Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[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 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—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

Of course I accept that. I was about to make very similar points in my remarks. What my noble friend has so accurately pointed out is that this is a subject for debate. He has made a very good point. This is precisely the sort of issue that should have been debated before the Government brought forward this legislation. What is the best size for a constituency in this country? I will come to the other constitutional changes that might affect this in a moment, but of course my noble friend is right.

If 90 is not an appropriate size for the membership of the House of Commons, why not? The Government have given us no clue. Surely, as I was saying, before embarking on such radical reform we need to seek agreement as far as possible between all political parties in this country on what principles should determine the size of the constituency and hence the size of the House of Commons.

In arriving at such principles, any review must take account of the other impending changes in our constitutional arrangements such as the increasing decentralisation of power to local authorities. All parties agree on the need for this. There are measures already coming forward from the Government. We need to look at the impact of those measures on the optimum size of a constituency, but the Government have not done so. We also need to look at the implications for the size of the constituency and the relationship between the Member of Parliament and their constituents of the impending reforms to this Chamber. Many Members will oppose such reforms, but the Government want to bring them forward and they owe it to the British people to have a proper discussion about the implications of such changes on the optimum size of a constituency. What will be the implications for the nature and role of the Member of Parliament? We have had no such discussion, and this amendment offers the opportunity to have it. I think that it would be very valuable for the health of our democracy for that to happen.

The commission would also need to take account of the principle that has been followed by all parties that believe in the value of the union of differential protections for the minority nations of the United Kingdom. This is a crucial point for all those who believe in the value of maintaining the union. The nature of the union has changed dramatically since the Labour Government brought forward measures of devolution, and that relationship is continuing to evolve. There is no evidence whatsoever in the Bill that the Government have appreciated this or recognised its significance. This amendment gives them a chance to look at the implications of the changing nature of the devolved constitutional arrangements of this country on the proposals in this Bill.

The statistical basis on which the size of constituencies is equalised is also crucial. It is bad enough that the Government are seeking to conduct a wholesale boundary review on the basis of an electoral register that is neither comprehensive nor accurate. It is deplorable that they appear to be doing this in the pursuit of partisan advantage. It is perhaps even worse that this fundamental redrawing of the electoral map should be done in such an arbitrary way, leaving key questions not even raised, let alone answered. How far, for example, should the electoral register be the basis for such equalisation? How far should population be the basis? These are clearly issues that any committee would need to consider, so they are included in the amendment.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

This matter has taxed many of us over a long period. I understand that when my noble friend was the Minister responsible he did some work in the department on the use of population—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry. Perhaps my noble friend would set out what work was carried out. It would help us, in moving our amendments, if we knew of his experiences.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. As he said, the previous Government—I was the Minister responsible for this—did a lot of work on how we could more fairly ensure that everyone entitled to be on the electoral register was on it. We brought forward legislation putting a duty on the Electoral Commission to bring forward such measures. That is another reason why I am in such despair that the Government are rushing ahead on the basis of such a flawed electoral register. If only they had had a little patience and had waited just a few months longer. There was every chance that the Electoral Commission’s work would produce a significantly improved register, which might even have been comprehensive and accurate, as it should be.

These issues now need to be debated. They are issues not just for this House or for the other place; they are issues for the British people, who have had no say in this fundamental building block of their democracy. This amendment offers the opportunity to the Government to give the British people that say in these arrangements. I very much hope that they will take it. I have also included provision—I think that everyone will agree with this—for boundary reviews to be timely. I do not think that there should be any dispute about that.

Finally—I know that this will be of concern to the Government—there is the question of a timetable. I had some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, when he said at Second Reading that the time had almost come for constitutional reformers just to get on with it. I hope that I am not quoting him inaccurately. Of course, anyone who wants to see constitutional reform must beware delay, which is always the enemy of truly radical reform. I recognise that cynical members of the Government—I am sure that noble Lords on the Front Bench are not so cynical—may regard this proposal for a committee as nothing more than a device to push all these issues into the long grass. That is not my intention. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I support the objectives of this Bill.

My amendment does not leave this process open-ended, but specifies a timescale. In my judgment—I did considerable work on these issues when I was the Minister responsible in the previous Government—three years is an appropriate timescale in which to explore all these issues with appropriate rigour, to hear evidence from all concerned parties, including members of the public, and to produce recommendations that can command popular support.

