Wales Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Mark Williams

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman says that there are 150, and I do not think that that is actually the number, but the point is that even with the number of appointments we have made, four years into this Parliament the number of Conservative peers has only just equalled the number of peers representing the Labour party, despite the fact that our commitment was to make the other place more accurately reflect the result of the general election. That reflects the enormous number of appointments made by his party when it was led by Tony Blair and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). That does not detract from my point, however. I wanted to reform the other place and to reduce the number of Members in both this place and the other place. I wanted to reduce the cost of politics and I am sorry that we were not able to do so, but I will not take any lectures from the hon. Gentleman, because he and his party did not support our legislation and they made sure that that reform could not happen—more’s the pity.

[Mr Mark Williams]

I want to return to the issue of the amount of space between electors that was mentioned earlier, not just in relation to our capacity—I have 600 family farms in Ceredigion, which covers a big rural area—but, critically, in relation to our constituents’ capacity to access us. That takes us back to the point about the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. Going down the route of having a list system with a list made up of anonymous people would, I think, be a retrograde step, as evidenced by what the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) said about anonymity, distance and how that will ultimately mean that we will fail our constituents.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes some very good points, and I acknowledged them in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North. I said that that was why I wanted the review to consider both the advantages and disadvantages. We need to consider them because the proposals I brought before the House to reduce and equalise the number of Members in this place clearly had an impact on the number of parliamentary Westminster seats in Wales, reducing the number from 40 to 30. We decided to decouple the number of constituency seats for this place from the number in the Welsh Assembly, but it seems to me that if we are going to consider the number of Members and if the trajectory of the number of Westminster Members is going down, we should at least consider how many constituency Members there should be in the Welsh Assembly. If that number moves downwards, as I think it probably ought to, consequences will clearly flow from that for the size of the regions and how we group them. We must also build in a process whereby we can change the number of seats as the population increases, decreases or moves to ensure that that equal representation continues.

Setting up the independent review enables all those issues to be considered properly. A report to the Secretary of State can then be produced and laid before both Houses of Parliament so that a proper decision can be taken. The Silk commission might well be able to consider all these issues in the further work it will undertake, and when I listen to the Minister’s response I might find that the amendment is effectively redundant. However, the issues are worthy of consideration.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Mark Williams

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Section 31 grants are specific grants, and the hon. Gentleman needs to be aware of an interesting point: local authorities already fund about one third of the cost of electoral reform, so if we insisted on a specific amount being spent on electoral registration, it would be easy for local authorities that wanted to do so to evade that. They could use the money that we gave them to pay for their business-as-usual electoral registration and not do any of the things that we want them to do. We will give them money directly; we will consult about the mechanism so that we have some accountability; we will recognise that some local authorities have bigger challenges than others so that all the money is not dished out in the first place—we want local authorities that face the biggest challenges to be able to bid for extra funding—and we will try to ensure that we have a workable system that is not too bureaucratic. I am confident that local authorities and electoral registration officers will welcome our announcement about not allowing the money to be swallowed up in the overall revenue support grant by paying direct grants under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003. They will have the confidence that they have the money to deliver the programme.

We consulted widely on our proposals for individual registration, which have undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. We have worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and groups of front-line staff on our plans. We will begin publishing draft secondary legislation for IER in June, and we will continue to add to the package as the summer progresses, aiming to conclude publication before Parliament returns in the autumn. We will talk to those key groups about the detail of the proposals as we go along.

There will be some matters for which we do not intend to publish draft legislation—for example, those for which we have no current plans to use the powers. There will be other matters on which we want to seek stakeholders’ views about the approach. In the amendment, Labour Members deplore our not publishing secondary legislation and it is therefore worth saying that, for two similar measures—the Electoral Administration Act 2006 and the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, both of which contain significant powers to be made by regulation—no secondary legislation of any description was published at any stage during their passage. It was all made and published after the Bills had received Royal Assent. On that issue, therefore, the Labour party is very much in the mode of “Do as we say, not as we do.”

The Government’s approach is to treat the House much more seriously, to publish Bills in draft, to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny, and to publish draft legislation while the measure is still going through the House. May I pick up the point that the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee made? Members can see what is proposed while the Bill is undergoing its parliamentary passage. I will take no lectures on that from anyone on the Labour Benches.

