Oral Answers to Questions
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I of course acknowledge that there is a great deal of unease on both sides of the House about how IPSA is operating in practice, which is why it is right that its working practices should be reviewed and, where possible, strengthened and improved. However, the fundamental principle that the administration of our expenses, pay and so on is independent remains exactly right in the wake of the terrible damage done to the House by the expenses scandals in the last Parliament.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
On Lords reform, does the Deputy Prime Minister think it right that those who give large donations to political parties find their way to the House of Lords?
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Laing
No, not at all. I appreciate the political point that the hon. Gentleman seeks to make, but that would make no difference because the Conservative party throughout the United Kingdom as a whole obtained considerably more than 20% of the popular vote, and in some places, such as Epping Forest—I am very pleased to say—a mere 54%. The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly good point, but it would be a pity to take up the time of the Committee looking in detail at the percentages involved. My purpose in putting the issue before the Committee is to address the serious concerns relating to exclusive cognisance, which were put to the Select Committee by the Clerk, whose opinion on the matter we take very seriously. The Committee, too, should esteem the Clerk’s opinion and recognise his concerns, and this is an opportunity for Members to consider them.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Is the hon. Lady aware of the various bids for independence from Conservatives south of the border made from time to time by Conservatives in Scotland? The point made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) might hold: the proposals could lead to the exclusion of the solitary, lonely Scottish Conservative figure on the Government Benches.
Mrs Laing
It is kind of the hon. Gentleman to stand up for my right hon. Friend, as I do frequently, but my right hon. Friend is not, of course, the leader of a political party in the House. The Prime Minister is leader of the Conservative party, with a large proportion of the popular vote throughout the country behind him, and undertakes that task very well indeed.
Mr Straw
I am glad to have the hon. Lady’s endorsement.
As we know, that was precisely the reason why, miraculously, of all the numbers that the coalition partners could have chosen, they originally alighted on the trigger level of 55%, because it would have given neither partner the ability to force an early general election against the wishes of the other.
Mr MacNeil
The right hon. Gentleman says that there is no prospect of a general election for a number of years, but may I mischievously suggest that he shows greater faith in the coalition partners than they show in themselves and each other?
Mr Straw
I would like to have such faith. My faith in the Conservative party’s ability to pursue its own interests and survival and to consume other, minor parties—mainly ones beginning with ‘L’—is always high. My faith in the Liberal Democrat party’s ability to secure its own survival was never particularly strong and has completely plummeted following the coalition deal. Shortly after the election, a Conservative peer told me—literally licking his lips at the prospect—of how he would happily predict that the parliamentary Liberal Democrat party would go the same way as previous Liberal parties, once they had been embraced by the suffocating hug of the Conservative party, and disappear for a number of decades into oblivion. I am glad to see that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is, if not quite licking his lips, smiling in approbation at the prospect.
Mr Straw
I am sure that that is a matter for the Chair, but I was simply trying to provide a comprehensive answer to the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke).
If we have a fixed-term Parliament, then of course the power of the Prime Minister to call an election is very significantly modified. I am concerned about the rights of this House. This House works by passing legislation, and all other matters, on the basis of votes by a simple majority. If we had a written constitution, which I am not against, we could have a separate debate about whether there should be some means or other of entrenching certain basic provisions. We are doing that in practice for some, but not others, by way of referendum, and for some, but not others, by way of convention and cross-party consensus. Meanwhile, however, regarding how this place works and good governance, we operate on the basis of a simple majority.
What we should be doing in the Bill is laying down a fixed term—I would prefer it to be four years, but it is going to be five—and then accepting the reality that circumstances could arise in which a Government of the day lost the confidence of the House. There is no alternative to that. No new Prime Minister could suddenly pop up and regain the confidence of the House. That being the case, there has to be an election, as happened after four and a half years of the ’74 to ’79 Government. It seems to me that those should be the only circumstances that should trigger an early election. I do not want there to be provision whereby, by some method or another, whether it is by a majority of a half, 55% or 67.5%, a package of Members can be got together in order to hold a general election. Nor do I think that those provisions would ever be used, because they are so complicated. There is no point in our passing legislation that has no significant purpose.
Mr MacNeil
I am genuinely listening with an open mind to what the right hon. Gentleman is saying about a simple majority in Parliament. However, how can we control a Prime Minister who has a majority in the House and whips his party to vote for his will? How can we maintain the power of the Parliament when the Prime Minister controls parliamentarians through the Whips?
Mr Straw
No, it would not. There is nothing in paragraph (c) that would, in law, prevent a Prime Minister from being party to an arrangement to secure his own demise and go for a general election. If these provisions go through, there will be nothing, in law, that can be done about that theoretical possibility.
Professor Robert Hazell, in evidence to the Lords Constitution Committee, made a very pertinent comment on this point when he said that political incentives should prove a force for stability. Whatever may have been appropriate in Germany in one very unusual case where the Chancellor did indeed arrange to move a motion of no confidence in his own Government, the prospect of a Prime Minister of this country coming to the House to move a motion of no confidence in his own Administration without suffering immediate popular and parliamentary derision, and a significant loss of votes at the poll that would then follow, is fanciful.
Mr Straw
I accept what the hon. Gentleman says and thank him for the compliment.
I have a number of rules that I try to follow in politics, one of which is that fancy tactics never work. This is a fancy tactic. I am sorry to say—it is not that I have anything personal against them—that one can see the Liberal Democrats, who were, as described by one of their members, a perpetual Opposition think-tank until they suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves in government, thinking up this wheeze on the basis that because it had happened in Scotland and, no doubt, in Latvia or Leichtenstein, it would work here. However, we have a more direct system of democracy; we may criticise, and I hope that we do. [Interruption.] I hear someone referring to Scotland. I happen to think, on reflection, that the relevant section in the Scotland Act is redundant, but different considerations applied at the time. One consideration—I mean this in no disobliging way to Scottish colleagues of all parties—is that the Scottish Parliament is a creature of this House, legally, whereas we have to be responsible for our own rules.
Mr Straw
It is the first time that I have ever been thanked for anything by a member of the Scottish National party. I hope that next April and May it says on every leaflet how deeply grateful the SNP is for the possibility and opportunity to serve in a Scottish Government and to enjoy all the rewards that have come its way from the money that the British people, of all parties, have provided.
Mr MacNeil
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the higher the percentage of parliamentarians required to trigger an election, the less likely it is that any Prime Minister will call an election of choice, because it will be more difficult for them?
Mr Straw
If a Prime Minister really wanted to call an election of choice, they would not worry about the two-thirds majority requirement, because they would be very unlikely to get it. They would instead go for a motion of no confidence.
By legislating for a fixed-term Parliament, we will establish a clear political norm that Parliaments last for five years. Leaving aside the argument about whether the term should be four or five years, I happen to support that principle, and I believe that is where the British people are. However, if the confidence of the House is lost, or the Government of the day simply give up and vote for a motion of no confidence, there must be an election. In the absence of that, there should not.
I have arranged to go and sit in Westminster Hall at 4.30 pm to listen to a debate on a matter of interest to all Members from east Lancashire. If this debate is not concluded by then, I hope I may be excused.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is true not only of his party but of the Liberal Democrats, who said that they were in favour of a fixed-term Parliament although there was no reference in their election material or manifesto, or in any of the speeches made by the now Deputy Prime Minister, to any provisions for determining when an election might be held or for introducing a super-majority. When their lordships consider this legislation, it is important that they bear in mind the fact that the conventions relating to matters that are adumbrated in a general election manifesto simply do not apply in this case. There is absolutely no electoral mandate for this provision.
The aetiology of clause 2 is pretty straightforward. It comes from the coalition agreement. I know that the hon. Member for Epping Forest is keen, for her own reasons of propriety, to stick to voting for proposals that are in the coalition agreement. However, she has complete freedom in relation to today’s amendments, because these provisions are not mentioned in the agreement. It states:
“We will establish five-year fixed-term Parliaments. We will put a binding motion before the House of Commons stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, we will legislate to make provision for fixed-term Parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”
I completely agree with the articles that were then written by several Members, the most impressive of which was probably that by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and published in The Daily Telegraph. In it, he stated:
“The requirement for a 55 per cent majority to dissolve parliament, and thereby dismiss a government, dramatically reduces the ability of Parliament to hold the executive to account.”
If that was true of a 55% requirement, it is even more true of a 67% requirement. Moreover, that requirement would involve 67% of not only those who voted but of all the seats in the House, even those that were vacant at the time and also, presumably, those of the Deputy Speakers and the Speaker, who would presumably not be allowed to vote. Those seats would therefore automatically be included with those who had voted against holding an early general election.
There is absolutely no mandate for the provisions in clause 2. I believe that it will entrench the powers of the Executive, rather than releasing their grip on Parliament. An important point has been made by several hon. Members, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Home Secretary—I could list all his jobs as he has held almost every job in the Government apart from Prime Minister; perhaps that will come one day. They pointed out that the clause introduces a new super-majority, which is alien to the processes of this House. There has never been a super-majority provision. The provision is introduced by statute rather than through the Standing Orders, so again it is the Executive forcing their will on the House rather than the House taking this forward.
Mr MacNeil
Philosophically, this change has come about because of the practice of Prime Ministers choosing to go to the country at a moment that suits them and their political party rather than the country or anybody else. Margaret Thatcher did this and plenty of other Prime Ministers have done it. How does the hon. Gentleman square the circle of getting away from that rotten practice and moving towards a fairer and more equitable practice?
Chris Bryant
The most important element of the Bill as a whole is the introduction of a fixed term. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I would prefer a four-year period, but it is five years in the Bill. The presumption should be in favour of a fixed term. It is absolutely right that the Prime Minister should no longer have the power to dissolve Parliament and that the Dissolution should rest solely with Parliament rather than with the Prime Minister. To achieve such a handing over of power, we also have to change the prerogative power to prorogue Parliament. Otherwise, it would be perfectly simple for a Prime Minister who wanted to ensure an early general election—for whatever set of reasons—to bypass the two thirds majority required in subsection (1), to engineer a vote of no confidence and then to prorogue Parliament immediately so that no vote of confidence in another Government could be called.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the workings of this place, whereby a Prime Minister could simply use his Whips to whip his party and secure a simple majority. How is that circle to be squared? We could say that in one sense Parliament has the power, but in another sense it does not if the Prime Minister can use his Whips to dragoon his parliamentary party into having an election. [Interruption.]
Chris Bryant
The Deputy Leader of the House is chuntering away. I think he is trying to talk to you, Mr Hoyle, because he keeps on saying that I am out of order and that I am not speaking to the right part of the clause. Perhaps he could have his conversation with you privately.
The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is absolutely right in one sense. We have to achieve a balancing act. This House needs to exert its power through its majority to hold the Government to account and, if necessary, to sack the Government. In most circumstances, that has happened when a political party has splintered or when a leader of a party has proved unable to control his or her troops—his, in most cases—through the Division Lobbies. We have seen that happen with the Irish Home Rule Bill and with the Budget at different times, leading to a collapse of confidence in the Government on the Government side and the subsequent fall of that Government. I think that we should still stick with that process.
In case hon. Members feel that in recent times motions of no confidence—and particularly successful motions of no confidence—have been pretty rare, it is worth pointing out that we should look at a longer period of history than just the last few years if we are to set out constitutional change that will stand the test of time. We have no way of knowing what will happen to the political parties, as presently constituted, in five, 10, 15 or 20 years’ time.
Looking back over the last 150 or so years, we find that no confidence motions have been used quite regularly and have frequently led to the collapse of Governments. Lord North’s Government, for example, fell in 1782. There was also a sustained period in which no confidence motions were common from 1885 onwards; indeed, there were two such motions in 1886, when first Lord Salisbury’s Government and then Gladstone’s Government fell again on the issue of Irish home rule, which divided the Liberal party—
Chris Bryant
We will undoubtedly discuss the Speaker’s certificate when we deal with later amendments.
The Government have relied for their provision on calling a general election on the fact that there are similar provisions in the Scotland Act 1998. It is true that that Act provides for an early general election when, and only when, there is a super-majority among those voting. However, as I tried to explain to my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, the two measures are completely different. The presumption in the Scotland Act was that it would be virtually impossible for any one political party ever to have a majority in the Scottish Parliament. Incidentally, the Act also contains a provision that is entirely different from the provision in clause 1: it provides that the date of the next general election, if there is one in Scotland, will not be changed at all.
Moreover, the provisions in the Scotland Act mean that if there is no First Minister—which is the equivalent of no one being able to gain a motion of confidence on a simple majority—a general election must follow in any event. That, in my view, clearly invalidates the super-majority process, which I think will be used very rarely in the Scottish Parliament.
The problem with the provision in clause 2 relating to a super-majority is that either it is profoundly dangerous because it removes Parliament’s power to hold the Government to account, and to be able to sack the Government or the Prime Minister, or it is otiose, because a Prime Minister who wanted to ensure an early general election at a time of his or her own choosing would simply engineer a motion of no confidence or, for that matter—as there is no determinant for what counts as a motion of no confidence—table a motion of confidence in which the Government then chose not to vote. The Opposition would almost certainly vote against the motion of confidence, and an early general election would follow.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Scotland. An election called by the Scottish Parliament during the period of that Parliament would not necessarily reset the clock. An election would still take place, say, a year or two years later. I understand that here the clock would be reset. There is clearly an incentive to go to the country at different points which does not exist in Scotland.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for echoing a point that I made three minutes ago. I still agree with the point that I made three minutes ago, and I now agree with the hon. Gentleman, which is great. We are gathering support in the debate, which is very exciting. I hope that he will support the same amendments as me.
My problem with amendment 33 is that it places all the power in the hands of the party leaders. That is a profound problem, as I hope we are moving into a period when Parliament finds more opportunities to take its destiny into its own hands. I hope various measures that have already been introduced will help in that, and will revitalise the role of Back Benchers and therefore make it possible for not everything to be decided by the party leaders. That is an important principle, and it is why we do not support the amendment—although I realise that the hon. Member for Epping Forest will not press it to a Division in any case.
Chris Bryant
I wonder whether I can carry the hon. Lady a little further into even greater acts of agreement. Bearing in mind the stricture she has set herself of not opposing anything that is in the coalition agreement, she should feel free to support us in respect of later amendments on the two-thirds majority, unless she has found some other reason not to do so.
We have tabled one amendment to clause 2: amendment 21. The clause provides for the calling of an early general election, but it does not specify what “early” means in that context. It does not state whether the motion that could be moved in the House would say, for instance, “This House calls for a general election in the autumn of next year,” and if so whether that means the general election would be held next autumn or prior to that, as current legislation still allows for the precise date of a general election to be set by royal proclamation, which would obviously be on the basis of advice from the Privy Council, and therefore would in practice come from the Prime Minister.
Therefore, the Bill as currently drafted lacks clarity in this respect. That is why we have suggested that the clause should refer to an “immediate” rather than an “early” general election. That fits with amendments we have tabled to other provisions saying the power to determine the precise date of the general election should not be left to the Prime Minister, and that instead the date should be set.
Chris Bryant
In a moment.
Once the Speaker’s certificate has been certified or provided, the general election should be held on a specified date as provided for in legislation, rather than one decided elsewhere.
Mr MacNeil
Will the hon. Gentleman define precisely what he means by “immediate” in this context?
