Individual Voter Registration

Mark Tami Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that according to the Electoral Commission there are currently up to 8.5 million electors missing from the UK electoral register and that the shift to individual registration is the biggest change to electoral matters since the introduction of the universal franchise; notes that there was cross-party support for the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, which proposed a phased five-year timetable for its introduction with safeguards to protect against a drop in registration levels, but that the Government proposes speeding up the timetable, removing some of these safeguards and eroding the civic duty on registering to vote by not applying the legal obligation to respond to an electoral registration officer’s request for information as exists for the household registration; further notes that, according to the Electoral Commission, if these proposed changes are not implemented properly there could be a reduction in registration of up to 65 per cent. in some areas, potentially leaving over 10 million unregistered voters, and that this would have a negative impact on the list from which jurors are drawn; believes that the 2015 boundary review process risks being discredited as a result of the unregistered millions; and calls on the Government to reconsider its current proposals that will lead to large-scale under-registration.

The move to individual electoral registration is the greatest shift in our electoral system since the introduction of the universal franchise. As a result, there is the highest imperative on us to get this right. There is wide support for the move to individual registration and an acceptance that the current system of household registration is neither fit for the modern world nor suitably robust against the perils of electoral fraud. The move is supported by the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Reform Society and the main political parties in the House. Our concerns are not about the ultimate objective of individual electoral registration but about some of the proposed means of achieving it.

I would like to make a point that I have made a number of times before about the importance of trying to get cross-party support for constitutional change. I am afraid that I do not agree with the wording in the coalition agreement on individual electoral registration—I will come to that later—but I welcome the process that the Government have adopted and how they are acting on this matter. We have had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny, and the Deputy Prime Minister has said twice on the Floor of the House that the Government are willing to listen to concerns—so too, when giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, did the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who has responsibility for political and constitutional reform and whom I welcome to his place. They appear to be keen to reach consensus before the Bill is finally published.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that when individual voter registration was introduced in Northern Ireland there was a dramatic fall in the level of registration? What will be put in place to ensure that that does not happen this time?

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right to remind the House that in 2002, when individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, there was a huge fall of 11% in the number of people on the register. I hope that this Government, like the previous Government, have learned the lessons of those changes. I shall come to that point shortly, if he will allow me.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I enjoyed seeing at first hand what is happening in Cumbria to try get the local economy moving. The action we are taking obviously includes the cuts in corporation tax, and the regional growth fund and the enterprise zones. Specifically for Cumbria, the money we are investing for superfast broadband will really help that county, particularly the most rural and far-flung parts, and will ensure that small businesses can benefit throughout the county.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Q15. DNA and CCTV played a vital role in the arrest of many of the looters. Why is the Prime Minister undermining that in the Protection of Freedoms Bill?

[The Prime Minister]

We are not.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the whole Deeside hub area, which covers his seat and mine, is one of the most vibrant and growing manufacturing areas in the whole country? We have to build on that rather than undermine it.

[Stephen Mosley]

I totally agree, but one problem with the RDA is that it stops at England’s border and has not looked over it. We have reached a situation in which there is almost a wall between Chester and north Wales. I hope that with local enterprise partnerships, we will have more local interaction so that there will be an improvement.

As I was saying, the north-west has suffered disproportionately more as a result of the recession than any other UK region and has seen the largest net decline in private enterprises in the country. Many of the private enterprises that should be powering the region forward have simply shut up shop—not a great success story for our regional development agency, and not something that I have seen splashed across one of its expensively produced glossy magazines, which seem to focus more on what it has spent than on what it has achieved.

Business sometimes needs support, especially at the start-up phase, but the remote, bureaucratic regional development agency model is not the most productive way of providing it. The replacement of RDAs by local enterprise partnerships—local, accountable and business-led organisations—is greatly to be welcomed.

