Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

Private or local; I am very happy with that as well. It is whether it affects it in a manner different from the private interest of other persons or bodies of the same category. In the opinion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and many others the right to vote is a public right and the manner and place in which it may be exercised are not private interests. It is on that basis that I agree with my noble and learned friend and with the Clerks of the House of Lords that there are no grounds on which it could be argued that this is a Private Bill.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I listened to the Leader of the House many times when he was Leader of the Opposition and was often almost seduced by his oratory. However, that was not the case on this occasion and I do not think that it was a speech that he will be entirely thrilled about, because it was based almost entirely on suggesting that my noble and learned friend’s argument was spurious, shallow, pointless and simply and avowedly party-political. The noble Lord is nodding, so he is obviously confirming that. I want to comment initially on two points that he made, which are important considerations for the rest of us during this debate.

The noble Lord said that we know “that this Bill is on a tight timetable”. In other words, it has been guillotined quite severely in the Commons; that; of course, is what he hopes to be able to achieve in the Lords. I simply ask him: who is responsible for this Bill being on a tight timetable? The Government have made that decision in the full light of all the information. It is also, presumably, the reason why the Government say that it was not even possible to have pre-legislative scrutiny on this huge constitutional Bill—one which I think the party leader of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has described as being part of the most important reforms since 1832, with characteristic understatement. Your Lordships need not worry; I am coming to hybridity. I am sure that the noble Lord will deal with that as seriously as I am dealing with the comments that he has been making.

The noble Lord enunciated what I thought a unique constitutional principle—at least as far as I have heard in this House; it was an astonishing one to come from the Leader of the House—in which it is not this House’s business to consider issues which have not been voted on or considered in the other place. He has commented on it enough times to make me realise that this means that large swathes of business under this coalition Government will not be possible for us to discuss, because he knows perfectly well that in the other place large sections of business are frequently not discussed and not voted upon. That is due to timetabling, which obviously took place under the previous Government as it does under this one. But please let us not pretend that he is making a serious constitutional argument that we must not consider it ourselves because it has not been considered by the other place.

I come to a severely practical point on the issue of hybridity, which was partly touched upon in an earlier exchange. No one could seriously argue that this particular clause of this particular schedule did not have characteristics of hybridity: “Preserved constituencies” is all it says. It then lists two constituencies with no explanation whatsoever of why they are preserved. I put this as a procedural point to the Leader of the House; I would have thought that there is clearly no reason on earth why any other constituency that wants to be added to the preserved list should not be able to make out a case for doing so. There are 648 parliamentary constituencies not covered in the preserved list. I shall certainly be trying to persuade this House that Telford is a constituency that should not be interfered with. It is a fast-growing town in the West Midlands, whose population changes much more rapidly than other constituencies. I put only that point to him. I will not develop the argument now—it would not be to the specific point of hybridity—other than to point out that these amendments, should they be tabled, could not possibly be grouped because the nature of the hybridity means that each case is individual and is unrelated to all the other constituencies. That is the basis on which these two constituencies are put down.

If, for the sake of argument, many amendments were tabled making the case for individual constituencies, it could not then be sustained, even if you concede that this clause is hybrid, that it was only a small part of the Bill, as some of the proponents of this not being a hybrid Bill are advancing. If, during the passage of the Bill through this House, other constituencies were added to the “exempt” clause, it would become a much bigger part of the Bill. I put it to the noble Lord the Leader of the House that these are serious questions; the case is certainly serious so far as I am advancing it. There is hardly a constituency in Britain that could not put its case on the basis of its boundaries, its communities and their relationship of the communities to each other.

In passing, we have to acknowledge that all local contribution to this by way of public inquiry, which has always been the case in the past, is being bypassed too; as the noble Lord the Leader of the House has told us, the Bill is under a very tight schedule. I acknowledge that there are different opinions on this, but it is not worthy simply to use the characteristics of normal parliamentary banter, which I enjoy as much as anyone else, in responding to a very serious Motion that my noble and learned friend has tabled which, on the noble Lord’s own admission, will delay the Bill, if that is what it does, by only a week and a half. On a matter of such constitutional importance—the Government’s words, not mine, although on this occasion I agree with them—should we really not be able to delay the Bill by that time in order to establish where there is clear and serious doubt, although the noble Lord will no doubt be able to persuade enough people to his point of view? We should at least have the opportunity of dealing with that question in the proper way by referring it in the way that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer is suggesting.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

