Grand Committee
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Harris of Richmond)
My Lords, before the Minister moves that the first statutory instrument be considered, perhaps I may remind noble Lords that in the case of each statutory instrument the Motion before the Committee will be that the Committee do consider the statutory instruments in question. I should perhaps make it clear that the Motions to approve the statutory instruments will be moved in the Chamber in the usual way. If there is a Division in the House the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Henley
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, I beg to move that the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the draft regulations, which we hope will be agreed by the House later. The coalition Government are, as always, committed to improved standards of animal welfare. It certainly forms part of my own department, Defra’s, structural reform plan.
These regulations remove the ban on beak-trimming of laying hens which is due to come in on 1 January 2011, to allow for routine beak-trimming of day-old chicks intended for laying to be carried out using the infra-red technique only, with other methods restricted to emergency use only. I recognise that this issue has generated a lot of interest in another place. A Written Statement was provided to both Houses last month setting out the background behind these amending regulations, explaining the Government’s determination to work closely with the industry with the objective of making a ban on beak-trimming possible in 2016. That is a commitment that I made and that my honourable friend Mr Jim Paice made in a Written Statement some two months ago.
The current position is that the UK makes use of a derogation in the EU Council Directive 99/74/EC on the welfare of laying hens, which allows for beak-trimming of laying hens that are less than 10 days old if carried out by qualified staff. The procedure is only permitted to prevent feather-pecking and cannibalism, which is a common but unpredictable behaviour in commercial flocks of laying hens and a significant welfare issue. The Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) Regulations 2007 implement this derogation but only allow routine beak-trimming to be carried out until 31 December 2010, after which beak-trimming of laying hens would be banned.
The ban was put in place when the laying hens directive was implemented in the UK in 2002, allowing eight years to develop a strategy to manage birds without the need to beak-trim. The Beak Trimming Action Group—comprising representatives from industry, welfare groups, Defra, scientific and veterinary professions—was established to develop this strategy. However, progress in the control of injurious pecking in England has not been sufficient to implement a ban on beak-trimming without causing a significant risk to animal welfare. In the mean time, a new infra-red technique was developed and is now used to beak-trim birds commercially, as an alternative to hot-blading. Currently, the infra-red technique is used on 95 per cent of all beak-trimmed laying hens.
The Farm Animal Welfare Council reviewed the evidence in 2007 and 2009 and recommended that the ban on beak-trimming should be deferred until it can be demonstrated reliably under commercial conditions that laying hens can be managed without beak-trimming, without a greater risk to their welfare than that caused by beak-trimming itself. The FAWC recommended that infra-red beak treatment should be the only method used routinely, as the evidence indicated that it does not induce chronic pain.
The Government’s long-term goal is to ban routine beak-trimming, but FAWC’s advice represents a sensible and pragmatic approach in the circumstances. A ban on beak-trimming for laying hens at this time would result in significant welfare problems through outbreaks of feather-pecking and cannibalism. It is therefore right that the legislation needs to be amended to remove the impending ban, which would otherwise come into force on 1 January 2011.
The Government see the proposed removal of the ban very much as an interim solution. The previous Government’s consultation on proposals to amend the legislation did not propose any dates to review the policy or for a future ban. This Government have taken heed of the strength of feeling on this issue and decided to adopt the Farm Animal Welfare Council’s recommendation of setting a review date of 2015. We will assess the output of this work, with the objective of banning routine beak-trimming in 2016. The Beak Trimming Action Group will be reconvened; its first meeting has been arranged for January. We are committed to working with the group to find solutions to this very complex issue. The group will establish an action plan to include the key milestones which were laid out in the Written Statement, leading up to a full review of beak-trimming in 2015.
The review will consider results of ongoing research projects that are investigating practical and realistic ways to rear laying hens without the need for beak- trimming. Bristol University, for example, funded by the Tubney Charitable Trust, is carrying out a three-year intervention study. It is developing a trialling and advisory package to help producers reduce the risk of injurious pecking through changes to housing and husbandry. All the key stakeholder groups are on the steering group for this project, with representatives from industry, welfare organisations, researchers, economists and Defra. The Beak Trimming Action Group will begin to consider the outputs from this study next summer.
We recognise that any future strategy will have to identify the lessons that can be learnt from those countries that already have a ban in place or just do not beak-trim, such as Austria, Sweden and Switzerland, so we have asked the industry to undertake some study tours to such countries. Feather-pecking is greatest in systems of management which do not house birds in cages. Therefore, the risk to the welfare of laying hens from injurious pecking is likely to increase after the ban on conventional cages comes into force on 1 January 2012. A review in 2015 will allow producers time to increase their experience of managing flocks in alternative systems.
