Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I had expected that some other Members might have spoken against clause stand part, which is why I was not immediately ready. On page 2, line 39, it is stated:

“The polls for the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary general election in 2011 are to be taken together”.

I am proposing that the subsection be deleted. I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that this is his solution, because we have just been discussing the confusion that will take place in a Scottish parliamentary election. I have spoken on this matter, but there are a number of areas of confusion; I will not go on at length about them, but will make a brief reprise of what I said previously. Two areas of confusion are likely to arise. The first is confusion in campaigning and the other, which relates to one of the solutions that I have just put forward—extending the franchise to European citizens—is confusion at polling.

On the confusion in campaigning, I do not think that the Liberal Democrat Members in particular understood the import of what was said in the previous debate. As to running a cross-party campaign, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and others, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, have been involved. He and I were hand in hand together on the campaign for Britain to remain a member of the European Union—he was in the Labour Party then. However, we worked together with Conservatives such as Malcolm Rifkind, members of the SNP, and other parties—particularly the Liberals. I remember campaigning for our membership on an all-party and cross-party basis. We were able to do that without any problems or difficulties, because there was no election taking place on the same day. We appeared on the same platform. John P Mackintosh was on the same platform as Malcolm Rifkind. That did not create any problems, because people understood that all that was being discussed was whether Britain should remain part of the European Union. They did not say, “It’s strange having a Tory and a Labour person on the same platform”, because they were not standing against each other in an election on the same day.

Imagine what will happen on 5 May next year if we have the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the referendum on the same day. As I have said on previous occasions, imagine campaigning with people of other parties. I chose the example of David McLetchie—a friend of mine who is a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament. Imagine if I said that I agreed with him that we should have first past the post and should not move to this awful system of alternative votes, but while we were going around Wester Hailes, in the Edinburgh Pentlands, people asked, “Are you supporting David McLetchie to be re-elected as the MSP?”. Of course the answer is, “No, I am campaigning for Ricky Henderson, the Labour candidate”. They would then say, “But why are you here with McLetchie?”. If I said, “Because we are campaigning in the referendum”, they would say, “But there is an election taking place”. That is how confusion arises.

As to expenditure, when you are campaigning, how can you easily differentiate between expenditure on the election and on the referendum? For example, I may use a loudspeaker system in campaigning for the Labour Party and then borrow it for a day to use in the no campaign for the referendum. How do you allocate the finances? In a later amendment there is a reference to party election broadcasts. At the moment it would be possible for the Liberal Democrats to have a party election broadcast not to say, “Vote Liberal Democrat in the election” but, “Vote yes in the referendum”. Unless we change it later, that is quite possible. Most Members here have taken part in an election of one kind or another, or one kind of cross-party referendum campaign or another, and know of the problems of having the two on the same day. So there will be confusion in campaigning.

I turn now to confusion within the polling booth. As I said, I tried to provide the noble Lord, Lord McNally, with a lifebelt to resolve this problem by bringing together the franchises and trying to introduce a single register, which would have made things easier. However, he chose not to take advantage of that lifebelt. Instead, he agreed with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who summed up the debate on European citizens voting. The noble and learned Lord said specifically in his reply that he disagreed with the solution in my amendment about allowing European citizens to vote and thought that there was an easier and better way of doing it—and that was not to have the referendum on the same day as the local elections.

That is now quite possible because of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which was passed by the House. It allows the Government to hold the referendum on any day between 5 May and 31 October and gives them the necessary flexibility. I shall not give away a confidence by saying who it was, but a Liberal Democrat Peer said to me, “George, I see the strength of your argument now as far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned”. In fact, he agreed that it would be better for the Liberal Democrats not to have the referendum on the same day as the elections because he believed that they would not get the same degree of support for AV. I could see his argument. When the elections in Scotland and Wales and the local government elections in England are taking place, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party will be pushing to get out their electorate to vote in the elections. They will turn out primarily for the elections and be predominantly in favour of first past the post. Therefore the AV support is likely to be at a minimum and the first past the post support at a maximum. However, if the referendum is held on a separate day it will be the real activists, the ones who want change, who will come out and vote for AV. The first past the post people will sit at home and think, “It will never change anyway” and wake up the next day to find that the activists in favour of AV have turned out. Without a threshold, there could be just a small 10 per cent turnout and the constitution would be changed.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