So far, I have discussed the measures that we are taking to mitigate the risk of the transition to the new system. There are also several opportunities to do better. The Bill will facilitate online registration, whereby an individual will complete the end-to-end process without having to fill in a paper form. That will make it more convenient for individuals to register to vote, more accessible for, for example, people with visual impairments, and more accessible for young people. It is our intention that the online system will be fully operational when the transition to individual registration begins. As I said yesterday during Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, that is a genuine opportunity, certainly for disabled people.

For example, Scope said that it

“supports the change to a system of IER, and warmly welcomes the Government’s commitment to ensure that disabled people’s needs are taken into account”.

It agrees with our assessment that

“the introduction of IER should improve access for voters with disabilities. The current arrangements do not adequately allow for disabled people’s access needs to be taken into account”,

and that the introduction of IER offers an ideal opportunity to put in place a more accessible system. We intend to do that.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for sharing the information about the online system with some of us last week. He will know that one of the concerns that some of us have is about access to national insurance numbers as a means of taking part in that system. There is some difficulty in that people do not readily have access to their national insurance numbers. What suggestions has he for improving that?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary is trying to be extremely helpful to the House, and he has taken lots of interventions. However, perhaps he will bear it in mind that he has been speaking for more than 40 minutes, that many Members wish to participate in the debate, and that there will be winding-up speeches.

Police and Crime Commissioners

Debate between Mark Harper and Mark Williams

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman who secured the debate spoke for just over half the time available, so let me address at least some of his questions before taking interventions from other Members.

Our view is that top-down control, with chief constables looking upwards to the Home Office, did not work particularly well, so we want locally democratically accountable figures setting policy. However, operational matters will, of course, remain the responsibility of the chief constable. There will be police and crime panels to ensure that there is scrutiny and transparency.

The hon. Gentleman made a number of points about the elections themselves and I shall deal with some of them in turn. As I said, I am pleased that so many Members of this House and the other place are stepping forward and that we are seeing candidates from across the country. I think we will have a good slate of experienced people. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I believe that a number of people who have had experience in the criminal justice system, some of whom are former police officers but others of whom have been involved in that system, have put their names forward. So I think that the public will be offered a good range of candidates—people with practical experience and people with policy-making experience. Like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I trust the public to be able to sort out the qualities that they want in police and crime commissioners and to make the right decisions in November.

The Government agree that it is important that candidates get their message out. To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), candidates obviously have a responsibility to do that themselves. Of course it is not the case that candidates can spend a limitless amount of money; there will be limits on expenditure, which will be broadly proportionate to those for other types of election. So candidates will be able to spend some money, but they will not be able to spend limitless sums. We thought carefully about how we could assist candidates in doing that, and provisions will be made in the draft legislation to enable candidates, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said, to publish information on the centrally funded website.

In addition, if the public are not able to use the website, they will be able to call a freephone number and request, on demand, printed information to be sent to them directly. We recognise that this is a novel approach, but we think that that blend of online and on-demand information will be very helpful. The website and the print-on-demand phone number will be printed on polling cards sent out in advance of the election.

[Mr Mark Williams]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will adopt the same stricture as I did in respect of Labour Members. Let me deal with the points that the hon. Member for Caerphilly raised, as it is his debate, and if we have time, I will be happy to take further interventions.

Polling cards will contain this information, so it will be widely distributed to voters. The Electoral Commission, with which we are working closely, will include that contact and access information in its own literature—indeed, this will be in the booklet that it is distributing to households, which will provide some information about the elections and the supplementary vote system.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly raised the issue of internet access. Although 77% or so of the population can use the internet, we recognise that there are people who cannot; my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) referred to people who live in his constituency in this regard. That is why we have the combination of online and print-on-demand information. I am pleased to tell the hon. Member for Caerphilly, as I anticipated that he would ask about this, that the information will be available in both English and Welsh. Candidates will be able to submit their information to go on the website in either language, and we will make sure that the website content and the printed copies are available in both languages. We will of course make sure that the information is available in a range of accessible formats for those voters who have some form of disability, to make sure that we maximise the opportunities for people to see the information.

