Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, no.

In contrast, Margaret Thatcher’s 1986 system recognised the need for balance, which allowed local commissioners and the commission to take account of historical and natural boundaries, and density as well as sparsity of population, and to do so with the widest public acceptability. That ability to achieve balance has also meant that long-standing problems such as the under-registration of voters has had less impact on the final outcome. The problem of under-registration goes back to the 1990 poll tax. We sought to stabilise registration levels, but that poll tax legacy remains. The right hon. Gentleman must recognise that his reliance on arithmetic above all makes the problem of under-registration so acute and so potentially unfair.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Straw]

I shall break my undertaking and give way to the hon. Lady.

[Mrs Laing]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for giving way. He knows what I am going to say because we have had this argument so many times across the Dispatch Box. He knows, as does the rest of the House, that under-registration will be put right to a very great extent by the introduction of individual voter registration, which was proposed by the Conservative party way back in 2005 and which the right hon. Gentleman’s Government delayed for five years before they introduced it.

[Mr Straw]

The hon. Lady will recognise that we introduced agreed legislation on the phasing-in of individual registration. She will also know—and she is on the record as recognising—that although there were potential benefits from individual registration, there were dangers too, which were clear from the Northern Ireland experience. It had to be phased in carefully, with a large amount of resources—not rushed, as the Deputy Prime Minister now proposes.

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[Mr Godsiff]

In theory, registration should be compulsory at the moment. Indeed, I saw something issued by Greenwich council saying that people should put their name on the register of electors and could be fined £1,000 for not doing so. However, I take the hon. Gentleman’s point.

We live in an age where all parties, rightly, make great play of the virtues and obligations of citizenship. I would have thought that it was a basic obligation of a citizen of the United Kingdom, who chooses to live in a democratic country, to take the trouble to express their view through receiving a ballot paper when a general election is held. Bearing in mind that the coalition Government are proposing five-year, fixed-term Parliaments, it does not seem to me an onerous obligation to place on a citizen of the United Kingdom once every five years.

Of course, I am not saying that an individual citizen should be obliged to vote for any party or candidate. People are perfectly entitled to do what they want with their ballot paper once they have received it. They could deface it, for example, or rip it up. Indeed, all of us will have stood at counts and seen ballot papers on which electors have put either no mark at all or certain marks in order to express their views on all the candidates—sometimes in the most colourful language. I have absolutely no problem at all with somebody doing that, because the important thing is that they will have expressed their views, whatever they might be and however offensive I might find them, and I believe that that is a basic obligation of a citizen in a democratic society.

Furthermore, by moving to a system of obligatory voting, we could begin to address the very important issue, which several Members have raised and the Electoral Commission has highlighted, whereby 3.5 million-plus people are missing from the electoral register. The majority are not on the register because the head of household did not register them, because they were not in when the council canvasser called or because they did not think that they were entitled to be on it.

[Mrs Laing]

Will the hon. Gentleman add something to that list? He rightly said that, currently, it is compulsory to register to vote, but is it not possible that some people do not want to be registered to vote because it suits them not to be on the register?

[Mr Godsiff]

That might well be the case, and I shall come to that point in a moment. I hear what the hon. Lady says, but in my opinion the majority of people who are entitled to vote but missing from the electoral register do not deliberately choose not to be registered. However, it is quite true that during the furore over the poll tax a large number of people deliberately left their names off the electoral register, because Mrs Thatcher’s Government, in their wisdom, decided to use the electoral register as the basis for levying it.

By far, the majority of people who are eligible to be on the electoral register but not registered are younger people, those from lower-income social groups, those who live in rented subdivided houses, people who do not have a strong command of the English language and individuals who have learning difficulties. If voting were obligatory, there would be a much stronger emphasis on electoral registration officers ensuring that, in every household, everybody who was eligible to register was registered.

I very much hope that the Government will seriously consider allowing the electorate to express their opinion on obligatory voting in the United Kingdom, particularly given that we are moving towards a system that is used by Australia, where voting is obligatory and, in comparison with Britain, the turnout is more than 90%. Indeed, it would make absolute sense if such a question were on the same ballot paper as the one under discussion, because the argument about cost just does not come into the debate. We are going to have a referendum anyway, and nobody can convince me that two questions on a ballot paper would increase the cost. So, if ever there were a time when the Government could hold a ballot, it is now.

If the coalition Government say, “No, we are not going to do that,” we will be left with the bizarre situation in which the Conservative party does not want AV, and in which the Liberal Democrats do not want AV—because they want PR—but will vote for AV for reasons of expediency and still hold a referendum on it. If the answer to that question is no, however, they are not going to hold a referendum to ask the people whether, on a second question, there should be obligatory voting in the United Kingdom. That is bizarre. I do not wish to make a partisan point, but the Deputy Prime Minister dotted his speech with phrases such as, “Not for us to decide,” “The will of the people must prevail,” and “The final decision should be with the electorate.” I suspect that, if nothing else, such a question would certainly engender a lively debate throughout the country, and I commend it to the Government.