It rather sounds as if the noble Lord is making a speech of no confidence in his own party leader. Surely that will remove all problems of dubiety about who is for and who is against, because he will get lots of publicity. Mr Ed Miliband has made it clear that he supports AV, which will surely overcome quite a lot of the problems put forward by the noble Lord.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Of course, the support of Ed Miliband—and I have a great respect for him—will help the AV campaign. However, I do not think that it will help it as much as the wide range of support for the first-past-the-post campaign in the Labour Party, which has a whole galaxy of supporters. That still does not argue the case about the differential in the turnout. The Liberal Democrat that I mentioned was arguing from his point of view the fact that it would be for Liberal Democrats to have the referendum on its own so that they could concentrate on the change that was necessary and get the enthusiasts and activists to turn out.

I urge noble Lords to support the deletion of this clause. It is the first in a group of amendments that would have a similar effect in different areas and in different ways. The amendment would eliminate the probability, or certainty, of confusion of the electorate in the campaign and at the polling booths. If we do that, we will have produced a far better Bill than we received from the other place.

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[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, despite the lateness of the hour, I rise with some enthusiasm to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. I thought that he made a powerful case for why it is a mistake to have this referendum poll on the same date as the Scottish parliamentary elections. In doing so, he did not draw on nearly all the arguments that exist, as has been apparent from other contributions.

I am struck by the contribution of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours allied to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. From the different perspectives of reform, I thought that they made complementary cases on why the Government should be persuaded to take more time over this process and to get it right. If we are to get a decision about the way in which we elect the House of Commons for a generation or more—or, indeed, for ever—it does not seem unreasonable to ask for time to think about the full implications of the decision that we are making and to test that even by discussion among parties or, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, suggests, among those who broadly favour reform. Furthermore, I thought that the analysis of my noble friend Lord Lipsey of the effect of the coalition’s proposal was deadly accurate.

I have been listening to debates in Committee on this issue and have been struck by the number of contributions supporting contemporaneous polls from people who, I have the sense, have not done much campaigning to encourage activists and electors to engage in polling. They may well have organised campaigns from the centre, but not out there in the streets as I have done time and again. It is challenging to try to encourage activists to go out with you often in quite inclement weather in Scotland, even at that time of the year, to knock on hundreds of doors, to spend hours and hours on doorsteps engaging with people and persuading them that they should come out during a particular window of opportunity. To ask people to do that and, at the same time, to support a campaign that involves them working with those whom they are campaigning against will be almost impossible. I know from the activists whom I have tried to engage and have worked with successfully on numerous occasions that that is a difficult thing to do. This should not be complicated any more than it needs to be.

I have already contributed to this debate and I do not propose to rehearse all the arguments that I made when the Committee considered this issue before, but I must say today that I have been reassured that not only did we win that argument—although we were unable to persuade the coalition Government to accept the consequences—but it seems that, subconsciously, we have persuaded more members of the coalition than we thought. For example, I heard the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, adopt exactly the argument that he opposed days ago and earlier today in his opposition to 16 and 17 year-olds having the vote. If he is not consciously aware that he has absorbed the argument, subconsciously his political acumen is telling him that there is something in it, because he repeated the argument.

Earlier, I suggested to the Committee that one reason why we should not have the Scottish Parliament elections and the referendum on the same day is that the London-centric media will dominate the debate and drown out the voices of Scottish politicians as they try to persuade people to engage with the issues that are important to them concerning who forms the Scottish Government for the next four years. I remember that argument being pooh-poohed, but I heard it repeated back to me today by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, as a justification for why we can be sanguine about the effect that having these elections on the same day will have on the 15 or 20 per cent of the vote, concentrated in London, who will not be part of a contemporaneous process. We are told that the London-centric media will be strong enough to counteract the differential turnout. Because I have done it myself, I admire the ability to use an argument that one opposes in a different set of circumstances for a different purpose. I do not admire the ability to use an argument that one opposes on a different occasion in the same set of circumstances. We seem to be persuading people much more than we thought on these Benches, from the results that we are having with the coalition.