Chris Bryant
Again, the hon. Gentleman is catching up with me; I explained that in my last sentence, but he had already sought to intervene. What I was trying to say was that under amendments we have tabled to other parts of the Bill, the election would take place on the sixth Thursday after the day on which the Speaker had issued the certificate, whereas the clause states that the general election will be held on the date provided for by royal proclamation—I presume under the Great Seal—as advised by the Privy Council, and therefore, effectively, determined by the Prime Minister. I presume those measures have been put in place so as to stick with the current timetable for general elections, which is six days after Dissolution for the close of nominations and 11 days after that for the day of poll, but perhaps the Minister will confirm whether that is the case. If we are putting other provisions on to the statute book, there is no reason why we should not be able to provide in statute the precise day on which the general election would take place. That is my definition of “immediate”.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was right in saying that he did not consult the Opposition in tabling his amendment. I have to confess that he got to the Table Office about 20 minutes before we did, so I am afraid that on this occasion we have had to row in behind him. Whereas we disagree on many issues, on this issue we simply agree. Either the provision of a super-majority for the calling of an early general election is dangerous or, like Z, it is the unnecessary letter—it is otiose and is not necessary in legislation. The hon. Gentleman’s amendment would remove the super-majority. It would return us almost exactly to the provisions of the South African constitution and allow for an early election on the basis of a simple majority, even though South Africa has fixed-term Parliaments, which have been pretty much adhered to since 1994.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Jonathan Edwards
I shall try to address those points later in my speech. I think that I addressed some of them in my answer to an earlier intervention.
If four years is good enough for a local councillor, why should an MP be given any longer without once again putting themselves up for election to secure a democratic mandate? The argument has been made that, because the current system allows for up to five years between elections, that should be set in stone as the new norm, but that hardly seems proportionate or common sense. When there is a range of options, it is not normal to go for the most extreme, because more moderate measures make greater common sense and attract greater consensus, especially in this Chamber. Let us be honest: amid the rushed and hasty constitutional changes that the Con-Dem Government have been steamrollering through, consensus, consultation and a genuine attempt to reach cross-party agreement have, unfortunately, been greatly lacking.
A fairer litmus test of how long a fixed-term Parliament might be is the average length of time between elections. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who I am glad to say will break with tradition tonight and, I hope, vote for an amendment in the name of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party, noted on Second Reading,
“the average length of a peacetime Parliament”—
going all the way back to the Great Reform Act of 1832—
has been three years and eight months.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 625.]
That is a very important point.
Similarly, as Robert Hazell of University college London’s constitution unit noted in his written evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, although the balance of Parliaments has been between four and five years, those that went the whole term were those governed by Prime Ministers who did not believe that they would win an election after four years. A five-year parliamentary term, as we saw between 1992 and 1997 and 2005 and 2010 in particular, is often therefore a result of the unpopularity of the governing party. It seems ironic that this Con-Dem Government, one of whose parties is already highly unpopular in Wales—with just 5% support, according to the most recent poll, in north Wales—should opt for the length of time that is associated with the failure to govern successfully and to govern with public support. Perhaps that is just an expectation of things to come.
Why should this Parliament be for five years and not four? Why should we hold the election on 7 May 2015 and not on 1 May 2014? After all, when John Major and when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) stayed in power for five years, they were accused of holding on to power. Is the same accusation not true of the current Government? There appears to be no great reason why five years should be the chosen length of the new fixed-term Parliament.
When questioned on Second Reading, the Deputy Prime Minister appeared loth to give a fuller explanation. I hope that we hear a better account this evening, because neither was an explanation more forthcoming from other Government Members. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) reminded us that his party’s election manifesto was for a four-year fixed-term Parliament, the proposal that my party supports. He said that he did not know when the policy was changed by the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
I have heard much from the Liberal Democrats in recent months about the need for agreement and compromise in coalition, but I am not entirely sure at whom the message was aimed, because my party has been part of a successful coalition in Wales since we signed the One Wales agreement in 2007. The key to success, I can tell the Liberal Democrats, was agreeing the policy programme before signing the deal, not making it up as we went along, which seems to have been the case with the UK Government. Being part of a coalition does not mean that we have to sell our souls; it means that we reach a practical agreement on policies.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
My hon. Friend talks about the merits of coalition Government, but in these islands there is a Government who have only 46 Members but manage to pass their budgets with majorities in the 70s and 80s. Coalition government is not always the way; there is also the minority government model, which is working very successfully in Scotland.
Jonathan Edwards
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I was remiss not to mention it.
Jonathan Edwards
I think that the debate is about whether there is to be five years or four years between elections. I will try to address the hon. Lady’s point as the debate progresses.
Many would say that the decision to run five-year electoral terms is a result of political expediency. I have a fair bit of experience of coalitions, and their policies should not have to be welded together in a back room in the way that those of the Con-Dem coalition have been. There is huge irony in the Deputy Prime Minister’s coming to this House to say that the coalition is taking away the Prime Minister’s right to call an election at the time of his choosing, because it is not. This addresses the point made by the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe). The one who is currently in charge can choose the longest possible time to be in charge providing that he can keep his own party happy.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee notes that much of the evidence it received was against the idea of a five-year fixed parliamentary term. Neither constitutional experts nor the public are in favour of the new electoral system being set at this length of time. Indeed, some experts saw a note of irony in that by spacing out the time between elections at this maximum length, the active participation of many voters in the electoral system will be reduced rather than increased or improved, as many people, sadly, choose to mark their ballot paper only in a UK general election and do not participate at other levels of democracy. That is another issue that has not been considered properly in the discussions so far.
On Second Reading, many Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), drew attention to the most salient concern—that of having the elections on the same day as other elections, specifically those of the devolved Administrations. There is nothing of what Aretha Franklin, or even George Galloway, might describe as “Respect” in the UK Government’s treatment of the devolved Administrations in this affair, which has been notably lacking in meaningful consultation.
Mr MacNeil
Is not that point all the more serious with a UK general election, a Scottish election and a Welsh election possibly happening at the same time, lined up with the referendum? We want to avoid that because we know the media cannot handle it. That disservice will be done to Scotland not only this time but yet again in four to five years’ time.
Jonathan Edwards
My hon. Friend is correct—it is a double insult. If these plans go through unamended, the next devolved elections in Scotland and Wales will be terribly skewed.
During the debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, we discussed at length the principle of holding a National Assembly for Wales election on the same day as a referendum on the electoral system for the UK Parliament. Despite the objections of Opposition parties and, perhaps more importantly, those who make up the Welsh and Scottish Governments, that Bill was passed, once again showing up the Con-Dem Government’s disrespect agenda for Wales and the other devolved nations. Ironically, even their best argument—the idea that savings would be made through combining the polls and that electors would not have to traipse to the polling station more than once—means little in the Welsh context, as we will already go to the ballot box in March for a referendum on the transfer of powers to the Welsh Government under part 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, and then again in the following May. Of course, the referendum on further powers is far more relevant to the National Assembly elections than the referendum on AV.
I am not here to repeat the arguments we have already had, although they remain equally relevant and valid to the amendment as they did to debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. That clash of elections will occur once every five terms for the devolved Administrations and once every four terms for Westminster elections. As yet, we have no idea when a reformed House of Lords will be elected. I am a great believer in not underestimating the public, and in publishing the Bill the UK coalition Government are failing to learn from previous practices and errors. Many will remember that the 2007 Scottish Parliament and local elections were held on the same day, with the result that there were an astonishing 147,000 spoilt ballot papers.
Jonathan Edwards
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point, but I was about to explain some of the complexities involved.
That was, of course, the first election after a new system was introduced, with the single transferrable vote being used in local elections in Scotland. Fortunately, we in Wales had already learned lessons and decoupled our local authority and Assembly elections by a year.
Mr MacNeil
Although it is true that the main problem at the last Scottish election was the design of the ballot paper, covering both the constituency and list votes, the man who looked into the matter, Mr Gould, nevertheless suggested that different elections should not happen on the same day. There was a feeling that that had contributed to the difficulties, even though the main difficulty was the design of the ballot paper.
Jonathan Edwards
My hon. Friend makes a more informed contribution than I do, but I was just getting to the Gould report. It was an independent review by the Electoral Commission, and its conclusions and recommendations stated:
“One of the more controversial issues in the 3 May 2007 elections was whether the Scottish parliamentary and the local government elections should have been combined on the same day. We were not surprised by the concerns that were expressed to us about this issue because pursuing combined or separate elections involves a trade-off of different objectives.
If local issues and the visibility of local government candidates are viewed as a primary objective, then separating the…parliamentary from the local government elections is necessary in order to avoid the dominance of campaigns conducted for…parliamentary contests. In addition, separating the two elections would result in minimising the potential for voter confusion.”
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and that seems to me a recipe for disaster.
The words in the Gould report that I quoted make it clear to me, first, that elections should not take place at the same time when there is a trade-off between different objectives, as there clearly would be between a UK Westminster election and an election to the National Assembly for Wales or the other devolved Assemblies. Secondly, they show the problem of the dominance of one election over another. National Assembly for Wales elections are in no way inferior to UK general elections. To many people they mean much more, as they are a way of directly influencing the health and education policies that have an impact on everybody in one form or another.
We must consider the impact of our media, and even the failure of our politicians to understand what is at stake at different levels. Who can forget, for example, the Conservatives using in a UK general election campaign the words of a woman in Wales, Julie from Llandudno, about her concern for education, even though the matter was not even being voted upon in Wales, where education is devolved? Such things have an impact on the perceptions of the electorate.
In the spring, we faced a bizarre, presidential-style contest that was alien to our democracy, in which we elect candidates to Parliament and then usually select the leader of the largest party in the legislature to head up the Executive. There is no doubt that giving three party leaders additional prominence had an impact on an election in which minority party candidates were forced to buck the trend to be elected. Were that to happen at the same time as a Welsh election to the National Assembly, it would cause untold damage to our democracy as Welsh issues, concerns and policies would be steamrollered by the UK media. In Wales, and to a lesser extent in Scotland, we face media that are largely published in England and understandably promote English issues and concerns. When the King report was published two years ago, it was noted that in a month of prime-time reports on health and education, both of which are devolved issues, not once in 134 stories was there any mention of the fact that those policies did not affect Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. That was a criticism of the BBC—a public service broadcaster.
Mr MacNeil
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman was as appalled as I was by a “Question Time” programme about two weeks ago. The issue of fiscal autonomy or independence, which is of crucial relevance to Scotland and, in a way, the UK, too, was raised by Nicola Sturgeon, but David Dimbleby just did not want to hear about it. Does my hon. Friend not think that that typifies the attitude of the BBC? Although the attitude was writ small in that case, in the event of an election it shows that there would be no interest at all from a London-centric point of view to air and properly discuss issues that affect the people of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Jonathan Edwards
Once again, my hon. Friend makes my point for me. What is important in this context is that the BBC is a public service broadcaster. I hesitate to say that the private sector is worse because it could hardly do much worse than nought out of 134. If this issue affects the BBC, it will certainly affect the private press as well.
The English or the UK-based media, which are, by and large, one and the same thing, have difficulties handling devolution issues. Given its high penetration into Wales, it would undoubtedly skew the National Assembly elections. That is a salient concern and one that the UK Government would be wise to heed before continuing down this route.
The Gould report of 2007 says that although turnout is important, it is not the only or the most important consideration. Its conclusions and recommendations state:
“More important is that they engage with the campaign in a meaningful manner and make a knowledgeable decision on their ballot paper.”
It recommends separating parliamentary and local government elections.
It is quite clear that the recommendations of the Gould report could equally apply to a separation of UK and devolved elections, which involve very different objectives and issues—not least in devolved issues such as health or education where some parties will be giving voters mixed messages due to the different policies that operate in different parts of the UK.
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman highlights the potential for organisational chaos in the 2015 elections. I am concerned about those elections from an organisational viewpoint.
That decoupling might lead to Westminster and the National Assembly for Wales having very different constituencies, and surely to confusion between different candidates, different policy areas and different locations. Just as importantly, there will be confusion because different electoral systems are used and different local authority electoral services will take responsibility for different counts.
Mr MacNeil
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), surely the answer to avoiding the clash of dates is to give the devolved legislature or Government the power to change the date of elections, whether in respect of Cardiff, Holyrood or Belfast. If people foresee a clash with the US presidential election, for example, a Westminster election or—who knows?—the cup final, they could change dates.
Jonathan Edwards
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. That is the intention of some of our proposals and I am grateful to him for that important contribution.
Mr MacNeil
Would it not be a great sign of maturity from the Government if they could accept new clause 4 and accept that various legislatures—be they in Westminster, Holyrood or wherever—have the right to pick their own window for an election in order to avoid clashes with another legislature and to allow the media the time to communicate properly with the populations? The latter will be difficult, as BBC “Question Time” the other week proved.
Jonathan Edwards
That would certainly further the respect agenda that we have heard so much about from the UK Government since their inception.
I am afraid that admissions of the sort that we heard from the Deputy Prime Minister show this legislation up as having been flung together rather than considered properly. The UK Government told us on Second Reading:
“We take these issues seriously and are not just paying lip service to them.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 702.]
However, we have no new amendments on the issue to discuss in Committee, and no answers have been given to the questions posed about how the Government plan to deal with those concerns. I hope that we will hear more from the UK Government on the issue today, as requested by the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs in our first report. Nobody in Wales has any confidence that their voice is being heard for as long as the UK Government continue to steamroller their policies through without time for due consideration and scrutiny.
Mr Shepherd
There is, of course, no question about that in my mind. Governments will try to engineer an election at the moment that is most convenient for them, although it may not be the best point in the cycle of public opinion, or relate to the sense of the House as a settled House.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman said that Asquith’s Bill did not receive pre-legislative scrutiny. Does he agree that we might be more relaxed about a lack of pre-legislative scrutiny if the Government were willing to reach out, listen, and take ideas on board—considered ideas that were not on the back of an envelope? May I suggest, in the context of new clause 4, that whether we support four years or five, it makes sense to allow other legislatures in the United Kingdom to alter, or tweak, what they are doing in relation to either Westminster or a five-year term?
Mr Shepherd
There is a simple amendment which the hon. Gentleman did not table, and which was not discussed in the lengthy and closely read speech of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). That amendment would state that the general election must take place on, let us say, the first Thursday in October. That would meet the point for which the hon. Gentleman argued at such great length—that he should not have to deal with the coincidence of elections on the same day. He did not table that simple amendment, however, and as it is not on the amendment paper I cannot speak to it.
I find Professor Blackburn a most interesting speaker on the constitution. In the evidence he gave in a memorandum on electoral law and administration, he makes the following point:
“In the UK, there can be little doubt that the period between general elections should be four years.”
That is what we are debating now, and it is arguable. He continues:
“The proposal for fixed term Parliament as a whole should fit as closely as possible into existing constitutional expectations, and the idea that four years is about the right length of time between elections is very prevalent. It was the period expressly approved of as being normal in practice, when the Parliament Act set the period of five years as a maximum.”
That is a reference back to Asquith. Professor Blackburn goes on to say:
“In an ideal democracy it may be that there should be elections as frequently as possible—even annually as supported by the Chartists in the eighteenth century”.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is present, has tabled an amendment proposing a period of three years, and we could refer back to the Chartists, so it is clear that these arguments were not unfamiliar at different times in the history of this country. There was an argument that we should have annual elections; that was a powerful movement in the early 19th century. It was thought that Parliaments and Governments must not move too far from the opinion of the public and the electorate.
