Elections Bill (Instruction)

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Instruction
Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Christopher Pincher)]

I beg to move,

That it be an instruction to the Elections Bill Committee that it has power to make provision in the Bill about the use of the simple majority voting system in elections for the return of—

(a) the Mayor of London;

(b) an elected mayor of a local authority in England;

(c) a mayor of a combined authority area; and

(d) a police and crime commissioner.

The motion seeks to widen the scope of the Bill to provide for these measures to be introduced. I do not intend to outline the purpose and effect of the proposed amendments in detail, because the House will be well versed in parliamentary procedure and will doubtless remind us that this debate focuses on the motion before us. If the motion is agreed tonight, we will have the opportunity to debate the substantive issues fully as the Bill progresses through Committee and its other remaining stages.

However, it may help hon. Members if I briefly set out the Government’s reasons for the change, without prejudice, of course, to the outcome of any substantive debate we may subsequently have on the amendments themselves.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I congratulate the Minister on his achievement in arriving at the Dispatch Box to move this instruction motion. Will those of us who are on the Committee enjoy the pleasure of his company as we seek to scrutinise the Bill, or will one of his hon. or right hon. Friends be taking that spot?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman thinks my eloquence, or otherwise, would be of benefit to the Committee. I assure him that the Committee will have sufficient expertise to properly scrutinise the Bill, not least because he is also on the Committee. Her Majesty’s Government speak with one voice.

Supporting first past the post is a long-standing Conservative commitment. It is in our manifesto and it reflects the view of the British people, as expressed in the 2011 referendum, when 67% of them voted for first past the post. The House will of course want to know that in my constituency of Tamworth 77% of electors voted for it. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced in March that the Government intended to introduce legislation to change the voting system for all combined authority Mayors, the Mayor of London and police and crime commissioners to first past the post, as soon as parliamentary time allowed. We now have before us an opportunity to consider and make this change in its proper context—the wider electoral law system. The amendment I propose to make to the Elections Bill will, for consistency, also extend the change to include directly elected mayors of local authorities in England. I am therefore today inviting the House to agree that parliamentary time be allowed for this important measure and by agreeing to the instruction before us, that it may make provision in the Bill about the use of the simple majority voting system in elections for the return of the Mayor of London, an elected mayor of a local authority in England, a mayor of a combined authority area and a police and crime commissioner. I commend the instruction to the House.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

The Minister is telling us that we will have time to scrutinise and debate the amendment he is proposing tonight, but he might not be aware that this Bill has already started; we have already had Second Reading, where all Members of the House were able to debate the merits or otherwise of the contents of the Bill, and the Bill Committee has already met four times. We have already finished our evidence taking. I say to the Minister that on page 114 of the transcript of the Committee he can see that, as a member of that Committee, I made a point of order to the Chair, asking whether or not we could take evidence from witnesses on the issue of electoral systems. The Chair was very clear in saying that that was out of the scope of the Bill and so Committee members were not able to take evidence on electoral systems. So I have to question why this was not included already in the legislation. On 16 March, the Home Secretary announced that the Government planned to change the voting system for all PCCs, combined authority mayors and the Mayor of London from the supplementary vote system to first past the post. If the Government had wanted this to be in the Elections Bill, surely they should have put it in the Bill from the beginning, allowing Members to scrutinise it on Second Reading and in Committee.

The supplementary voting system that is used for all those different types of elections—

[Patrick Grady]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we should find a way, through the usual channels, to make sure that the Bill Committee can take some supplementary evidence and we can schedule in some additional sessions so that, assuming the instruction is passed tonight, the Committee can have that level of scrutiny that has so far been denied to the House on Second Reading?

