Wales: National Assembly Elections

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords will be relieved to know that I will do my best not to repeat the excellent arguments that have already been put to the Committee, but I am caused to ask this question: what are we doing? This is only the second specifically Welsh debate we have had in your Lordships’ House during this Parliament, and what are we debating? Are we debating the impact of the double-dip recession on the people of Wales, a recession made in Downing Street? No, we are not. Are we debating the lack of economic growth or high unemployment? No, we are not. Are we debating the mean and spiteful cuts in benefit support for disabled people and the poorest people in Wales? No, we are not. Are we debating the Remploy factory closures, which will see hundreds of disabled people thrown out of work, and who will probably never get another job in their lives? No, we are not debating any of these things. Instead, we are debating constitutional reform again. I feel sure that I can report to noble Lords that in the pubs and clubs of my former constituency of Islwyn, they will be talking about nothing else. While hard-pressed and hard-working families struggle to make ends meet and keep their heads above water, this Government seem to be obsessed with constitutional change.

It was only on 11 October last year that the Welsh Secretary, Mrs Cheryl Gillan, set up the Silk commission and gave it two tasks. First, it was charged with reviewing the case for the devolution of fiscal powers to the National Assembly, on which it was asked to report by the autumn of this year. Secondly, it was given the task of reviewing the powers of the National Assembly, on which it is to report by 2013. Barely six months later, finding that she cannot wait for the commission’s report, the Welsh Secretary has surfaced once again, this time with a Green Paper on the future electoral arrangements for the National Assembly for Wales. How I wish the Welsh Secretary were here to answer the debate this afternoon. Although it is not possible, it would be far better than meeting Peers behind closed doors. However, we are fortunate that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will respond. I know that I am not alone in admiring and respecting the Minister, who is held in high regard and with a deal of affection on all sides of the House. I feel sorry for him now that he has been asked to front-up the Green Paper for the Secretary of State for Wales.

I begin by asking the Minister what discussions the Secretary of State had with Paul Silk and his commission before embarking on the exercise of producing the Green Paper. Did she ask commission members what they thought of the idea of producing a Green Paper while they were in the middle of their deliberations? Did the commission consider that the Green Paper would undermine its task? What opinions and advice did the commission give to the Secretary of State? Will the Minister give us a full report of the discussions that took place between the Secretary of State and the commission, and perhaps also publish all correspondence on the matter? I suspect that while the Silk commission was busy carrying out Mrs Gillan’s task, she bypassed it and published the Green Paper.

The Government are obsessed with tinkering with the British constitution while bread and butter issues that affect most people I know are marginalised. For the past two years since they have been in government, this has been their main thrust.

[Baroness Randerson]

I was very interested in what the noble Lord said. Does he agree therefore that the Labour Party was obsessed with tinkering with the British constitution when it introduced devolution and other significant changes, including to this House?

[Lord Touhig]

There is a huge difference between what the Labour Party did in government and what this Government are doing. I shall develop the argument and thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to do so. For the past two years, the main thrust of the Government’s legislative programme has been about constitutional change. For a start, we had the biggest act of electoral gerrymandering—the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, was more generous than me about this—with the Bill to reduce the number of parliamentary seats. It was all done for party advantage. The legislation was put forward by the Conservatives and warmly embraced by the Liberal Democrats. Government MPs and Peers trooped through the Division Lobbies time and again to reduce the number of representatives from Wales by a massive 25%. While the Labour Party and others valiantly tried to defend Wales, we witnessed the enthusiasm with which the Conservatives and Lib Dems forced through the reduction in the number of Welsh MPs.

How quickly that enthusiasm has evaporated. It evaporated when the Boundary Commission completed its review and produced the first draft of its report on 30 new parliamentary seats in Wales. If the report is accepted, Conservative and Liberal Democrat representation from Wales in Westminster will be all but wiped out. I judge that the governing parties are not as enthusiastic as they were about reducing the number of Members of Parliament for Wales.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Bill was designed to keep this failing Government in office no matter what happened. As a result, it is no longer enough for a Government to lose the confidence of the House of Commons before they lose office. It is now necessary for two-thirds of the Members of Parliament to vote to throw them out of office. The Bill is a blemish and a stain on Great Britain’s long and cherished democratic system of parliamentary democracy.

Here in the United Kingdom, we are proud of our past. We are proud of the fact that we moved from empire to Commonwealth. We see ourselves as the fountainhead of democratic government, which we tell ourselves is the envy of the world. We were encouraged and flattered when many newly independent Commonwealth countries followed our example of a representative parliamentary democracy. However, I contend that if the Government of one of our Commonwealth partners were to use such a blatant act of gerrymandering to stay in office, Great Britain would be the first to challenge and charge them. I have no doubt that the Liberal Democrats would be at the forefront of such a condemnation and would probably want that country thrown out of the Commonwealth. What high ideals and great principles a once great party of liberty has traded for a handful of ministerial red boxes.

