Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

I obviously listened carefully to what the noble Lord said, but there have been some disturbing accounts of the way in which postal voting has been conducted, and he knows that as well as I do. The security of the postal vote does not begin to compare with the security of the personally cast ballot. I am glad to see him nodding assent at that.

When it comes to the day, for the reasons that I indicated earlier, I have great sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I see no need to depart from Thursday. It is good that we should discuss it and maybe consider experiments with more local elections. I would not be averse to that. However, I believe that Thursday is tried and tested for general elections, and I hope that the Government will stick to that, certainly for the foreseeable future as foreseen in the Bill. I very much hope that they will consider the issue of postal votes and how postal voting is conducted and made more secure. It is important for the House to look at this and for another place to have another chance to look at it. Obviously, it would be quite wrong to press any of the amendments to a Division today, but I hope the Minister will be able to tell us that the Government have taken on board the points that have been made and will truly reflect on them.

[Lord Bach]

I hope that the Committee will forgive me if I speak from the opposition Front Bench at this stage. I am not for a moment trying to shorten the debate. It is a very important subject and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, among others, has waited for years for a proper debate on this topic. The last thing I want to do is to stop that debate. The Minister knows, and I have told the Committee, that I have some personal difficulties that require me to leave in fairly short order. I hope that the Committee will forgive me if on this occasion I put the view of the opposition Front Bench very briefly and then leave. Of course the opposition Front Bench will be filled very adequately in my absence.

I say briefly that the Committee should be very grateful for the two opening speeches in this debate—the introduction from my noble friend Lord Howarth and the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, about weekend voting. At the very least it is necessary for the Government to think very carefully about the advantages—and the disadvantages, which the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Pannick, have hinted at—of changing from Thursday voting to weekend voting. It is an issue that ought to have been debated in Parliament a long time ago; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, exactly about that. It was particularly interesting, sitting where we sit, to hear the language used by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in the sense that he was looking not just for a debate that would end in a few fine words but for some kind of decision on this issue. If I heard him right, he thought that this was the appropriate Bill for such an issue to be finally resolved under. Am I wrong about that?

[Lord Rennard]

For clarification, I was not necessarily suggesting that this Bill should determine the issue but that, if we were assured that it would not close this issue and that we would properly and seriously consider the issue in Parliament in due time before 2015, I would not necessarily want to press the amendments at this stage.

[Lord Bach]

I understand what the noble Lord has said. He mentioned the magic date of 1 October 2013. My advice to him, if I dare give advice to someone so expert in this field, would be just to beware the words that you hear from the Government when they have had time to consider this issue, even though they will be honeyed by the tones that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will undoubtedly use both today and when the matter is raised again on Report. The noble Lord will be promised the earth but I am not sure that there will be any delivery within the timescale that he is looking for.

It seems to us an attractive idea in principle that we should consider very carefully whether weekend voting is more appropriate and will lead to greater turnout. I do not think that we should assume that it necessarily will. There are people who would not dream of voting at weekends who will vote on a weekday, but I think that more people will be more tempted to vote if they are given a period, such as some part of Saturday and some part of Sunday, to do so. This is a very important issue not just for turnout but for other issues around British elections. The Opposition wish these amendments well. We hope that the debate continues, and we look forward to playing a full part in it.