why they have not taken advantage of one of these methods of public engagement to ask the public what they think about this measure?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, in the Constitution Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, asked my honourable friend Mr Mark Harper about opinion polls which showed public support for establishing fixed terms. These are not old opinion polls: the Populus survey conducted for the Times, published on 30 May 2009, found that 74 per cent of those surveyed supported the establishment of fixed terms; a poll conducted by ICM Research for the Sunday Telegraph, published on 26 May 2010, found that 63 per cent of those surveyed supported the establishment of fixed terms; and a survey by the Scottish Youth Parliament conducted in August 2010 found that 76.4 per cent of the young people surveyed were in favour of establishing a fixed term for the United Kingdom Parliament. I accept that the question as to whether it should be four or five years was not put, but there was clearly in the surveys support for the principle of fixed-term Parliaments.

My noble friend Lord Dobbs talked about the opportunity for policies to mature and to be assessed. Therefore, there is an opportunity for accountability because the electorate can see what has been delivered, not only by this Government in the present Parliament, where it may take some time for the necessary remedial measures to work through, but by other Parliaments. It is possible for a Government coming into office at the beginning of five years to plan their legislative programme and the other things that do not require legislation, and at the end of which the public can make their decision and judgment on the effectiveness of the Government over those years. That will help accountability.

Practical issues were raised by a number of noble Lords, not least by my noble friends Lord Renton and Lord Blencathra. The questions of stability, practicality and allowing for accountability point to five years.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I keep hearing the words, “It is a matter of judgment”. I heard them from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on several occasions in connection with giving the electorate the power to decide. I just heard a reference to the importance of time for pre-legislative scrutiny and allowing people who are about to vote an opportunity to maturely evaluate the Government’s policy. I am beginning to feel as though we live in a different place, because we have a whole plethora of constitutional reforms before us, who have to vote on them, with no opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny and no opportunity to see how the first bit, the second bit, the third bit and the fourth bit come together.

Then, in the middle of it all, is the bit of the Bill that perhaps worries me even more than the five and four years: who, how and in what circumstances the proposed five or even four years could be varied. I have heard a variety of ways in which a Prime Minister can decide that it is a good time for an election if he thinks it is in his interest, although I think that convincing the Opposition that it is a good time for an election will be quite a hard task. Having heard all these arguments, however, I am not allowed to see what this coalition Government propose to do. This is against a background of assurances that I keep getting that they know where they are going and they know who is going with them, but it sure ain’t me because they are not telling me where they are going.

I have been asked to vote on changing the system of votes, which is being put to the people in the AV referendum, without being told what is being proposed for people being elected to this House. All these things keep being thrown at me by people who say, “Oh well, it is a matter of judgment”. In the end, a bit like the dance of the seven veils, all will be revealed. However, I want to know the whole picture now before I am asked to start pulling apart some of the parts of the structure of our constitution. The argument is therefore surely that it would have been better if the coalition had concentrated on fewer Bills that made fewer changes to the constitution, had put them out for quick pre-legislative scrutiny and did not Christmas-tree them. Those who have been in government know that the minute the whole plethora of people in any department see a Bill looming, they start hanging little baubles on it, complicating it and muddying the whole picture. I am therefore uneasy.

On the use of the term “judgment”, I think that it is a bit arrogant of the coalition—a new form of government in this country for a long time—to say, “We are making a judgment about when you can vote to judge us, and we are restricting the way in which it is going to be done”. Perhaps, having a somewhat warped political mind, I can see that it is just possible, in reaching an agreement to form a coalition, that neither party trusted the other and so the five years had to be set in concrete in case either one pulled the rug from under the other. However, I am then assured that in the middle of the Bill is the opportunity for the Prime Minister of the day suddenly to pull the rug out anyway, although I suppose he would have to get his Deputy Prime Minister to support him.

On the argument about the length of time that it takes to bring in legislation, in my view the public out there have the right to expect to be able to voice their view on what happens in the future. It is just possible that, within the next two years, some people who are currently members of the coalition will not want to be tied to a fixed term of five years. They could be members of either party; it is not always the most adulterous one who ends up getting divorced.

I am concerned. Why cannot we have a big picture for all these constitutional changes? Why cannot we substitute this judgment that we ought to be laying in concrete an agreement of convenience for this particular Government? Why are we wasting our time legislating to set that in concrete? We are wasting our time because they can do that anyway. They do not need this Bill to do that, so why on earth are we being told that they do? I am beginning to get suspicious, because from certain Benches—from parties to this Government—I keep hearing, “Well, we are voting for this now. It is not what we really want, but we will get what we want next time”. I have met the odd person out there who has said to me, “Hey, I watched that debate, and the Lib Dems said that they do not really like AV, but it is better than what we have, and anyway it is a road to somewhere else”.

Finally, I cannot resist remembering when I sat on those Benches over there during the first stage of House of Lords reform. I heard a member of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition at the time—a former Home Secretary—come out with the words, “The wicked thing the Labour Government are trying to do is force an extension of the life of government”. Who is doing it? Not us. Can we please have the big picture, can we ask the British people what they think, and can we not patronise them by saying, “You need longer to be able to judge us”?

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I think most would agree that there is merit in the arguments on both sides of the debate on whether the term of Parliament should be fixed. However, if there is merit in the argument for the term being fixed at five years, it is merit that passed by both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats until the coalition agreement enlightened them. Nearly a year after that agreement, Ministers have still not managed to find a way of articulating that case persuasively.

The Government’s proposition is that they have a mandate for this proposal—this was one of the arguments used by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, on Second Reading—because an appetite for political reform was manifested at the last general election. That is a questionable proposition, to put it at its politest, because it conflates an arguable general distrust and dislike of politicians with a wish for a specific proposal for a five-year fixed term for Parliament. The Government’s argument that five years is somehow part of our political culture—the Deputy Prime Minister has made this argument—ignores inconvenient facts about the average length of post-war Parliaments. Of the last seven Parliaments, for example, four have lasted for about four years and three for five years. Moreover, the proposition, which Ministers have also advanced, that the Parliament Act somehow supports this proposal confuses setting a maximum term with fixing a norm. Then, of course, there is the selective quoting of international examples, nearly always in discussions of constitutional reform—a refuge for the intellectually desperate.

Does it matter that the Government have so inadequately made the case for a fixed term of five years? I think it does. This is not a matter of a finely balanced judgment one way or another, with there being really nothing very much to choose between a four-year term and a five-year term. Of course there is an element of judgment in these things, but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, so eloquently set out, the overwhelming weight of expert opinion is in favour of four years. Anything longer inevitably—logically, inevitably—delays the calling to account of the Executive, and it creates an accumulating democratic deficit.

In the absence of any persuasive arguments for a five-year term, this flaw is toxic. It is particularly toxic because of the process by which this Bill has been brought before Parliament and the damaging perception that this has created the motivation behind the selection of five years as the fixed term for Parliament. Due process and perceptions of motivation matter especially for constitutional legislation because they can create public trust in the integrity of our constitutional arrangements or they can destroy it. A constitution which does not command the trust and respect of the citizens it serves is a constitution without value.

So what has been the process for this Bill? There has been no manifesto commitment to its key detail or any compelling argument for it. There has not been a Green Paper, a White Paper or public consultation. The process has consisted simply of ramming this hastily and poorly drafted Bill through Parliament as quickly as the business managers can get it through. This creates a perception which has been widely voiced. I am very grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for telling the House about the account given in Mr David Laws’ history of the formation of the coalition agreement. I am sure that Mr Laws did not wish to be quite as unhelpful to his colleagues who remain in government as he has turned out to be. Nevertheless, the citizen might legitimately ask, “Why did the Government suddenly abandon a historic Liberal Democrat commitment to a fixed four-year term?”. Why would two parties which are locked in an uneasy embrace, trying to find a way to govern together that does not lead to an electoral annihilation for one or other or both of them, suddenly decide to extend the fixed term to five years?

My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s quote from Mr George Osborne tells us everything that we need to know about this. The Government have yet to come up with one good argument about why the motivation for this move to a five-year term is nothing more than the search for short-term, partisan, political advantage, seeking to stay in power, locked together, for as long as they possibly can. Sadly—I say sadly because I know that many Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches have long and honourable histories of espousing constitutional reform—this sort of short-term partisan manoeuvring is coming to characterise this Government’s constitutional legislation. It injects poison into the system. It creates suspicion where there should be trust and volatility where there should be stability. This really is no way to legislate for constitutional matters.

Accepting this amendment would help to neutralise this poison, but I fear that the Minister—characteristically amiably, no doubt—will try to find reasons for resisting it. I fear that the Government will ignore the reservations, which we have heard over and over again in this debate, which has gone on now for nearly one and a half hours, just as they have ignored all the other doubts about their constitutional legislation, and that they will just whip this Bill through. Despite that, I hope that the noble and learned Lord who moved this amendment will test the opinion of the House on the matter, if not now then at Report. This House should do its constitutional duty whatever view Ministers take of theirs.

[Lord Dobbs]

This House pursues this discussion with considerable passion and at times almost with an element of ferocity, which is how it should be. But I have to admit that it has left me rather confused. I have done my best to follow the arguments. Should it be four years or five years? Should it be three years and 10 months or some other figure? Statistics have been hurled around this House and given a mythical, almost mystical, significance and, at times, even an ethical significance. Some say that “this figure is right and that figure is wrong”, and not just wrong but downright wicked. It is enough to make a young chap giddy.

For better or worse, as a party official and a prime ministerial adviser, I was involved with the process of helping to choose one or two election dates in the 1880s and 90s.

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[Lord Wills]

Before the noble Lord finishes telling us why he changed his mind, perhaps I may point out that all the considerations in favour of a five-year term that he is now advancing, and the issues that he has brought into play, have been well known for many years—in fact, all the years during which he was in favour of a four-year fixed term. Can he tell us now precisely why he changed his mind?

[Lord Rennard]

The first reason is one about which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, should know a great deal. I pay great tribute to him as a genuine constitutional reformer. He was responsible in the previous Parliament and in the previous Government for changing significantly some of the rules on party political expenditure. Noble Lords opposite shared my concern throughout much of the 13 years and the three Parliaments of the previous Government about the lack of a level playing field in this country in party financing, which gave too much opportunity to extremely wealthy individuals to influence an election, particularly in constituencies, in the immediate run-up to it. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, introduced legislation in the previous Parliament which provided for control of that expenditure after four years and seven months of a Parliament. There would be no controls before that; they would apply only after four years, seven months. I opposed that legislation on the ground that it would work logically only if you had a five-year fixed-term Parliament. Noble Lords opposite had no answer to that point, but decided that four years, seven months was how it should be. So, now, our legislation to regulate party political expenditure is entirely dependent on there being a five-year fixed-term Parliament and on those controls coming in after four years and seven months through to the 60th month of the Parliament, and no other period.

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[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, for introducing the amendment. It has given rise to considerable debate in all parts of the House and a number of important and interesting arguments have been put for and against. The duration of the parliamentary term proposed in the Bill has been discussed not only at Second Reading but in some of the earlier amendments we debated on the first day in Committee. It has also been debated in the other place where, it is worth noting, amendments similar to those tabled by the noble and learned Lord were debated and rejected.

