House of Commons Business

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

We move on to happier subjects. I will speak first to the motion on e-petitions. I will also address the other motions in my name, on parliamentary privilege and on Standing Order No. 33, and I will seek to move them formally at the end of the debate. I will also address the motion relating to programming, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and is supported by the Government.

Hon. Members may recall that, following the work of both the Procedure Committee and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, I have previously undertaken to bring forward proposals for an improved e-petitions system. I want to build on the successful features of the current system, which has seen more than 10 million individuals sign one or more of the 27,500 e-petitions that have been submitted, 145 of which have reached 10,000 signatures, leading to a formal response from the Government. Of those, 29 petitions have reached 100,000 signatures and become eligible to be considered for debate, 25 of which have been debated.

The system provides a straightforward means by which people can submit a petition to raise an issue and press for action. As we have seen in debates such as those on Hillsborough, the badger cull, Sophie’s choice and the ban on female genital mutilation, petitions can be and are debated in Parliament. However, the system by which they are submitted is not approved or in any way owned by Parliament, and that is what I want to change. I want Parliament to share in the ownership of a modern e-petitions system that allows people to petition their Parliament, engage their elected representatives and, where appropriate, get a response from their Government.

I have already held constructive discussions with a number of interested parties throughout the House on the principles of a new system, but a lot of stakeholders are involved and there is a lot of detail to be worked out. I am therefore not initially coming to the House with a fully worked up blueprint for approval. I want to work with others on some ideas that will produce the best result for petitioners, who are our constituents. This is a therefore a paving motion, which will allow the House to agree on the principle that a new system should be jointly owned and run by the Government and the House of Commons.

To develop the detail of the new system with the House, the Government need a partner with which to work. We therefore propose that the Procedure Committee acts on behalf of the House in helping to shape the proposals. There will, no doubt, be other interested parties in the House and outside who will want to contribute, and that is entirely welcome.

I wish to refer briefly to amendment (a) to the e-petitions motion, tabled by the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). I confess that I am disappointed that he has felt the need to table an amendment that is largely about the detail of the new system, not least because those are exactly the sorts of discussions that I hope we can have as we develop it. I do not disagree with all the elements that he suggests, but I am confused by an amendment that rejects the notion of a collaborative system yet goes on to envisage the sharing of the existing Government platform. The amendment is internally inconsistent and, I would argue, flawed in principle as a consequence. I cannot, in any case, imagine what the public would make of our establishing two competing and overlapping e-petition systems, which would be the effect of the amendment.

The hon. Gentleman is usually, and quite volubly, in the business of calling for the Executive to work in partnership with Parliament on legislation, on constitutional principles and on much else beyond. That is exactly what I am offering on e-petitions. It would be uncharacteristic of him to turn down such an offer, so I hope that he might not move his amendment.

I hope that a new system can provide better service and support for petitioners. It would provide more flexibility for the House to consider e-petitions in a variety of ways and an enhanced capacity for the House to ensure that the Government respond to those petitions in a significant and adequate manner.

The use of the platform already developed by the Government Digital Service will minimise the costs of the new system. Any additional staff costs will depend largely on the level and nature of the support provided to petitioners, and it may be that it can best be provided by the House’s outreach and information service. You will recall, Mr Speaker, that in the medium-term financial plan the House of Commons Commission has envisaged the provision of some modest support of that kind for a new e-petitions service.

I do not seek to hide the scale of the system. Just under 10,000 petitions are submitted each year—the number settled down after an initial burst in 2011 to about 20 per day, which is a lot of petitions. The moderating, monitoring and sifting of those petitions is a considerable task, but the rules relating to them can make it a manageable, and I think a fair one. Whether we have a petitions committee to govern that process is a matter for discussion. I confess that I am in favour of some form of petitions committee to act on behalf of the House, to develop engagement with the public on petitions, and in the longer term to liaise with Government on e-petitions and the system. For the avoidance of doubt, this motion and any proposals we have do not impinge at all on the existing paper petitions system. That is a matter for the House, and in particular the Procedure Committee.

The existing Government system will be taken down when Parliament is dissolved at the end of March next year. To ensure that a new system, based on the principles that I hope we can endorse today, is up and running from the start of the new Parliament, we must have reached agreement on the details of that new system by the end of this year, when I hope the House will be able to debate and decide on our joint proposals. With that in mind, I ask the House to approve the motion to allow the work we have started to continue, in close consultation with the Procedure Committee, as proposed.

The Government are happy to support the proposal from the Procedure Committee in the motion on programming, which I hope will benefit the whole House. As hon. Members know, the Government have already addressed concerns expressed about Report stage by providing more time where necessary, with the result that fewer groups of amendments are now left undebated than in the last Parliament. In this Session alone, no fewer than 11 Bills have benefited from more than one day on Report. I remind the House that there were only 10 such Bills in the whole of the previous Parliament.

By extending the deadline for the submission of amendments on Report from two to three days, the Government will be able to take full account of the number of amendments selected and grouped before tabling the supplementary programme motion. That will allow us better to match the available time to the weight and nature of amendments tabled. The deadline will rightly still be subject to the discretion of Mr Speaker. I emphasise that the Government will continue to seek to table amendments one week in advance of Report.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

On the supplementary programme motions, I have had to wrestle with getting the amount of time for each group of amendments correct when drafting programme motions. Does my right hon. Friend propose that in each case the Government will use knives to allocate time for each group of amendments, or will they try to balance that—perhaps in conversation with the House—with what they think is the demand? In some cases, it may be better just to let the debate fall in the usual way. I am not sure from the motion what is being proposed.

[Mr Lansley]

As my hon. Friend will recall from his experience of these matters, we sometimes believe it necessary to introduce what are known colloquially as “knives” into the programme motion to specify when discussion on certain groups of new clauses or amendments is to be concluded. However, we discuss that with the usual channels, and we try to ensure that the House gets the opportunity to debate all significant groups of amendments. The process of deciding whether we should do that or—as we sometimes rightly allow—whether to allow the debate on the amendments to proceed naturally, as it were, is not changed by the motion.

In effect, the motion creates during its trial period an agreement across the House that amendments on Report should be tabled three rather than two days earlier. The benefit of that is that we are more likely to get the programme motion right and not find, as has happened in the past as my hon. Friend will recall, that Opposition or Back-Bench amendments are tabled on Report at quite a late stage and at a time when it is very difficult—not to put too fine a point on it—to incorporate them successfully into a programme motion that understands where the weight of the debate will be. That is what this motion is principally about. A trial period in the next Session would enable us to see whether the proposal turns out to benefit Back Benchers and whether there are any unforeseen disadvantages. I am pleased that the Procedure Committee has secured the support of the Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition for the trial period, and has committed to reviewing its operation towards the end of the next Session. If judged successful, the Government will support a permanent change.

Let me clarify that we start from a shared understanding that we use the term parliamentary privilege to describe a fundamental constitutional principle that guarantees freedom of speech in Parliament and allows us in this House to work on behalf of our constituents without the threat of interference from the courts. The motion on parliamentary privilege arises from the work of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which was established to consider the Government’s White Paper on that subject published in 2012. I place on record my thanks for the diligent work of the Committee on that complex issue, and I stress that, as set out in the Government’s formal response, we agree with the Committee in its central conclusion that there is no strong case for comprehensive codification. None the less, there are steps that the House can take—I stress that the operation of parliamentary privilege is a matter for the House rather than Government—to provide greater clarity.

[Mr Lansley]

I am hoping to make absolutely clear that this motion is in no sense about the law not applying equally to us as it would to any other member of the public. It is about what happens in this House and its proceedings, which require to be protected. Parliamentary privilege may have originated centuries ago, but it must always remain true. It may take a different character in terms of judicial activism, rather than Executive action, but none the less on behalf of our constituents we require what we do here to be done without fear or favour, and without risk of impeachment or prejudice from external parties. As my hon. Friend says, it is important for that privilege to be maintained for the benefit of our constituents.

The motion before the House is a means by which I hope we can provide the clarity necessary for the effective operation of parliamentary privilege. An equivalent motion was agreed by the House of Lords on 20 March this year, after a full debate. In essence, it calls for clarity in the application of any particular legislation to Parliament. The need for further clarification on that point arises because there is some legal uncertainty as to the consequences of a decision of the courts in the Graham-Campbell case of 1935, which held that the protection afforded to this House by the doctrine of parliamentary privilege was wide. The scope of parliamentary privilege has been revisited by the courts and commentators in more recent times—notably by the Supreme Court in the 2010 Chaytor case. However, the Graham-Campbell case has not been expressly overruled, which has sometimes led to uncertainty over what needs to be said in an Act intended to apply to Parliament. The boundaries of parliamentary privilege will in practice be determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis, so it is helpful to them if legislation makes clear Parliament’s intent when legislating in areas that might encroach on those boundaries. That is why this motion provides for explicit provision on that point in cases of doubt.

In practice, that will require discussions between parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses on whether relevant provisions in Bills should apply to the activities of the two Houses, and for there to be express provision in the Bill where necessary. That is a sensible and pragmatic move towards providing greater clarity on a relatively obscure but important issue. As a matter of principle, I am sure we all agree that the law of the land should apply equally to Parliament, subject where appropriate to the protections of parliamentary privilege. I hope the House will agree to the motion so as to provide for that consistency across the two Houses.

[Mr Harper]

Of the two recommendations in the report by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, the second was for the Government to take steps to ensure that Departments complied with the official guidance, issued by the Treasury Solicitor, to consult with the House authorities on legislation. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will do that in every case? The report said that it happened in some cases, but not in every case.

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. It was not an invariable practice. A moment ago I spoke about the necessity for discussions between parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses, and I hope that those discussions will enable us to meet the recommendations of the Joint Committee. That is important.

What has, in part, led to the necessity of the motion is that different Bills have taken different approaches, sometimes seeing it as necessary to disapply parliamentary privilege and in other cases seeking to make it clear in legislation that parliamentary privilege applies. Our general proposition is that it is not required to say that parliamentary privilege applies—it does apply. However, we need to make it clear where the provisions of a Bill intend to have an effect on Parliament. In particular, we need to identify and specify where they may encroach on the boundaries of parliamentary privilege, so that the courts have an unambiguous legislative provision that sets out to what extent Parliament has determined that the law, in that respect, applies to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

First, I want to thank the Leader of the House for being so expansive in his arguments and when explaining the reasons behind many of the Government’s positions. I will focus first on some of the Procedure Committee recommendations, and come on to the issues relating to e-petitions at the end of my short speech.