In a brief intervention some months ago, I acquired an entirely undeserved and unsought reputation for being an expert on hybridity. On that occasion, though, I detected what I thought to be a serious issue that needed to be considered in the way described. On this occasion, I can detect no such issue. I have listened with great care to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has said. I accept that the threshold is a low one, a point that I made on the previous occasion, but an elector’s interest in voting is not a private interest in the sense described in the Standing Orders. There can therefore be no question of treating one private interest differently from another. I am saying, only in a roundabout way, exactly what I believe the Clerk of the Public Bill Office has himself said in the letter that has been mentioned.

Before I am asked, I shall say that I have not read—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

Yes, my Lords, but on the whole I think it is better for people to know what it is they are voting on, which is what is envisaged in the Bill.

[Lord Grocott]

Further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I hate to have to admit it in public, but we lost the general election. Can the noble Lord point me to a constitutional principle which tells us that parties which lose the general election are thereby bound to put to the electorate ad infinitum the same proposals on which they lost?

[Lord Strathclyde]

There is none. I was just hoping that there might be a little consistency from the party opposite and that it would wish to support the coalition in giving the people their say on whether there should be an alternative vote system.

The reason to have the referendum on 5 May is that it will save money—about £30 million—to hold it on the same day as other votes. About 84 per cent of the UK electorate can go to the polls for local elections or elections to the devolved assemblies on 5 May. I do not see the purpose of dallying a few months, at a cost of £30 million, to get to the self-same place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, having sat through this debate so far, I have been greatly encouraged, as I suppose we all are, by the number of people who I found myself agreeing with wholeheartedly—not least the previous two speakers. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made a series of points very effectively—I will not repeat them—while my noble friend Lord Snape, with whom I have not knowingly disagreed for 36 years, likewise made some very powerful points indeed. Yet I do not want to put false optimism into this debate because, overall—trying to find the right adjective to describe the Bill—I find it depressing. That is the best adjective I can offer to the House.

I find it depressing, in part, because it is a political fix. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, tactfully described it as a political alliance but we know what we are talking about. I was not born yesterday; I know perfectly well that parties have to reach agreements and that compromises are made. However, I cherish many aspects of our constitution and I do not like the idea of it being the subject of a political fix, not least for the reason, which was mentioned earlier, that once constitutions are changed, the chances are that they will stay changed.

I am also depressed because there is no overall view of the constitutional reform structure, if I may put it as grandiosely as that, that the Government are engaged upon. There is no attempt to explain how each of the three Bills that we are promised—there is another one as well, I think, about recalling MPs, so I make that four—relate to each other. Not least, why are we discussing changing the electoral system in the Commons in such detail when we are about to talk about introducing an electoral system into the Lords? Surely those things should be considered, at least in part, in relation to one another.

I am depressed as well because the Bill damages two or maybe three important parts of our parliamentary democracy. First, it damages the relationship between MPs and their constituencies, which for me has always been at the heart of our democracy. It is what brings all MPs back to earth every weekend, whatever part of the stratosphere they have inhabited during the week. It is what gives you strength and direction. What is more, it is generally appreciated by the public; amid all the difficulties of recent months and years, the one constant has been that, while the public do not like MPs in general, generally speaking they quite like the work that their own Member of Parliament does.

I find the Bill depressing because it weakens Parliament in relation to the Government. There is no answer to that and no Minister, as far as I know, has tried to offer one.

The Bill is depressing for another reason too, and the Minister really will need to address this. He repeatedly prayed in aid big majorities in the Commons. Now, he knows the Commons pretty well, as do a lot of people in this House, and he should know it well enough to know that if people had been voting in the way that they strongly felt—in a free vote, let us say; a funny thing for an ex-Chief Whip to talk about, but let us surmise for a moment—my guess is that there would have been at least a two-thirds majority against changing the electoral system. Nearly all the Conservatives would vote against it, although they can speak for themselves, and my estimate, although it is a low one, is that 60 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party would have voted against it. I do not suppose that any Liberals would have done so because they vote as a bloc in a Stalinist way, but the rest of us would have made our own minds up. That is my guess. So let us not feel any inhibition whatever about what we do in dealing with the Bill, because the House of Commons, and I could cite names if that were required, wants us to do some work on the Bill and make changes to it.

