Electoral Registration

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for this debate. I am not sure that I would accept as much of the responsibility for initiating the debate as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has suggested. I do remember our conversations and I very much welcomed them because I said that if we are going to take this further we need a better information base of evidence on which to take it, and this report provides that.

I declare an interest in that my son is an overseas voter. He has a proxy vote, which his mother exercises—he trusts his mother more than his father. Of course, there are a number of proxy voters who are overseas voters; at the moment we have some 15,000 to 20,000 people who we think are on the registers. A fundamental issue here is that our system of electoral registration and our system of constituencies are based on locality and not on any national study. In the first three months of 2015, as at the end of 2009 and in early 2010, we expect to see a surge in overseas registration for very obvious reasons, and we do not know how far that will go.

I welcome the steps that the Electoral Commission is taking to provide as much information as possible. I hope that those taking part in this debate and others welcome the efforts that the Government have taken to make electronic registration easier. As noble Lords will know, the proportion of voters now registering online is much higher than we originally anticipated, so things are getting easier. We may well get a surge that takes us well above 30,000 next year. We very much hope so.

I will, however, make a number of cautionary remarks. In the parallel debates on whether we should lower the voting age to 16, including overseas voters, I recognise some undercover thoughts from different parties about whom these extra bits of constituencies might be most likely to vote for. I need not say any more than that; we all understand where we are. As we take the debate about extending the franchise further, I think that it would be advantageous if we were perhaps to pull these two together. Both are ways of extending the opportunity to vote. If we were talking about the two together, it would not necessarily imply advantages for both sides or for one side against the other, and they are both about extending the level of franchise. Of course, we do not know who our overseas voters will vote for in large numbers. At this point, I think I should stop.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn) (Con)]

My Lords, there are nine minutes remaining in this debate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was about to say that there are some fundamental differences between the way we approach and citizenship and the way that other countries, including France, do so. The attitude to those who are overseas is very different there. The assumption is that the French state wants them to remain French citizens closely allied to France. That means that consulates and embassies are staffed more generously where there are strong communities of citizens and French schools are subsidised. Those are not things which this country has done. This country has not had such a strong sense of the state and of the need for the state to hold on to its citizens overseas. It is a national duty, in a sense, for a French citizen to take part in democratic life. We have not thought that the local basis for political engagement was quite the same, so we are talking about some quite wide changes in our attitude to government. I wonder whether we would see ourselves having candidates campaigning in Dubai or Hong Kong to appeal to their overseas voters in the way that French presidential candidates now campaign in London because London is a significant base for French citizens abroad.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, talked about the need to consider special constituencies. That would be a large departure and again would require some philosophical thinking about the nature of British citizenship. At present, the Government have not begun to think about the possibility of overseas constituencies because the basis of our system is the single-member constituency, local voting and local registration. That is also part of the reason for the 15-year limit because after 15 years someone who lives overseas will have begun to lose a sense of identification with the place in which they last lived and the local representative for whom they would be voting. We are beginning to get into a quite large discussion about the nature of representation and citizenship within the United Kingdom if we go as far down the road as some are suggesting.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, said that British citizens go abroad to work. I agree that is true for some. Some go abroad to retire. Some go abroad to avoid tax. The five largest countries for British citizens living abroad are Australia, Spain, the USA, Canada and France. They are quite different. In Spain and France, a quite substantial number have gone there to retire. In the USA and Canada, I suspect—particularly in Canada—a number of people have gone there thinking that they are leaving the UK behind and emigrating to live, as in New Zealand and Australia. In other places such as the UAE, where we have now 160,000 citizens, very clearly people have gone there to work.

If I were in opposition, I do not know whether I would want to exclude those who live in the Cayman Islands and Monaco from the right to vote in Britain because of the issue of whether or not they have gone abroad to avoid the citizen’s duty of paying tax. Noble Lords will be aware of the American attitude to citizens abroad and taxation, which is very different from our own, and, indeed, has attracted some publicity recently with regard to the Mayor of London.

The Government are actively engaged in this and we readily accept that the Electoral Commission’s expanded efforts are partly in response to what the group has done. Turning to the question of the responsible Minister, it is a Cabinet Office responsibility—Greg Clark, Sam Gyimah and, in the Lords, myself. I am very grateful for the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that I should shoulder the entire responsibility. I have to say, my wife rather hopes that I might retire over the next six months and then there may not be someone who has this bridging responsibility between the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office.

I will say something about the Foreign Office involvement in all this. Unlike the French, we do not keep records of citizens living abroad, nor do we expect and require citizens to register. After the 30% cut that the Foreign Office took in its budget between 2010 and 2013, we are thinly staffed in a number of countries. We have reduced the number of consulates within the European Union, which is where nearly half our overseas citizens live. It would be a very major and expensive effort to ask embassies to expand into this new area. There are some limited efforts that can be made. Of course, one of the problems of having voting in embassies and consulates-general is that if you are upcountry, so to speak, it is much harder to vote than if you are in the capital. At present, it would require a very substantial shift and expansion of FCO resources to be able to provide the sorts of resources that are required.

The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, talked about electronic voting. The Government are not yet convinced that electronic voting is secure. The question about electronic registration—downloading the forms and then sending them back, as in New Zealand—is an interesting one, which I will take back and which the Government could certainly consider.

I hope that I have covered most of the questions that I was asked. I return to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, with whom, in the course of discussing a number of SIs over the past 18 months, I have had many exchanges. We are still extremely happy with the response to individual electoral registration and with the very high proportion who have registered online. We are not content with the number of people who have registered from abroad. We welcome the efforts the Electoral Commission is undertaking to raise awareness of this and we hope that the numbers will therefore increase. But I say again that this is not for government alone—it is also for private bodies, the media and political parties. I will make one small remark on this. I was recently in Andalucia and looked at the English-language newspaper there. It seemed to me that if one were to have a Spanish constituency of overseas voters, none of the conventional parties would necessarily win, if you understand me. Some citizens who live overseas are discontented with the state of Britain, the European Union and many other things as well.

[Viscount Astor]

My noble friend the Minister has not been able to address the issue of the Armed Forces in time. I ask if he can take that issue back to his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence so that we can help those serving abroad to vote.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I apologise for that and I thank the noble Viscount for reminding me. On the question of the Armed Forces, we are exercised with that. It has become easier, partly because the basing structure of our armed forces is changing. It is intended that most major units will stay within one place as their home: Catterick or Aldershot or wherever it may be. This will make future Armed Forces voting easier than it has been. I will take this back and if there is anything more that I can say to the noble Viscount to reassure him, I will write to him.

I will finish by saying that I very much welcome this report. I hope that the group who produced it will continue its efforts. We should all be concerned with maximising, first, registration and, secondly voting from all those entitled to do so. There are some much wider issues about the future of representation in Britain which we should also engage in before and after the election. I look forward to further debates on this broad issue.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, we have caught up some time. I will arrange the officers for the next debate and we will start straight away.

Hong Kong

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact of recent events in Hong Kong on the prospects for democracy in that region.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Hong Kong’s future is best served through a transition to universal suffrage in line with the Basic Law that meets the aspirations of the people of Hong Kong. As noted in our repeated statements, we call for rights and freedoms to be respected, and we urge all sides to engage in constructive dialogue and to work to build a consensus that allows a meaningful advance for democracy.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong have very genuine concerns about the pushback from the joint declaration of 1984, particularly with regard to judicial independence and elections? He will be aware that the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary China Group has just been denied a visa for China for the mere act of instigating a debate in the other place on the Hong Kong situation. Does my noble friend agree that the actions of the Chinese Government are imperilling Hong Kong’s status and stability, as well as destabilising the whole region?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there were several questions there and I shall try to answer at least two of them. Hong Kong plays a very important part in Britain’s relations with China. It is also one of the most sensitive issues in Britain’s relationship with China. We regret the Chinese Government’s refusal to allow Richard Graham, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary China Group, to take part in what would have been a very valuable exchange between Members of both Houses of Parliament and their Chinese equivalents, and we have made that clear to the Chinese Government at a very senior level.