The review in 2015 will assess the achievements on eliminating beak-trimming to date and advise whether a ban on routine beak-trimming of laying hens will achieve the maximum welfare outcome, which is what we desire, with a view to reinstating the ban in 2016. These regulations will improve existing welfare standards for laying hens in the short term while we work hard to find a lasting solution, which will bring an end to the need for routine beak-trimming. They also complete the implementation of Council Directive 2007/43/EC by implementing the mutilations provisions for meat chickens and I commend them to the Committee.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining the instrument. We fully support the aim of ending beak-trimming and the general desire across government to do so. As the Minister explained, without this instrument the ban would legally have come into force although, given the difficulties, I imagine that even had there not been a change of Government we would have been in a similar situation, particularly given the responses to the consultation that the previous Government held earlier this year. There is the difficult equation of balancing a possible deterioration in animal welfare standards by not continuing with the derogation and the concern that changing the system at this point could have meant that we would have had extra imports coming in from countries with lower welfare standards. I can therefore see some of the difficulties that were involved in calculating how to take this issue forward for the future and, for that reason, I understand the action that the Government are proposing in these regulations.
As the Minister said, however, there is considerable public and parliamentary interest in this issue. That is not surprising because there is a strong degree of commitment to animal welfare among the public and in Parliament and to seeing increased animal welfare standards for the future. Certainly, that concern was reflected in an Early Day Motion in the other House, which was proposed by a Conservative but endorsed by Members from many parties, particularly my own. Their desire is that beak-trimming should be brought to an end as soon as practicable. Indeed, that underlines the idea of creating some kind of deadline for this to happen, which the Government have done in deciding on the review period and the ban date as the Minister outlined to us.
Obviously, 2016 is some time off. I am not trying to make a party-political point because I know that the process has already been a long one. None the less, if there are any other ways of trying to shorten the timetable I would certainly encourage the Government look at them. One aspect of the work that needs to be undertaken between now and then is the study tour of EU and other European countries that do not have beak- trimming. I would have thought that that work could start soon and I understand that it will be proceeded with expeditiously. I understand what the Minister said about the three-year research project. That obviously takes us to some time in the future. However, having said that, I certainly hope that at the very least the timetable that has been set out can be adhered to.
I do not know whether the Government considered putting the deadlines in the regulations, but I hope that it will be made very clear that this is the deadline to which the Government are working. It would not be good for a signal to be sent out that nothing much will be happening immediately so therefore people do not need to worry about it. That has been a problem in the past and we do not want it to be a problem in the future.
On another issue, I strongly support what the Minister said in terms of favouring the infra-red method as opposed to the hot-blade method. As he said, 95 per cent of production is subject to the infra-red method. However, the regulations say that in the case of a sudden outbreak, it would be possible to use the hot-blade procedure. I understand from the debate that took place in the other House that such emergencies have not occurred recently. None the less, I note that the British Veterinary Association, in its response to the Government, is concerned that the regulations could be interpreted as allowing the arbitrary use of hot-blade beak-trimming after 10 days to control moderate or even minor outbreaks of injurious pecking. The association felt that in order to counteract that, the term “emergency” should be more clearly defined. Has consideration been given to that as a way forward? Or is it that, as was described in the other House, the concerns of the British Veterinary Association are not causing too much worry to the Government at present because this procedure is not really being used at the moment?
The regulations state that holdings with fewer than 350 birds are exempt from the regulations. I would like to ask the Minister a little more about that. Why should not the infra-red technique be prescribed for those holdings as well? I do not know whether there is routing beak-trimming in holdings with fewer than 350 birdsI note that in the debate in the other place the Minister said that such holdings would in any case be covered under the Animal Welfare Act, which was passed by the previous Government with all-party support. If the provisions in that Act were sufficient, why would these regulations be necessary? I am not quite sure why the older Act is sufficient in the case of holdings with fewer than 350 birds but not for holdings with more than 350 birds. The very helpful Explanatory Memorandum says that there are 1,323 holdings housing more than 350 laying hens. Does the Minister have any statistics for how many holdings have fewer than 350 birds? I could not see that information in the Explanatory Memorandum. If it is there, I apologise for having missed it.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing the regulations. I am sure that the poultry industry is most grateful for the derogation being extended. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, spoke about the public’s enthusiasm for free-range and enriched colony cages in terms of production. That is where the problems of cannibalism and pecking occur most readily. Coming from Glasgow, I was most glad to hear that the University of Glasgow was able to make a positive contribution towards resolving some of the issues linked to beak-trimming and to developing infra-red treatment. Does the Minister know whether infra-red treatment is reckoned to cause any suffering, or is it objected to because it alters the physical properties of the beak?
