Elections Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I cannot be here for the whole of today. When I spoke at Second Reading, I made my reservations about the Bill quite clear. There are certain aspects that I support, such as tidying up postal voting, but all that that needs is a short Bill.

It is grotesque that we have this Bill before us while people are literally dying for democracy. The best, most seemly and most honourable thing that we can do is to delete these clauses completely from the Bill. They have no place in a Bill of this nature in a country that prides itself on being the mother of Parliaments—it is not the institution, by the way; Bright’s quotation was that the country was the mother of Parliaments, and that is what we are. It is a heritage that we should do everything we can to cherish and preserve. We are exceptionally fortunate in the democracy that we have, warts and all. While people are being mown down in Ukraine and while brave people in Russia, in St Petersburg, Moscow and other cities, are going out on to the streets to protest, knowing that if they are arrested then they might face 15 years in jail—we heard earlier in our deliberations today of that poor man or woman who was in jail in Belarus in a tiny cell with 15 others, all of whom were smokers—we have an absolute duty to cherish and preserve our democracy.

A democracy needs to have a monitoring body. I spoke for the Conservative Party from the Front Bench in the other place when the Electoral Commission came into being. As we said at Second Reading—my noble friend Lord Hayward made this point—it is certainly entirely appropriate to review its operations after two decades, but to shackle it in such a way that the Government are in a position to dictate what it does is utterly and completely wrong.

There is no point in my noble friend, for whom I have considerable affection and regard, pretending that this Government do not mean any ill. I am perfectly prepared to accept that they do not mean any ill, but what if Mr Corbyn had had charge of this? Would we on our side of the House have thought it appropriate that a Corbyn Government should have the power to dictate to an Electoral Commission? One only has to state the words to underline their absurdity. I hope my noble friend will not see that we have protracted debate on this but will say that these clauses should go, and that we do not have to debate them further.

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

When I listed the people and groups who were going to oppose the Bill, I should have included the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and some of his Back-Bench colleagues. I apologise for leaving him out.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

It is a touching gesture. Anybody who considers himself or herself a parliamentarian should be opposed to this particular part of this particular Bill. I hope that message will be received by my noble friend and that he will realise that it should not be his mission to undermine, however indirectly, our parliamentary and electoral democracy because, of course, this applies to elections as well and not just to Parliament.

We are much in the debt of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for tabling these amendments. She introduced them with remarkable brevity. Let us have done with this.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

May I ask my noble friend before he sits down just to clarify his comments about the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher? Will there also, as I see it, be an opportunity to comment in more detail when we debate the clause standing part? That may be the occasion when I comment on his generous comments about me, for which I thank him.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Yes, that is fine. I think there is even a case for deleting these clauses in Committee.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak on this part but I feel very queasy about the way a number of noble Lords are using the situation in Ukraine to have a go at this part of the Bill. People are indeed dying for democracy, but they are not dying to defend an Electoral Commission—an unelected quango in the UK. I think it is rather unbecoming to use that.

The Electoral Commission is relatively new to the UK’s democratic life and democracy thrived when it did not exist. At the very least, we should stop aggrandising the Electoral Commission as though the electorate depend on it. There are problems with it and there are problems with the way the Government are trying to deal with it. I am not necessarily defending the Government’s way of solving the problem of the Electoral Commission—