Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I am absolutely clear that the Electoral Commission would be perfectly capable of setting out what it would regard as the criteria that had to be satisfied. If you impose a provision like this, I have no doubt—and I have experience of this having been the Minister involved in ensuring good electoral practice—that that would have the effect, as far as the local authorities are concerned—they are, in practice, responsible for registration—of lifting all the votes up. I cannot envisage a local authority that would want to be one of two or three in the country that were incapable of meeting the standard. I cannot envisage that anybody in this House does not want the standard that I have described to be met. If the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, thinks I am imposing too high a standard, I am sure that he wants some standard imposed, and I would welcome his contribution about the margin of error that he would regard as acceptable as far as the Electoral Commission is concerned. I have detected no one in this House who has not supported the proposition that we should try to do all that we can to get the 3.5 million people—a broadly accepted figure—who are not on the electoral register on to it. The effect of my amendment is not that everybody has to get on; it is that the local authorities have to make a reasonable effort to get them on. If they do, and if the Electoral Commission certifies that they have done all that they can, then, and only then, can this process start.

My noble friend Lord Lipsey, who I am delighted to see in his place, made a speech before dinner in which he made the point that if we proceed with this very significant change in relation to the drawing of the constituency boundaries on the basis of the December 2010 register, which is what the Government are proposing, we are going to build in the bias. Who is the bias against? It is against young people, those in private rented accommodation and members of the black and minority ethnic groups. It might be said that that group would tend to favour Labour or even the Liberal Democrats, but that is not the point. You do not want to start with a great section of our population—the young people—being disenfranchised because they do not want to vote.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The sentiments that the noble and learned Lord expresses are wholly admirable. One wants to get every single person on to the register, but as I apprehend it, the problem is not a technical one; it is that there is a mass of disaffected younger people in our country who simply cannot be bothered to vote. They are not galvanised to take part in the democratic process. How does he propose to overcome that?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I know from my experience as the Minister responsible that if, for example, you do door-to-door inquiries, check who lives there, hand over a form to get on to the register, rather than sticking it in an envelope, and then go back and pick it up, you dramatically increase the number registered. My noble friend Lord McAvoy referred to the effort by the city of Glasgow. In my speech, I referred to the way that Manchester and Birmingham have 95 per cent registration because they are making the effort whereas London and Nottingham have 91 per cent, which is much lower. Picking up the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, work has been done to identify the practical steps that can be taken. That is why I am submitting that it is not unreasonable and does not impose an unreasonable burden on local authorities for the Electoral Commission to say that it expects good practice from everybody. Our democracy is crucial to the well-being of our society and only when all the local authorities have got to that standard, measured not by an absolute number but by doing the right thing, do we then move on to this particular approach in relation to registration. We then avoid the bias against young people, particularly in the BME communities and in the private rented sector.

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[Lord Soley]

I am very encouraged by that. I have to say, though, that I would rather hear it from the Front Bench, because I am sure that this did not come round in the form of a letter or even an e-mail.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords—

[Lord Soley]

I will give way in a moment, if I can take one intervention at a time. I know, as does everyone who has dealt with party politics, that you advise your group not to do something in meetings and by word of mouth. That is how it happens.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The noble Lord threw down the gauntlet and someone has to pick it up. Exactly as my noble friend has just said, no one has said any such thing, and if they did—I must not use unparliamentary language—I would not be impressed.

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[Lord Soley]

With respect, I am sure that the noble and learned Lord is one of those Members to whom no one would say that—just as they also would not say it to me, actually. But I know the way in which it works in all political parties: when a Government are worried about time on a Bill, they try to get their Back-Benchers to stay quiet and then they accuse the other side of filibustering. That is what we had today; the evidence is before people. In that major constitutional debate, only one Member from the Liberal Democrats, who suddenly got very angry about one aspect, spoke. Not one other Member spoke on the issue.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I cannot resist it when he is casting these aspersions across the Chamber. Can he assure the House that he has not received any instructions to waffle on ad nauseam on this issue?

[Lord Soley]

I most certainly can. What is more, I can go a bit further. At our meetings to discuss how to handle the Bill, there was a clear view that we should not filibuster. I say that categorically and give my word of honour. There was not one occasion when anybody supported the idea of filibustering. What we have seen this afternoon, sadly, is the reverse of a filibuster. A government party—or two parties—refused to take part in a serious debate about the constitutional matter of a Government taking on themselves the power to change the size of Parliament. That is a major issue. I do not want to make it directly relevant to this debate, which is becoming slightly off-side. I will simply say—and I will leave it on this point—that in a situation where a Government are allowed to change the size of a Parliament, you cannot deny that it is a major constitutional issue. The voting system is not. The voting system and even registration are not major constitutional issues. They are very important but they are not constitutional issues in the sense that changing the size of Parliament is.

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[Lord Lipsey]

I am proposing to tackle it in the very same way as I hope he is proposing to tackle it—by voting yes to AV whenever we get round to the referendum, whether on 5 May or, as I hope, a later date.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I know that it is a shock to see somebody rise from this side but perhaps I, too, may make a speculative intervention following what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has said. I have not thought this through, but it seems to me that if it were possible to take the number of potential electors—let us call them that—as the governing yardstick for the size of constituencies, then Amendment 54A becomes unnecessary because one would then be in the position that all one needed to be satisfied about is that the local authorities had done their work properly in time for the election concerned. If, however, you take the system as it currently prevails, then the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is the way to go. But, as I say, it would take away one of the time constraints if one was to go down the Lipsey-Foulkes line, if I can call it that.

The other thing that is worth not forgetting—because a lot has been said about the difficulty, or more than difficulty, of having everything sorted out by 1 October 2013; a number of noble Lords opposite have made that point—is that paragraph 37 of the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution, to which a number of noble Lords have referred, states:

“The Boundary Commissions have confirmed that this timetable is achievable”.

That is to say, things will be sorted out by 1 October 2013. It, after all, should know what it is talking about. With that assurance, and with a new method of calculating the mean, it seems to me that Amendment 54A may not be necessary.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

First, I welcome greatly the fact that someone on the other side is actually participating properly in the debate—genuinely debating and listening to the debate. I can reassure him. Just in case the Government are preparing to say, “We cannot work out, or we do not know, what the notional figure, or the actual electorate, is”, how can they say that 91 per cent are registered here, or 85 per cent are registered there? There is no way of calculating the percentage unless they know the number of people eligible to vote.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, has just quoted from a Boundary Commission document, which states that this is achievable.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I hesitate to interrupt, but the quotation was from a report not of the Boundary Commission but of our own Select Committee on the Constitution, which is rather more important in this respect.