[Lord Luce (CB)]

My Lords, since it is in China’s, Britain’s and Hong Kong’s interests to do nothing to undermine the 1984 declaration, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, helped to negotiate, and since universal suffrage is on offer for the first time, is not the most important thing that the people of Hong Kong should engage in constructive dialogue with the Chief Executive of Hong Kong to ensure that the next time there is an election for Chief Executive, there is a reasonable and wide range of choice of candidates?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for that detailed and constructive question. We are talking about the Basic Law of 1997 and not the joint declaration of 1984, and we are talking about the commitment to universal suffrage. The issue at stake regarding the demonstrations is how open the nomination of the Chief Executive should be. The question of judicial independence came up with regard to a Chinese Government White Paper of June 2014. It is the British Government’s view that judicial independence in Hong Kong has not been compromised by that White Paper.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, the Basic Law of Hong Kong, which the Minister has already referred to, dealing with the introduction of universal suffrage, also affirms rights to freedom of speech, press freedom and freedom of association. I am sure that the Minister will agree that the Basic Law of Hong Kong is crucial in the present circumstances and that it must continue to be pursued in practice.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree with that. On the whole, the demonstrations in Hong Kong have been handled well and they have continued peacefully. Recently, some of the student leaders of the demonstrations conducted discussions with the executives of Hong Kong on television. There are not that many countries in the world where that would be possible on quite such a peaceful basis. Therefore, there are aspects of the joint declaration and the Basic Law that are very fully observed.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I think I understood my noble friend to say that he believed that the British Government did not feel that judicial independence had been jeopardised through the White Paper. Would he like to tell the House how requiring judges to be patriotic without defining patriotism is upholding judicial independence?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there may be people inside the Chinese Government whose sense of the importance of the distinction between the different aspects of government—legislature, Executive and judiciary—is a little less highly developed than it is in the UK. However, I suspect that in some aspects of British politics, and possibly some newspapers, there are those who would think that judges who could not describe themselves at patriotic were not appropriate judges, even in the UK. I am not at all saying that Her Majesty’s Government are pleased with that.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, is there not a striking contrast between the passion for democracy among the people of Hong Kong and the democratic inertia and cynicism of so many people in this country who are entitled to vote and do not do so?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I can only agree, but it is up to all of us and the Members of the other place, as well as all those involved in democratic politics, to re-enthuse the British public with democratic politics as far as we can and, in particular, in the next five months.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, bearing in mind that the noble Baroness’s question refers to democracy in the region, will the Minister take the opportunity to pay tribute to the people of Taiwan, who change their Governments regularly through the ballot box, and whose parliamentary system is very close to our own, unlike that of mainland China? I declare an interest as co-chair of the British-Taiwanese All-Party Parliamentary Group.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are a number of states across east, south-east and southern Asia that have made successful transitions to democracy. There are others that have some way to go. We welcome the evidence in a range of Governments there of the rule of law, open elections and the transition from one head of Government to another, all of which are fundamental. These are principles to which good Governments and well run economies should adhere.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, we must welcome the statement in the Wales Bill last week that the electoral registration officers in Wales—all 22 of them—are to encourage new ways of registering young voters. Can we ask whether this might also apply to all electoral registration officers throughout the United Kingdom?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I hesitate to suggest that Her Majesty’s Government should bring that to the attention of the Chinese Government. I accept the noble Lord’s point that all of us, in every way, including the many Members of this House who go out on school visits, should be doing our utmost to raise the level of interest of people of all ages in the democratic process.

Sri Lanka

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are studying the implications of the ECJ judgment and considering appropriate next steps. The UK is committed to maintaining an EU listing. The court’s decision was based on fundamental procedural grounds, but the court rejected the LTTE’s argument that it could not be listed as a terrorist organisation because of its involvement in an internal armed conflict. The UK condemns the Tamil Tigers as a brutal terror organisation, and it remains proscribed under UK law.

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his Answer will be greeted with a great sigh of relief by nearly all the Sri Lankans who live in the United Kingdom and, indeed, virtually all the citizens of Sri Lanka? However, is he also aware that this coming Thursday there is to be a rally at ExCel to celebrate the life of the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Mr Prabhakaran, and the other Tamil Tigers, and to raise money for Eelam? Will my noble friend bring this to the attention of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police? It seems to me that this is covered by the proscription. Frankly, if the terrorism Acts mean anything, this particular rally should be stopped.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would be surprised if the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is not already aware of it. The United Kingdom Government are actively concerned to promote reconciliation and reconstruction within Sri Lanka among all of its different communities.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, President Rajapaksa has called an early presidential election for 8 January next year. Last week there were defections by senior Ministers from the Government, including Mr Sirisena, who will be the principal opposition candidate. Given the history of such elections in the past and that reports this weekend suggest that Mr Sirisena’s first broadcast has been blocked and his bodyguards removed, what do Her Majesty’s Government believe are the prospects for a free, fair and inclusive election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the British Government and others are talking about the best way in which to make sure that there is effective monitoring of the elections. We will of course be raising such issues with the Sri Lankan Government.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister say what progress is being made with the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry into the behaviour of all parties, including the Tamil Tigers, and if the Government of Sri Lanka are giving any signs of co-operation with that at all?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord is aware, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has just reported that he is not receiving the co-operation which he needs from the Sri Lankan Government.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, will the Government condemn the refusal of the Sri Lankan authorities to grant visas to the OHCHR team which was to investigate the atrocities committed in the final stages of the civil war by both the Government and the LTTE? Will the comprehensive report of that team, headed by Martti Ahtisaari, nevertheless be published in accordance with the mandate of the team at the 28th session of the Human Rights Council in March 2015?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the UK was a sponsor of the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council. We are actively concerned in this issue. We are not at all happy about the refusal of the Sri Lankan authorities to co-operate with the attempts to have an external inquiry, because of our concerns that the internal inquiry’s recommendations have not yet been implemented.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House what action the British Government will take to ensure that the Sri Lankan Government co-operate more fully with the UN report that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, just mentioned in his question?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have actively made our position clear to the Sri Lankan Government and will continue to do so.

Commonwealth: Young Entrepreneurs

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Baroness Benjamin (LD): My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in so doing, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, at the UK-Caribbean Ministerial Forum in June, both sides committed to bringing together young leaders in business, entrepreneurship, civil society and academia. In 2014, our support for the Caribbean has included progressing scholarship programmes between higher education institutions and the UK, and enhancing regional competitiveness and enterprise innovation. In the wider Commonwealth, the range of UK programmes includes supporting a social entrepreneurship programme for young women in India.

[Baroness Benjamin]