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[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

This afternoon a delegation travelled from the Isle of Wight to present the results of an online petition to 10 Downing street. This evening I shall present the petition in the more traditional paper form.

The petition was organised by the cross-party OneWight campaign. Former parliamentary candidates, Mark Chiverton for Labour and Jill Wareham for the Liberal Democrats, were in the House. Kevin Smith, the chief executive of the island’s chamber of commerce, and Richard Priest OBE, the non-political spokesman for the campaign, joined us. In a few short weeks, the campaign attracted support from more than 17,500 people.

Some people say that constitutional reform is a matter of interest only to political anoraks. That is not true in this case. Islanders do not want 30,000-plus voters to be transferred to a cross-Solent constituency.

On 15 July, the Deputy Prime Minister told the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, of which I am a member, that we must

“come to terms with the need for extensive political reform in order to re-establish public trust in what we do here.”

He went on to say that in the past

“too much… power has not been sufficiently transparent.”

I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister’s words, but it is hard to reconcile them with his actions. His aim is for 600 Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and English constituencies of more or less equal size. He says he wants greater fairness for electors, yet he has arbitrarily decided that there will be some exceptions.

I support the principle that islands with no physical link to the mainland are a special case, but the Deputy Prime Minister has singularly failed to explain why Isle of Wight residents have not received similar consideration to Scottish island constituents. Like the Scottish islands, we are physically separate from the mainland, but our uniqueness is ignored. There has been no consultation and no explanation.

Unlike the Scottish islands, the Isle of Wight has no scheduled air service. It takes between 40 and 50 minutes to cross the Solent on a car ferry. Many Members take similar amounts of time on car journeys around their constituencies, but this is not a car journey, it is a ferry. Our car ferry needs to be booked in advance. At busy times, people frequently cannot get the crossing that they want. The cost of peak sailings can be more than £100 for a return ticket. If one misses the ferry, one must wait up to an hour and a half for the next one. Foot passengers face even more difficulties. There are also times when the ferries simply do not run due to adverse weather or sea conditions. In fact, many islanders rarely visit the mainland.

Living on an island with no rail or road links to the mainland is, in many ways, a joy, but one has to experience it to realise the challenges that we face. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne) will not be too upset to hear that the possibility of him representing West Wight has not gone down well. That is because islanders and the Lymington River Association hold different views about the need for a new Wightlink ferry. It was not until I moved to the Isle of Wight in 1997 that I fully understood that island life is really different.

In addition to the two Scottish island constituencies, there are other exceptions not subject to the strict principle of fair votes. There will be a cap on the geographical size of any constituency, and there are provisions that enable over-representation in Northern Ireland. The effect of those exceptions is that Scottish and Northern Irish votes may be worth more than English and Welsh votes. There may be good reasons for that, but they should be explained by the Deputy Prime Minister. He is rushing the Bill through, but has given no proper explanation for the exceptions. Nor has he said why he has ignored the case for treating the Isle of Wight differently.

[Mrs Laing]

There is considerable support in the House for my hon. Friend’s case. There is no logical reason why the north of Scotland should be treated in a special way on the one hand, and the Isle of Wight should be completely ignored on the other. My hon. Friend has a lot of support from the people in this Chamber.

[Mr Turner]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. As I say, the Deputy Prime Minister has given no proper explanation. The island’s media have asked for interviews; that would give him the opportunity to explain to islanders that he knows best about how they should be represented.

I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister on 11 August, asking for information about how his exceptions had been decided on. I also e-mailed him, asking him to meet the delegation that travelled here today. I received no reply, despite my office chasing the matter up, and he did not meet the delegation. If that represents him taking direct responsibility for major constitutional issues, we are in deep trouble. I want him to explain the exceptions that he has made, so that my constituents can see that the island’s case has been judged fairly. In the absence of any meaningful response, I can only conclude that his fine words about accountability and transparency are just that—fine words.

The OneWight campaign is a broad alliance of the three main political parties, island businesses and many other island organisations and individuals. The local council has indicated support for it, as have town and parish councils across the island. Many of my constituents want to retain one MP. Some would rather have two. I would be happy with either solution, but not with a cross-Solent solution. No one wants a one-and-a-bit MP. In my election address, I promised islanders that I would vigorously oppose any attempt to impose a cross-Solent constituency, and I will continue to do so until the special case for the largest constituency in the UK, and the smallest, is recognised.

