Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Grocott

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Grocott (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Committee has heard three excellent speeches. I thank the noble Lords who tabled these amendments. I am acutely aware of the expertise of these speakers and the efforts they have put in over many years to try to deal with this fundamental weakness of our democratic structure. I cannot claim to have that level of expertise, but it is obvious to me that, however wonderful the Bill comes to be in its final form, it is still, to a worrying degree, a castle built on sand.

The basis of our representative democracy is, of course, the right of people to vote. It is assumed that everyone of an age is able to exercise that right. If, as has been amply demonstrated—there is no need for me to repeat it—it becomes more and more apparent that these figures are seriously inaccurate, and that the numbers on which we determine constituency boundaries do not reflect the number of people living in an area, it is a castle built on sand. It is a bit like an architect saying, “Here is a terrific design for your new house. I like everything about it. The bricks are really dodgy, but you can still go ahead.” The bricks are dodgy; that is the problem.

It is not just a question of numbers; it is also to do with the integrity of our democracy. We hear so many arguments about the size of electorates; for example, pointing out that some inner-city seat has only 50,000 electors, so “My word, it must be a bit of a cakewalk being an MP for that area, with only 50,000 electors.” Of course, it may be true that there are only 50,000 electors, but you can bet your boots, if it is a city-centre constituency, that there will be a lot more people than those 50,000 who live in the constituency and have the right—which they undoubtedly have—to come to you for help. I doubt whether any former MP speaking on this group of amendments, when faced with a long queue of people coming to see them at their surgery, checked before they agreed to help them whether they were on the electoral roll—I certainly never did. There may be MPs who are more effectively bureaucratic than I was who make sure they find that out even if it does not affect their performance, but one’s obligation is clearly to those people. To say that constituency A in an inner city with 50,000 is unfairly overrepresented compared with the rich suburb with 90,000 misses that fundamental point that the bricks out of which the building is constructed are flawed. There is no simple answer, but we have already heard from the previous three speakers that numerous practical things could be done to deal with this fundamental weakness of our democracy—I am not given to hyperbole, but, clearly, if electoral registration is not accurate, people are not able to vote who in our democracy ought to be able to.

I shall say no more and leave it to the experts, but I am so glad that this matter is being debated and with so many really informative contributions.

[Lord Wills (Lab) [V]]

I want to say a few words on Amendment 24, to which I have put my name in support of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, on whose committee I had the pleasure to serve, but, first, I hope that your Lordships will accept my apologies for my inability to be present at Second Reading.

The Conservative Party manifesto commits the Government to

“making sure that every vote counts the same—a cornerstone of democracy.”

While there are several ways to interpret how exactly every vote counts the same, what I think informs the phrase is a proposition with which I hope everyone can agree, which is that the vote gives every citizen the ability to help choose their Government and to hold those in power to account. That is the cornerstone of democracy and political order. As we have heard, that is true only if every citizen who is eligible to vote is able to vote. They are able to vote only if they are registered to vote. The Government’s aim of equalisation can be achieved only if everyone eligible to vote is registered to vote.

However, as we have heard, there are millions of people who are eligible to vote but who are not on the electoral register and so cannot do so. In this country, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, the register is only 85% complete, which is not a figure with which the Government should be content. In Canada, as the noble Lord pointed out, the register is 96% complete. In normal times, this level of completeness in our electoral register would be a concern, but these are not normal times. Across the Atlantic, in the world’s most powerful country, which has always prided itself on its democracy, there is now unprecedented questioning of the process for electing the next President. Politicians and commentators across the political spectrum are questioning the integrity of that forthcoming election. At the heart of much of that questioning lie well-documented techniques of voter suppression: techniques for stopping voters registering and voting. Such techniques benefit one party, the Republicans, at the expense of the other, the Democrats. Some of those voter suppression techniques are identical to those to which this Government seem attracted, and they use the same justifications as those used by the Republicans in the United States.

I do not want to go into those now. But in these circumstances I hope that the Government would want to take every opportunity to reassure Parliament, and the country, that their motives in pursuing electoral reforms are noble and non-partisan. This simple, straightforward amendment seeks to help them in that endeavour: it gives them an opportunity to share with Parliament their proposals for improving the electoral register until it is as close to being 100% accurate and 100% complete as possible, and it would allow the elected representatives of the people, and your Lordships’ House, to assess the merits of these proposals. It is an amendment that embodies a commitment to democratic transparency and scrutiny, and as such I see no good reason why the Government should not support it. I very much hope that the Minister will now commit the Government to embedding it in the Bill.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Grocott

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.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Grocott

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.