I wholeheartedly welcome the proposals in the Bill. The one area on which I seek reassurance from the Minister relates to the proposed triennial review process of remaining public bodies. The Public Administration Committee made detailed criticisms of the five-yearly review process that existed until 2002. I would welcome an opportunity to examine the new triennial process and the criteria against which public bodies will be evaluated in future. As I have said before, I am enthusiastically supportive of the Bill, which is a continuation of the Government’s relentless approach to localism, accountability, transparency and efficiency. I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members will support the principles that lie at the heart of the Bill.

House of Lords Reform

Mark Tami Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leigh]

That was an excellent intervention. There are many other legislatures in the world, such as the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, in which one cannot be a Minister. That is why Senators in the United States are much more independent of the Executive than Members of Parliament here are. If we were to create an elected Chamber, why not have a rule that nobody up there who was elected could become a Minister? Then, perhaps, they would be free from the powers of patronage, which strongly militate against genuinely free debate in this Chamber.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

What we should be talking about is what the House of Lords is for and what it should be doing, but all we are talking about is whether it should be fully elected, fully appointed or 80:20. We should really be concentrating on what its key role is.

[Mr Leigh]

That is absolutely right. Perhaps we have spent too much time, even this afternoon, talking about methods of election rather than about the sort of men and women whom we want in the second Chamber and what sort of job we want them to do. Apparently, the sort of men and women we want are people of expertise who are good at revising legislation, and I submit that we have very large numbers of dedicated Members of the second Chamber who do precisely that. Of course, there are some who are lazy, corrupt or bad—and some are good, some are old and some are young—but there are scores of people up there who do their job as men and women of expertise in revising and improving legislation. Let us concentrate on the sort of people we want up there rather than being absolutely obsessed by the methods of election.

UN Security Council Resolution (Libya)

Mark Tami Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, I considered this carefully, and we discussed it at Cabinet this morning. We felt that the best approach was to give time for the tabling of a substantive motion today, which I believe has to be done by 2.30 pm. If we do that in advance, it will give anyone who wants to suggest an amendment the chance to do so, and then there can be a proper debate on Monday. Actually, I considered whether it would be better to hold the debate on Tuesday to give people more chance to consider what may or may not have happened over the weekend, but I think that the House will be anxious to have that debate, so I judged, and the Cabinet judged, that a debate on Monday on a substantive motion that can be amended is the right thing to do.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

What UN resolutions say and what they are subsequently interpreted to say can be very different. What assurances can the Prime Minister give to the House that it will be different this time, particularly bearing in mind the number of abstentions we had last night?

[The Prime Minister]

The point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that this resolution seems to me to be extremely clear in that it has the call for a ceasefire, it has the no-fly zone, it has all necessary measures for a no-fly zone, it has the need to protect civilians, and all the necessary measures for civilians, alongside all the other issues about travel bans, asset seizures and the rest of it. It is a very clear resolution. As I say, I am very conscious that as we go ahead, we want to take people with us. That will inevitably be a difficult path, because every action has a consequence. However, I particularly welcome the fact that the resolution says so clearly that there must not be an occupying force. I think that sends such a clear signal to the Arab world, to the Muslim world, and to people in our own country, scarred by what has happened in the past, that that will not happen again. As I have said, there are some limits on us, but I think that in this circumstance, that is absolutely right.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The problem is that an amendment was moved, hon. Members took part in the debate, and then the Minister introduced the other option, yet gave us no chance to respond, because of the guillotining by those on the Government Front Bench.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Surely the point is that the Minister knew that information at the start of the debate, but he chose not to inform Members House at that stage.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes the point well.

More recently, and more importantly for this House, our concerns about the length of the Parliament have been strengthened since the Bill was in Committee by the Lords Constitution Committee. In his short contribution, the Deputy Prime Minister cherry-picked parts of its report, but he missed out the most crucial bit. In the Constitution Committee’s view, five years is simply too long. Like us, it argues that four years is more appropriate. Its report challenged the Deputy Prime Minister’s assertions that the Government’s progress on constitutional and political reform, of which the Bill is a key component, will make Parliament more accountable to the people. The Constitution Committee argues that the provisions in the Bill to fix the length of Parliaments to five years would lead to less frequent elections and make the legislature less accountable, not more. Under a system of fixed five-year terms, there would have been four fewer elections since 1945.