I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. As part of her Diamond Jubilee, Her Majesty created the Queen’s Young Leaders Award. Part of that programme is to discover, develop and nurture young entrepreneurs across the Commonwealth, which is wonderful. However, more opportunities are needed for young entrepreneurs, especially in the Caribbean. What are the Government doing to encourage links between business schools here in Britain and those in the Caribbean? How much priority does DfID give to encouraging entrepreneurship in the Caribbean?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is not just a question of DfID programmes: there are also UKTI programmes and British Council programmes. The British Council is concerned particularly with a creative young entrepreneurs’ programme, which covers the Caribbean as well as some other areas. It is clearly the sort of area where services and new industries can develop.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, last week I spoke at the opening event of Global Entrepreneurship Week here in London. I was delighted that a report released at the event showed that London is one of the top two cities for entrepreneurship in Europe. Is the Minister aware of the Sirius programme backed by UK Trade and Investment, which attracts young entrepreneurs from around the world and which I was involved in launching? Will the Government assure us that they are promoting this Sirius programme throughout the Commonwealth, along with countries such as India?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am certainly aware of the Sirius programme. It is being promoted across the Caribbean and the Commonwealth, as well as in other areas.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that this is Dominican Republic week in the United Kingdom and that various events are being organised by the embassy and by industries with an interest in the Dominican Republic? Will he encourage Commonwealth Caribbean countries to do similar by having a Trinidad week, a Barbados week and a Jamaica week in the United Kingdom? Maybe I should declare an interest as president of the Caribbean Council.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord may be surprised to know that I was not aware that this is Dominican Republic week. However, I am conscious that there are a range of Caribbean-related festivals not just in London but across Britain. Indeed, on one occasion I presented the prizes at the Miss Grenada Commonwealth competition in Huddersfield at what should have been about 10 o’clock at night but turned out to be one o’clock in the morning.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I have to declare an interest as president of the Royal Commonwealth Society. Does my noble friend agree that what these young entrepreneurs really need is access to funds to get their businesses started? If, as in many other parts of the world, the banks will not play and are not really being as helpful as they should be, should we not also encourage the development of all kinds of alternative finance built on peer-to-peer lending and so on, as well as many other opportunities, which are enabling small businesses all over the developing world and certainly in the Caribbean to have proper access to funds for the first time?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, of course we should be doing that. Part of the problem in the Caribbean is that, apart from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, we are talking about very small islands with very small economies, and getting major enterprises going in such areas is often a little more difficult than it is in larger countries.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Caribbean area is not, to put it mildly, a priority for DfID aid, should Her Majesty’s Government be doing more to assist some of the smaller islands there, some of which not only suffer from deep poverty but need support in order to succeed in establishing successful trading and business concerns?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my brief says that the Caribbean is very much one of DfID’s priorities. We are of course conscious of the difficulties that some of the smaller Caribbean economies have. I am told that, apart from Guyana, none of the Caribbean economies is at present demonstrating very strong economic growth.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, will my noble friend also have a word with the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat to ensure that it promotes such activities so that other Commonwealth nations can benefit? Not only could they learn from us but we could learn quite a lot from some of the Commonwealth countries.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, certainly we are actively engaged with the Commonwealth Secretariat. The UK is the largest funder of the Commonwealth Secretariat and also the largest supporter of its youth fund.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust and as a person who was born in Dominica, one of the tiniest islands within the Caribbean. Mention has already been made of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee scholarships which are going to be given to the 53 countries. Can the noble Lord tell us what assistance the Government intend to give to make sure that Caribbean members get a proper opportunity to demonstrate their skill, their talent and their ingenuity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a very good and complex question, and I think it is better that I write to the noble and learned Baroness with a full indication of where we are. I am very conscious of her background in Dominica and indeed, with my World War I hat on, of the contribution that her family and many others in the Caribbean made to the British war effort in the Great War.

Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 21, 22 July and 13 October be approved.

Relevant document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 19 November

Motions agreed.

House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

With the greatest of respect—and I have great respect for my noble friend—I think that he has missed the point. I agree that substantive reform of the Lords will not take place until the relationship between this House and the other place is fully resolved. I believe that conventions will need to be codified in an Act of Parliament to have any chance whatever of there being a relationship between two elected Houses, if we are to have two elected Houses. Other noble Lords will disagree but I say to my noble friend that the argument that the Government have deployed on a number of occasions is that we cannot agree to sensible, incremental measures because we are committed to a fully elected second Chamber. That seems to be the argument that essentially comes out, certainly from the Minister and his party. My point is that even if we were to reach consensus and a reform Bill went through both Houses, it would be some years before it could actually be put into practice.

In the mean time, we still want a second Chamber to be as effective as possible. The way we are going, the issue about numbers is becoming so serious that we are running into a real problem of credibility. That is why I hope that the Minister will be very positive on this Bill but that he will also reflect on what his noble friend has said about allowing the House to discuss these other matters and come to a view very quickly, which I believe could be done.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitate to open up a wider debate about long-term Lords reform. We all know that we are already into substantial discussions about constitutional reform of this multinational state. I suspect that after the next election and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just said, with whatever shape of government should emerge from it, the future of this House will be caught up in those discussions. Two of the three parties are already committed to a constitutional convention, so there are a range of things—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am sure he is right but does he also accept that it will be some years before any change can take place? Therefore, the argument that the House should be given a fair wind by the Government to make some incremental, sensible change is overwhelming.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord and I will discuss, off the Floor, the question of how easy it will be to get consensus on the principle of retirement. I will tell him about some of the conversations I have had with Members of his own Benches about this over the past two years, some of which have been extremely vigorous.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with the Committee stage of today’s Bill, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, rightly pointed out, is concerned with the conduct of the House. It has a limited and specific purpose and is concerned with the reputation of Parliament as a whole. We welcome that. The Bill is also concerned with rebuilding public trust in our political institutions and, as she made clear, is intended to give the House precautionary powers—powers which are intended to be available but to be rarely, and, one hopes, never, used. We recognise that and the Government also recognise the sentiment around the House on the Bill. We are very happy to work with the noble Baroness to ensure that the amendments are tweaked into a form that would suit.

We understand the spirit of the amendments but there are some issues about the exact definition, which we need to clarify. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, raised one example: what do we do if we become aware of past conduct which was egregious but was not previously known? What do we do about past conduct, the effects of which are continuing? The issues of retrospectivity are complicated in this regard and the House will also need to be concerned that we currently have an inherent power of suspension, which may or may not be used with retrospective regard to past conduct. If we were to pass this, we would be limiting the power of suspension that the House currently has. What I can do on behalf of the Government is to say that we would be very happy for Cabinet Office officials and lawyers to discuss between this stage of the Bill and the next, with the noble Baroness and others, how we might reshape these amendments to put them into a reasonable form.

The Government are giving the Bill a fair wind in this House. How far we will be able to assist it in the other place is a matter which the Government do not yet need to address and have not yet fully addressed. All Members of this Chamber will know of the complicated internal procedures that the Government need to go through. It will be tight to get the Bill through the other House, given the queue of Private Members’ Bills before the next election—although I take the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that some of them are not entirely overworked at the moment—but we need not address that issue definitively at present.

For the moment, I am very happy to say that the Government will work with the noble Baroness to revise the amendment into a form that would suit the purposes that are intended, and that we have thought through some of the complications about the principle of retrospection, which is a very delicate and important one in the issue of conduct.

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[Baroness Hayman]

I suspect that we will not have the same level of debate on this technical amendment. It was pointed out to me that it would be helpful, in spelling out the consequences of expulsion under the Bill that are to mirror those under the “Byles Bill”—the House of Lords Reform Act 2014—if I referred not simply to Section 4 of that Act but also to subsections of that Act. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, here again the Government are sympathetic to the principle, but there are some technical issues about how the Bill refers to the 2014 Act and how one relates to the other. Again, the Government would be very glad to talk to the noble Baroness between Committee and Report to sort them out and perhaps come back with a different amendment on Report.

I read the latest Code of Conduct again this morning, thinking that we need to be sure what we are on about. One of the issues that perhaps we need to discuss informally off the Floor is how far this measure is intended to refer only to conduct that is mentioned in the Code of Conduct or to egregious conduct of other sorts conducted by Members of this House. However, that is a question that we need not have in the Bill itself, but it is certainly a question that the Committee for Privileges and Conduct and others will need to consider at a later stage. With the reassurance that we will be very happy to discuss how we remodel this amendment between now and Report, I hope that the noble Baroness is happy with the Government’s response.

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords, one thing I would never claim as one of my core skills is parliamentary draftsmanship. Therefore, I am not just happy but very grateful to have the discussions that the Minister suggests.

I agree with the Minister that the heavy lifting about getting this right has to be done within the House, with the Committee for Privileges and Conduct looking at the code of conduct and Standing Orders and making sure that we have the appropriate procedures. This is an enabling Bill to allow us to get on and do that meticulous and careful work under its auspices.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 92C, I will also speak to Amendment 92D, and—this may sound peculiar—I will specifically not speak to Amendment 93. What arguments I shall make in speaking to these two amendments should not be read across to our position on Amendment 93, which stands up on its own, and which will be well presented by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and supported by my noble friend Lady Thornton.

Essentially, the amendments probe Clauses 83 to 86. Once again, we have degrouped from the proposed original grouping the question that Clause 83 stand part of the Bill. We did that because we want to make it clear that we are not against the underlying concept of this group of amendments, providing that they are benign in intent, and that the Government are willing to accept either our amendment or appropriate other amendments which secure the benign nature of the intent.

It is interesting to look at just how important these clauses are. The Minister, Oliver Letwin, who has the wonderful title of Minister for Government Policy, said in another place:

“In that context, clause 61”—

which is now Clause 83—

“which is probably the single most important clause in the Bill, creates a growth duty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 37.]

