Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

We will talk about the franchise in due course. I do not think that the point is terribly sensible.

Government amendment 326 makes changes to the definition of the voting areas for Scotland and Wales. This change ensures that in Scotland and Wales the referendum will be run on the same respective boundaries as the Scottish parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections. No changes are required in respect of the provisions for England, which already allow for the referendum to be run on the same boundaries as the local government elections.

Government amendment 262 provides that the local authorities within the voting areas must place the services of their officers at the disposal of the counting officer.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I seek clarification, further to the debate last week. Although I welcome the Government’s U-turn to let us have the boundaries in Scotland, will they make a single extra penny available to Scottish returning officers, as they have requested through their submission to the Scottish Affairs Committee, to pick up all the additional costs that will arise from the referendum?

[Mr Harper]

We have listened to what returning officers and electoral administrators have said, to ensure that these more sensible administrative arrangements are in place. That was the point of working with them during the summer. On costs, as the hon. Gentleman knows, by combining elections and holding them on the same day, there is a significant saving to the devolved Administrations, because much of the cost involved in running elections will be shared and split equally between central Government providing for the costs of the referendum and the devolved Administrations. It is considerably cheaper to hold a combined poll. I do not understand his point. The devolved Administrations will have fewer costs than would be the case if we did not combine the elections.

[Thomas Docherty]

To clarify, Tom Aitchison, who is the interim chief returning officer for Scotland, wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) and the Scottish Affairs Committee stating that holding the referendum on the same day as the election would require extra ballot boxes, extra staff and perhaps larger rooms for a longer period. That, to my maths, is not a saving, but an extra cost.

[Mr Harper]

The costs specifically required to run the referendum are picked up by the Consolidated Fund and do not fall in any way on the local devolved authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Some of their costs for running their own election—the cost of hiring polling stations, for example, and the cost of paying for staff—is split between the local Administrations and central Government from the Consolidated Fund, so the devolved Administrations make a saving, compared with running those elections on a stand-alone basis. I do not understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will have noted that we are going to debate recounts under amendments 153 and 154 to schedule 2. I am sure that if he waits for that point in the debate, we will be able to engage in some dialogue.

The approach that I have outlined will apply only to the fee paid for the performance of a counting officer’s duty relating to the referendum. It will not impact on the level of expenses that the same person can claim for carrying out their duties in their capacity as the returning officer for the election.

[Thomas Docherty]

Particularly after the events of last May, I welcome the provisions relating to electoral returning officers not doing their job properly, but has the Minister had specific discussions about what will count as being an inadequate performance? Given the terrible scenes that we saw in Sheffield and other cities, what view will the Electoral Commission take of the confusion that may be caused by having parliamentary elections and the referendum on the same day?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman asks separate questions. The chief counting officer will decide about the level of performance of the counting officers and regional counting officers. The Electoral Commission has been working closely with the Government and with our officials, and it is confident that the referendum next year can be carried out in combination with the elections. We aim to continue to work with it to ensure that that remains the case through to 5 May next year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is trying to draw me into doing the chief counting officer’s job for her and into trespassing into election courts. It is not my role to do that, and the chief counting officer will make those determinations in the usual way. The Government consider that the amendment represents the best option for ensuring that regional counting officers and counting officers are accountable for their actions. Given the hon. Gentleman’s comments and those of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), I hope that that helps address some of the concerns that members of the public and, indeed, Members of Parliament expressed about the accountability of returning officers, following what happened at some polling stations, albeit limited numbers of them, on 6 May.

The amendments do not apply to the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland—the counting officer for the referendum—because he is a statutory office holder, who is already directly responsible to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for his conduct.

[Thomas Docherty]

Perhaps it might help the House of Lords when it considers the Bill if the Parliamentary Secretary asked the chief counting officer to provide written guidelines about exactly what would constitute not doing the job adequately.

