European Council

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I always pass on the messages my noble friend provides me with. Energy policy is quite an interesting example of where the Prime Minister has been influential in refocusing the European Union’s approach. We have been able to ensure that we have combined energy security, the costs of energy, and climate change in a more sensible way, so that the way in which we try to improve the internal market for energy in Europe makes sense to member states. Certainly, we have been able to reach agreement without any kind of inflexible targets on member states which mean that they are no longer able to decide their own energy mixes; as my noble friend suggests, that is a very important part of our independence.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the Statement she has just read out exposes the contradiction and confusion at the heart of the Government’s European policy? In the first half, we had many good reasons why we need to stand together with our European partners—to deal with the situation in Iran, to stand up to Russia, to deal with chaos in north Africa and the problem of migration. All those are good reasons for working within Europe. In the second half, however, we had the Government’s policy of standing there with one hand on the exit door. How on earth can Britain lead in Europe if at the same time it is threatening to leave?

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. The core purposes of this Bill are that there should be an “in or out” referendum. It is not about what the result of that referendum should be; it is about whether there should be a referendum and that it should be before the end of 2017. This amendment has no bearing on those purposes. It leaves them unaffected. It requires the Government in certain circumstances to do something which any self-respecting Government would or should do in those circumstances. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that he and his colleagues in the House of Commons have the best chance of this Bill passing if he decides to accept this amendment.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for long. I think that there is pretty strong support all around the House for this amendment. It certainly has the support of the Opposition, who will vote for the proposition in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, if he chooses to test the opinion of the House. What is needed in any “in or out” choice is an authoritative assessment of Britain’s intended relationship with the European Union should the people decide to withdraw from it. That does not have to be just a wish list of hoping that we can have our cake and eat it outside the Union. It has to be a hard, realistic assessment.

I am a great lover of history. I like reading books about Britain’s post-war relationship with the European Union. The Macmillan Diaries is one of the books I have read. Harold Macmillan tried to establish a free trade relationship with the Common Market when the treaty of Rome was signed. He explored that and failed because, even in 1958, he was not able to achieve what was necessary for the national interest, and he decided we had no alternative but to join the Common Market. So we have to be realistic and this assessment has to be realistic.

Many Members on our side of the House have pointed out that the proposed referendum is not a popularity poll, it is a fundamental choice. It is not a choice you take once every five or 10 years. You cannot say that it would be a choice made for ever but you can certainly say that it would be made for generations. It is important that this choice is taken not on the basis of wish lists or hypothetical speculations—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said—but on the basis of what is a realistic alternative. The truth is that those who want to take us out of the European Union rarely state what they think the alternative is for Britain, which is why this amendment is crucial. There is a huge range of possibilities. At one end of the spectrum, there is membership of the European Economic Area, probably as a consequence of rejoining EFTA; but at the other end, we would have to rely on our WTO status in terms of our trading relationship with the European Union.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Does the noble Lord recall that when he worked in Downing Street and the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, was a Minister at the Foreign Office, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, endlessly put down Questions asking for an assessment of the pros and cons—the benefits and the costs, because there are costs—of our membership? The noble Lord and the Government endlessly rejected that, year after year. Even a Bill was put down, but it was talked out. Does he think that he owes the noble Lord some sort of apology?

[Lord Liddle]

I am afraid that I do not, no. What I do know about the Labour Government is that when they were considering whether to join the euro, they carried out a thorough assessment. In the case of this proposed referendum, we need to have a thorough assessment of what the alternatives would be.

Many people assume that we can continue to enjoy the benefits of free trade with our European partners by being in the EEA. That, of course, is the economic option with the least pain. But as my noble friend Lord Kinnock said when he talked about sovereignty, although being in the EEA might involve a minimum of economic pain, it would certainly involve a huge loss of British sovereignty. Whereas now we have a say on every EU regulation that applies to us, in future, as members of the EEA, we would simply have to accept every regulation decided in Brussels, and we would have to make a budgetary contribution as well. Being in the EEA would mean a massive loss of sovereignty for Britain. We may no longer be in the European Union but, in my view, we would also no longer be Great Britain, a sovereign nation able to exercise some say over its future.