I think that the decision on Standing Order No. 33, which allows amendments to be called at the end of the Queen’s Speech, was made after consultation between the Leader of the House and interested parties. I think it reflects a certain maturity in his office, a willingness to listen to diverse views and, in the end, an ability to make the right decision. The Leader of the House knows that no decision will be met uniformly with acclaim. That is just not possible, but I think that what we have before us today is about the best result we could have hoped for. It reflects the original position put forward by the Procedure Committee after consultation with various interested parties, including the Speaker’s office, the Leader of the House’s office and the shadow Leader of the House. So the decision on Standing Order No. 33 is a step in the right direction and I welcome it.

The Procedure Committee has also made some recommendations around programming. I could spend the next 10 minutes focusing on those aspects of our report that the Government rejected and do not feel comfortable about, but that would be extremely churlish. Today, as we head towards the Prorogation of this Parliament, we should focus on the positives that have come out of our reports, not the negatives. I regard this as a journey and all journeys start with a step, and then baby steps along the way until eventually we reach our point of arrival. I might not be alive to see that point of arrival, but it is just possible that my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be able to celebrate that.

Our changes to programming come under the heading “Boring but important.” Anybody who reads The Week magazine, which makes us all instant experts—give it 10 minutes of our time and we become a world expert on what is going on in Ukraine, South Africa or Brazil—will know it has a section headed “Boring but important”, and I think that that applies to our changes to programming. They might be boring but they are very, very important.

[Mr Harper]

And very exciting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Let me start by touching on a couple of democratic principles that underlie some of the issues before us. The first is about whether we are a representative democracy or whether, because we are held so much in contempt by the public, we want to become a direct democracy. That is why e-petitions could either be advantageous to us or play into the hands of those who want to see a Parliament even more diminished, especially those in newsrooms and media offices up and down the land who have the ability to get up 100,000 signatures and put pressure on Government and Parliament. Under motion 3 as it stands, that pressure could be transferred from Government to Parliament. Parliament is a handy whipping boy for so many of these issues, including expenses. Governments of all parties have shown a great facility in ditching Parliament—leaving Parliament holding the baby for issues that have been the responsibility of Government.

One issue is about explaining what we are. Earlier, we had a mini debate about privilege. It was all about these poor people out there who do not really understand these arcane bits of judicial archaeology, and the fact that there is something wrong with the public. One Member said that we need to lead them and be stronger in explaining these things, but we have tried that for many decades. We have all discovered that even when we try to explain the concept of reimbursements using the word “expenses”, it does not always work. Explaining how Parliament and Government are different from each other is one of our main duties, because people lump us together. Indeed, this business in front of us today is an example of the Government trying to get that conflation of two institutions. Even though we will not change minds today on the Government Front Bench, it is important that we keep those Front-Bench Members honest and point out that we know what they are trying to do, even if there is not much we can do about it other than heckle the steamroller.

That choice over whether we go to a serious representative democracy and continue to try to rebuild Parliament or whether we abstain from that and hand over to a plebiscitary democracy is one that all Members need to consider.

[Mr Harper]

I think the hon. Gentleman is being a little cynical about those on the Front Bench. The problem with what he is trying to do, which is to have two petition systems—one to Government and one to Parliament—ignores the fact that Government are accountable to Parliament. They are only the Government because they have a majority in Parliament. Having two separate systems would be worse than having this House and the Government working together collaboratively. With respect, what he is suggesting is not helpful; it is the opposite.

[Mr Allen]

Obviously, I do not spend all my time in the Chamber, but during the 26 years that I have been here, I have missed that occasion when Government were accountable to Parliament. What we have here is the mythology of parliamentary sovereignty—the hon. Gentleman knows that and we have discussed it in front of my Committee—in which Government can use and abuse Parliament on a daily basis. They can set the agenda of Parliament on a daily basis. It is a little disingenuous to pretend that it is Parliament holding Government to account. If we conflate two systems, we will make things harder. Rather than Parliament being able to say, “The Government have not responded to a legitimate petition”, we will have to share the blame for the problem. If we do not have a petitioning system of our own, we will not have direct redress, through which we can say to the Government, “We have discussed this, as many people have requested of us, and we have a view. What are you now going to do?” Parliament legislates and, in theory, holds Government to account, but it is the institution of Government who execute and put Acts into the parliamentary sausage machine. Putting the two together continues the deception that Parliament can effectively hold the Government to account. What we need to do is build our accountability function, not give it away to Government.

[Mr Harper]

The problem is that, if we have a petitioning system directly to Government, we then suggest to Government that they respond directly to the people who have petitioned them, completely bypassing this House. I would prefer Government to interact with the public through Parliament, keeping Members of Parliament in that conversation rather than excluding them.

[Mr Allen]

We have an e-petitioning system at the moment which is to the Government and to which the Government have to respond. What we are discussing is giving Parliament its own e-petitioning capability, so that it can engage as a partner in a debate with Government. That has to be healthier than one organisation or the other imposing its will, as happens continually in our proceedings, with Government dominating Parliament. This is a minor demonstration of the mythology and fallacy of parliamentary sovereignty, and therefore it is useful to bring it to the attention of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

We have had a good debate. I shall say some brief words on the motions about petitions and parliamentary privilege and devote most of my remarks to the motion on programming.

The motion on petitions is sensible. I view the word “collaborative” in the phrase “a collaborative e-petitions system” rather more favourably than the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), as meaning the House and the Government working together. The House is not a sub-office of the Government. I prefer to think of it the other way around, with the Government being a sub-office of the House. The hon. Gentleman and I have had many discussions about this. I know that the theory of Ministers being accountable to Parliament sometimes does not work as well as it ought to, but rather than throwing it away and adopting a different model, we should all work hard to make sure that it does work properly.

The multifaceted role of the Leader of the House as both the member of the Government responsible for the Government’s legislative programme and also—I know he takes this responsibility seriously as the Leader of the whole House—the person who has to ensure that the House functions properly is reflected in the motions tabled by him.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North talked about the technology of the platform. The Leader of the House mentioned the Government Digital Service. When I was doing my job as Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, I worked with it on some of the individual electoral registration technology. This is one of the rare occasions when the words “Government digital service” and “Government IT” refer to positive things. It works in a modern way, producing material iteratively and on quite tight timetables. The Leader of the House is right: if we can give it a clear direction by the end of this year, we can realistically expect a good process to be up and running at the start of the next Parliament.

Giving the Procedure Committee the responsibility to lead on doing that is sensible. It will enable Members on both sides of the House, including the hon. Gentleman, to make representations to the Committee over and above what we have said today, and the Committee, as can be seen from its reports on other matters, can be trusted to reflect and balance the views across the House and come up with a sensible set of proposals. I agree with some parts of his amendment, but not all. I hope he reflects on it, does not press it to a vote, takes the content of it as an input and gives evidence, if necessary orally, to the Committee.

Finally, let me expand a little on what I said about the difference between the Government and Parliament. I do not want two different systems to operate because I do not want the public to make representations to the Government separately from representations made through this House. I want to make sure that Ministers remain accountable to the House. When the petitions that the Leader of the House mentioned were debated in the time provided by the Backbench Business Committee, part of the point of the debate was not only that Back-Bench Members could debate it, but that a Minister had to come to the Dispatch Box, answer questions and account for the Government’s policy. That is why it is important that any petitioning system keeps the House at its centre, rather than having two separate systems. There would be nothing more confusing for the public than an e-petitions system to the Government and a separate one to the House of Commons, and the two not being connected in any way. A collaborative approach—yes, with education and a clear set of messages to the public about what the system is for, how it works and what expectations someone might have after going through the process—is very important and is more likely to improve the reputation of the House.

I take a more optimistic view on the motion on privilege than my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) set out. Privilege is well understood by many people in various professions. We should explain what it means, rather than think about an alternative label for it. The problem is that the misunderstanding is often created deliberately by some of the hon. Gentleman’s favourite people, by the sound of it—those in newsrooms—who deliberately try to create confusion about what privilege means. We must explain what it means and we have people in the outside world who are familiar with the concept as well. It is our job to explain, as Members have ably done today, the purpose of privilege, which is to enable us to speak on behalf of our constituents without worrying about powerful interests.

The only question that I had on the privilege motion has been answered by the Leader of the House. It was about making sure that we follow through recommendation 227 on Treasury Counsel working with the House. He made it clear that the Government would do that.

I welcome the report on programming, which I read very carefully, and the Government’s response to it. The Leader of the House is right. This Government have worked hard to try to improve how the Report stage works. He referred to a significant number of Bills having two days on Report. I should say in passing that the Government have also done a good job of increasing the number of draft Bills brought before the House for pre-legislative scrutiny. The Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has done an excellent job. In response to one of the measures debated in the earlier Standards motion on recall, his Committee scrutinised the draft Bill that I introduced and made some sensible recommendations, which may or may not be debated in the future.

The Government have done a good job of dealing with the House. Listening to the comments of the shadow Leader of the House about scrutiny and the time allowed for the Report stage of Bills, it was difficult to believe that she had something to do with the previous Government. I do not pretend that the current Government are a paragon of virtue and get absolutely everything right, but I remember frequent occasions when there was a single day for Report, there were a large number of amendments and we barely got through any of the groups. She did not acknowledge that anywhere in her remarks.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Harper]

Let me say one more thing, which might affect what the hon. Lady says. The sensible remarks she made about the difficult balance that has to be struck between allowing the Government to get their business and allowing scrutiny was a positive point and her tone was welcome.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his final remark. What I was trying to say was that there is an issue with timetabling in general. I have been in the House at the time when we had no timetabling, apart from guillotining on specific Bills. That is certainly one way of working, but it leads to 80-hour working weeks. I have experienced them; I do not know whether he would like us to go back to that. Given that we have a timetabling structure now, we have to make certain that we can get away from some of the game-playing with timetabling that leaves large swathes of legislation not discussed in the Commons. As the Minister who took through two extremely important constitutional Bills at a rapid rate, perhaps he should get his own House in order.

[Mr Harper]

I am glad the hon. Lady raised that. I was going to come on to those. I accept that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 was taken through at something of a pace because of delivering the referendum. There is sometimes a slight cynicism in the House, with the suggestion that all Ministers do not like having things debated. When that Bill was going through, I took great pains to make sure that all the important issues were debated in the House, and they all were, even though in the debate on thresholds I had to indulge in the device of moving a Back-Bench amendment from the Government Front Bench—following the model of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw)—in order to ask Members to vote against it, to ensure that this House was able to take a decision and not leave it to the other place.

Another Bill that I had some responsibility for was the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, for which we did not have that imperative. In fact, we ran out of Bill before we ran out of time, and we debated all of it fully. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who ably assisted me in taking that legislation through, and I took great pains to ensure that the House had ample time to debate all of it. I will say a little more in a minute about how I think the Government should do the timetabling.

