Elections Bill

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, drew a parallel between the Electoral Commission and Ofcom. However, Ofcom has a huge and evolving remit; inevitably, it has to respond to changes in government policy in areas as diverse as regulating the spectrum and the quality of broadcasting. The Electoral Commission is a very different beast, with a very straightforward role: to oversee elections and regulate political finance to ensure that we have a free and fair election system.

It describes its job as working

“to promote public confidence in the democratic process and ensure its integrity”.

What could a Government want to do to change that? It is simple, straightforward and easily understood. I cannot understand what the policy statement enshrined in Clauses 14 and 15 would add to that quite straightforward purpose. Nothing I have heard today has helped me in that direction, and I hope the Minister might be able to answer the question that others have asked: what is the purpose of this?

That there is room for improvement in the way the commission operates is true, but the proposed policy statement is simply not the way to accomplish that. In my experience, when it comes to elections, political parties have one overriding objective: to win as many votes as possible. Indeed, in the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party was so keen to win votes in South Thanet that it drove a coach and horses—and, indeed, a battle bus—through the rules. So egregious were the breaches that in 2019, Mr Justice Edis, presiding over the subsequent court case, was highly critical of what he termed Conservative Central Office’s

“culture of convenient self-deception and lack of clarity about what was permissible in law and what was not.”

The senior central office employee who was instrumental in this electoral fraud was sentenced to nine months in prison on 22 counts. It was only because of her personal circumstances that the sentences were suspended. There is no doubt that Conservative Central Office is not the only political headquarters to have played fast and loose with the rules if it thought it could. That is why we do not want political parties anywhere near the Electoral Commission.

Those who drafted Clause 14 may have done so with the most honourable intentions in mind but, as has been said, these clauses could have a truly malevolent effect on our electoral system. There is an unpleasant whiff about them, and it could evolve into a foul stink. The positive case for these clauses has simply not been made, and I therefore support the removal of these clauses from the Bill.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I am somewhat conflicted in this debate, to the extent that I, unlike a number of noble Lords who have spoken previously, do not view the Electoral Commission through rose-tinted spectacles. I shall refer to one or two problems that I and others have had with it recently. I have, however, had the opportunity to meet and deal with Mr John Pullinger, its new chairman; I wish him well and believe—partly because of what he has done in relation to some of the issues that I have had—that he will actually change the culture in the Electoral Commission.

I was fascinated by the contribution just now from the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. I must declare an interest, because the person to whom she and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred is a close personal friend of mine, but I will not deal with the case as such. The noble Baroness aired the view that, although CCHQ had been found guilty of an offence, it was almost certain that the other parties did the same. That is actually the problem—

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I was not insinuating that other political parties had played fast and loose in that particular election. I merely meant that, had they felt able to in some elections, they might have done.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I am sorry; I did not make myself clear. I was referring not specifically to that election but to elections in general, which is what I took to be the comment of the noble Baroness.

I will first cover the Electoral Commission and then come on to this particular clause. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said first and others have said later, the Electoral Commission is required to produce an independent, free and fair set of elections. It is not required to start intruding in terms of developing or interpreting legislation. I was brought up to believe that these two Houses and the judges—the judiciary —decided how our laws operated. But, unfortunately, the Electoral Commission has moved into that field. I say that with reference to the debate in this Chamber on 6 January on the progress of regulatory bodies into fields and issuing edicts that they are saying are law.

I refer here not to the case that I just raised but to the availability of electoral rolls. They are key if you are going to investigate corruption in Tower Hamlets, but access to them is being denied by the Electoral Commission. In an email, it said that, unfortunately, “the law is silent” on this matter. It then went on to develop policy on it, effectively saying that it is law. It has issued instructions to EROs on a certain basis.

Later in the Bill, I shall cover the fascinating development of the law of secrecy when it comes to a polling booth, a practice that we have had for 150 years. The Electoral Commission is now changing the processes—it is changing the law—which is why I have tabled an amendment to stop it doing what it appears to be doing.

The noble Lords, Lord Rennard, Lord Wallace and Lord Kennedy, are all aware of the difficulties that I have had with it since early August on accredited observers—people who can be allowed into a polling station. The Minister wanted to go into a polling station in a by-election in Tower Hamlets and was told that she could not because she was political. She, or her office, was making those arrangements with the chief executive of Tower Hamlets. Nothing in law says that an accredited observer cannot be a political individual. I would have been quite happy if the Labour or Lib Dem spokesmen in the Commons or the Lords had gone to witness the problems there, but, suddenly, the Electoral Commission said, “You cannot do that”. Nothing in law says that.

