Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Dobbs

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, as always it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and particularly so on his birthday. I should like to take this opportunity to wish him many happy returns. I am surprised, though, that in his interesting history of the previous Government’s legislation in this area he omitted to mention that the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer referred, was agreed as being the best way forward by the Conservative Front Bench in opposition and by the Liberal Democrat Benches in opposition. We have still not had any explanation of why that agreement has been ditched and we have to spend the time of this House and the other place on this new legislation. Perhaps he will return to that in due course and explain to those of us who are still mystified by it exactly why that was the case.

I support these amendments, which have been so ably spoken to by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. They all go to mitigate what many of us think are the risks of a decline in levels of registration as a result of this legislation. There is no certainty that the levels will decline, but we feel that there is a risk of that. We do not know whether the Government agree because so far they have studiously avoided saying whether they think there is any risk, but what we do know is that they are commendably committed to a comprehensive register. They have said that many times and I think we all agree on that. We also know that, again commendably, they are bringing forward a number of measures to that end, and they have the support of almost everyone in the House for those measures. But what we have also learnt is that they seem to feel that a level of registration of 85% to 87%—in other words where there would be 6 million people who would be eligible to vote but who would not be on the register—is a level of completeness that, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in an email to me, is, “as complete as is reasonably possible”. That at least indicates that they think there is some considerable difficulty in achieving a truly comprehensive register. We do not know exactly why the Government will not say whether they think there is any risk of a decline in levels of registration as a result of this legislation. It may be because they actually think that there is no such risk but that it would be imprudent for a Government to commit themselves in that way. It may be that they have done some work which shows that there are considerable risks inherent in the legislation, but again they do not want to tell us.

Governments are not infallible. Amendment 36, which I particularly support, offers Parliament the opportunity to assess the Government’s record in this area. This amendment would commit not only this Government but subsequent Governments. This Government may not be in power after 2015 so this amendment would commit a future Labour Government to bring before Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise levels of registration and, if necessary, to produce remedial measures. I think Parliament should have that opportunity.

This is not a minor technical matter, although some of the details are technical; it is about the very wiring of our democracy. The outcome of general elections depends on electoral registration. There are worries on this side of the House that this legislation, coupled with the PVSC Act, will lead to partisan outcomes in levels of electoral registration. These are important issues and Parliament ought to have the opportunity to scrutinise them regularly.

The Minister may say that the Electoral Commission will do its usual good job in bringing forward annual reports on the state of electoral registration and then it may be for Parliament to discuss the matter if it so wishes, but I hope that the Minister will not rely on such an argument. That would be to downplay the importance of this issue and the risks inherent in this legislation. I hope that the Government can agree with what is actually a modest amendment and allow Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise levels of registration on an annual basis.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wills. I always listen very carefully to what he says but on this occasion I must take a rather different view of him. The cat was rather let out of the bag this morning by the BBC, which said that many Members of this House, and indeed the other place, regard this Bill as being a partisan, party-political Bill—a conspiracy on the part of the Conservative Party to extract maximum electoral advantage. This Government have been accused of many things but being part of a Conservative Party conspiracy to extract maximum electoral advantage is not a characteristic that they display daily.

Clearly the Bill is of considerable importance. It gives more effective meaning to the principle of “one voter, one vote”. It is just too important to be played for party-political advantage. Indeed, from my point of view, it stands alongside redistribution of boundaries in ensuring that elections are fair and balanced. Surely it is no fault of this side of the House—at least this party—that at the next election the principle of “one voter, one equal vote” may not apply, although I live in hope that my colleagues in the coalition may yet see the way to a liberal dose of common sense and just a smidgen of consistency even on that issue.

Of course, the important question is: how do we measure the success of this Bill? I share the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and other noble Lords that numbers are falling as a result of the current system of electoral registration. Figures of 3 million or 6 million missing voters have been mentioned. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, mentioned 7 million, which is a figure that I had not seen before, but I suspect that voters are rather like those pesky badgers: every time you turn around there are more of them than you thought.

The noble Lord, Lord Wills, is right that everyone who has a right to vote should have a vote. It is that simple, yet surely it is not just a matter of numbers, which he concentrated on; it is also a matter of accuracy—that those numbers should be the right numbers. So many of the amendments that have been put down to this Bill emphasise completeness rather than accuracy; for instance, Amendment 36 talks about the Electoral Commission producing,

“a report on the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register”,

but it goes on to emphasise that what it is really interested in are “variations in registration rates”.