However, I want to major on another point, which concerns respect. Having the referendum poll on the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament shows a distinct lack of respect for the Scottish Parliament. The proposal has created in Scotland a unique coalition of opposition. That coalition of opposition was reflected in the views expressed and the vote cast in the Scottish Parliament itself. The Scottish Parliament, the electoral body that will have an election on the same day, has said to this Parliament, “Do not do this to us. Do not impose this dichotomy on our electorate on the same day and please do not do it against the background of the experience that we had in 2007, when a similar set of circumstances were created”.

I read that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Scotland Office dealt with this argument in the House of Commons by saying that he had no response to that debate or that decision because not one argument was rehearsed in the Scottish Parliament debate that had not been rehearsed in the other place or in this Parliament and that therefore he did not need to take cognisance of it. That is disrespectful in the extreme and we in this place should be above that sort of argument.

I believe that the coalition is required to give Scottish parliamentarians, who have expressed their view in that way, an explanation as to why they are not listening to them. They particularly require to do that because this same coalition Government have just published a Bill that accepts a recommendation of the Calman commission that will give that Parliament the responsibility for organising its elections once that Bill becomes an Act. The Government have said, “In principle, we accept the argument that the Scottish Parliament should be a sovereign body in relation to the conduct of its own elections”. That is now printed in a Bill that they hope to persuade this House and the other place to support. At the same time, they are saying, “We will ride roughshod over your recent exercise—potentially—of that right by imposing on you a coincidence of polls that you say you do not want”. What is the coalition Government’s position?

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I do not see any contradiction between giving the Scottish Parliament sovereignty over its own electoral matters and the right of this Parliament, which is sovereign over United Kingdom matters, to decide how referenda that apply throughout the United Kingdom should be decided. To abdicate that principle is not a matter of disrespect but a recognition of the principle of subsidiarity. That is deeply rooted in our constitutional understanding of devolution and membership of the European Union. We are entitled to take decisions in this Parliament that govern how this Parliament’s membership will be arrived at. We do not defer to Europe on that issue or to any regional or other body in this country on these matters.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention because he sets the context for the argument that I am making. I am not making a legalistic argument. As he knows, I am well versed in the legal relationship between the devolved Parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament and was close to the process that delivered that settlement for the people of Scotland. I agree entirely with him in a legalistic sense but, if I understand his argument, he is now saying from the Liberal Democrat Benches that the Liberal Democrats’ attitude, or at least his attitude, to the Scottish Parliament is: “We have known the date of your election for four years, but we want that date. You can move”. If the implication of the noble Lord’s argument is accepted, that will at a stroke in Scotland undermine the only reason that we have heard articulated in this Chamber for why the coalition Government want to have the referendum on the same day as the Scottish Parliament election.

If I understand the noble Lord, he is saying, “We want to do these two votes on the same day to maximise the turnout, but if you are right”—and we have to accept that they are closer to this than we are—“that this will do a disservice to your election, feel free to move your election. Of course, we have known about the date of that election for four years, but the lack of respect that we have for you is such that you can move over and we will take your date, even if we don’t get your turnout”. That is not the argument that this House, this Parliament or, indeed, the coalition Government should be putting before the people of Scotland. The people of Scotland have spoken through their Parliament and said, “Please do not do this to us. Our electoral system and Parliament are important to us. Do not do this to us”. It seems to me, for all the reasons that have been rehearsed, that they create an argument that is in favour of the objective that the noble Lord wants to achieve. It does not seem to be unreasonable to ask the coalition Government to accede to that request.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, is right and I refer him to the comparison between subsections (1) and (2), (3) and (4). However, I have made my point and I earnestly ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to consider taking the government amendment away and coming back with a measure on Report to achieve his aim, should Clause 4 still remain part of the Bill after the Committee stage.