On the debates in the other place, I should indicate to the noble Lord, Lord Wills—who, at one point, suggested that the business managers were ramming the Bill through—that the Bill was introduced on 22 July 2010; it had its Second Reading in the other place on 13 September; it had two and a half days in Committee in November and December; Report and Third Reading were on 18 January; and it was introduced into this House on 19 January. We are now on the second day in Committee on 21 March and, with the best will in the world, we would be unlikely to reach Third Reading of the Bill before the Easter Recess. That does not sound like ramming a Bill through. I shall come later to the point the noble Lord made about the partisan nature of the Bill, which I strongly reject.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, suggested that I had indicated that the issue of four or five years was one of high principle, and I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for quoting what I did say. I indicated that I did not believe there was a right or wrong answer. I think that there is a matter of important principle in terms of a general constitutional reform package. I have always strongly believed in the argument for a fixed-term Parliament, and I thought that the Labour Party supported that argument as well at the last general election.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, went on to say that he considered this a matter of high principle, although many of us are waiting to hear exactly what that principle is. I did not discern it in any of his remarks. He put forward arguments on the basis of practicality and why he felt four years was better than five. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, cited a number of academics and politicians who had given evidence to that effect as well. However, my noble friend Lord Rennard quite properly pointed out that the legislation on candidate expenses which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, took through the other place under the previous Government—which, I assume, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was responsible for in this House—presumed that there would be a five-year Parliament. Indeed, that legislation would have been otiose if there was a four-year Parliament. No doubt we could amend that legislation but it is an insight to what the Labour Party was thinking at the time. Therefore, to elevate this to a matter of high principle is overegging the cake.

However, it is a matter of principle that the constitutional reform that the Government are working hard to achieve should have a framework for strong and stable government that can deliver results to the electorate. This Bill and a fixed five-year term would help to ensure that.

Perhaps I can now address some of the issues and explain why a five-year term would be beneficial. The current constitutional position is that any Government who retain the confidence of the other House may, if they wish, stay in office for a full five-year term. We should not kid ourselves that curtailing the length of time would be a significant change beyond simply the important change to fixed terms. On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that the Bill made provision for five years and two months, that would be the case only if an order was brought forward in unusual circumstances—for example, if there was an outbreak of foot and mouth—and it would require a resolution of both Houses of Parliament to be implemented. Amendments will be introduced later—this evening, I hope—which will require the Prime Minister to give an explanation to both Houses as to why he or she was doing this. In fact, a Parliament need not be dissolved until five years after it is called but it is certainly possible under our existing constitutional arrangements to go beyond the five years. Under the Bill, unless there is the exceptional circumstance to which I referred, it would not be possible to go beyond five years. I understand the noble Lord’s concern but hope that he, on listening to the later debate when this comes up, will be reassured on that point.

I take the stricture of my noble friend Lord Dobbs about the dangers of trading figures. It is the case that most Parliaments since the Second World War, some 10 out of 17, have lasted at least four years. Three of the last five have lasted almost five years. Some have pointed to examples of Parliaments that have lasted closer to four rather than five, making the argument that four is somehow the norm and five is only for Governments who are clinging on to power. Yet, as was well put by my noble friend Lord Marks, those who point to the examples where the fifth year has been, if one wished to use the term, a lame duck almost make the point. These arose because the Prime Minister of the day looked at the runes, did the calculation and estimated that it would not be worth going to the electorate because he was probably not going to win. The very nature of the Government being in that position means that they are almost inevitably limping into their fifth year. That is a different situation from Governments knowing that there is a five-year fixed term and having to plan accordingly.

The noble and learned Lord also mentioned what Mr Asquith said back in February 1911. We could have a legitimate debate on what Mr Asquith was actually saying. He is quoted in the Official Report as saying that reducing the Parliament from seven years, as it previously was, to five would,

“probably amount in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/2/1911; col. 1749.]

He clearly did not say that the term would be for four years but that the practical legislative working term would be for four years. That is an important point and one I will pick up later in light of the comments made at Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. As I said, the fact that an election is called before the end of the fifth year of a term has often been cited as the Prime Minister of the day seeking to give his or her party a political advantage. The noble Lord, Lord Martin, gave examples where a Prime Minister has exercised that power and it has not come off. It is fair to say that those Prime Ministers were mightily surprised and upset by that. They could not have foreseen it: it was their wrong judgment. That cannot get away from the fact that that is what they were trying to do. My noble friend Lord Dobbs made it clear from his inside track that that is precisely what Prime Ministers try to do in those circumstances.

At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, said—although I accept that he indicated his objection to fixed-term Parliaments as a whole—that there are merits, if you are having fixed-term Parliaments, to a term of five rather than four years. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, made the same point today. I remind the House what the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said:

“If legislation were to set a fixed term of, let us say, four years, that period would be reduced to more like three years. That would not leave enough room for sensible policy-making and good parliamentary debate before the imminence of the forthcoming election began to cast its distorting shadow. So I hope that, if this Bill becomes law, the fixed term will be five years, as is proposed in the Bill, and not some shorter term”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 971.]

That echoes the point made by Mr Asquith about what would practicably be the working life of the Parliament. Many commentators—politicians and the public—would argue that Governments can be too short term in their planning and decision-making, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. Many major decisions and investments often take a significant time for their consequences to appear. We want—I hope there is a consensus in the country that people also want—to encourage future Governments to take that longer-term view rather than always to be looking for the short-term advantage, be that from being able to pick the date of the election or shortening the length of the Parliament.

[Lord Wills]

The noble and learned Lord said earlier that he was not quite sure what the high principles were that are at stake here. He has just set out one of them—the interest of stability and good government. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, also made the case for this. Against that has to be traded the principle of accountability, which has informed a lot of the remarks on this side of the House. The noble and learned Lord has just referred to what the British public might want. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, also referred to this. Why precisely have the Government taken so few steps to consult the British public on this? There is no Green Paper or White Paper as far as I am aware, and no going out to the country to ask the British people how they think these respective principles of accountability and stability should be weighed in the Bill. Why have the Government not done this?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I take seriously the issue that somehow democratic accountability is being reduced. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made the point in speaking to his amendment on the first day of Committee—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, also expressed this view—that if we had had fixed-term, five-year Parliaments there would have been a reduced number of elections. I cannot accept that that automatically follows. Taking up the point of democratic accountability, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, cannot ignore the possibility—or, more, the probability—that there would have been Parliaments that did not run their full term of five years. Perhaps February 1974 would have been an example, or October 1974, or the 1951 election.

My noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames also indicated that it is important to put the ducks—as they were described by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—in perspective. It is almost inevitable that during the past 65 years some Parliaments would not run their full course. You cannot say that every Parliament would automatically run the five years. Indeed, that is why we have the provisions in Clause 2 of the Bill.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wills]

16HA: Before Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“Committee of Inquiry on Parliamentary constituencies
(1) There shall be a Committee of Inquiry, chaired by a High Court judge, comprising members of both Houses of Parliament, including representatives of the principal political parties in the House of Commons, as well as individuals with no party attachment, and others.
(2) The Committee of Inquiry shall—
(a) review the current rules for conducting Parliamentary boundary reviews (contained in Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986) considering in particular—(i) how to address the inequality of constituency sizes;(ii) how to stabilise the size of the House of Commons;(iii) the relative importance of electoral equality against the specific character of individual constituencies, including the rules relating to geographical considerations, local ties and “inconveniences”, and the rules on crossing borough and county boundaries; and(iv) make recommendations;(b) examine in this context the question of the optimum size of a constituency taking into account the need to maintain the Union, the proper role of MPs in their constituencies and in Parliament, and the implications for these roles of the responsibilities of other representative bodies including local authorities and the House of Lords, and make recommendations;(c) consider the implications of an optimum size for the House of Commons, for an optimum size for the House of Lords, and make recommendations; (d) review the time taken to conduct boundary reviews, particularly in England, and make recommendations;(e) review the alignment between the timing of local and parliamentary boundary reviews to ensure that stable local government electoral boundaries can form the basis for each parliamentary review, and make recommendations;(f) examine the question of a role for keeping the operation of the rules under review and ensuring consistency of approach by the four Parliamentary Boundary Commissions, including monitoring their standards of performance, and make recommendations; and(g) examine the arguments surrounding the statistical basis on which electoral areas are currently constructed, in particular whether the eligible population rather than electoral statistics should be used, and make recommendations.(3) The Committee of Inquiry established under subsection (1) shall report to Parliament annually on its progress, and deliver a final report with recommendations to the Secretary of State within three years of the passing of this Act.
(4) Within 6 months of the Committee of Inquiry’s report, the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament, for Parliament’s consideration, a scheme including draft Bills to implement the recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry.”

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, the House will be aware that I moved an identical amendment in Committee. I did not seek to divide the House then but said that I would return to this issue on Report if the Government showed no sign of engaging with the issues raised in that lengthy debate. The Government have not engaged with the issues in any serious way and so, as I said I would, I now return to this amendment. In doing so, my approach is informed not only by my experience as a Minister in the previous Labour Government responsible for these issues but as someone—a member of a tiny minority in this House—who believes in the objectives of both parts of this Bill. I support a move to the alternative vote system not as a compromise or halfway house but as a desirable end in itself. I, of course, support any attempt to make the process of boundary revisions fairer and more efficient. I am certainly not opposed in principle to a reduction in the size of the House of Commons.

In Committee, I set out the case for an independent, impartial inquiry into the important and complex constitutional issues created by Part 2. I will not rehearse the case in detail again but I stress what I stressed then: this amendment does not seek to substitute my judgment for that of the Government in addressing these issues; instead, it sets up a process for an independent, fair and principled judgment to be made, which can then inform the legislation.

Over and again, as the debates on this Bill have progressed, it has become clear that the Government have not thought through the implications of their proposals. The process has been irredeemably flawed. That is all the more worrying as the measures, technical though they may often be, are of great constitutional importance. There has been no public engagement with the issues, no attempt at elucidating any underlying principles for the changes, no consideration of the implications of a referendum held after legislation, apparently no realisation that the proposals threaten community identity and no serious attempt to address the widespread belief, which has only grown as the Bill has progressed, that the Bill has been engineered to secure partisan advantage. Instead, there has been just a breakneck rush to get these half-baked proposals into law.

That, in sum, is the case for a pause—a relatively brief pause—so that an impartial inquiry can establish the principles on which these significant constitutional reforms should proceed. The Government’s response to this proposal has been, to put it at its politest, inadequate. That is why I am bringing back the amendment to the House.

In responding to my original amendment, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said that it asked the Government to,

“wait longer to turn the Bill from a Bill that is workable and achievable into a deeply analysed but almost impossible one that would then have to be taken forward”.

He referred to,

“the dangers of a perfectionist approach”.—[Official Report, 10/1/11; cols. 1221-22.]

