Electoral Registration
Debate between Mark Durkan and Graham Allen(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Allen
One case has been proven and taken forward. I want to give a couple of other statistics, and, sadly, there are a lot more zeros in them. Some 7.5 million people were not registered to vote at the last election. That works out at about 10,000 people in each of our constituencies. In fact, in deprived areas, such as my constituency, I am damned sure that it will be more than that—so more than 10,000 of my electorate are not even registered to vote, let alone not taking up the right to vote. Of those who did register at the last election, 16.5 million people decided not to bother to vote. If we add the non-registered to the ones who did not bother to vote, it comes to more than the number of those who voted Conservative and Labour combined.
This is a scandal. I am not blaming the Government for this; I am just saying that we as a Parliament need to take this in hand. We as a Parliament need to get people to register. We need to encourage people to vote not just because the techniques are right, but because they feel engaged in their system and believe that decisions are made not just at the Whitehall level, and because they feel they own their democracy and own decision making, particularly in own locality.
The point about EVEL—English votes for English laws—has been thrown into the debate again, but that is a procedural technicality for this House, rather than a question of how we devolve power, as they do in virtually every other western democracy, to people at the grass roots, to seize the opportunity to develop their own ways in their own areas.
Mark Durkan
On the subject of English votes for English laws, does the hon. Gentleman recognise that if the Government continue with the current Act—the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011—the seat distribution to the boundary commissions in the next Parliament will be on the basis of reduced registration in England, so there could be fewer English seats in this House and more Scottish and Northern Ireland seats?
Mr Allen
Whenever a colleague in this House hears someone talking about EVEL and English votes they should be reminded that, unlike most democracies, we decide the size of our constituencies not on the number of people in them but on the number of people who are registered, and, as I have said, even at the last election 7.5 million were not registered. What a nonsense of a system that is!
I am going to give one last statistic, which is a slightly happier one. Some say, “People out there aren’t interested in this stuff”, but a world-record number of people replied to a Select Committee consultation on voter engagement. People out there are desperate; they are hungry for engagement. That is why there are so many organisations around. I have a list of a few of them here: Bite the Ballot, Unlock Democracy, the Hansard Society, the British Youth Council, Sky’s “Stand Up Be Counted” campaign, Catch 22, the National Union of Students, Involver, UpRising. They all wanted to grab that chance of saying to us that we have got to do better.
It is not good enough. Sixteen thousand people responded to our report, and the follow-up report, having listened to those 16,000, will be published tomorrow. There will be a debate in this House starting at 1.30 pm for those Members who are not able to speak in today’s debate.
We must do something about this. If people read the report tomorrow, they will see lots of ways forward on an all-party basis to involve our people in our own democracy.
House of Commons Business
Debate between Mark Durkan and Graham Allen(10 years ago)
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Mr Allen
We have an e-petitioning system at the moment which is to the Government and to which the Government have to respond. What we are discussing is giving Parliament its own e-petitioning capability, so that it can engage as a partner in a debate with Government. That has to be healthier than one organisation or the other imposing its will, as happens continually in our proceedings, with Government dominating Parliament. This is a minor demonstration of the mythology and fallacy of parliamentary sovereignty, and therefore it is useful to bring it to the attention of the House.
Mark Durkan
Is the hon. Gentleman’s point not even more marked when one considers that the current e-petition system is widely talked about as the Downing street e-petition system for securing a debate in Parliament? When it is talked about in those terms it is as though debate in this House is absolutely controlled by Downing street, and that is bad for the reputation of this House.
Mr Allen
It is bad for the reputation of the House, but it is the truth. It is useful to call a spade a spade and to call a Downing street petition a Downing street or Government petition. Let us keep it like that and people will see the response they get from Government and will, through the processes of the House and its individual Members, be able to do something through the House of Commons itself. We cannot change the law for people, but we can bring issues to the attention of the Government. We need that capability to keep the Government honest and to hold them to account when many people see that as the way forward.
The fundamental question is about the separation of powers. We ought to have that, as it would be quite useful and would develop a more pluralistic view of our politics. People might not share that view and might think that we can somehow collaborate beyond merely using the platform and technology that are already there—I am perfectly happy to use that platform and technology to save the House money, as we all want that, and I am prepared to compromise on that alone—but an e-petition site for Parliament should be run by Parliament, not the agency we are meant to be keeping under control and holding to account. It is a contradiction in terms that the very people we should be holding to account will be running our system. I hope that the Procedure Committee will be very clear about that as it considers the issue. We all want to be pally and we all want to have little chats with the Leader of the House, but at the end of the day we either have our own e-petitioning system or we have not. If we have not, let us concede that and admit it clearly.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Mark Durkan and Graham Allen(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Allen
My hon. Friend has been persistent in raising these matters in the House, and I bow to her expertise on them. I am sure that we all have particular things that have interested us as Members over the years where it has been essential that we have such access. I have no problem in listing those things, and I hope that my constituents might be impressed if I were to do so. On the basis of honesty and transparency, all those things should certainly be clear for everyone to see, to make sure that our government is conducted without even the slightest whiff of impropriety.
Mark Durkan
Further to the previous intervention, does the hon. Gentleman recognise that we have also had recent reports about the Government’s change on minimum alcohol pricing, which showed that layered lobbying on a corporate basis by that industry had been going on? Surely the amendment he has tabled on behalf of the Committee would at least bring into the Bill’s scope all the civil servants who were part of that layered lobbying. Unfortunately, it would not bring into the Bill’s scope the very people who were doing that lobbying.