As for the alternative at the other end of the spectrum, relying on our WTO membership and trying to negotiate free trade agreements, noble Lords have already pointed out some of the problems. We would immediately be withdrawing ourselves from free trade agreements that the EU has with other countries, and the whole future of agriculture would be put into grave uncertainty. The car industry is perhaps the best example of what noble Lords on the other side have to address. The car industry is probably the most outstanding example of the manufacturing renaissance that we have seen in Britain.

[Viscount Eccles]

I would be grateful if the noble Lord would agree that I personally do not have a case to answer because I want to stay in. And I think that it is extremely damaging for him continuously to tell us that he expects the people to vote no.

[Lord Liddle]

I have the greatest respect for the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. I am not worried about the result of an election if there is a fair vote which is based on fair information. However, I am really worried about a referendum that is based on an artificial timetable which is led by the Prime Minister. I have great respect for the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech—as I said to the House, I agreed with 80% of it. To be frank, however, my honest fear, and I speak as an individual, is that when you look at what happened in the other place yesterday, when the Government collapsed in the face of rebellion from their own Back-Benchers—

[Noble Lords]

No!

[Lord Liddle]

Conservative Back-Benchers, I hasten to add, not Liberal Democrat ones. The Prime Minister's response to that was pathetic, even when what was at stake was a question of us sticking to the law. What kind of confidence can we have that an EU referendum would be fought on a fair basis unless these kinds of guarantee are written into the Bill?

I come back to the case of our car industry outside the EU. Unless we can negotiate a special deal with our partners there will be a 10% tariff on cars that are made in Britain. That will have a devastating impact on jobs in the British car industry. We cannot take these decisions lightly. We have to think about what we would be able to negotiate.

We should also have a realistic assessment of what we will be able to negotiate. Many people think that we would have the whip hand in any such negotiations were we outside the EU. I think that it was my noble friend Lord Davies who said that, in fact, that is not the case. We have to face the fact—and people are hard-headed about economic matters—that our exports to the single market account for between 40% and 50% of our total exports, however we calculate it. The rest of the single market’s exports to us account for about 8% of its exports, so if we are just looking at this in terms of the balance of power in that negotiation, it is not an attractive one from the prospect of jobs and growth in Britain.

In conclusion, if the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, is not prepared to accept this amendment, is he certain what his alternative to EU membership would entail? How would he go about making sure that the referendum was fought on a fair basis? If we cannot have this fair assessment then, frankly, the Bill is as I described it at Second Reading: an invitation to buy a pig in a poke.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, before the noble Lord finally sits down, will he explain to me why, when legislation was taken through Parliament for a referendum regarding the European Union in 1975, no such provisions as the ones he is now calling for were included?

[Lord Liddle]

If I recollect correctly—I took an active part in that campaign—there was an assessment of the reasons for British membership, which was sent to every household.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, there is a government view on membership of the European Union, which is that the UK’s interest is to be a member of a reformed European Union. There are also agreed government views on how to run a referendum, following the alternative vote and Scottish independence polls. However, there is no collective position on holding a membership referendum and hence no government view on its implications. Noble Lords can be assured that, by the time of the referendum, the official yes and no campaigns will have made their cases in some detail. Therefore, the British people will be in no doubt about the choice that they are making.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Giddens]

My noble friend Lord Williams raises a significant set of issues. There plainly could be big discrepancies in patterns of voting across the United Kingdom and these will be consequential for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would be interesting to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, how the Government would deal with a situation where the English basically settled the vote in such a decisive way that you could argue that the voices of other parts of the country were eclipsed. It will be interesting to hear what the noble Lord has to say on that issue.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I will be very brief on this point, but my noble friend Lord Williams has raised an issue of fundamental importance with this amendment. It covers the role of the devolved Administrations, their views on EU membership and how those views are communicated to their electorate, and the risks that this whole venture poses to the union we care about most, the union of the United Kingdom. I care a lot about the European Union but I care even more about the union of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Dobbs]

Can the noble Lord clarify whether, when he says that this venture poses risks, he is talking about the Bill or a referendum as a whole?