I know the pressure that will be brought to bear on Government Members to support the Bill—a Bill that they do not believe in and that they have a problem with. However, when they come to decide whether to give it a Third Reading, they should remember the words of the Lords Constitution Committee, which said that a five-year term was

“inconsistent with the Government’s stated aim of making the legislature more accountable, inconsistent with existing constitutional practice and inconsistent with the practice of the devolved institutions and the clear majority of international legislatures”—

except in Rwanda. If the Bill goes through this House, the Opposition will be looking to the Lords to heed the advice of their own Constitution Committee and recognise that four years is a much more sensible length of time for a fixed-term Parliament.

Time is short, so I will not go into the other problems that we have with the Bill. However, what I will say, and for the second time in a number of months, is that I am optimistic and sincerely hopeful that the other place will inject some sanity into this Bill, through proper scrutiny. This Bill is rushed, self-serving and opportunistic. It is an affront to how we ought to go about amending and improving our constitution. We shall be voting against it being given a Third Reading.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Of course, but I will not look for you to join us in the Division Lobby, Mr Hoyle.

The Government might say in their charming, elegant and smooth way that this is a hypothetical situation because the honest truth is that in all normal circumstances no Government and no Prime Minister would ever choose to circumvent the power of the House on the two thirds majority that would be needed to call an early general election by enforcing a motion of no confidence. I echo the words of the Clerk of the House in a memorandum on the Bill to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform: there may be little risk of an accident if one drives up the motorway on the wrong side of the road at 4 o’clock in the morning, but the impact if there were an accident is likely to be very serious, and so although the risk of a dispute about a vote to dissolve Parliament being argued out in the courts might be small if it were to happen, its impact politically and constitutionally would be very great. That is why I say to the Government that although I understand how they have ended up with this legislation—it is not that I detest every element of it, although I dislike the process and I dislike the use of the period of five years instead of four and so on—and although I think there are elements of the clause that are right and proper, I think that they have not thought through the full possible consequences of the legislation.

I can easily foresee a time when a Prime Minister who is desperate to have a general election because of war, an immense financial collapse or something else that he thought was of absolute centrality to the Government that he—

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Or she.

[Chris Bryant]

Or she. I thought I just heard my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) speaking in my ear.

If that Prime Minister felt that it was essential in the interests of the nation that there should be an early general election, the Government would be prepared to bypass and use every trick in the book to secure an early election. They might well have this Bill in their back pocket as a means of achieving that. So although this Government were supposedly trying to release the grip of the Executive, they would have enhanced it.

I want to reaffirm our commitment to fixed-term Parliaments. That means that we have to lay down in statute that it is for the House, not the Prime Minister, to dissolve Parliament. It should also be for the House to decide the precise date of the general election, which should be in statute, and we should have only one process of calling an early general election. We must be clear that the Government need always retain the confidence of the House of Commons and that should be written in statute now.

For most of the 20th century, we have had very few hung Parliaments, but I suspect that there might well be more in future. We need to ensure that our provisions will stand the test of time rather than simply being drawn up to appease the coalition agreement.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards]

Obviously, my fears might come to nothing, but I see no reason why democracy should be held hostage to fortune in that way. The complication, of course, is how the media report different elections. That is the big difference between London elections and those for the devolved Administrations.

We are aware of the potential pitfalls, and I see no suitable way of dealing with them except by holding the different elections apart from each other. Of course, those are the known unknowns. As yet, we have no way of knowing the unknown unknowns between now and the next set of elections.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned one problem with holding different elections on the same day. Many who apply for a postal vote for the Westminster election will assume that they will automatically receive a postal vote for every election, but in fact, they will not, because they need to apply separately for a postal vote for the other elections.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the potential for organisational chaos in 2015 and about participation in those elections.