In the middle of all this, we have the referendum in Wales on more powers for the National Assembly. I had some reservations about this, not so much about passing over more powers to the Assembly but about the fact that it represented a further piecemeal tinkering with our constitution, chipping away here and there rather than looking at the big picture. Capping this constitutional onslaught, we have the Clegg Bill to abolish your Lordships’ House and give our country 400 more paid politicians, who will have guaranteed highly paid jobs for 15 years, doubtless with a pension. I know people who would like a job—any job—let alone one guaranteed for 15 years. The Remploy workers would certainly like a job guaranteed for the next 15 years.

Finally, as my noble friend Lady Morgan of Ely said, we have the elephant in the room: a referendum in Scotland that could see our union split apart. Will all this constitutional tinkering never end? The Minister could do no better than go away from this debate today, reread this little blue book—I am sure he has already read it—and take up its sound advice. It recommends that we have a constitutional convention looking at the whole of the constitution of the United Kingdom, and stop this piecemeal tinkering with our constitution.

This Green Paper is a bit thin. It poses four questions, but why so few? If we must go through this process, there are many more questions that ought to be asked and answered. As the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said, now that the National Assembly has primary lawmaking powers, is it able to scrutinise the Executive and hold it to account? I am certainly not suggesting more Assembly Members—although I know that some people think we should have at least 80—I am simply asking whether, in view of the major lawmaking powers now held by the National Assembly, its Members can adequately scrutinise legislation. Can the Opposition hold the Welsh Government to account in a way that we would want them to do?

Moving on, should we not be asking about the system for electing Members of National Assembly? Frankly, the present system is barmy. I know it was introduced by my party; then again, madness and being a member of the Labour Party are not necessarily mutually disqualifying. It is a barmy system. In Wales we have 40 first past the post elected Assembly Members. On top of that, we have an electoral top-up system of 20 Members, which gives the party with the most votes no seats and the party with the least votes seats.

Take the last election: setting aside the election of 40 first past the post seats—I know some of your Lordships believe we should have a different system, as has been well articulated today—in the election for the 20 top-up Members of the National Assembly, the Labour Party polled 37% of the vote and got two seats. The Liberal Democrats, with 8% of the vote, got four seats, and the Conservatives, with 23% of the vote, got eight seats. In the North Wales region, Labour got 32% of the vote and no seats. The Liberal Democrats got 6% of the vote and one seat. In South Wales Central, Labour won 41% of the vote and gained no seats. The Conservatives won 22% and gained two seats and the Liberal Democrats, with 8%, got one seat. South Wales West was even more bizarre. Labour won a massive 46% of the vote and did not gain a single seat. The Liberal Democrats, with 7% of the vote, got a seat.

Is it not funny how the Liberal Democrats always gain the lowest vote but always end up as winners? I am sure their Conservative colleagues in government have come to understand that that is their working relationship. Certainly, it is a puzzle to me. I suppose it is what happens when you have coalitions. I just hope that the leader of my party will recognise that those who get the lowest votes often end up on top in these kinds of situations.

The electorate of Wales do not understand the present system, so why does the Green Paper not consult them? Further, if we are to have a PR element— I favour first past the post rather than PR—why do we not split the first past the post election from the election for top-up Members? The public would then vote for the party candidate of their choice in the first past the post election, and the party of their choice in the constituency part of the election, and their choices would be elected. Giving the electorate what they want might seem novel, but at least they would understand what they were being given.

On the whole there has been a negative reaction to aspects of this Green Paper—to what it does not ask rather than what it does. It is a friendless Green Paper. Not even the Conservative leadership in the National Assembly will support it—and if the largest party in government will not support it, why should we?

[Lord German]

My Lords, I start by saying how much I welcome the views of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, which I presume do not represent the mainstream of the Labour Party, or the National Assembly would not have been created in the first place. Perhaps it would be useful to trace a little of the electoral history of the Assembly prior to 1997 and 1999. I first declare my interest as being in receipt of an Assembly pension. Also, last week in my absence, I was elected a director of Cymru Yfory, which is campaigning for the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, to have 80 National Assembly Members elected by single transferable vote. I will say more about that later.