Therefore the Minister for Government Policy thinks that it is the most important clause in the Bill.

In Second Reading in the House of Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was a little more careful. He said:

“Clauses 83 to 86 create a statutory duty for non-economic regulators to consider economic growth when carrying out their functions. This duty will be supplementary to”—

we may come back to those words, perhaps not today, but in the course of the passage of the Bill—

“and will not supplant, the regulators’ other statutory obligations. It will make them take economic growth into account as they exercise their regulatory functions. Guidance on this has just been published”.—[Official Report, 7/7/14; col. 16.]

I will come on to that guidance.

The importance of this clause is a matter for appraisal. It rates the positive value of this set of clauses between zero—which is pretty low—and £240 million per annum. I am reminded of Tesco’s “Every little helps”. However, it is a little. Some £90 million may be a big figure, but it is stretched across the whole gross domestic product of something over £1.5 trillion, and I ran out of noughts while trying to find out what percentage it is of that. A more down-to-earth figure is that it represents £3 per annum, per worker. Therefore this is a push in the right direction, if you believe in all the benefits, but not that significant a push. If it is the most important clause in the Bill, as the Minister said in the other place, it does not say a lot for the other clauses.

The reason I stress the size of the impact is that when we make a piece of law, we have to consider the unintended consequences. This set of clauses could have serious unintended consequences, because they go to the root of the concept of regulation. To quote Oliver Letwin, a right-wing Tory Minister:

“I will begin by saying something that several in the House might find mildly surprising in the context of this debate: regulation is often sensible and necessary. It is no part of the Government’s plans or our view of life to suggest that regulation is never useful. Indeed, like previous Governments, this Government are presiding over an immense amount of regulation, much of which is constructive and helpful”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 35.]

I passionately believe in regulation. I believe that it is the essence of what creates a society. It is the process by which individuals are protected from abuse by persons—I draw the distinction in the sense that “persons” includes firms, the state and all different collections and interests—while enabling the flourishing of society in general. It is essential to civilisation and for most people, it is barely noticed. That is one of the problems with regulation: there is little appreciation of how important it is in society. It is as old as history, of course. The first regulations that we tend to learn about are the Ten Commandments, and they go on and on. We call them laws but, in many ways, criminal laws are just as much regulations as regulations which are not criminal laws, and they overlap.

In this House, due to our longevity, one can pray in aid the Clean Air Acts. One has to be fairly old, but the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will remember the 1962-63 smog in London, which brought the city to a halt, a phenomenon which was common.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My noble friend is not old enough.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

We were there together. The regulations that cleaned up the atmosphere totally changed the city of London. It was worth cleaning the buildings afterwards. Nobody knows about the Clean Air Acts, but they are central to our lives.

When I was young, aeroplanes used to crash quite frequently. Being an airline pilot was a dangerous pastime. People used to go on to aeroplanes wondering whether they would get to their destination. People do not think about that now. They assume that it is safe. What makes it safe is a great feast of regulations that governs every bit of that activity to make it incredibly safe. We do not think about regulation when we go into a restaurant; we go in assuming we are not going to be poisoned. Why can we make that assumption? Because there is a raft of regulation that makes sure food is safe; everything from what varieties are allowed into this country in the first place to how it is handled, how it is checked and so on. Regulation is a crucial part of our lives but most people do not notice it.

I notice it because I have been involved in regulation for 50 years. My initial training was as a pilot, and you immediately realise how regulation contributes to the safety of the operation. Over those 50 years I have been a pilot, an air operator, a railway operator, chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, chairman of the Rail Safety and Standards Board and involved in safety in the MoD. Finally, as a Whip, I had to explain the failure of regulation that caused the Nimrod crash in Afghanistan and killed servicemen unnecessarily. I am a passionate believer in regulation and its protection.

Let us turn to what the clauses do. One of the most useful documents when looking at legislation is the impact assessment. The reason it is useful is that it is usually written by reasonably junior people and they are, putting it nicely, less nuanced than some of the more superior documents. You frequently get to what people are thinking about when they have the legislation in mind. The relevant part of the impact assessment is pages 16 and 17. It is all relevant, but pages 16 and 17 set out the areas of advantage that the impact assessment envisages these clauses will bring about. They include: reduction in duplication costs for information, £28.17 million; reduction of information requirement costs, best estimate, £41.43 million; reduction in time required for inspections, £7.21 million; reduction in unexplained duplication of inspection, £1.01 million; reduced reliance on external contractors, £12.4 million. I remind the Committee that the range is nought to £240 million and the best estimate is £90 million. Those impacts of these clauses are benign. They are about the process of implementing regulations. They are about being sensible with the regulator and making sure there is no duplication, that regulators talk to each other and that processes are efficient. If all these clauses have impacts like those, they are benign, and we support them.

The problem is the clauses themselves. Clause 83(2) states that,

“the person must … consider the importance for the promotion of economic growth of exercising the regulatory function in a way which ensures that … regulatory action is taken only when it is needed, and … any action is proportionate”.

Those words by themselves seem a pretty high test for a regulator. As I tried to illustrate, our lives are made acceptable and benign by regulators acting pretty well as they do at the moment to protect us. So are these new clauses a licence for regulators to approve regulations that kill people to save money? When you put it like that, I am sure everybody will say, “Of course not”. Nobody could believe that the intention of these regulations is to kill people to save money. The trouble is that in my very long career in regulation I have heard discussions about killing people to save money. Nobody uses terms like that. They will say: “The risk of this event is so low and the costs we are having to put in to prevent it happening are so high that it is unreasonable. Why are you forcing us to spend this money for this mitigating measure?”. These conversations go on. They go on in more complex circumstances. They go on in situations where a new regulation is being introduced which, as a consequence, mitigates most of the risk in a particular area as well as mitigating other risks. Other people can then say, “The residual risk is now so small, surely you do not want that regulation to continue in place, costing money, when people only kill other people very occasionally”. In other words, the risk is small enough to be put to one side. Do we intend praying in aid quite strong words such as necessary and proportionate for those sort of circumstances to be envisaged?

--- Later in debate ---

Am I right in assuming that this actually applies only to England? A very large number of matters that we are talking about today are indeed devolved or not reserved, as the wording would have it, to these respective bodies. That means that certain regulators that have a UK-wide remit will have an even more difficult job in interpreting the Government’s wishes in this most important clause if at the same time they are required not to exercise these functions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but only in England. If they wish to have them exercised they will presumably have to negotiate separately with the respective Parliaments in those places. That sounds fun.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the many noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. When I was on the opposition Benches I did on one occasion attempt to challenge the extent clause of the Bill at about 9.45 in the evening, to the deep discontent of those on all Benches. My particular concern was with how far the legislation applied to the Crown dependencies—the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. It is clearly something that, at some point—as I said a good five years ago—the House of Lords could usefully devote some time to because of the extent to which UK law extends to the Crown dependencies, and how far they can cherry pick what they accept from UK law is a matter of considerable interest to us all. Perhaps that is something that the noble Lord and I could explore further off the Floor of the House. Part of the problem with extent clauses is that one almost always reaches them when everyone is exhausted by the Committee stage of the Bill and does not want to have another long debate.

However, this has been a long, serious and useful debate. We are of course ready to discuss further off the Floor to provide what assurance we can and to discuss whether the current drafting and guidance is adequate or whether it could usefully be strengthened. We have some time before Report to set that process in train.

The aims of the Bill are to reduce duplication. The consultation on this clause, as with others, produced a number of examples of duplication of different bodies attempting to regulate the same thing or requiring information from businesses for different purposes. If possible, we wish to reduce that and provide simplification. This is not an attempt to destroy vast areas of regulation. We all recognise that an effective and efficient market is a well regulated market. Our aim is better regulation. Efficient regulation also means no more regulation than is needed, but that is where many of the most difficult issues come up. How much regulation does one need? How efficiently and effectively is it maintained? That is the area that we clearly need to discuss further.

