Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Rooker]

108: Schedule 1, page 20, line 1, leave out “may take whatever steps they think appropriate to” and insert “must”

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[Lord Rooker]

This is the first amendment I have moved on this Bill this year, for those who keep count of our proceedings. I kept clear of amendments relating to Part 2 of the Bill. I will not be long in speaking to this amendment. Neither the Electoral Commission nor anyone else, for that matter, has ever carried out an exercise across the United Kingdom to explain officially the mechanics of voting systems, whatever they may be. In this case, they are the alternative vote as proposed in the Bill and first past the post.

The Electoral Commission might decide to explain about the alternative vote and might need to indicate that there are at least three alternative vote systems, none of which is proportional. It might decide that it has to counteract the media referring to the alternative vote inaccurately—as, indeed, we in this House have agreed that the Deputy Prime Minister did when referring to it as a system guaranteeing that MPs would be elected by 50 per cent of the electorate, which of course is not what will happen under AV in the Bill. That simply cannot happen in every case.

It is true that I tabled this amendment a long time ago and that a lot of water has gone under the bridge. My noble friend Lord Lipsey has two amendments of substance in this group. My simple view is that it should not be left to the complete discretion of the Electoral Commission as to whether or what information it puts into the public domain. There should be some kind of constraint in the Bill, hence the modesty of my amendment and, indeed, the amendments of substance which my noble friend has tabled. He will go into those in much greater detail than I intend to do. I intend to be brief.

As I have said, I wanted to raise the issue about the discretion of the Electoral Commission over this enterprise which, I repeat, no official body has ever undertaken in the United Kingdom. It is fraught with some difficulty and, in some ways, excitement, as the project has never been undertaken. However, it is one where we in Parliament should say that the Bill should have a little more detail, rather than simply leaving it to whatever steps the commission might think are appropriate or inappropriate. I beg to move.

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)]

I have to inform the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 109 by reason of pre-emption.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am convinced that the broadcasters will see it as part of their remit to involve themselves in these debates. It is up to them to decide how they do so and is not at the direction of the Government, however desirable those of us in government might think that that would be.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I am surprised that the debate has lasted so long. On the other hand, it has been quite interesting. There has been talk of contentious items. The first thing that I contend is that the largest group in this House is the coalition, not the Opposition. We could have a debate about that: it is the kind of thing that we might put on the leaflets. As someone said, it is symptomatic and sad that the only debates on the Bill in which these issues have been raised have been in this unelected House of Lords. They were not debated in the other place and certainly will not be, so we need not apologise for debating them here.

There is another surprising thing in this debate. We have agreed to finish Committee stage tomorrow, and when there is such an arrangement, it is normal for those who have restrained themselves from participating in the debate to pile into the debate. That is what used to happen in the other place. However, we have had only one contribution from the Liberal Democrats. They know that they can speak on this without affecting the outcome simply because we are going to finish tomorrow anyway, yet they still refuse to join in the debate. However, that is their problem, not mine.

It has been an interesting debate, and I wish to raise a couple of further points. The legislation talks about information to “persons”, not households. As far as I know, there are 44 million electors in 27 million households. The legislation says “persons”. People are going to vote, not households. If we want to talk about the bias, it might be considered bias in the proposed leaflet—I have the draft in my hand—for the status quo to apply in terms of which system will be dealt with first. The issue will be: which system will be described first in the leaflet? There could be a question of bias. I have no view about which way round they should be, but if I was really fanatical, I could nit-pick and consult lawyers about which one is going to be described first—leaving aside the fact that there are four pages to one system and one page to the other, which is another issue.

Furthermore, no one has mentioned the costs involved. I saw press reports at the weekend of the yes campaign being backed by about £6 million and the no campaign somewhat under £1 million. Obviously there is money to be spent on this. It is not impossible to do this. I have so far refrained from mentioning, as I did before, the fact that in New Zealand there was never any complaint, to the best of my knowledge, about the literature put out by its Electoral Commission for its two referendums when they changed the voting system. So it is perfectly possible to explain.

I am pleased about something that is contained in the Electoral Commission draft, which I have only just seen. It will not wash in terms of explanation, but it will stop the Deputy Prime Minister telling fibs any more. The draft says:

“Because voters don’t have to rank all of the candidates, an election can be won under the ‘alternative vote’ system with less than half the total votes cast”.

Let us have an end to that. I know that the Leader said that; he is not going to point out the errors of the Deputy Prime Minister, who started peddling this view. I could peddle the issue about how it ends tactical voting. It does not—it moves tactical voting to the second vote.

We have had an interesting debate. My noble friend talked about leaflets. It will be booklets, not leaflets. I do not see why the Royal Mail cannot do it. It can deliver to every household quite quickly. The difficulty is in the timing. Nothing can be printed until after Royal Assent. One assumes that something will be ready to go, if the Plain English Campaign has looked at it. However, it is going to go through letter boxes in the UK at exactly the same time as other election literature. Will it get the justice that it deserves? Clearly, we are embarking on a big project. As I have said, I have no view about the referendum on 5 May. I only offered a lifeboat if a lifeboat was needed. I do not campaign one way or the other. I simply think that, as I said last night, time is running short to get the message across in a way that will result in a meaningful vote.

Some practical problems may come up in terms of the mechanism that will be involved. One assumes that contracts have been looked at. You cannot just go to Royal Mail and say, “By the way, you know there are local elections in which there is no free post, but there are poll cards; and, by the way, we are having a referendum. Can you knock an extra one out for every household in the country?” Royal Mail will say, “No one has asked us about that. We have not got the capacity for that. We need more warning”. Has anybody done that? I presume we can ask that when we debate further amendments. However, in view of the need to make progress, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 108 withdrawn.