Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Newton of Braintree Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

I am grateful for those points, too. On the latter point, these are not alternatives; they are designed to supplement each other, but a leaflet that can be studied at leisure and revisited has a different impact from that of a television programme, although I agree that they are complementary. As far as cost is concerned, we need to keep a sense of proportion. After all, every household gets a poll card. Nobody thinks, “Oh God, it is so expensive sending these poll cards. People don’t need them to vote. Elections are so unimportant that we could avoid the cost of a poll card in future”. Indeed, I believe that electoral law provides for the political parties to send one leaflet to every household in the country. The noble Lord, who knows much more about the House of Commons than I have ever known, will correct me if I am wrong but I believe that also takes place. We should not think that sending a leaflet to every household would mean great disproportionate expenditure. It is not a major logistical exercise of its kind and will not cause the budget deficit to soar where otherwise it would shrink.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, continuing my attempt to be reasonably even-handed in these debates, I have a variety of views.

On the previous exchange, which I had not expected, I am entirely on the side of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, because I am aware that there are endless examples of requirements or practices that ensure that information is delivered to all households in the country. I guess that the latest such example is the widespread circulation of leaflets on how to avoid flu during the winter, but there have certainly been electoral examples as well.

On the amendments, my feelings are mixed. I half sympathise with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker; I am worried about the first amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—for reasons that I will come back to—but I support his second amendment very strongly because, whatever materials are produced, it would be helpful if they were looked over by someone who writes the kind of English that everybody can understand. One of our latest arrivals, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, will recognise from our association some 30 years ago that I used to be driven to distraction by social security material being produced in a form that no normal person could understand. I seem to remember that we got the Plain English Campaign involved to try to help us improve things, and I think that they have improved. Some effort needs to be put into making sure that whatever goes out uses terms that can be understood.

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[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I am not saying that that would happen.

I think that we need to rely on the good faith of the Electoral Commission, which clearly seeks to do everything in an unbiased and impartial way, but making that a statutory requirement would raise a lot of questions that we might not want to answer.

[Lord Soley]

I have considerable agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on the very difficult issues raised by this profoundly important set of amendments. If my memory serves me correctly, the last time that I discussed the matter with the Electoral Commission, it was talking about preparing a leaflet or pamphlet on this very issue. I think that the same issue came up on Second Reading, too. The difficulty is ensuring that the leaflet is right and unbiased. I phoned the Electoral Commission this morning to find out the latest position and, perhaps slightly worryingly, both the numbers that I normally use and get through on without any trouble were unobtainable. I am sure that there is a very good explanation and that I will be able to get through soon, but that means that I cannot tell the House where the Electoral Commission is up to on this important issue.

The amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Rooker, spell out the right principle that we need material that says, in plain English, what an alternative voting slip will look like and so on. However, as soon as we get into explaining how the system works, we are in much more difficulty. It is very hard to write a leaflet on how a voting system works—particularly how it works in comparison to an existing system—without getting into a minefield of problems about possible outcomes or computations of the effect of one’s vote. There is a lot in Amendment 109A, in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, that if we are to go down this road, having the Speaker’s committee involved in the Electoral Commission would be a good idea to provide some political insight. Otherwise, I can envisage that the leaflet that might come out could produce literally thousands of phone calls from political parties and their agents up and down the land saying, “This is biased”. That is only a short step away from the courts. The same point might be made about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury—we would get into an absolute minefield.

I hope that the Government will give this serious thought. The Government may already have talked to the Electoral Commission—perhaps they had another phone number that worked this morning that I did not have. I know that the commission is exercised by the issue and is keen both to get the information out to the public about the importance of the referendum and to convey information to people about the different voting system. However, if we are to go down the road of requiring rather more detail on the effect, we have to look much more carefully at Amendment 109A in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, which would at least provide for some political control. Without that, the Electoral Commission will, frankly, be hung out to dry and probably crucified as well.

I hope that the Government will give this important issue careful thought, given that, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey said, we have done so little on this and the changes will all come very suddenly. We must make a major effort to convey to the public the importance of this vote. On that point, my noble friend Lord Lipsey is absolutely right. The problem is what should be put into or left out of the leaflet.

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[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I would happily support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which would leave out,

“may take whatever steps they think appropriate to”

and insert “must”, but I am worried about the preparation of the leaflets. As I mentioned in my previous intervention, Amendment 110ZZA would provide that,

“The leaflet shall be distributed, so far as is practicable, to all households in the United Kingdom”.

When I asked, no one had put a price on such a project, although it would be a very costly project indeed. Although I have always taken advice from the noble Lord, Lord Newton—in another place, he was Leader of the House, and a very good Leader at that—I must advise him that those health leaflets did not come through in Scotland, possibly because of the devolved arrangements. I do not know whether such leaflets would have gone out under the auspices of the local health board or of a government department, but I worry about legislating that a specific body—namely, the Electoral Commission—publish leaflets and distribute them to every household in the land. That is a tall order for the Electoral Commission. With great respect, some Members of this House do not know just how big or small the Electoral Commission is. There is a limit to its resources.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My recollection—I reflect a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—is that in the days now a bit far off when I was a Member of Parliament, there was a legal requirement on the Post Office to deliver an election leaflet to every household during a general election. We all had supporters who spent hours writing out these things and delivering them to the Post Office. Even now, the Post Office has a universal delivery obligation. All the Government have to do is pay for the production of enough leaflets, give them to the Post Office and say, “Get on with it”.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

Perhaps that is what should happen, but my point is that imposing a legislative responsibility on the Electoral Commission would put a burden on the Electoral Commission. That would be a tall order, although it would be a good contract in these days when there is competition. In the old days, a Member of Parliament got free postage from the Royal Mail. However, the Royal Mail now has competitors that will say, “No, we want to do that job”. Therefore, the Electoral Commission will have to ensure that it is even-handed.

My experience with the Electoral Commission was that, as Speaker, I had the duty of chairing the overseeing body known as the Speaker’s committee. One of our biggest worries—this is why I am concerned about bringing this into legislation—was that the commission wanted to bite off far more than it could chew. For example, although in the days that we have spent debating this Bill noble Lords have spoken with great passion about the fairness of the Boundary Commission’s appeals process, we previously had to stop Ministers handing over responsibility for the Boundary Commission to the Electoral Commission, as desired by its then chairman, Mr Younger. I had to say to Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Scotland, “Look, they cannot cope with that work”. The commission wanted to provide seminars to train electoral officers that would have involved using a training pack that was copyrighted by an outside organisation, so the cost to taxpayers would have been quite substantial. In other words, the Electoral Commission’s enthusiasm had to be curbed.