[Lord Liddle]

I am talking about an “in or out” referendum, which this Bill is designed to generate in quick time. It is quite possible that the different parts of the UK will vote in different ways. As I said at Second Reading, the risk is that independence is defeated in the Scottish referendum this autumn, but that an EU referendum in which Scotland voted to stay in and England, by a majority, took the United Kingdom out would just reignite the whole argument about Scottish nationalism once again. The Government have to think very seriously about this problem. I quite accept that it is not easily dealt with through amendments to this Bill, but it is a very serious issue for the future of the UK.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Williams and Lord Wigley, for the way they introduced this very important issue—there is no denying its importance. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, himself readily acknowledged that the amendments go beyond the scope of this very simple and very narrow Bill, and the technical answer to them is that the UK’s relationship with the EU is not a devolved matter. However, that of course is not a sufficient answer to the points that they made.

Amendment 55 is a probing amendment, which has been put in a dignified and detailed matter, and I want to try to deal with it in that spirit. I have specific concerns about the amendments. The logical consequence of this group of amendments would be to raise at least the possibility that some parts of our United Kingdom might be denied the opportunity to vote. It would render a national referendum pointless because of the involvement of devolved parliaments, which I am sure is not the intention of the noble Lords who tabled these amendments at all. Noble Lords have waved the flags of the various constituent parts of our United Kingdom with pride, and I congratulate them on that. They have raised useful points which we should all be sensitive to, such as the possibility of Northern Ireland and the Republic being on opposite sides of the fence. It is a very serious, complicated issue. However, along with all the other issues that have been raised, that is fundamentally a political challenge. They are not ones that we should try to anticipate by an analysis, no matter how acute and insightful, of various hypothetical situations at this time.

The issue was raised of the possibility—indeed the necessity—of trying to pre-empt the outcome of the Scottish referendum, in case Scotland voted for independence. In the event of that very sad decision of Scotland to leave the United Kingdom, all sorts of new arrangements would need to be made, and the arrangements required for this Bill would be part of a much more complex bundle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Triesman]

I promise that I shall be even closer to the noble Lord later.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, this debate has raised another set of issues that need to be properly and thoroughly addressed before we put arrangements in place for any kind of referendum on our future in the European Union. On this side of the House, Members would be very sympathetic to the principle that my noble friend Lord Kinnock set out that we should have the broadest possible vote on this fundamental issue. I know the sort of arguments that some people might make against this. One is that that it would set a precedent for voting in general elections and local elections, but I do not think that it would. An EU referendum is fundamentally different; it is certainly not a vote for a councillor, an MP or a Government. It is a vote not for eternity, perhaps, but for generations ahead. The Prime Minister’s phrase about “no return ticket” comes to mind. It is a different type of vote from any other that we are likely to have in this country in the near future, and therefore needs to be considered differently.

There is a second, more low-level political point. Even now, with the debate that we have had, I am sure that we run the risk of seeing some headline in the Daily Mail that says, “Peers demand the vote for foreigners in British EU referendum”. I can well imagine that being the headline—and I see that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, thoroughly agrees with that proposition and thinks that such a headline would be right.

