Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

58ZZZA: Clause 10, page 8, line 15, at end insert—
“(c) if there is a system of fixed-term Parliaments but a General Election is to be held other than on a 5 year cycle beginning with May 2015, then the Boundary Commission shall submit a report under subsection (1) no later than 18 months before the due date of each General Election.”

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, this amendment connects in quite closely with previous debates but also raises a new point. It basically deals with the relationship between this legislation and the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, which is making its stately progress through the other place and will, I hope, arrive here by the end of this month. We will be having a debate on it. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, gave us an indication of how the Government envisage the relationship between the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill and this Bill. The Fixed-term Parliaments Bill envisages five-year Parliaments and five-yearly looks at the constituency boundaries by the Boundary Commissions. He says he envisages that there will be roughly an 18-month gap between the date on which the Boundary Commissions report and the date that the subsequent general election takes place. Those 18 months are presumably a period in which, where there are changes to the constituency boundaries, the constituency parties can select new Members of Parliament, people can get to know their constituencies and there can be a canvass in relation to it.

There is one factual issue in relation to this and one principle issue in relation to law. I raise first the factual issue which my noble friend Lord Lipsey touched on. He asked how many changes there would be every five years and made the point that if the numbers remain critical and it is only a 5 per cent variation, it is possible to envisage the boundaries of many constituencies changing. I quote from a document called The Ten Per Cent Solution which is by a man called Mr Lewis Baston and dated 20 January 2011. He says the following: “The government’s Bill”, which is a reference to this Bill,

“proposes that the boundaries will change every election, which disrupts the relationship between MP and constituency and will no doubt lead to confusion. Because the 5 per cent limit is so tight, many constituencies that were the right size in one boundary review will be too big or too small by the next. This will happen because of growth and decline in population. It will also happen because of variations in electoral registration from year to year, which are likely to be larger under the forthcoming Individual Electoral Registration system. It is quite possible that radical changes in boundaries will be made for no better reason than fluctuating registers, which as we know have become much less stable, complete and accurate”.

So this report from Democratic Audit says that the effect will be quite significant; it uses the phrase “many constituencies”. I do not know what work the Government have done on this but it is important to know their estimate of the effect of the five-yearly review—not the first review but the five-yearly review.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, for tabling this amendment. At the outset, I will clarify that I agree with his interpretation of the rules. Perhaps I may put in the caveat that the rule with regard to taking into account inconvenience does not apply to the first review in 2013, but would apply thereafter. I thought that I had indicated that it was subject to the 5 per cent rule when I responded to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. That is indeed the case. I was responding initially to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, who talked about uprooting the whole system every time and starting again, which is not consistent with the discretion given to the Boundary Commission.

As the noble and learned Lord—echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—indicated, the intention is that there should be fixed-term Parliaments of five years with boundary reviews in sync. The intention of the amendment is to retain the relationship between the cycle of general elections and the boundary review reporting timetable if the cycle of fixed-term Parliaments shifted away from the pattern starting in May 2015. That would happen if the terms of the fixed-term Parliament were changed to something other than five years. I thought that that may have been the point of the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, but he made it clear that that is not the case. However, he indicated the possibility that there could be an extraordinary general election. We do not believe that it is possible to provide for every reason why an election might not occur at the exact five-year interval. Instead of such complexity, the Bill seeks to address the matter in a way that would not necessarily waste resources. At the same time, future Parliaments would be able to consider how best to address the issue of the reviews getting seriously out of sync. The commission's annual progress reports that are required by the Bill will increase Parliament's knowledge of each review and assist it in deciding how to act.

As the Bill stands, there would still be a broad alignment of boundary review and general election cycles. I will give an example. If the boundary review reporting cycles were realigned to be exactly 18 months before any general election, it is possible that the Boundary Commission would be forced to abandon a review midway and start again from scratch. For example, if there was an extraordinary general election in 2018, before the 2018 report was due out, the Boundary Commission would have been reviewing boundaries for three years on the basis of electorate figures for 2015, and that work would have to be scrapped and a new review cycle started on the basis of 2018 electorate figures. This would be a waste of resources.