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[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

There is much wrong with the Bill, or Bills—I think there are two separate Bills, which have been woven into one for political expediency—that have been presented today. As highlighted in the Opposition amendment, the Bills are top-down, hasty and undemocratic, and by their very nature they have lost their bipartisan appeal across the House. However, my main complaint is not what is in the Bills, but what is left out. There is no reference to any action on under-registration.

I have been interested in that issue since 2001, when my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) informed me of the massive drop in my electorate and the electorates of many MPs across the UK. Since then, I have tabled hundreds of parliamentary questions, spoken dozens of times in Parliament, and met people at the Electoral Commission and various Ministers, but the position remains the same—3.5 million people are missing off the register. Poll tax is one of the reasons for that.

The Government say that the Labour Government did nothing to get those 3.5 million people back on to the register, but we did take steps, and they were not partisan. In 2001, we introduced a measure that said, “If you, or the head of the household, do not personally sign the register for two years on the trot to keep your name on it, you will be taken off.” That was detrimental to the Labour party and the Labour Government, but we took that step because it led to clarification and to improved quality. Many of us complained at the time, although we were not listened to, but it was done for the best purposes.

When I asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), what type of person was missing off the register, he said that no national estimates had recently been made. However, the Electoral Commission found in its 2005 report, “Understanding electoral registration”, that based on data from 2000, 17% of ethnic minority individuals, 22% of students, 10% of those renting from a local authority, 11% of those renting from a housing association and 18% of unemployed people were missing off the register, and that areas with the highest levels of unemployment and income deprivation had the highest levels of non-registration. It has been shown that under-registration and inaccuracy are closely associated with the social groups most likely to move home across all seven areas in phase 2 of the study. Under-registration is notably higher than average among 17 to 24-year-olds, with 56% not registered. In addition, 49% of private sector tenants and 31% of British resident black and ethnic minority groups are not registered.

[Mrs Laing]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No, I will not. I had enough of the hon. Lady’s nonsense in a previous intervention, which I will come to in a minute.

In the Electoral Administration Act 2006, we tried to put pressure on electoral registration officers to ensure that they did their job properly, and progress has been made. Best practice is out there, but it takes time. I have managed to improve the situation in my constituency. Working closely with the electoral registration officer, we have put an extra 6,000 people on to the electoral register, 1,000 of whom were in a ward with houses in multiple occupation. I pay tribute to the work of Gareth Evans, the electoral registration officer in my constituency who has brought that about.

Individual registration is opposed by many Labour Members because we know that when it is introduced the electoral register goes down by 10%, as it has in Northern Ireland, and that the people who come off the register are the poorest in society. We were prepared to accept that because the previous Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), said that individual registration would go hand in hand with increasing the register.

I predict that the Government parties will blow a hole in the consensus and go for rushed individual registration, taking another 4.5 million people off the register in addition to the 3.5 million who are already off it. That bipartisanship will be lost for a long time unless they get those 3.5 million people back on to the register. The Deputy Prime Minister can talk in high-falutin’ language about the Reform Act of 1832, but if they are going to take 8 million of the poorest people off the register, and keep them off, they know that they are doing wrong. The British people deserve better than this.

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[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Contrary to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), I support the Bill, but it requires the House’s scrutiny, and I will suggest several ways in which it can be improved.

May I first say that the measures to reduce the size of the House and equalise the size of constituencies are long overdue? I hear what Opposition Members say, but their arguments do not hold water. The size of the Chamber has changed almost randomly over the past century, and the number of MPs has never been properly tackled. In the current economic climate, we expect organisations in other walks of life to reduce their work force, and for people to work a little harder to take over the responsibilities of their former colleagues. There is no reason why the House should not set an example in that respect.

However, much more importantly, a democratic system in which votes are not of equal value is an insult to democracy. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) did very well in trying to defend the indefensible for the sake of the Labour party’s current electoral advantage, but the fact is that traditional boundaries, consulting local people and community coherence are simply much less important than the integrity of our democratic system. Therefore, contrary to what he says, the arithmetic must be paramount, because one vote, one value is a basic principle of a fair democracy.

Sadly, however, the other part of the Bill will not enhance a fair democracy. The alternative vote system will undermine the very principle of one vote, one value. Many of my hon. Friends, and the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and other Opposition Members, put those arguments very well, and I am sure that they will be enhanced over the coming months. However, we must have a referendum, because it is a matter of honour. The Prime Minister agreed in the coalition agreement to a referendum on AV, but it is a stark reflection of the priorities of the Liberal Democrats that that was their essential first condition of entering into a coalition Government.

I support the coalition because we need the stability it provides, and I appreciate that a referendum is the price for that, but what a high price it is to pay, not only politically, but in simple financial terms. At a time when essential cuts to public spending are about to affect the everyday lives of almost every British citizen, the Deputy Prime Minister insists on spending £100 million on a referendum that nobody outside the House wants nor cares one tiny bit about. How many special needs teachers, cancer nurses or helicopters for Afghanistan could be funded by £100 million? I accept that we must have the referendum, but let it not go unnoticed that we must have it not for the better welfare of the people or the general good of the country, but only for the perceived electoral advantage of the Liberal Democrats.

