Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My noble friend brings back even more painful memories, because also taking part in that election broadcast was Mr Jim Sillars. In fact the late Professor John P Mackintosh, who by coincidence had been my professor at university, actually committed the Labour Party to full tax-raising powers for a Scottish Parliament as well and it took some years to finesse the policy afterwards.

While people probably go and switch on the kettle whenever there is an opportunity to watch a party-political broadcast, I urge your Lordships to take this matter particularly seriously. Seeking and opposing an interim interdict is an extensive and diversionary activity and I urge the coalition to take my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton’s amendment very seriously.

[Lord Soley]

I think that my noble friend should arrange a special showing of that election broadcast in the House; I would like to see what I missed. On a more serious note, I support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. He has hit on an important point. It is worth remembering that there are different electoral systems within the UK for different elections, so it needs to be made clear that we are separating out the referendum from the party-political agenda. The second amendment is particularly important in this respect. I would have thought that there was a strong case for the Government simply to accept that amendment, although they may want to reword it. I hope that in due course they will say that the principle that my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench is putting forward is right and ought to be protected.

[Lord Lipsey]

I support my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s amendment. The need for it reflects in part the baleful effects of the Government’s plan to have the referendum on the same day as other elections, because inevitably there will be a cluster of party-political broadcasts as part of the campaigns. That means that a ban of this kind is all the more essential because there will be a temptation at times for various parties to include the referendum in those broadcasts. Of course, it is possible that the referendum will not take place on 5 May—we shall see—but the circumstances in which it took place later could mean that the ability to use a party-political broadcast to campaign for or against AV could considerably prejudice the result of that referendum.

Let us take a case whereby the referendum is held at a time when the coalition has broken up, which seems a more likely prospect today than it would have done about a fortnight ago. In that circumstance, the Conservatives would no longer have any inhibition about campaigning flat out for what they believe in, which is that AV is a bad thing, and they could well wish to devote a party-political broadcast—or party-political broadcasts, come to that—to smashing into AV, if only in the hope of defeating their erstwhile friends in the Liberal Democrats on something that they greatly want.

The idea of party-political broadcasts, although they are propagandist things, is that they are balanced; everyone gets a go at one, so they cancel each other out. Within a referendum campaign, however, to allow for party-political broadcasts arguing one side of the case where it is a matter of chance whether or not there is a party-political broadcast arguing the other seems to be an extremely unfair way to conduct the campaign. I therefore support my noble and learned friend’s amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I detect some inconsistency in the Minister. He is using this legislation to introduce new rules concerning loans but he has spent a considerable amount of time this afternoon telling the House that it is not appropriate to use this legislation to change rules in respect of other matters that may arise in the conduct of referenda—for example, expenditure on publicity or the rules governing the donations that authorised individuals may give. Why is it okay for the Government to change the rules here where it happens to suit them and not in those other respects?

[Lord Soley]

May I ask for clarity? I found the Minister’s comments confusing. He seemed to be saying that, because the rules were not ready, we could not change this, but he was setting aside time or something—I did not understand that bit—so that we could change it at a later date. I think that he needs to explain that a bit better.

[Lord McNally]

These rules will come into force once the Bill becomes an Act. This amendment merely brings the legislation into line with the new civil sanctions that the Electoral Commission is bringing in for political party operations—civil sanctions that I greatly welcome, because they give the Electoral Commission a degree of flexibility in getting discipline into elections rather than the constant threat of criminal sanctions.

[Lord Soley]

I understood the Minister to say—maybe I got this wrong—that the civil sanctions were not ready because they had not gone through the other House in time. Is that what he is saying?

[Lord McNally]

The civil sanctions in relation to the referendum will not apply until this Act is passed. The civil sanctions that are being brought in apply to elections and the conduct of parties in elections. The amendment merely brings the Bill into line with what was done on 1 December, but the civil sanctions in relation to the referendum will not be in force until this Act is on the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

I declare an interest as one of the parliamentarians who offer advice to the Electoral Commission when it asks for it. It recognises the problems involved in making a bald statement. It seems to me that it faces the alternative of making a very bald statement that the alternative vote is this and the first past the post system is the other, so that both sides are covered in a very limited way, or of getting into descriptions. That is where you hit the rocks, because as soon as you start describing systems you inevitably talk about advantages and disadvantages, even if it is by implication.

There is a real problem both for the Electoral Commission and ultimately for this House. How far does the commission offer advice on what should be done by a Government or by this House as opposed to simply stating what the current position is or what it would be if a certain amendment or change was made? There is a case for saying either that Parliament rather than the Electoral Commission should decide all the details or that the leaflet must be agreed by the various parties in advance. It is quite a minefield. There are other people in this Chamber who have been at meetings with the Electoral Commission. I do not doubt that it is trying to do its best, but there is a genuine difficulty as to what powers it leaves to Parliament to define and describe and how much authority it takes in trying to describe without falling into the trap of being biased, however unintentionally.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I support what the noble Lord has said. A leaflet describing the pros and cons of different electoral systems cannot be factual, as there are values and opinions. The assertion that one voting system means that people will have more than 50 per cent of the electorate’s support is open to argument. Of course you can go into a certain amount of detail about whether a fourth preference is as valuable as a first preference, but the argument is even more complicated than that. Surely the Government ought to consider the possibility that there should be no leaflet of any kind from the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission has chosen two designated organisations, both of which will receive public funds. Why not leave it at that? Why do you have to have somebody listing the pros and cons in a way that will inevitably be attacked from both sides?

