European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all who have taken part in this debate. I will try to answer the various questions that have been raised.

I start with the relative costs of by-elections. My noble friend was quite right: I mentioned a figure for Wales, where the total cost of a by-election would be £7.1 million. If there was a by-election in the south-east, it would be £19.585 million. The difference is accounted for by expenses for delivery of the poll. In Wales, this would be nearly £5 million, but in the south-east £13.4 million. I suspect that is because there are more electors in the south-east and it has more MEPs than Wales, which has three. There is a slight increase in the cost of relevant services supplied by the returning officer and a significant difference in the cost of delivering the mailings at public expense—£2 million in Wales and nearly £6 million in the south-east. The difference is, basically, related to the number of voters.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked me a question which he has asked me before about the Law Commission review. I am afraid that the answer is the same as I have given him before: the Government continue to work with the Law Commission on taking forward its review of electoral law.

I return to some of the main issues raised in the debate. I welcome all the contributions. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that this is most unlikely to happen and it is a small window, but it is quite a large sum of money. We therefore believe that this is a proportionate and sensible step to take in order to potentially save a significant amount of public money.

The noble Lord also asked whether a by-election would still take place if the nominating officer was unable to nominate somebody as the list had been exhausted. All the MEPs elected at the last European election represented major registered parties. I think it is most unlikely that a nominating officer would not be able to find anybody from a party to take up a vacancy. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats would be able to find somebody to fulfil that role, and I am sure the same would apply to any other party.

As regards Scotland, I am not that familiar with what happens north of the border, but I understand that due procedure was followed. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, implied that if we pass these regulations, it would prevent that happening. It would not. We would still have to go through the list member by member before the provisions in this regulation were activated—namely, having exhausted the list, there would not be a by-election; there would be a nomination.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, tempted me to answer a hypothetical question: what would happen if, for whatever reason, we did not exit the EU? That is a hypothetical question which is beyond my pay grade to answer. However, these regulations would remain on the statute book unless they were revoked, which would be an option were that eventuality to arise.

It was implied in some of the remarks that it is undemocratic to allow the party machine—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to it—to fill a vacant seat. These changes are modelled on the process that his Government agreed to fill MEP vacancies in Northern Ireland, and have been used already to fill a vacant seat there. I am not sure whether allegations of undue use of the party machine were made by the Labour Party at that point.

Another hypothetical question was asked: what happens if UKIP becomes unregistered, or if it does not have a nominating officer? If it does not have a nominating officer, the nominating officer cannot nominate somebody, by definition, and there would then be a by-election. That would happen if the party became unregistered.

I was asked what happens to a vacancy where the MEP has changed party. As I think I said from a sedentary position, the vacancy is filled by the next person on the list of the party that won the election at the previous election. I think that is the right thing to do democratically because that is how people voted at that election—they voted in those numbers for a Conservative Party or Lib Dem candidate. When that candidate is no longer fulfilling that post, I think it is right that the party that got the requisite number of votes at that relevant election should fill the vacancy.

As paragraph 4.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states, the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 is being amended to enable the changes to be made to the 2004 regulations. This is, as it were, a paving Bill, if I can use that term, for the substantive regulations that we are debating.

I detected no fundamental opposition in principle to what the Government are doing. There were a number of very interesting questions which I have done my best to address.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, it would seem from what the noble Lord is saying that we are all prepared to accept a short-term solution to this problem. However, does he accept that in the longer term it could not be a solution? He described the question of my noble friend Lord Rennard as entirely hypothetical. Has he not noticed that an increasing number of people, even Mr Farage, think that Brexit might not happen? It may be, of course, that in his case, since he says he is skint, he is beginning to think that his continuing MEP salary might be rather desirable.

However, can the noble Lord, in his usual fashion, give us an undertaking that, if there is a possibility that this ceases to be a short-term problem and becomes a longer-term one, we should at least expect the Government to produce some form of contingency plan beyond March 2019? He surely must accept that this provision before your Lordships cannot be allowed to stand for ever. That is undemocratic. It does not even really meet the requirements that his party has set out in the past for truly democratic representation in the European Parliament. If, this time next year, we find ourselves still not sure whether we are going to be exiting from the European Union, surely a responsible Government should look again at what should be put in place of these regulations.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is very plausibly trying to tempt me further down a route that I embarked on, probably ill-advisedly, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. I think that I can best shelter behind paragraph 7.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum:

“Following the EU Referendum, the UK will be leaving the EU and it is not expected that the UK will be participating in the next elections to the European Parliament in 2019 (the date of the poll has not been confirmed”.


It then goes on to say that, while we remain a member of the EU, we have to return MEPs. I can go no further than what I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—that if these regulations are approved by both Houses, they will govern the position of any vacancies where a party list is exhausted. In that unlikely event, there are European elections next year and the list would be refreshed. However, as the Government’s policy is to leave the EU, I shall venture no further down that path or I will get into real trouble, except to say that these are sensible precautions given that, following the EU referendum, the UK will be leaving the EU.