Mr Allen
If we had more than four hours and we could use the four hours on only this amendment, I imagine I could provoke every Member in the Chamber to recall a similar story or experience to that of my Select Committee colleague and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). We are all aware of such things and they are legion. If we look back at our debates in Committee and on Report, we see that people from all parts of the House made the exact same points.
I would like to press the amendment to a vote, as is appropriate. I do not anticipate that we will win on this one. I imagine that those who support the Select Committee would win handsomely were there to be a secret ballot. The rational arguments for including senior civil servants are missed only by the Government Front-Bench team; they are not missed by Back Benchers and members of other parties. With great optimism, therefore, I await the Deputy Leader of the House accepting my amendment, in which case there will be no need for a vote. I understand that the Government have moved on including special advisers, and I will listen with great care about whether they will indeed be included and how that may be done. I would welcome that, and I hope it will mean that we do not have a vote on the matter.
A lot of amendments are on the Order Paper, but I hope that we will spend most of the four hours discussing the annoyance and anger that is out there about this flawed and failing Bill, rather than spending all our time walking round in circles in the Lobby being beaten by the same number. I am afraid that this Bill and part 1 of it do not do what they were meant to do—what they said on the tin. They do not deal with what the public felt outraged about; they do not help to bring lobbying under control. They do not do what the House felt was appropriate in terms of bringing lobbying back into the mainstream. They do not do what all three parties committed to at the last general election, which was to regulate lobbying effectively. They do not do what the Prime Minister said in respect of addressing the potential for the “next big scandal” in British politics.
On that basis, unless I hear good news from the Deputy Leader of the House, I would ask colleagues in all parts of the House to register their protest, not least at how we have been treated in our discussions on the Bill, by voting for the amendment that stands in my name as Chair of the Select Committee. I hope we will get the Government, even at this point, to see sense.
John Thurso
I will quickly take two interventions and then no more because I am going to conclude.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Mark Durkan and Graham Allen(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Allen
I do not want to incur the wrath of the Deputy Speaker, so I had better not say anything on clause 4(2)(g) as my amendment relates to clause 5. I do not intend to press my amendment to a Division, however. What I wish to do is engage the Leader of the House on an issue on which there is both concern and a lot of constructive activity. If he chooses to tap into it, there is a lot of constructive endeavour out there seeking to get this right for all the people who are concerned about lobbying. On that basis I am putting a number of items on the record in the hope that, either here or in the other place, we examine the following very difficult question: if we are going to register lobbying, do we register the subject too, and if so, how do we best do that for the sake both of convenience and of the transparency and accountability on which this whole Bill rests? I am sure that it is not beyond the wit of my Select Committee, and that it is absolutely not beyond the wit of Government, to come up with something, put it on the Order Paper in the second Chamber and find a way forward that allows everybody to make progress.
We are not talking about a detailed note and a minute and so forth—I do not imagine the hon. Lady is talking about that either. Alexandra Runswick, the director of Unlock Democracy, is one of the people who gave evidence to us. She said:
“I think that misrepresents the nature of the information we are looking for in the register. We are not expecting a transcript of the meeting, but what policy area it is that is being lobbied on. There are already individual MPs who publish their diaries and say, for example, ‘I met Unlock Democracy about the Lobbying Bill.’ That is the level of information that we are looking at—the policy that is being lobbied about, not the exact information that was shared with the person whom you are lobbying.”
That strikes me as eminently reasonable, but if it is not in those exact words something that the Government feel they can adopt, perhaps it is something they feel they can work with, so what we produce from these Houses is not a laughing stock to people out there who say, “There they go again; the old boys in the club have stitched it up again. Look at what they’ve done. This isn’t going to tackle lobbying. We’ve seen that it’s not tackling some of the key lobbying issues that got this subject into the public domain, and now look at it! They’re not even going to tell us what they want to talk about in two words.”
That does not do a service to the House or to this Bill. Lobbyists and those being lobbied are also very clear that that does not help them in what most of them do, which is a fair day’s honest work trying to do their job effectively. They understand that this looks as though there is something to hide, when in fact, as in most walks of life, 99.9% of them are just doing a fair day’s work.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
The hon. Gentleman rightly makes the point that if the topic on which the lobbying is taking place can be kept secret, people will have no sense of true transparency, but does he agree that not only do the public need to be satisfied about, and protected by, such transparency, but so, too, do the people contracting the lobbyists and the lobbyists, because they should be free of any accusations of ulterior motives or ulterior agendas, or lobbying on other issues, by being able to say clearly, “This is what it was for; that is what it was about”?
Mr Allen
That is why I think sorting out the information provided in the register is essential to this part of the Bill.
Political Lobbying and Media Relations stated:
“Explicit information on the details of meetings between lobbyists and ministers should not be published.”
I agree with that. It continues:
“This removes the right of privacy to individual organisations who often have sensitive information that they wish to share with elected representatives.”
As far as I can gather, nobody is actually suggesting that that should be done and that there should almost be a video camera present whenever such an interaction takes place. We are modestly suggesting, as food for thought, that there should be some means of registering the subject that is the object of the debate involving the lobbyist.