I wish to address what the noble and learned Lord rightly describes as the political aspects of this. Clause 4 is included to allow for the combination of polls. It is intended to ensure that a variety of elections can take place together. As a matter of principle, we think that that is the wrong approach to that issue. There is no dispute in any part of the House regarding the importance of the referendum. I cannot recall a referendum over the past 150 years—it is more a case of reflecting on history than personal recollection—which concerned the voting system. I think most people in this House would agree that we should hold referenda only in relation to very important constitutional issues. The referenda held since the Second World War concerned: the partition of Ireland; staying in the European Union; the 1978 referendum on devolved Assemblies for Wales and Scotland; and the 1998 referendum on devolved Parliaments or Assemblies for Wales and Scotland—all very important issues. As far as I am aware, each of those referendums has taken place alone, without there being any other poll on the same day. That is a sensible course whereby this country’s approach to referenda is that you have them only when there is an important constitutional issue. We heard from my noble friend Lord Lipsey and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who both said how important the issue is.

We also have the report from your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution, which is a cross-party organisation that spoke unanimously on the issue. The committee cited evidence that the effect of having elections on the same day as a referendum is that the referendum debate gets swamped by the election of individual people. If you look at America, where frequently referenda take place on the same day as elections—such as those in November this year—you find that no one pays much attention to the referenda and everyone pays attention to the election of individual people. If the Select Committee of this House is right, you are in danger of the referendum question being swamped by the election of people in the three—or even four, if there is also a mayoral election—other elections going on at the same time.

Why is this being done if it is such an important issue? Everyone in this House wants the constitution properly to be given effect to. I do not want there to be a sense of illegitimacy about the result. Whatever view one takes about this referendum, one wants it to be decisive—decisively in favour of either first past the post or the alternative vote system. The result could be close, but you would want a good turnout and the sense that the question had properly been addressed.

This is the second national referendum in 120 years. It is the first one to affect our electoral system—the one that will make people have a view about whether they trust their electoral system. This Government, as I understand it, justify bringing the referendum together on the same day as the other elections when there is formidable evidence that it leads to the question being swamped. The Government justify that on the basis that it will save some money. Money is important, but it may be that the legitimacy of our constitution is more important.

This is a fundamental point of principle, and it is not too late for the Government to change their position. I should have thought that everyone on the government side, whether they are for or against a change in the electoral system, would want the result of the referendum to be something that the country has confidence in. What we are doing on this side is, in effect, reflecting the arguments of experts who say that having the referendum on the same day as other elections is not a good idea. It deprives the result of legitimacy.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. He gave an American example, because he could not refer to any British example or precedent. However, as recently as November, California—a state close to bankruptcy—decided in one day both to change the party in government there and have a conservative outcome in a referendum on gay marriage. I do not think that it is appropriate to draw any conclusions from the American example, except that people are intelligent enough to understand what they are doing—and they do it even when there appears to be some conflict between their decisions.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

The American experience, which is part of the evidence relied on in these debates, suggests that in the polls in November, either in mid-term or general election years, the tendency of the public is not to focus on the proposition but to focus primarily on the people they are electing. In the coverage in November I did not spot the result of the proposition in California; all I spotted, which is where all the coverage was in America, was who was going to win in California. So the American experience tends to confirm what the Select Committee said—that the referendum question gets swamped in the question, for example, of who you want to be your Government in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Why is it being done like this? Is it only to save money or are there other reasons? The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to which we have all agreed, has given the Government the opportunity to hold the referendum on a different day. In answer to my opposition to Clause 4 standing part, it is necessary for the Government to say why they think it is right that this critical question should be dealt with on a day when there are other polls; when it has never before been done in our history; when experience in other jurisdictions suggests that the referendum question gets swamped; when anyone who has any care for our constitution wants the result to be decisive. I do not want a situation where whichever Government are in power seek to change the electoral system; I want something that is settled as far as the people are concerned. That has always been the purpose of referenda in the past. Furthermore, quite separately from those points of principle, there is inevitably scope for confusion with so many elections going on with different electorates.

I shall listen very carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, justifying why an issue as important as this is being dealt with in a way which seems to make it harder to come to a legitimate result than easier.