Elections Bill

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Maria Miller

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

Because it will enable people to be part of the system, to register online and to have confidence in what is going on in our election process.

I want to probe the Minister on the length of election campaigns, which have, I believe—this is to the hon. Gentleman’s point—not served us well in helping to engage people in the election process. Many hon. Members who took part in debates on the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill made the point about the continual lengthening of our election campaigns being not a benign act, but an act that has potential consequences—consequences we are not that aware of. Emerging research suggests that longer election campaigns are potentially disengaging for electors. They mean that the interest of electors wanes over time—perhaps all of us who have knocked on doors have seen that over the last two decades, when election campaigns have increased significantly in length.

Will new schedule 1 and new clause 11, tabled by the Government, provide some sense of opportunity that at least the length of election campaigns will not increase? The former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North, spoke about her understanding of the importance of potentially shortening election campaigns as well. Hon. Members will remember that in law at the moment election campaigns are currently 25 working days, and amendments that I and my hon. Friends tabled the last time these matters were discussed in this place considered shortening campaigns to 25 days.

Will the Minister update the House on the undertaking to consider research into the length of election campaigns, in conjunction with new clause 11 and new schedule 1? That could provide an opportunity for us to understand better how election campaigns affect voter participation, and how the length of campaigns may be shortened in a realistic and sensible way as a result of her new provisions. Will she help the House to understand how she will take that forward to ensure that our democratic process is as strong as it can be? The lack of consideration about the length of campaigns should be something that is of the past, and the issue should be central to the thoughts of the Government in the future.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 1, as well as new clauses 3 to 8, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady). I welcome the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) to his place. It is a pleasure to see him.

Before addressing the new clauses, I wish to put on record my sincere thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North and the hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who, day after day in Committee, went through the Bill forensically and exposed the fundamental threat to our democracy that is contained in almost every line of it. From restricting the franchise through the introduction of voter ID cards, to giving the Government power to set the strategy and policy of the Electoral Commission, abolishing a progressive, proportional voting system, and constraining how whole sections of civil society are allowed to campaign, this Bill has it all.

This Bill, which—let’s be honest—would not be out of place in the hands of Viktor Orbán or Jair Bolsonaro, should not be seen in isolation and has to be viewed in the wider context, as it includes plans to criminalise peaceful protest and to allow the Home Secretary to strip someone of British citizenship with the stroke of a pen. It places onerous legal constraints on journalists and whistleblowers. Ministers will be allowed to ignore legal rulings made under judicial review and there are plans to abolish the Human Rights Act. It was Peter Geoghegan, writing in openDemocracy just before Christmas, who said:

“This is what democracy dying…looks like. And we need to act now before it’s too late.”

That is why we opposed the Bill on Second Reading, why we sought to amend it radically in Committee, and why, unless Government Members wake up to what they are about to do and fundamentally amend the Bill today, we will oppose it this evening as well.

We in the SNP fully support new clause 1, which would simply bring the age at which people can vote in Westminster elections into line with what already happens in Scotland and in Wales. The SNP has advocated this for a long time—indeed, the legendary Winnie Ewing, when she made her maiden speech from these Benches 55 years ago during a debate on lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, said:

“There are moral and intellectual reasons why it is good sense to make people responsible at the age of 18 if not sooner… I am absolutely on the side of youth.”—[Official Report, 20 November 1967; Vol. 754, c. 980.]

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Maria Miller

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend makes points that I am sure those listening to that debate will be pondering. In a day and age when electronic mail, not postal mail, is the norm, they will be asking what the Government are doing to ensure that our electoral system is modernised. I applaud the Government for all they are doing on voter identification. It is such an important thing but it has been sadly lacking. This is a reforming Government in that area, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will do all she can to continue that reforming zeal in her work.

Let me pull together two other points that are allied to what we have been discussing. I think a great deal will be needed in returning to the status quo ante. The vast majority of Members do not remember the status quo ante—some of us do, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) and perhaps one or two others such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell, but there are not many of us left. Ensuring that the House and Members understand those conventions that are not formalised in law will be something of a challenge. I am sure the Minister is up to that challenge, but it is something we need to address. She has rightly made a number of comments on this issue—she has written a letter to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and there are pieces of correspondence and an opportunity for debate—but as we move forward we need a settled view of the conventions.

Finally, on the wash-up, the day that a Prime Minister announces a general election is not the start of the general election campaign, and hon. Members need to take a much closer look, perhaps through colleagues who sit on the relevant Committees, as to how we can get better control over what is considered in that wash-up session. There are often a few deals regarding what legislation will pass through Parliament before the election campaign, and perhaps that would be better done after the election, rather than before. We should be considering such matters, with a focus on shortening the election campaign to something that is not just best for one set of people, but best for our democracy.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I will hopefully delight the Committee by trying to speed things up a little, and I will not detain Members for long.

I agree with the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) that the Bill smacks of a Government who are still smarting from the events of 2019. I suggest that perhaps anger and revenge are no way to govern, and hopefully the House will help the Government to look beyond their bruised pride and get to a situation far beyond this Bill. Although in and of itself clause 1 may look fairly innocuous, and when taken in isolation might even be seen as trivial and almost unimportant, I caution the Committee that when viewed alongside other legislation currently going through this place—the Elections Bill, for example, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill—we are witnessing a strategy on the part of the Government to centralise power and control with the Executive at the expense of this House. Some clauses in Bill, including clause 1, give more power to the Executive, strip parliamentarians of their powers, and deny the judiciary the ability to scrutinise what they are doing, while at the same time eroding the public’s right to protest against it. As has been said, this is an unashamed power grab by the Executive at the expense of this House, and we believe that that is how it will be seen in the context of that wider picture.

However intensely hon. Members may dislike the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, simply voting for the Bill this evening will not automatically return us to our position prior to 2011 when that Act was introduced. The Scottish National party has said it will oppose the Bill all the way through, and we will oppose it again tonight. New clause 2, and the idea that a general election could be called to dissolve Parliament and that that motion must be agreed by this House, is correct. It appears to me that if the Bill passes without new clause 2, the Prime Minister of the day will have full and unfettered control over the Dissolution of Parliament and the timing of any general election.