Austin Mitchell
Again, that was because the then Government were hanging on, as Macmillan was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. They had to hang on to the bitter end, which was October 1964, because they were disastrously placed in the polls. That is another example to support my argument, which is that bad Governments want the maximum. This Government are a bad Government and they are trying to legislate for the maximum—they are trying to set bad practice in concrete.
Mr MacNeil
As I listen to the hon. Gentleman, I wonder whether cause and effect are a bit mixed up. One complaint that we have had in the past is about the Government holding an election at a time of their choice when they feel the runes are looking good for them rather than fixing the democratic process in some way so that the gerrymandering of polity and of the climate in the country could not happen. The idea of having a fixed Parliament is exactly that. It is best fixed at four years, I think—the hon. Gentleman thinks that it is best fixed at three—but the problem in the past has been that it has been for five years and was then cut short. It is not the length of time that makes a Government bad; it is just that bad Governments run out of time but would keep going for six or seven years if they possibly could.
Austin Mitchell
I accept that point. The argument for fixed terms used to be that Governments would manipulate the economy to suit their own purposes and would go to the country when it suited them. Now Governments are so disastrously buffeted by economic circumstances that they will seek to hang on as long as possible.
Stephen Pound
Miss Begg, I am, as ever, attendant to your body language and I am interpreting every flicker of that elegantly sculptured eyebrow, even as we speak.
The Septennial Act 1715, as amended by the Parliament Act 1911, is the Act that we will lose, should the Bill reach the statute book. The key point is that if, in the interest of expediency and of pleasing the coalition, we bring in a five-year fixed-term Parliament in contra-indication and contrast to the existing legislation, we place this country in peril indeed. The Bill at present on the Floor of the House at Committee stage, which I read with great care a few moments ago, is hedged around with all sorts of caveats so that an election may not be held on a day of national mourning or thanksgiving or on Christmas day. The Bill is limiting.
I support the amendment because that limitation restricts the right and privilege of the House to decide, under certain circumstances. There are emergencies or there may be some dramatic situation where an election has to take place. The removal of the royal prerogative, on this day of all days, is not something that I wish to comment on.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman mentions days when the election can take place. Does he agree that the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies of the United Kingdom should be given proper respect, and therefore that new clause 4 should be supported? That would allow them to see whether particular days did not suit them. Whether it be Christmas, Burns night, Hallowe’en or whatever, they should be given the choice if there were a clash between the elections to this place and to the great Parliament of Scotland, and the attendant media were unable to cope.
Stephen Pound
One reason why I support clause 1, page 1, line 13, is not because I am massively enamoured of the joys of four-year Parliaments as opposed to five-year Parliaments, nor because I think that there is a natural rhythm in the political cycle that means that every few years we get exhausted and have to have an election, but because it is the least-worst option. It is unfortunately a fact that sometimes we have to present that option. I happily present the hon. Gentleman from the constituency that one day I will be able to pronounce.
Mr MacNeil
There has been confusion in the House that somehow five years is bad and four years is good. It is almost Orwellian. The fact that five years in the UK has turned out to be bad is because people tend to leave it to five years. The reason I support four years is not because I think five years is particularly bad, but four years is long enough to spend without going back to the people to ask for another mandate. It is a democracy, after all, and ultimately the people, through the ballot box, rule. Politicians and elected people are stretching the credulity of the electorate to go beyond four years. The example of Scotland again is tremendous for Westminster.
Stephen Pound
Amendment 11 addresses these points. The reality is that if we had a fixed-term Parliament—I appreciate I am arguing for a fourth year rather than a fifth year—what dreadful temptations would come the way of susceptible politicians? Legislation would be front-loaded, knowing that there was never the possibility of an early election by which they might be made accountable to the people. I appreciate that clause 1 may be influenced by future legislation on recalls. We could find ourselves with so many recall petitions that we in fact have a new Parliament in the middle. There are certain aspects in the Bill later—not specifically relevant to clause 1, before you mention it, Miss Begg—which refer to the power to dissolve. But the most important, most salient point here is that if we locked the system into a four-year or five-year cycle, we would lose that glorious uncertainty of the democratic oversight. We would lose that concern, may I say, even, on occasion, that fear of the electorate, which is the honest emotion that parliamentarians should always feel.
Mr MacNeil
The reason we want a fixed-term Parliament, particularly those in minority parties, who are never in the party of government in this situation—in Scotland we made sure that it is far more democratic—is not the fear of the electorate, it is the fear of the Government, using the particular wins that they have created for their own advantage in a narrow period of time. There is an advantage in a fixed-term Parliament. Some people prefer five, some people prefer four. I am in the four camp—
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
It is a great pleasure to speak with you, Miss Begg, in the Chair.
A number of Members said that they thought that the Government would be running out of steam, but it is a very clear sign that the Opposition are running out of steam when they have to wheel members of the Whips Office in to argue a case—a case, actually, against their own Front Benchers. Their Front Benchers are in favour of four-year terms, so the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) would have done a better job if he had troubled to read the Bill, the amendments and clause 1.
In addressing the amendments that deal with clause 1 on the proposed length of the fixed term and the date of the next election, it might be helpful to explain at the outset why the Government have taken the approach that we have set out in the Bill. The Government announced in the coalition agreement our intention to introduce a Bill for fixed-term Parliaments, and I have listened to a good number of arguments for and against the proposed five-year term, not least today. The Government strongly believe that a five-year fixed term is right, not only for this Parliament but for subsequent Parliaments, as it will provide the country with the strong and stable Government that it needs.
Mr Harper
Let me make a little more progress, and then I will give way.
We have heard arguments in favour of a four-year or three-year fixed term. However, the statistical evidence shows that if we exclude the three very short Parliaments since the war, the average length of Parliaments has approached four and a half years. The first point that I would make in respect of the arguments for four-year or three-year Parliaments is that those advocating them gave insufficient regard to the current arrangements, which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) outlined in observing that this Parliament is able to sit for five years. Indeed, if the Prime Minister wanted to achieve the aim of this Parliament sitting for five years, he would merely not ask the Queen to dissolve it for five years. The Bill has nothing to do with extending the term of this Parliament.
Mr MacNeil
If the hon. Gentleman is such a strong advocate of five years for a Parliament, would he extend that strength of feeling to the devolved legislatures to enable them to have five-year terms as well? If we do the multiplication—five times four equals 20—it is clear that we will have the problem of the two dates clashing every 20 years. Would he be happy for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to move to five-year terms as opposed to four?
Mr MacNeil
Let me pick up on that point about the American Congress and the House of Representatives. There are a number of American politicians—those in safe seats and those who are unopposed—who are not on a constant campaign. The Minister made a fair point about Lady Thatcher, especially given the partisan point that he could have made. She looked at the party advantage of her electoral cycle and that is why she probably went for four years. If the Minister does not support the five-year terms for the devolved legislatures, will he support new clause 4 that would allow the devolved legislatures to avoid the clash with the Westminster Parliament?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will soon get to that point and to new clause 4. I just want to take this in order.
My final point for the hon. Member for Great Grimsby—he did not address this in his remarks, so I can only assume that it is an oversight—is that his amendment would mean that the next election would take place on a Tuesday. He gave us no indication of why he would want to do that, so I assume that his amendment is technically as well as logically flawed.
Let me turn now to amendments 11, 12 and 13, the first of which was ably moved by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), and supported by those on the Opposition Front Bench. The amendments primarily make the argument for four-year terms, which is probably a good moment to pick up on the point about the coincidence with the devolved elections. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was a little too soon in her criticisms of what Ministers will do, because she had not actually heard what I was going to say. She did exactly the same when we debated the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and she was not correct in what she said. The Committee, of which she is a member, was behind an amendment that was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest. Although we did not accept the amendment, we took it away and brought back a Government amendment to do exactly what the hon. Lady wanted, which was to reduce the ability of Ministers to interfere with a boundary commission report. It was not true to say that we did not listen to the House; we tabled an amendment that was inspired by the Committee of which she is a member. The Government do listen.
When the Deputy Prime Minister made the statement on 5 July, he recognised that the coincidence of the devolved elections in 2015 with the UK general election was qualitatively different from the coincidence of the referendum and the elections next year. He has discussed the matter with the devolved Administrations and the Presiding Officers. He said that he would look at the matter, and he has kept that promise. I can tell the House that we will consult the parties in the devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly to give them the power to defer the date of their elections by up to six months—in other words, to move the election into the future to avoid coinciding with elections to this House.
I shall write to the First Ministers, the Presiding Officers and all the parties represented in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly tomorrow to set out that plan. My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales will be available to discuss those matters with parties represented in the Parliament and the Assembly.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful for what I feel is the partial acceptance of new clause 4. How drawn is the Minister to the time of six months?
Mr Harper
That is something that we will be able to discuss when we consult Members in the other places. This power will only be exercisable in the years in which elections coincide, because it is to deal with that specific issue; it is not a general power. As for the ability of the Parliament and the Assembly to bring their elections forward, we feel that two-thirds of MSPs or AMs would be needed to support such a move. As the hon. Gentleman said, this is not a power that should not be given to the Administrations; this is a power that should be given to the Parliament and the Assembly.
Mr Harper
I will give way to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) again, and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Rhondda. If the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) will give me a moment, I will get to Northern Ireland and then I will take his intervention if he still wishes to make one.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way once more. I do not want to seem pedantic, but for the sake of clarity, does he mean that two thirds of the relevant devolved legislatures can move elections both back and forward, or only back?
Mr Harper
No. The hon. Gentleman must not keep giving the Committee misleading arguments. The Bill does not extend the term of this Parliament—this Parliament can run for five years. Members of the devolved Parliament and Assemblies have asked the Government to think about how they can make a decision on whether to move the date—a sensible provision—of elections.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman, who has been following the Bill’s progress very closely, will know that we have allocated the second day in Committee for next Wednesday, but we have not announced a day on Report, so there is not a date to hold back. We have not been rushing through the Bill’s proceedings at great pace.
There was great discussion about the Gould report.
Mr MacNeil
I have three points for clarification. Is the Minister guaranteeing that there will be no clash of election days between, say, Scotland and Westminster? Will he guarantee that the six months he has spoken about will be put into legislation? Finally, who will have the power to shift the dates? We feel that that should be for the devolved legislatures. Also, the point made by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) about the difficulties of getting a two-thirds majority was apposite. But it is all in the mix.
Mr Harper
I thought that I made it clear that it would be a two-thirds decision for—in the hon. Gentleman’s case—the Scottish Parliament. It could not be a simple majority, because effectively that would give the power to the First Minister of Scotland or someone leading a majority Administration simply to choose a date that suited them—and that would be wrong. It would therefore be for the Parliament to make a choice about the election date.
Mr Harper
The Scottish Parliament would have the choice to consider the date. It could be moved by up to six months—it does not have to be six months—but it would be for the Parliament to make the decision. I gave a commitment that we would make that change in the Bill at a later stage of its progress.
Let me turn briefly to amendment 32, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) spoke on behalf of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform and which was effectively about whether we should reset the clock when there is an early election. The Committee’s train of thought, which she set out, was that if a party knew that it would get only the remainder of the term, it would be less inclined to pass a Dissolution motion or a no-confidence motion. Her Committee suggested that if that was the case, we would not need the super-majority proposal for an early Dissolution. There is a technical problem with amendment 32 as drafted, because it would allow an early election to be held at any time, right up to the next scheduled election, but would still force the scheduled election to take place, so we could have an election in March and then another in May, which would not be very sensible.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant
It is surprising that a Government that consists of Conservatives and Liberals is taking a view on the number of seats in Parliament that is different from what was in both parties’ manifestos at the general election. The point is that we should have had time to debate these matters, and we have not had a single moment to debate them. I would merely say that I hope that their lordships will take the opportunity to debate the matters that it has not been possible for us to reach.
Let me swiftly deal with some of the amendments. The Minister is absolutely right that the vast majority of the amendments are relatively technical. However, that does not mean that we should be able to agree them today, because we have not agreed any of the statutory instruments on which they depend—he said “if” the statutory instruments are approved by Parliament. There is an enormous presumption in tabling amendments to meet a piece of legislation that has not yet been agreed. That treats this House with a degree of disrespect that is inappropriate.
Amendment 222, tabled by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), is about the costs of running the polls being met by the UK Government. The Minister is right to say that the costs are all met by the Consolidated Fund, but I presume that the hon. Gentleman’s amendment has been tabled to make the point that he thinks that the responsibility for running the Scottish parliamentary elections should be the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament—[Interruption.] He is not nodding; he is looking inscrutable at the moment. That is unusual for him, because he is normally extremely scrutable. Perhaps we will have to wait for his contribution to the debate.
The vast majority of these amendments make changes such as substituting “2010” for “2007”, because of the different statutory instrument that would be referred to. Although I suppose it would in theory be possible for us to vote on all of them, because we think that it would be inappropriate to decide on them until the statutory instruments have been decided on, we will none the less want to press at least one to a vote simply to make the point that the process has not been sensible.
Government amendment 78, however, refers to the abandonment of a poll in Scotland. When the Minister sums up, will he explain precisely why he has moved in that direction? The amendment relates to line 3 of page 226, in schedule 7. The Minister also referred to Government amendment 177, which is, as he says, a quite substantial amendment. It runs to several pages and concerns Northern Ireland. It runs from page 1047 of the amendment paper onwards. Proposed new paragraph 40(2) states:
“The following provisions have effect as if the persons listed in them included persons who would be entitled to be present at the proceedings on the issue or receipt of postal ballot papers in respect of the referendum or a relevant election if those proceedings were taken on their own.”
I wonder why the Minister has chosen that precise wording. Likewise, paragraph 42(2) states:
“Otherwise, the provisions listed in sub-paragraph (3) have effect as if the words before ‘the colour’ were omitted.”
It may be that I am very dim, but I simply do not understand that provision in relation to Northern Ireland; it will be for the House’s convenience if the Minister explains it.
Similarly, paragraph 44, on spoilt postal ballot papers—again in relation to Northern Ireland—states at sub-paragraph (2):
“The spoilt postal ballot paper may not be replaced unless all the postal ballot papers issued to the person are returned.”
I do not understand why, if a voter has been given three ballot papers and has spoilt only one of them and therefore wants a replacement only for that one, they have to return the other two as well. Will the Government explain that? I ask about this because some people believe we should make postal balloting more difficult.
In Northern Ireland there has been a tradition of separate rules and regulations for postal voting, because of concerns about corruption. In case the Government are considering substantially restricting the use of postal voting in England and Wales, I must tell the Minister that the current provisions have made it far easier for a large number of my voters to vote in any election. Previously, people had to get a member of the medical profession to sign them off as ill to get a postal ballot. In many cases, my voters were charged £6 a head for the right to vote in an election by post, which I think is completely wrong. Of course we want to ensure that there is no opportunity for corruption in the use of postal ballots, but my experience is that many elderly and other people, particularly those who cannot predict the precise timing of their work commitments, value the current provisions on postal voting.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to the Minister for sending me an e-mail today about the definition of newspapers and periodicals, but unfortunately the parliamentary system would not let me open the attachment, so I do not have the faintest idea what it says. I would be grateful if he could find some means of letting me know what he was trying to communicate.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I hear about amendments that are probing, wrecking and reasoned, but amendment 222, in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), is simply protesting. It is protesting about what could have been achieved with a lot less resistance had the Government been reasonable and not tried to usurp Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’s day of democracy—a day that was set in stone, in legislation anyway, 12 years ago.