I also welcome the Government’s suggestion of a three-day deadline for tabling amendments, which supports what the Procedure Committee has said. I welcome the Opposition’s support for that. It will of course be challenging for Opposition Front Benchers and for Back Benchers, but I think that without it we cannot ensure that time is used more sensibly.

Another point that I want to put on the record—I got the answer I wanted, and expected, from the Leader of the House when I asked how the Government and the usual channels would approach programming—is that I think Back Benchers can help in this regard by indicating where the focus of debate is likely to be. With the best will in the world, timetabling is an art, not a science. Having amendments tabled earlier in the process would enable their full scope to be seen by the Government and the usual channels before the supplementary programme motion is devised, so the amendments could indicate what the issues of controversy are and on which provisions debate is likely to concentrate. Even so, it is still an art, not a science. I think that it will take good will on both sides of the House to ensure that the right decisions are made on whether to allow a debate to flow or to put knives in place and manage it more tightly.

I also think that it might be worth engaging the Chair in this process, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that there are rules about avoiding repetition and so forth, but clearly the Chair must be mindful of the need to allow a proper debate by making the proper judgments when Members step over those lines and engage in game-playing. If the House is to debate things properly and table amendments earlier, and the usual channels are going to try to ensure that that happens, it will be interesting to see whether the Chair experiments with the severity with which it imposes the rules of the House, and the extent to which Members find that agreeable, to ensure that we balance properly progress—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and this seems to me to be an opportune moment to make it clear to the House that, although he is perfectly in order and has not taken a unreasonable amount of time this afternoon, it would nevertheless be helpful if Members speaking from the Bank Benches could limit their remarks to between 10 and 15 minutes, and possibly 12 minutes. That way, everyone who wishes to speak will have an opportunity to do so.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. When putting on the record things that the Chair might wish to consider, there is always a risk of provoking the Chair, as I have just done. I can hardly complain, having invited you to do that.

There is sometimes game-playing on the Back Benches, on both sides of the House, to try either to get something debated or to ensure that it is not debated. The Chair has quite a lot of scope, both in the selection of amendments and in enforcing the rules of debate, for ensuring that we make progress.

My final point, and an important one—I agree with the shadow Leader of the House on this—is that this House, the elected House of Commons, should have the opportunity to debate and vote on all the important issues when legislation starts its journey through the House. Sometimes it is unavoidable that important matters have to be added to Bills in the other place, and often that is in response to issues raised in this House. Indeed, if issues are raised in this House and Ministers say that they will take them away and consider them, clearly it would be absurd for the Bill not to be amended in the other place.

However, I think that it is important that this House does its job properly to avoid the other place using the refrain, as it frequently does—it is sometimes justified, but often not—that we do not do our job properly and that we always rely on it to do so. This House can and does do its job properly, and it does it increasingly well, for example because of the extra time that the Leader of the House often makes available for us on Report. I want to ensure that we step up to the plate and do not give the other place the opportunity to pretend that it has to do our job for us.

I support the motions and hope that the hon. Member for Nottingham North will take his concerns up with the Procedure Committee, rather than pressing his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

I am glad that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, who chairs it most ably, is showing once again his political nous in his attempts to corral us. I hope he is right and that, after this experiment, the Procedure Committee will be able to return to the matter and see whether it has achieved its purpose. If not, I hope not only that the experiment will result in a permanent change to Standing Orders, but that all of the third report’s proposals will be fully implemented.

[Mr Harper]

My intervention is likely to be more prosaic and not as poetic as that of my hon. Friend the Chair of the Procedure Committee. Having read the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, I am not as depressed as the hon. Lady, because all it said was that they did not agree with the suggestion for a proportionate and rigid allocation of time. They said they wanted to be able to exercise judgment on how to allocate the time and that a proportionate model would be complex and unwieldy. The sense I got from the Government’s response is that they want every group of amendments and all the major issues to be debated; they just do not want to do it in the mechanical way suggested by the Committee’s report.

[Helen Goodman]

We will hear whether that was the intention when the Deputy Leader of the House winds up the debate. What the Government actually said was this:

“The Chair would have to make rapid calculations on the number of minutes available per group in response to the progress of the...business”,

as if the Chair is not capable of doing some straightforward arithmetic. I know that education standards in this country are not what they ought to be, but I am absolutely confident that the Chair, supported, of course, by the Clerks, would be able to do that. The Government’s response also said that there is no evidence of a “systemic problem”, but there is a systemic problem, which is precisely why it is worth changing the rules of the game.

Business of the House

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman and the House will know that the development of the personal independence payment system is proceeding in stages and it is important that we get it right. It is geared to the needs of people with disabilities far more than the previous system, under which they were often not subject to assessment for years on end. I recall that the figures for those with life-limiting illnesses showed that a high proportion of those assessments had been undertaken. However, I will look at the figures and ensure that the Department for Work and Pensions responds to him. I am sure that we would be grateful to have the details of any particular case so that we can respond to it.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I listened intently to the Leader of the House’s impressive list of legislative achievements, and, following yesterday’s debate, I look forward to the Immigration Bill joining that list, which should really improve our immigration system. However, now that we have listened to the shadow Leader of the House for a number of weeks, will the Leader of the House remind her and the House that this House’s job is not just to be a legislation factory? It is important that we take time to debate important issues, have question sessions and hold Ministers to account as well as passing legislation.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The legislative achievement in the course of this Session has been impressive and the Immigration Bill and the Care Bill, which will, I hope, pass its final stages next week, will add substantially to that list of achievements. He is quite right, too, that our work goes beyond that. It has been depressing week on week to hear the shadow Leader of the House and other Opposition Members interpret debates nominated by the Backbench Business Committee and even their own Opposition day debates as of no consequence. Such debates are the essence of what we do in this place and the fact that in this Session we have been able to give the Opposition and the Backbench Business Committee more days than we were required to while securing Royal Assent for some 20 Bills by the end of the Session is a good use of parliamentary time.

Votes at 16

Lord Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion]

I thank the hon. Lady, and I recognise that point. Sixteen-year-olds may also join the armed forces, change their name by deed poll, obtain tax credits and welfare benefits in their own right, become a member of a trade union or co-operative society, and even become the director of a company. On top of all that, 16-year-olds in work are required to pay income tax and national insurance contributions, yet those 16-year-olds paying taxes are not allowed a say in how they are spent.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

Everyone, if their income is high enough, has to pay tax and national insurance. A child who has a sufficient level of income—who is, for example, gifted money by relatives—is eligible to pay income tax, but still has no say. To what level is the hon. Lady suggesting that we reduce the voting age?

[Sarah Champion]

I am not suggesting reducing the voting age below 16. I am suggesting 16 for the reasons I have already stated—that people may consent to sex, for example, and so are recognised as adults in other areas. Surely 16-year-olds having no say if they pay tax is not right. It reminds me of “no taxation without representation”, an expression, coined 250 years ago, that eventually led to the American revolution. I do not intend to start a full-scale revolution, but I hope that we trigger radical reform.

Moving away from the status quo is difficult, as history recognises. In 1918, votes for women was not a popular cause, but the minority who knew it was right paved the way for millions of British women, who have gone on not only cast to their vote, but regard doing so as the norm. Tracing history further back, much the same could be said of the Chartist movement, which fought for the vote for the working classes. Once again, at the time, that idea was regarded with animosity and was resisted, but society quickly came to see the opening up of the vote as fair and just. The time is right to open the democratic system even further, and to include 16 and 17-year-olds among the group of people who are able to vote. It would be a bold and pioneering move that would really show how far we have come as a country.

Since the debate was announced, I have heard from many 16 and 17-year-olds throughout the country on why securing the vote is so important to them, and particularly from the young people of the Rotherham youth cabinet, who went out of their way to come to my office last week to share their thoughts on voting at 16. At the meeting, Oliver Blake, who was previously our Member of Youth Parliament, said:

“I feel that the major issue preventing people from supporting the Votes at 16 campaign is that people say you’re not mature enough. I don’t feel that argument is valid. You have people at all ages who don’t use their vote wisely; you can see this by the number of people voting for extremist parties or joke candidates, but you don’t exclude them from using their vote. I want to be able to vote because I want a say in my future, and I know I’ll use that vote responsibly.”

Rotherham’s current Member of Youth Parliament, Ashley Gregory, expressed his desire to help choose his future by voting now. He believes that issues of direct relevance to young people, such as university tuition fees and education, demonstrate his case. At our meeting, he said:

“I find it difficult to hear MPs having conversations about what the level of tuition fees will be, how higher education is funded or even what curriculum we study in school without being…a legitimate part of that conversation. These are decisions that affect me, but I’m not allowed a voice on them.”

The arguments in favour of voting at 16 are varied, but each in its own right is strong, from the argument that allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote empowers them to engage with the political system, to the argument that young people voting would lead to a fairer and more inclusive youth policy. Furthermore, there is the argument that young people should not be expected to contribute to society through taxation as members of the armed forces, or by parenting children, without having a say in how that society is governed. Another persuasive argument is that the low turnout of younger people at elections might be dealt with by engaging them earlier in the political process. Taken individually, each of those arguments is forceful, but collectively they make a robust case for reform.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing the debate. It is a debate we have had a number of times in the House, and I have had the pleasure of speaking on most of those occasions. The hon. Lady will probably find it disappointing that I will not support her campaign for extending the voting age to children—those of 16 years of age—and I would like to set out for the House why.

It is a great pleasure to see the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) in his place. I have occupied the same seat as him in debates on the issue in the past. The Government do not have a settled view on the matter, because the two coalition parties do not agree. I will save him any embarrassment by explaining my party’s view. The Conservative party’s view is that we should not extend the voting age below 18. The Liberal Democrats believe that we should, and I expect that the Minister will set out the Government’s view and expand a little on his party’s view.

[Wayne David]

If the Conservative party’s position is as the hon. Gentleman says, why, in January last year, did the Conservative party not vote against votes at 16?

[Mr Harper]

I am a humble Back Bencher, and I do not speak for the Conservative party’s voting position. There have been several votes on the matter in the House. For example, in 2005, during the previous Parliament, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) proposed a ten-minute rule Bill, which I spoke against and opposed, and the House voted clearly against it. A private Member’s Bill, which I think the hon. Lady mentioned, was introduced in 2008 by Julie Morgan, the then Member for Cardiff North who is now a Member of the Welsh Assembly. That private Member’s Bill did not get support in the House; it was opposed by Members on both sides of the House, for very sensible reasons.