I was interested that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, regarded the Ten Commandments as regulation. I rather regarded them as commandments, which is a stronger term. Leviticus and Deuteronomy, where one gets into dietary laws and cleanliness, are where one gets into the regulatory parts of the Old Testament. Again, that is a matter that we might discuss further.

I was interested that the noble Lord sees the Clean Air Act as being in the very distant past. When I was in my first job as a junior lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1967, if I left my papers on my desk on a Friday, I had to blow the smuts off on the Monday. It is not that long ago that we were still cleaning up the air, particularly in northern cities. I think it was probably in the late 1980s that I got off the train in Leeds and realised that I could actually see the hills in the distance. That was a mark that the air in Leeds had at last started to become clean again after probably about 150 years.

The constant message from all those who have spoken is that we have to be concerned about unanticipated consequences. I recognise that that is where we have to provide the best reassurance that we can and, in particular, to provide reassurance that those involved in the consultations that have already taken place have done their very best to consider what those consequences could be.

To start with, and before I answer any of the questions, perhaps I may set out as clearly as I can my understanding of the purposes of this clause. The purpose of the duty for non-economic regulators to have regard to economic growth—or the “growth duty”, which we have all been discussing—is to give regulators a statutory obligation to carry out their primary duty of protection in a way which does not undermine economic growth but is supportive of it, if possible.

The draft guidance, published in January, makes it clear that the growth duty will not override, undermine or cut across powers of protection; nor does it compromise the independence of regulators. It provides examples of ways in which regulators can have regard to growth without compromising protections. For example, they can: first, keep administrative burdens to a minimum; secondly, be proportionate in their decision-making; and, thirdly, understand the business environment and tailor regulatory activities accordingly.

This guidance is subject to the approval of each House of Parliament, and those who are subject to the growth duty are under a requirement to have regard to it. The growth duty does not permit regulators to ignore illegal behaviour—with particular reference to the Gambling Commission—nor does it diminish the responsibilities of businesses to comply with the law. The Government recognise that an environment where legitimate business is trusted and where protections are in place is a key factor in facilitating economic growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, particularly made clear.

It is not appropriate for government to dictate how the growth duty should rank in relation to other duties and factors which regulators also need to consider. Some regulators will rank it higher than others for unavoidable reasons. Regulators are best placed to weigh up the desirability of economic growth against each of the other factors that they must consider and to tailor their approach accordingly. It will be for each regulator to use their expertise in deciding how much weight to afford to each factor in their decision-making. I hope that that makes it clear that we do not intend to compromise the independence of regulators.

A third of the regulatory bodies that were consulted replied that they already considered that they did take account of the need to promote and to have regard to economic growth in their interpretation of their duties, so we are talking about a tweaking of the range of functions concerned, not a revolution.

Listening to the debate, I was thinking that I might have a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, as a former head of the Food Standards Agency, about the effect of tightening up the control of slaughterhouses some years ago in north Yorkshire on the reduction in the number of slaughterhouses. I know the area well because I walk there a lot and have done quite a lot of politics there. There was a much larger reduction in the number of slaughterhouses than I am told had been intended, and it had a very adverse effect on what one might call the home production of quality food by specialist producers. That is a good example of where, if they had thought about the importance of food exporting from farm industries in north Yorkshire, they might have paid attention to a slightly different interpretation of the regulation. I am not an expert on this and perhaps I might come for a tutorial with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, at a later stage, but that is the sort of thing that we are looking at.

[Lord Rooker]

There is no need for that, because the story is that those slaughterhouses were not paying their proper costs. The fact is that the taxpayer subsidises the meat industry because neither Government have allowed the Food Standards Agency to reclaim its costs for checking the abattoirs. In that case, the smaller ones were paying a disproportionate amount for regulation—which is governed by Europe, by the way, as most of our food is—so it is probably to do with collecting the fees that they were required to pay for inspections. In that part of the sector there are charges and the FSA is not allowed to collect its full costs. Full cost recovery does not apply because Governments of both parties have not wanted to challenge the meat industry.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification; I was sure he would know the answer. I thank him for his extremely helpful contribution.

The duty will, I stress, complement existing duties and will not override or cut across regulators’ other powers of protection. The growth duty requires regulators to consider growth when carrying out their regulatory functions, so environmental and other issues that I mentioned will not be overruled by this. I should say in passing that when I saw the noble Lord’s amendment I was immensely impressed. My first instinct was to wonder whether we could add a government amendment to the amendment to add four or five additional things that people should take into account.

Those who have been regulators, such as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, would probably say that a good regulator takes into account a wide range of issues and then attempts to strike the best balance among them. We also accept that, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said in moving the amendment, the issue of how much risk, if any, one is prepared to accept in regulation is one of the most difficult issues in regulatory powers. You cannot guarantee that you can ever provide a situation of nil risk, but the question of how far away from nil you are prepared to move is one of the most difficult issues.

I am not sure that I can answer absolutely all the questions that have been asked about specific agencies, but again I am very happy to discuss this further off the Floor. However, on the question of responses to the consultation, a wide variety of respondents welcomed the growth duty. Many businesses and trade associations said that the first priority of regulators should be protection and that the growth duty should be added but should not take precedence over others, and we have taken that into account. I have already remarked that over one-third said they considered that regulators already had regard to growth. Respondents cited a variety of ways in which regulators could support growth. These include co-ordinating, providing more targeted advice, being generally risk-based and proportionate, and helping businesses to achieve compliance. I also mentioned that a care to avoid duplication of regulation—particularly the sort of regulation that asks businesses for information—is one of the areas that we wish to look at. The growth duty should make a difference in precisely those areas where there is duplication and where regulators have not thought about the growth dimension, but again we are not suggesting that this is a revolution—this is a modest change of balance.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked whether the growth duty would have teeth. The answer is that, as with all other aspects that regulators take into account, businesses will have the chance to challenge a regulator which has not had regard to one of the dimensions of their task. They can challenge them though the regulator’s own internal mechanisms or statutory appeal mechanisms. They can, if necessary, challenge the enforcement decisions in court and, in the last resort, they can pursue judicial review if a regulator has failed to apply the duty, or applied it in a way that is clearly unreasonable. Again, we do not expect or anticipate that that would be a frequent dimension.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rosser]

The Minister has accepted that Clause 83 may lead to additional legal action. I appreciate that he attempted to dismiss it by saying that it would not happen very often but, if we are talking about businesses, the pockets of some of them that might think about taking legal proceedings in relation to Clause 83 may be somewhat deeper than those of the regulatory bodies. First, how would the Government intend to address that situation to ensure that a regulatory body did not feel that it could not contest proceedings for fear that it might lose them and find itself paying quite considerable bills? Secondly, as I understood it, the Minister said that the provisions of Clause 83 should not carry any greater weight than any other requirements on a regulatory authority or any other issues that it should take into account. Is it the Government’s intention to write that into the Bill?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Government’s position is that the guidance plus the statutory instruments, which Clauses 84 and 85 deal with—I recognise that we are in effect discussing all four of these clauses on the basis of this amendment—will be sufficient. However, that is also a matter which we are prepared to discuss between Committee and Report to make sure that we can agree a satisfactory level of what needs to be in the Bill, in guidance and in further regulations or statutory instruments as we go through.

[Lord Rosser]

What about the question of financing any legal action taken against a regulator or authority, bearing in mind that it could involve some quite large businesses whose pockets would certainly be deeper than those of the regulator?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I shall take that back, too, and we will discuss it between Committee and Report. I hope that I have managed to answer a number of questions. I recognise the concerns that have been expressed. We have a well operating system of regulation in the United Kingdom. The question of balance between good regulation, better regulation, sufficient regulation and efficient regulation is something around which a great deal of hard politics revolves. All of us who read the Daily Mail as loyally as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and I do know that its constant campaign against all health and safety regulations is one end of the spectrum, but the other end of the spectrum is the overregulation that we all also have to be concerned about. That is going to be a continuing basis of politics, and this clause aims to strike the right balance.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Does the Minister accept that his Prime Minister is also at the Daily Mail end of the spectrum?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I could not possibly comment. I do not begin to think that the Prime Minister accepts the Daily Mail approach to health and safety. He knows as well as everyone else that there is always a difficult balance to be struck in this area. I am well aware that there are a number of things, from his own personal experience, that the Prime Minister feels very strongly about in terms of proper provision of public services and proper regulation.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

On that point, surely it is not right to say that everyone else knows that. The Daily Mail does not know that and, unfortunately, it tends to say to a lot of other people that they should not know that either. I just think that we ought to remind ourselves that the common sense that he and the Prime Minister put forward is rather important.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Writing common sense into law is one of the most difficult things that we all spend our time on, however.