I was grateful to my noble friend also for taking so much time to explain the rationale behind the 2015 review, because there was some doubt as to what its purpose and outcome would be.
Baroness Parminter
My Lords, I, too, accept the regulations as an interim measure ahead of a ban on beak-trimming. There is much common ground between both sides of the Committee, so I shall not repeat any of the very good points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin.
I was slightly disappointed that no firm date for a ban has been given. The Explanatory Memorandum says clearly,
“with a view to banning … in 2016”.
How can we ensure that pressure is maintained on the industry to deliver to that timetable which we all want to see? I ask that question as a member of EU Sub-Committee D on agriculture, environment and fisheries, which is undertaking a review of innovation in agriculture. Many of the submissions that we have received tell of how the industry is struggling with the twin challenges of addressing climate change and the need for food security. Given that the industry is coping with finding funding for innovative research in those areas, how, without a firm cut-off date of 2016 for beak-trimming, can pressure be maintained on the industry to ensure that the necessary funding for research is delivered? I acknowledge what the Minister said about the research project in Bristol and the work of the Beak Trimming Action Group, but I should like to hear specifically how he will seek to keep pressure on the industry at a time when it is already struggling to find funding for innovative research in other areas of agriculture.
Lord Henley
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I shall try to deal with the various questions that have been put to me.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for accepting the difficulties involved, but she went on to say that 2016 is a long time off. I hate ever to make party-political points and, as the noble Baroness knows, I never do—well, I try not to—but I should point out that the previous Government had eight years in which to deal with this matter and they found it difficult. We are seeking another six years to take us up to 2016, and I hope that we shall be able to do what we can. We will work as quickly as possible in these matters. The noble Baroness asked particularly how we would expedite the process and start study tours to other countries—which is a very good idea. I can assure her that, early in the new year, the industry will present its plan for getting these things looked at and seeing what happens overseas.
Both the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lady Parminter said that they would like “2016” to appear in the regulations. I appreciate that it was in the previous regulations; that is why we are here today debating these regulations—it is possibly no bad thing on occasions to force Governments to come back. The commitments made by my honourable friend, which I repeated in a Written Statement, should be sufficient. However, my honourable friend made it clear that that we would do it only if it was possible. We do not want to compromise animal welfare provisions. Therefore, we will work as hard as we can and push forward as fast as we can but only, as I stress again to the noble Baroness, if these matters are possible.
The noble Baroness then asked for some idea of what we meant by “in emergencies” and when we would use something other than the infra-red treatment—that is, when we would use hot-blading. I must stress that hot-blading is intended only as a last resort and is carried out only in the interests of animal welfare. It is suitable only for the older birds and only after other provisions have been tried. Beak-trimming an adult flock is not a task that is undertaken lightly. All those poultry farmers who are involved understand the wish not to do so. I would not want to define what “emergency” means but those on the ground know what it means.
Moving on to statistics, the noble Baroness asked how many flocks had fewer than 350 laying birds. I am afraid I do not have a figure but there are a substantial number. There is, as the noble Baroness will know, no need for farmers with fewer than 50 birds to be registered. I have seven laying birds, which lay the odd egg but not that many. Those with more must be registered. I could find her an answer on the number of farmers who have between 50 and 350 birds. If that is possible, as long as it is not too expensive, I will do so.
My noble friend the Duke of Montrose asked about the evidence that infra-red technology was better than other methods. I accept that, like all methods, it is extremely likely to cause short-term pain but this has not yet been confirmed. However, on balance, the current evidence suggests that infra-red beak-trimming does not induce long-term pain. For those reasons, we are satisfied.
Lastly, the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, rightly asked about what we are doing to build alliances in Europe, in both the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. I am glad that she stressed the importance of both. She spoke from her experience as a former Member of the European Parliament. It is important that we concentrate on both the Parliament and the Council of Ministers. We will certainly do what we can to build up the appropriate allowances and work with people. This will be generally true of everything that Defra does. Defra probably has more to do with the EU than any other department. I certainly notice that my honourable friends in Defra in another place are frequently in Brussels. The noble Baroness will know this from her own experience. We shall continue to work with others and we will certainly continue to keep other member states updated on the progress of what we are doing in our industry, just as we will continue to try to learn as much as possible from other member states. I referred in particular to Sweden and Austria; I forget which the third was.
I hope I have dealt with most of the questions that have been put to me.
Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Henley
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, these regulations implement Council directive 2007/43, which establishes for the first time rules governing the conditions under which meat chickens are kept and the monitoring of the birds in slaughterhouses for poor on-farm welfare. The directive is unique in that it looks not only at inputs but at welfare outcomes.
A small section of the directive dealing with mutilations will be implemented through the regulations which the Committee has just discussed.