I believe that that accurately encapsulates the Government’s resistance to the amendment. I will happily give way to the Leader of the House if he wants to correct me. He remains seated, so I assume from that and the benign expression on his face that I have accurately encapsulated the Government’s position.

I understand this argument. In certain circumstances, it can be a valid one—for example, when there is some immutable deadline or when delay can cause greater damage than action. It is true that management textbooks often have chapters titled along the lines of “The best is the enemy of the good”, but they also tend to have chapters titled along the lines of “Better right than quick”.

The question of when speed should take precedence over deliberation is always a matter of judgment. The case has to be made every time judgment is exercised. That case has not been made here—not even remotely. The only argument for such speed that I can recall the Government making is that the Bill addresses issues that need addressing, that they have not been addressed for too long and that they must therefore be dealt with immediately. This argument does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. It does not follow axiomatically from the fact that a problem needs a solution that the solution has to be immediate. Indeed, if a problem has persisted so long, it could equally be argued that a few months’ delay is neither here nor there, particularly when the case for further impartial deliberation rests on the real improvements that it will bring to the legislation and on the way in which it will help to ensure that the legislation endures.

There are three arguments for the value of such an inquiry that outweigh any putative disadvantage arising from delay. First, it would enable the reforms to proceed on the basis of coherent principle in a way that they manifestly do not in their current form. Secondly, it would enable them to do so following the sustained engagement with the public—whom, let us not forget, our constitutional arrangements serve—which has not been possible under the rushed timetable laid down by the Government. Thirdly, the amendment would help to deal with the corrosive suspicion that the Bill is a partisan measure, motivated not by high constitutional principle but by low self-interest. I am not in a position to make a judgment on whether that is the case, but Ministers must recognise that this suspicion was there from the start and has only grown as the Bill has progressed through both Houses of Parliament.

Let me give the House a brief example of how this might work. A principled decision on the optimum size for the House of Commons would dispel this continuing suspicion that the figure of 600 was chosen because it most advantaged the government parties. The sum of the explanations so far advanced for how this figure was decided is that both government parties were committed at the election to reducing the size of the House of Commons and so decided that the new size would be 600—a nice round number. That is a little like a child asking a parent where they came from and getting the reply, “Well, my darling, Mummy and Daddy met and fell in love, and then nine months later along you came”. It may all be true but it misses out some rather crucial details about what happened in the mean time.

Why did the Conservative Party decide to increase—not decrease or reduce—the size of the House of Commons from the 585 that it pledged in its manifesto? Who suggested it? Why did the Liberals agree to it rather than insisting in the coalition agreement that the number be lower than that? They had a figure of 500. What discussions on the appropriate figure were held within the coalition? How exactly was the figure of 600 arrived at—and so on and on? We do not know the answer to any of these questions because Ministers refuse to tell us. They airily wave away all such questions as if they are not really important. They are important. The difference of 15 seats between the figure that the Conservative Party was pledged to in the election and the figure now in the Bill is the difference between one party being in government and its not being in government. It is that important. The Government must realise that, as long as they fail to produce any coherent explanation of how this figure was arrived at and why they went back on what they promised in the election, the suspicion must remain that this decision was motivated by the pursuit of partisan advantage. That suspicion could easily be dispelled by the work of the inquiry that this amendment would establish to explore the optimum size for the House of Commons.

In tabling Amendment 28A, the Government have belatedly recognised that there might be an issue here that needs to be addressed. I do not wish to pre-empt the discussion that we will no doubt have on that amendment, but it is not a substitute for this amendment. Unlike this one, that committee’s remit would be imprecise and its composition vague. It would remain in the tight grip of the Executive—there would be nothing independent or impartial about it—and it would commence its work after the new system was in place. It is another ill thought-out proposal of the sort that litter this Bill.

What if this committee that the Government propose to set up decides that 600 is not the optimum size for the House of Commons? The amendment makes no commitment to action, only to publishing its finding. Will the Government act on the findings of their own committee, so inflicting further wholesale change on the electoral system, or will they ignore them, in which case the exercise is simply cynical window-dressing? Now that the Government have conceded the case for an inquiry on this issue, which is one of the most important issues in Part 2, they should abandon their amendment and support this one, which, unlike theirs, would set up an inquiry in a fair, impartial and timely way. There should be no other way.

Moreover, the relatively short delay envisaged by this amendment would also help to address deep concerns about another important issue raised by the Bill—the Government’s proposals that the boundary revision should take place on the basis of a register that everybody, including the Government, accepts is deeply flawed because more than 3 million voters who would otherwise be eligible to vote are simply not on it. In doing this, they must recognise that they are creating suspicions that they are motivated by partisan considerations, as it is widely believed that doing the boundary revision on the basis of this flawed register will primarily disadvantage the Labour Party. A short delay would allow the measures that the previous Labour Government brought in to improve the register to take effect and would mean that an election could be held on the basis of boundaries on a new, truly comprehensive and accurate register.

Finally, there is no reason to think that if your Lordships’ House agrees to this amendment the Government will not get their legislation in this Parliament. Under the new fixed-term Parliament proposed by the Government, they will have adequate time to digest the results of the inquiry and get the legislation through before the next election. The only cost of this delay would be that the new constituency boundaries and a new system of voting—if that is what the referendum decides—would be in place not for the next general election but for the election after that. I ask the Minister what really is so wrong about that—is that really too high a price to pay for all the improvements that just a few months’ extra reflection, deliberation and public engagement could bring to this important legislation? Constitutional reforms should be built to last; they should not become subject to constant fiddling and wholesale revision from one Parliament to the next. That corrodes public trust in our democratic system because it suggests to the public that politicians are more interested in rigging the system to serve their own interests than in using it to serve the people who elect them. If these reforms are to endure, as I think they should, it should be immaterial whether they are in place for this election or the next. I ask the Government to reflect on that point.

This amendment would get the Government to the place that they want to be and with all the additional benefits that such further impartial, independent deliberation and public engagement can bring. It would help to sustain public trust in our constitutional arrangements by helping to ensure that this legislation can be viewed as genuinely principled and valuable constitutional reform rather than the product of arbitrary and partisan calculation, as so many people see it at the moment. I beg to move.

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

I confess that I was not proposing to speak to this amendment, but I have just listened to the noble Lord, Lord Wills, who I believe was Minister for Constitutional Affairs in another place, and I have to say to him that, frankly, I have rarely read a paragraph that horrified me as much as the one on his committee of inquiry. It seems to me that he is going down absolutely the wrong route by proposing a committee of inquiry composed of,

“a High Court judge … members of both Houses of Parliament … representatives of the principal political parties in the House of Commons as well as individuals with no party attachment, and others”.

That is a joke. The inquiry would go on for ever and would not reach sensible conclusions. We in this House and the other House are expert in what is required here.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

As the noble Lord, Lord Renton, will know, my noble friend Lord Wills’ provision states that they have to produce a report within three years. So it will not go on for ever.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Falconer for pointing that out. Perhaps I may also say to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that this committee is based on what used to be known as a royal commission. I was told by the powers in this House that I could not refer to it as a royal commission, but the royal commission, as he ought to know, has a very long and distinguished provenance. If he has read my remarks in the earlier debate on this amendment he will have seen that the period of time provided by the amendment is pretty much the average time given to the last 12 royal commissions that have reported.

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

The noble Lord’s amendment provides for three years after the passage of the Act, but it does so on what basis? That is what really surprises me. He has been a Member of the other place as well as a Minister in the other place. I cannot understand why he feels that a committee composed of,

“individuals with no party attachment, and others”,

is likely, even if it reports after three years, to reach a better judgment on what is needed in the two Houses than would be achieved by the Members of this House and the other place. Frankly, I think that he has no knowledge of history. Throughout history Parliament has reformed itself, starting with King John and Magna Carta; moving on, after some centuries, to 1911 when, because of the strength of Lloyd George and the Liberal Party, changes were made which stopped this House considering financial matters; and, more recently, to the 1999 Act, which greatly reduced the number of hereditary Peers. That shows the ability of both Houses to do this work sensibly themselves, and that is vitally important.

If we go down the other road of saying to the public, “Come on, everyone. Let us all have a voice in it”, you will have three years of muddle without any clear knowledge of what we should be doing. It is important that these matters are now taken forward quickly, and that is surely the point of the Bill before us. We may not like bits of it, but it is a serious attempt to move reform forward within the judgment of the two Houses themselves. So I have to say that a committee of inquiry with many people on it who are not in this place would be a fatal thing to do.

--- Later in debate ---

I am sure that I have not given the noble Lord the satisfaction that he would like, but it is the best answer that we can give him. I hope that in withdrawing his amendment he will give us an insight into the thinking of the last Government on these issues.

[Lord Wills]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for that, and I accept his assurance that that is the best answer that we are going to get. He is right about that.

This has been an important debate. It has been limited in contributions, but they have been distinguished by their pithiness. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, I do not feel that I have no sense of history—I think that I have a different sense of history from him. The instances that he gave precisely illustrate the point. All the instances of these great constitutional turning points in our recent history that he evidenced did not come out of nowhere—they were the subject of prolonged and vigorous debate in and outside Parliament. Nobody with the best will in the world can say anything like that in relation to the proposals in this Bill. That is precisely the point and purpose of this amendment: to allow space for a proper consultation to take place.

I was extremely struck by what can come across only as contempt by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and the Leader of the House, about consulting the public on this. We have heard very little about that in all the debates, but it is very important. We had a very good debate about local inquiries just a few minutes ago in this Chamber, but what about the broader issues? These are the electoral arrangements for the people of this country to determine how they elect their Government. It is not our Government—it is their Government.

We have had no consultation. We have had no Green Paper, no White Paper, no pre-legislative scrutiny, none of the more modern forms of engagement with the public that I would like to see, such as deliberative engagement where people come together and discuss these issues, sometimes for days at a time—none of that. I find the contempt for the British public shown by the Benches opposite profoundly depressing and, incidentally, at odds with all the rhetoric from the Prime Minster and the Deputy Prime Minister about a “new politics”. This has been a pithy debate but rather a saddening one with regard to the way that the British public have been treated by the government Benches.

I want to comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Garel-Jones, about remedying the unfairness. I understand how deeply the Conservative Party feels that the system is unfair, of course I do, and he has put it very well. However, he has to understand that there are other issues that come into play, as my noble friend Lord Soley said, and we all have a strong sense ourselves of what is fair. I am afraid that fairness is always a relative point. If we are going to command the respect of the British people that this is an impartial process, it is not, with respect, the noble Lord or I who should be judging what is fair and what is not; it should be an independent and impartial inquiry that is seen to be such. That is the point of this amendment.

Despite all this, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, came up with the same old argument that this measure has to be pushed through for the next general election; it cannot wait for the election after next. The sense of history of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is out the window, according to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I respectfully point out to him that great swathes of British history are not measured by the period from one general election to the next; they are measured by decades and generations. Given that sort of timeframe, why is he so bothered that it has to be the next general election rather than the one after it? He has no answer at all.