[Mr Harper]

I am sure that their lordships do not require help from me or the chief counting officer to deliberate on the Bill. I would not dream of that. I am sure that the Electoral Commission will set out in due course the approach that it plans to take. It has already done that on some issues to do with the referendum, and I am sure that that will be helpful to Members.

Let me speak briefly about amendment 353, in the name of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and others. It would mean that, in addition to votes in the referendum in England being counted on local authority lines, as we propose, they would also need to be certified on parliamentary constituency lines. Given that 32 metropolitan boroughs, 52 unitary authorities and 192 second-tier districts in England have elections next year that involve around 31 million electors—79% of the total local government electors in England—the proposal would present significant additional administrative requirements for local areas and result in considerable extra effort and cost. Counting and issuing the results of the referendum on local authority lines, as we propose, makes administrative sense.

In Northern Ireland, counting and issuing the results will take place on Northern Ireland Assembly boundaries; in Scotland, on Scottish Parliament boundaries; and in Wales, on Welsh Assembly boundaries. That will be done because all devolved Administrations have elections to their respective bodies on 5 May. We think that that also makes administrative sense.

The Government see no benefit in requiring the counting officer to certify the results of the referendum in each parliamentary constituency. Any possible benefit would be outweighed by the extra demand on resources that the proposal would make. I would also be wary of inserting an extra layer of counting into the process, as I am sure that everyone wants a clean, clear result, which is calculated and communicated as quickly as possible.

For all those reasons, I urge hon. Members to support the Government amendments, and Opposition Members not to press theirs to a Division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I apologise for taxing the hon. Gentleman on this point, but I think he is muddling up a separate issue with the practical arrangements for counting the votes. The Government are proposing—eminently sensibly, it seems to me—that we use whichever constituencies are counting votes for other elections. So in the case of the Assemblies in the devolved institutions—

[Thomas Docherty]

Or Parliaments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Well, I was going to make an attempt at an answer, but I do not know whether it will appease the hon. Gentleman.

I am not trying to undermine the result of the referendum. I would like every single person in Britain to vote in it. I would prefer a system that would lead to even turnout within the bounds of normal elections, rather than a system in which there were important general elections in some places—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—but only local elections in 83%, I think, of England. It would provide for a nicer outcome if we could provide results by parliamentary constituency boundaries.

[Thomas Docherty]

It might help the Committee to know that, certainly for Scotland, returning officers will allow recounting only at constituency level. They will not support a Scottish-wide recount because, they argue, it would be far too complicated. I think that that undermines the point made by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles).

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. My anxiety is that the route down which we are travelling will mean that ordinary constituents—voters around the land—will end up being treated differently according to which part of the country they live in. If the whole Bill goes through, they will effectively have less of an understanding of who represents them, because at different tiers there will be no clear structure going from the local authority, whether unitary or not, to the Assembly Member in Wales or the Scottish Parliament, or the UK Parliament. That is why the basic building block of the referendum, as it concerns the whole of the United Kingdom, should be the parliamentary constituency. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) obviously disagrees.

As for the Government’s other amendments, I am still not satisfied by the Minister’s answers about whether the job has been done properly or not. He says that he would not want to do the job of the chief counting officer, but in fact the Bill makes—[Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House says that it would be improper, but the Bill makes vast numbers of provisions relating to the counting officer, as does other legislation. As the Minister has introduced this new concept of not paying for a job that has not been done properly, I do not understand why it is not possible to delineate what not doing the job properly means.

For instance, if it had been decided that all the ballot papers for the referendum should be a different colour from the ballot papers for other elections on the day, would not doing the job properly mean that the ballot papers had not been provided in the right colour? Would not doing the job properly mean that some polling stations had too many barriers to disabled access? Would it mean that some of the polling stations did not have the official stamp? There is a whole series of issues in relation to the combination of polls that are laid out in the legislation in Scotland and Wales. I presume that the Minister wants to replicate those in the many amendments that he will come forward with, yet he says that he cannot make it clear this afternoon what not paying for a job that has not been done properly would mean.