The Deputy Prime Minister has stuck his neck out on this—indeed, I wonder whether he is prepared for the consequences as it will be his neck on the block if things go wrong—and the Government have proceeded at breakneck speed, disregarding people’s feelings and beliefs as well as the important issues that will arise in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales next May. That is not a slight against the two Ministers present—the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons—who have been handling a very sticky wicket quite well indeed.
No time has been taken to consult the devolved Governments on the Bill. However, that was also a mistake of the Labour party in government when it delivered devolution to Scotland and Wales almost in direct correlation to the strengths of the nationalist parties in those countries. [Hon. Members: “Rubbish!”] That is not rubbish: it is absolutely right. We in Scotland got our Parliament because the Scottish National party is stronger than Plaid Cymru, which is why Wales got an Assembly. I often wonder why Scotland does not have even the powers of the Isle of Man—population 100,000.
In the past several weeks we have had five days to discuss the Bill in Committee. When the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was not speaking, we even had some time to get the odd word in before the guillotine. The debate was cut off at important points and some very interesting and reasonable amendments were put on to the waste heap of parliamentary time. One of the most interesting amendments came from the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who tried to ensure that all the Bill’s measures, not only those on the voting system but those on the changes to boundaries and the number of Members, would have depended on gaining a positive result in the referendum.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman just slipped in, I hope, a reference to a voting system that will be used only every five years. I hope he will not support a five-year fixed-term Parliament, and that I might be able to entice him towards a four-year fixed-term Parliament, which would be a means of guaranteeing that the UK general election did not fall on the same day as a Scottish or a Welsh general election.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The salient point is not whether the election takes place every four years, five years, three years or whatever, but that the referendum coming up next May is usurping the day of democracy and affecting issues over four years. The Minister said that the UK will be solely responsible for the costs, which implies that the amendment has, in effect, been accepted. I welcome that.
When the referendum comes around, I cannot see parties such as the Scottish National party campaigning very strongly for or against. We will have more important things to do. I would encourage the Liberal Democrats to campaign on the referendum, because we will then go and hoover up their seats. A massive mistake is being made by holding that poll on the same day as the elections in Scotland. That is why I am making the protest, and I hope it is being heard. I do not know what will happen in another place, but it should change the provision.
Gate-crashing Scotland’s day of democracy shows a lack of respect on the part of the Government. They say that they would have respected the devolved Administrations, but when pressed they tell us that the opinions of the governing parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not matter—a case of words and actions diverging greatly.
The Government need our input. They need all our voices. We need to present issues to the Government and make sure that they do the right thing.
Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)
Surely the hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. We have heard much from the Opposition Benches about respect for the devolution settlement. This is an issue reserved to the Westminster Parliament, so the question of extensive consultation does not arise. This is a Westminster issue for the Westminster Parliament under our settlement.
Mr MacNeil
That is why respect is important. The day has been set in legislation for the Scottish Parliament for more than a decade. All of a sudden, somebody wanders in, gate-crashes the party and takes the media caravan on to the lawn. Hon. Members cannot imagine that people in Scotland will not be upset or annoyed that that is happening.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a disgrace that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government were not consulted? To compound that disgrace, the Government claim that they would pay no attention even if the Scottish Parliament passed a motion in this regard.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady is right. I wish that the status that the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Government should have were enshrined in legislation.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for speaking to the amendment. On the respect agenda, can he explain to me, because I do not understand, why the UK Government are against holding a referendum on further powers for Wales on the same day as the Welsh Assembly elections, yet are in favour of the referendum on AV? Obviously the referendum on further powers is far more relevant in terms of the Welsh Assembly elections.
Mr MacNeil
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, because that is an example of a lack of joined-up thinking, and, if the Government were to undertake this process again, they would not start from here, as it were. They find themselves where they are and have to employ the best arguments, regardless of how sticky the wicket might be.
This Bill, like the spending cuts, has moved fast, and had some respect been shown, we might have supported it to a far greater extent than we have been able to. I shall not push my amendment to a vote, because I am sure that the Government have heard my point. Indeed, I think that the Minister has confirmed that the relevant costs will be the sole responsibility of the UK Government, and that makes me very pleased. However, it is my sincere hope that, until Scotland gains its independence, the Government will give us the respect that we truly deserve—the respect that was shown today to France and on other days to Norway.
Mr Dodds
On the respect agenda, and further to the intervention by the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe), there is a question not just about interfering with the date of the elections in the devolved regions, but about the changes to the boundaries in Northern Ireland. They will have a direct impact on the boundaries of Assembly constituencies, on which we were not consulted at all. This legislation has a direct impact on the Northern Ireland Assembly and its membership. It is not just a question of the date; the legislation has a direct impact on Northern Ireland, and for that reason there should have been consultation.
Mr MacNeil
Northern Ireland. I did notice that the right hon. Gentleman said the regions of the UK—
Mr MacNeil
I’ve got the north to my left; I’ve got Northern Ireland to my right. I’m stuck in the middle with you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Huw Irranca-Davies
Well, not to Wales, but to a UK parliamentarian. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the interesting intervention by the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe), which was—I am not being patronising in any way—very well meaning, shows the difference in understanding on the part of those who are in the devolved nations and have a Parliament or an Assembly about how respect cuts both ways? Although we did not always get it right in government, we certainly tried as Ministers to ensure that there was full dialogue and consultation even if we disagreed with the issue. If this Government should learn one thing from this debacle, it is that from now on they need to consult the devolved institutions properly.
Mr MacNeil
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He makes a very good point and leads me to reflect that perhaps I was a bit harsh on the hon. Lady. Perhaps there is simply a lack of understanding, rather than a lack of respect. If we think back, we find that yesterday was really—I think that I can safely use this term—“all-points Celtic”. It was Cornwall. It was Wales. It was Northern Ireland?
Mr MacNeil
My “all-points Celtic” is checking out. It was also Scotland. It was a Celtic issue, and it hit across the nations and a region of the UK—he says, looking around him! However, there are very serious and important points here, and I hope that the Government will listen. At this late stage, it is not too late.
Kevin Brennan
It might not have been entirely inappropriate for the hon. Lady to intervene, because, as I recall from my visit to Corby as a young man, most of it was populated by Scots and Welsh people, who were there to set up the steelworks at the time.
On the date and the combination of polls, however, is it not also an own goal on behalf of the Government and, particularly, the Deputy Prime Minister? He is demotivating those electoral reformers among us who would have been prepared to go out alongside colleagues from other political parties to campaign for the alternative vote. We will now campaign with our parties to help our Welsh Assembly colleagues get elected, and not devote the energy that we otherwise would have done to the Deputy Prime Minister’s cause?
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman is bang on. The Deputy Prime Minister, not content with having some opposition to his aspirations for a change in the voting system, has moved on to look for even more opponents to changes in the voting system, and he has succeeded in that end, because he has absolutely demotivated those people who will have greater priorities when the day comes in May. Their priority will not be the voting system for elections to the UK Parliament, and that is where the mistake lies.
Again, I ask the Minister to speak to his friends in the other place, because that might make quite a difference. Of course, there are those who might feel that there are elements within the governing coalition who are happy to see a demotivated support force for a change in the voting system. I will leave that question hanging.
Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)
I am very surprised by the technical amendments that the Government have introduced. I have previously brought to the House’s attention the fact that, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson), I am currently still a Member of the Scottish Parliament. In the light of this debate, that is a very useful experience to bring to it. For eight of my 10 years in the Scottish Parliament, I was a Minister, and I introduced a considerable amount of legislation. In my experience, if you had to table such a range of amendments, it meant one of two things: first, that something had gone very badly wrong with your legislation organisationally and it needed immediate rectification, perhaps at crisis level; or secondly, that you were wrong in the fundamentals and having to try to address that fact and clean up the mess.
Margaret Curran
At the risk of being incorrect on the record, I would like to think that, no, it did not happen to me, and that I was very clear about my legislation.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady mentions the 1980s, the poll tax and Thatcherism. Would she not have preferred to have had an independent Scotland, and not had Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. This is getting a little out of hand. Can we come back to the amendments? I am sure that is what the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) is going to do.
Geraint Davies
Having more than one poll on the same day is not without precedent. My point is that putting yet more questions in more elections on the same day adds complexity, which can lead to confusion and administrative problems.
Mr MacNeil
May I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the real problem that we fear is what happened in the UK general election? The media tried to turn that into a presidential election. They skew what happens on the day by concentrating on one event and missing what is the main event to people who live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. That is my concern, and I think it is shared on both sides of the House.
Geraint Davies
The hon. Gentleman is right and what he says is fair. Inevitably, the media will focus on the UK election and, to a certain extent, the AV referendum. In Wales or Scotland, there are points of difference between different parties on health and education and so on, but they will be overwhelmed by the background noise of the media, which will focus on health and education in England.
As the Conservative position on health develops, they might take out the strategic centre of the NHS in favour of a more atomised view. That is in complete contrast with the more traditional NHS model in Wales. However, the media will talk about the prospective changes to England’s NHS rather than what happens on the ground in Welsh hospitals. People’s understanding of how their hospital works could be quite different from what is actually happening, and they might vote on a false pretext. The power of the media talking about the UK will overwhelm knowledge of what is actually being delivered in local schools and hospitals, particularly among those who do not use such services.
Geraint Davies
It will be very complicated to explain to people in Wales why, when they already have a proportional representation system that is fair, they should opt for the alternative vote, which is not fair. The people in favour of AV will argue—although I do not agree—“Well, AV is better than first past the post. It may not be as good as what you already have in Wales, but we still want you to vote for it. By the way, we also want to talk about parking in hospitals”. People might also want to talk about the fact that Sky Television does not allow the nationalists to speak—although as I am being sponsored by Sky, I will not mention that. That was a joke.
Mr MacNeil
I come from the west of Skye, but that is another story.
Valid points have been made by hon. Members on both sides, but we should bear in mind—if we want a participative democracy—the attention span of voters, who will give only so much of their time to the message from politicians, whether it is dumbed down or quite complicated. They might do the American thing, where they slam down 140 ballots—or however many they are doing on one day—and vote the same way on a slate. We do not want that because, for example, Labour’s plans, and the big holes in its spending, should be scrutinised hard in the coming election.
Geraint Davies
I am certainly grateful that we will have a lot of scrutiny in Scotland. I agree that there is scope for confusion even though, as many hon. Members said, we cannot underestimate the sophistication of the electorate. However, one in five people in Britain are functionally illiterate and find it difficult to fill in forms. If they face four or more ballot papers, and a multiplicity of different questions in different areas and zones, it will be confusing. If we want to increase rather than decrease participation—and for people to vote how they intended to vote, and not vote the wrong way—we should make it easy for them by having a coherent system, with the choices being sequential rather than coincident.
The Deputy Prime Minister
There may well be a case for looking at the number of Ministers when the size of the House of Commons is reduced, but that is not happening now. It would happen only in the next Parliament. We would need to keep it under constant review, and—dare I say it?—future Governments might wish to act upon that idea. I do not dispute at all the principle that as the Commons is reduced in size, so should the number of Ministers be reduced.
I understand that some Members continue to have specific concerns about the detail of the Bill. That was clear, for example, during the thorough debate on the date of the referendum. I know that Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in particular continue to worry about the implications of combining different polls on 5 May, but I believe that our decision is right and that voters are able to distinguish between elections to local government or devolved institutions and a straightforward yes or no question on a completely different issue. However, the Government remain alive to the concerns and will continue to work with the Electoral Commission and administrators across the UK to help ensure that combined elections run smoothly.
Mr MacNeil
One of the major concerns about having elections on the same day is that the media, rather than the voters, may be unable to cope. We have all accepted, both in Committee and on Report, that that is where the difficulty lies. There is a problem with the registration of the yes and no sides of the campaign. How will that affect access to the media, particularly in the run-up to Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland elections? That is an important consideration.
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, registered and designated organisations in the referendum campaign will have access to broadcast time. I do not see why that should make it in any way impossible for voters—they are the ones who count—to distinguish between their choices in the devolved elections and in the referendum contest.
Ms Bagshawe
I have but three minutes and I regret that I cannot give way.
We have heard arguments over valleys and rivers, but never have we heard arguments in favour of people. The Bill seeks to remedy an ancient wrong.
I say this to my hon. Friends who are worried about the AV referendum: take heart. I believe that the referendum is something of a miscalculation by my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Liberal Democrat party, but I am quite happy and content to trust the people. Let us lay it before the people and let them decide.
Opposition Members have become convinced of the doctrine that what is traditional is therefore right. I welcome their eleventh-hour conversion to that doctrine, but they cannot get away from the fact that the boundaries in this country are incredibly unfair. The votes of those in Corby and east Northamptonshire should be worth exactly the same as those in the constituency of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). No matter how they run and no matter how they hide, they cannot make the argument that equality is bad for democracy.
That sums up Opposition Members’ arguments. I hope that the House supports the Bill in numbers, as it deserves.
Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant
Sorry, S4C, not Channel 4. S4C is going to be part of the BBC in the near future. I presume that subsection (b), which might be presumed at a later date to transfer to other referendums, would not be disturbed by the congruence of the two organisations, I think in 2013-14.
Subsection (b) also uses the term “broadcast”, a word that, in legislation, specifically refers to broadcasting from one to many points. That is to say, the broadcaster does not determine the precise number of people who receive a programme, network or channel, as opposed to cable, which has never before been referred to as broadcasting, because it is point-to-point. That is to say, the cable organisation knows exactly where the programme is going, because there is a direct connection between A and B, as opposed to what happens in terrestrial broadcasting, whether digital or otherwise. That is why the Communications Act 2003 has separate provisions for broadcasting and cable. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that when he says “broadcast” he does not just mean broadcasting, but includes cable and the provision of any such programme via any other means.
I ask that because subsection (c) refers explicitly to
“a programme included in any service licensed under Part 1 or 3 of the Broadcasting Act 1990 or Part 1 or 2 of the Broadcasting Act 1996”.
I do not understand why subsection (b) refers to a broadcast—as opposed to either a programme provided by the two organisations listed or one included in any service provided by them—and it contrasts with how subsection (c) has been constructed. In addition, there is an issue relating to the provision of party political broadcasts, because there will be a different level of provision of party election broadcasts in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, as a result of the elections being held there, from that provided in England during the run-up to the referendum and the short campaign for those elections. I suppose that any of the political parties in those areas could decide that it wanted to major on the alternative vote provisions and the referendum in its party election broadcast, and therefore might be considered to be in conflict with the provisions under the terms of the 2000 Act or the Broadcasting Act 1990.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
A party might indeed consider doing that, but would the hon. Gentleman concede that the political reality of the situation is that most parties and combatants in the Scottish and Welsh elections will have better things to do than consider the AV referendum? That further underlines the folly of holding the referendum on the same day as those elections, thereby not giving the issue its proper space in those territories.
Chris Bryant
Indeed. Many of the provisions that we will talk about in the main debate this afternoon relate to the combining of polls, but this is the only point in the debate on the Bill when there can be any discussion about party election broadcasts, because this is the only point in the Bill that they are referred to. All the other elements—how many registers of electors there should be, what colour the ballot papers should be, how many polling cards there should be and so on—are referred to in the new schedules that we will come to a little later, but not broadcasting, which is a reserved responsibility.