The question of EU citizens living in this country and of British citizens living in the EU has to be treated in the same breath. It is basically an issue about the people who have shaped their lives around the fact that we are members of the European Union. This referendum proposes to put at serious risk the rights to live, work, study, retire, marry, partner and do whatever else you want, which are enormous enhancers of human freedom. Let the UKIP people say how they would deal with these rights. As a simple matter of the rights of these citizens—both EU citizens here and UK citizens in the rest of the EU—this matter deserves the greatest consideration.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I can see the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, nodding at points on the issue of the views that may be expressed in the Daily Mail. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I remind the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that during the passage of the legislation to establish the Scottish Parliament he supported his much lamented friend John MacKay when he argued that the waiter from Brussels living in Scotland would have a vote but his daughter who worked in Brussels and was Scottish would not. I know that the noble Lord will make certain that the views he expresses on this Bill will be in line with his firmly held principles on that occasion.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Liddle]

79AA: Line 10, at end insert—
“( ) the county of Cumbria”

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I have never before moved an amendment to an amendment in any other democratic body that I have been in. It is quite against Citrine’s rules of procedure, from what I remember from my political education in the Labour Party. None the less, I hope that the House will recognise that this is a natural amendment to an amendment, which the House can agree to. The only reason why Cumbria was not in the original draft of the amendment that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer submitted is that I failed to get to him in time. I hope that noble Lords opposite will accept this as evidence of the chaos and lack of co-ordination on this side of the House, rather than the planned filibustering that they claim is going on.

This is a serious amendment and there are serious local concerns. Why do I think that Cumbria qualifies for special treatment? I give several reasons. First, it is a very remote part of England. I am pretty sure of my facts but I might have got them slightly wrong. In the north-west region, Cumbria accounts for half the geographical area but something like only 6 per cent of the population. It is a geographically large and scattered area. It is also a naturally bounded area in its geography. To the north is the Scottish border. I am glad that at least the Bill allows for Cumbrians not to have to take any Scots into their electoral areas. That is a boundary that, under this Bill, cannot be crossed. It is a natural boundary as well as a national boundary, with the magnificent Solway Firth and the forests of the Borders dividing the two nations. To the east of the county lie the Pennines—again, a natural barrier that divides the communities of the east from those of the west. To the south is Morecambe Bay, which divides the south of Cumbria from Lancashire. There is a natural boundary to this county.

There is also a very strong sense of community in Cumbria. I am not saying that it is a community spirit that embraces the whole county in exactly the same way, but there is a community spirit in the many different parts of the county. It is a county that is divided naturally, not just by the geographical features that surround it, but by the Lake District mountains, which lie in the middle of it.

Cumbria is also divided by the economics that founded its communities. I was born in Carlisle; there is a very good story about why Carlisle became such an important railway town. One of the reasons was that it was physically impossible for a fireman on a steam train to manage to fire the train over the Beattock summit into Scotland from Carlisle and over the Shap summit south of Carlisle. It was a physically impossible task for a single chap, so all the crews changed at Carlisle. That demonstrates the natural boundaries of the area.

Then there is west Cumbria, which is a distinct old industrial community and is now the home of Britain’s nuclear industry. West Cumbria’s prosperity was made on iron and coal, exported through the ports of Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport. That is a distinct community. In the south, there is Barrow-in-Furness, where there was a marsh in the mid-19th century. It became one of the most successful steel-making, iron-making and shipbuilding towns in Britain and has played a key role in the history of the Royal Navy since that time. It is an isolated and distinct community.

I have talked about the industrial communities of Cumbria, but the rural communities are also distinct, because the Lake District divides the county into different rural communities—east, north, south and west of the Lake District hills. There are also distinct rural areas, such as the Solway plain and the Eden valley. This is an area that an expert in geography, demography, geology, economic history and all the rest would think was distinct. It is distinct geographically to the extent that it is difficult to see how you could hive off bits into other parts of England without creating the most unnatural parliamentary constituencies.