My arguments for opposing the extension of the voting age to children—those below the age of majority—have nothing to do with the hon. Lady’s straw-man arguments about people’s competence, intelligence or ability to reach a rational decision. My point is simple. We have to have a voting age, and some people will be on one side of that cut-off point and some people will be on the other. I think there is general agreement about that. The real question is where we set the age. My view is that the right age is the age at which we decide that someone moves from being a child to being an adult. That is the right cut-off point at which someone should be able to vote and make a serious decision about who governs their country.

One argument put forward by the hon. Lady and others who favour votes at 16 is to allege that in a range of policy areas 16-year-olds have certain rights. Some of the things that the hon. Lady set out were accurate, but several were not. People tend to set out half the story but forget to fill in the missing pieces, and my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) pointed out one of them. In England and Wales it is perfectly true to say that 16-year-olds can get married, but there is a significant qualification, namely that they have to have permission from their parents. We do not accept, therefore, that 16-year-olds are capable of making that important, life-changing decision; we say that they must have parental consent.

[Alex Cunningham]

As a Scotsman, albeit one who lives in England and represents an English constituency, it always interests me that 16-year-olds in England can make the choice to cross the border to Gretna and get married there. Do they not, therefore, have the choice after all?

[Mr Harper]

I was careful to say that that was the position in England and Wales, and not in Scotland. I am familiar with the law in Scotland, which is a matter for Scots. People in England and Wales are perfectly capable of going to any jurisdiction in the world to do various things that they are entitled to do there.

When it comes to joining the armed forces, the hon. Lady left out two important qualifications. First, although 16-year-olds can join Her Majesty’s armed forces, they cannot do so without the consent of their parents. We do not accept that 16-year-olds should be able to join the armed forces purely on their own say-so; we insist that their parents consent to that decision. Secondly, we do not deploy 16-year-olds in theatres of armed conflict. We make a clear decision, following on from the UN convention about child soldiers, that we do not deploy young people in conflict zones until they attain the age of 18. Those are two important qualifications.

[Sarah Champion]

I hope that I made it very clear in my speech that I was not saying that we were deploying 16-year-olds. I was merely saying that they were able to represent our country at an international level.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Yes, but the important point that I have made was that they are not allowed to join the armed forces without their parents’ permission, so we do not accept that they are able to make such decisions. I accept that there are some things that people can do at the age of 16. The age of sexual consent is 16, although there are two scenarios in which we do not accept that someone under 18 is able to make a sensible decision. In a case under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 of abuse of a position of trust, we make a distinction between those aged 16 or 17, and those aged 18 or over. We make a similar distinction about whether someone is able to consent to be in pornography. We say that they are unable to do so until they are 18, for sensible reasons of child protection that I very much support.

[Mark Field]

My hon. Friend is making an important argument. It is also the case—perhaps he will come on to this—in relation to the purchase and consumption of tobacco products. The trend has been in an upwards direction, with the threshold age now 18. Likewise, in relation to driving, there is now a strong lobby that suggests, perhaps for good reasons, that people should not be behind the wheel of a car on their own under the age of 18. My hon. Friend is making a positive case that there is no consistent move towards the age of 16. If anything, we are militating in the opposite direction, with many of the threshold ages moving towards 18 and the age of majority.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point; I was coming to that. I have been involved in this argument since I was elected to Parliament in 2005, and have heard many of the arguments used in favour of various ages of consent for various activities. He is quite right. It is interesting that in many cases the age has been going upwards, often for sensible reasons: we are saying that we want to protect children from certain activities and that we do not think that they can make sensible judgments on some issues. However, I find it interesting that those who are keenest on votes for 16-year-olds—those who think that 16-year-olds should be able to decide who governs our country—are often the same people who are keenest to say in many other areas that 16-year-olds are not able to make decisions, and to increase the age limit. My hon. Friend makes a sensible point, to which I will come in a moment.

The hon. Member for Rotherham discussed the school leaving age and people’s ability to go out to work. Again, the trend on that issue is in the opposite direction to the one that she proposes. We are now mandating education or training until age 18, although I recognise that that applies in England and not in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The driving age is one age limit that I, coming from a rural constituency, would rather keep at 17, because it enables children to be more mobile, especially those who have left school to go to work or those going into higher or further education. However, there are proposals to increase that minimum age as well.

We do not think that 16-year-olds should be able to purchase alcohol, but the age limit that has changed since I have been in Parliament, of course, is the one for purchasing tobacco, for sensible reasons. Personally, I have no problem with adults smoking. I do not think it is a pleasant habit, but I think that adults should be free to make the decision to smoke, although I would not do so myself. However, we think that we should protect children from tobacco, and we do not allow them to purchase it until they are 18. It would be a bit odd to say to children, “We don’t think you’re able to make a decision about smoking tobacco until you’re an adult, but”—to follow the hon. Lady’s argument—“we do think you’re able to vote for representatives who will make decisions about legislation.”

We do not let people gamble until they are 18, with the exception of playing the national lottery and buying certain scratchcards. Many film classifications still have an 18 certificate. We accept that there are many items of subject matter in films, videos and DVDs that we should not allow children to watch. Since I have been in Parliament, there has been an interesting debate—again, one of its proponents was someone who thinks that we should lower the voting age—after which the Houses of Parliament passed the Sunbeds (Regulation) Act 2010, in which we decided that those under 18 years of age were not capable of exercising a decision whether to have a tan or not. That may or may not be a sensible decision—I did not feel particularly strongly one way or the other—but I find it slightly odd that the same people who pass legislation saying that someone must be an adult to make such decisions think that we should lower the voting age. That is not very intellectually consistent.

[Guy Opperman]

I held a debate involving four high schools—Haydon Bridge, Ponteland, Prudhoe and Hexham—on that particular issue last month. It was won by Ponteland high school, whose students proposed the motion for 16-year-old voting, and who also swayed quite an elderly audience—with respect to them. I accept that my hon. Friend is my former boss, and normally I would obey everything he says, but on this issue, does he not accept that to a degree, whether or not the argument is won today, the tide is beginning to turn a little?

[Mr Harper]

No, I do not accept that. In a moment, I will counter what the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said by explaining why I do not think that the voting age is particularly significant to how Members of Parliament conduct themselves, or ought to conduct themselves, with regard to young people. I might touch then on my hon. Friend’s point. I will not labour any more of the arguments, but it is worth saying that the trend is against allowing younger people to make such decisions.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

rose—

[Mark Field]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I am spoiled for choice. I will give way first to the Minister, and then to my hon. Friend.

[Tom Brake]

On the subject of trends, my hon. Friend will know that in some cases relating to electoral matters, the trend is going in the other direction. The Electoral Administration Act 2006 lowered the minimum age for standing for election to the House of Commons and local authorities from 21 to 18, in line with the minimum voting age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

That is a good point. If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will come back to it, because I want to refer to what the Electoral Commission said about the voting age and the candidacy age.

[Mark Field]

My hon. Friend has set out the case well. To touch on what my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) just said, does he share my concern that there is a lot of cynicism involved in the argument? The perception of the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats is that they will reap some electoral dividend by being modern and allowing 16-year-olds to vote, yet there is little good evidence to suggest that the voting age should be reduced, other than the idea that those political parties will benefit from the votes of that young age group and that those of us who take the hopefully more balanced view that it is not necessarily in the interests of the electorate to be extended in that way will suffer from being seen as old and fuddy-duddy.

[Mr Harper]

I do not share that concern, for two reasons. My hon. Friend mentioned people’s motivations for change. I am perfectly happy to accept that the hon. Member for Rotherham is setting out a case that I have heard before from those in favour of the argument, and that it is reasonable. It is, of course, the case that certain people are in favour of allowing 16-year-olds to vote for one reason only; I am thinking of one particular First Minister of Scotland whose only reason for wanting young people to vote in the Scottish referendum was that he looked at opinion polling evidence from some time ago and thought that they would be more likely to vote in favour of Scottish independence. That is the only reason why he supported allowing them into the debate. Subsequently, of course, polling evidence showed that young people have changed their minds and are now opposed to independence.

That is why I am relaxed about the issue. First, I think that we should treat younger people with respect and argue our view, even if it does not necessarily accord with theirs. I think that we will actually get some credit for being prepared to say things to people with which they might not agree, but which we think are right. Secondly, to go back to votes for women, there were people on the left who thought that enfranchising women would mean that women voted for them. The lesson for our party—less true recently, but certainly true for the bulk of the 20th century—is that the enfranchisement of women meant that the Conservative party was in power when we otherwise would not have been if only men had had the right to vote.

[Guy Opperman]

On the Scottish referendum, I was in Aberdeenshire last September and was delighted to see that the youngsters proposing to vote were canvassed. Of pupils in the entirety of the Aberdeen schools, 75% were in favour of the Union. Surely, from a politician’s point of view, the lesson is to be careful what you wish for.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right. I will mention opinion polling, but it suggests that we should set out what we think is right and have some confidence that it will stand us in good stead, rather than make a cynical calculation of what we think people in some age group might or might not decide to vote for and take a view for that reason, which has a great likelihood of backfiring.



The reason why I have laboured the point about age categories is that if we do not set the voting age at 18 —the age at which we suggest that children become adults—I am slightly concerned about where we will set it. I know that the hon. Member for Rotherham is advocating that we set it at 16, but I am concerned that once we move it to 16, based on her arguments, there are no good reasons why we should not make it 14 or 10, for example. We say that 10 is the age of criminal responsibility, at which people may be held accountable for their actions, so why not 10, 12 or 14? I have met plenty of 14-year-olds in my constituency who are perfectly capable of listening to facts and arguments, making very good arguments themselves and making up their own minds. By the hon. Lady’s argument, there is no logical reason why I should not give them the vote. If we move away from 18, there is no obvious place to stop, which I think is a good reason for sticking where we are today.

[Sarah Champion]

Obviously I have not made my argument very clearly. In numerous fields, 16-year-olds are recognised as adults in law. The hon. Gentleman has shown some of the present anomalies. I would like to clear up those anomalies. It is precisely for that reason that I am arguing for votes in law. He looks confused, so let me give an example. People can have sex at 16 but are not allowed to watch it until they are 18—there are all sorts of anomalies like that, and we need to clear them up.

[Mr Harper]

Although I used to be a great fan of tidying things up, one of the things that I have learned in my time in politics is that life is quite complicated and that some of those anomalies exist for very good reasons. For example, although the hon. Lady said earlier that people can get married and have children at 16, and it is perfectly right that they can legally do so, I do not think there are very many people who would advocate doing so or say that, as a general rule, it is a good idea for 16-year-olds to get married and start a family. I think that most people would consider that 16 is rather too young for someone to do that.

