Electoral Conduct

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Alderdice—who, as he said, was a member of the all-party inquiry into electoral misconduct—for bringing these issues to the attention of the House as we approach the next general election, as well as local elections in much of England next May. This is therefore a very timely debate.

I was pleased to be able to provide evidence informally to the inquiry, based on my experience of involvement in election campaigns over more than 40 years, since I first became an active member of the Liberal Party as a teenager in the 1970s. I believe that the inquiry raised important issues for debate and action. I also thank John Mann and his assistant Danny Stone, who I met, for their work in initiating this, and also for the earlier report by a cross-party group of MPs concerning anti-Semitism.

The inquiry chaired by Natascha Engel helped to illuminate continuing problems with prejudicial behaviour, such as discriminatory language, in the conduct of our elections. I believe that the most blatant use of discriminatory language by candidates from the major and most established parties in this country is fortunately now very rare. However, all the major parties had severe embarrassment in the past. I remember being personally very deeply unhappy and distressed about the use of the phrase “secure family background” in the Liberal Party leaflet for the Brecon and Radnor by-election of 1985, in which neither of the other two major candidates were married. My late noble friend Richard Livsey had to apologise immediately for a leaflet that he had had no involvement whatever in producing.

When I took overall responsibility for parliamentary by-elections for the Liberal Democrats a few years after this incident, I helped to ensure that we took great care in those campaigns to avoid even the kind of unconscious discriminatory language that could otherwise have slipped through. However, it is not possible for a national party to monitor every leaflet produced at local level. In 1993, I was enraged when some of the literature that my party produced for a council by-election in Tower Hamlets was clearly pandering to racism. It was also clear in that campaign that Labour literature had had the effect of boosting the BNP vote, enabling a BNP councillor to be elected. This controversy led Paddy Ashdown, who was then the leader of my party, to ask my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill to conduct an investigation and to produce a report. I believe that what he said in his report, Political Speech and Race Relations in a Liberal Democracy, was very pertinent to this inquiry. He wrote:

“The right to free and unfettered political speech and debate is fundamental to democracy”.

However, he added the important rider:

“Whilst essential to political speech and public debate, free speech is not an absolute right without limits. Other fundamental values must be of equal value, including the unequivocal commitment to the principles of religious and racial acceptance and cultural diversity in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect”.

This inquiry sought to address the problem of how to deal with people when they go beyond the tolerant norms of society and, often, beyond the scope of what the law can allow in a civilised society, because to do so unfairly demeans others and may incite hatred, or even violence.

One of the most shocking cases of such behaviour that I have come across in recent years was during a council by-election in the London borough of Waltham Forest. One of the sitting Liberal Democrat councillors was in an openly gay relationship, but the Labour candidate in that campaign put around false rumours that he was a paedophile. There were no leaflets, but the rumours were effectively spread by word of mouth. As a result the councillor was harassed, his property was attacked and he lost the election to the candidate who spread the vile rumours.

After the election, some of the truth came out when local residents who were aware of the real facts revealed what they had been told and identified the source of it. The new Labour councillor was prosecuted, convicted and forced to stand down. The Liberal Democrats won the by-election that followed, but by then our shattered ex-councillor had been forced to leave the area. Such legal action will always be rare, and it could not provide proper redress in this case.

I have described this particularly unpleasant incident in order to highlight my belief that the greatest responsibility must be on all the political parties to take sufficient care in their approval of candidates, so that none of them could behave as this particular Labour candidate did. All parties must make it plain to all concerned that such behaviour is not remotely acceptable, that candidates and those working for them should be governed by proper codes of conduct, and that they may also be subject to prosecution.

The point was well made in the inquiry that, while the major parties may have greatly improved their assessment, approval and training of parliamentary candidates, generally they lack the resources to do this sufficiently well at local level. The task of vetting local council candidates is generally done by volunteers. The inquiry report calls for funding from the Equality and Human Rights Commission to provide support, training and guidance to the parties about non-discriminatory campaigning. I believe that it could again undertake some of the useful work that was done by the Commission for Racial Equality, with which I have worked previously.

However, a significant problem is one of resources for the parties themselves. If we are to improve the quality and diversity of candidates standing for public office at all levels, and to ensure that they behave as they should, there is also a case for public funding to assist parties with the tasks of identifying, approving and training candidates at different levels to prevent such problems occurring.

When problems do occur, legal remedies may apply in the most serious cases. Candidates always have the protection of the law in relation to defamation, but legal routes are neither quick nor affordable for most people. Candidates and agents should in future be rather wary after the case brought by my friend Elwyn Watkins against Phil Woolas at the last general election. The election court that met in the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency after the 2010 general election agreed that false statements had been made by Mr Woolas, who was thereby disqualified from Parliament and a parliamentary by-election took place. The court case revealed that the intention of the then Labour agent—now, I am told, a member of UKIP—had been to,

“make the white folk angry”.

The court was able to obtain and to see the chain of e-mails within the Labour campaign that revealed a blatant attempt to appeal to racism. As a result, an MP was disqualified from public office and the costs to him and the Labour Party may well have been in excess of £1 million.

Serious malpractice therefore still exists, but my own conclusion is that the major responsibility for dealing with it must lie with the political parties. They must make sure that their agents and organisers are fully aware of their responsibilities, both legally and according to appropriate codes of conduct, and that they are subject to party discipline.