[Baroness Thornton]

I was not particularly surprised at the Minister’s response on the CQC. Given that we know that the CQC cannot answer the Opposition’s questions about this, why would we be surprised to hear that the CQC said that it is fine? The Department of Health has said that it has to say that it is fine. We now know that it is being told what to do by the department, which is worrying. As for the questions I asked, which are those that need to be asked in order to test this legislation, the Minister cannot tell me that those questions have been asked and what the answers were, and we therefore need to pursue that further.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all very conscious that we are talking about a range of regulatory bodies which, as has already been said, have different relationships with Governments. Some are entirely independent, some are agencies of departments, and that is part of the universe with which we need to deal. I have already offered to discuss this between Committee and Report and I recognise, as I have already said, the concerns which have been expressed in this debate.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

The Minister has said that there is a possibility of further discussion between now and Report, but will he nevertheless undertake to arrange for written answers to be available to each of those questions in advance of that meeting? In order to make sure that nothing slips from people’s view, it would be very helpful if he would commit to getting us written answers where we have asked for them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I shall do my best to ensure that written answers are provided to the very large number of questions that have been posed in this debate about a substantial number of different agencies. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

Before my noble friend gets up, as we are in Committee, and as the Minister has been very open in wanting to discuss issues that my noble friends have raised, I shall raise another for him, which I failed to do when I was at the FSA. Let us take all these regulators here. They are all a pinprick on the main department by which they either get funded or are attached to. They are not really the big player; they are a very small part of each function of a government department. As such, they never really get any parliamentary scrutiny. The issue arose when I arrived at the FSA in 2009, because at no time since 2000 had it ever been called before a Select Committee to look at what it does on the tin—the business plan or the forward plan, the strategic plan or the general plan. The Health Committee deals with doctors, nurses and hospitals, the sexy political bit of policy. I raised the issue with the Leaders of both Houses of Parliament. Because it is the non-politically sexy part that is ignored by MPs, it is ideal for this House.

I suggested after talking to people that this House should have a Select Committee on regulators; maybe every three years, every regulator would get in front of a Select Committee, not because something has gone wrong, in which case the regulator would certainly come before the departmental committee, but to check that it is doing what it says on the tin, to be asked about function, finance, forward and business and plans, and for some of them the science base. It would give them a raison d’être to know that they are actually accountable to Parliament—because that is the reality; at the end of the day, they are. But I was told, “Oh, we don’t want any more Select Committees”. As I say, I raised it with the Leaders of both Houses, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and Sir George Young, who was Leader and then retired and came back as Chief Whip.

I still think that there is a missing function for this House, in that regard, because it does not compete with the other place; all the big issues are dealt with by the departmental Select Committees, but they will never run the rule over the regulators, particularly when there are no problems, when they are carrying out their normal regulatory function. But once in a while—say, every three years—it would be quite useful for them to come for a couple of hours or an hour and a half before a committee to explain what they are doing and why and how they are doing it. In going back to have a think about things with the powers that be, perhaps this should be thought about, because it is a genuine issue of parliamentary accountability.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very interesting point but very wide of the amendment under discussion. I am very happy to discuss that also with the noble Lord off the Floor. Perhaps I could add that the pre-legislative scrutiny committee thought that the clause was a useful part of the Bill. So in recognising all the critical comments that have been made by the opposite side, we are pleased that the committee examined this and thought that it was a valuable addition to a Deregulation Bill. Having made all those comments, and looking forward to further discussions, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank all who have participated in this debate. I can respond immediately to the point that has just been made. Our concern about these clauses is not about their existence but about their unintended consequences. The general view is that regulators should do their business in a way that aids society. The vehicle here for society is growth, but forget that—what we are talking about is getting regulators to have a wider concern for society. That is not contested; what is contested is whether the wording is safe and does not have grave unintended consequences. As I said at the beginning, and as the debate has proved in its sheer volume, depth and complexity, these clauses go to the essence of regulation, which is so important.

I very much thank the Minister for his offer to have discussions off the Floor. I think we will probably have to have discussions about discussions first, because we would have to try to bring some focus to those discussions. Clearly, with the CQC, we would particularly like its representatives in one form or another to try to explain how these growth clauses might affect it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, when I first stood up today, I realised that I should have apologised to the Committee. I unintentionally misled the Committee the other day when I said that industry interests had not lobbied on the question of liqueur chocolates. I apologise because, on checking back, I discovered that there had indeed been some conversations in that regard. I trust that that corrects the record.

I am impressed by the youth of my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. I first met my noble friend Lord Deben in the winter of 1959-60 when we were undergraduates. The noble Lord is a mere stripling compared with my noble friend Lord Deben and me.

The issue at stake is simply whether one need include this body in an exceptional way in the Bill or whether this can be dealt with under secondary legislation. The noble Lord will be well aware that listing inclusions and exemptions in a Bill is not generally regarded as appropriate because primary legislation would then need to be amended each time a regulatory function were changed or created.

No specific regulatory functions of any other named body are listed in the Bill and the Government’s argument is that it is not necessary to do so in relation to the regulatory functions of the EHRC. The regulatory functions to which the growth duty is to apply will be set out in secondary legislation subject to the affirmative procedure to enable proper parliamentary scrutiny. Before any secondary legislation is made bringing the non-economic regulatory functions into the scope of the growth duty, the Minister must consult any person exercising functions to be specified in the order and such other persons whom the Minister considers appropriate. This consultation should provide enough opportunity for scrutiny, making it unnecessary to include this in the Bill. Naming a particular regulator or function in the Bill would also not allow the necessary flexibility for any new functions to be included.

I have some experience and some past expertise on the operations of international organisations. I know the speed at which they move, and I do not think that the delay between the passage of this Bill and the passage of the secondary legislation would jeopardise the position of the EHRC. I assure my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Baroness that it is absolutely the Government’s intention that this will not be included in the Bill. I hope that that assurance is sufficient to reassure my noble friend and on that basis I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, at this stage, I certainly will withdraw the amendment. I fear sometimes that my noble friend, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, takes responsibility for so long that the iron enters his soul. The truth is that on the international stage, people do not read the fine print. The rumours get about and a status can be undermined. I will discuss with my co-sponsor and will consult with the commission and others in your Lordships’ House who are not here today who have this concern. Although I will withdraw the amendment now, unless I get some good advice to the contrary this amendment will come back on Report with a great deal of support on the Floor of the House.

I say to the noble Baroness that I fully acknowledge the origins of the commission. I hope that when the history of events around 2010 comes to be written, my role in the commission’s survival will not be considered ignoble. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

I never thought that I would be taking issue with my noble friend Lord Rooker. I followed him as a Minister and found that we sometimes contradicted each other in minor ways, but having arrived in time for this amendment I want to make some cautionary statements about putting a growth duty on the inspectorate. There is a growth duty on the inspectorate, in effect, in the sense that there is a presumption for development in the planning system. That presumption for development is really important because planning inspectors have to arrive at a balance in their decisions. That is why we invest them with such authority. They are the arbiters of various pressures that go into deciding what is a good and sustainable development and what is harmful development.

There are ways of determining what is harmful development, for example, in relation to the financial, physical and historical environment. What worries me about my noble friend’s amendment is that if we were to put a growth duty specifically on to the planning inspectorate, we might disturb the ecology of the ability of the planning inspector to make such a balanced judgment. In the National Planning Policy Framework, we worked very hard to get the balance right. I could not agree more with my noble friend about the need for housing—my goodness, it is an open and shut case—but the presumption for development needs to be balanced against those protections that are absolutely essential to maintaining the other things that we need in this country, which is a care for open spaces; he is a great advocate of that. From my point of view, it is also about care for the historic fabric of this country, and we have the historic protections that are there explicitly to be taken into account to protect against significant harm.