I am afraid that because of the poverty of the response that I have had from the government Front Benches—incidentally, before I conclude, I want to say that the noble Lord is right: I kick myself that we were not able to put this committee into place. Perhaps he could just intervene on me; in fact, I would be grateful if he would. If I had succeeded in my aim to set up this commission before the general election and the election had been the same, would he have scrapped it or abided by it? I will give way to him now. Will he tell me?

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is the most hypothetical of all hypothetical questions. If the noble Lord had set it up, we would have co-operated with it fully.

[Lord Wills]

More opacity in this debate, I am afraid. The Minister’s response has been profoundly inadequate—charming, but inadequate. Because these issues are so important and go to the heart of the Bill, I am not going to withdraw the amendment. I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

No, I do not see any real prospect of that happening on any big scale at all and that should be a real concern to all of us. As someone who will be as active as I possibly can be in the no campaign, I am aware of the big disadvantage that the no campaign has, which is that everyone in the country at least knows something about first past the post but next to no one can answer serious questions about the mechanism of this particular form of the alternative vote system. That is why any impartial leaflet trying to tell the public about a system for which there is no evidence they know a great deal about must include the information as to where this is used. If it was not used anywhere in the world, presumably that is a valid factual piece of information to give to the electorate.

I am aware of the time, but I want to spell a point out and get a grievance off my shoulder. One must not bear a grudge, but I am still smarting under the advice that the Electoral Commission gave indirectly to the House, as it went to all Members of the House, when it was commenting on the various amendments as they were going through. The House may not remember Amendment 40B in my name but I do. It was a very simple amendment to allow the results of the referendum to be published constituency by constituency. It was a very simple proposal and I am sorry to say the House rejected it. I am not going to go into the merits of it but I simply want to make this point: in advance of the vote, the Electoral Commission, whose job it is under this legislation to provide information, made a mistake—believe me, the Electoral Commission can make mistakes —in respect of the advice it gave on my amendment.

As I said, my amendment was about publishing the constituency results. The commission said:

“We do not support this amendment … making such a significant change to the rules for the referendum this close to 5 May”.

In other words, it was assuming that the referendum had to be held on 5 May, which is a contentious piece of information to begin with. That is a date chosen by the Government, and the Electoral Commission is not necessarily obliged to give information which helps the Government to achieve this contentious advice as to when the date should be held. More seriously, and perhaps more factually, this piece of information came to the House after the amendment of my noble friend Lord Rooker, giving flexibility as to the date, had been approved by the House. So the referendum, according to the Bill as it then stood, did not have to take place on 5 May; in fact, it could take place any time between 5 May and some time in October, and that is the Bill as it stands.

I do not dispute for a minute the good intentions of the Electoral Commission but it was at the least a contentious piece of advice to Members taking part in that debate. If on a fairly straightforward, simple proposal like that it could be contentious then I would suggest that, for anything that tried to explain how various electoral systems worked and the merits thereof, it would be almost impossible to get a non-contentious document out to the voters.

[Lord Wills]

Now that my noble friend has got this particular grievance off his chest, may I say he is right to raise the central importance of the information given to the public on this crucial vote that they are going to be faced with in a very short space of time? What role does he expect public service broadcasting organisations, notably the BBC, to play in providing the public with this information, bound as they are by considerations of fairness and impartiality and trusted as they are, particularly the BBC, by the great mass of the British public to be fair and impartial? What role does he think they will play? I would also be grateful if he could inform the House what role he thinks they should play.

[Lord Grocott]

I find it easier to answer the second question than the first because, although we all complain about the media from time to time, believability tests are regularly conducted about different forms of media outlets—in other words, what the public trust in terms of the information they receive from the various media outlets. Always near the bottom in believability tests, I fear, are party political broadcasts. Somewhere near the top are always programmes such as “Crimewatch”; people believe what they hear when someone in uniform tells them. That is the scale. The broadcast media always come out better than the print media. My short answer to my noble friend is that broadcasters have an enormous responsibility to provide the information because the public trust the information that they get from broadcasters more than that which they get from newspapers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that is why I hope that the noble Lord will look at the website. If he does, he will find that the Electoral Commission has already made that point in its draft. He will be immensely reassured, as will the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

I will respond to a couple of other issues raised by the amendments in this group. We very much agree with the intention of the noble Lord to ensure that leaflets are written in plain English. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, my noble friend Lord Newton and others can be assured that the Electoral Commission is seeking the advice of language experts and working with the Plain English Campaign to produce its material. Nothing in the Bill prevents this, and the commission is doing it anyway, so I hope that the noble Lord will agree that that part of the amendment is unnecessary.

I am sorry to have dealt with these matters quite fully, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, they are important issues. I hope that I have put the Committee's mind at rest that these matters have been thought about.

[Lord Wills]

Before the noble Lord concludes his remarks, perhaps I might ask him to address the issue that I asked my noble friend Lord Grocott to address, namely the role that public service broadcasting organisations in particular should play in the debate. It is perfectly possible that they will think that this is an arcane and abstruse issue that deserves 10 minutes on “Newsnight”, and that will be that. Does he think that that would be an acceptable discharge of their public service obligations, or would he expect them to play a fuller role in fully, fairly and impartially examining all the issues on both sides of the debate?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am convinced that the broadcasters will see it as part of their remit to involve themselves in these debates. It is up to them to decide how they do so and is not at the direction of the Government, however desirable those of us in government might think that that would be.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I am so sorry if I was unclear. I explained that I thought that that new provision might increase the necessity for assistant commissioners and therefore be incorporated into the Government’s proposals.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of brief points in support of this proposed new clause. I think there is general agreement in the Committee that the engagement of the public in this process is desirable. There has been a great deal of discussion about what format that could take, but that principle is generally accepted by everybody and this proposed new clause goes to the heart of that agreement.

When the previous Government looked at a whole range of methods of engaging the public in policy formation—of which this would be a part—we came to the very clear view that fundamental to all forms of consultation was the need for the public to know what had happened to their contributions to the debate. That was crucial for the credibility of the process and it avoided cynicism creeping in about what had happened. I think that this new clause is entirely consistent with that principle. I understand that it might be thought unnecessary to put such a provision into the Bill, but it might also be thought to be a sound principle that could be relied upon and about which the Boundary Commission could be relied upon to make a judgment. Putting it into the Bill in the way that my noble friend proposes with this new clause would signify the importance of such feedback, and I very much hope that the Minister will look favourably on it. I do not think that it fundamentally compromises the Government’s objectives in the Bill and it could play an important part in building public support for the process.

Finally, I notice that my noble friend has used the generic term “published”. I do not think that any amendment to the clause is needed but, if the Minister is prepared to look at the proposal favourably, as I hope he will, I should be grateful if he could make it clear that all forms of publication should be used. Obviously, the web should be deployed but we should also bear it in mind that, even today and despite the best efforts of the previous Government, large sections of the population are excluded from the web. Therefore, I should be grateful if the Minister could make it clear that he would expect the Boundary Commission to use all forms of publication.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It seems to me that what is proposed in this amendment is the more important if one takes the view, as I do—but contrary, I think, to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Baker—that there will be extensive public interest in, at any rate, certain proposals for boundary changes. In recent days and weeks, the people of Cornwall and the Isle of Wight have given us to understand in no uncertain terms that they have very strong views about how constituencies should be drawn in their parts of the world. Given the radical and wholesale changes that the provisions of the legislation will entail, I think that we should be prepared for considerable strength of feeling and for vigorously expressed representations not just on the part of the political parties but, certainly in controversial cases, on the part of many members of the public. It is, as my noble friend Lord Wills suggested, important that people have feedback and that they should know that their representations have been listened to, gathered up and presented for careful consideration by the boundary commissioners through the activity of assistant commissioners, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey has proposed.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

If the noble Lord is gently trying to say that this is not a problem that has just arisen and that just happens to coincide with the formation of the coalition Government, I am absolutely with him—of course the problem has been with us and with our system for quite some time now, for probably more than 20 years. However, what brings it into stark relief is the fact that if the Bill goes through in its present form, we will build the size of constituencies on the basis of much stricter numbers than we used in the past. Those numbers will be very important indeed; more important than they were under the rules set by previous Governments over the past 40 or 50 years. In the instance where numbers will be even more important, it seems more important to us to get the numbers as correct as we can.

[Lord Wills]

I am just wondering if my noble friend is as surprised as I am that the noble Lord who previously intervened on him seems to be completely unaware of the legislative measures that the previous Government took to tackle this profound problem of underrepresentation. For example, we gave the Electoral Commission significant new powers—data-matching powers and so on—precisely to help it to tackle this problem of underrepresentation and to ensure that by 2015 the register was comprehensive and accurate. I should have hoped that before intervening the noble Lord would have apprised himself of all the measures—not only the measures that I have just mentioned but all the measures—that the previous Government took to tackle this problem.

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to my noble friend. If I were to outline them all, my speech in moving this amendment would take much, much too long. But I rather hope that my noble friend will be able to enlarge on what he said in a few minutes’ time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bach]

Indeed; and undoubtedly the electorate in Northern Ireland decreased appreciably when individual registration was introduced there. These are not issues without difficulty.

[Lord Wills]

I am sorry to keep interrupting my noble friend, but having spent years on this issue, until my brain hurt, I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—who has a proud history of espousing constitutional reform for many years, and I pay tribute to it—is under a real misapprehension about the nature of reform of the registration processes. Of course individual registration is important. That is why, as my noble friend has said, I espoused it. That is why the previous Government brought it forward. However, it is primarily important for the accuracy of the register; it does not help the comprehensive nature of the register. In fact, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has just pointed out, it has the real potential to damage the comprehensive nature of the register. That has, for years and years, been the problem with dealing with individual registration. The previous Government, I am pleased to say, found a way forward, and I will, if the House permits me later, speak at greater length about it. It is true that individual registration is important for the accuracy of the register; it is not true—with all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—that it is important for the comprehensive nature of the register. That is the core of the issue here.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, illustrating the point that I was seeking to make before I was interrupted, perhaps I may refer to a study undertaken by CACI for the Electoral Reform Society late last year. It found:

“After equalisation, the average constituency will contain about 76,000 registered voters. It will have a total voting age population … of about 83,000. But in areas of the country where registration is low, the VAP could be as high as 110,000—a third bigger than the average constituency”.

Typically, as we have heard, the areas of low voter registration tend to be poorer, urban constituencies where the MPs face a bigger and more difficult caseload than their colleagues in more affluent parts of the country. The people who make up much of that caseload often do not appear on the voter registers but they turn up in numbers in constituency surgeries—and they will continue to turn up even after this boundary review has failed to count them. They will be the invisible electorate which will inflate inner urban seats and will grow in size in line with the requirement to meet the official electoral quota, increasing still further the constituency burden that bears on the MPs who represent them.

So the Bill may be aiming at creating more equal-size seats, but it is going to shoot well wide of that mark. Our amendment will provide a small correction. Using the proposed new electoral quota of 75,800 as the starting point, our amendment would prevent the creation of seats within excess of approximately 98,500 adult residents. It will therefore provide a little more parity between constituencies and, in doing so, prevent the complete overload of MPs representing inner urban populations. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I did not say that it was the 2000 census; I said it was the 2000 electoral register. The 2000 electoral register is the relevant basis for assessing the electorate. In the same way, the report that the Boundary Commissions will be expected to produce by October 2013 will be based on the electoral register as at 1 December 2010.