What makes it worse—this is where I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake—is that the Electoral Commission does not admit its failings. As I say, I made correspondence available to other parties throughout, contemporaneously, and came to the conclusion that, in the way it has operated, the Electoral Commission is institutionally arrogant. It will not admit its failings, to the extent that, despite representations, detailed letters and failures to reply, when challenged about the refusal to allow the Minister into a polling station—it had been involved in conversations some 10 or 15 days before the by-election—it said immediately afterwards that it was not aware of a Minister being prevented from entering a polling station. This is despite the fact that, two and a half months later, it admitted that it had had conversations with the Cabinet Office and the Minister’s office, not to mention one with me in a polling station and with a local councillor, all of whom the Electoral Commission officials are saying it stopped, in one form or another.

What was fascinating was that, when confronted with all these different things, Electoral Commission kept saying, “We didn’t say it.” The Cabinet Office officials thought it did, as did the Ministers and the staff at Tower Hamlets. I believe it did. It is not a body which has previously been willing to admit its failures. As I say, it failed to do so when—

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. His complaints against the Electoral Commission may be justified, but can he explain how a strategy and policy statement from the Government would put the matter right?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The noble Lord intervenes at a highly apposite time. I said at the start of my contribution that I was conflicted. All I wanted to do was set the record straight in relation to the Electoral Commission as I and others have experienced it. A number of noble Lords have said that these clauses do not solve the problems that might arise from any behaviour of the Electoral Commission. That is why I am conflicted. I do not believe these clauses solve the problem. I believe there are problems with the Electoral Commission and that Mr Pullinger and his new organisation will tackle them, but I do not believe that these clauses solve the problem.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, regularly reminds us of Henry VIII clauses. I regard this as a Henry II clause: “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”—or, in this case, this troublesome regulatory body. I am sorry, but I cannot read those clauses without thinking that in some malevolent hands they will be misinterpreted by some Government or another.

I was an electoral observer in 2018 in a country I know well because I completed the whole of my university career there—Zimbabwe. I met the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and challenged it on the way it operated that election. I would like to be in a position to suggest that it use and operate our law. Could I honestly do that with these two clauses as they stand?

I come back to the position on which I opened. I am conflicted. I would like to see what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, identified: the clear operation of an electoral commission that produces independent, fair, free elections. That I could commend to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. I hope that, when it comes back, this legislation will be something that I could recommend. As it stands, with these clauses, I could not.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Just for the record, I am not Lord Kennedy.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I am very conscious of that. I did not necessarily say that the Lords to whom I was referring were present in the Chamber; I gesticulated towards the Bench opposite. I hope I did not offend the noble Lord in saying that.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Lord. He has delivered a message to people in his party that you can be severely critical of the Electoral Commission and consider that it has shortcomings and has not always owned up to things it has got wrong, but it does not follow that it makes sense to remove a body which is, in many respects, a guarantee of the democracy of our system. His illustration from Zimbabwe is telling. Who among us has not talked to people from various countries with very shaky regimes about the need to have a fair and reliable electoral system? Many have taken part as election observers, as he has, and seen a lack of independence in the electoral process that is fatal and damaging. The fact that the existing members of the commission believe that the provisions of these two clauses would inhibit their ability to behave independently tells its own story. It is on that and one other point that I want briefly to contribute.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, quoted from the letter that all but one of the members of the commission sent to Ministers. However, he did not go on to take a further quote from it, which says:

“If made law, these provisions will enable a government in the future to influence the Commission’s operational functions and decision-making. This includes its oversight and enforcement of the political finance regime, but also the advice and guidance it provides to electoral administrators, parties and campaigners, and its work on voter registration.”


It goes on to say that the “have regard” duty would

“provide a mechanism, driven by the then governing party, enabling that party’s ministers to shape how electoral law is applied to them and their political competitors.”

That is pretty clear, and anyone who took up a position on the Electoral Commission with this law governing how they conducted themselves would be likely to be severely inhibited by it. That raises a question of who will be willing to serve on the Electoral Commission with this kind of statutory statement as something to which they are obliged to have regard.

The other point I want to make is to reinforce something I said by way of an intervention. It really is no use the Government relying on the fact that they have produced an illustrative or indicative statement. That statement may be regarded by some as motherhood and apple pie; it might be regarded by others as offering a few hints of things that might be unsatisfactory in future statements. It is not the law. It does not inhibit or guide even this Government, let alone future ones, as to what kind of statements they will seek to get through the process.

Remember that the process is effectively one of statutory instruments—affirmative procedure, the same as statutory instruments—which, for various other reasons, many noble Lords are reluctant to use in this House to the extent of actually defeating a statement. Indeed, the Labour Party has often taken a public position that it is not appropriate for this House to take such an action, but the noble Lord on the Front Bench pointed out that we are dealing with a different matter here. We are dealing not with a general policy issue but with protection of the integrity of the election process and the body required to regulate it, and the independence that body needs to be able to do those things.

I end with the hope that the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, will be read by quite a lot of other members of his party, who might then feel free to join those of no party, my party and the Labour Party in saying that this matters. This is a threat to the independence and perceived independence of the body that regulates elections. However many of its decisions we disagree with or which may have been discomforting to our own individual party or cause, we must maintain its independence. That requires the removal of these clauses.