House of Commons Business

Debate between Graham Allen and Mark Harper

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

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

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

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

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

[Mr Harper]

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

[Mr Allen]

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

[Mr Harper]

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

[Mr Allen]

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

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Mark Harper

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

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

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

[Mr Allen]

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

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

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Schedule 5

Transitional provision to do with Part 1

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Mark Harper

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point—to which we might return in Committee, given that I have not got very far with my speech and want to make a little progress before I take any more interventions.

As I was saying to the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), part 2 also contains provisions to improve the administration and conduct of elections, thereby serving to increase voter participation and to make a number of improvements to the running of elections.

Before I explain the rationale behind our proposals, I shall deal briefly with the Opposition’s reasoned amendment and approach.

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

Before the Minister turns to the burden of his argument, may I congratulate him on how he has involved the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform and the House in the deliberations on the Bill? It is an exemplar of good practice, but he will see from the reasoned amendment that there is still some way to go. May I also put on his agenda the question of fines for people who do not register? They will be introduced under secondary legislation, so at the moment we have no idea whether an effective and proportionate fine will be available. Will he address that in his remarks?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to the Committee’s Chairman for what he says, and I hope that by the time I finish my remarks the House will see that I have addressed satisfactorily all the points in the reasoned amendment, at which stage I will of course urge Members on both sides of the House to support the Bill’s Second Reading.

We debated this subject on an Opposition day in January during which I welcomed the tone that the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) adopted. He said, for example, that he welcomed the process that the Government had adopted and how we were acting; he noted that we had had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny; and he noted that the Deputy Prime Minister and I had said that we would not just listen to concerns, but act on them and make changes accordingly.

At the time I noted that that was a shift from last autumn, when the right hon. Gentleman’s party leader said, in response to our making registration individual rather than household, that the Labour party was going to go out and fight against the change, and when the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said that our proposals were

“a shameful assault on people’s democratic rights.”

I thought that that was nonsense when she said it. In January, the right hon. Member for Tooting appeared to think so, too, and he adopted a sensible tone that was welcomed not just by me, but by Members on both sides of the House, so I am disappointed that in tabling this reasoned amendment he appears to have reverted to the Labour party’s original approach.

One of the main points in the reasoned amendment that I will not cover later in my speech is the assertion that there was cross-party support for the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. As I said in January’s Opposition day debate, it is true that we supported the proposals in the Act for individual registration, but it is worth reminding the House that the previous Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to include them. They were not in the Bill when it was introduced in this House, and that is why we voted for a reasoned amendment. In fact, they were not in the Bill when it left the House of Commons, although by that stage the Labour Government had made a commitment to include them. They were, however, introduced in the other place. My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), now Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, who led for us on the issue, ably assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), said:

“I am glad that at the eleventh hour the Government have, at last, agreed to move ahead with individual voter registration, albeit in what still seems to be a lamentably leisurely time scale. They committed to the principle of individual voter registration many years ago, but a bit like St. Augustine, they seem to be saying, ‘Make me chaste, but not yet.’”—[Official Report, 2 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 695.]

My right hon. Friend made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, which we thought could be accomplished earlier. We said that it would be our intention to do so, and on page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to

“swiftly implement individual voter registration”.

It is not fair and right, or at least it leaves out something quite important, to say that there was complete cross-party consensus on that measure.

Before I set out the Bill’s provisions in detail, let me explain the rationale on how we got to this stage following the draft proposals and the significant amount of pre-legislative scrutiny that has taken place. The move to individual registration was supported by all three main parties in the previous Parliament and was in each of their manifestos. It is supported by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators and has been called for by a wide range of international observers. We remain one of the few countries in the world to rely on a system of household registration. I believe, as I am sure many Members do, that a system that relies on the rather old-fashioned notion of the head of household, whereby just one person in the house is given the responsibility of dealing with everyone else’s registration to vote, is out of date. It does not engender any personal responsibility for being registered or promote a person’s ownership of their own vote, and it could give that one person the ability to disfranchise others. That is not the approach that we adopt in other areas where people engage with the state.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Allen and Mark Harper

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. We made it very clear in our proposals that we are interested in reducing the vulnerability of our electoral register to fraud and in ensuring its accuracy. We are also interested in ensuring that it is as easy as possible for anyone who is eligible to vote to get on the register. To that end, we are taking part in some data-matching pilots to improve that situation.

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

Does the Minister accept that not only registration but counting the votes properly is important? Is he aware that in most constituencies there are a handful of spoilt papers, whereas in mayoral elections there are sometimes more than 1,000? On two occasions at least, the number of spoilt papers has been larger than the majority of the election winner. Will he take that up with the Electoral Commission?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which will look at our individual elector registration proposals and carry out pre-legislative scrutiny. He has raised that question with me before, and I can confirm that I will ask officials to look into that matter. I will come back to him and the House in due course.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Mark Harper

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Yes, the Leader of the House made the point and I do not think it is different from what I have just said. These are important measures and the Government want to get on with political and constitutional reform. That is why we are moving ahead with these measures, but they will be debated on the Floor of the House and all colleagues will have the opportunity to debate them.

[Mr Allen]

Is not one of the advantages of having a five-year or four-year fixed-term Parliament the ability to plan the legislative timetable, and will the Minister therefore reassure Members of all parties that in future all Bills will be subject to a 12-week pre-legislative scrutiny process? [Interruption.]

[Mr Harper]

Well, I think I hear my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House saying that in principle that is what we intend to do.