On the history behind the electoral system for the National Assembly, some of us were engaged in discussions prior to the 1997 election of the Labour Government about how the Assembly should be elected. It was clear that those who favoured a National Assembly were not of the view that it should be dominated entirely by one party throughout its existence. Therefore, proportionality was an important facet of the proposals that were brought forward in the Bill of 1998. At the time, we were told by Ron Davies, the Labour leader on Welsh issues in Parliament, that the deal he could get through his party was the one that we ended up with in 1999, and which went into the 1998 Act. There was no doubt that it was fudged so that the Labour Party at some stage would have a majority in the National Assembly, but on most occasions would not. That was the political imperative driving the way in which the system was devised.

As a result, the system is not as proportional as that in Scotland. We must recognise that. We do not have the system of representation that the Scottish people enjoy. I will return in a moment to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, because I have a list—of which I would like him to take note—of members of the Labour Party who stood as constituency candidates in the most recent elections to the Scottish Parliament, and also stood as members of their party’s list. I will relate the list in a moment, but that is why we are where we are. Clearly, the campaign that started with the commission of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, was a move towards trying to make those changes.

Of course, some of us would like the changes to be made more quickly, but we are where we are because of other legislation that has come before us. I remind my noble and learned friend—we have been involved in these matters together for many years—that the Government of Wales Act 1998 states:

“The Assembly constituencies shall be the parliamentary constituencies in Wales”.

The Government of Wales Act 2006 states:

“The Assembly constituencies are the parliamentary constituencies in Wales”.

If that is the case, we will have to accept that the number that the Boundary Commission comes up with—which could be 29, 30 or 31—will be the number of parliamentary constituencies in Wales, and we could see a reduction in the total number, because 20 would remain.

The status quo cannot remain even if we retain the current 60 Members. It is quite right and proper that if we are going to hold the current position—and I have talked about where I want to see the position go in future—then we will have to have change. Those who argue for the current position will also be arguing for legislative change. Therefore, we have to consider the Green Paper that is before us.

There are some problems with a dual mandate of people putting their name on both sides of the ballot paper. However, in general terms, all you are doing is giving parties the opportunity to present their best candidates. I refer the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to Elaine Murray, Sarah Boyack, Lewis Macdonald, Claire Baker, Richard Simpson, David Stewart, Linda Stewart, John Mackay, Kieron Green, Donald Crichton, Gordon McKenzie, Greg Williams, Jean Morrison and Kevin Hutchens, some of whom were elected to the Scottish Parliament and all of whom were on the party’s regional list as well as being constituency candidates. This is perfectly appropriate and the Scottish Labour Party did the right thing by allowing the best people’s names to be put forward. Some of those people, who were preferred by the Labour Party in Scotland because of their talents, were duly elected to the Scottish Parliament.

The issue of the dual mandate has become somewhat different over the years. At the beginning, some Members of Parliament chose to put their names forward and stand for the National Assembly for Wales. For those who gave and devoted their time to it, it was a very useful and helpful device because parliamentary experience came to the National Assembly at the same time as experience from those who came from local government or who came with no political experience. Since those early days the trend has been the other way and Members have gone from the National Assembly to the House of Commons. As it is a full-time job, it is important that both the National Assembly for Wales and this Parliament should have full-time people elected to one or the other as swiftly as possible. The political parties have themselves been engaged in a regime with their own rules to ensure that this happens as rapidly as possible. The Green Paper proposes speeding this up so that it is dealt with more quickly than the current arrangement of waiting for the next election. There are powerful arguments for saying that if you are elected to do a full-time job, it should be done in one places.

On the balance of regional Members and constituency Members, we have not today raised the respective roles of regional Members and elected first past the post Members. I am the only person in your Lordships’ House who was elected as a regional Member in the National Assembly and I know very well that there are tensions. However, there will always be inbuilt tensions between Members of Parliament of different parties. If in a constituency there is a Member of Parliament from one party and a Member of the National Assembly from a different party, there will undoubtedly be tensions. The reality is that the elector has more choice. We can deliver choice to the electorate through proportionality. Another way is through creating a healthy tension between Members—not always of different parties—by having them elected to represent constituents. I do not see the jobs or the tasks as different, but the ability of the elector to choose and work with different elected Members is very helpful. I am therefore in favour of reinstating the names of regional candidates on the ballot paper.

The issue that we face today is whether we should debate constitutional issues relating to Wales and not other matters. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that we will have a debate tonight on the Remploy issue. It is a named debate brought by the Liberal Democrats on an issue where there is unanimous support from all the disability groups named in this document for the changes that are going to take place in Wales. Of course, the only opposition that the independent study found was from the Labour Party and the unions. So we will have the opportunity to have these discussions in the Chamber.

[Lord Touhig]

Is the noble Lord now telling me that the Liberal Democrats support the campaign to keep the factories open in Wales, or are they going to do as they did before and support closing them?

[Lord German]

The Liberal Democrats support the policies that are evinced in this document—

[Lord Touhig]

Closing the factories.