That is a case for adding Cumbria to the list in Amendment 79A and I hope that the House will accept it. It goes along with the argument that I have made at other times. For the sake of completeness, not because I want to bore the Committee unduly, I wish to say that the Boundary Commission has, on successive occasions, recognised the distinctness of the county. The commission decided in its previous two reviews that, despite the fact that the application of the quota did not strictly justify Cumbria’s six parliamentary seats, when community considerations were taken into account—before the issue was put to a local inquiry—the six seats should be retained.

This makes a very strong case for adding Cumbria to the list of places where there should be special exemption. Ideally, this is not the way in which I would like this matter to go. I would prefer that we did not have a rigid cap on the number of Members of Parliament and that we had a Boundary Commission that was able to exercise proper discretion, as it saw fit, to deal with these kinds of circumstances. However, the Government have so far refused to show any flexibility on the cap on the number of MPs and on the rigid corset within which the Boundary Commission will have to do its work. As long as the Government are rigid about this issue, those of us who care about community considerations and parliamentary representation have no alternative but to move these amendments. That is what I now do. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am happy to be interrupted on that. I understand my noble friend’s point plainly. The point that he and others have made is that an MP cannot represent well a constituency that crosses county boundaries, but my right honourable friend the Minister of State at the Scotland Office represents a seat in the south of Scotland that crosses, I think, three local authority boundaries, and he does it rather well. The fact that the seat crosses several such boundaries makes no difference to his ability to represent it, so I do not accept the argument that my noble friend makes. I do not take away from him and other noble Lords the passion with which they make their argument. I just think, and this is the Government’s point, that it is a better and safer principle to stick to an equality of numbers of electors in constituencies across the country than to try to make these arguments.

[Lord Liddle]

I think that the noble Lord is slightly misrepresenting the point that we are trying to make. There is no attachment here to lines on maps that mark county boundaries that cannot be crossed. We are talking about the fact that these lines on maps represent real communities, which in some cases are very geographically isolated communities, and it is impossible to draw constituency boundaries that would maintain that essential sense of community. We are asking for the flexibility to take that sense of community into account, not local government boundaries.

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is exactly what noble Lords opposite are saying. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said that crossing county boundaries destroys local identity built up in Cumbria. He said a couple of times that it would export voters into other constituencies. I just do not understand what that means or why it should be important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for least going through the arguments. I must admit that I find them difficult to follow on this amendment. These small exceptions—exceptions have already been made—do not make a fundamental difference to the Bill, nor to the way that the solution for constituencies and democracy in this country would work. I find that response disappointing. I accept that not every area in that list may be correct, and that it is perhaps therefore not right to vote on the amendment this evening, but I strongly believe that community matters. Although what the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, said, was absolutely right—this is a national forum—we sometimes forget in this House a thing called casework, which comes to Members of the other place. That is hugely community-based.

I have to make one last admission. When I was an MEP, I was MEP for the Isles of Scilly, for Cornwall and for West Plymouth, and the constituency covered the River Tamar. It was not a good solution and did not necessarily work well for the city of Plymouth—although I felt that I did a fantastic job. The difference between those communities was huge, and the practical outcome was that that was not the right solution. I hope that the Government—whom I support in every other way—will reconsider this important area for the future. We live to fight another day for Cornwall in another argument. That is important.

[Lord Liddle]

I shall withdraw my amendment, but I hope that when we get to Report—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. It is not that we do not wish to hear from him; it is just that we have procedures.

[Lord Liddle]

The Chairman asked me to speak.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I beg the noble Lord’s pardon.

[Lord Liddle]

To tell you the truth, I was not sure what I was supposed to do. I just wanted to say that I hope that we do not have to raise this issue again at Report, because I hope that the Government will bring forward more flexibility in the way that the Boundary Commission operates so that the needs of communities in places such as Cumbria can be taken more fully into account. If the Government do that and allow much more local flexibility in the rules than at present, which does not breach the principle by which we have operated in Britain since the Second World War of equal constituencies, there will be no need to press this issue again.

Amendment 79AA (to Amendment 79A) withdrawn.