As I have indicated, because population estimates are produced at the local government level, it would be equally or even more of a problem to estimate the true level of the population at lower than that level. Local government geography is obviously a relevant issue for the Boundary Commission, but it might find that even if population estimates were consistently compiled for areas smaller than the local authority level, the data may not be sufficient to allow it to draw up a constituency boundary that meets the two size requirements as set out in the noble Lord’s amendment. For example, the commission might have to depart from using wards as a building block to reduce the population of a constituency that was slightly over the 130 per cent limit. Furthermore, the amendments are silent on what would happen if the commission found itself unable to comply with both of these rules in an area. The amendments would make the commission’s task vastly more complex and unachievable.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I hope to be able to make a contribution to this debate at greater length later. Will he clarify something? It is probably my fault, but I am baffled by it. He keeps referring to the inequity—I am paraphrasing—of voters being subject to a year 2000 set of statistics. Could he explain what he means by that? What I think I understand by it, but I may be completely wrong, is that it is wrong that registered voters should somehow be included in constituencies that are not equalised. Obviously the Bill’s purpose is to equalise constituencies, for all the reasons which the Government have set out. Is that what he is driving at when he refers to this figure of 2000? If it is not, I would be grateful if he could explain exactly why he thinks this is so unfair.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am grateful for the opportunity to explain. I was surprised that when the noble Lord, Lord Bach, sat down the noble Lord, Lord Wills, did not stand up, hence why I intervened at this point. He will, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said. The point that I have tried to make is that the electoral quota, which is one of the key building blocks of the constituency boundaries, is determined by reference to a relevant date.

In terms of this Bill and the four Boundary Commission reviews for 1 October 2013, the relevant date for the electoral register is 1 December 2010—last month. The point I am trying to make with reference to England is that the relevant date for determining the boundaries is the year 2000. The general election in May last year was fought on boundaries on which, if we do not have a further boundary review before 2015, the general election of 2015 will be fought. The data go back to the year 2000. Therefore we will have constituency boundaries that are based very much on outdated data. The point I am trying to make is twofold. First, that in no way serves those who are not included in the register but are eligible. Secondly, under our proposals and what we intend to do to improve voter registration, voters will be on the register for December 2015, which will be the relevant date for the report to be produced in October 2018 for the general election of 2020.

There are two uses of the electoral register. There is the use of the relevant date, to which the Boundary Commission must have regard in determining the size of constituencies and constituency boundaries; and there is the continuing importance of the electoral register to determine who is eligible to vote at a particular election. That is a very important issue, and work continues to try and ensure that those who are eligible are on that register.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I wonder if I might contribute briefly to this debate. I add that I am not on any roster or rota; I will be very brief and address the amendments. There will not be time, I am afraid, for the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, to get out and order his tea at all.

In order to have equal-sized seats, which I hope are what we are all aiming for, it is essential that there is an accurate and comprehensive register. It was brought home to me on the day of the last general election just how defective our present register is. I heard someone a moment ago say that it was pretty good, as a result of people wanting to vote. However, I sat for four hours on polling day outside a polling station in Lambeth and I found—I have done my best to be as accurate as I can—that something of the order of a third of the people who came up wanting to vote, when they came out and were asked if they would indicate how they voted, told me that they were not on the list. They were almost invariably from ethnic minorities and many of them were young. If that is the register that we are going to be working on, it is not good enough.

It seems to me that if the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has put before the House are defective, this cannot simply be ignored. I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is anxious to make this Bill as good as possible and anxious to get it through at the speed of light, but these problems must not be in-built into the fresh legislation. If anything calls out for a pause and a chance to try to find a way of getting this right, and if that means using data from outside what are currently used, surely that must be the way to achieve our main aim of equal-sized seats.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I start by associating myself with the comments made by my noble friend Lord Browne about the generosity of the Minister in taking interventions. He really was very indulgent and I am grateful. He really helped the Committee in his constructive and positive response to all the interventions that he was good enough to take, so I express my thanks to him for doing that.

As I understood it, the burden of the Minister’s justification for resisting this amendment—I hope that he will correct me and I am happy to give way to him if he wants to do that—was that it was wrong somehow that the boundary revisions should be taking place on the basis of out-of-date data. Perhaps he will just nod if I have correctly summarised his resistance to the amendment. I will just repeat that so that he can nod his assent. The basis of his resistance to the amendment was, essentially, that it was wrong for this boundary revision to take place on the basis of out-of-date data. Is that broadly it?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I think that it was a little more complex than that. It was the fact that the population estimates—indeed, the first thing is that they are estimates—are annually updated compared to the electoral register, which is an actual number. Certainly, the indication that the Boundary Commission for Scotland’s secretary gave to the relevant Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place was that it saw significant practical difficulties in doing that.

[Lord Wills]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for that elucidation, but will he consider this: is not an even greater problem this continuing shame that 3 million to 3.5 million of our citizens, who are eligible to vote, are for one reason and another excluded from the register? That seems to me to go to the heart of the problem which this amendment is designed to address. The real issue, it seems to me at least, is one of timing. If the Minister was able to tell the Committee—

[Viscount Eccles]

Why does the noble Lord use the word, “excluded”?

[Lord Wills]

Quite simply because they are not on the register. There is a lot of suspicion that some local authorities do not invest the money given to them by central government in paying enough attention to ensuring that everyone who is eligible to be on the register is on the register. Many local authorities do an admirable job and spend more than is given to them by central government for these purposes. If the noble Viscount is trying to suggest that I am somehow insinuating that there is a positive process here, rather than people just excluding themselves, as it were, he is partly right. There is no doubt, from some of the evidence I have seen, that some local authorities are far less diligent than they should be in including people on the register.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend refers to the 3.5 million who are excluded. It is not that they will not be allowed to vote in the next election; they may well be if they seek to register. The issue must be that the 3.5 million excluded are therefore not being taken into account when the boundaries are being set for the new constituencies. That is the key argument that we are not getting over in the Chamber—the exclusion of those people from the calculation on boundaries is distorting this whole piece of legislation.

[Lord Wills]

My noble friend is absolutely right: this is precisely the point I made on Second Reading. This is the key point. If this were somehow an intractable problem, and we were stuck for ever with large numbers, millions of people eligible to vote who somehow, for whatever reason, could never be included in the register and therefore, for a practical purpose, we just had to get on and deal with all the other issues that the Minister has alluded to, I would agree with him. I agree with him that a lot of what he has said is desirable, but he has failed to grapple with this essential point. If, as I say, this were somehow an intractable, insoluble problem, I would be much more sympathetic to the approach that he has taken, but it is not.

[Lord Sewel]

Building upon what my noble friend has been saying, does he accept that as a measure of those entitled to vote, an electoral register of any date is likely to be more inaccurate than an estimate derived from the wide number of data sets which could be available to the Electoral Commission?

[Lord Wills]

Of course, I agree with my noble friend—he is absolutely right. This goes to the point about the folly of the Government rushing this through. I will come in a moment to the point about the 2011 census, which is crucial, as my noble friend Lord Howarth has already mentioned. The point is that measures are in place to make the register comprehensive and accurate. I hope that I can help the Committee to have a little more understanding; those who followed the debates about individual registration in the other place will be familiar with the argument and I crave their indulgence.

The previous Government—I was the Minister responsible—faced a real, intractable problem. Everyone agreed, I think, that individual voter registration was desirable. There was very little doubt about it. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, mentioned pronouncements of the Electoral Commission many years ago and I think most people recognised that individual registration was desirable.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Not all of us.

[Lord Wills]

I will come to the doubts that people had, and those of my colleagues who are shaking their heads may feel more comfortable when I have made further remarks about this.

Individual registration was desirable as an objective in its own right. It helped to guarantee the integrity and accuracy of the register and, in a modern democracy, it is right and proper that individual citizens should register their right to vote, rather than the head of the household doing it in some 19th century, Victorian way. However, the problem was that it was widely recognised—and the Northern Ireland experience, which was arguable in several ways, substantiated this—that any move to individual registration was likely to exacerbate the problem of the comprehensive nature of the register.

In other words, more people were likely to fall off the register, for all sorts of reasons, not least that there are a large numbers of adults, regrettably, who are still functionally illiterate. Any move to individual registration, desirable as it was in its own terms, carried with it a very real and severe risk that even more than the 3 to 3.5 million people already disfranchised, despite their eligibility to be on the register, would be disfranchised. That was unacceptable, so for many years there was a stand-off between those who felt that the integrity of the register was more desirable, and that we should therefore move immediately towards individual voter registration, and those who said that we should not do that at the cost of disfranchising eligible citizens. This was a real problem.

The previous Government came to grips with this by bringing in a measure to implement individual registration; not immediately, not rushing it through as this Government are doing with this registration; but in a measured way. We made it explicitly subject to the achievement of a comprehensive and accurate register by 2015. We did not do that lightly; we gave the Electoral Commission the power to oversee the process, to report annually on its progress in achieving the objective and we gave it substantial new powers, data-matching powers, at a time of great anxiety about the Big Brother state and all the rest of it.

These measures went through with all-party consent in the House of Commons—the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives all agreed. I hope that the Minister is listening to this, because this is important. We went through this process with all the Front-Bench spokesmen and spokeswomen in the House of Commons and explained to them why their initial reservations about the timescale were misplaced. We had lengthy discussions and consultations, all of which, I am afraid, have been absent in the progress of the Bill. We persuaded them, genuinely persuaded them, that it was simply not possible to achieve a comprehensive and accurate register any more quickly than on that timescale and they agreed to it.

Any noble Lord who wants to read the Hansard record of these debates will see that they signed up to this timetable. They all recognised it. The Liberal Democrat spokeswoman and the shadow Justice Secretary for the Conservative Party agreed to the timescale because, when they familiarised themselves with all the details, all the difficulties of making the register comprehensive as well as accurate, they recognised that this could not be rushed through; it did need that timescale. To do those politicians credit, they changed their minds about this. They had thought we should just rush in individual registration and that the register could look after itself, but when it was explained to them what the consequence of this could be, they changed their minds. I pay tribute to them. This was a consensual process, a process of consultation; we reached agreement on it and, in doing so, incidentally, the Government changed their mind on certain details as well. It was a genuinely consultative process, which, from my perspective, is a model for how constitutional reform should be conducted.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The objective was laudable and it was supported by many Members. However, when discussions about resources took place, was there not a reservation in the mind of my noble friend that, if a Government were ever elected who would starve local authorities of resources, the whole programme of individual registration would collapse, particularly when, in the register which will apply in 2018, we find that the boundaries set in 2018 will be based on individual registration? Is it not a sting in the tail that we introduced a measure, with the best will in the world, but now that the resources will not be there to ensure that it is properly introduced, the measure will damage boundaries in the future?