[Lord German]

No—I ask the noble Lord will be patient for just a second. The position is that the Government have provided for groups of employees and their supporters to come together with options for building and retaining their own independent operations. That is what was recommended by the government report, that is what we are supporting, and that is in fact what will happen to a number of factories. If noble Lords want to engage in this debate, they can do so later this evening in the Chamber.

I was going to spend some time talking about the benefits of the Sainte-Laguë formula over the d’Hondt system but I will resist the opportunity to indulge myself. I will talk about five-year terms. I believe that the elections should be on different dates. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, it is not just about different manifestos but about different electoral systems. The Scottish experience of having an STV election on the same day as an election by the additional member system for the Scottish Parliament was very difficult because there were different arrangements and people had to mark their ballot papers in different ways. On top of the issues of manifestos and focus, it is right that the elections should be separated and that this should be locked in by having a five-year cycle for all.

In conclusion, the Green Paper is a very important document for discussion, and we will have an opportunity to debate it further. It raises crucial issues, all of which must be dealt with because the status quo is no longer suitable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this debate, which has been very useful. First, I acknowledge a comment by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. I was indeed aware that the origins of the name Wallace come from the Shropshire-Wales boundary; I think the names are very similar. That only proves to me that we are pretty much a mongrel island and therefore those who would try to artificially break it up should reflect on the fact that peoples have moved around these islands for centuries. That may be one of the things that bind us.

The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, asked why we were debating this as opposed to many other issues. I think it is a red herring to claim that if you are focusing on one thing you are completely ignoring other issues. There is no doubt that the Government are absolutely committed to pursuing the economic objective of recovering the country’s finances from the situation we inherited in May 2010. Very often that is not done by legislation, and just because we are focusing on one or two items of legislation does not mean to say that we are taking our eye off the ball on the fundamental issues of the economy.

I would welcome more debates on Welsh issues, be they economic or otherwise. Having served in the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament and the House of Lords, the ways in which the usual channels move are mysterious and wondrous to behold, but I am sure that we will try to find other opportunities to debate Welsh issues, and that there will be general support for that on all sides of the Committee.

[Lord Touhig]

I am most grateful for that commitment from the Minister. As the grandson of Katie Wallace, I knew that I could always trust a Wallace.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord is my kinsman.

A number of noble Lords raised questions about the voting system and the size of the Assembly, so I should perhaps say at the outset what this consultation paper does not try to do. It was never the intention that it should open up these far more fundamental issues. It was clear from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that there is no consensus on the size of the Assembly. Although this is not an issue for this consultation paper, the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, on the need for scrutiny, and the presidency—or vice-presidency—of the organisation to promote an Assembly of 80 Members elected by STV, to which my noble friend Lord German has recently been appointed, lead me to suspect that it will not go away.

When the Silk commission moves on to Part 2 there will be an opportunity for representations to be made, not on the voting system but on where the responsibility for that may lie. I may want to come back to this issue. It would have been wrong, in this consultation, to have gone into the much wider issues of the size of the Assembly or the voting system. It is intended to address mechanisms because of a situation that has arisen as a result of the two pieces of UK legislation to which I referred.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I am coming on to address that point and I accept that it is important. In terms of taking messages back, I can assure noble Lords that these proceedings will be read, it is fair to say, avidly by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. Not only will I report back, but I am sure that they will be read in the Official Report.

[Lord Touhig]

I apologise; the noble and learned Lord is being very generous in giving way. I accept what he says about the Silk commission being excluded from looking at the situation in Wales, but the point of my question was this: was the Silk commission consulted about this Green Paper because it has come out of the blue for all of us?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, it is my understanding that the commission was not consulted, but that was because what this Green Paper is about is beyond its remit. Questions have been raised about these deliberations, and I am aware of the debate last week in the National Assembly for Wales. The fact—one that has been reflected by a number of contributors to the debate—is that the electoral arrangements of the Assembly are a non-devolved matter. The matter is reserved to this Parliament. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made the point that Wales has two Governments: it has a Government in Wales in the National Assembly and also has a Government here at Westminster. The devolution settlement agreed in the Government of Wales Acts 1998 and 2006, and the distribution of powers that was approved only last year in a referendum, retain the electoral system and arrangements for the Assembly as being matters for the Westminster Parliament.

I accept that those in Plaid Cymru who aspire to much greater powers for the National Assembly for Wales would argue the case that electoral arrangements, and possibly the system, should be devolved—albeit with a two-thirds majority—and clearly that case can be made. The Silk commission does not have within its remit the current electoral arrangements but it does have within its remit the distribution of powers between the Westminster Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. I have no doubt that representations to that effect will be made, but that is not the current devolution settlement.