Also, regarding the hon. Lady’s point about children having sex and watching sex, I hope that she is not suggesting that the age at which children can participate in pornography should be reduced. As I said, I am very happy that the age for that is set at 18, which is not the same as the age at which people may have sex, for very good child protection reasons. Again, the trend has been against any reduction in the age at which children can participate in pornography.

All of the rules on age may not be logical and tidy, but a lot of them exist for very sensible reasons. The hon. Lady says that she would like to tidy some of the rules up. Some of the arguments about increasing the age at which people can buy tobacco and do a whole bunch of other things—use sun beds, for example—were championed by her party. I am perfectly happy to accept that there are people who think that we should change the legal age for doing lots of things to a lower level, and if they want to reduce the voting age as well, that seems logical and consistent. However, I find it very odd that people who support raising the age at which we let people legally do things such as using sun beds and purchasing tobacco—it is perfectly sensible to hold that view—simultaneously hold the view that people should be able to vote at a younger age. It is not logically sensible to hold both those views; to do so seems to make no sense at all. If someone votes, they are making decisions about who governs the country, about tax rates, about where we deploy armed forces and about all sorts of important issues. If people think that young people are capable of making those sorts of decisions, I do not see how they can also say that young people cannot purchase a packet of cigarettes. That does not seem to make any sense at all.

Let me just pick up on the point that the Electoral Commission made, which has been mentioned. In 2004, the commission published the results of a review that it had carried out on the age of electoral majority; the review took 12 months and was pretty extensive, and it was set up under the previous Government. Having carried out that research, the commission concluded that the minimum voting age should stay at 18. That conclusion was based on international comparisons; on the minimum age limits and maturity, although as I have already said the maturity issue is not one that I am particularly focusing on; and on research that the commission had carried out among the public, which suggested there was strong support for keeping the minimum voting age at 18 and which also showed that young people themselves were divided on the question. I will come back to that last point in a moment, because I have a relevant story about it of my own; it is similar to that told by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), but has a different conclusion.

The commission also referred to voter turnout, although I have to say that the argument about voter turnout is not my strongest argument; just because people between the age of 18 and 25 turn out to vote at very low levels, that is not in itself an argument against reducing the voting age. Having said that, it is an odd argument that lowering the voting age will engage more people, because there is no evidence that suggests that 16 to 18-year-olds would turn out to vote in higher numbers than those aged between 18 and 25.

The commission recommended that the candidacy age should be brought into line with the voting age and thus be reduced from 21 to 18. That is a very sensible proposal. It seems to me that if someone is able to vote and make a decision about who their representatives are, they ought to be able to stand to be one of those representatives themselves. The House has debated the issue previously and I know that a number of younger people have been elected to local authorities, although no one under the age of 21 has been elected to the House of Commons. As I say, the suggestion seems perfectly sensible, but it prompts a question. If someone believes in reducing the voting age to 16, do they also believe that 16 to 18-year-olds ought to be able to be candidates at elections? I genuinely do not know the views of the hon. Lady and the Parliamentary Secretary on that issue; the hon. Gentleman might like to fill us in on what the Liberal Democrat view is.

Let me deal briefly with a number of the arguments that the hon. Lady made. The one that I thought was not very sensible was about the various previous campaigns about voting—for example, the campaigns to enfranchise women, first the campaign to enfranchise women generally, and then, of course, the campaign to reduce the voting age for women after they were enfranchised at a higher age level than many people wanted. That question arose when we were debating the private Member’s Bill on voting age. There is an obvious difference between enfranchising women and reducing the voting age. Unless something horrible happens, a 16-year-old will become an 18-year-old in due course and will then be able to vote. Women, who were unable to vote were never going to be anything other than women and therefore were never going to be able to vote. So giving the vote to women is qualitatively different from giving the vote to children, because a 16-year-old may not be able to vote today but will of course be able to vote in two years’ time.

That point relates to the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, who is no longer in his place, raised earlier. As an MP, like all hon. Members, I am sure, I visit youth projects and schools. I visit schools right down to primary schools, where I talk to very young children, and right up to secondary schools, including sixth forms, where there are students who are old enough to vote today. I treat all the young people I meet with great respect. First, I respect them in themselves; we debate and have arguments. Secondly, I am of course very well aware as an elected Member that if I am talking to a 13-year-old today, in five years’ time that person will indeed be casting a vote. When I was first elected to the House in 2005 and I went round schools, I was very clear that in 2010, when I would be seeking re-election, any 13-year-olds to whom I spoke would indeed have a vote and would be able to make a decision on my future.

Consequently, I just do not follow the argument that just because someone is not entitled to vote today that we pay no attention to their views, because we only pay attention to people who can vote. I pay attention to the views of all my constituents. Some of my constituents—for example, Jehovah’s Witnesses—do not vote because they choose not to, but I still listen to their views and take their arguments seriously. About 30% of my constituents chose not to vote at the last general election, but when people come to me to state their views on something, I never engage in a conversation with them about whether they are likely to vote for me. I treat everyone’s views with great respect and I am sure that that is true of all Members, so the idea that we do not listen to young people and we do not pay attention to what they think—that we do not think about tuition fees, education or similar things just because young people under the age of 18 are not able to vote—does not hold water.

We have to set the line somewhere, and I think that the right place to set it is the age of majority—the age of 18—when we basically decide that children become adults. That is where I think the line is best left. I do not think that that means that we do not engage with children in debates and arguments in schools and colleges; I and all other Members do engage with children in that way perfectly well. Also, those who campaign on this issue because they think that it will in some way pay an electoral dividend for them—I am not putting the hon. Member for Rotherham in that category—should, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, be careful what they wish for. If we treat young people with respect and engage them in the argument, they will have more respect for us than if we just agree with something that some of them think because we consider that it will make us more popular. As I say, I do not put the hon. Lady in that category. The voting age should stay where it is—at 18—and I am against what the hon. Lady is proposing.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. It might help right hon. and hon. Members to know that I would like to start the wind-ups at 10.40 am.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Bone, in a debate on what you rightly said was an important matter of constitutional significance. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing the debate and on her passionate speech. She is devoted to the issue and has often raised it in the House, and she had time this morning to set out her thoughts in full. I look forward to the Minister’s response, particularly now that it has been previewed by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) as reflecting both the Government view and the diametrically opposite Liberal Democrat view. We are all used to Liberal Democrat politicians expressing two opposing views at the same time, but it will still be interesting to hear how the Minister responds.

[Mr Harper]

I will not allow my views to be traduced. I was trying to be helpful to the Minister. He will set out the Government’s position, which is that they have not taken a view on either side of the argument because the coalition parties have different views on the subject. He will no doubt take the opportunity to set out the view of the Liberal Democrats as well. The two positions are not opposite, and I was trying to be helpful, as I always am.

[Mr Slaughter]

We will find out. I will resist provoking the hon. Gentleman because we have already heard quite a lot from him so far in this debate. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David); both Members are experienced on this subject, as they are, respectively, the former Minister and former shadow Minister with responsibility for constitutional reform. I therefore feel that my knowledge of the matter is somewhat limited, particularly as I am carrying the flag on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who unfortunately cannot be present because he had a long-standing commitment to chairing a conference on electoral reform. He is particularly keen on that issue, but also on lowering the voting age, and I know that he has been travelling up and down the country meeting young people to discuss the issue. He, the shadow Secretary of State for Justice—my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan)—and the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), have led on this agenda and are together putting the issue at the heart of the Opposition’s constitutional reform programme.

We are facing a deficit in politics that goes beyond the issue of young people voting. It would be easy to retreat from the problem, especially in the midst of a significant economic crisis, but it is not enough to do nothing and hope that the tide changes. It is essential that we seek to explore new ways of achieving democratic renewal and political reform. General election turnout in the UK has been on a downward trend since the 1950s, when 84% of the population turned out to vote. At the last election, the proportion was just 65%. As we have heard, membership of political parties has fallen off a cliff, spectacularly so in the case of the Conservative party, which is now at one thirtieth of its peak membership, but all political parties have been affected.

We deplore the fact that a majority of young people do not vote at elections yet decide to do nothing about it. I thought that some Members who intervened earlier and oppose voting at 16 were using that fact as a reason to justify doing nothing, rather than as a reason to take the matter more seriously. Youth is not automatically linked to apathy, and the reasons behind low turnout are complicated. My experience is that young people today are often highly political but wary of formal party politics. Many do not feel that politicians listen to their concerns or discuss their aspirations.

Bite the Ballot is a very good organisation that promotes young people voting, and one of its representatives commented:

“I would say the majority of young people don’t trust politicians.”

It is probably true that a majority of all people do not trust politicians, but that feeling might be particularly significant among the young, who are perhaps not so world-weary, slightly more idealistic, and therefore more shocked by the way in which politicians sometimes behave. People will have heard the exculpatory comments of Chris Huhne during his media exercise yesterday; I think we must all say that sometimes we politicians do not do ourselves any favours at all.

Sitting back, doing nothing and hoping that our young people vote is not enough. Opening up our democratic system to younger people is important and is a way to solve this problem. Rather than turning our backs, we must seek to improve the current democratic malaise by empowering young people.

Only 44% of those aged 18 to 24 voted in the general election. A recent survey found that only a third of 16 to 24-year-olds say they have an interest in politics. Compare those figures with the 76% of those of pension age who voted. The gap has almost doubled since 1970, when there was an 18 percentage point gap between young people and those of pension age, to around 30 percentage points.

There was a good article in the Daily Mirror this morning—there are always lots of good articles in the Daily Mirror—about this issue, although I do not know whether the Minister read it. It stated:

“Almost 60% of young people say they will not vote in the 2015 General Election”

and that the percentage of those intending to vote in the European elections is only 30%, although perhaps the latter is not so surprising. Those are poor figures and they appear to be getting worse. The response to that should not be to write off young people’s voting, but to take the approach that my party has taken. At the Labour conference, the Leader of the Opposition set out how we will seek to change the situation.

It is right to say that introducing votes at 16 is a radical proposal that has the potential to energise a new generation of politically active and engaged citizens. However, votes at 16 need to go hand in hand with wider youth engagement and a renewed commitment to citizenship education. The education participation age is rising to 18. By offering the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds at school, at college and in workplaces, we can intertwine civic duty with our education system. Conferring a democratic responsibility and opportunity on people still in compulsory education offers practical benefits. For example, on polling days, schools and colleges could have polling stations for students, making it more likely that this group would take advantage of the opportunity. That would be intertwined with Labour’s policy to empower schools to work with electoral registration officers to ensure that students are registered to vote.