I accept the constructive intent of the noble and learned Lord's amendment. It is not necessary, but I am willing to reflect on whether we have done the best we can to maintain sync. However, if issues became such that there was a serious mismatch, it would be open to a future Parliament to redress that. The amendment does not achieve the outcome it intends and could lead to an unnecessary waste of resources. With these comments, I hope that the noble and learned Lord will withdraw it.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

That was a helpful response. First, I thank the noble and learned Lord for confirming that my view of what the Bill meant was correct, which is obviously important. Secondly, he is in effect acknowledging that if there is a general election outside the fixed term—I say in parenthesis that if the fixed term were changed in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill as it goes through this House, it might affect the cycle, but that would require an amendment to this Bill—the intention is that there should be an 18-month gap, and that may have to be dealt with by primary legislation after the general election. It is that eventuality that my amendment seeks to avoid. It is an unsatisfactory situation that every time there is a general election outside the cycle—none of us in the Chamber knows how regularly there will be general elections outside the cycle, and if one looks at history one can envisage circumstances where one has an early general election, for example because a coalition falls apart, and then there is an indecisive result and one ends up with considerable uncertainty—and one needs a boundary review, one has to wait for primary legislation, and the party that gets into power after a closely fought election is in the driving seat in relation to when the review takes place.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for saying that he will consider this. I, too, will consider it, and perhaps we could meet to think of a way in which some degree of certainty can be assured, because this is an important issue. I would also be grateful if the noble and learned Lord would write to me with the Government's estimate of the number of seats that might change their boundaries in the first of the five-yearly reviews, as opposed to the one that they envisage ending in October 2013. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lipsey that the facts are critical. On the basis of the helpful response of the noble and learned Lord, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 58ZZZA withdrawn.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Presumably a large part of the purpose of parliamentary reform is to refresh our parliamentary democracy, re-animate it, and re-engage the citizens of this country with it. My noble friend Lady Thornton’s amendment is particularly helpful because it addresses a problem that we all recognise to be real and disturbing, which is the poor propensity of people in the 18 to 24 year-old age group to vote. There is some evidence that the attitudes that people bring to their first opportunity to vote as young adults tend to persist through life. We must all agree that it is extremely important that we make a determined effort to ensure that there is a much fuller participation of young people in our parliamentary democracy and that they take up their right to vote.

My noble friend has tabled a helpful amendment in enjoining a particular duty on the Secretary of State. We had some discussion on Monday about our fear that local authorities, because of the reductions in their funding, will be unable to pursue electoral registration as vigorously as they should. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours made a powerful speech on that problem. If local authority funding is to be cut by some 28 per cent over the next four years, it must follow that any activity that is not statutorily required of local authorities will be in jeopardy. My noble friend’s amendment would insist that at least the Secretary of State was able to certify that every effort is made to bring 17 to 24 year-olds on to the register. That points in a direction that implies that the Secretary of State himself must take steps to ensure that the registration process is carried on vigorously, effectively and thoroughly.

It would be helpful if the noble and learned Lord would say something about the Government’s view on the practical prospects for improving the proportion of registration in all age groups, but particularly in this one, the behaviour of which will be so crucial to the future of our democracy. We can change the voting system and constituency boundaries, but if we fail to re-engage people to vote, those reforms are little better than a sham.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I do not think that there is much dispute about either the facts or the outcome sought. In March 2010, the Electoral Commission produced a report entitled The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain. In a sample of areas that it examined in detail, 56 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds were missing from the electoral register. In the 2005 general election, 37 per cent only of those between 18 and 24 voted, so there is a more than 50 per cent underregistration, and only just over a third of that age vote.

We have heard repeatedly in the debate and outside that if young people are not registered and do not vote, they set a trend in their lives that distances them from democracy. I do not think that anyone in the House disagrees with any of those propositions. We on the Front Bench of the Labour Party support the amendment because we have heard nothing from the Government about what they propose to do about it. If they had some proposal that could assist, we would be interested to hear it, but this proposal, made by my noble friend Lady Thornton and supported by my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, builds into the system the requirement for work to be done on the issue, which is something that the noble and learned Lord himself has said in previous debates that he wants to do. He should tell us what the Government will do about what they have already agreed is a problem. If it is not as good as this amendment, maybe this is the way forward.

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[Lord Soley]

I support my noble friend Lord McKenzie and my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth who I understand cannot move the amendment. It is a particularly important issue and I know that, like me, my noble friend Lord Knight will have had real examples of the problem in his own constituency when he was an MP. However, I have to say that this matter does not affect just inner-city areas: it affects the whole private rented sector. I had a survey carried out in my constituency of Hammersmith, which lasted for more than a year. A number of things stood out, but one which stood out very strongly was the overrepresentation of people from the private rented sector coming to see the MP or the councillor because their problems were more acute. This is really what the issue is about. These people need representation and yet they are the ones who are least likely to be on the list.