From the perspective of candidates, another argument against the five-year fixed-term UK Parliament and the clash with devolved Administration elections is that political parties in those countries will need to find suitably more candidates to contest those elections—probably about 90 in Wales, if the Con-Dem Government have their way with the boundary changes enacted in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and about 180 in Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I shall support all those amendments that propose a four-year fixed-term Parliament, and in so doing I shall invoke someone who when I was growing up was considered a great Liberal. Mr Asquith spoke in the Chamber that preceded this one, and, in a recent debate on 21 February 1911 on the Parliament Bill which was to change the Septennial Act 1715, he said:

“In the first place we propose to shorten the legal duration of Parliament from seven years to five years, which will probably amount in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years. That will secure that your House of Commons for the time being, is always either fresh from the polls which gave it authority, or—and this is an equally effective check upon acting in defiance of the popular will—it is looking forward to the polls at which it will have to render an account of its stewardship.”—[Official Report, 21 February 1911; Vol. XXI, c. 1749.]

Asquith’s reasons have been borne out in all the years since then. The average length of a Parliament is not far off four years, and his points relate to the electorate. None of the constitutional proposals of the Deputy Prime Minister—who I again note is not following his own Bill on the Floor of the House of Commons—strengthens the position of the electorate versus the Crown as represented by the Government. The proposals are therefore abandoning the principle that a Government have the authority to govern but must be mindful that there is a time after which the electorate should make a judgment on the actions, activities and success of that Government. That is all being cast out for what I believe to be a profoundly cynical purpose: the entrenchment, or attempted entrenchment, of a particular Parliament for five years. That requires a Bill. I do not know whether it is possible to present clause stand part arguments on the basis of parliamentary privilege and the series of very serious arguments that lie behind what we are discussing.

[Mark Tami]

The hon. Gentleman hit the nail on the head when he said that the Bill was really all about the current Parliament, and about holding the coalition together. No thought has been given to what it actually means for the future; it is just about holding the coalition together today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Tami]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that neither Front-Bench team argued the case? I cannot recall anybody having argued for a five-year term, apart from now, when it is convenient for the coalition parties to wed for this period of time.

[Mr Shepherd]

The proposal suits the Government for their own purposes, and that is why the nation at large is cautious, as are many Members on both sides of this Chamber.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

We have had the comprehensive spending review, and in Wales some cuts will be imposed directly on non-devolved matters, such as the DVLA in Swansea, but some cuts will go through the Welsh Assembly as part of its grant, and it will have to make tough choices. People may be confused about who is doing what and what responsibility different people have for those choices. That undermines the democratic tapestry that we have set out through devolution to bring democracy closer to people, so that local decisions are made more closely to local people. If everything is scrambled up into a confusion overlaid by the mass media that want to get simple points across about the UK situation, thus crowding out more localised concerns, our democracy will be the worse for it. If the administration of the vote is in a state of collapse, things will be even worse.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Can my hon. Friend foresee a situation in which two Labour supporters were campaigning for an Assembly candidate and a voter asked, “What do you think about AV?”, and they had totally different viewpoints. They might get into an argument, which would help no one—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) obviously thinks that that is highly unlikely to happen.

[Geraint Davies]

I wish that we had enough party workers for that to happen. However, theoretically, the people campaigning in elections in an area may not agree on AV. In my city, we have several MPs, and it is possible that one of them—say, me—might not agree with AV, but another Labour MP might agree with it. If it was reported that Labour was in favour of AV, I would say that I was not in favour of it. All those problems will be superimposed on the Assembly and parliamentary votes, alongside shifted boundaries and some people losing their postal votes, leading to mass confusion and excessive cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I admire my hon. Friend’s commitment to his constituency, of course, and he argues his case with great conviction, but I disagree with the characterisation of the Bill as an attempt to “pasteurise” constituencies. After all, one third of the Members in the House already represent constituencies within the size quota that we are setting down, so it is hardly a revolution. It is very much an evolution, building on arrangements that are already in place.