The Broadcasting Act 1990 makes it clear that
“any regional Channel 3 licence or licence to provide Channel 4 or 5 shall include—
(a) conditions requiring the licence holder to include party political broadcasts in the licensed service; and
(b) conditions requiring the licence holder to observe such rules with respect to party political broadcasts as the Commission may determine.”
In addition, we specified in section 127 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 that
“(1) A broadcaster shall not include in its broadcasting services any referendum campaign broadcast made on behalf of any person or body other than one designated in respect of the referendum in question under section 108.
(2) In this section, ‘referendum campaign broadcast’ means any broadcast whose purpose (or main purpose) is or may reasonably be assumed to be—
(a) to further any campaign conducted with a view to promoting or procuring a particular outcome in relation to any question asked in a referendum to which this Part applies, or
(b) otherwise to promote or procure any such outcome.”
Mr Harper
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is characterising that in a sensible fashion. This is a national referendum to be held in the United Kingdom, and it is a reserved matter for the UK Government to decide upon. When this whole issue arose and my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made a statement to the House, some Members asked what consultation had taken place and he made it clear that this is a matter for the UK Government and that it was right that this House heard the announcement first, before any conversations took place with the devolved Administrations. I do not think that is disrespectful; rather, it is properly respectful of the rights of this House.
Mr MacNeil
Does this not highlight that when devolution was established by the then Labour Government, they were trying too hard to hold on to power and they should instead have been a bit more relaxed and allowed the devolved Assemblies or Parliaments a bit more power over the governance of their own elections? That is not rocket science.
Mr Harper
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. In my response to the hon. Member for Rhondda, I set out what the arrangements are now for the administration of elections. One of the things that has been discussed as part of the Calman proposals is the suggestion to devolve the administration of elections to the Scottish Government. I hope that we can take that forward, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) would welcome it. I think that I have run through the issues raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda and by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. He is no longer in his place and that demonstrates that his questions have been adequately answered.
Mr MacNeil
On the use of separate ballot boxes, if a voter happens to put both papers in one or other of the ballot boxes, will that be cleared up at the polling station simply by transferring the relevant paper to the right pile?
Mr Harper
Clearly, as is common with combined polls, the verification procedure, which I shall discuss later, will make sure that verification is complete for all polls before any election results are declared, so that there will not be problems if a whole load of ballot papers are suddenly found in the wrong box. That provision is fairly consistent with what happens now in combined elections.
Mr MacNeil
Will the Minister clarify that point? When he says “verification”, does he mean “counting”, with a declaration of the result after both polls have been counted, or does he mean that the papers will be separated to ensure that they are in the right place and that, in Scotland, votes for the Scottish Parliament will be counted and declared before people get around to counting and declaring the result of the referendum?
Mr Harper
Yes. The verification of both the referendum and election ballot papers will take place first; it will not be necessary to count the referendum papers at that point, but they will have to be verified to make sure that no election ballot papers have inadvertently been put in the wrong box. That is what happens with combined general and local elections now: local election votes do not have to be counted before general election votes can be counted and the result declared, but both sets of papers have to be verified to ensure that all the general election papers are in one place and that the result is accurate. That does not hold up the declaration of results, which, quite importantly for all the devolved Assemblies, will be wanted as soon as possible. When I come to that issue, the hon. Gentleman can jump straight in if he thinks I have not been clear.
Following our debate in Committee on 18 October, I confirm that a large-print version of the ballot papers for each of the relevant polls, including the referendum, must be displayed at all polling stations. Paragraph 20 provides that at a combined poll:
“The large version of the ballot paper displayed…must be of the same colour as the ballot papers to be used for the referendum.”
Paragraphs 27 to 34 permit the counting officer to use the same copy of the register for each poll to combine the various lists that are produced for proxy voters, the votes marked by the presiding officer, the list of voters with disabilities assisted by companions and the tendered votes list.
Paragraph 36 sets out the procedure that presiding officers must follow at the close of poll. That includes rules on the packets that need to be made up and sent to the counting officer after the poll has closed. Provision is included to ensure that certain documents relating to each poll are not combined with documents relating to any other poll. That applies to unused or spoilt ballot papers, tendered ballot papers and certificates as to employment on the day of the poll.
Paragraphs 38 to 45 set out the Government’s policy for the verification and count procedure at a combined poll. The combination amendment does not specify the timing of the count for any of the polls, to ensure that there is flexibility for votes on the ballot papers for the elections to be counted before those for the referendum. The combination rules for the verification and count process make it clear that once ballot papers have been received from polling stations, they have to be taken out of the ballot boxes and separated into piles for each poll. Before the votes on ballot papers for any poll can be counted, the counting officer or relevant returning officer must ensure that the ballot papers from a ballot box are mixed with the ballot papers for that poll from a different ballot box, and that postal ballot papers are mixed with ballot papers for that poll from a ballot box. If the counting of votes for any poll has not commenced by the time the verification process has been concluded, the ballot papers for that poll must be sealed up and retained by the counting officer in the case of referendum ballot papers, or delivered to the relevant returning officer, who will be responsible for storing the ballot papers securely until the count takes place.
Paragraph 46 provides that the verification process for all combined polls must have been completed before the declaration of any counts. Although we are aware that that may delay the declaration of a count, we believe that given the number of polls taking place the requirement is essential to ensure that all the ballot papers have been correctly accounted for, thereby ensuring the integrity of the count. Clearly, as with combined elections, having to do all the verification may mean that the result is a little delayed, but it will not mean that we have to wait for the referendum to be counted before the election count.
Paragraphs 48 and 49 set out the arrangements for ensuring that the counting officer and returning officer seal up all relevant papers in appropriate packets after the poll, and deliver them to the relevant registration officer. All documents that have been combined will be sealed together and sent by the counting officer to the relevant registration officer. Where it has been decided to use separate lists for each poll, the documents will be sealed in separate packets and delivered to the relevant registration officer by either the counting officer for the referendum or the returning officer for the relevant election.
We have specifically provided that in the event of legal proceedings arising on the referendum and/or relevant election, the court can make an order for the production of combined documents relating to the poll or polls.
Margaret Curran
The Minister may not be aware, but I am still a Member of the Scottish Parliament, and I feel obliged to point out to him that throughout the Parliament there are concerns about the coalition Government’s decision to hold the referendum on the same date as Scottish Parliament elections. People across the political spectrum in Scotland profoundly feel that that is a great disrespect to the Scottish Parliament, and I say that with great authority.
Margaret Curran
This is not a nationalist point, and I hope that the coalition does not dismiss the feelings to which I have referred as the marginal voice of nationalism in Scotland. The view is widespread throughout Scotland, and mainstream parties such as mine also hold it. However, I am concerned that in response to the question from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), the Minister seemed to imply that, because the Scottish Parliament does not have responsibility for the elections at the moment, it is not a key stakeholder in the ongoing discussions—
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will come to him when I have completed this point.
We recognise that there is a different qualitative issue raised by the combination of the general election and these elections. As I have said in previous debates, we are thinking about how that issue may be dealt with, and we will come back to the House and the devolved Administrations in due course.
Mr Harper
Hang on: let me deal with one intervention at a time.
My understanding—I am sure that this is the case—is that this issue has been raised at the JMC; I am sure that I will be corrected if it has not. Moreover, one would be having these conversations not only with the Administrations but with the Parliaments and Assemblies themselves. I know that some of those conversations have taken place. For example, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has had a communication from the Presiding Officer of the Welsh Assembly making it clear that its Members did not want the date of the Assembly election changed.
Mr Harper
No, I was not suggesting that at all; I was simply making the point that they have not done so. However, let me save them time and trouble by saying that if they do, it will not make us change our minds, so they can focus on the important issues that voters will be concerned about.
Mr MacNeil
Does the Minister find it a bit rich—I know I do—that Labour Members, particularly those who are still Members of the Scottish Parliament, argue day in, day out against more powers for the Scottish Parliament, yet suddenly, when party politics are involved, try to score points by saying that they want more powers for the Scottish Parliament? They should stick to their principles and not play party politics with the issue when they are here. We should give power to the Scottish Parliament similar to that for the Isle of Man, at the very least.
Mr Harper
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will not add to his point, but I am now slightly envious that I am not a Member of the Scottish Parliament too, and so cannot indulge in such debates on a daily basis. I now know what I am missing out on by not participating in Scottish politics.
In answer to the hon. Member for Rhondda, I can confirm that these issues have been discussed at the JMC. If he does not believe that they have, I will happily write to him and give him the details.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
I wish to speak in support of new clause 7, which was so ably introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), and to comment on the related issues of the number of MPs and the number of Ministers with which it deals. Paragraph 24 of the coalition programme for government, the contents of which we are, in part, debating today, starts with the words:
“The Government believes that our political system is broken. We urgently need fundamental political reform”.
I totally dissociate myself from that shameful statement. If it were true, all the political leaders of recent years ought to resign their seats because they would be responsible. Our “political system is broken” it says. That was the slogan of Oswald Mosley and the British fascists when I was a boy. Mosley spent the war in prison and the political system he despised and described as broken triumphed at home and abroad. Our political system is not broken. We have had some nincompoop Front Benchers, some expense-fiddling Back Benchers and even some who managed to qualify under both categories, but our political system is basically sound and, in parliamentary terms, not very different from what it was in 1945, 1918 and 1815.
It is the duty of an incoming Government in a democratic country to work within the rules and conventions of its political system, not to change those rules and conventions to fit their temporary party political convenience—that is a privilege usually reserved for banana republics. That is why I am opposed to all the so-called constitutional changes proposed in the coalition programme. The Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday—appropriately on “Desert Island Discs”—that when he met the leader of the Conservative party after the election, they agreed together that in the general election both their parties had lost. We should try to reverse that decision of the electorate not by changing the rules of the game but by raising the standard of government. We do not have too many MPs: we have too many Ministers and too many placemen, to use Sir Robert Walpole’s phrase to describe the proliferation of what Disraeli later described as the Tadpoles and Tapers of politics, who are now being proliferated to an astonishing degree.
In 1900, when we were the richest and most powerful nation in the world, there were nine Parliamentary Private Secretaries. By 2000, the number had gone up to 47 and it is rising daily.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman said that in 1900 the UK was the richest nation in the world. Today, in The Scotsman, I read that among the top 15 most prosperous nations, the UK finds itself in the unlucky 13th place, behind Norway at No. 1 and noticeably behind Ireland and Iceland, respectively at 11th and 12th. That is just a point of information.
Sir Peter Tapsell
It is very interesting—even if incomprehensible to me. I make the point in passing that Scotland has gained even more than Britain from the combination of our two countries since the Act of Union.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Gentleman feel that the Irish Republic would be better off as part of the UK, or has the Irish Republic prospered and done far better by leaving the UK?
Sir Peter Tapsell
Curiously enough, I shall come to the question of the Irish Republic a little later in my remarks, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me.
Although by 2000 the total number of MPs involved in Government had already gone up from 42 in 1900 to 129, the number of Cabinet Ministers has not greatly increased. It is the number of loyal, but little known and easily sackable bag carriers that has ballooned. At the election, we in the Conservative party were pledged to make Government more answerable to Parliament. How is that to be achieved by maintaining the number of Ministers and increasing the number of PPSs, yet at the same time reducing the number of MPs? At this rate, genuine Government Back Benchers will become a threatened species. There will be no more Pitts attacking Walpole, no more Disraelis attacking Peel and no young Macmillans attacking Chamberlain, yet that is part of the lifeblood of our parliamentary story.
On what grounds is it claimed, historically, statistically or in terms of accommodation, that we have too many MPs? Germany, Australia and the United States, with their federal structures, have far more elected representatives, at various levels of their constitution, than we have. Over the past two centuries, our population has increased from about 16 million in 1800 to about 62 million today. We now have 650 MPs. The proposal is to reduce the number to 600. In 1801, shortly before Trafalgar, there were 658 MPs. In 1885, in the heyday of Liberalism, there were 670 MPs. In the 1918 general election, 707 MPs were elected to the House, before the southern Irish were hived off in 1922—the year in which the Back Benchers of the Tory party reasserted themselves and got rid of Lloyd George.
Universal suffrage was not fully achieved until 1929, but in the two previous centuries the voteless masses were never out of the minds of wise MPs and Ministers. In 1801, the number of people, as distinct from voters, in each constituency averaged 24,000—although it varied a good deal from constituency to constituency. Today, the number is 95,000 and the majority are electors. If we reduce the number of MPs to 600, as is proposed, that average population figure will become 103,000, quadrupled from the 25,000 of 1800 when they had more MPs than we have today. Also, the demands of a constituency on its Member of Parliament have enormously increased in recent years. In my first Parliament, I shared one secretary with two other young and active MPs; now I have three secretaries working for me alone.
Coalition Ministers, in their programme document, claim to hold our political system in contempt, but the strange fact is that the part of the system that undoubtedly works best is that in which the Government are least involved. The best aspect of modern politics is the close personal relationship between MPs and their constituents. Its closeness and extent is unique. Even in Switzerland, the cantonal MP is not seen as being so close and available as most MPs of all parties are seen to be by their constituents in Britain.
While the media and many members of the public often express contempt for our leading political figures—but not, of course, for the Leader of the House—at grass-roots level, whatever the politics of their MP, people are more likely to say, “My own MP does a good job in the constituency, and when I am in trouble, I know that he will do his best to help me.” That is the strongest of all the present bulwarks of our democratic parliamentary system.
At a time of economic failure, disgruntled police, fearful public servants, a neglected army and hostile trade unions, which in many countries would be regarded as a dangerous quintet, why tamper with that bulwark? When there are so many more pressing issues to be solved, why set many MPs, even of the same party—or particularly of the same party—at the political throats of their neighbours, as rumours of boundary changes begin to abound? My local press has already speculatively redrawn the six Lincolnshire constituencies and abolished one of them, to general dismay and the discouragement of activists of all parties. Why muddy the political waters with the inevitable charges of gerrymandering, which are certain to be thrown about?
Very wisely, in the United States, changes to the actual constitution occur only very rarely, after years of discussion, and they require a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress and the approval of the Supreme Court. In this debate on new clause 7, I have spoken about only two aspects of the so-called constitutional reforms, but in my view, the wide range of constitutional and electoral changes proposed by the coalition Government, taken as a whole, and introduced so early in the life of a Parliament full of new Members, constitute an attempt at a peaceful, political coup d’état, with the sole object of securing the position of Ministers. They have no mandate for the Bill from the country. I therefore urge this Committee to accept new clause 7, and urge the House in due course to reject the whole Bill on Third Reading.
Chris Bryant
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her splendid speech. I had not realised that she was going to end so swiftly.
We have had excellent contributions. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said that he lacked ambition. That is clear, I suppose. That has been underlined with three lines from the Whips, but I praise the motion that he tabled. It puts into a new clause the question that I asked the Deputy Prime Minister some few months ago: if the Government plan to cut the number of seats in the House of Commons and do not plan to cut the number of Ministers, surely that will increase the influence of the Government—the Executive—over Parliament. I wholeheartedly support the argument that the hon. Member for Broxbourne made this evening.
Mr MacNeil
May I charitably suggest that although the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) might lack personal ambition, he certainly does not lack ambition for the House and its wider membership, which will have been noted on both sides of the House?
Chris Bryant
Of course; I did not mean to be ungenerous to the hon. Member for Broxbourne, as I think he well knows. I was praising his ambition, which need not be for the greasy pole—it might be for other things in life.