I support the Bill, but it is the duty of the House to try to improve measures before it, and I will seek to improve this one in two ways. First, the result of the referendum will command far greater respect if it is held on a different day from the national elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as many colleagues have said. The inevitable differential in turnout in different parts of the United Kingdom would leave the authenticity of the referendum open to question.

The second improvement that the Bill needs is in relation to the thresholds. Is it right to bring about constitutional change if only about 15% of the electorate vote for it? The status quo is the status quo because it is the status quo, and changing it should require far more than 15%. That would be wrong. The result of the referendum and the consequent constitutional change will not command respect unless a significant proportion of the electorate support it. It is our duty to improve this Bill, and although I will vote for it this evening, I look forward to seeing a very different Bill on Third Reading.

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[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I will be brief in order to keep to the three-minute time limit you have given me, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I wish to follow the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) about under-representation. Indeed, my constituency was mentioned by the Deputy Prime Minister in his opening remarks. The mid-2007 estimated population of my constituency was just over 88,500. Almost exactly 20% of those people are not eligible to vote, giving a notional registrable electorate of 71,000, or around the mean of the national average, given the 650 seats in this House. However, the number actually on the electoral register is around the 60,000 mark, so we must ask where those 10,000 or 11,000 missing people are. I suggest that the vast majority fall into one of the three categories highlighted by the Electoral Commission—young people aged 17 to 24, private sector tenants and the black and ethnic minority residents in my constituency.

The Edinburgh university students association did some work that estimated that there are more than 20,000 students in Edinburgh, and of those some 9,000 would be eligible to be registered in my constituency. On the Electoral Commission’s figures, 50% of those students are not registered, accounting for 4,500 of the missing electorate. I mention this because the principle of equalisation is not denied. We agree with it, but we must ensure that we achieve equalisation of representation at the same time. Some 25% of all the constituents who come to my constituency offices are not on the electoral register. Therefore, if we arbitrarily adopt a 600-seat House and just divide the number of people on the register in December 2010 by 600, we will end up with an artificial figure that under-represents the most vulnerable and the hardest to reach.

The evidence is borne out by the Lothian Valuation Joint Board, which by December 2010 will have completed only 85% of the work that it does on the register. Therefore, the electoral registration figures that will be used to fundamentally redraw our constituencies will be—

[Mrs Laing]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Murray]

I would, but I am afraid that I do not have time to do so.

The electoral registration figures in December 2010 will be far short of where they would be in the final register that the board will put together.

In the limited three minutes that I have been given to speak, I would like to say that the disparity between the largest and the smallest constituencies is a concern for the House. Nobody here would disagree that equalisation of constituencies is something that we should all strive towards. However, what we cannot do is strive towards it on the basis of an arbitrary figure, drawn from an electoral register that is not just out of date, but misses out the hardest-to-reach parts of our constituencies. If we do that, we will not only be doing a disservice to the hardest-to-reach, but ensuring that the Members of Parliament to whom they look to help them are under-represented.

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[Mr Harper]

I shall come to that later.

A number of Members cited the merits of different electoral systems. As my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister said, that is a matter for debate not now but during the referendum campaign. I know that Members on both sides of the House, and on both sides of the coalition, will participate vigorously in that debate.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) suggested a turnout threshold. Such a system would make an abstention effectively a “no” vote. It would give people an incentive to abstain from voting, and the Government do not believe that that can be right. As for the issue of turnout and legitimacy, I should point out that in the 2005 election only three Members of Parliament received the support of more than 40% of their registered voters: my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Member for Belfast West (Mr Adams), an interesting combination. Members who suggest that voting is legitimate only if turnout is above a certain level should think carefully about where the logic of that argument takes them.

[Mrs Laing]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not. I have a great deal to do, and not much time in which to do it.

The Labour party’s position on the referendum on the alternative vote strikes me as ridiculous. Labour supported an AV referendum before the election—it was in the party manifesto—but Labour Members are not supporting it now. They are hiding their opportunism behind the fig leaf that the proposal is contained in a Bill that plans a boundary review to provide more equally sized constituencies and more equal votes.

The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has criticised us for not presenting our proposals in a stand-alone Bill. Given that both our measures concern the election of Members of Parliament to the House of Commons, it seems perfectly sensible to link them. I remind him that he presented proposals for an AV referendum in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. That was hardly a stand-alone Bill. It also included measures relating to the civil service commission, the civil service code of conduct, the ratification of treaties, amendments to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the tax status of Members of Parliament, financial reporting to Parliament, freedom of information, counting of votes and the Act of Settlement.