Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Martin of Springburn Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, say that he did not kowtow to the press. He agreed to sponsor me in this House. We had a discussion a fortnight beforehand and I said: “George, try to keep your name out of the newspapers”. He did, but hard as he tried, he could not keep his name out of the papers. He certainly does not kowtow to them, but he does make sure that he is in them.

There is an important principle here about the count taking place in a few hours after the close of the poll. Every political party represented in this House and in the other place depends largely on volunteers giving up their time to help in the political process. Without them, we would not have the political parties or the democratic process that we have. These men and women work months in advance—they are working now—to try to win their party a seat in their constituency or, in Scotland, on the list. They give of their time and sometimes they take holidays in order to do so. They negotiate with their employers to take a holiday that they are due and, when election day arrives, they take the day off. For manual workers and blue collar workers, that means giving up a shift, and they can well manage to stay on till the small hours of the morning and hear the result for which they have worked so hard. Sometimes they are disappointed; on other occasions, they are over the moon. However, it would be different if the count were left until later. It would not be practical for people who are paid an hourly wage to stay on and lose another day’s income. For that reason, it is important that we keep the tradition.

There is also the comradeship that one finds at the count. It is a great gathering place. Perhaps you will not have seen party workers with whom you are friendly other than at a conference and you ask how things are going in their constituency. There is banter and even friendly rivalry between the parties. It is a good time for political people to all be under one roof, and I think it is a tradition that we should keep. For young people, it is a way of learning about the political process—how to take guidance from the agent or how to be a count agent—and to see the process in action.

I do not think it will have been forgotten that the last count at the Scottish elections was an absolute shambles. Electronic equipment had been brought in to do the counting, although everyone was used to manual counting. The machines did not work and, as a result, at certain constituencies the counters and returning officers had to seal the boxes and even the whole building, allowing the workers to go home to rest and come back the following day. I ask the Minister to ensure that that shambles does not happen again.

During the debates on this Bill, I have mentioned the Electoral Commission. I have no reason to pick on the commission but it will have to learn from its mistakes. It had some input into the decision to use electronic equipment at those Scottish elections and, because of that, it was not possible for independent adjudicators to find out what went wrong—in other words, they could not carry out an investigation. The taxpayer had to pay for a gentleman called—if my memory serves me right—Mr Gould to come from Canada to do the investigation, and the cost involved was substantial. That would not have happened had the Electoral Commission had some foresight. My criticism is that it tends to jump in without thinking through the consequences. Therefore, I hope that the counts that take place during the night and the wee hours of the morning continue and that we will learn from the mistakes of four years ago.

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, earlier I raised the concerns that exist in Northern Ireland. I can understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, regarding how the count will proceed in Scotland, where two elections are held on the same day. The position in Northern Ireland is more confusing because we have three elections on the same day. I warned that this could cause confusion and over the past few days I have certainly experienced increasing unease in Northern Ireland about the count following these three elections. Two will be based on STV—one to the Northern Ireland Assembly and one to the district councils—and the third one on AV.

When I raised this matter with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, he said that when he came to respond to this amendment we would get an answer on what priority would be given to the counts for the three elections in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I should like to know in which order the counts for the three elections in Northern Ireland will take place, and whether we will have to wait for the result on AV to come through in Northern Ireland or whether it will come out at the same time as in England, Scotland and Wales.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have received the Minister’s response with mixed feelings. He prays in aid of Lord Gould—it was the noble Lord, Lord Martin, who mentioned Lord Gould—and I remind him that, although the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was shaking his head, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was right to say that Lord Gould recommended that the polls should be separate.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The person I referred to was not the noble Lord, Lord Gould; he was a Canadian gentleman. He certainly was not a Lord.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have a noble friend Lord Gould, whom I absolve of any responsibility for this.

Mr Gould, the Canadian, suggested that the elections should be separated. In fact, the Scottish Parliament took a decision to delay the local government elections for a whole year as a result of that and suddenly it finds the referendum spatchcocked in to create extra problems for it. Although extra problems will be created, they are not in any way as bad as the problems described by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, where the electronic counting came on top of the voting on two ballot papers, one of which was the most confusing I have ever seen in my lifetime—and I have seen ballot papers in the Soviet Union, the United States of America and elsewhere. It was a crazy ballot paper. I hope and expect that these ballot papers will be simpler and that the count can take place.

I am disappointed that the Minister still presses that the count should not be held overnight. I am worried that the chief counting officer will have responsibility for this. As I understand it, the chief counting officer is the chair of the Electoral Commission. What the noble Lord, Lord Martin, said about the Electoral Commission will be echoed by a number of Members in this Chamber. However, it has improved with the recent addition of political members and, I hope, will now be more sensitive.

Notwithstanding what the Minister has said, I hope that the chief counting officer and the chair of the Electoral Commission will have heard this debate loudly and clearly and will recognise the pressure to have the count overnight, not only from this House but also from all political parties in Scotland. Although I accept that, as the Minister said, it may not be best to have that written into the Bill, I hope that it will be taken into account—otherwise the chief counting officer will be even more unpopular in Scotland than Mr Alex Salmond. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.