The right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell)—
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: procurement is extremely difficult, but we have absolutely got to do better. One of the decisions that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has made is to get Peter Levene back into the Ministry of Defence to look at some of those issues. It is vital that we try to improve on the record that we have inherited.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Two years ago, when jobs were threatened at the QinetiQ Hebrides range—that is where Type 45s, among other defence assets, exercise—the current Defence Secretary and Armed Forces Minister joined me and the Hebrides range taskforce in forcing the then Labour Government into a U-turn. Will the Prime Minister join them in their support of the Hebrides range by valuing its work?
The Prime Minister
We have not made decisions about that yet, but what I can say is that the hon. Gentleman can see the overall lay-down that we have set out, in terms of the Type 45s, the frigates that we will retain and the future frigate programme.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. She and I have not colluded on this, but I took the precaution of looking up the definition of “alternative” and its usage in the “Shorter Oxford English Dictionary”, which says:
“Some traditionalists maintain”—
I think that she and I are both in that category—
“from an etymological standpoint, that you can only have a maximum of two alternatives (from the Latin alter ‘other (of two)’) and that uses where there are more than two alternatives are erroneous.”
However, the dictionary then says:
“Such uses are, however, normal in modern standard English.”
More is the pity, but that is the factual situation as described in the dictionary. However, the sense that I have described is how those of us who are traditionalists, as well as a lot of other people, understand the word “alternative”. Indeed, although I am reluctant ever to criticise a word that he says, earlier on we heard the Prime Minister use the word “less” when he meant “fewer”.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is giving us a lecture on the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. However, in a previous general election—in 1992, I think it was—the Inverness seat had four candidates on roughly 25% each. How were those voters allowed any power or given any alternatives to express their further preferences, rather than having the winning candidate get only roughly a quarter of the votes?
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) intervenes, may I remind the Committee that we are not discussing AV versus first past the post? We are debating a particular form in this amendment, and we are now drifting away from that a little. Perhaps we could come back to it.
Mr MacNeil
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is talking about an exact parallel. At an election, there is a division of votes, but there is no division of time in a race: everyone is striving to achieve the shortest time. That is different from a division of votes among candidates.
Mr Chope
Speaking from my personal experience, when I was first lucky enough to get elected to this House in 1983, I got 41.5% of the vote. When I was defeated in 1992, I got more than 45% of the vote. I did not complain about that because all my constituents could understand that the person whom they most wanted to be their MP was no longer me. That is what we understand with the first-past-the-post system. As soon as we complicate the matter with alternative systems, we get complexity. In the amendment, I am trying to reduce that complexity and mitigate the problem as much as possible.
I want to draw another analogy. If the alternative vote system proposed by the Government in the Bill were adopted, people would be encouraged to rank the number of candidates from one to however many, in order of preference. I think that a lot of our constituents have difficulty in being sure about the relative merits of one or two candidates, yet we would be expecting them to list perhaps nine candidates in order of preference. If we tried to rate fast-food outlets in order of preference, we would need not only to work out which one we liked the most, but to rank Starbucks, McDonald’s, Subway, Café Nero, KFC, Burger King and Pret A Manger in order of preference. It is quite complicated for people to rate, say, one as their sixth preference and another as their seventh. Such a voting system would be demanding and result in people having to spend a lot more time in the polling booth poring over the information about the candidates. Indeed, they would need to get a lot more information before they could exercise an informed choice.
Mr MacNeil
I am not sure about the constituents of Christchurch, but the constituents of Na h-Eileanan an Iar certainly have no difficulty in getting beyond the No. 2, even when it comes to fast-food outlets, which we do not have many of in the Outer Hebrides.
Mr Chope
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point.
I refer the Committee to the evidence submitted to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee by Professor Patrick Dunleavy in the 14th written submission on page 205 in the third report on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. In his important paper, he asks what the alternative vote means. Were the Bill to pass, and were there to be a referendum in which the question on the alternative vote appeared on the ballot paper, many members of the public would ask precisely that question: what does the alternative vote mean?
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman said that in Wales and Scotland there was a list to balance the inequities of first past the post. Is he one of those who feel that inequities are manifest in first past the post?
Mr Syms
I have always supported first past the post, but if I were to argue for any alternative I would go for the German system, which could effectively be used in Scotland or Wales. I think that it is a better, more logical system, which retains the link between Member and constituency. However, that is not what is proposed in amendment 62.
I think that the amendment is sensible because it goes to the root of AV, which is the weighting of votes. Endless weighting of votes makes a system that is meant to be fairer much more unfair, because those who have a first choice are cancelled out. It might be fairer if someone’s second preference were counted as half a vote, or someone’s third preference as a third of a vote, or someone’s fourth preference as a fifth of a vote; but treating the preferences equally produces lowest-common-denominator politics. It means that the least offensive people can win, and that those with the most positive and passionate politics can lose.
Mr Chope
This has been a useful debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for what he said. I thank everybody who has participated; we have had some interesting insights. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) because he brought up important points about the need to give equal weight to votes and the way in which that principle is undermined by the principle of the alternative vote system.
It is semantics to say that people have only one vote, but some people’s votes may be counted more than once; that is the equivalent of saying that some people have several votes and some have only one, but if that is how the proponents of AV wish to try to campaign in the AV referendum, so be it.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) for his intervention, and I notice that he has an amendment on the amendment paper that effectively seeks to introduce the French system. I must say that when he told the Committee and me that the noble Lord Plant of Highfield and the noble Lord Campbell-Savours supported my amendment, I immediately got rather cold feet about its wisdom.
The purpose of the amendment was to try to draw out a discussion and get from the Minister a justification—whether it is satisfactory is another matter—of why the AV system put forward in the referendum is different from the AV system in London for the election of the London Mayor.
Mr MacNeil
I often hear Conservative party members, in particular, talking about first past the post or even advocating the form of AV that he might be advocating at the moment. Would he ever advocate that for the leadership of the Conservative party, which, as I remember, seemed almost to be AV for slow learners over the two or three weeks that it took?
Mr Chope
Actually, it was a very sensible system, not dissimilar to the one operated in France. Basically, there is one election and the person who gets the fewest votes drops out and there is a completely fresh start with a fresh ballot. For example, when Mr Michael Portillo sought to become the leader of the Conservative party, he had the largest number of votes—
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is rather jumping ahead; we have not even passed the legislation for the referendum, let alone there having been a yes vote from the voters. He will know that the right body to carry out the education process he describes would be the Electoral Commission, which does not receive its money from the Government. It makes a request about the resources that it needs to the Speaker’s Committee which puts a motion before the House, which then decides what resources to give to the Commission, so it is a matter not for the Government but for the House to decide.
Mr MacNeil
It was not the STV system that created the difficulty in Scotland, but the way in which the lists were drafted for the first-past-the-post and additional member systems. The new STV system did not create as much confusion as is imagined; it was the lists for parliamentary voting that did so.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification, but he will forgive me if I do not want to get into what happened in Scotland a few years ago.
The final question that the hon. Member for Rhondda asked was why the Bill does not refer to a candidate getting 50% plus one of the votes. The drafting is designed to work not just in the first round but, as he suggested, in subsequent rounds. As came out in the debate on the amendment from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), although someone who wins under the alternative vote system has to have 50% of the votes that are still in the count, they do not necessarily have to have 50% plus one of the votes cast in the election, because if all voters do not express a preference, someone can get elected on a smaller share of the original vote.
It is important that I run briefly through the details of the clause, because, as the hon. Member for Rhondda has pointed out, if there is a yes vote next year, a Minister will have to lay an order before the House and the system we are debating will be the electoral system that is used in this country to elect Members to the House of Commons. It is therefore worth the Committee spending a little time considering what the rules would be.
Chris Bryant
There are a lot of misconceptions in relation to the supposed benefits or otherwise of the system to the Labour party. For instance, I heard frequently during the general election—this is before Cleggmania rose and fell—that the system was unfair because the Conservatives would need to be 10 points ahead to gain a majority. That is not precisely the hon. Gentleman’s point, which I will come to in a moment, but many people forget that the difference between winning an election and winning a majority is significant in our system. However the boundaries are drawn, the moment a party gets over the 40% mark in a majoritarian system such as ours, it tends to do rather better than its share of the vote would suggest.
Mr MacNeil
The reason why parties or people do well in a majoritarian system when they get more than 40% of the vote is that the first-past-the-post-system was really designed for two players. A third or fourth player complicates first past the post and renders it idiotic, but for chaos theory.
Chris Bryant
I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s pronunciation of the word “renders”, but other than that, I am not sure I agree with his point. It is true that in elections in the previous century, the Conservative and Labour parties secured something like 95% or 96% of the vote and that in the last election, we secured considerably less than that. That is one reason why we ended up with a hung Parliament. However, I do not see how that bears on my point, which is that in a majoritarian system, once a party gets more than 40% of the vote—many think that this is the great benefit of that system—it tends to find it rather easy to get not just a majority, but a fairly hefty one.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I am looking at amendment 353, but it is not clear precisely which “parliamentary constituency” is referred to. Does it mean a Westminster parliamentary constituency or a Scottish parliamentary constituency? As Members would or should know, there is quite a difference in numbers—72 as opposed to 59—between the two. There is some ambiguity in the amendment; it is not at all clear.
Mr Harper
Fortunately, neither I nor my hon. Friends were responsible for that legislation. It was introduced by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues when they were in government. I am thus not going to defend the wording. I think that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar is probably spot on in what he said.
Mr MacNeil
The intervention from the Opposition Front Bench has only added to my confusion. Does the amendment refer to both the Scottish and the Westminster parliamentary constituencies or neither—or is it “Please yourself and toss a coin”?
Mr Harper
Again, I think that the hon. Gentleman is quite right. The Government propose to have the counting done and the results declared in tandem with the other elections taking place that day. We believe that that is administratively sensible and in no way affects the legitimacy of the results, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford has pointed out.
My final point in response to the hon. Member for Rhondda is that he was effectively inviting me to do the chief counting officer’s job for her. Of course there are rules laid down for the conduct of elections, but it is for her to judge whether the regional counting officers and others appointed to work for her are carrying out their responsibilities appropriately. It is not for me to micro-manage her judgment—her judgment is a matter for her. On that basis, I urge hon. Members to support the Government’s amendments and urge the hon. Member for Rhondda not to press amendment 353 to a Division.
Amendment 261 agreed to.
Amendment made: 262, page 14, line 28, leave out sub-paragraphs (3) to (5) and insert—
‘Assistance to counting officers etc
2A (1) A local authority whose area forms, or forms part of, a particular voting area must place the services of their officers at the disposal of—
(a) the counting officer for the voting area, and
(b) the Regional Counting Officer (if any) appointed for the region that includes the voting area,
for the purpose of assisting the officer in the discharge of his or her functions.
(2) In this paragraph “the local authority”—
(a) in the case of a voting area that is a district or county in England, or a London borough, means the council for that district, county or borough;
(b) in the case of the City of London voting area, means the Common Council of the City of London;
(c) in the case of the Isles of Scilly voting area, means the Council of the Isles of Scilly;
(d) in the case of a voting area in Wales, means the council of a county or county borough;
(e) in the case of a voting area in Scotland, means the council of a local government area.’.—(Mr Harper.)
Mr Brady
As my hon. Friend says, the Minister is a good man. He said as recently as 6 September, in the winding-up speeches on Second Reading:
“It is perfectly normal in most countries that in order for someone to be able to vote for the national Parliament they have to be a citizen of the country concerned. That is a perfectly normal process and we are not changing it in this Bill. It is the existing system and I feel sure that Mrs Clegg will cope with it perfectly well.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 128.]
I am sure that Mrs Clegg will cope with it perfectly well, whatever we do this evening. However, crucially, although my hon. Friend the Minister appears to share my view that it should be perfectly normal for the right to vote in general elections to be reserved for citizens, as it is in most countries around the world—in almost every country around the world—it is not yet perfectly normal in this country. The purpose of these amendments is to begin to lay the ground for that important change in the franchise.
Mr MacNeil
I am reading the hon. Gentleman’s amendments with interest. I note that Republic of Ireland citizens would, as I understand it, lose the right to vote in the referendum if his amendments were to go through. However, those who live in Northern Ireland but have Republic of Ireland citizenship, so long as they were ordinarily resident in Northern Ireland, would be allowed to vote. My question is about those from Northern Ireland who might have Republic of Ireland citizenship—not UK subjects—but who subsequently move to Scotland. Would they vote or would they not, and how would we enable that to happen or not to happen?
Mr Brady
I think I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I think that for the purposes of this Bill it would be perfectly simple. We are talking about a referendum vote that will take place on a single occasion, so any change we make in the franchise for the referendum would clearly depend on their status at that time.
Mr MacNeil
A particular instance might be the case of an individual who has never lived in the Irish Republic but who has chosen Irish citizenship and has then moved to Scotland.
Mr Brady
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that I tabled amendment 60 in a spirit of compromise with the intention of avoiding re-opening difficult debates that had taken place at the time of the Good Friday agreement. It is of course an inconsistency set against amendment 59, but that is its sole purpose.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Lady agree that if we can send 16-year-olds into our armed services and demand that they pay tax, they should be allowed to vote at 16? The Scottish National party and, I recall, the Liberal Democrats have been very strong advocates of having the franchise at 16; we are still of that mind and I hope that in the Lobby the Liberal Democrats will be, too. Is she optimistic about that?
Natascha Engel
I have it on good authority that I should be very pessimistic about the Liberal Democrats joining us in the Aye Lobby tonight, but they would be very welcome to do so.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) may have been taunting the Liberal Democrats to stick to their principles, but I am again stunned by their spinning, wriggling and movement. Is there anything left? No single transferable vote, no votes for 16-year-olds—what is left for the Lib Dems? May I offer them a cerebral argument? Sixteen-year-olds will be disproportionately affected by virtue of their age—
The Temporary Chair (Mr Roger Gale)
Order. I should like to curtail interventions to intervention length.
Natascha Engel
I should have been more particular about that point, and I apologise. My argument was that 16-year-olds are allowed to do any number of things—
Natascha Engel
Indeed. At 16, people are allowed to do many things over which they have no say. The argument I am trying to make is that, as we are proposing a fundamental change in the voting system for a parliamentary election, at the referendum—and referendums are rare—that will happen only a few years before the general election at which we propose to change the voting system, it is only right that the people who will be affected by it should have a say in whether they want that system changed.
Mr MacNeil
I am listening with interest to the hon. Gentleman. I have already given an example to which there has not yet been an answer—of the Irish citizen from Northern Ireland living in Scotland. What about the children of those who have left the islands of Scotland and gone off to Australia or New Zealand? I know some people who have done so. Those children are the children of UK subjects and have the title of British citizen. Are they entitled to vote, although they have never lived in the UK, when those who have come here and are materially affected by what is happening would not be allowed to vote?
Mr Shepherd
As for those who have emigrated, and possibly even taken up Australian citizenship, I would say no. Why should they? They have made a declaration.
Mr Shepherd
I do not want to engage in an exchange across the Chamber of the kind that we have just had. I respect the hon. Gentleman’s opinions, but it seems that we are talking about a central, small part of an issue: what constitutes British citizenship? It is not as defined in 1947 any more, and there has been a whole series of extensions to that definition. Now, European—not British—citizens can determine how local taxes are arranged in the borough or elsewhere.