My hon. Friend talks about the rigidity of the constituency size set out, but there will actually be a 5% margin either side of an ideal size. As he also knows—I have discussed it with him previously—it builds on a provision already present in existing legislation. The Bill merely prioritises the matter in a way that is not currently the case. So no, we would not be minded to accept amendments that reopened the fundamental question of fairness and equality in how constituencies are drawn up.

I urge Members to remember that if the Bill passes, as I hope it does, it will be then that the real decisions on constituency boundaries begin. They will be up to the independent boundary commissions, and Members and communities will have plenty of opportunity to have their say.

[Mark Tami]

Does the Deputy Prime Minister not think his argument would be stronger if he did not make an exception for a certain number of seats in Scotland, to his own political advantage? They are being treated completely differently, and without the equal value that he pretends to believe in.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman may know, two constituencies are treated differently from others. One is held by the Scottish National party. [Interruption.] No, two. The other one is a Liberal Democrat constituency. Both constituencies have been recognised in previous regulations and legislation as having a unique status. I know that the hon. Gentleman has about 60,000 people in his constituency. [Interruption.] The Prime Minister himself has looked up the statistic, so we are talking about a very good authority. Other colleagues represent 20,000 more voters. Surely that cannot be right.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Before we move off the subject, a person applying for a postal ballot might automatically assume that by doing so they will get one for all elections. Is that so, or must they apply separately for a postal ballot for each poll?

[Mr Harper]

I do not want to anticipate the debate that we will have on the proposals of the hon. Member for Rhondda, but we have said that someone’s standing postal vote application for parliamentary elections will trigger their postal vote for the referendum. It is the same franchise, and we thought that that was a better way around the problem than insisting that all those with a standing postal vote application for a parliamentary election apply for a new postal vote specifically for the referendum. We wanted to maximise the opportunities for people to take part rather than have people who miss out because they did not realise that they needed to apply for a new postal vote. We have ensured that if people already have a standing postal vote for a parliamentary election, they will get one for the referendum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman said that he wanted to ensure that these issues had been discussed, and they have been raised and discussed at the JMC. The devolved Administrations probably still disagree with the Westminster Government’s decision, but the matter has been discussed. He is not making a very sensible point.

[Mark Tami]

Would the Minister not agree that Scotland in particular has experience of holding polls on the same day, and that problems have resulted?

[Mr Harper]

It certainly does have that experience, which is why we looked closely at the conclusions in the Gould report. In an earlier debate I made it clear that although Ron Gould—he of the said report—said that combination would not have been his first choice, he was clear that combining a simple yes/no referendum and the Scottish parliamentary elections was likely to be a much more straightforward proposition than what happened in the elections to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Ron Gould did not believe that the same problems would occur.

[Mr Harper]

No, we have added one extra vote to what would otherwise have taken place, and it will have a simple yes or no question rather than a complex electoral system. Like the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar in an earlier debate, the hon. Member for Dundee West (Jim McGovern) is doing his fellow Scots a disservice by suggesting, albeit obliquely, that they are not capable of making a decision in the referendum as well as voting in the very important Scottish parliamentary elections.

[Mark Tami]

Does the Minister not recognise that candidates standing in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament elections could take various lines about whether they are pro-AV or anti-AV? There is still a lot of scope for a very confusing situation.

