European Parliamentary Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2013

Lord McAvoy Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the Minister has little choice but to bring these regulations before us, but I have to say that the whole process is a dog’s dinner. Noble Lords will have detected that in the regulations we are now creating three different classes of councillor. One class consists of councillors in the existing local authorities, which will run until 2015; another class consists of councillors who will be elected in 2014 and who will run in parallel with the existing ones until 2015; and a third class consists of members of both the old and the new. On top of that, we have a statutory transition committee, doing bits and pieces of work, which will also be populated by councillors from the old regime. You could not make this up.

This process has taken 14 years, and we are transferring only one meaningful power to local authorities in addition to the relatively small powers that they have at present—which is in planning—and they will have only part of the power at that. Pretty well everything else has been held back by the government departments that have ground away for the past 14 years and succeeded in ensuring that the local councils that will be elected are not much more powerful than the existing ones.

I will put to the Minister just one point about people queuing outside polling stations and their votes being counted. In the past, there have been cases where polling stations have been kept open and votes taken after the deadline had passed; I am sure that the Minister is familiar with that situation. I just wonder how it is to be policed. At what point is a line drawn between when people can queue up and when they cannot? Who will go outside and actually police this? Indeed, will it be the police? Will it be staff under the control of the chief electoral officer? Who will do this? I believe that there is potential, particularly on dark nights, for confusion. Who will decide where the line is drawn? A queue is outside, staff are inside, and more people come along to queue. How is that going to be handled? When does that process actually end?

When this process began in 2001, one of the watchwords was coterminosity, which meant trying to ensure that Westminster, the Assembly and local councils were as compatible as possible in a boundary sense. Now we have a system where they are utterly and completely incompatible, which is another startling outcome of this process. Therefore, not only are things more chopped up and divided than ever between different parliamentary Assembly constituencies and local authorities but the whole context of having local identity taken into account during the local government reform process was excluded from the Bill. In fact, the Boundary Commissioner was excluded from taking local identity into account. Considering that it was local government reform, I just leave with the Committee the thought that it seems the most bizarre process to have entered into. There was the most flagrant political gerrymander of the city of Belfast—but there will be more of that later in another context.

The scheme that the Minister has proposed is required, given that we have two elections on the same day which involve consequential changes. I notice it is proposed that the ballot boxes for both elections will be opened at an early stage when the verification is being undertaken. I assume that there are past examples of different ballot boxes being in the polling stations, with some votes being placed in the wrong ballot box, either accidentally or deliberately. However, does that mean that there will be a joint verification process on the same day or that the ballot boxes will simply have the wrong ballots taken out of them and the other ballots will not be processed, doing one verification at a time?

The first election votes to be counted will relate to local government. Although the European elections take place on the same day, as most voting in Europe takes place on a Sunday, those votes will not be counted until the following Monday. Therefore, when those boxes are opened, will be they verified at that stage or will there be a separation of ballots so that the votes end up in the correct boxes?

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for a very clear and full exposition of these necessary changes. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is a complete realist and knows that those changes must go ahead to fit in with the various consequential amendments that are required.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I noticed that there will be two ballot boxes, and I am aware of what happens in those circumstances and so on. Being an experienced politician, I can see the capacity for confusion and mistakes. Therefore, will special emphasis be placed on the counting officer being required to make sure that all the political election agents concerned have a right and a duty to supervise that procedure so that there will not be instances of it going ahead in the absence of one or more political agents?

I also noted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, concerning coterminosity. I understand his point of view, because in Scotland we also hoped that we would have coterminosity in terms of organisation after the founding of the Scottish Parliament. However, we do not have the coterminosity that many of us would like to have seen, and I understand his point of view. It is a cliché, but we are where we are. We need these SIs to go ahead. I believe that there were commitments to coterminosity at the time. I remember that quite clearly because local boundaries in Northern Ireland, as everywhere else in the United Kingdom, are quite important. Nevertheless, the Opposition views these SIs as necessary. We are grateful for the clear exposition. If the Minister could comment on the two ballot box situation, I would be very grateful.

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I welcome these SIs, which are designed to help the elections proceed smoothly. With regard to the Local Elections (Northern Ireland) Order, which replaces the existing 26 councils with 11 larger local council areas, the elections are to be held on 26 May 2014. I welcome that. It is important that local elections go ahead as, to date, there have been many co-options on to local councils in order to address the so-called problem with double-jobbing. Many councils have a high proportion of councillors who have never received a mandate from the electorate. From 2015, when I understand co-option will stop, councils will be truly democratic.

In order for political parties to have sufficient time to prepare for these elections, it is vital that they know in good time what wards are grouped into which electoral areas. Will the Minister indicate how soon an order will be laid before Parliament so that the chief electoral officer will be able to draw up plans for locating polling stations? I regret that the normal 12-week consultation period in the draft scheme has been withdrawn, but I trust that that will not lead to problems with the siting of polling stations.

I am pleased to hear that the papers for the local election and the European election will be of different colours. That is what happened last time when we had the Assembly elections and the local council elections, but there was considerable confusion because even though the papers were colour-coded, the colours were insipid, which led to problems. This time, with the papers having a title showing which election they are for, that problem will be solved.

There is a continuing decline in turnout at elections in Northern Ireland. I think that only 55% of the electorate took part in the previous election—down from 62.9%—but I trust that these regulations will encourage voters to turn out.