I shall say a word or two about first past the post versus AV, which is a crucial part of the Bill. If anyone should hate the first past the post system, it really should be me. I have lost more elections under that system than I care to remember: four out of eight general elections, not to mention sundry country council elections and others. In this case, though, experience gives me an even greater respect for the first past the post system, certainly in comparison with AV. Indeed, for me it is not first past the post versus AV; I prefer to see it as being first past the post versus second or third past the post, which is obviously what AV amounts to. It means that the person who comes first is not necessarily declared the winner. As someone who spent a bit of my youth talking to bookies, I must admit that I quite like the notion of the horse that comes third or fourth being declared the winner—I would be richer—but that is not a good basis on which to operate a constitution. I find the arguments in favour of AV almost totally unconvincing and almost dishonest. As the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, suggested, it is not at all the solution to the difficulties that the parliamentary system has encountered recently.

A whole new concept has been introduced, which made me do some research. I was suddenly being told by Liberal Democrats and others that there was a crucial determinant of someone’s eligibility to be a Member of Parliament—namely, whether they achieved 50 per cent of the vote. That is what gave them legitimacy. If they did not have 50 per cent, they did not have legitimacy. Not being an anorak as far as numbers are concerned, I thought I would check whether I achieved 50 per cent in those four elections that I managed to win. Frankly, I did not have the faintest idea. I am happy to report to the House that the figures were as follows. My first win was on 42.6 per cent; my second was on 42.8 per cent; and my third was on 48.3 per cent, so at least the figures were moving in the right direction. My fourth win was on 57.8 per cent; at last I was legitimate.

I simply report to the House as a matter of fact—I am happy for someone to intervene or contradict me on this—that not only did I not know whether I had got 50 per cent until I checked the figures, but I absolutely assure the House that my constituents would not have had the faintest idea. Whether I had 50 per cent did not make a scrap of difference to the work that I did in the constituency. The same people came to me about the same kind of problems. Nor did it make a scrap of difference to my work as a Member of Parliament. As far as I know, no one said, “Don’t listen to him” or “Listen only to 48.3 per cent of what he says because he hasn’t got 50 per cent of his electors behind him”.

I hoped I could pray in aid the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on this. I took the precaution of checking the result in Stockport South in 1979. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, achieved 45.1 per cent of the vote. I had not appreciated the angst that he must have suffered because of this. When the returning officer declared him duly the Member of Parliament for the said Stockport South constituency, he would have been consumed by guilt, I imagine, because he was not a legitimate Member of Parliament. He must have felt quite ashamed when he came down here as an illegitimate Member. It is beyond parody or sarcasm. It simply bears no relationship whatever to how people here or in our constituencies ever think about the legitimacy of an MP.

I will say two other things about the weakness of the alternative vote system, which I hope are relevant to our debate. First, we surely have enough different electoral systems operating in this country at present. We have five by my calculation: first past the post, the additional member system, single transferable vote, supplementary vote and—wait for it—the d’Hondt system of proportional representation, which I do not understand and I suspect many other people do not either. More to the point, we will now not only have another electoral system for the Commons if the coalition has its way, but we will also have another electoral system for the House of Lords. That makes seven different electoral systems in this country. I would have one simple question in the referendum: would you like to revert to the first past the post system, which has served us so well in the past, for all these elections? I am certain that it cannot possibly be right to have seven different electoral systems. Added to which, we are warned—let us acknowledge the warning—by Nick Clegg and others that this is only a temporary phase. I wish those who are going to vote in favour would be honest with the electorate and this House and say, “We are voting for it but, as Nick Clegg has said, it’s a miserable little compromise. It won’t last long. Get ready because we’re coming with the real job later”. That is no basis on which to change the electoral system of a country. When its most prominent supporter describes it only as a miserable little compromise, that is not a great rallying cry: “What do we want?” “A miserable little compromise!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”. It is not the kind of thing which inspires an audience, quite apart from the fact that it will cost a lot of money. We keep being told that it will save £12 million to have fewer MPs, yet we are embarking on this hugely expensive referendum.