[Cat Smith]

I find myself in agreement with my fellow Bill Committee member; I hope that the usual channels will find time for extra evidence sessions so that the Committee can be informed on the different types of electoral systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I thank the Minister and welcome him to his place, temporarily or otherwise. I was incredibly surprised by the length of the introduction he gave on this important change to this Bill. During my time in this Parliament, the first occasion we have had an instruction motion was last week, when the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) moved one. To his enormous credit, he was thorough, considered and detailed, and he gave a lengthy explanation as to why he wanted his instruction to take place. The Minister has absolutely failed to do that this evening. It is astonishing. Just when we thought the Government could not be any more obvious or blatantly self-serving or go further than what is already contained in the Elections Bill, here they are trying to change the rules for their own electoral advantage. Not content with silencing judges, stripping power from the Electoral Commission, privatising critical media, banning public protests and cleansing the register, the Government now want to do away with an electoral system that promotes plurality of voice, encourages participation and, more importantly, delivers a fair result. It is pretty obvious that the Conservative party has absolutely no interest in fairness, plurality or the extension of participation; the Conservatives seem interested only in retaining power, and they are prepared to change the rules and game the system to make that happen. In short, the Conservative party is quickly becoming a danger to democracy.

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend says that the Conservatives are prepared to game the system; they are gaming the system not only by changing the electoral system but by using this instruction to change the way the House is supposed to scrutinise the Bill. It is totally outrageous that they are changing the scope of the Bill once we have already begun its consideration.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I absolutely agree. If this was a casino, we would demand that it be shut down and the owners arrested for loading the dice, marking the cards and allowing the croupiers or whoever to have an ace hidden up their sleeve. Why should we accept that a party in power can get away with giving itself every conceivable unfair advantage to remain in power, including by changing the voting system on a whim? The Tories are undermining the electoral watchdog and introducing barriers to voting, particularly among folk who would see hell freeze over before they would vote Tory. Throughout our discussions of the Bill, we have been told, “It was in our manifesto—that’s why we’re obliged to do it.” It is remarkable that Government Members can ignore the absurdity of that argument, given the manifesto commitments we voted on earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I think there has been some grumbling on the Conservative Back Benches that the House has been detained by this motion and there have been all kinds of Divisions this evening. Well, we on the Opposition Benches wanted to keep reforms such as call lists, remote voting, remote participation and proxy voting. The Government were the ones who were determined to bring all of this back and to have the House in its full glory, so they are not really in any position to complain about that kind of thing.

We wait ages for a cognate motion to appear and then two come along at once. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said, it was just last week that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) tabled one of these motions, but he did it before Second Reading—right at the start of the scrutiny process of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, which we considered that day.

In this case, the Government were already well out of the traps. The Elections Bill is on its way. The House has approved the principles of the Bill on Second Reading, but that did not include what the Government are now trying to shoehorn into it. This is a further demonstration of what we warned of on Second Reading; it is significant and radical constitutional reform that is generally undermining the democratic principles that are supposedly enjoyed on these islands, and it is being done in a very sleekit and piecemeal fashion in the hope that nobody will notice. Well, we are noticing it and we will call it out.

I would be grateful if the Minister could reply to the various points that have been made by my hon. Friends and in my own interventions about precisely how this will work. Who will lead for the Government on the Bill now that the Department has changed? How do we pronounce the name of the Department, by the way? Maybe he can tell us how the new acronym is supposed to be pronounced, because no one else seems to understand. How will the Government bring forward amendments? Are they going to table amendments in Committee and then we have to table amendments to the amendments in order to try to achieve some kind of scrutiny? Are they going to bounce it through the House on Report, because according to the current programme motion we only have up to an hour before the moment of interruption on whatever day it comes forward? Or maybe they will just put it all through in the House of Lords, because frankly that would be about as democratic as everything else they are trying to do.

This is yet another power-grab by this Conservative Executive and people can see absolutely right through it. While they are going backwards with their introduction of first past the post for local elections in England and Wales, the devolved institutions, of Scotland in particular, will continue to increase democratic participation by increasing the franchise and increasing the accountability and proportionality of the representation in the electoral systems that we have. The Minister asked in a sedentary intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) what system elected us. Well, yes, we were all elected under first past the post, and the first thing that our leader at the time, Angus Robertson, said when he got up in this House was to recognise the disproportionate result that was achieved in Scotland in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Our amendment has not been selected, but I will tell the Government this: if they want to introduce proportional representation for election to the House of Commons, bring it on.