As Natascha Engel concluded in the debate on the report in the other place:

“I hope we can foster an atmosphere of fairness so that we fight elections on policy, not on personality or people’s sexual orientation or religious or ethnic background”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 102WH.]

The political parties have a responsibility to promote these values. I hope that government and all appropriate independent bodies will work with all the parties and help them to do just that.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, on putting down this Question for debate and thank those Members of the House who have taken part in the inquiry and have spoken today.

As we have all agreed, the report that they have produced is an excellent document, and its recommendations give all political parties and the Government issues to reflect on. The need to address the recommendations and conclusions of the inquiry is as urgent as other noble Lords have said, as we are coming up to the general election. As my honourable friend Sharon Hodgson said in the debate in May in the Commons, we support the report’s recommendations.

As noble Lords have said, the inquiry was chaired by my honourable friend Natascha Engel. In addition to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, it also included my noble friend Lord Beecham among its members. I was very struck, as were other noble Lords, by some of the things that are in the report. Natascha Engel said in that debate:

“Our inquiry found that people in some areas were not putting their names forward as candidates out of fear for their lives, which happened across the board. Whether the tensions were religious, ethnic or based on their sexuality or gender, we found that people who would have been good candidates for elected office at any level were not putting their names forward”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 97WH.]

I think that we would agree that this is unacceptable in a modern UK and a modern, mature democracy.

We can all cite, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—although I notice that he cited only Labour cases—examples of malpractice.

[Lord Rennard]

I referred also to the Liberal campaigns in the Brecon and Radnor by-election and in Tower Hamlets. I was not being one-sided. I cited examples of bad practice by both my party and the noble Baroness’s.

[Baroness Thornton]

I accept that rebuke, although I have to say that the noble Lord went into some detail.

I remember being Harriet Harman’s “minder”—as they are called these days—during a by-election in 1982. She was pregnant with her first child, and the Liberal candidate, who is now a Member of your Lordships’ House, used the fact that she was pregnant all the way through the campaign as an argument for her not being fit to be an MP. As we all know, Simon Hughes has apologised for the campaign that was mounted against Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, during the by-election in Bermondsey. We all have issues that need to be addressed. Even today, none of us can cease to be vigilant as party politicians to ensure that every single word that we utter and every single word that is printed in our name is appropriate.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that, as far as I can tell—and it was certainly what I was taught as a Labour activist and someone who has run lots of elections—that you have the responsibility to make sure that every single word that is published and every single leaflet that is put out in the name of your party is proper and correct, and does not contravene any rules. That is difficult, and people will make mistakes, but there is no doubt where the responsibility for those things lies. It is true that we have a proud history in the UK of fair and free elections with proportionate regulation, and broad agreement that discrimination and racism have no place in society in general, and certainly not in our democratic processes. However, as we all have agreed, we know that racist, homophobic and other discrimination takes place during election campaigns.

The committee produced a series of recommendations and we give our full support to those, tackling, as they do, discrimination as it affects our democratic process. Like other noble Lords, I am puzzled as to why the Equality and Human Rights Commission has to be urged in the way it is being in this report—and by noble Lords—to produce a plan for engaging with electoral conduct, which is clearly an excellent idea. It would pick up on the work carried out by the former CRE. This should be done as a matter of course. It makes sense that the EHRC, the Electoral Commission and the police should work together to make sure that the guidance produced for our elections and election procedures is clear; makes it easy for people who are running elections, particularly in local elections where it is being done by volunteers; makes it clear what our responsibilities are; but also tells everyone how to deal with issues of redress.

Since the political parties’ annual briefing from ACPO and the Electoral Commission focusing on voter fraud takes place, the report is right in asking: why not expand that sort of event to include discrimination? I think the Electoral Commission trialling an online briefing for candidates seems an excellent idea and, where possible, should be integrated into the work political parties are undertaking with their candidates. However, as the report rightly points out, it is new parties, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned, and independent candidates, who are the ones who may not know their responsibilities and what they should or should not say. Of course, parties from a racist background are the ones we need to be particularly wary of and which need to be watched most carefully.

All police forces appoint a single point of contact for matters concerning electoral fraud. This has proved invaluable. Expanding that role and appointing a second officer may be one way to deal with these issues. One of the other issues not referred to in quite the same way in the debate is the code for parties to work within concerning non-broadcast media. While it is the case that generally parties and candidates have behaved responsibly, surely there will be those who have pushed the boundaries. What does the Minister think should happen in those cases?

I turn to new media. We face an election where social media and online campaigning will be present in a way that it never previously has been in our general elections. I remember a few years ago being targeted by the online discussion in our local newspaper in Bradford—I think it was by UKIP, to be honest—in a vile and horrible way. The problem was that the newspaper was not mediating the online discussion properly. When eventually it was pointed out to the editor that they had a responsibility not to allow people to be vilified in this fashion on the website of their newspaper, they took action. Multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of other incidents and I think all noble Lords would agree that we potentially have some very serious problems.

It will take concentrated and co-ordinated action to deal with such issues. I believe the Government have a responsibility to make sure that those things are pulled together. Every single political party has a responsibility, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, for the behaviour of its own candidates. Certainly in the Labour Party we take this extremely seriously: we have no hesitation in referring people to our disciplinary committee. We carry out the appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the party, and occasionally involve the police. We have no doubt that those are our responsibilities as a political party, but also that we all need to work together to ensure that our free and fair elections continue to be so.