The next Labour Government will create schools that nourish real civic duty and democratic understanding, as well as ensuring, of course, that teachers are qualified and all schools are properly inspected, and taking up other unconventional ideas that the Government do not appear to support.

It is important to note that only about half of young people aged 18 to 24 are registered to vote. If people vote once, they are more likely to vote again. The Social Market Foundation published research that found that the closer to an election an individual’s 18th birthday is, the more likely they are to vote. That demonstrated that people who turn 18 in the year leading up to a general election are significantly more likely to vote than those who turn 18 in the year after the previous general election and have to wait five years. Those who vote when young continue to vote. Over time, voting could become a rite of passage in our education system, like taking exams, but this will require a strengthening of citizenship education.

Almost 50% of the population of my constituency was born outside the UK. This is anecdotal rather than statistical evidence, but in communities in my constituency, there is often much greater political awareness and willingness to vote, and that is passed down from parents to children, whether because they value the vote more or because they are taking more of an interest in a country that they have come to relatively recently. If the same interest was shown more widely, that would help; it is achievable. Often, marginal decisions affect whether people vote. For example, we all know that making it easier to vote by post or by other means massively increases turnout.

The Labour Government made great strides with their introduction of citizenship as a subject in secondary school. Citizenship education should sit at the core of our curriculum, giving young people an understanding and deeper knowledge of, and interest in, civic issues. Votes at 16 would place renewed emphasis on this area for our schools.

Business of the House

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I can understand how the hon. Lady feels about the impact on her constituents. On those who will lose their jobs, ensuring that they can access new employment and, if necessary, retraining and the like is a responsibility for the Department for Work and Pensions. As for wider interests, and supporting the local enterprise partnership and local authorities in ensuring a broader economic development response, that is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but I will ask both Departments to contact the hon. Lady about the steps that they are taking.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I listened carefully when the Leader of the House announced the business for next Thursday. Perhaps he could add some time to the debate on the procedures of the House for discussing the Backbench Business Committee. He, I and the Chairman of the Committee could then explain to the shadow Minister for Europe, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), that it was not the Prime Minister who scrapped debates ahead of European Councils; this House unanimously decided, as a result of the Wright Committee recommendations, to give that time to the Backbench Business Committee. We could also suggest that having a debate before every European Council would not be welcome.

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, the House took an important and positive decision to give Back-Bench Members, through the Backbench Business Committee, the opportunity to assess the relative priority of debates. I am not sure of the view of shadow Leader of the House on the matter, but I hope that she might have a word with the shadow Minister for Europe, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), to make it clear that trying to revert to the past will actually undermine the independence of the Backbench Business Committee and of Members of this House.

Business of the House

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman is of course right, and Members across the House will share his concerns about the timeliness of the matter. I will, in consultation with my hon. Friends at the Department for Education, ensure that the House is informed as soon as possible, subject of course to the inquiry being carried out thoroughly.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will know that, a couple of days ago, the House agreed, without a Division, a programme motion for the Finance Bill. I had originally thought that that was a good idea, but having listened to him this morning, I think that perhaps another day’s debate would serve to remind the House that the Opposition voted against all of our excellent tax changes—our tax cut for working people and the freezing of fuel duty. An extra day’s debate to remind the British public of that might be a good use of this House’s time.

Business of the House

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will know that, contrary to some impressions, we have had difficulty scheduling a number of debates on the Floor of the House. I hope that the issue he raises can be considered in one of the European Committees very shortly.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I know that the Leader of the House has found time for debates on the Budget, but if he can find more time, I think that the full quotation he referred to earlier could be exposed more thoroughly. It was from a Labour party adviser, who said that

“you can’t trust people to spend their own money sensibly, planning for their retirement”.

He was an adviser at the beginning and end of the previous Labour Government, including several years in No. 10 advising Tony Blair. That sentiment says everything we need to know about that party and about the parties on the Government side of the House, because we trust people to spend their own money sensibly. The more times we say it, the better.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I wish that we had more time to debate the Budget, not least because the longer we debate it, the greater the chance that at some point we might find out what the Opposition’s alternative would be. I agree about the sentiments of the Labour party, as expressed in the claim that people cannot be trusted to spend their own money. That has been true in the past, is true today and, no doubt, will be true in the future.

Business of the House

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As always, large numbers of right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. I simply remind the House that we have a statement on school funding followed by two statements by Chairs of Select Committees on the reports of those Committees. We then have what I advise the House is a very heavily subscribed debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee on the badger cull. The consequence of all that is that there is a premium on brevity, and I ask colleagues to ask single, short supplementary questions without preamble, and for the Leader of the House to provide characteristically pithy replies.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000? My right hon. Friend will have seen yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgment, which from my reading seemed clearly to misunderstand what this House and the other place set out in primary legislation. I am glad the judgment will be challenged, but a debate would be helpful so that the House can fully understand who makes the law—this place, or judges.

[Mr Lansley]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it was a disappointing decision, and the Government will appeal it in the Supreme Court. We have been clear that preserving the confidentiality of communications between the Government and the heir to the throne is an important principle to be protected. Indeed Parliament endorsed that approach when it passed the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, amending the Freedom of Information Act. The case obviously relates to earlier papers, but the House is clear about that principle.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I was very pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer joined us because he is, along with many other Conservative members of this Government, one of the sponsors of this coalition Bill to reform the House of Lords.

I made it clear in 2007 that I thought that the most important relationship was between the Executive and Parliament, and that the Executive were too powerful. I am happy to reaffirm that now as a member of the Executive, as the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) also said. I still believe that, and I believe that what we are about here is making Parliament stronger to keep the Executive under control.

This coalition Government have made important reforms to strengthen this House of Commons. We implemented the Wright reforms, we have elected Select Committee Chairmen and we have introduced the Backbench Business Committee—not always a comfortable experience for the Government, but the right thing to do. This Session, we will introduce a House business Committee. Now it is time to get on to reform the other place, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) set out clearly in his speech and in his article in The Guardian exactly why we should do so—to make sure that a stronger Commons will make life more difficult for Ministers and make Ministers think harder about legislating. That was an argument that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House set out clearly, as well.

We have heard from many members of the Joint Committee. The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) reminded us in an excellent speech that we should pay attention to the views of our constituents. In a recent YouGov poll, 39% of the public said that the way peers are elected to—I mean get to—the House of Lords [Interruption.] I would be very happy to elect them. The public say that they do not like the way in which peers are currently selected. That is the top thing they do not like about our political system. Whenever people are asked in polls, the overwhelming majority want to elect a significant number of Members of the other place.

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

No, the right hon. Gentleman did not leave me any time to take interventions, so I am afraid I am not giving way to him. He spoke for far too long.

The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) set out clearly in his excellent speech the trends over the last decade whereby this Government have built on the work done by others, including the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). His White Paper of 2008 was similar to the proposals we have set out, which is why Labour Members will, I hope, support the Bill on Second Reading.

The proposal in the Bill is very simple—that those who make the laws should be elected. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) demonstrated beyond doubt in his example that Members of the other place influence and make the law. He and I, however, draw opposite conclusions from that. He draws the conclusion that we should keep an appointed House; I draw the conclusion that those Members make the laws, so they should be elected.

We have adopted a consensual approach. We established a cross-party Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, and when we finished that process, there were only three areas of disagreement with the Labour party. Labour Members wanted a referendum—we were very clear about that—they wanted 100% and not 80% of Members to be elected, and they preferred a list system to the single transferable vote. We have moved on the latter in a spirit of consensus, which I hope will be reflected.

[Mr Straw]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Harper]

No, I will not.

We then established a Joint Committee which considered our draft Bill for nine months, giving it exhaustive scrutiny. The Committee agreed with its central propositions, but recommended a number of changes, more than half of which we adopted. One of its most important recommendations was that the reformed second Chamber should have an electoral mandate. In a Division that was won by 13 votes to nine, nine Members of the House of Commons voted for an elected second Chamber and only one did not. That was a very clear result, and I think that we should accept it. [Interruption.] We will have a debate about the referendum in Committee. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will set out the next steps for the timing of the Committee debates—which will take place when the House returns in the autumn—during business questions on Thursday in the usual way, following what I hope will be a very clear and decisive vote in support of Second Reading tonight.

Let me now touch briefly on the proposed alternatives. Many Members have mentioned a Bill presented by Lord Steel. That Bill would achieve only two things. It would allow peers to retire, but even Lord Steel recognises that significant numbers are unlikely to do so without what he called a bronze handshake and what I call redundancy pay. I am afraid that, given the current financial times, our constituents would not understand it if we spent public money on rewarding some of the better-off members of society for leaving the other place, and without such payments the Bill would not achieve its objectives. It would also not remove any of those in the other place who have been convicted of criminal offences. On the basis of the two propositions that it advances, it will fail.

Finally, let me say something about the way in which we will proceed. The Leader of the Opposition said that he wanted the Bill to be out of the House of Commons in sufficient time for it to be debated seriously by the other place. The programme motion that we placed on the Order Paper, which will not be moved, would have meant our debating the Bill in the House of Commons until November. If the Opposition want the Bill to leave this House and go to the other place, they need to agree on a sensible number of days for debate. The only alternative is for Members to be willing to sit during the summer, or overnight, or for the House to do nothing but debate this Bill. That is not the right way in which to proceed. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) approached the matter in a constructive way by tabling an amendment. She did the right thing: she engaged in the debate.

I hope that, following the lead given by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, there will be proper negotiations between the usual channels, and we have allowed time for that to happen. I also hope that every Member who votes for the Bill’s Second Reading tonight and agrees to its principle will ensure that we can get it out of the House and into the other place and achieve reform, because I believe that there is a consensus in favour of that reform. We will test the opinion of the House tonight, and I am confident of the result. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Wayne David]

Like the Minister, I commend the programme agreed for Committee, which was sensible and appropriate—all hon. Members have had plenty of opportunity to air their support or concerns. I hope that that sensible approach is continued for the next constitutional legislation that we will discuss, namely the House of Lords Reform Bill, and that there will be plenty of time for Members to consider all the more important issues.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I do not want to risk your wrath, Mr Deputy Speaker, but will the hon. Gentleman tell us how much time he wants to debate that Bill?

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith]

There has been very little by way of explanation from the Minister in his response to the amendments that would give us any confidence in the potential alternatives to the annual canvass that have been repeatedly mentioned from the Government Benches. We have had references to alternatives that may be developed in the future, which may at some point in the future give the House the confidence to agree to a ministerial proposal to abolish the annual canvass. It would have helped the Committee in its deliberations if the Minister had outlined clearly what some of those alternatives might be.