I know that my noble friend says it is a probing amendment but we need to be really careful about putting explicit duties on to the planning inspectorate, which could damage its ability to make balanced judgments. Decisions do have to be made.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on getting this within the scope of the Bill. I recognise exactly the motivation as we are facing more delays in getting our housing industry going again than we ever anticipated. It is deeply frustrating for all parties, and anything that one can do to give an extra push in the right direction is desirable.

My speaking note points out, however, that the majority of the planning inspectorate’s functions do not fall within the definition of “regulatory functions” in the Bill. Further work would be required to establish whether the functions of the planning inspectorate which do fall within that definition are non-economic in nature and could be brought into scope. If the Government consider in the future that the planning inspectorate regulatory functions could be subject to the duty they will consult on the proposal to include those functions before a final decision is made. That is a rather po-faced answer to a very determined intervention. I think that the answer to the noble Lord is that we should all encourage him to keep pushing in this direction on all occasions. We all share his view to get housing construction going again, but this may not be the most appropriate Bill in which to give it that particular push. On that basis I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.

Relevant Document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

Motion agreed.

Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.

Relevant document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak also to the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014 and the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.

The Committee will be aware that individual electoral registration was successfully introduced on 10 June in England and Wales and on 19 September in Scotland. For the first time ever, people in Great Britain can apply online to register to vote. To date, some 67% of the 3 million people who have applied under IER have done so online. The draft instruments before the Committee today will make some further refinements designed to improve the operation of IER.

As noble Lords will remember, this is one of a long series of statutory instruments in this process. The process is being taken through with considerable care. Our aim is to ensure that the largest possible number are registered as we make the transition and that the integrity of the register is maintained as we do so. So far, the process has gone well. The matching process has been more successful than we expected, but we are concerned to maximise the number all the way through and we will be maintaining our efforts until the next election and beyond.

The Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014 will establish a pilot scheme, enabling information about entries in electoral registers in 24 areas in England, Wales and Scotland to be compared with information held by the Secretary of State for Transport about individuals’ driving records and vehicle registration documents. The current IER system involves matching data against DWP records, and we are keen to see if there are other public data sets that could be used as well to increase the completeness of the electoral register. The order will require participating EROs to disclose their registers to be matched, including the use of the IER digital service, against name, address and, where held, date of birth information to be provided by the Department for Transport and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Committee may recall noble Lords’ support for using DVLA data during the passage of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act, and will be pleased to see this practical scheme to pilot the use of this data. In 2011 a small-scale pilot indicated that using DVLA data, in addition to the match with DWP data, might increase the confirmation rate by a further 10%. The pilot scheme established by this order will test whether DVLA data will indeed add significantly to the confirmation match rate. The scheme will also allow for the piloting of data matching using DVLA data to identify potentially eligible individuals who are not currently registered. The pilot scheme will end on 30 June 2015.

I have heard, anecdotally, that people—particularly young men—who move very frequently do not on the whole bother to inform the state agencies with which they interact of their new address, including not reregistering with doctors. However, we are told that they do ensure that their driving licence is up to date and the right address is on it, so the DVLA data may help us in teasing out one of the under-registered groups in the population: young, unmarried men living in rented accommodation.

The Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014 and the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No.2) Regulations 2014 will enable Crown servants and British Council employees living abroad to register online. The current electoral registration process for Crown servants and British Council employees relies on a paper-based declaration sent via the individual’s organisation, as well as an application to register. This means that these individuals cannot currently apply wholly online. The changes set out in the draft regulations enable them to do so. The figures that I have already given showing the high percentage of people who have registered online in recent months suggest that it would be very advantageous to enable them to do so. The regulations also replace the requirement to send the declaration via the employer, with a requirement for people, as part of their declaration, to supply their staff number or payroll number. The electoral registration officer will then be able to check with the employer that the applicant is entitled to register by virtue of a declaration.

In addition, EROs will be required where necessary to send a second reminder to people, such as overseas electors or service voters who are registered by virtue of a declaration, that their declaration is about to expire. Noble Lords may recall that in May the House approved regulations that disapplied the follow-up process for overseas and service voters, and may wonder why we are now being asked to apply it again. The answer is that we are not proposing to reinstate the previous process that would have required EROs, after the expiry of the declaration, to send an invitation to register to special category electors, followed up by two reminder letters and, theoretically, a visit by a canvasser. That process would have been expensive and impractical in the case of many special category electors, and it is right that it is no longer a mandatory requirement. Instead we are introducing a requirement for EROs to send just one further reminder to those special category electors whose declaration has not yet expired but which is about to do so. I am told that in a large number of cases, online addresses are available and it will be possible to do this online. This is a relatively simple step to take, without the need for the more protracted subsequent process that we rightly removed earlier in the year. The regulations also make minor updates to statutory references to registration appeals.

The Scottish regulations will also extend to Scotland one of the provisions on data sharing by local authorities for electoral registration purposes that were introduced for England and Wales in May. These allowed for the disclosure to an ERO of information contained in records held by the authority by which he or she was appointed, provided that a written agreement was in place between the authority and the ERO as to the processing of the information.

The different local government structure in Scotland rendered a provision for two-tier area data sharing, as set out in the legislation introduced for England and Wales, unnecessary. At quite a late stage in the drafting of the England and Wales legislation it was decided to provide additionally that the ERO’s own local authority may disclose its data to the ERO, provided that a written agreement was in place covering the use of the data. It appeared that such a change might also be relevant to Scotland but we undertook to consult EROs and local government organisations in Scotland about that before we sought to legislate. That has now been done. Here, therefore, is the regulation.

The Electoral Commission is content with the provisions of these instruments and the Information Commissioner did not consider that they raised any new or significant data protection or privacy issues. The three statutory instruments before the Committee will each play a part in the continued successful implementation of individual electoral registration in Great Britain, and I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak particularly to the second statutory instrument in the group, which relates to the pilot scheme to which my noble friend referred in the early part of his remarks. He quite rightly—and I welcome this—spoke of the whole context of this transition to IER. Those of us with the battle scars of a number of debates in Grand Committee over many years, going back to the previous Government—IER was a previous Administration’s initiative—will recall that this context has caused quite a bit of controversy, and rightly so because, as he emphasised, the register is a critical foundation stone of our whole representative democracy. The present Government, the coalition Government, have not changed the transition in any substantial way but accelerated the process. So my noble friend has rightly referred to the extent to which the Government are determined—I think the phrase he used was that they intend to take “considerable care” in how this transition proceeds. It is in that context that these orders are so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their helpful and intelligent comments. I start by reminding them that in another area of the Cabinet Office, we are much concerned with data sharing, digital privacy and the whole question of public and private data. Concerns about data privacy have been one of our inhibitions about moving in this area. Unfortunately we have not managed so far to bring forward a Bill to harmonise and update the laws which apply to different government departments on their collection and maintenance of data, many of which were put into effect long before cloud computing and two or three generations back in terms of the use of computers. The terms under which some government departments hold data are significantly different from those of other departments. I am sure I do not need to tell noble Lords that the sensitivities of the privacy organisations are such that we move with care in data matching, certainly in disclosure, both between different central government departments and between local authorities and central government departments. This is one reason why we have moved with all deliberate speed on this, using, first of all, the DWP database and moving on from there to the DVLA database. When we started out on this process there was some hesitation within the Department for Transport as to the terms under which the DVLA database ought to be made available for these purposes. We are in a very sensitive area in terms of data privacy and data sharing.