[Mr Harper]

No, I do not think there is, actually. People are perfectly capable of laying out the prospectus on which they stand and the important issues on which they are campaigning in the elections to the Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and Scottish Parliament, and also joining the yes or no campaign on a voting system for this Parliament. That is not very complicated at all, and our voters will show us that we are underrating them if we take that view. Incidentally, next week, Americans will vote in an extraordinary number of elections—I shall pursue that thought only briefly, Mr Evans, for fear that you will rule me out of order—and they are perfectly capable of doing that, in the same way as voters here are perfectly capable of voting in two or three sets of elections next year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Tami]

The point, surely, is not who has the legal responsibility, but who has the experience. There should have been plenty of consultation—certainly in Scotland—enabling Ministers to learn from that experience, and to decide on the basis of it whether it would be appropriate to hold the referendum and elections on the same day.

[Chris Bryant]

Obviously that is the case. I should have thought that, given that none of the Ministers in either of the teams affected represents a Welsh, Scottish or Northern Ireland seat, it would have been more important for them to consult the relevant devolved Administrations just to be able to get the position right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the way in which the current Administration have dealt with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—

[Mark Tami]

What about the respect agenda?

[Chris Ruane]

This is my intervention, if my hon. Friend does not mind!

Are not the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales behaving more like governors-general than Secretaries of State?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed, and I will come on to some of the specific problems that could arise. My hon. Friend did not add, however, that they are on completely different franchises as well. The Minister seems to think that the franchise for the next general election will be the same as the franchise for the referendum. They will not be, however, because of the inclusion of peers in the referendum. It has to be said that we do not have many peers in the Rhondda, however. We have one: Baroness Gale of Blaenrhondda who, unfortunately, is in hospital at the moment—she is across the road at St Thomas’—and I wish her well. There will be confusion in respect of the different franchises and issues such as whether we have the same register or two registers, and I will talk about those specific issues a little later.

The Minister referred to all the schedules before us and how we will address them, and he said that the territorial Departments for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have today—I presume that means since the beginning of the debate this afternoon—tabled the statutory instruments that are required fully to combine the polls in each of the areas. There is no provision in statute for the combination of polls in Northern Ireland, whether for local government and Assembly elections or any other kind of elections. In Scotland, there is provision by virtue of an order, which I think was introduced in 2007, hanging off the Scotland Act 1998. That order makes it clear that local elections and parliamentary elections can be combined, but in fact it has now been decided not to combine them. In Wales, the situation is different again, because a 2007 order on the representation of the people and the Welsh Assembly makes provision to combine local elections and Welsh Assembly elections, but until now there has been no provision to enable the combining of referendums and elections.

The dangers of combining referendums are completely different from the dangers of combining elections. That is why the Government have had to introduce these statutory instruments to make provision for the referendums to be combined in each of the three territorial areas. Unfortunately, that is not the legislation that exists today, so these instruments have been tabled without, as far as I know, having been sent in advance to anybody involved in this Committee or anybody in the shadow offices in relation to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and without the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly having been consulted on them; they have simply been published. I presume the Minister will be tabling things tomorrow, once we have finished in Committee, and he will then table a series of new amendments, which we will be able to debate on Report. I simply say that such an approach puts the horse before the cart.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend finished on the point that I was going to make. Does he agree that the Government are clearly just making this up as they go along? At last Thursday’s business questions, even the Leader of the House was unable to confirm whether the affirmative procedure would be used or whether the instruments would be taken on the Floor of the House. Perhaps my hon. Friend could update us on whether he has been given more information.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proper process for a statutory instrument is that, first, consideration is given to whether it should be taken on the Floor of the House or in Committee. Given that all three of these statutory instruments relate to elections and are of a constitutional nature, my preference, and that of Labour Members, is for them to be taken on the Floor of the House and not in some Committee without general public scrutiny. Secondly, statutory instruments have to be considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which has a limited remit but can examine whether the affirmative or the negative resolution process should be used. Last week, as my hon. Friend rightly says, Ministers, including the Leader of the House, did not seem to have the faintest idea whether or not these would be subject to the affirmative procedure. I am glad to say that the Minister has now made it clear today—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

It is neither A nor B—in fact, it is C. It is a new creation. The franchise for the AV referendum will be, broadly speaking, the same as that for a general election—that is, it will not include EU citizens—but will include, rather exceptionally, peers, including a peer who is able to have that vote only by virtue of their having a business interest in the City of London. A particularly bizarre franchise has been invented, which is why we tried to amend some of the elements of it in a previous discussion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) makes a good point. In many polling districts, the register will be substantially different. In Newport, for instance, 1,000 voters will be able to vote in the Assembly elections but not in the referendum. I am not sure how many voters will be able to vote in the referendum but not in the Assembly elections by virtue of their being peers.

