National Assembly for Wales (Representation of the People) (Amendment) Order 2016

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the first two minutes, as I was in the Chamber trying to follow another devolution debate going on in parallel. I thank the noble Baroness for bringing these before the Committee. If she has not already said this in her opening remarks, will she confirm that there is unanimous backing for this in the National Assembly? I believe that to be the case—and therefore it is welcome.

I shall resist the temptation to ask her to clarify the grammatical errors in the Welsh language form, but that underlines one point—that many matters such as these should surely be devolved to the Assembly itself to handle rather than expecting Ministers with no knowledge of the Welsh language to handle it up here. Would I be correct in saying that, if the devolution Bill that is currently under consideration is passed as intended by the Government, that would put responsibility for matters such as these into the hands of the National Assembly, and therefore there would be no need to test the Minister on her detailed knowledge of the Welsh language?

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, these three regulations are being debated together, and at the outset I should say that I have no issues with the instruments before the Grand Committee today. However, I have a few points and questions for the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm of Owlpen, and I am sure that she will be able to answer them for me.

First, in respect of the National Assembly for Wales order, I was pleased to see the addition of Article 23A, which concerns the inadequate performance of returning officers and the making of provisions for no payments. That will hopefully focus minds, but what are the Government going to do to deal with poor performance of returning officers in general? Payments can be withheld, but that is just imposing a monetary sanction; it is not actually dealing with the problem.

On Article 13, I was pleased to see that the expenses limit for candidates has been increased, as these elections were last contested five years ago and costs have increased for all candidates. Although we are not able to do it with this order, we need to get to a position whereby these allowances are automatically uprated by inflation, which would remove the need for this cumbersome process, involving officials, the Electoral Commission and everybody else.

In a similar vein, although I know that these issues are not part of these regulations, I hope that the Committee will forgive me for putting some other issues out there. The Government need to look at the whole question of recordable and reportable donations thresholds, which have not changed for well over six years and need to be uprated. Combining the polls with the PCC elections is sensible, makes for better, well-run elections, reduces costs and is helpful to both the administration of the election and voters alike.

The other matters in the order, which include allowing PCSOs to enter polling stations and making provision for people who had their postal vote rejected due to an identifier problem to be contacted to correct the problem for future elections, are very welcome.

Paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to the work undertaken by the Law Commission to consolidate all our election law. For me, this cannot come soon enough. Election law is needlessly complex, hard to understand and contains far too many Acts, regulations and orders. A thorough rewriting would be in everyone’s interests, whether they be candidates, officials organising the elections or, most importantly, voters.

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[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions, and I will try to answer the points raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, raised the issue of devolution, and it is absolutely true that the Welsh Assembly will be responsible following the Bill, so noble Lords will not have to listen to me speaking here for at least 20 minutes on the subject. That is very important and will make a big difference.

The noble Lord also raised a point about the Welsh language. The Cabinet Office is looking into that further and is making sure that these mistakes do not happen in the future. It is getting together more people who can speak Welsh and can be in charge of this sort of thing, because it is not good for that to happen.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, made a point about the performance of returning officers. Even though monetary sanctions are indeed very important—it draws people up short if they think they will not get the amount of money they thought they would—I agree with him that other important considerations should be taken into account. The Cabinet Office has organised two seminars for all returning officers at PCC elections in England and Wales to provide training and guidance for the delivery of the PCC elections in May. In fact, on a recommendation from the Electoral Commission, the Welsh Assembly SI provides that Welsh Ministers may reduce or withhold returning officers’ charges in the event of poor performance at the Welsh Assembly elections. This is a significant sanction, and we have no plans at this time to introduce further sanctions in the event of poor performance. Our focus will be on the guidance and training provided to the returning officers.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

From my time as a commissioner, I remember that we had the situation where—I do not know whether returning officers are paid some money in advance—there was a complicated process of providing receipts and getting the money back. It seemed to go on for ever and was very cumbersome. Maybe we need to have the bills first and then pay the money out, but it seemed to go on for months. It was very inefficient. That went on between the commission and the returning officer. How this is funded and how money comes back needs to be looked at.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The noble Lord raises an important point. Having it that way round seems to make things more complicated, and I will certainly take that back for further discussion.

The noble Lord also raised the issue of candidates’ expenses limits. Our current policy is not to link candidates’ expenses limits to inflation so that they increase automatically in line with inflation. Of course, we have agreed to increase the limits for the Welsh Assembly elections in May following a recommendation from the Electoral Commission. As with other electoral matters, this will be the responsibility of the Assembly once the Wales Bill is passed.

The noble Lord also raised the issue of the existing thresholds for reportable donations. These have not been changed since 2010. The current thresholds apply to elections across the piece. We do not wish to make a change for a particular poll and we have no plans to change the current arrangements, although, as with other electoral matters, we will keep this under review.

We do not as a matter of course consult political parties on electoral SIs, which are often technical in nature. We keep representatives of the parliamentary parties panel informed of our work on upcoming elections at meetings held on a quarterly basis. We will draw to their attention any planned changes we think would be of particular interest to them.