[Lord Wills]

My noble friend is completely right: I was full of reservations and trepidation about the future. One does not embark on this sort of wholesale radical change without a lot of consideration and worry about whether one had made the right judgments about this. I was very worried and I remain worried about some local authorities. A lot of local authorities are exemplary democrats in this respect. They spend a lot of money and resources on ensuring that registration is comprehensive and accurate. It does not matter what their political complexion is—there are Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat local authorities which are exemplary in this respect—but I came across enough evidence to show that many local authorities do not take these issues sufficiently seriously. A lot of colleagues from the other place told me of examples where they thought that local authorities were wilfully not putting effort into registration, for party political advantage.

I make no secret of this now: I wanted to ring-fence the money that central government gave to local authorities for this. I thought it was so important to our democracy that local authorities should have no option. I was stopped by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which was hysterically paranoid about anything that might smack of central government directing local authorities. Such is the power of the universal panacea of localism. I am in favour of localism, let me say, but there has to be a balance. I wanted to get this money ring-fenced and I was stopped.

I hope that the Government will look again at this matter. I see that the Local Government Secretary is, in many ways, admirably robust in trashing local authorities. This is one area where he could show his iron fist and ensure that every local authority invests the money that it is given by central government in making sure that we have a functioning and healthy democracy.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

It has never come out publicly before, but my noble friend was blocked. I knew that, and I knew the Ministers responsible for doing it. When he was blocked, though, did that not give him cause for concern about what he was introducing? Maybe we should not have proceeded with this process, which we are now being punished for. We introduced it for the most honourable of reasons, and now we are punished by the lack of resources available to local authorities.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Before the noble Lord answers—

[Lord Wills]

Let me respond to one intervention, and then I assure the noble Lord I will happily give way to him.

I beat myself up about all sorts of things that I did when I was in the other place; I assure my noble friend that I am not complacent about anything. Of course it gave me pause. I was anxious and concerned. I returned to the fray on many occasions over several years, believe me, but I failed. Yes, I was worried, but I do not think that we are being punished for doing the right thing.

I still think that bringing in individual registration was the right thing to do. It was right to yoke it together with moves towards making the register comprehensive and accurate and making one dependent on the other, I am sure about that. I am sure that we would not have had the measures that are now in place to make the register comprehensive and accurate if we had not yoked it together with individual registration. I am afraid that if my noble friend thinks that if we had done nothing, the party opposite would not have rushed forward even more precipitately and inconsiderately with moves to bring in individual registration without any attempt to link it with the achievement of a comprehensive and accurate register, I think that for once he is deluded. I happily give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, we are terribly interested in the noble Lord’s ministerial career in the House of Commons, but it has nothing at all to do with the amendment that we are discussing. It is a positive abuse. Further, the noble Lord has been speaking for 15 minutes, and the Companion says that,

“speakers are expected to keep within 15 minutes”,

unless they are making,

“a speech of outstanding importance”,

which the noble Lord most certainly is not.

[Lord Wills]

I am very sorry that the noble Lord should make such a personal and slightly vindictive comment. I am trying to help the House understand these matters. These are subjects that, as my noble friend rightly said, have not been made public before. The experience of any Minister in a Government is relevant to the passing of legislation, and this legislation is important. I am sorry that the noble Lord thinks that it is irrelevant that 3.5 million people are not registered but I think that it is profoundly important, and it is very important to this amendment.

I was actually concluding my remarks. I have given way to everyone, following the Minister’s generous example. I will give way again, subject no doubt to further spiteful comments from the noble Lord opposite.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It would be helpful and interesting for the House if my noble friend could make a few remarks about the census.

[Lord Wills]

That is how I was going to come to the conclusion of my remarks. I was responding to an intervention about that, and I was not talking about my ministerial career; this is about the process of legislation, which is directly relevant to this clause. All parties in the House of Commons agreed, parties that have now changed their minds about it, including the party of the noble Lord opposite. His spokesman in the House of Commons agreed with what we proposed, which has now been jettisoned. When I have sat down, I would like to hear him explain exactly why his party has changed its mind about the importance of people being on the register. That is relevant to this debate.

The reason why we were able to persuade the spokespersons from both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties about the importance of a timescale—in other words, to 2015, not the new precipitate timescale—was, above all else, the importance of the 2011 census data. Only when those are available can we be sure that we have a comprehensive and accurate register. This was not a political decision; we were assured by officials, and I am sure that the Minister is getting exactly the same advice, that the full benefit of those data will not be available until 2014. So we come back to the central point about the timescale.

I understand all the arguments that the Minister has made in resisting the amendment. They are important, they are not negligible and I do not resist them all. There is a greater argument, though, about the central importance of having a comprehensive and accurate register, and, at the earliest, that cannot be available before 2015. I am not necessarily opposed to what the Minister is proposing overall in the legislation, only to the process and unforgivable rush. If he sticks to this timetable, he is putting forward profoundly flawed legislation, and I urge him once more to think again.

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, as one-time Minister responsible for electoral registration in Northern Ireland, I have been interested by the references to the introduction of individual registration in Northern Ireland. As several speakers have said, several conclusions could be reached about what the result of that individual registration was. However, it certainly was not, and I strongly refute the suggestion, that it was because elderly people there did not know what they were doing—the word “illiterate” was used. I remind the House that the standard of education in Northern Ireland, and indeed in Scotland, is generally higher than in England.

On a serious point, the average size of the family in Northern Ireland is considerably larger than a family in England. When the head of a household filled in the registration form, he would very often put down all the members of the family whether they were living in Northern Ireland, England, New York or wherever. That was brought to an end when the requirement for individual registration was introduced and people outside Northern Ireland were no longer registered, only those who were actually living there. That is one of the reasons why the electoral register fell in numbers.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai]

My Lords, I always get excited when I see a mathematical formula in a Bill. The formula of U over 598 appears in the Bill. The idea, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said, is to have an arrangement whereby each vote counts equally towards electing an MP. That is a very worthy aim, with which I have no quarrel. It is like a programming problem, whereby you minimise the distance between the sizes of different constituencies, subject to various considerations. That is a perfectly good aim.

Where I fail to understand the Government’s approach is why they are adding another completely artificial constraint by at the same time reducing the total number of seats by 50. You can achieve equalisation of votes and seats and achieve the aim of having each vote count equally with 650 seats. It would be absolutely no problem. It might even make it easier for the Government to achieve their aim if they did that. We already know that they have a problem in having to set aside two seats. There may be many more seats, as noble Lords have said, and other peculiar constituencies that would rather not be broken up or merged. There are lots of constraints that the Government are trying to ignore. If they had 650 seats, they would be able to achieve their aim of reducing the anomaly between the size of the seats and the number of votes required for a candidate to be elected and to solve the problem of all the other constraints, such as the peculiarity of certain constituencies.

When most other countries redraw boundaries or do redistricting, as it is called in America, to make adjustments for population changes, as happened recently in India and as happens periodically in the United States, they do not change the total number of seats. They change only the drawing of boundaries between constituencies. With a system whereby you are trying to do several things at the same time, you end up with a very inadequate solution to the problem.

The Government may have a perfectly good, non-political reason for reducing the number of seats to 600, but that has not been stated. One problem that we are facing is in knowing whether the Government’s main aim is to reduce the number of MPs, in which case why make the figure 600? Why not 550 or 500—why not half the House of Commons? We do not know. Are the Government trying to increase the load for MPs, which will clearly be a result of this measure? That surely cannot be the aim.

Are the Government trying to do their best to achieve justice whereby each vote has the same value? Yes. Since every other country that has tried to solve the problem has solved it without reducing the total number of seats, I fail to understand why the Government have added that additional constraint. We could go back to the Boundary Commission solution and adopt it and not put a constraint of 600 seats but try as best as possible to equalise the size of seats and electorates. Then we could see what the number would be. We could see whether we could reduce it slightly within certain limits. That may be possible. Right now we are trying to do something that is very worthy, but the way in which it is being done—hedged in by other constraints—will prove counterproductive.

Here in this Committee stage we are having a discussion of the various conflicting objectives that the Government are trying to achieve in a very narrow and constricted framework. If the framework had not been so narrow and constricted, the solution would have been much easier.

[Lord Wills]

I support the amendment, in the sense that I understand it to be a probing amendment about the Government’s decision to reduce the size of the House of Commons to 600 Members. I do not have a problem about reducing the size of the House of Commons, but I have a problem when it is not done on the basis of principle and when the process by which the new figure is arrived at has been opaque. That is precisely what we have seen here. In this context, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Maples, on a thoughtful and analytical attempt to pursue precisely that sort of argument on the basis of principle. I do not agree with everything that he said but, for the first time that I can recall from the government Benches, we had an analytical approach based on principles, which the noble Lord set out very persuasively in many cases. What I want to know from the Government—and I shall come to this in a moment—is why we have not heard that sort of quality of speech from them on this issue.

I hope that I am not misrepresenting Ministers when I say that, in previous discussions on this issue, they have rather airily waved aside the question of the size of the House of Commons, as if it was a piffling matter. It needed to be reduced and whether it was reduced by a bit or a bit more did not matter very much. But it really does matter, because the size of the House of Commons shapes the size of each constituency, even more so when we are looking to equalise the size of these constituencies, as this Bill seeks to do, and with certain qualifications. Most Members of both Houses of Parliament would support that aim. The size of the constituency crucially determines the nature of the relationship between the Member of Parliament and their constituents. That lies at the very heart of our democratic arrangements. I have touched on this issue in previous debates and Ministers have more or less ignored what I have said, so I hope that they will forgive me if I spell it out in just a little bit more detail now in the hope that they will now engage with this issue, even if they do not particularly agree with the view that I take on it.

When I was the Member of Parliament for Swindon North, I used to deal with about 200 to 300 e-mails and letters every week. I was helped by outstanding staff, but I had to deal with those letters and e-mails, as they were on issues of such importance to my constituents that they were not delegated to staff. I was helped, but I dealt with each of them. Most of those letters—around three-quarters, on one estimate that I took about three years ago—came about because of the problems that my constituents had with Swindon Borough Council. Most of the rest were on problems that constituents had with various agencies of central government. Most MPs, including former Members of the other place in this House, will probably have had similar, if not identical, experiences. That casework is detailed and complex, which is why, in the end, I felt that I had to take responsibility and be directly engaged with it.

It follows logically from that that if any constituency were to be increased significantly in size it would be that much more difficult for any conscientious MP to deal with that casework in exactly the same way. It would be equally hard if further decentralisation of power to local authorities increased the workload of MPs trying to sort out constituents’ problems with local authorities, such as Swindon Borough Council. Those facts may argue for even smaller constituencies and therefore more of them. On the other hand, it could be argued that, should decentralisation result in more powerful, effective and competent local authorities—and, indeed, local councillors—it would lighten the casework of Members of Parliament, leaving MPs freer to concentrate on work at Westminster. That might argue for fewer constituencies; I think that the noble Lord, Lord Maples, was arguing for that. These are important issues and he made the case for having a significant reduction in the number of constituencies perfectly well. I do not altogether agree with him, as the work that MPs do for their constituencies is profoundly important in a healthy democracy, but he made a cogent case.