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend envisage people turning up expecting to be able to vote, because they can vote in the other election, only to be told that they can vote in that election but cannot take part in the referendum?

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed. There is a series of complications that I shall come on to, if my hon. Friend will bear with me for a while. Amendments specifically refer to that point, but they amend the Government’s new schedules rather than the new clause, and I want first to deal with the amendments to new clause 20 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, other colleagues and me.

The first amendment is amendment (a) to new clause 20. I realise that some hon. Members might be slightly confused that there are lots of amendments (a) in this group, because some refer to the new clause and some to each of the new schedules. Amendment (a) to Government new clause 20 states:

“Where the date of the poll for a local authority election in England is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together.”

That is narrower than that which the Government have provided. The Government are suggesting that the polls can happen together when there is the referendum, and a local authority election in England, and a local referendum in England, and a mayoral election in England. In other words, it is theoretically possible that, if we stick with the Government’s proposal, one voter might come in to vote on the referendum on AV, a local authority election, a local referendum and a mayoral election all at the same time. It is one thing to consider all this in relation to someone coming into a polling station, and people might conclude that it is perfectly legitimate—that there is the franchise for the AV referendum, which we have already discussed, and the franchise for all three other issues, which would be the same—but what happens with postal votes for all those polls? If there are four postal votes and four polling cards, that provides a right old tagliatelle of a constitutional settlement for ordinary voters to try to sort out. That is why our amendment, instead of allowing all four polls at the same time, would allow only a local authority election in England to happen at the same time as the referendum. We do not think that is ideal, but at least it would tidy things up a little. I very much hope that the Minister will accede to that amendment.

Amendment (b) would also amend new clause 20 in relation to Northern Ireland. The Government propose:

“Where the date of the poll for one or more of the following is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together—

(a) a Northern Ireland Assembly Election;

(b) a Northern Ireland local election.”

In other words, they are providing for all three to happen at the same time. Up to now, there has been no legal provision enabling that to happen in Northern Ireland, which is why the Government are bringing forward relevant statutory instruments. We do not believe it is right to have all three elections at the same time, so we suggest, in a consensual way, that the Government might at least limit the combinations to a degree by taking one of the polls out of the measure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

All that I can say is that we can examine the comparative records. In the last Session under the Labour Government only four Bills had pre-legislative scrutiny. We will end up with twice as many, so our overall record will bear comparison.

I am not sure whether he meant it, but the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) accused us of putting the horse before the cart and proceeding at a gallop. I represent a rural area, so I think I have got this right: putting the horse before the cart seems to be the right thing to do, as does proceeding at a gallop. I do not see any problem with that.

[Mark Tami]

It was actually my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) who said that, not me. As I asked the Minister earlier, will he resign now?

[Mr Harper]

I will not, but I will of course correctly assign the comment to the hon. Member for Rhondda. It perhaps demonstrates that he needs to learn a little more about horses and carts before he makes such allusions.

The hon. Member for Rhondda mentioned combined elections and said that the Government had chosen the date of other elections for the referendum. I cannot help but observe that in both 2001 and 2005 the previous Government specifically chose to have general elections on dates when county council elections were already planned. They knew that in advance, and the elections were combined. They ran perfectly well and passed off without incident. I do not have any complaint about that, but for the Opposition to complain about our choosing to have a referendum on a date when there are other elections seems a bit rich.