As I indicated in my initial comments on the amendments, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), suggested previously in oral evidence that modified versions of the annual canvass could be available in the future. It would have helped the Committee if we had had more detail from the Minister about what some of those alternatives might be. It is clear that Ministers are thinking through some of these proposals. Nothing in what we have heard today gives us the confidence to believe that the part of clause 6 that gives the Minister the right to abolish the annual canvass is anything other than a threat to the democratic process in this country.

The Committee is being asked to agree something completely in the dark. In his response, the Minister indicated that in early 2014 there would be a full annual canvass, and I thank him for that. He also made it clear that it would be carried out in time for the European elections, which take place in June that year, as we understand it. The local elections in 2014 are likely to take place at the same time. He then indicated that the new individual registration process would commence shortly afterwards.

May I take it that the Electoral Commission’s recommendation is that the commencement date for the new IR process should be 1 July 2014? We have had no response to that, but from what the Minister said, there is clearly a plan to go ahead with implementation of IR in the late summer of 2014. However, no information has been laid before the Committee today and no commitment has been given that the data-matching pilots which are part of the legislation will be completed and evaluated by the Electoral Commission before commencement of the new provisions.

It is reckless to commit to a new system of electoral registration and to commit to commencement in 2014 when we have no certainty that the pilot schemes designed to test whether the new processes work will have been completed. It is the Opposition’s view that the new scheme for individual registration should be introduced only when the Electoral Commission is satisfied that it will guarantee a high level of completeness and accuracy. Nothing that we heard today gives us confidence that that will be the case.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made good contributions in which they described in detail the complexity of people’s lives and the impact that an annual canvass may have in reducing levels of completeness precisely because of those complexities. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham referred in particular to the problem of registering students.

Last week we had a debate about student registration. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) pointed out that there are 31,800 students living in his constituency alone. Without the annual canvass it is entirely possible, for all the reasons outlined in the debate, that registration in a constituency such as Sheffield Central could be substantially reduced. Given that the majority in Sheffield Central stands at only 165, it is obvious that before we make any radical changes to our electoral registration processes we should ensure that we have guarantees that any new system works properly, is based on sound evidence and is guaranteed and given the stamp of approval by the Electoral Commission.

We have heard a lot today about how the new system will work, but we have not heard the detail. We have had superficial reassurances that it will work, but we have heard nothing of the detail. We have had no significant reassurance on whether new systems will eventually be so robust that we will be able to abolish an annual canvass.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I wanted to check this information before I responded to the hon. Lady, but the assessment of the data-matching pilots to test the confirmation process by the Government and the Electoral Commission will be done by June 2013, well in time for us to have a clear picture before we commence the IER process.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the Minister for that, but can he confirm that all the data-matching pilots and necessary testing will be complete before the Government move ahead with the new scheme?

[Mr Harper]

The only one that we have to have tested before we move ahead is that to do with confirmation. The pilots that we will be doing, subject to the approval of Parliament, to see whether some of the data matching can help us to identify people not on the register concern things that we would want to know if we proposed to get rid of the canvass. As we do not propose to do that, we do not need to have that information before we move ahead with IER. We will know the results of the confirmation testing pilots by June 2013.

[Angela Smith]

The key point is that the new register, and the one used for the boundary review in 2015, will not be as complete as it should be, because those people carried over for the general election will not be carried over for December 2015. I therefore do not take a great deal of reassurance from that.

We have had a lengthy debate. The Opposition will not seek to press the amendment to a vote. We believe that the House of Lords will engage in a lengthy and detailed debate on the issues that we have raised today, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 7 and 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9

Piloting registration provision

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

You have been very lenient, Mr Weir, and have let me rabbit on for a few minutes.

I give the Government credit for their recognition of representations from both sides of the House, civic society, the police, the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy, the courts and so on. They have listened, but this was all unnecessary. If they had stuck to Labour’s 2015 timetable, we would not have been discussing the matter today and would perhaps have been discussing the economy, growth or other such issues.

[Mr Harper]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir.

I should acknowledge the very charitable comments—for him—made by the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). It was pleasant to have such a polite outburst, compared with some of his previous ones. I acknowledge straight away that he is right that we all have a responsibility to help get these matters right. As Members of Parliament, we are in a very powerful position when it comes to talking to our electoral registration officers, asking what they are doing and checking that they are doing everything that is necessary. The same applies to senior councillors. I often hear anecdotal evidence that EROs say that they have trouble getting the resources to do the job properly, but the EROs and returning officers are often the more senior officers in the council. Councillors are very interested in ensuring that the electoral register is done properly and we as Members of Parliament have an opportunity, which the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we should take, to ask EROs what they are doing. When the Bill becomes law, as I hope that it will, it will be incumbent on us all to talk to our EROs, to check that they are doing all the work and to ask how they are progressing in implementing the provisions.

I thank the hon. Members for Vale of Clwyd and for North Durham (Mr Jones) for what they said about the Select Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and the excellent work it did in pre-legislative scrutiny. I also thank the hon. Member for North Durham for what he said about our response to that scrutiny. There is not much point in its being done only for us to ignore all of it, and we made a number of significant changes before we introduced the Bill. I should also praise the hon. Gentleman for mentioning accuracy as well as completeness. They are of equal importance and the Government have focused on both.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

May I make a suggestion concerning the registration form? There should be a simple tick-box for people to register for a postal vote. In some cases, they have to register to vote, and on a different form register for a postal vote. A tick-box on the registration form would be much easier.

[Mr Harper]

Let me conclude my previous thought and I will come to that.

Some local authorities already use the register for the other purposes for which it can be used—for example, to run credit checks, or when people want credit for a mobile phone—as a positive method of encouraging people to be registered. This is where is it important to give EROs the power to consider their local circumstances. Depending on the area, depending how many people move, how often and the kinds of people, there are different messages that may work with different groups of people. The ERO should have the opportunity to do that. The Electoral Commission will be doing some work with us on this. When the commission suggests that certain things should be on the form and should be mandated, we have the powers to do that.

On postal votes and the point made by the hon. Member for North Durham, a separate form must be completed. In order to prevent fraud, people have to provide identifiers, such as date of birth and a signature for the electoral registration officer—[Interruption] The hon. Member for North Durham says, “On one form.” If we are moving towards allowing people to register electronically, a postal voter would still have to provide a hard copy signature, so the process cannot be made completely seamless. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Some local authorities may want to collect all the information, including date of birth, at one time. I will take his suggestion and see whether there is anything in our regulations which would prevent that. It may be one of the things that we can ask the Electoral Commission and some of our stakeholders to investigate to see whether that would be helpful for voters.

[Mr Jones]

I am grateful for the Minister’s response. I accept that a signature and date of birth are needed, but surely those could be provided on one form. That would save council administration and encourage people who want to apply for a postal vote to do so more easily.

[Mr Harper]

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, and, as I said, I will take it away and look at it. We will make sure that there is nothing that prevents such a suggestion, and we will also investigate it with our stakeholders, including the commission, administrators and a lot of the groups, particularly focusing on those who might find a postal vote helpful. We can perhaps trial some of that and see whether it is effective. That is a helpful suggestion from the hon. Gentleman.

Amendment 17 links Government Departments with responsibility for welfare payments, pensions, driving licences, revenue collection and national insurance with information about the electoral register. I agree with that up to a point and we will already be doing some of that. However, it would not be helpful to mandate that, given that most voters are already on the electoral register and quite a lot of people do not move about all the time. We do not want to insist on making every transaction with each of those Departments more complex. However, I agree with the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge about signposting and making that kind of linkage more effective.

The hon. Member for North Durham mentioned driving licences, and we are working with the Department for Transport on that. He also mentioned Directgov, and the Government Digital Service, which is working with us on developing the online registration tool, is also responsible for Directgov, so they will work seamlessly together. Where Departments deal with people who move about or new voters, we are considering signposting and giving people prompts. If we did that electronically and people needed only to tick a box, potentially they could be redirected straight to the site where they could register online. For some voters, that would be an effective way of driving up registration.

[Mr Jones]

Directgov would be a good system, because the identifier is down to the individual, and it allows one to do a whole range of things. To be able to register to vote through it, accepting that a form may be required to obtain a signature later, would be much easier for a lot of people, especially when they move house. A lot can be done through Directgov in one place, which is always useful.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes some good points. Once we have an online method of registering in the first instance, that will be very effective. It already works very well in a number of local authorities for re-registering each year. I have just received my form in my constituency of the Forest Dean and I was able to re-register in a matter of minutes on my BlackBerry, putting in the code and ticking the opt-out box for the edited register. That worked very smoothly and a confirmation e-mail arrived. Many local authorities already do that. What they cannot do, because they are not empowered to do so, is effect new registrations in that way. Once we can do that, many people will move to that, either doing it themselves, or, if they need assistance, through an assisted digital method. It is important that people have that assistance and I think that is where people will start going.

The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge, like Members beforehand, raised concerns about younger voters, particularly attainers—16 and 17-year-olds who get registered. I have been to Northern Ireland and seen how they register young people directly in schools. The chief electoral officer’s staff do a presentation, focusing on the civic side and the need to register to have a vote and to have one’s say, but they are not above looking at some of the other reasons that young people might want to be registered to vote, such as credit. Northern Ireland has a voter ID card and electoral staff run also through some of its practical uses, such as proof of age. Interestingly, as I have said in debates before, now that younger voters are engaged with directly, a higher percentage of them are registered to vote than in Great Britain, where we rely on mum and dad to do that.

So, I am a bit more hopeful. Having spoken to young people when I visit schools, as I am sure have many Members, I think that such direct engagement is a way to get them not just to register to vote but to use their vote. One of the depressing points is that young people, even when registered, are the least likely to cast their vote. In a sense, getting lots of people registered just to see them not vote is not very encouraging, so I think that we can all do a better job on that. However, as I said, I am more hopeful about younger voters engaging directly. There is some evidence that if we can engage with voters directly, rather than relying on one person in the household, we might all be pleasantly surprised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wayne David]

That is right. A balance has to be struck. We had hoped to debate whether the Government had struck that balance, but unfortunately we cannot come to that decision. Perhaps before the end of the debate the Minister will tell us what level of fine the Government have in mind.

[Mr Harper]

I want to say one or two words about the draft secondary legislation. I do not apologise for when I laid it in the Library, because we are not debating it; we are debating the Bill. I put it in the Library so that Members could see it. I know I said this last week, but I will repeat it, because the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) needs to think it through: I will take no lectures from him about secondary legislation. Two similar Bills delegating significant powers to Ministers on electoral matters were introduced in the previous Parliament. I shall tell the House when the previous Government published the secondary legislation. It never published any in draft during the parliamentary passage of the Bill. The first any Members saw of any secondary legislation was after royal assent. I have published the draft secondary legislation while the Bill is still before this House, let alone the other one, and I have said that the rest of the secondary legislation will be published by the autumn, before the Bill has finished its passage through the other place. It might not be perfect and we might not be paragons of virtue, but we are doing an awful lot better than the previous Government. He ought to think about that before makes that point again.

