Elections Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, this is a very interesting Bill. It gets us into an even bigger mess than we were in before we started.

I believe in the principle of no representation without taxation. I spent almost 40 years living part of the time in Brussels. I paid my local tax there. I carried my national identity card, which was my voter ID card when I went to vote. It never caused me any problems; I never really thought about it. So I just do not sign up to all the business about the difficulty of having a card.

But the Bill has some very funny things in it. New Clause 1A(3) introduced by Clause 12 gives the right to vote to people who are living abroad and who have never been on the register here. I think instantly of my dear 75 year-old sister, who left Great Yarmouth at the age of seven and has lived in Dublin ever since. I do not know that there will be a branch of Fine Gael, which she has been active in all her life, for her to join here. Really, are we going completely mad, when we are giving the vote to 75 year-olds who left Britain at the age of seven? It happens that when my sister lived here, she was in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. So, from Dublin, she will be able to vote for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Colleagues, we have gone mad, have we not?

I share many of the points made by my good friend Lord Cormack about the Electoral Commission. I am not going to go into the detail as to whether the Government can or cannot, but when every member of the Electoral Commission, apart from our Conservative member, signs a letter such as they have, there is a serious problem and it needs sorting out. We cannot just go ahead with things as they are outlined in the Bill. The Electoral Commission must have enough freedom and free standing to be able to do its job.

I was a strong remainer. I think the Electoral Commission went too far during the course of the referendum campaign, became too partisan and needs some change, but the change needs to come on an all-party basis. We must have a broad consensus, otherwise what happens? There will be a change of government. I am sure the Labour Party is fine and upstanding, but it will certainly be tempted to say, “If they could do it to us, we can do it to them”. This is one of the areas of public life where it is essential to have some agreement between the parties.

I have been kind to the Labour Party for long enough. On the matter of trade unions’ support for funding and campaigning, they have to decide where they stand. Some 30% of trade unionists vote for the Conservative Party. That is not reflected in their political activity. Our colleagues will tell us that, of course, people can opt out, but the trade unions really have to get themselves up to date. In part that means, as Sharon Graham said, they have to start representing their members and stop trying to run the Labour Party. That is important on the way forward, because they do not need to support the Labour Party any more, frankly, than we need Russian money.

Colleagues and friends, I am very unhappy that we get so much money from big donors, because donors do not pay for nothing. These various shady people are not paying for nothing any more than Len McCluskey was paying for nothing. I would like to see a radical overhaul of party funding on both sides, because it has got us to a position where the whole of democracy is now starting to smell. Those on the Liberal Benches may well nod; they have also had their problems. People are looking at it and saying, “It’s not really our democracy, is it? It’s them up there”, so we have to tackle that.

Finally, the move to abolish the alternate vote is a severe backwards step. Personally, I believe in proportional representation; I think it gives us better government. I have worked in Europe for 40 years. People who tell me that strong government comes from our system need to look at places such as Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries—countries that have run very good Governments for a very long time on the basis of proportional representation. It is an idea whose time has most certainly come. It deserves close looking at, and I do not mean look at it as Tony Blair did, when you think you might need it to get into government and then say to Paddy Ashdown, “I’ll give it to you for Europe, but I can’t go any further”.

We need to look at how we run society, and I put it to the House that when we do so, we might find that a PR form of government is a much fairer way of running our society. I think I have upset everybody now.

Elections Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I too express my deep concerns about the ways in which the Bill contravenes the Human Rights Act and indeed our constitutional commitments. I have canvassed the views of human rights lawyers and constitutional lawyers, and I am afraid I find it very difficult to see where the Government’s advice has come from that this complies with our commitments and obligations under our own legislation and constitutional commitments. When people say, “Let us think twice”, it is a reminder to this House about our role in causing hesitation when something of such significance in our democracy is going to interfere with the fundamentals. I call upon us to hesitate before going down this road, and to question what its purposes really are.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to say a word of caution as well. When I look at a piece of legislation, I invariably say, “How would this work if the political parties were changed—if, instead of us implementing it, the party opposite were doing so?” If it passes that test because it is a fair piece of legislation, then I think that is within the Government’s right.

My concern here is that we are unbalancing the structure and that a Secretary of State—from a party, my party, that clearly is not well known for its love of the trade union movement—could exercise these powers, which may need exercising but not in this way by these people. We have to be very careful with the Electoral Commission because it is in all our interests for it to be seen as fair, independent and trustworthy. I am not going to make lots of speeches on this Bill because they would all be essentially the same, but I am afraid I am concerned about the way the Bill is tipping things.

I clearly have no interest in funding Labour Party campaigns, but I have an interest in there being a level playing field and people being able to campaign. My personal view, which I will mention in debate on another clause, is that party financing has got completely out of control and needs fundamental reform. You cannot run a democracy on selling games of tennis. When we say, “We have a great democracy and we’re really proud of it”, we are asked, “Oh yes? How do you fund it?”, and we have to reply, “Well, the Prime Minister plays tennis with Russians, and we get quite a bit of money in from that.”

When I came into politics, which was a long time ago—about 60 years, to be exact—the great joke was that you could not have a party function without a raffle and you could not run an election without at least a couple of jumble sales. When I was eventually disposed of by the Labour Party, which in retrospect was actually not a bad thing, I joined the Conservatives—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

I have followed the noble Lord’s career for all those 60 years in great detail; I remember when we worked together in the Co-operative Party. I think his recollection is just a little wrong. My recollection is that he left us; we did not kick him out.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I have a letter signed by none other than the great Mr Blair terminating my membership of the Labour Party for a disciplinary offence, which was running for an office that was not actually reserved for any political party but was supposedly open to all. Mr Blair decided that I was to be forbidden from running for that office. I had won the election fairly easily because it gave people an excuse; they were voting not for Balfe but against the Iraq war, which was a bit odd because the job I was standing for was administrator of the European Parliament pension fund.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Was the noble Lord not running for a well-paid lucrative post within the European Parliament?

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I suggest to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that he stops making a fool of himself. This was not a paid post; it was an elected post within the European Parliament, known colloquially as “shop steward”—I see the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, nodding—that attracted no pay but you got some staff, a big office and the ability to actually get things done for the members. By definition, it was a non-political post. It had no politics attached to it, which made what happened even more odd. I will bring the noble Lord the letter; I will get it out of the LSE archives.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Could the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, just help us with something? Having gone down this road, we need to complete the journey. I think I understand why he was removed from the Labour Party, and why he presumably accepted the post, but I would like to know what it was he found particularly attractive about the Conservatives. It is one thing to leave the Labour Party, but to join the Tories, I mean—

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

From my position in the trade union movement, I knew there were quite a lot of right-wing people in AUEW/TASS. We were not all bleeding-heart liberals; we were actually toughies. I had no difficulty in joining the Conservative Party because I felt that it reflected many of my values.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I am enjoying this exchange, although obviously we need to focus on the clause. In recent times the noble Lord has addressed this House about the discipline that has been imposed on him by the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, so that seems to be a common thread through his career.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I think we should stop our entertainment and get back to the purpose of the Bill.

My concern about the Bill is that it leads to an uneven playing field—it is as simple as that. If we are to have reform, it should be by some form of consensus, although I know that has been incredibly difficult to achieve. I take a rather puritan view as to how much should be spent on elections. We need to get back to a situation where a democracy consists of people asking for votes, not of people going out and attempting to buy them. To my mind, the party funding system has got completely out of kilter.