Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 19th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for opening this debate and all noble Lords who have contributed. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, was quite right; it may be a small debate, but it was a quality one for all that. I have certainly learned a lot this morning. I should say at the start that it is an unexpected treat to be here this morning, but I would have much preferred that my noble friend Lady Hayter was standing here covering this brief. Her gifts are rather greater than mine and she would have done a much better job. I fear she is a loss to the Front Bench and your Lordships will have to make do with me.

I am with my noble friend Lord Dubs and the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne: I love voting. I love everything about it. I love the sense of responsibility, the sense of hope and the deep secrecy of the polling booth. I even love the pencils on strings. I often give thanks for those who fought so that I would have the right to vote and I have always used it. I voted in a general election for the first time in 1979, when I was still at school. If I am honest, the result was not all I had hoped for. However, I kept voting and by and by it got better. By about 2010, I had got the hang of it, but then I was not allowed to do it any more. In the middle, in 1997, it went really well for a few years. It went up and down.

I confess that I now miss voting in a general election. The last time I went to vote locally, there were two clerks on the polling desk. One asked the other what the “L” next to my name meant. She whispered, “Lord”, looked quizzical and just said, “Well, because…”. Then she looked at me and waited for me to move away, I suspect before intoning the list of Peers, felons and so on, because it seemed faintly rude.

In the last general election, 48,324 people voted in the city of Durham and 55% of them voted for my wonderful honourable friend Roberta Blackman-Woods. Obviously, I would have been happy if I had been able to vote, but it would not have made a difference to her election. I take the point from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, that there are times when it does. Had it been on a knife-edge, and my vote had tipped the balance, I am not sure the people of the city of Durham would have welcomed that with open arms. They may not have felt happy about it, if that had made a difference. Fortunately, it did not. My honourable friend’s standing was so great that the people of Durham came out to back her in great numbers.

My noble friend Lord Desai made the point that, traditionally, the view has been held that we pay a price for being here. Although I hear very clearly what my noble friend Lord Dubs thought of that analogy, it has seemed to me personally that if I had to trade the chance to vote in the city of Durham to be able to stand here to amend Bills and change legislation, that is at least a fair swap. As my noble friend Lords Dubs will know, although he may not approve of it, the view of the Labour Party has long been that if we are to look at this question, we should look at it in a broader sense. We have long had a view that there should be a constitutional convention which should look at the composition and role of the House. This could be swept up in that.

Despite the steely stare of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, I want to talk briefly about other ways of extending the franchise, something raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, is right: there is a question about priorities. If I were going to start extending the franchise, I do not think I would start with us. I would want the opportunity to give 16 and 17 year-olds the chance to vote. Then the rather impressive 17 year-old described by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, would not have to wait for the next election, should it happen to come along sooner than currently planned. I look forward to seeing him take up the former seat of the noble Lord in due course—possibly not very long, based on that comment. However, I would send one comment back to him. If we get rid of all the archaic laws on our statute book, it might look a little different from how it does now. He might want to give some thought to that.

I will share one thought in passing on young people voting. Can the Minister let me know whether it is true that members as young as 15 have a vote in the Tory party elections to choose the next Prime Minister? If so, is it not ironic that they can effectively choose the next Prime Minister but cannot vote for their local MP?

Alternatively, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, we could extend the franchise to long-resident EU nationals in this country after we leave the EU—or before, since some were denied the chance to vote in May. Or we could address the difficulty in voting faced by people in rented accommodation, young people on the move, or indeed homeless people, of whom there are, I am sorry to say, more than there are Members of this House. Can the Minister share any thoughts from the Government on that?

In parenthesis, before I close, one of the interesting things about our current system is that we are Members of the UK Parliament and remain so even during a general election. Should there ever be a crisis—God forbid—while the Commons was not sitting, at least our being here permanently means that we have the opportunity not only to express a view on questions, but to challenge and bring to account Ministers on the decisions they may take. Maybe that is a slight benefit to our being slightly aside from the fray.

For now, notwithstanding the very strong views expressed around the House, it is our view that this is not the biggest priority to tackle. It is not the biggest injustice before us. I am not sure that it is even the biggest injustice in this House. The hereditary by-elections, with their in-built bias on grounds of sex and race, frankly call to be addressed ahead of this. As fortune would have it, we have an opportunity to do precisely that on 6 September when my noble friend Lord Grocott brings his Bill before the House. That is something to look forward to.