More generally, this is a typical timeframe for a royal commission. The average time to report for the past 10 royal commissions has been slightly less than three years. This is a reasonable amount of time to give the committee to report. But I have added further comfort in this amendment to those who might be concerned about undue delay. The amendment includes provision for the commission to report annually to Parliament on its progress, so that Parliament may have regular opportunities to contribute to the continuing deliberations of the commission. The Government will always have the option to take steps to ensure a speedier dispatch of this work should they think that that is necessary, which I very much hope that they will not.

This amendment is detailed and complex because the issues covered are detailed and complex. They are also vital to the health of our democracy. I hope that the Government may feel able to accept the amendment, if not in this exact formulation then at least in one perhaps better drafted to achieve the same objectives. Whatever view is taken of the merits of the objectives of Part 1 of the Bill, no independent observer could consider Part 2 to be anything other than at best botched legislation and at worst a partisan attack on fundamental constitutional proprieties. Such profoundly flawed legislation is unlikely to endure and I just say to Ministers opposite that history is not likely to look fondly on its perpetrators.

The amendment offers the Government a chance to find a way out of the swamp into which they have waded with little care or consideration. It gets them to the place that they say that they want to be with a delay of only a few months to allow for independent examination and the engagement of the public in issues of great importance to our democracy, which, after all, is meant to serve the public, not the interests of the Government of the day. It would enable this legislation to proceed on the basis of constitutional principle not on that of arbitrary and partisan calculation. I beg to move.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak this early, but I may as well intervene to support my noble friend in his amendment. I begin by commenting on my reflections over the Christmas Recess on how I see the progress on this Bill. My comments stem from conversations with Members of the other place, some of whom spoke on the Bill during its transit through that House. The conclusion that we have all come to is that the way in which this legislation is being handled is a clear breach of any reasonable process. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, looks as if I am saying something that causes him some anguish, but the reality is that this is a constitutional Bill in its two principal components. AV, which is a huge change to the electoral system with massive constitutional implications, and the change to constituency boundaries are big constitutional issues that in both cases require, in my view, a proper inquiry before this legislation goes through Parliament.

The reality is that, because of our arrangements in the House of Lords, at least we are able to give the Bill some level of scrutiny, but I do not believe that the level of scrutiny that we can give it satisfies in any way the gravity, importance and significance of the legislation that the Government are seeking to introduce. I am saying all this as a strong supporter of a change to the electoral system. Indeed, I would probably go down the route of the Liberal Democrats on this matter if only they would be honest in the position that they took as against supporting this miserable little compromise. Also, the concept of a reduction in the number of seats is not altogether alien to me; indeed, it has never been a great problem for me. The question is the process by which we arrive at that.

I believe that my noble friend’s amendment is critical for securing proper consideration. As he said, it was the subject of a resolution carried at the Liberal Democrat conference. Both the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler, are in their places today and I hope and expect them to have the courage to argue on the back of this amendment the case that was argued forcefully at their annual conference basically in support of the principles that my noble friend is seeking to establish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have not read that report although it is on my reading list. There are a number of reports I have to read next weekend in preparation for the debates that will take place next week.

The point is that this is not the peg on which to argue the basis on which people register. My noble friend’s amendment simply says, “Let us have an inquiry that does precisely that”. He is saying, “Let someone, somewhere, do some homework on this whole area before Parliament is required to carry any particular piece of legislation”. That is my case.

[Lord Wills]

My noble friend has made an important point about the importance of considering population. But does he agree that this emphasises yet again the folly of rushing this? In a short space of time we will have the results of the 2011 census—probably around 2013 or 2014. It is absolutely crucial in deciding the validity of going forward on a population basis, but also in ascertaining just how under-registered the British people are. What is the degree of under-registration in different constituencies and different population groups throughout the country? Does this not prove the folly of rushing ahead like this?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I could not agree more with my noble friend. If we are going to have a five-year Parliament, why cannot those data be used? It would still leave the opportunity for legislation to be introduced to deal with this whole issue. Why, in other words, on the back of a whipped vote on the coalition Benches, is this measure being driven through this House when we all know it is an abuse of process and wrong in every possible way?