[Chris Ruane]

Does the Minister accept that the difference between the two previous Bills, which, I admit, were certainly not perfect, and this Bill is that the former were not highly politicised? The 2009 legislation had cross-party support, but this Bill is highly contentious. We believe it to be highly politicised and the Conservative party’s ticket to winning the next election and the one afterwards. There is polarity there, which is why we need to see the fine print.

[Mr Harper]

I am not going to labour the point—

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Mike Weir)]

Order. Before the Minister gets too far into this, let me remind the Committee that we are not debating the secondary legislation at this point. Let us debate what is before the Committee. The Minister can reply if he wants to, but I hope he will shortly bring us back to the main subject.

[Mr Harper]

That is a good steer, Mr Weir. Let me make the point in passing that the 2009 Act to which the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) referred was not uncontroversial. We voted against it by way of a reasoned amendment because it did not include provisions on individual electoral registration. They were put in only when the Bill went to the other place, so I think we have done very well. Let me clarify what we have done. We have added to the secondary legislation and put in provisions setting out the steps the registration officer should take before insisting on a penalty and we have set out some information about the penalty, to which I shall return in a few moments.

Let me explain, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned it, that “agile methodology” is a way of developing information technology—the way it is done in the private sector—in order to avoid complicated and massive IT systems that cost a fortune, do not work and then have to be scrapped. We have learned much from how the previous Government operated; this is the way in which this Government will develop IT systems, and I think that they will be much more successful.

Picking up on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), let me be clear from the beginning that we are talking about registration; we are absolutely not talking about imposing a penalty for not voting. Voting is voluntary and it will remain voluntary. While this Government are in office, there will be no proposals to change that. I am always disappointed when people do not vote, but they absolutely have the right not to, and it is our job as politicians to give them reasons for going out to vote or use their postal vote and to ensure that there is no obstacle to their doing so. If they do not vote, it will be because we have not given them sufficiently compelling reasons either to vote for us or against us, depending on their point of view. That remains the case.

It is worth setting out—it is a bit of a stand part debate, but it is relevant to the amendments—how we have arrived at this point. Members will know that it is not now and will not be in the future a specific offence not to register to vote in the first instance. The current position is that if people do not respond to the household form or, indeed, other inquiries that the electoral registration officer makes—this is the current way of getting on the electoral register—it is a criminal offence with a penalty of up to £1,000. We have no plans to change that; it will remain in place.

The question we faced with the invitation to register was whether to have a penalty. The hon. Member for Caerphilly is quite right that when the draft Bill was first published, it did not include a penalty. Several hon. Members have touched on the public policy reasons justifying a penalty. Some aspects of registration affect other people. First, the register provides the source of jurors, and it is important to have balanced juries made up of a proper cross-section of adult electors. Secondly, electoral registers can affect boundary changes—not just parliamentary boundary changes, but local ones as well, as highlighted by several hon. Members. That is why we decided it made sense to have a civil penalty, which was also in response to the Select Committee’s report and some of the evidence that was taken.

As for the amendments—the Select Committee’s amendment 33 and amendment 14 from the hon. Member for Caerphilly—regardless of the amounts specified, I do not believe it sensible to put the civil penalty directly in the Bill, as this would be better done through secondary legislation. I hesitate to correct the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Select Committee, but these matters are not at the diktat of the Minister. All the Bill’s powers are made by Ministers, but they all have to be approved by way of affirmative resolutions by both Houses. There is proper parliamentary control over the exercise of that Executive power.

I hope that both hon. Members will withdraw their amendments; as I said, it is not appropriate to put the figures directly on the face of the Bill rather than implement them through secondary legislation. As for how we get to the figure for the penalty, I am afraid that the hon. Member for Caerphilly is going to remain disappointed for today, as I do not propose to pluck a figure out of the air. The process we want to adopt is one that we have done all the way through—we are going to listen to people. We have explained how we will go about this. We think that the analogy with parking fines is sensible. The hon. Member for Caerphilly observed that there was a range of parking fines across the country, but the range is fairly narrow. A parking fine is not £500; it is about £40 at the lower end and £130 at the higher end.

There are some good arguments in favour of setting the fine at the higher level, for instance to reflect the importance of the matter and to ensure that it is a proper deterrent, but there are also arguments in favour of setting it at the lower level. Unlike the £1,000 fine issued by magistrates who can take into account the circumstances of voters—both the extent to which they believe them to be culpable and their financial resources—this will be a fixed penalty. It should also be borne in mind that although the criminal penalty involves a maximum fine of £1,000, the fines that are actually issued are usually much lower. During the 2011 canvass, the London borough of Hounslow successfully prosecuted 10 people for not providing the information required, but the average fine issued was £125. That was because magistrates were able to take various factors into account. This penalty will be fixed throughout the country, and when it is issued it will not be possible for the electoral registration officer to alter it.

We have listed a number of factors that should guide the arguments in favour of a higher or lower level, given broadly the same range as that which applies to parking fines, and we will do some targeted work with our stakeholders and consider their responses. I suspect that some will favour a reasonably high number for encouragement purposes, while others will be a little concerned about the potential impact.

I have listened carefully to the arguments that have been advanced today. I think that the hon. Member for Caerphilly’s proposal is at least in the ball park of the parking fine system, while the figure suggested by the hon. Member for Nottingham North on behalf of his Select Committee is rather on the high side. We will draw our conclusions, and Members will be able to see what we have come up with.

I should also say, in response to a point made by both the hon. Member for Caerphilly—who referred to the impact assessment—and the hon. Member for Nottingham North, that this is not the first course to which electoral registration officers should resort. We do not want them running around the country handing out fines like confetti; indeed, in an ideal world we would not want fines at all.

Those who receive parking fines can usually reduce them by paying promptly, but they cannot reduce them to zero. In this instance, everyone who incurs a civil penalty—and we hope that the number will be no more than the 100 a year or so who incur criminal penalties—will be able to reduce the amount to zero by registering to vote. If they register as a result of incurring the penalty, the electoral registration officer will be able to waive it. The purpose is to persuade people to register, not to issue fines. The Bill will prevent registration officers from keeping the money, so that they are not tempted, and so that people do not think that they are issuing the fines in order to use them as a revenue generation exercise, which would be just as bad.

We will specify—and have set out in draft regulations—what registration officers must do. They must issue the invitation, send reminders and send a door-to-door canvasser, and they must be satisfied that the individual has received the invitation and still resides at the address involved. Only when they have done all that can they tell people that they will issue a notice, and that if they do not register after that, a penalty will be incurred.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Minister touched on an important point earlier. He will know that some London boroughs, in particular, have given parking attendants an incentive to issue tickets by offering payment by results. Will he include in secondary legislation a methodology that would preclude such activities in areas where the level of registration is usually low in the first instance, so that there is no incentive to fleece the taxpayer?

[Mr Harper]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was present when I said this, but we have included in the Bill the important provision that any revenue from fines does not go to the ERO and is not kept by the local authority. It must go to the centre. The purpose of the fines is to encourage people to register to vote, not to generate revenue for local authorities. Therefore, the process of issuing a penalty will come with a cost to, and a burden on, the local authority. We do not want this to become a means of revenue generation for local authorities, as some people think is the case in respect of parking and speeding fines. I am confident our proposals strike the right balance.

[Chris Ruane]

Many constituencies with large numbers of unregistered voters cover some of the poorest areas of the country, where cuts in other areas will loom large. EROs will be under a lot of pressure. If they legitimately raise finance through fines, should they not be allowed to keep a proportion of that, to reflect the additional work they will have to do? Will every step be monitored? Further, will there be an increase in bureaucracy, and if so, how will it be paid for?

[Mr Harper]

I shall make two points in response to the hon. Gentleman’s questions. First, some of our stakeholders are concerned that many people who are not registered to vote may well be poorer people; they do not want people without much money being hit with fines and being financially penalised. We thought about this matter when drafting the legislation, and my view was that it was better to make sure there was not a financial incentive. Everyone who gave us feedback, including EROs, said they wanted a penalty. They do not want to issue any penalties, however; rather, they want to be able to write a scary notice on the form saying, “If you don’t do this, something will happen, so you can’t just ignore this form and put it in the bin.” That goes back to a point made by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams).

We will work with the Electoral Commission on how to set out the description of the penalty so that it has the desired effect. It will test that in the design of forms, through user testing. If we come up with forms that are effective in this regard, we will be able to make it mandatory that they are used, which is important because at present authorities do these things in a variety of ways.

[Chris Ruane]

On this question, may I refer the Minister to the example set by Denbighshire county council, which stated in the middle of its form for registration, “If you do not fill this form in, you will be fined £1,000”? The warning has to be prominent and at the centre of the page, so that the recipients of these forms clearly understand that they must fill them in.

[Mr Harper]

The Electoral Commission will consider such issues when addressing the design of the form, and I am sure the points the hon. Gentleman raises will be taken into account.

Having set out why I do not think the level of the fine should be stated in the Bill, and having drawn attention to the draft secondary legislation and the approach we plan to take in coming up with that figure—rather than just making it up, we will listen to what stakeholders have to say—I hope the amendments will be withdrawn so we can allow the clause as currently drafted to stand part of the Bill.

[Mr Allen]

First, may I name-check another member of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), for her attendance and contribution? She made an epic contribution, and she was extremely helpful to me when I was indisposed, in making sure the Committee carried out its scrutiny duties effectively. Secondly, may I give credit to the Government, as they have moved on this issue? At the outset, there was not to be any fine whatever, and it takes courage, and some cost, to listen, and the Government should be commended in this Chamber and outside it for having done so. There is more to do, of course, but we are now in a position from where we can move forward.

There were a couple of references in the debate to Robert Caro’s mammoth biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, from a very difficult position, became the leading promoter of civil rights, including civil rights legislation. At the beginning of those enormous volumes, the scene is set by a black woman in the south seeking to get registered to vote. We need to remember, particularly in discussing registration and clause 5, that she was prohibited from participating in the democracy of the United States not by being prevented from voting, but because she could not even register in order then to participate in the voting process. That is why this clause is important, and why I hope the Minister will listen to the arguments that have been made tonight. In order to ensure that he listens even more carefully than he normally does, I will withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Schedule 5

Transitional provision to do with Part 1