European Council

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, has the Leader of the House had an opportunity to study last week’s financial stability report from the Bank of England, which demonstrated the interconnectedness of the obligations of British banks and those of banks on the continent and suggested to the reader that, should there be any kind of sovereign debt default in a member state in the eurozone, Britain and British banks would be heavily involved in any debt restructuring that was necessary? In this case, is it not time that, instead of trying to pretend to their anti-European and Eurosceptic Back-Benchers that Britain can stand aside from the problems of the eurozone, the Government recognised that we are in these problems up to our neck, that if we want a credible growth strategy for Britain we must also have a credible growth strategy for the eurozone, and that we should be ready as the United Kingdom in our national interest to play a full part in that?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I have not had time to study the stability report from the Bank of England to which the noble Lord referred, but I understand exactly what he was saying. With the greatest respect to him, I think that his question was misconceived. There is no fear from us that we are trying to appease anti-European or sceptical Back-Benchers. These are bogeymen that obviously exist in the noble Lord’s nightmares. We have no such nightmares and no such concerns. If any such concerns exist, they are partly dealt with by explaining that there will be a process in the British Parliament for agreeing the changes that we have made. Of course, as I laid out in the Statement and in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we have a clear strategy for growth in the United Kingdom and believe that there should be a clear strategy for growth in the rest of Europe.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am grateful for that clarification and I apologise if I have misrepresented the noble Lord. I hope he will then agree with this practical argument. We should look towards first past the post continuing for the House of Commons. If we have elections to the House of Lords, that is where we should have some proportional system. If the Commons continues, as it will, to form the Government—in other words, once the Commons is elected that is where the Government come from—stability is important. Apart from the current aberration of the coalition, first past the post normally produces stability. It produces one party in power for a period of time—five, 10 or 15 years. That gives some stability, which, in government, is important.

[Lord Liddle]

Is it the case that under that arrangement what you would have in practice would be more instability? What you would have is a Lords with full democratic legitimacy, elected on proportional representation, which would feel able to overturn the decisions of the House of Commons. Therefore, you would not get stability by that system.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I remind the noble Lord of a speech he gave to the parliamentary Labour Party about four years ago, where he made precisely the point that is now being made. He said that in the event that we were elected here by proportional representation and they by first past the post we would claim legitimacy where they could not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle]

I was very tempted by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, because I should like to see a wide-ranging debate about all forms of electoral reform in this country. I am very tempted indeed by the amendments of my noble friend Lord Rooker, which go for a two-party arrangement, first seeking the people’s opinion on whether in principle they want change and then asking them what system in particular they want. That is an amendment that deserves the support of many people on our side of the Chamber.

So far as concerns the general question of why we need a debate on this issue, I think that we should set aside questions of party advantage. I know that people will laugh at that but I think that we should do so and ask ourselves whether the present system has legitimacy. The first general election in which I canvassed and campaigned was the 1964 general election, when the Labour Party and the Conservative Party got more than 85 per cent of the votes cast. The two parties were overwhelmingly dominant in our politics. But when you look at the result of the last two general elections—2010 and 2005—you see that the two major parties won only about two-thirds, 65 per cent, of the votes cast. This is not legitimate. You cannot have a system, which is an alleged two-party system, in which the voice of 35 per cent of the electorate is not being effectively heard. That is why we have to have a big debate in our country about electoral reform.

There are many arguments made against electoral reform, such as that it will result in weak government because there have to be coalitions. However, although I do not agree with the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, I do not believe that it is a weak Government. I think it is quite a decisive Government who are getting on with doing a lot of things I do not particularly like. It blows a hole, however, in one of the arguments against proportional representation, which is that it would result in a coalition politics that would mean that nothing would ever get done.

