Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

We always made it clear on the Government Benches that if the House of Lords remained unreformed it would be necessary to enable it to better reflect the character of the outcome of the preceding general election. I will not reiterate the point I made to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), but if the Opposition had supported House of Lords reform we would have been able to deal with that.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No, I am going to make more progress—this is only a two-hour debate.

I am asking the House to maintain the boundary review. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) reminded us earlier, it was my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister who said, quite rightly, on Third Reading of the Bill that became the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011:

“Fairness demands constituencies that are basically equal in size…there can be no justification for maintaining the current inequality between constituencies and voters across the country.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 864.]

I have heard no argument that changes that, nor any justification from the Lords to seek to do so.

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[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes a good point well. Anybody who votes to agree with the Lords or not to disagree with them on this amendment will, I fear, have to explain to their electorate why they are not reducing the cost of politics when we are asking the public services generally to do that.

In what is colloquially known as the Hart-Rennard amendment we have not only an abuse of parliamentary process, but a democratic travesty. The unelected House is seeking to frustrate the precisely expressed will of this Parliament—not a previous Parliament—to deny fairness and equality in the franchise and fundamentally to manipulate the basis on which this House is to be elected.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why this Government have appointed 125 new peers since 2010? Contrary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, the average cost is £130,000 a year, which adds an extra £16,250,000 a year to the cost of politics, or £81,250,000 over five years.

[Mr Lansley]

Leaving aside the fact that some of the figures that the hon. Gentleman quotes were from the resignation honours back in 2010, I would say that he heard what I said about House of Lords reform. If he and his colleagues had supported the programme motion, we would be in a completely different place in the House of Lords.

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[Sadiq Khan]

I think that the Electoral Commission, the Boundary Commission and electoral registration officers will be quite offended by the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I am sure that, on reflection, he will want to withdraw those remarks.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this Bill has nothing to do with fairness, saving money or the cost of democracy, but is actually about pure party political advantage for the Conservative party? Is it not straight out of the Karl Rove book of how to rig elections to the advantage of a sitting party?

[Sadiq Khan]

We have seen that the general election co-ordinator for the Conservative party has left the Chamber. The fact that he was in his place earlier speaks volumes about the motives of the Conservative part of the Government.

The move to individual electoral registration risks even greater numbers falling off the register.