[Lord Tyler]

Before my noble friend leaves that point, is he saying that there was actually some legislative, statutory problem with the DVLA which did not apply to the DWP? If so, I totally understand the delay, but three years of delay because of some administrative, bureaucratic decision making within the Department for Transport is more depressing. I accept that good progress has been made and I hope my noble friend has not taken my contribution as being in any way negative about the overall process. However, this particular episode is not a very happy one since we were raising these issues more than three years ago.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, makes a very fair point. We are all looking back with care: we understand that we have to be right and proper, but it comes with a bit of a spring in your step at the same time. There is a question of care and there is also just not moving very quickly. I think we need to get on with it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We understand that but I stress that there are other major issues. I happen to have been involved in some of the discussions about changing the system of legal protection for government collection and sharing of data. Noble Lords may remember that there were discussions early in the coalition Government’s period of office about whether or not we could do without the census next time round because all the material collected in the census is actually collected by the Government in the process of normal procedures, year by year. Some of the data are collected by local authorities, such as those about children going to primary school, which is one of the best indicators of the changing social and ethnic basis of a local community. If we were able to put all the data together, much of what we get from the 10-yearly census would be provided. However, if we put all of that material together—including health records and NHS data—we would be in an area in which ordinary citizens and those concerned with data privacy begin to be extremely upset. This is part of the reason why the good progress we made with the DWP data gave us a feeling that we could move along in that way. We are now extending this by looking at the DVLA data. I am told that the pilot will start in December or early January and should be completed by 31 March. It will not be too late for late registration for some of these people. As I said in my opening speech, I stress that access to the DVLA database is not merely a matter of matching but also of discovering people who are entitled to be on the register but who are not registered. The unmarried young men category in particular, which we are all familiar with as a weak area, would enable us to make the electoral register more complete.

Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that Experian has a symbiotic relationship with the electoral register because it uses it for a great many things. If you are not on the electoral register, you are often not on the Experian database. Another area we are concerned about is the overlap between public and private databases. When discussing the issue with various people who are concerned about it, I have explained that there is no clear boundary between some public and private databases. For example, when I renew my car tax online, the first thing the DVLA does is check the private insurance database to ensure that my car is insured. That is an example of the public going to the private and coming back. These are all part of what is changing as public and private databases become much easier. The Government—whichever Government they may be—hope that an enormous amount of time, effort and money will be saved by moving more and more of these kinds of data online.

The problem is that this has huge implications for individual privacy and we have to be concerned about it. When talking in Bradford nearly two years ago about why so many people are not on the register, I was told vigorously by local councillors and officials that those people do not want to be registered. They do not want the state to know who they are and where they are. That is part of the issue here.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

The noble Lord is absolutely right on the point about the merging of public and private databases, and indeed it is the point I was trying to make. So much information about people is now being held by Experian and a host of other bodies that I cannot believe it is beyond the Government to talk to Experian and others, saying, “We are not looking for people’s medical records or driving licences. What we are after is the data matching that is taking place for you being provided to local authorities. They can then see that in a certain street there are three people who are not on the register but they do actually exist. We know that because we have their bank details and driving licence particulars and we know where they shop”. All we would ask for is that Experian should give the council the name and address; it is as simple as that. I get the privacy point, but my worry is that we will end up with fewer people on the register than we have ever had before, and that is a terrible place to be. I think that the Government should do everything possible to make sure that that does not happen.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I would mark that after the next election, we will have a major debate and a draft Bill on the question of data sharing. If we were to access the Google and Amazon databases, I am sure that that would go a good deal further to identifying those who are not on the register, but the Government do not have the legal right to do so, and again, it raises huge questions of privacy.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who raised the question of an additional door-to-door canvass in the spring of 2015. When I visited the ERO for Wandsworth a couple of years ago—I should mention that the Wandsworth ERO is a member of the Government’s consultative panel—he told me that given the mix of sheltered social housing and new apartment blocks at the top end of the market, the borough of Wandsworth now has some 25,000 homes that are behind locked doors. The problem of gated accommodation, which all of us who deliver leaflets are painfully aware of, is making it more and more difficult to conduct the door-to-door canvass that we used to think was such an important part of the exercise. That is why we have to do all these supplementary things as far as we can. We intend to complete a door-to-door canvass as far as possible, but that is becoming much more difficult as we go on.

I will have to write to the noble Lord about precisely who was on the advisory panel of EROs. I have met a number of EROs during the last three years of the process, and have much enjoyed talking to them about the particular issues with which they are concerned. I will happily write on that.

There were a number of other questions. Why has it taken us so long to get round to data matching? I have explained that DWP records actually took us a very long way, and we are now seeing what we can do to gain further completeness. I was asked whether it was a cross-section of 24 areas—incidentally, it is 24 areas but 21 electoral registration officers, because in Scotland the electoral registration system covers several local authority areas. The areas range from Harrow, Southwark and Trafford to the City of Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Coventry and Newport—a fairly good mixture. I have marked one or two areas which have a high concentration of students and several inner-city areas. It includes the City of Edinburgh, for example, as well as Stratford-on-Avon. It is a pretty good cross-section of the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, rightly keeps pressing us—as I hope he will continue to—on how confident we are that we will come out with a higher rate of registration than before. I can say only that we are continuing to work towards that objective. We have made some extra funds available to local authorities for this and we are now considering whether further additional funds would be helpful. From what has happened in the last two or three elections, we all know that late registration produces a great boon. We will not know how successful we have been probably until the middle of April 2015, because a lot of the target groups will not have got round to filling in their online forms until the campaign is upon them.

The Government will continue to stress the importance of registering and of people being involved. We are working with a number of non-governmental organisations. I spoke at a Bite the Ballot conference a couple of months ago. Bite the Ballot is working very hard, as are a number of other organisations, with particular vulnerable groups—in its case, young people. However, it is a matter for all of us, in all political parties and beyond, to keep up the momentum as we approach the election of saying that it is very important that you register to vote and that you do vote. That is the final dimension of trying to capture the maximum number of people.

I have two other things to add about the overseas dimension.

[Lord Tyler]

I am sure, from the long experience that my noble friend will acknowledge, that the best possible way to get people to register and to vote is to have a very close election, as was demonstrated in Scotland, of course. When I got a majority of nine, I managed a turnout of 83% on a very wet and cold night in Cornwall. When my majority went up, the turnout went down. I do not know how he can achieve a close result in every constituency in the country, but that is the ideal way to get a good turnout next May.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will not have to organise the next election. Many of us fear that it will be very disorganised in this respect and that the competition among four or five parties nationally, which will quite often be a competition between different pairs of parties in different constituencies, may make for an extremely confusing election campaign. I spoke at an annual general meeting in Yorkshire and said that I thought we were going to have what would feel much more like a series of by-elections across the entire country. It will be very different constituency by constituency when it comes to it, but let us hope that it does raise the interest.

On the question of overseas voters—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again. I know one or two local authorities. One of them is Manchester, where there has been a catastrophic drop-off in some areas in terms of registration, and that needs addressing. I also know of a local chief executive who was embarrassed to tell us that he sent letters out saying, “You haven’t been matched”, only to get one himself. He lives in the borough that he is the ERO for, and he himself had not been matched. He is not someone who has moved around very often; he has lived in the borough for many years and I assume that he has a bank account and stuff, but he did not match at all. There are one or two places where there has been a catastrophic drop-off. That is really bad. Perhaps the Minister could get his officials to talk to some of these local authorities. In certain pockets there are problems bubbling away.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We are well aware that one of the reasons why the electoral registration business is a local one is that the pattern varies so much from one place to another. The debate now going on about whether additional funds should be made available would of course be concentrated in those areas that have found the greatest difficulties. Again, we are well aware of that.

I will just pick the noble Lord up on one of the things he said. He said that we have never had an overrepresentation problem in the UK. I think I would agree with him that we have never had an overrepresentation problem in Great Britain, but those of us who know something about Ulster politics know that there have been interesting issues in Ulster over the past 50 years.

We are exploring further measures to increase student registration ahead of the general election. We are, for example, looking at emerging evidence from pilots undertaken in Sheffield and Manchester that tested the scope for integrating electoral registration with university enrolment. A lot of these things are under way but we do not quite know where we are.

On the question of overseas voters, we will be having a debate on this next week so we will return to it then. Overseas registration, as I think noble Lords will know, is an extreme example of the extent to which the number of voters registered more than doubles in the run-up to a general election and then falls off afterwards, so again we may anticipate that. The extent to which we can encourage more overseas voters on to the register will be assisted by this measure because the easier it is to register online, the more that overseas voters are likely to do so. I hope that I have answered all the questions and points that have been made, and I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014.

Relevant documents: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

Motion agreed.