There is a strong argument to be made for the sake of the country. The late Lord Jenkins, of whom I was a great admirer, attached a lot of importance to the belief, based on his experience in the 1980s, that it was a very bad situation indeed when there were no Conservatives in the county of Durham and no Labour people in the county of Surrey. What you got was a polarisation of the country when in fact what you want is a system of representation where there are Conservatives who have to represent the deprived areas of the north of England and there are Labour MPs who represent the more affluent districts. That would be good for the country and would produce a more legitimate system. That is why I support electoral reform; why I am tempted by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, but am not going to support it; why I would definitely support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker; and why I very much support the principle of a referendum on some change.

[Lord Sewel]

My Lords, in a previous existence I used to teach something called social science research methods, which was basically reduced in large part to constructing questionnaires and getting undergraduates to go out and ask people in various ways which way they would vote if there was a general election tomorrow. There never was a general election tomorrow, so the results were always slightly erroneous and had no predictive basis whatsoever.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, says:

“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons”.

Then we get this wonderful sentence:

“It is proposed that the system should be changed”.

Let us note the two words “proposed” and “changed”. You are actually sensitising the respondent to the desired response, because everyone accepts on that basis that it is proposed, so it is a good thing: and “change”, as we know, is a very powerful word—think of Barack Obama. It is a false question in terms of equal balance because you are making clear the direction of the desired response just by using those two words: “proposed” and “changed”.

We then get on to the more substantive issue of linking the first past the post system, which is actually undefined, with the alternative vote system. The one thing that we have learnt during the debates and discussions on this is that we do not know whether there is “the” alternative vote system. Very different types of systems claim to be the alternative vote system, but there is not one “the” alternative vote system.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

In his comprehensive treatment of electoral systems, my noble friend Lord Foulkes missed out one system. As a consequence of the experience of multiple elections in Scotland, there have been two changes to the electoral system. In 2015, as my noble friend said, the elections for the Scottish Parliament will not take place on the same day as the elections for the UK Parliament. Equally, in May 2011, there should have been local government elections under the single transferable voting system on the same day as we would be having a Scottish Parliament election.

Much as I respect my old friend’s political acumen and his attractiveness to the electorate, the fact that he is a Member of the Scottish Parliament is down to only one thing—namely the low vote that the Labour Party received in the first past the post seats for the Scottish Parliament. One of the reasons why the Labour Party did not do as well in the 2007 elections was that people were being asked to participate in two elections using two different systems. Across the country there were incredible numbers of spoiled papers. In my former constituency, the majority of the successful nationalist candidate was less than the number of spoiled papers, which in our estimation tended to come from the areas which had been the traditional stalwarts of Labour support. That is the kind of confusion that seems to have escaped the attention of the previous speaker.

The confusion that arose may take a slightly different form in this election, but it has already been admitted by the desire to have two elections in different years, and two elections in the same year but at different times. Simply trying to get a bigger turnout seems to be the only argument. It could be that saving money is one of the arguments, but I suspect that that is a pretty feeble one because £15 million is a lot of money in one area, but it does not amount to a great deal across the country. Certainly, if we are to do this election properly, we will have to have more people in the polling stations than we had at the last election. We will require sufficient numbers to get the job done. If £15 million is a figure that would break the bank, I would be very worried about the staffing of the polling stations on election day.

I do not want to prolong my speech too long, but I want to make another point. There will be confusion. I have fought several referenda, and I think that I have won one and lost two. I lost the European one in 1975. I lost the Scottish one in 1979, but then went on to win my seat. My point is that the result of a referendum is often largely dependent on the popularity of the proposers. At present, Tory supporters, although they are wilting a wee bit, by and large are quite happy with what this right-wing Government are doing. But I cannot imagine that the proponents of AV—the pure and unalloyed, or the slightly alloyed, proponents in the Liberal Democrats—will be accorded the respect of the electorate, given the way in which they have failed to stem the right-wing tendencies of this Government.