I want to comment on the “making constituencies bigger” section of the Bill, which I prefer as a title. Again, I offer the House my own experience, which may or may not be accepted. I had the privilege of representing two constituencies during my political life: one was Lichfield and Tamworth, with an electorate then of 101,343; the other was The Wrekin, which, before its redistribution, had an electorate of 90,872. Thank heaven, the dear old Boundary Commission came along and split that constituency into two, as it has also done with Lichfield and Tamworth. The link between MPs and their constituents is at the heart of our constitution. However hard you work—and, my word, I did work hard, as do most Members of Parliament—you cannot give the same service to constituents when you represent 101,000 as you can when you represent 60,000 or 70,000. For the life of me, I cannot see the justification for increasing constituency size in the way enshrined in the Bill.

I can conclude only where I started. I hope that this speech is not too depressing because I feel depressed about the Bill. The coalition has a huge majority in this House and in the other House and so far there is no sign that the Government are listening to any of the arguments. However, I am encouraged by the overwhelmingly hostile contributions which so many noble Lords have made today. Their speeches were overwhelmingly hostile to large sections of the Bill. I hope that we will do our job in this House and put it into better shape.

Coalition Policies

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

Broadly speaking, yes, I do, because they have the support of the majority in the House of Commons and were overwhelmingly and clearly pointed out in the respective manifestos. There are one or two exceptions where that is not the case but, as I said before, we will recognise them when we see them.

[Lord Grocott]

As it is not necessarily feasible to go through and analyse every single response, can the Leader of the House at least tell us how many people wrote in saying they thought it would be a good idea to spend £100 million on a referendum on the alternative vote?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord is of course right that it is far too short a time to look at each one but I flicked through the responses usefully over lunch and, for instance, here is one taken at random:

“We want referendums on national issues as we were promised”.

Another is:

“We want FAIR VOTES NOW!”.

Here is another one:

“I am concerned that having an elected upper house will mean that there is less accountability rather than more”.

I thought that one would go down well.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

Because, my Lords, this committee is charged to create a Bill in draft. There will be a full role for Back-Benchers in both Houses, on all sides and with different views, when we set up a Joint Committee of both Houses which will then give it the scrutiny it deserves before it is introduced to each House.

[Lord Grocott]

Could the Leader of the House, in the spirit of the coalition document, referring as it does to the importance of transparency, ensure that the agenda and minutes of this committee which is meeting at present are made available to the House and to the public?

European Council

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is right when he says it is beyond belief that the EU should wish to inspect our Budget before it is presented to Parliament. He is entirely right. In that there is not a cigarette paper of difference between him and the Prime Minister, or I suspect even the Opposition. We would all agree that the EU has no role and no place to look at our budgetary arrangements and, indeed, our parliamentary procedures. That position has been made entirely implicit in the Statement that I repeated a few minutes ago. It is not unfinished business; it is firmly finished business and we will be leaving it entirely the way that it is currently.

The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, made great play of looking at the conclusions and the Statement that we made. This is an old game to play and the noble Lord does it with great skill. I assure him that again there is no difference between the conclusions and the Statement that we made. They can live together entirely side by side and there is no difficulty for the Government.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords—

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I think we should hear from the Labour Party.

[Lord Grocott]

The Leader of the House has reported, quite rightly, that there were extensive discussions about the ongoing problem of Iran. Were there any discussions on the wider issue of the region and the ongoing problem of the blockade of Gaza? How can the suffering of the people of Gaza be relieved? How and when will there be discussions at some stage, as surely there must inevitably be, between representatives of the European Union and representatives of the current Administration in Gaza?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there was a discussion on Gaza. Generally speaking, the conclusion was positive about the steps that have been taken and we very much hope that the measures taken by the Israeli Government will be part of reducing tension in the area.

Special Advisers

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, these advisers are the personal appointments of Cabinet Ministers. Their job is to help Cabinet Ministers to do their job even more effectively than they would otherwise have done if they had not had such an appointment.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am not sure that the Leader of the House answered the question put by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours precisely. The question is really this: if any Minister, in relation to his or her activities in connection with a special adviser is seen to be in breach of the Ministerial Code, would it be the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister who would have to exercise disciplinary action against them?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, in the first instance it is up to the Minister who appointed the special adviser, but if there was a most serious breach of the code, I am sure that it would be for the Prime Minister to take a view.