The current system is wide open to abuse. There has been a huge recent increase in postal votes on demand, which has opened up much scope for fraud. The problem is going to grow with the increasing growth in the private rented sector. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the Constitution Committee have implied that fraud is rare. However, I go back to stating that proven cases of electoral fraud are rare but of course it is incredibly difficult to prove that electoral fraud has taken place. Whether such abuse happens is not entirely the point. Our electoral system should be made as secure as possible. My concerns are not entirely hypothetical, as we can all quote cases of politicians of all political colours who have been convicted recently—

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Dobbs

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I think most would agree that there is merit in the arguments on both sides of the debate on whether the term of Parliament should be fixed. However, if there is merit in the argument for the term being fixed at five years, it is merit that passed by both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats until the coalition agreement enlightened them. Nearly a year after that agreement, Ministers have still not managed to find a way of articulating that case persuasively.

The Government’s proposition is that they have a mandate for this proposal—this was one of the arguments used by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, on Second Reading—because an appetite for political reform was manifested at the last general election. That is a questionable proposition, to put it at its politest, because it conflates an arguable general distrust and dislike of politicians with a wish for a specific proposal for a five-year fixed term for Parliament. The Government’s argument that five years is somehow part of our political culture—the Deputy Prime Minister has made this argument—ignores inconvenient facts about the average length of post-war Parliaments. Of the last seven Parliaments, for example, four have lasted for about four years and three for five years. Moreover, the proposition, which Ministers have also advanced, that the Parliament Act somehow supports this proposal confuses setting a maximum term with fixing a norm. Then, of course, there is the selective quoting of international examples, nearly always in discussions of constitutional reform—a refuge for the intellectually desperate.

Does it matter that the Government have so inadequately made the case for a fixed term of five years? I think it does. This is not a matter of a finely balanced judgment one way or another, with there being really nothing very much to choose between a four-year term and a five-year term. Of course there is an element of judgment in these things, but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, so eloquently set out, the overwhelming weight of expert opinion is in favour of four years. Anything longer inevitably—logically, inevitably—delays the calling to account of the Executive, and it creates an accumulating democratic deficit.

In the absence of any persuasive arguments for a five-year term, this flaw is toxic. It is particularly toxic because of the process by which this Bill has been brought before Parliament and the damaging perception that this has created the motivation behind the selection of five years as the fixed term for Parliament. Due process and perceptions of motivation matter especially for constitutional legislation because they can create public trust in the integrity of our constitutional arrangements or they can destroy it. A constitution which does not command the trust and respect of the citizens it serves is a constitution without value.

So what has been the process for this Bill? There has been no manifesto commitment to its key detail or any compelling argument for it. There has not been a Green Paper, a White Paper or public consultation. The process has consisted simply of ramming this hastily and poorly drafted Bill through Parliament as quickly as the business managers can get it through. This creates a perception which has been widely voiced. I am very grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for telling the House about the account given in Mr David Laws’ history of the formation of the coalition agreement. I am sure that Mr Laws did not wish to be quite as unhelpful to his colleagues who remain in government as he has turned out to be. Nevertheless, the citizen might legitimately ask, “Why did the Government suddenly abandon a historic Liberal Democrat commitment to a fixed four-year term?”. Why would two parties which are locked in an uneasy embrace, trying to find a way to govern together that does not lead to an electoral annihilation for one or other or both of them, suddenly decide to extend the fixed term to five years?

My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer’s quote from Mr George Osborne tells us everything that we need to know about this. The Government have yet to come up with one good argument about why the motivation for this move to a five-year term is nothing more than the search for short-term, partisan, political advantage, seeking to stay in power, locked together, for as long as they possibly can. Sadly—I say sadly because I know that many Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches have long and honourable histories of espousing constitutional reform—this sort of short-term partisan manoeuvring is coming to characterise this Government’s constitutional legislation. It injects poison into the system. It creates suspicion where there should be trust and volatility where there should be stability. This really is no way to legislate for constitutional matters.

Accepting this amendment would help to neutralise this poison, but I fear that the Minister—characteristically amiably, no doubt—will try to find reasons for resisting it. I fear that the Government will ignore the reservations, which we have heard over and over again in this debate, which has gone on now for nearly one and a half hours, just as they have ignored all the other doubts about their constitutional legislation, and that they will just whip this Bill through. Despite that, I hope that the noble and learned Lord who moved this amendment will test the opinion of the House on the matter, if not now then at Report. This House should do its constitutional duty whatever view Ministers take of theirs.

[Lord Dobbs]

This House pursues this discussion with considerable passion and at times almost with an element of ferocity, which is how it should be. But I have to admit that it has left me rather confused. I have done my best to follow the arguments. Should it be four years or five years? Should it be three years and 10 months or some other figure? Statistics have been hurled around this House and given a mythical, almost mystical, significance and, at times, even an ethical significance. Some say that “this figure is right and that figure is wrong”, and not just wrong but downright wicked. It is enough to make a young chap giddy.

For better or worse, as a party official and a prime ministerial adviser, I was involved with the process of helping to choose one or two election dates in the 1880s and 90s.