Let me deal with why we have chosen that option rather than completely free mailings paid for by the taxpayer. We did consider funding mailings of the type used for UK parliamentary and European elections. We are minded to conclude—this is our preferred option on the website, rather than our final position—that at a time when budgets are tight, it is difficult to justify those mailings for PCC elections. There are also some logistical difficulties involved in producing a candidates booklet, such as those used for mayoral elections. The difficulties are partly to do with the size of the PCC areas and having to produce the 41 booklets simultaneously; this would be very difficult to co-ordinate across the country. We think that the approach we have adopted is a proportionate one that will give people access to the information. We will, of course, look at the experience in practice; we will look very carefully at what happens. I am sure that hon. Members in this House will not be backward in coming forward about any issues, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be sure to tell us of issues in his area in Wales. We will look at this carefully but we are confident that we have adopted a sensible approach; we have worked closely with stakeholders and we think it will be successful.

As I mentioned, the Electoral Commission will be working on some public awareness information. This is in its plan, so it is in the money that it has bid for and had approved by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and by the House. This is something that has been in the Electoral Commission’s programme, so I am confident that it will be effective.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly also asked about the conduct rules. The elections, as he said, will take place in every police force area in England and Wales outside London, although it is worth saying that the first time that people will be able to vote for the directly elected person who will control policing will be in the London mayoral election, now that the Mayor has that responsibility. The detail for the other elections will be in the secondary legislation that we intend to lay before the House shortly. I can confirm that “shortly” means by 15 May, so that legislation will be laid before the House six months before the elections.

We have, of course, worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, returning officers, the Local Government Association, the Welsh Government, the Wales Office and the Association of Police Authorities, among others, to check that the legislation is in good order and that it will work in practice. Preparations have started. The police area returning officers will be administering the elections across the police force areas, a number of meetings have taken place and the preparations are in good order.

The hon. Gentleman asked one or two other questions and I have dealt with his question about the language. He raised some concerns about the website and I can make it very clear that the Government have ensured that they will have no role at all in the content on the website, which will be dealt with by the police area returning officers. The Government’s role is to set up the function and ensure that the information is posted; we will not have any editorial control at all, as is appropriate.

[Mr Harper]

I can confirm that the legislation will be drafted—I am sure this will be tested when it is debated in the House—to ensure that it is clear that there will be no opportunity for the Government to have any role in deciding the content of the information. That would clearly not be appropriate.

Let me come to the final point about victim support services, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). It has been proposed—the consultation by the Ministry of Justice finished just a few days ago—to move from a national to a local model. The Government’s view, on which we consulted in our consultation document, is that rather than Whitehall attempting to pick those services and fund them across the country, the police and crime commissioners, who will be accountable to local people, will do a better job of making those judgments. I have read through the Ministry of Justice consultation document in full, as a local victim support organisation wrote to me in my capacity as a constituency MP and I wanted to ensure, having worked with Victim Support in the past, that I was confident about what would happen. I have been through the consultation document and I think the proposal is a good one that will mean more money gets spent, rather than less, and that decisions will be taken more locally. That makes sense, rather than trying to have a one-size-fits-all policy. The Ministry of Justice will consider the responses to the consultation very closely to see whether it needs to alter its policy in any way.

I think that I have answered all of the points raised by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, so, as we have one or two moments, do any of my colleagues who jumped up to intervene earlier want to do so before I sit down?

[Mr Mark Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he said about the Welsh language, which is very important in large parts of Wales. What costings were made to examine combining the Electoral Commission’s booklet with an insertion from candidates?

[Mr Harper]

We did consider that and we discussed it with the Electoral Commission, which is, of course, producing one booklet to be distributed to every household across England and Wales. The difficulty is that if a booklet is going to be produced with the candidate information, 41 different versions will have to be produced. Logistically and for cost reasons, that is quite complicated. It is not quite as straightforward as my hon. Friend put it.

I hope that I have dealt with colleagues’ concerns and I am pleased that the debate was so well attended. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Caerphilly for raising points in the way that he did.

Question put and agreed to.