This is a question that would, frankly, have been startling to many people, certainly when I first came to the House. The numbers are huge: 3 million new British citizens have been created since 1997, and I do not see them returned on the electoral register. It has not leapt by that number. I want to assert the essential concepts of citizenship, because the Bill is, in the end, about our citizenship; it is about voting processes and how we elect a Government, and it explores the idea of a five-year mandatory Parliament. However, the essential issue here is who should vote. That is all it is about.
Mr MacNeil
Is the hon. Gentleman saying that somebody who holds British citizenship because of their UK-subject parents—I know that these are funny terms that are kind of inconsistent—and who has never lived in the UK should be able to vote in the referendum and that those who live here should not?
Mr Shepherd
I am using common terms, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for that. I understand British citizenship as a link by birth to a country. I also see it as the sentiment of the individual. As I said, there have been 3 million new British citizens in 13 years, and it is not impossible for them to express that sentiment and qualify for citizenship. I did not want to be distracted down the routes along which the hon. Gentleman was trying to lead me. I feel that we have started on a question and answer session, and that was not my intention.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is sitting next to the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West—a man who just described himself as an eternal optimist. They are both so optimistic that they are still referring to me as a Minister, which is a delight. Of course, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) knows perfectly well that that is not the argument I am making; I know that because he did that little shrivel-up of his nose that he sometimes does when he is about to make a mischievous contribution in debate.
The basis of my argument is that the bonds of the Commonwealth are important, and I have given a couple of instances of that. We have significant numbers of people from these various communities in the UK. Many of them have been resident for some time, pay taxes and contribute to British political life, and I would like them to be able to remain in the same situation. The situation is not broken, and so, to use an old Conservative principle, I do not see the need to fix it. Particularly in relation to the Republic of Ireland, it would be a step completely in the wrong direction to try to unpick the relationship that we have managed to maintain over the past few years.
Another issue that has been touched on only slightly relates to the overseas territories. We should consider, not directly in relation to this referendum, but certainly in relation to the future, how overseas territories are represented in the context of the British Government. There is an degree to which we still decide matters for the overseas territories. For instance, in recent weeks the Government have decided to overturn the decision on borrowing in the Cayman Islands and allowed the Cayman Islands to remain as a tax haven. I believe that that is entirely a mistake, and that the finances of Cayman are unsustainable. It is therefore important that we find some means of ensuring that the overseas territories have some form of representation.
I want to ask the Minister a couple of other questions about why the Government have introduced the clause precisely as it is. I presume that we will not have a clause stand part debate, so I will mention these points now, if that is all right, Ms Primarolo. I do not understand why peers should be allowed to vote in a referendum on elections to the House of Commons. That seems slightly odd, because all the other provisions relate to those who are able to vote in elections to the House of Commons. Perhaps the Minister will be able to enlighten us. In particular—this may be down to my personal stupidity and inability to read legislation—[Interruption.] Undoubtedly it is, yes. I see that the hon. Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley) has swapped sides and decided to join the ranks of the Labour party: he is very welcome.
I asked the Minister about clause 2(2) earlier, so by now he might have had some inspiration from the officials. No, I see that he is not going to get any inspiration from them because they are all shaking their heads furiously. The clause makes provision for peers whose only right to vote will be by virtue of being able to do so through the City of London—for instance, as an alderman—and therefore not by virtue of their residence. Precisely how many people does he think that that catches?
Can the Minister tell us about the position of the bishops? As he will know, some bishops arrive in the House of Lords automatically and some arrive on a sort of episcopal escalator that takes them up there once they are among the longest-standing bishops of the Church of England, as long as they are diocesan, not suffragan or area bishops. What happens to bishops once they are no longer taking their ex officio seat? Will they be allowed to vote? What provisions does he think should be made for the future?
Chris Bryant
I beg to move amendment 352, page 37, line 26, after ‘contrary’, insert
‘including any validly registered voter who presents himself to the polling station before 10 pm but, because of a queue, is not immediately able to vote’.
The amendment seeks to rectify the situation that we saw in the general election this year, when, as hon. Members will know, in several constituencies around the land people turned up to vote at 9.40 pm, 9.45 pm, 9.50 pm or 9.55 pm, but could not cast their ballots. Indeed, they were not provided with ballot papers because they could not get through the doors, as there were queues of people wanting to vote. I hope that all hon. Members thought it a bit of a scandal that although people have historically said that England is the mother of all Parliaments, and although we pride ourselves enormously on our historical past, we were not able to run—
Chris Bryant
Unfortunately it was a Liberal who first said that England was the mother of all Parliaments, so I can only excuse him. However, if the hon. Gentleman wanted to point out that the first Parliament was not on these isles at all, he would be absolutely right: it was the Althing, the Parliament of Iceland, which has sat since 929.
My point is that on election night we were deeply embarrassed by the fact that so many people were unable to vote in so many parliamentary constituencies. The Deputy Prime Minister himself said that the situation was simply unacceptable in a democracy:
“It is not right that hundreds later found themselves unable to exercise their vote when the polls closed. That should never, ever happen again in our democracy”.
In fact, the situation in his own constituency was among the worst in the land. The returning officer, John Mothersole—a name I have not come across before—apologised to voters who were turned away, saying that the council had “got things wrong.” He said that the turnout had been phenomenal, probably the highest in 30 years. That was not quite right—it was not the highest turnout in 30 years—but the fact that some 200 people were turned away in Ranmoor in Sheffield, Hallam and the police had to deal with an angry crowd of about 100 would-be voters is a clear indication that there is a significant issue to consider.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is true that some people vote some days before the election when they vote by post, but for many people—those doing shift work, for example—it is vital to keep the polling stations open right up to 10 pm; otherwise, they would not be able to meet their work obligations as well as their voting duties.
Mr MacNeil
I saw how what the amendment proposes can work in practice in Venezuela, where I was once asked to be an international election monitor. When the time to close came, the polls stayed open until the queue of people had finished voting. It worked with no problem at all; it functioned very well in Venezuela.
Chris Bryant
Some people have had doubts about some of the Venezuelan elections, and I am not sure that we want to base what we do entirely on comrade Chavez’s elections. When I was the Minister with responsibility for Latin America, I was shown a hospital in Venezuela and on one occasion I saw the same woman in three different wards—to prove that the hospital was being used.
Mr MacNeil
Serious questions are often raised before elections, but that happens in this country, too. I do not want to leave people with the impression that there is anything specifically wrong with Venezuelan democracy. From what I have seen of that democracy, I know that both the opposition and the Government of that country were very happy with the process.
Chris Bryant
Perhaps we should stick to elections in this country, rather than worry about Venezuela. The point is that the amendment is designed to allow someone who has presented themselves to the polling station before 10 o’clock to enter it, receive their ballot paper and vote after 10’clock, even though there was a queue that prevented them from being dealt with by the officials immediately. This will be even more important if we end up with combined polls next year. In many areas in the Rhonda, there tends to be a fairly quiet period between 8 pm and 9.30 pm, but then there is a sudden surge of voters. If Assembly elections as well as the referendum are happening in the same polling station, with people having to approach two desks to provide the information necessary to get their ballot papers, the delay might well be increased. If local authorities are worried about whether the number of staff is sufficient to fulfil all the functions properly, that provides all the more reason to make special and specific provision for people to be able to vote, even though they are not in the polling station until after 10 o’clock.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 155, page 1, leave out line 6 and insert—
‘(2) (a) The Electoral Commission shall within two months of Royal Assent to this Act specify the date on which the referendum is to be held.
(b) The specified date must be—
(i) within 18 months of the date of Royal Assent to this Act, and
(ii) a date on which no other election to a parliament or assembly in the United Kingdom is to be held.
(c) The Minister must lay before Parliament the draft of an Order in Council to give effect to the specified date.
(d) The draft of the Order in Council under paragraph (c) above shall not be laid before Parliament until the specified date has been agreed by the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales.’.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 4, page 1, line 6, leave out
‘must be held on 5 May 2011’
and insert—
‘shall be held on a date specified in an order made by the Minister, provided that such date—
(a) shall not coincide with any poll or polls held for any parliamentary assembly or regularly held local government election; and
(b) shall be at least six months after the commencement of the referendum period (as specified in Schedule 1).’.
Amendment 126, page 1, line 6, leave out ‘on 5 May 2011’ and insert
‘within 18 months of Royal Assent on a date that shall not coincide with any poll or polls for any parliamentary assembly or regularly held local government elections, to be specified by order subject to the approval of both Houses and following a consultation undertaken by the Electoral Commission.’.
Amendment 1, page 1, line 6, leave out ‘5 May 2011’ and insert ‘8 September 2011’.
Amendment 124, page 1, line 6, leave out ‘5 May’ and insert ‘2 June’.
Amendment 225, page 1, line 6, leave out ‘5 May 2011’ and insert
‘the day of the next general election’.
Amendment 5, in schedule 1, page 14, line 7, leave out
‘day on which this Act is passed’
and insert ‘relevant date’.
Amendment 6, page 14, line 8, at end insert—
‘1A (1) For the purposes of paragraph 1(a) above the “relevant date” is a date specified in an order made by the Minister, after consultation to be held after Royal Assent to this Act with the Electoral Commission as to an appropriate period for the fair conduct of the referendum.
(2) If in the opinion of the Electoral Commission the date on which Royal Assent is given to this Act would mean that there would be an insufficient period for the fair conduct of the referendum if it were held on the date otherwise required by section 1, the Minister may by order specify such later date on which the referendum shall be held as the Electoral Commission shall approve.’.
Mr MacNeil
I am glad that I may speak to our amendment on the date of the referendum on the voting system.
The current proposed date makes the referendum a squatter in another’s house, perhaps even a parasite. It is quite unbelievable that, of all possible days, one has been chosen that means the concerns of parts of the current UK are completely overlooked and disregarded. It is almost as though the Bill were intended to find opponents, and it has been successful in that end. It has created a coalition of opponents.
The handling of the referendum’s timing has been at best insensitive and insulting and at worst high-handed and cack-handed. In Scotland, we have already moved our council elections by a year so that they do not interfere with the parliamentary elections and vice versa. We have shown respect for others and each other. I have heard about the respect agenda, and I am now seeing its substance. I have also heard about the Liberal-Tory big society, and I wonder whether that is as vacuous, but that is another debate.
The fact that the Electoral Commission has sent guidance to Scotland’s 32 local authorities informing them that the referendum will be “the senior poll” is bad news for all of us who respect what happens in the Scottish Parliament. The counting of ballots for the Scottish Parliament will come second, which could delay some Scottish parliamentarians’ results until the next day, or perhaps even later given Scottish geography or, as I can testify from the experience of the 2007 election, weather. The same could apply in Northern Ireland. Wales has already seen the problem coming and moved its elections, because there are to be two referendums, a council election and an Assembly election in 2011.
For all parties in Scotland, the question is why Scottish issues should be put on the back burner for a referendum for which there appears to be little real public appetite. There has been surprisingly honest input on that question—hostile, some might call it, although we might call it sensible. There has been sensible input from Jim Tolson, who happens to be the Liberal Democrat MSP for Dunfermline West. He has supported us, saying that he is very much against having a referendum on the same day as the Scottish election. Oh that the Liberal Democrats south of the border could show the same sense.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Jim Tolson’s submission was one of a number that were made to the Scottish Affairs Committee, which have now been circulated to the House as a whole by e-mail? I hope that all Members will study them in great detail.
Mr MacNeil
I welcome that input from the Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee. We all look forward to opening that e-mail and spending many happy hours reading it.
Mr MacNeil
Maybe not happy hours, just hours.
Tom Aitchison, the convenor of the interim electoral management board for Scotland, has expressed sensible concerns about holding the UK’s alternative vote referendum on the same day as the Scottish Parliament poll. The proposal is an example of bad practice, and perhaps a slippery slope. In the United States, referendums are often used as wedge issues—some would allege that the Republican strategist Karl Rove uses them for exactly that purpose. We do not want our democracies hijacked by side issues on the day of a main vote that has been expected for years.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
If I recall the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998 correctly, the Scottish Parliament has the ability to vary the date of its election. If there is concern about having the polls on the same day, surely it could move the election a few weeks either side.
Mr MacNeil
I hear the hon. Gentleman’s accent. I have heard about the respect agenda, but I smell cultural imperialism in its worst form.
The UK’s media are pretty poor at dealing with complexities across the UK, and we are concerned that the important issues that will rightly come before the Scottish people will be sidelined by an “X Factor” media dealing with the simpler issue of the referendum. It happens in the US—it is the big ticket election, which affects all viewers, listeners, readers and dare I say media consumers, that counts, regardless of the importance of the issues being debated. However, is daily health and education policy not more important than the type of electoral system that is employed every four to five years? That is not to say that the electoral system is unimportant, but surely it is further down the hierarchy of needs and importance.
Mr MacNeil
My hon. Friend’s assertion is correct. The referendum, when it arrives, will probably receive very little attention in Scotland, because those of us involved in politics will not waste any time discussing whether we are for or against. We will have greater priorities that affect Scots day in, day out—and not a voting system for Westminster that comes along every four or five years. [Interruption.] I think that I have roused some Members.
Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)
Which is it to be: will the referendum arouse no interest whatsoever in Scotland because we have weightier matters to discuss, or will it drown out all other voices and deprive the Scottish people of the ability to consider their local elections?
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady misses the point which is the way in which the UK is constructed, the way in which finance goes into the media in the UK, and where the media broadcast from and are centralised. Everybody accepts that that issue will dominate.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
It is not clear whether the hon. Gentleman’s position is that there should be a referendum on another date, or whether he views the issue as so irrelevant that it should be held on no date. Is it no date or a different date?
Mr MacNeil
I have clearly engaged the hon. Gentleman well, because he anticipates my next point. I remind him of what I have said: it is not that the electoral system is unimportant; it is just that it is lower down the hierarchy of needs and importance.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman truly saying that the electorate lack the sophistication to understand various different issues at the same time? In other words, is he saying that the electorate cannot walk and chew gum at the same time?
Mr MacNeil
I am saying not that the electorate have any difficulties, but that the media that broadcast into people’s homes have a difficulty. If the hon. Gentleman is secure and certain of the sophistication of the electorate, he will doubtless support the inclusion of the single transferable vote, and perhaps other forms of election on the ballot paper. That would give proper cognisance to the sophistication of the electorate.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me and with Tom Aitchison, to whom he has already referred, that this is not simply a matter of the sophistication of the electorate? Mr Aitchison has identified serious practical problems, not least, as he put it in his evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee, the problems of sourcing enough ballot boxes, the hiring of additional venues and the expense of hiring additional staff.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Lady makes her point well; I will add no more, other than to thank her for that intervention.
The amendment tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends seeks to correct the huge error that has been made and to enable a day to be found, with the Electoral Commission taking the lead, so that the referendum can take place on a date on which no other election to a Parliament or Assembly in the United Kingdom is to be held. To that end, it seeks respect and consultation between the UK’s parliamentary and Assembly institutions. I have not prescribed a specific date, but have specified a time frame within which a referendum could take place. That would enable everything to occur and the process to be completed before the next UK election, which was alluded to during the programme motion debate.