The crucial point is that we have had no realistic, sensible discussion about how far the ability of an MP to manage their casework effectively and personally matters. This is an important issue for debate. We may come to different conclusions, but proper public debate on this is surely important. Even the Government could not deny it, yet they have denied the public and both Houses of Parliament any proper opportunity to debate it. Moreover, as I have said, there is no question but that the increasingly plural levels of government, with a complex and constantly evolving mix of local authorities, devolved Administrations and national and European institutions, are reshaping the nature of the MP’s relationship with their constituents. That must have significant implications for the appropriate size of the constituency and so for the size of the House of Commons.

I discussed all those issues in the amendment that I put forward last week. I hope that the House will forgive me, but earlier in today’s debate a noble Baroness from the Cross Benches—I am afraid that I did not catch who she was—made some comments about that amendment. I fear that she was in danger of misrepresenting my position, so I hope that I will be forgiven if I put on record what my exact position was. She concluded her remarks by asking why we had had that lengthy debate on my amendment, which was then not put to the vote. That was my decision as a Back-Bencher. She then said that Cross-Benchers could be forgiven for wondering what was going on. I will catch up with Hansard tomorrow and perhaps write to that Cross-Bencher as well about this, but perhaps I might inform the Committee what was going on.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend will know that I was one of those who were pressing him to have a vote. I have indeed changed my mind because he was, quite rightly, arguing privately that there was a need for the House to have the time to gestate and understand the implications of that amendment. Another reason for changing my mind was that there were a lot of Cross-Benchers in the House—more during that debate than on any other issue that we have discussed on the whole Bill. Some of us realised that it was important that we gathered their support over the following days, this being one of them. I am sorry that my noble friend was criticised as he was.

[Lord Wills]

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend. All that I ask the Government to reflect on in approaching this is that these issues are profoundly important. They are difficult and complex and there will, inevitably, be valid points of view on all sides on all these issues. If they will not listen to me, I hope that they will take an example from the admirable speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maples. That was the sort of debate of which we could have had far more thus far from the other Benches. In whatever time is left for us to debate the Bill, I hope that we will see more contributions such as the noble Lord’s from his colleagues on those Benches.

Any responsible legislative process would have set out these and all the other relevant issues and then consulted on them and come to a decision on the optimum size of a constituency and so of the House of Commons. Allowing the British people themselves to have a say in this would have been desirable, but the Government have not done that. Instead, they have determined a figure, for which they have failed so far to produce any good reason, and then shaped everything else around it. This is not just a wasted opportunity but a lazy and irresponsible way in which to approach legislation of such importance. It is also damaging to our democratic process—all the more so, I have to say in passing, because of the way in which the Government seem intent on getting this legislation nodded through this Chamber.

Why have the Government failed to produce any coherent explanation for how they arrived at this figure of 600? It is curious, as other noble Lords have pointed out, that before the election both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats had decided on a figure lower than 600 and had arguments for doing so, which we have heard today from the noble Lord, Lord Maples. So why did they change their minds? There is a coherent case for keeping to the pledges that they made to the electorate before the election. That coherent case was made by the noble Lord, Lord Maples, today. Why did they not stick to it? They will not say.

In an attempt to elucidate this information, I put in a freedom of information request, as I have already told the House. The last time I mentioned this in the House, I mentioned that I had not yet had a response, but such is the power and influence of this House that the next day I got a response, for which I am delighted. The response that I received from the Cabinet Office, dated 11 January, confirmed that the modelling that I was looking for on the impact of a reduction to 600 and to lower figures exists but that some of that information is being withheld under Section 35(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act. I think that the Government have ignored the existence of Section 35(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, which would remove their justification for exempting the information that I requested, so I have put in a request for an internal review of the Cabinet Office’s decision and I look forward with great interest to seeing the results of that review.

Leaving aside the legislative niceties of this, I believe that the public should know how and why the Government went back on the promises that they made to the electorate at the election and decided to increase the size of their reconstituted House of Commons to 600. The public want to know how the Government think this will affect their relationship as voters with their MPs. I think—and I say this in kindness to Ministers—that the public want to be reassured that, in reaching that figure of 600, the Government were not motivated in any way by the pursuit of partisan advantage. They will want to be reassured about that. The Government must realise that, as long as they fail to come up with any coherent argument for why that figure of 600 was arrived at, the suspicion must remain. They cannot avoid this. I know that it is unwelcome.

I see Ministers sitting on the Benches opposite and I know that they are without exception decent and honourable men and women. It is with some trepidation that I keep coming back to this point, but they must realise the cynicism that exists about all politicians at the moment. They must realise that the suspicion that they are motivated by nothing but partisan self-interest exists and they should be doing everything that they possibly can to dispel it, so I hope that when the Minister concludes the debate on this amendment he can provide some reassurance about that.

On Thursday last week, I wrote to the noble and learned Lord’s colleague, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, asking whether he could release the information that I had requested. When you put in a freedom of information request, it refers only to work that has been done within the Executive by government, not to work that clearly feeds into the process of formulating legislation that is done by special advisers and Conservative and Liberal Democrat party officials. I have therefore also asked the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in the interests of openness and transparency and of reassuring the public about the Government’s motivation in alighting on this figure, whether he can confirm—it may be that the Minister can confirm this in his remarks at the end of this debate—whether any modelling has been done on the differential impacts of different sizes of the House of Commons on the party composition of the House of Commons, either within government or by the Liberal party, the Conservative Party or special advisers. He can confirm or deny it. I very much hope that he will take this opportunity to start clearing up this issue once and for all. It is an important issue and we need to move forward from it. We can do so only if he can provide us with the reassurance for which I am asking.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I join my noble friend in trying to answer the question he raised about why the numbers have changed from the electoral commitments made by the two parties opposite to the grand round figure of 600. Perhaps the answer may be found in part in the adage of US politics that an election platform is something to run on, not to stand on. I join my noble friend in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Maples. If we are to have a debate, here is someone who has, as always, in a radical and rather wonderfully iconoclastic way made his own contribution to the debate. I hope that there will be a contagion and that Members alongside him will adopt what he said and at least join in the debate, not just on this magic number of 600 but on the way in which this Bill has been handled. I had the privilege of serving with the noble Lord, Lord Maples, for eight years, I think, on the Foreign Affairs Committee in another place, and I can say with deep sincerity that I valued very much the independent, non-partisan contributions that he made. I think that for at least part of the time he was vice-chairman of his party, but he is very ready to join independently in debate. I disagree with one or two points that he made about the numbers, but at least it was an honest contribution.

When I approached the House this morning, I was reflecting on what I might say, having packed my toothbrush. I picked up, as I normally do, the Daily Telegraph, and came across page 23, which reminded me that today has been called “suicide Monday”. The headline is:

“How to get through Blue Monday”—

that is today—

“Lovebomb your partner, take up salsa or sing to the skies—these are just a few of the expert tips for beating the blues”.

Nothing was said about how to face a long, dark night and still be sufficiently alert to make what one hopes will be a coherent contribution.

I am certainly not wedded to any particular number—600, 650—but the onus, as always, is on those who wish to make a change to make the case not only for reducing the number below 650 but for why this magic number of 600 has been selected. It is not good enough to say, as I think the Leader of the House did, that it is a nice round number. No doubt there will be some advantages, but there will also be many disadvantages, and there is no way in which there has been a testing of the arguments for and against by any independent experts. There is an unseemly haste about the way in which the Government have moved.

I think a number of noble Lords will remember with affection Lord Weatherill, who was a very distinguished Speaker and the Convener of the Cross-Bench Peers. I see another distinguished Speaker close by. Lord Weatherill began in the family business with an apprenticeship as a tailor. He told me that on the first day he was there, he was apprenticed to an old Jewish tailor who was asked to make a suit from the cloth very speedily. The old, tried tailor said to his boss: “Do you want it quick or do you want it good?”. There is a certain lesson for us in legislation. Do we want it quick or do we want it good, particularly when there is no objective reason for speeding along on this? This is not a national emergency or something relating to an external threat or internal terrorism; this is something that the Government have chosen according to their own timetable in a fairly authoritarian way.

I go back long enough in politics to remember, again with affection, Lord Hailsham. I sat behind him on occasion when he was a very robust and amusing Queen’s Counsel. I also watched him in action in the House. At a certain stage, he defined a term—I think it was called elective dictatorship or the dictatorship of the majority. He was, as always, extraordinarily eloquent about elective dictatorship and carried us along quite far. However—surprise, surprise—when he and his party got into government, he forgot all about elective dictatorship. He was there for at least part of the time of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when she abolished the old GLC because she did not like it, and when she took away many local government powers. Gone was the eloquence about elective dictatorship. He had a remarkable, almost Damascene, conversion. I hope I can spirit back Lord Hailsham, who I admit was a great parliamentarian and for whom I had great affection.

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[Lord Baker of Dorking]

I am coming to more interesting points. I have only just started on my reminiscences of my time as a Member of Parliament. Let me move on to the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, who said that we in the United Kingdom are not overrepresented. May I remind the House of the extent of overrepresentation in our lower Houses? We have a population of about 60 million people and 650 or so Members of Parliament. Germany, with a population of 82 million has 600. Japan, with a population of 127 million, twice ours, has only 470. Russia, with a population of 144 million, roughly three times ours, has 450. Can those who are familiar with all the parliamentary activities in these countries say that constituents are any less well served because they have large constituencies? I do not believe that the argument holds up at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, “Ah, but they have länder in Germany.” He should recall that in three parts of our country we have virtually independent Parliaments. We have, in Scotland, an independent Parliament. In Wales, the Welsh Assembly is a Parliament in all but name and the situation is virtually the same in Northern Ireland, where, in fact, all local matters are dealt with by the representative Members of those Assemblies, in a very similar way to that in the länder. So, international arguments are significant. Therefore, I believe strongly that this is a good measure. I have never put it forward from the view of saving money; I simply believe that the House of Commons can operate very effectively with a smaller number of MPs. I will give way to the noble Lord, because I heard his speech earlier on the computer.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the honourable gentleman—I am sorry, the noble Lord. I do beg his pardon. He was kind enough to refer to my speech, so, before he sits down, as I sense he is about to do, will he answer this question? He has made his case for it being wholly possible to reduce the size of the House of Commons without any adverse consequence for constituents—I accept that there is a strong case for that—but in deciding on the number to which the House of Commons should be reduced, does he think, first, that the new figure should be based on some broad principle, some broad understanding of the role of Member of Parliament? Secondly, does he think that the public should be consulted on what the size should be?

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

On the first question, if you look at the history of the development of the House of Commons, it has never been based on broad principles. I remind the noble Lord that in 1707 there were 513 Members of Parliament for England and Wales and that, as a result of the Act of Union, 45 were added—a figure plucked out of the air with a huge overrepresentation for Scotland in relation to its population in 1707. No principle, just practice. With Pitt’s Act of Union—disastrous, in my view, but I shall not debate that—which abolished Grattan’s Parliament in 1800, 100 Members were added; a huge overrepresentation for the population of Ireland at that time. That overrepresentation was never effectively reduced. In 1922, Northern Ireland received 12 Members, but they did not take away the 88 extra, but only 55.