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I am tempted to ask, as the Irishman did, “Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?”. I cannot at the moment see where Schedule 19C to the 2000 Act, on civil sanctions, gets anywhere near the issue of the leaflet. If we can all discuss anything anywhere in the Bill, I have several suggestions about what we might discuss. We can come back to this later. I think that it is an important issue but it is not covered by this group of amendments. Please can we have some time later to discuss the issue? I sympathise with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is making, but it ain’t here.

[Lord Soley]

I agree with that, too. The problem is that the Minister raised it.

[Lord McNally]

I did not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

If it was not the Minister, it was someone else and he responded to it. It was the Minister who started talking about the leaflet.

[Lord McNally]

We can discuss this under Schedule 1 to the Bill.

[Lord Soley]

I would be happy with that. Let me be clear. I was responding to the exchange that took place in which the Minister talked about a leaflet.

[Lord McNally]

As we drift down this stream, we do, I confess, go into inlets and rivulets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

I shall not comment one way or the other on extraneous interventions like that, for goodness’ sake.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, gave me a slap about getting irritated, but the point is that these election rules and regulations—most of the schedules to the Bill—are straight lifts from existing legislation put in place by the last Labour Government, so it comes as a surprise that people who were Ministers in that Government suddenly find all kinds of loopholes and dangers in that legislation. We have transposed into the schedules existing legislation, bringing it as up to date as we can with this amendment and this clause.

I am not a lawyer but, as far as I understand it, the civil sanctions have been brought in because, as I said earlier—and this is not in my brief but from my understanding of it, so perhaps if I am wrong one of the experts behind me can correct me—the criminal sanctions in the existing legislation were felt to be far too heavy-handed, particularly as they applied to volunteer officers in political parties. A range of civil sanctions were brought in that allowed the Electoral Commission a degree of flexibility, from giving a little advice to an errant officer to applying heavy sanctions. That flexibility was intended in bringing in civil sanctions. The decision on how to apply them is one for the Electoral Commission.

As noble Lords know from briefings sent to them, the Electoral Commission is following very closely these deliberations and listening very closely to the points made by noble Lords on all sides. I have every confidence that, if a point is made that the Electoral Commission thinks is of substance and needs to be dealt with, it will not hesitate to bring this to the attention of Ministers and Members of the Opposition, just as it has done in the past. The clause is a fairly narrow one to make provisions regarding the regulation of loans and bring the regulations under the referendum up to date with the legislation already introduced on 1 December.

[Lord Soley]

I do not want to continue the discussions that we have had other than to close them down. This is all the fault of my old and noble friend Lord Gilbert, with whom I had the great pleasure to be an international observer at the first free elections in Mongolia, which was quite an experience for both of us—and an even bigger experience for the Mongolians. I should say, in case I misled the House or the Minister, that I did not intend to imply—and I do not think that I implied—that the Electoral Commission was passive, which was the word that he used. I simply tried to describe the dilemma facing organisations such as the Electoral Commission as to whether Parliament should make more detailed rules, or whether they should make them and keep things on a very simple basis. That is a very important debate, but it is one that we get to under Clause 9.

[Lord Lipsey]

In the same spirit, I think that I misrepresented Schedule 1, and therefore the Minister, because there is a proposal in there on which it would be possible to hang a discussion about a possible leaflet—namely, the public information measures. I apologise for that and ask the Minister to confirm that it would be fully in order for the House to have a proper debate about the very important issues raised about the leaflet when we get to Schedule 1.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey]

Perhaps I might make a helpful suggestion to the Minister to move things on, because we are getting into other waters. He said something incredibly helpful just now: that this is intended to give part of the powers to be exercised by a Secretary of State for Scotland and a Secretary of State for Wales—by a territorial Minister; that is what the noble Lord said, as he will find when he checks in Hansard—and part of them to be exercised by the Lord President. That is perfectly sensible and a very good description. All he therefore needs to do is to agree to introduce at the next stage of the Bill an amendment that makes that clear and we can move on.

[Lord Soley]

I would not have intervened again, except for the way that the Minister addressed his last comment. That was not helpful. It is where he actually makes matters worse. My noble friend Lord Rooker is exactly right. The noble Lord talked about his vast experience but I know of many experiences of both kinds of Government increasing a Bill by piling in extra clauses that then come before this House. It does not help to try and score a party-political point. The other side of the argument is that on the last occasion we debated this—I forget which day that was—I quoted from a Conservative MP’s letter, which stated very clearly that he had only five minutes to discuss an issue of great importance and did not have time to speak at all on the main debate for it. There were members of the Minister’s Government complaining about lack of time.

My advice to the Minister is not to get into this party-political knockabout. A Bill like this, which is very important to the Government but very complex, will inevitably expand over time if it is hurried through in the way that the Government are doing. That is what has happened and that is why all those extra clauses, to which my noble friend Lord Rooker referred, have been added. It also explains why some people on the Minister’s own side who were opposed to certain aspects of it complained about the lack of time in the House of Commons. I simply say: for heaven’s sake, drop this idea that it is all one party’s fault. That is nonsense.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Does my noble friend agree also that the fact that the Bill has been added to on such a massive scale by the Government during its passage through the House of Commons—indeed, we have just been examining a new government amendment—indicates that it was prepared in great haste? Yet at the same time, the Government are insisting that the Bill must move very fast indeed towards the statute book. Can it be right to prepare a Bill so hastily that large-scale improvisations have to be made by the Government in extending it, even as they insist that it is rushed through and therefore skimpily scrutinised?