My thinking in framing the amendment was to avoid being prescriptive and repeating the Deputy Prime Minister’s error of finding a date and arguing for it, regardless of what else might be happening on that date. My main motivation has been to respect already established processes and elections by finding another day, consensually and with respect for all by all. I do not, however, rule out supporting other amendments through a mechanism of mutual support.
I move the amendment because, although this issue is important—the Committee would not be discussing it if it was not—it is not as important as the range of policy choices to be made in Scotland and the re-election of an SNP Government on 5 May 2011.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I rise to move amendment 4, which was tabled in my name and those of my colleagues and which is associated with amendments 5 and 6.
Nick Boles
I always defer to my hon. Friend, and in particular on the question whether we are right, here and now, to deliberate the issues. I cannot say that it is my idea of fun, but it is what we are here to do, and it is right that we should do it. However, does that mean that we should therefore expect the people to go through a similar process in answering a simple question about a voting system? I do not think that we should.
It is revealing when some Opposition Members talk about the lack of consultation in the other nations of the United Kingdom. They never refer to the opinions of their people. They talk about—I quote the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson)—there having been no consultation with the stakeholders and about political opinion. To me, that sounds as though we are talking about elites.
Mr MacNeil
Will the hon. Gentleman concede that the Scottish Parliament is the most democratic forum that represents the opinions of the Scottish people?
Nick Boles
I am second to no one in this place, even to the hon. Gentleman, in my respect for the Scottish Parliament. I am a Conservative who always believed that we should have had a Scottish Parliament, and I am delighted that we have one. However, I hold the Scottish Parliament in as much contempt as I do all our political elites, in that we do not necessarily reflect the interests, concerns and priorities of the people whom we represent when we discuss politics itself and how elections are conducted.
Hywel Williams
We have had a very good debate, and I will not detain the Committee with repetition. However, I would like to thank the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who defended the Government’s position.
Hywel Williams
Promotion, indeed. The hon. Gentleman was heroically, magnificently incoherent—so he should go far on the Government Benches.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) distanced himself—and, to some extent, his party—from this shambles. That has a significance in Wales that some hon. Members perhaps do not quite realise.
As far as I can see, there are many, many reasons not to hold the referendum on the same date as the elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but so far no compelling reasons have been offered for why we must have the referendum on 5 May next year, apart from the reasons alluded to earlier: that this is part of the deal between the two parties that make up the coalition. As far as I can see, that is the only reason offered.
My major concern is that the referendum is to be held on the same day as the Assembly elections in Wales. In that respect, the arguments that we have heard about political interference from one campaign to the other are pertinent. It is difficult for us to hold the Assembly elections and the referendum on the same day, not least because of the points that have already been made about the media. In Wales, English newspapers have a huge penetration. Very few people read newspapers originating in Wales. The debate is therefore dominated by UK issues, or perhaps even by English issues. That will have a significant effect on the democratic debate leading up to our Assembly elections.
The argument has been made that there is a cost element involved, but, as I said in an earlier intervention, we will now have another referendum in Wales, on 3 March—we will have one on 3 March, one on 5 May and the Assembly elections on 5 May. That blows out of the water some of the arguments about cost.
Mr Harper
The Deputy Prime Minister and I have looked very carefully at the submissions Mr Gould made to the Scottish Affairs Committee, and also at the other submissions. We have also looked at the relevant sections of the Gould report, and the analysis is not the same. We are not talking about multiple voting systems. We are talking about a straightforward question with a yes or no answer. I simply fail to see why that would cause an incredible amount of problems.
I think voters are perfectly able to distinguish between the polls. On Second Reading, I said to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) that he was understating the qualities of his own constituents and the Scottish people in general. I think they are perfectly capable of making judgments about who they want to represent them in the Scottish Parliament—as, indeed, are Welsh and Northern Irish voters in respect of the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies—and of making a judgment about what the voting system should be for this Parliament. I think they are perfectly capable of making that judgment, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not agree.
Mr MacNeil
I was not in any way casting aspersions on the electorate. I was casting aspersions on the capabilities of the media to deal with more than one issue. They are obsessed with programmes such as “The X Factor” and they struggle with complexity—as, I am a little surprised to discover, the Minister is too at the moment.
Mr Harper
The Chairman of the Scottish Affairs Committee made a number of points. I think that I dealt with some of them in interventions. My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford made a speech with good humour. I think he was underplaying his reputation when he said that 90% of constituents did not know who he was. I am sure that if that was true and if more of them knew who he was, he would get an even more impressive result.
The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) and the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) made some serious points about the operational issues in Northern Ireland. The franchise for Northern Ireland Assembly elections and for local elections is the same. The referendum would be conducted on the Westminster franchise. So there would be two franchises operating, but that would be the same position as when local elections are combined with a general election.
As for the ID requirements, the legislation will provide that the requirements for the referendum and the Assembly elections will be the same. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends that the inconsistencies between ID requirements for voters in the Assembly and local elections will be dealt with before the polls next year.
The final point that I want to make, I am sure hon. Members will be pleased to know, is in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who talked about consultation. On Second Reading my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister said that we had not introduced the provisions on combination in the Bill because we wanted to take the time through the summer to work with the Electoral Commission, others in government in the territorial offices and with electoral administrators across the United Kingdom. I have written today to members of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, Opposition spokesmen and others with an interest in the Bill, including Members who spoke on Second Reading or who have tabled amendments, and leaders of parties represented in the devolved Parliament and Assemblies, to set out when we propose to table those amendments and debate them in the House, and to give them an idea of some of the provisions. I hope that that is helpful—indeed, it was intended to be so. In conclusion, I urge right hon. and hon. Members to resist any amendments that are pressed to a Division, and I urge hon. Members thinking of pressing their amendments not to do so.
Mr MacNeil
To recap the debate, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) made a very good speech majoring on fairness. He mentioned missing the bus, and it seems to me that the Deputy Prime Minister missed the bus on fairness with his differential treatment of voters. The hon. Gentleman’s amendment cites six months; I cite 18 months as a maximum. The point of agreement is that the date must be changed to prevent the differential treatment of voters. He also made a good point about the BBC. Not understanding the voters has been a problem with the media, and with media management and presentation. Only 3% of the BBC output comes from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which constitute 17% of the UK population.
The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), an apostle of AV, naturally supports AV, but he does not support the date. I look forward to seeing him in the Lobby, and I am sure that narrow party political considerations will not prevent him from voting. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), a fair and progressive person if ever there were one, made a good speech. His arguments were on the issues, not on side calculations for party political gain. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) repeated the point that the devolved Governments were not consulted and that there will be differential treatment across the UK. He argued that the referendum should be held in September—I am not against that at all; the point of agreement is that there should be a different date from 5 May.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made some excellent arguments. What can I say about her Gaelic pronunciation, other than that I expect to see her at the Mòd in Thurso by the end of the week, doubtless singing a Gaelic song? For Members who do not know what the Mòd is, it shows that we are more than two nations in one state. The hon. Lady said that she might need to examine her conscience. I would be more than happy to help her do so in the Lobby very shortly.
The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) illustrated our veritable rainbow coalition against 5 May. She made practical points about congestion on election day at polling stations, which were underlined by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) and by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The hon. Member for Belfast East made a cracking, quick-fire factual speech, and she also hit on the difficulties with the media and with Royal Mail. I only wish she had spoken to the absent Deputy Prime Minister before he landed the hon. Member for Epping Forest in it. [Interruption.] She wrote to him, she says from a sedentary position. She also mentioned the opportunity for cross-party co-operation that has been lost in the north of Ireland. I imagine that outside Scotland cross-party co-operation is more needed, including in Northern Ireland.
I am sure that the fire in the hon. Lady’s belly had nothing to do with the fact that the Faroe Islands have drawn with Northern Ireland. Perhaps this is a good point at which to mention that I am chairman of the all-party Faroe Islands group, which will hold a meeting before the end of the month—everyone is welcome. [Interruption.] I hope there will not be a differential turnout. Despite the Faroe result, Scotland are drawing 2-2 with Spain at the moment. [Interruption.] Not very united at the moment, eh?
The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) called for a level playing field, and he highlighted the difference between an election for a national Parliament, one for local councils, and no elections at all in the UK. He discussed his relationship with the leader of the Liberal Democrat party. The rest of us are not sure of any relationship at all, and might not even be able to pick him out in an identity parade. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), a renowned political tipster if ever there was, says that the hon. Gentleman is at the zenith of his political career—I am not sure what he means.
The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) told us of the reservations of Members of the Scottish Parliament; 5 May was on their timetable first, but it was ignored. My amendment allows 546 other days at least; of course there will be some days that we will wish to subtract. He supported an AV referendum, but he did not want it to be a democratic spoiler for Holyrood. He said that this was a deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories in support of Tory cuts. I put it to him that he prefers Tory cuts to independence for Scotland.
Eventually, after three hours we had someone supporting the Government. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) spoke about jobs, and I can relate again that the hon. Member for South Antrim was tipping him for promotion. I was expecting a Spectator award for him later in the year, but unfortunately he just kept talking and that seemed to slip from his grasp. He was given a good jolt of reality by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).
The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) highlighted the fact that the majority of the speakers came from the devolved nations and regions of the UK. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) conceded that the referendum was not ideal, but it was what was on offer. I would ask him to stick to his principles. But to be fair to him, he was one of the few Lib Dems on the big Lib Dem issue in the Chamber. I was counting, and only 3% of the Lib Dem party turned up for the main part of the debate on their big, big issue.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) talked of the premature calculation of a political novice, namely the Deputy Prime Minister. He said that the Deputy Prime Minister was in thrall to 5 May. He pointed out that the public can cope with different elections on the same day, but it is the media, the political system and even the Electoral Commission that struggle. He worried about the Tories turning up in Northern Ireland. In Scotland, they are like the corncrake, almost a protected species.
In a great contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) said that there were many reasons against 5 May, and that is what the Chamber heard tonight. There are many reasons against 5 May, and there is nothing for 5 May other than a tawdry deal between the governing parties. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) brought humour to the debate and illuminated internal Labour party thinking: vote for a referendum because the Lords will overturn it. He is supporting a change from 5 May, and I will welcome that.
The respect agenda should be alive and if it was, 5 May would not be happening. The Minister is a reasonable man and he batted heroically on a very sticky wicket. He personifies in the Chamber the maxim that one can disagree with a person’s argument but still respect the person. This is not a veto. This is only on one issue. One must have respect for the other legislatures in the UK and they themselves will be consulted on this one issue once. If one opposes this it makes the assumption that the Members of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Irish Assembly are unreasonable people.
I should not have to press the amendment to a vote. The Government should accept the arguments of all parties on both sides about the differential treatment of electors and the unfairness of this in the UK, but unfortunately I will have to do so.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Caroline Lucas
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. In a way, it is pretty arrogant for Members to assume that the population do not have a view and cannot make a sensible choice. Are we really saying that first past the post is such a strong and popular system that it justifies such a narrow question? Recent history suggests that it is not. It is no accident that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, not one of the eastern or central European countries emerging from years of totalitarian rule chose the Westminster model. Similarly, is AV really the only system that we should consider if we want to change?
I acknowledge that the alternative vote system has a number of advantages over first past the post and that, in some respects, it represents a small step forward. The Electoral Reform Society has conducted a thorough analysis of AV, and I share its assessment that there are some positives. Those positives include the ability of voters to record a sincere first preference, thus reducing the need for tactical voting; the widening of the political choice available to the elector; and the disincentives that the system offers for parties to pursue core vote strategies that ignore the wishes of the majority of the electorate.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Lady agree that AV, which the Liberal Democrats have accepted and which they imagine to be a halfway house between first past the post and STV, is not a halfway house at all? I contend that it does not go even a quarter of the way towards STV—probably not even a tenth or a twentieth or a fiftieth of the way. It probably does not go even 1% of the way towards STV. The Liberals have been bought off more than cheaply.
Caroline Lucas
I agree. The alternative vote represents a small step forward, but we should be very clear that it is not a proportional system. We owe it to the electorate to put before them a choice that includes a genuinely proportional system. The debate is wider than whether we should choose AV or first past the post. The relative merits of AV as against first past the post cannot be said to cover all the arguments in a modern debate about real electoral reform.
Mr Harper
It sounds as if the hon. Lady and those on the Government Benches are doing the same thing; we are putting to the House amendments that we think will get support. If she wishes to test hers and we test ours, we will see which of us has made the right judgment about which will get the support of the majority of Members in this House.
Mr MacNeil
Surely it is better to give the public a choice of three or perhaps four electoral systems that are commonly used throughout the United Kingdom, rather than a very narrow restricted choice of two, which seem to have been the subject of some sort of agreement in the smoke-filled rooms of this new coalition. Surely the public should be trusted and allowed to choose for themselves.
Mr Harper
Opposition Members seem awfully obsessed by smoke-filled rooms. Given that this House voted in the previous Parliament to ban smoking in public places, I have not detected a lot of smoke in any of the rooms where we have had our discussions.
As I said, choices will be put to the House this evening; if the opinion of the House is tested, the House can make a judgment about which of the questions it finds most acceptable. I hope that hon. Members will support the amendments that I have proposed, which the Government have tabled. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is perfectly free to test hers too, and we will see where the balance of opinion in the House lies. Given that we have only 18 minutes left and we are dealing with a number of amendments, I shall draw my remarks to a close and allow the debate to continue.
Austin Mitchell
Why does my hon. Friend not see that it is daft to give the second Chamber a better representative system than the first Chamber? It is important that the first Chamber has a system that gives us representation according to the way people vote. That is the essence of proportional representation; that is all we are trying to include in the referendum.
Mr MacNeil
Having just heard the words uttered by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), it is a fact that for the electors here, we effectively have a unicameral system, because they do not vote for those who enter the Chamber down the corridor.
Mr Mark Williams
May I reiterate to the Committee and to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) that the Liberal Democrat party still believes in STV, has done so for years, and will continue to do so? However, the reality is that the advances that the Bill represents will be jeopardised if we adopt the amendment on STV. The agreement before us was made on the basis of a referendum on AV. Without that, we will not secure a referendum, so there would be no referendum at all. That is the reality of the debate. We still believe in STV, and this is a staging post to something towards which our party will still work, but there is no majority in the House for STV. Without that majority, there will be no referendum.
Mr MacNeil
We have just heard the Liberal Democrats say that they still believe in STV. I wonder whether that belief stretches 5 or 10 yards to the Lobby. I would wager that it does not go very far at all.
In the moments that are left, I want to speak to an amendment that I tabled.
Individual Electoral Registration
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Harper
Electoral registration officers already have to undertake a number of checks to confirm that people are eligible to vote, particularly in different sets of elections. My hon. Friend will know that, for example, in order to vote in a general election, a person has to be a citizen of the United Kingdom or a qualifying citizen of the Irish Republic or the Commonwealth. Those checks will remain as they are now. The checking of the date of birth, signature and national insurance number will enable the registration officers to be confident about someone’s identity, which will enable those other checks to be more accurate.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
In these days of value for money and cost effectiveness, does the Minister see any merit in people who are in receipt of a state benefit, and thereby already encountering an arm of the state, automatically being registered to vote? The same could apply to people paying council tax, as he mentioned in his statement.
Mr Harper
While we are looking into data-matching, we are also going to look at other public databases—the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned a couple—to see whether, using that information, we can contact people who are eligible to vote but who are not on the register. They could then be contacted to check their further eligibility—their citizenship, for example—and encouraged to register to vote. The hon. Gentleman has made a useful and worthwhile point.