It would be in the Liberal Democrats’ interests to have a referendum as far away from next May as they can—probably to have it a year and a half before the general election, if they are to have one at all. By that time they might be a wee bit less unpopular than they are at present. The university towns and cities of this country are the kind of areas where young people would be expected to turn out to vote for constitutional or electoral change, but the Liberal Democrats do not have a hope in hell of getting any support from them at present.

This is a confused, ill-constructed, badly thought-out proposition of which the date is only one part. It would be desirable for us to look afresh at the date. My noble friend Lord Rooker wants to give electoral reform legitimacy. If we are going to give the result legitimacy, we should hold the referendum at a time when it is not tainted by or confused with any form of political activity.

A referendum is an awkward political weapon which has to be used carefully. Let us face it, over the years there have been referenda across Europe which have resulted in outcomes that none of us would have liked. I do not think this is the same, but it lends itself to confusion in ways that this country could well do without at this time. That is because there are forces at work that are anti-democratic and who wish to use every opportunity to denigrate the democratic system. Having a referendum on the day suggested, when elections are being held in other parts of the country, and in the format decided upon, is foolhardy. No one will be a winner and democracy will be the loser.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Foulkes. I agree with him on some things, but not on others. First, I agree with the points he and my noble friend Lord O’Neill have made about the practicalities of holding a referendum on the same day as other elections. Secondly, there is a real constitutional point made by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, which is that it is not a good idea to have lots of referenda. I do not agree with having lots of referenda. But if you are going to have them, it is a very bad idea to hold them on the same day as other elections. So if we are going to have a referendum—which, generally speaking, I am not in favour of—it should be held on another day away from the elections.

The third point I want to make is that I speak in favour of delay as a supporter of electoral reform and as a supporter of the alternative vote in a referendum. What we need to do is put party politics aside and have a big debate about the nature of our politics in this country. Whereas first past the post was a perfectly legitimate system in the 1950s when 95 per cent of the electorate voted for the two main parties, it is not a legitimate system when only 65 per cent voted for the two main parties, as was the case at the last general election. Surely that makes the case for at least thinking about change. But if we are to have that great debate, it has to be clear of party politics.

I know that on my own side there are many genuine supporters of reform who believe that the most important task next May will be to fight the coalition by getting the biggest vote for Labour rather than making a principled argument in favour of change. If, therefore, we are to bring about a more pluralist system and create a genuinely progressive alliance for change, we should definitely not hold the referendum on the May date.

Regional Development Agencies

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Liddle]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in light of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills’ comment that the handling of the proposed abolition of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) had been “a little Maoist and chaotic”, whether they will now withdraw their proposals to abolish the RDAs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)]

There are no plans to withdraw our proposals to abolish the RDAs. We fundamentally believe that it is the right thing to do to ensure growth and economic development that meets local needs.

[Lord Liddle]

I thank the noble Baroness for her clear Answer, but does she agree that the Government have got themselves into a bit of a pickle—maybe an Eric Pickles brand of pickle—on this issue? Will she clarify whether she agrees with the comments of her boss, the Secretary of State for Business, and if so why will she not withdraw the regional development agencies from Schedule 1 to the Public Bodies Bill and transfer them to another schedule where their great contribution to economic development might be properly considered and assessed?

[Baroness Wilcox]

We will not do that because we know that the system does not work. It has cost a load of money and has taken ages. It has not achieved what it wanted to achieve in the first place, which was to bring the north and the south together, so it is time for change. That is why I am standing on this side of the House and the noble Lord is on the other.

What did my honourable friend in another place mean? He meant that change is upsetting and can be chaotic. Let us face it: if any of us have moved house, we know exactly what that feels like. We have set an ambitious pace for reform and are trying to move at speed to reorganise completely the way in which economic development is targeted and supported locally, where it can really impact on people. In abolishing the nine autonomous organisations, we have set ourselves a challenging task to achieve that by March 2012. Change is upsetting and unpleasant and feels chaotic, but at the end of change we know that what we are doing is for the best.