So there is no principle; it is a matter of pragmatic sense. I agree entirely with what the former Speaker of the House of Commons said. It is a matter for decision, a political decision at the end of the day. My decision is for a smaller House. I respect the views of Members opposite, but I do not think that we would, in any way, impair the workings of democracy in our country by having a smaller House of Commons.

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[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I was going to end this very brief speech by saying that I thought that it was now time, as we entered our fourth hour of debate, for the Minister to respond. If the House will bear with me for less than the five minutes that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, would allow me, perhaps I could make a comment as someone for whom the other place probably means the General Synod of the Church of England rather than the House of Commons.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, who is not in his place, that the absence of pre-legislative scrutiny and the speed with which the Bill is being put forward, with 5 May as a date to work towards, cast an unfortunate shadow over the whole discussion. However, the thought that, if there had been that scrutiny, all parties would reach agreement on such a contentious issue seems exceedingly fanciful. At the end of the day, a judgment has to be made. The fact that the Prime Minister made it quite clear that this would be among his proposals seems to undermine the criticism that it is profoundly undemocratic.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, is not in his place, because his speech was important, indicating that there is a tendency in our society towards mission creep in all sorts of areas, not least in the role played by Members of Parliament. Something that has not been mentioned in the debate so far but which is very important is the development of the internet. If we go back over a long period, as we have done in our debates, we see that the relationship between constituents and their Members of Parliament was totally different before modern communications developed. Any reflection on the ideal size of a constituency must take into account a completely new arrangement. It means in some ways that individual representation of an area is not so important, as an MP can communicate with people very much faster and multiply those communications to a large number of people.

[Lord Wills]

Does the right reverend Prelate recall that the Prime Minister’s commitment during the election was not to a figure of 600 but to a lower figure? That is the source of so much unease, certainly on this side of the House.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

I think that it was to a 10 per cent reduction. I suppose that I am used to nice round figures from the Bible, but that is another matter altogether. If it was a radically different figure, the noble Lord’s point would have greater power.

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In other words, the Boundary Commission should be able to report by October 2013 to allow candidates and local parties to reorganise and select candidates for an election in May 2015. Those are all very practical, proportionate reasons and this has all been approached in a very reasonable way. I hope that I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that the number was not changed because of some modelling that the Government did to try to improve the benefit. Indeed, a number of noble Lords in previous debates have indicated that, on their figures, the Bill would not actually benefit any of the parties particularly well. I hope that that puts into some kind of context the suspicions that have been voiced in this debate.

[Lord Wills]

The noble and learned Lord is right that the Answer goes some partial way towards reassuring me, but I am afraid that it does not go all the way because he has not actually answered all the questions that I asked him. I also asked him about modelling that might have been done by the Conservative Party or within the Liberal Democrat Party. Can he confirm or deny that point? Equally, if he wants to have a look at the issue—I will accept his own reassurance on this, just as I accept the reassurance given by his colleague the noble Lord, Lord McNally—and make inquiries of those political parties and then come back to me, I would be perfectly happy with that. Can he address those particular questions now please?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I seem to recall that I started to get into this territory last week on the same circumstances. I was quickly told by a noble Lord opposite that I speak here for the Government rather than for an individual political party. I am unaware of any modelling that shows a political bias to the Labour Party or the Conservative Party and I am certainly unaware of what bias there might be to the Liberal Democrats. I have reflected on the point that both coalition parties were committed to a reduction in the size of the House of Commons and, although that pledge was qualified by the context in which it was made by the Liberal Democrats, I think that there is a general view that that should be the direction of travel.

Another issue that has generated considerable debate is the relative increase in the workload of Members of the other place. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, called for some scientific analysis of that, but my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking indicated that, in his experience from having been first returned as a Member of Parliament in the 1970s, I think, there is a considerable difference in the resources that were made available to Members of Parliament by the time that he left the other place. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester mentioned that there are now opportunities for Members of Parliament to communicate electronically with their constituents in a way that has never been possible before. It is a continually changing scene.

For me, the reason why a scientific analysis could never bear fruit—apart from the fact that it would produce 650 different responses—was evident in the exchange that took place between the former, esteemed Speaker of the other place, the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, and the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Campbell-Savours. The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, indicated that, as a Member of Parliament post devolution, if he received an issue that was properly the matter of the Scottish Parliament, he passed it on to the MSP or, if it was a council matter, to council officials. He also said that he did not answer everyone on a petition. Frankly, having been a Member of the other place—indeed, for a short time, I was the Member of Parliament for Shetland but not the MSP for Shetland—I would have done exactly the same in those circumstances. I do not think—although I may have done so once or twice—I generally made a habit of responding to everyone on a petition. However, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, immediately took issue with that point, as did the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. If two very senior former Members of the other place can take issue with the position of the former Speaker of the other place and both sides are being absolutely honest in their approach and about how they would do their work, how in the world is anyone going to quantify or evaluate what the workload of a Member of Parliament should be? There would be a wide divergence over what individual Members of Parliament think should be the case.

At the end of the day, the judge and jury in such matters are one’s constituents, when one seeks re-election. They know how well a Member of Parliament has represented their interests over the previous lifetime of a Parliament.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

That is a question for the government Front Bench. I think I know the answer. It has something to do with five days in May, but we can wait for those on the Front Bench to answer that. If they want to look after their own Back-Benchers, let alone the Back-Benchers of any other party, my advice to the Government is that to have parliamentary boundary reviews every five years is not such a good idea as they thought when it was first put on the drawing board.

[Lord Wills]

I support all the amendments to this clause, but I incline most to the amendment to which my noble friend Lord Grocott has just spoken. They all speak to the folly of the unmerited speed of what the Government are doing with these boundary reviews. The risks of their approach are manifold, and we have heard some of them already rehearsed this afternoon. I focus on one: the statistical inadequacy of conducting reviews on the basis of what is universally acknowledged to be a flawed electoral register. The best estimate that we have is that 3.5 million people are eligible to vote but are missing for one reason or another from the electoral register. How on earth can the Government propose to rush through a boundary review on the basis of such a flawed register?

The Government must be aware that the Labour Government took significant measures and passed legislation to ensure that the flawed electoral register was repaired. It gave the duty to the Electoral Commission of ensuring that by 2015 the electoral register was comprehensive and accurate, and gave it significant powers to achieve that end—powers that I see the Deputy Prime Minister is now claiming as his motivation and responsibility. Actually, the previous Government passed the legislation that gave the Electoral Commission those powers.

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[Lord Wills]

I agree with the powerful case that my noble friend is making, but does he agree that another factor militating against the equalisation of constituencies that the Government want to see—I think most of us want to see it—is the fact that this boundary review will be taken on the basis of a flawed register? Many constituencies will have nearly 100 per cent registration of all those who are eligible to vote, but others will have barely half that. How can constituencies possibly be equalised on that statistical basis?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend developed his argument compellingly in his speech just now. Just as differential turnout matters very much, so do differential levels of registration. These are all factors tending, unfortunately, to produce votes of unequal value. Moreover, within the alternative vote system, we know that the votes of the supporters of the minority parties that continue to be totted up and distributed will themselves carry more power in the ultimate decision than other votes will.

One is left puzzled about what the Government’s motivation can be in rushing this through, unless it is to secure political advantage for the Conservative Party as part of the deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats do not even get the reformed electoral system that they really want, but the Tories get their opportunity to reduce the number of seats by 50, which, it has been calculated, if not by them—although I think they might be aware of the calculation—will advantage them and disadvantage the Labour Party.

The truth is that, while pursuing this pretty cynical policy, the Government risk causing the redistribution of constituencies to be botched. If it is botched and there is widespread public dissatisfaction with it, that can serve only to alienate sentiment and to alienate our citizens further from our democratic processes in this country. If there is a case for reform, and I believe that there is a case for significant reform in a number of aspects of our constitutional arrangements, then the benefits of reform will be dissipated and lost if the public feel angry that their legitimate entitlement to make their contribution to this process through public inquiries has been stamped upon by a Government who are in a hurry to effect change to suit their own political interest.

My noble friend Lord Dixon made a speech of profound importance, and I hope that Ministers and noble Lords opposite will think very carefully about what he said. He spoke with passion about the community of which he has been a member all his life. The Government’s formula of insisting on rigid numerical equality between constituencies risks violating community, ignoring history and causing profound offence to the people of this country. If indeed there is to be a rigid numerical formula, with a difference of no more than plus or minus 5 per cent from the norm of 76,000 voters, it is all the more important that the Boundary Commission should be allowed to have the time to take care to be sensitive to these other very important factors. If the Government rush in seeking to create numerically equal constituencies and do not pay attention to what people have to say about community, history, geography and the importance of the alignment of parliamentary constituencies with local government, they will make the process even more offensive than I fear it will inevitably be in any case.

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[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)]

My Lords, the Bill would require the Boundary Commission to report by October 2013. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, would change this to October 2015. The amendment in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, and the noble Lord, Lord Snape, would make it October 2016, and Amendment 56A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, would make it October 2017. As I indicated on more than one occasion on Monday, the Government’s approach has been simple: to ensure that constituency boundaries are as up to date as possible. That point is worth repeating. The boundaries in effect in England at the general election fought last May were drawn up based on data that were 10 years old. If the House were to accept any of the amendments, the election in May 2015 would be fought on data that were 15 years old.

I mentioned on Monday, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Wills, the 3.5 million people who are eligible to vote but who are not on the register. What I cannot fathom—and I have thought about this time and again in case I was missing something—is the point that somehow one does a service to these 3.5 million people by using electoral data from 2000. What service does that do to those who have come on to the electoral register between 2000 and December 2010?

[Lord Wills]

Perhaps I may answer that question. Under legislation, the Electoral Commission is tasked with repairing this grievous fault in our electoral register by 2015. Why can the Government not wait two more years? I understand the frustration and the point that the Minister is making about data being ridiculously out of date. Of course he is right, but why not wait just a few months more for the Electoral Commission, an independent body with new powers, to bring those 3.5 million people on to the register, and then do this comprehensive review?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I shall answer the noble Lord’s second point directly.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

As I have said, we are committed to undertaking the pilot schemes and, if they have proved their worth, rolling them out. I would not make that commitment unless we believed that the resources were there to do that.

[Lord Wills]

I ask the noble and learned Lord to clarify the point that he has made several times already. Is he really saying that the injustice that he sees in people already on the electoral register being misallocated to a constituency—about which, as we have heard, there is considerable controversy—outweighs the injustice of proceeding to this wholesale boundary revision that will exclude 3.5 million people who are eligible to vote but who are not on the register? Does he really think that one outweighs the other?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am saying that I think it is more unjust to have the 2015 general election fought on the basis of data that were collected in 2000, not data that were collected in 2010. That would be the injustice. There are the people, to whom the noble Baroness referred, who signed up to the register during the last general election campaign. If we go into the next election on the basis of constituencies in which the electoral registration data for the year 2000 apply, we will miss out those people. There is also the completely different but related issue of trying to improve electoral registration, which we are very much committed to.