I recognise the problem for local authorities. People in this group are particularly hard to identify and to follow up on if you fail to get them to register in the first instance, but it is important that we make an effort. I know that it affects rural areas as well, which is why I say that it is not just a matter for inner-city areas. The private rented sector generally has in it people who tend to be on lower incomes, often in accommodation for not that long. If it is a shorthold tenure, it will be for a maximum of six months, although obviously that can be renewed as appropriate. But it means that you are dealing with a high turnover of people, often on low incomes and yet often with multiple problems that need to be addressed by an elected representative, be it a councillor or a Member of Parliament.

I do not have any simple answer, but I can say that at one stage Hammersmith council got particularly good at following up on these people and did rather well on increasing the representation of people in the private rented sector. However, I do not think that any of us has got it right yet. As I have said, although it is more extreme in urban areas, it also affects rural areas. The evidence is very strong that there is underrepresentation on the electoral roll of people in private rented accommodation, and it would be useful to know if the Government have any ideas at all about how to address this.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, this is well tilled territory. The position according to the Electoral Commission is that if you own your house outright, 93 per cent of you are on the electoral register; if you are buying on a mortgage, it is 86 per cent; if renting from a council, 79 per cent; if renting from a housing association, 75 per cent; and if renting from a private landlord, only 44 per cent. If you are “other”, it is 78 per cent. I do not know what “other” is. Perhaps it is living in a commune or in a tent somewhere or, indeed, in a caravan, as suggested by my noble friend Lord Graham. Why is this? The Electoral Commission report says:

“Taken as a whole, tenants in the private rented sector are significantly more likely to be absent from the electoral register than owner-occupiers or those in social housing. This pattern arises from the greater turnover of households in the private rental sector compared to other tenures as well as the associated concentrations of specific social groups in private rental accommodation, notably young people and students, and some BME groups”.

Again, I do not think that much of this is in dispute and that what we are looking for are proposals as to how it might be dealt with.

I endorse all that my noble friend Lord McKenzie has said about the private rented sector, but there is a further point to make. I turn to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to the effect that, “You do not want this review to take place using very out-of-date material. It is going to take place using material prepared in December 2010, so all your proposals that there should be an improvement in the number of young people and BMEs in the private rental sector will not apply unless you want to delay it”. That is the key answer. What is the hurry for this to take place by 2015? The obvious answer to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, is that a period of time should go by, maybe a year, and then we should take the register at December 2011, but only if the sort of steps that my noble friends Lady Thornton and Lord McKenzie of Luton have been asking for have been taken.

If that is wrong, because we can delay the date until December 2011 and we can seek measures to be taken to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State or the Electoral Commission to ensure better representation of the three underrepresented groups, we can achieve both. I would therefore ask the noble and learned Lord to give answers to two questions. What is being done about the private rented sector to get more people on to the electoral register? What would be the problem in answering his oft-repeated song that we delay for a year or some other period the date at which we take the electoral register for the purposes of the boundary revision? What would the nation lose by that? There would be more people from these underrepresented groups on the electoral register.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, as has been indicated, this amendment is very similar in its terms to the previous amendment, although it focuses on the need to maximise the proportion of private sector tenants on the electoral register. It will therefore not come as a surprise if I indicate that the arguments are substantially the same. I will answer the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. The difference is that what we are being invited to do with these amendments is put off the boundary review to some indeterminate time. No date is fixed in these amendments, although the noble and learned Lord said that it could be 1 December 2011. But we have heard the whingeing complaints that to do it in 2010 is going to make it tight for a boundary review to report by 2013. Given that, I rather suspect that using a review date for the electoral register in December 2011 is going to make it impossible for the 2015 election to be fought on new boundaries. That is the crucial difference.

The party opposite appears to wish the boundaries for the 2015 election to be fought on electoral data, so far as England is concerned, that go back to the year 2000. We have quoted on many occasions in these debates the report from the Electoral Commission published in March last year, when of course the party opposite was in power. These underregistrations have not suddenly materialised since May last year. I have indicated what we intend to do with regard to younger people in terms of data matching, so I found it rather breathtaking to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, say that we should get on with it. I think that we are probably proposing to do more in our first eight months in office than all that happened during the past 13 years. I give credit for initiatives that were taken, like rolling the register, but all that would come to naught because any benefit that came from that if we hold the 2015 election on electoral data from 2000 would be lost. Any positive steps taken by the previous Administration will not have any effect.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, mentioned Glasgow, and in previous exchanges the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, has indicated what has been done there, and it is a positive example. But of course none of that would be taken into account if we had to use electoral data from 2000. I welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, because I wondered where he was earlier.