These regulations apply to holdings with 500 or more birds. They do not apply to breeding stocks of meat chickens, hatcheries or chickens marketed as extensive indoor, free-range or organic. However, these birds are subject to the provisions of Schedule 1 to the welfare of farmed animals regulations 2007, which sets down general conditions for the way in which animals are kept. For the purposes of these regulations, we have defined the chickens in scope as “conventionally reared meat chicken”.
Meat chicken welfare is an important issue. Around 850 million meat chickens are produced in the UK per year and 4 billion across the European Union. The United Kingdom is one of the largest meat chicken producers in the EU, and the total value of the UK industry is estimated at £1.6 billion. There has also been an increase in public awareness of meat chicken welfare over recent years, reflected in significant sales of chicken produced to higher welfare standards by major retailers.
The directive came into force on 30 June 2010. There has been a delay in implementing it in English law due to the change of government and the new processes that have been put in place to ensure the close scrutiny of all new legislation. However, I know that the industry and enforcement bodies have started to take account of the EU legislation in their activities, including training, and I much appreciate their commitment and good will in working with us on implementation. It has been an example of partnership working at its best.
Currently, there is no legal maximum stocking density for meat chickens in England. The directive permits member states to allow a maximum stocking density of up to 42 kilograms per square metre provided that certain criteria are met, including a challenging cumulative daily mortality figure over seven consecutive flocks. Therefore, a producer would have to meet these criteria and provide the evidence before being allowed to stock at 42 kilograms per square metre.
We have decided not to take advantage of this derogation on animal welfare grounds. The draft regulations set instead a maximum stocking density for conventionally reared meat chickens of 33 kilograms per square metre, with the opportunity to stock up to 39 kilograms per square metre provided that additional house documentation requirements and environmental parameters are met. This is in line with the commitment in the coalition agreement to improved standards of farm animal welfare.
There is evidence that meat chicken welfare can be compromised at densities higher than 40 kilograms per square metre. A Defra-funded study at Oxford University showed that, while mortality and leg defects were not compromised at higher stocking densities, other measures were affected, such as jostling, a reduction in growth rate and fewer birds showing the best gait scores, which is an assessment of chicken walking ability. The Farm Animal Welfare Council has also advised against the adoption of a maximum stocking density of 42 kilograms per square metre. In addition, more than 90 per cent of domestic chicken production is currently subject to assurance scheme requirements, which operate at stocking densities at or lower than 38 kilograms per square metre.
Adopting this approach allows us to show leadership on animal welfare. The industry should aim to provide consumers with this information and promote the fact that English chicken meat meets the higher welfare standards set by this Government. Consumers can then make an informed choice. We are not alone in setting a maximum stocking density of 39 kilograms per square metre. I understand that Wales and Scotland have also already taken this approach.
However, we are not going to set this stocking density and walk away. The maximum stocking density will be reviewed as part of the post-implementation review of the regulations. In addition, the EU Commission will publish a report in 2012 looking at the directive’s application and influence on chicken welfare.
We intend to commission a socioeconomic research project to assess the impact of implementing the regulations on the relevant monetary and non-monetary costs and benefits identified in the impact assessment. As part of that, the analysis will look at the impact of the regulations on the industry, enforcement body activity, the effectiveness of slaughterhouse welfare triggers, welfare outcomes and the experience of other member states, some of which will be operating a maximum stocking density of 42 kilograms per square metre.
As I mentioned earlier, the regulations are unique in that they will also look at the welfare outcomes for the birds. All birds will be subject to post-mortem inspections in the slaughterhouse for possible indications of poor on-farm welfare.
For flocks stocked at over 33 kilograms per square metre, mortality information will also be assessed as an indicator of poor welfare. “Poor welfare” will be defined through the setting of welfare triggers for mortality and post-mortem inspections in the slaughterhouse. Any concerns will be communicated to the producer and to Animal Health in order for them to take appropriate action. That might include the drawing up of an action plan in conjunction with Animal Health to outline how a welfare problem will be addressed.
This system of welfare triggers will allow for a more consistent approach across slaughterhouses to the identification of potential on-farm welfare problems. The welfare triggers have been based in part on a pilot study that saw some of the largest meat chicken companies working with us and Animal Health. This is another good example of people working together to improve welfare.
As highlighted, these draft regulations are certainly an important step in improving the welfare of meat chickens and I commend them to the Committee.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, the Opposition are generally supportive of these regulations and the directive behind them. Indeed, the directive was agreed in European Union negotiations under the previous Government, and the regulations implement the directive here. The Minister is correct in saying that this is a useful and important step forward. This is the first time that rules governing conditions under which meat chickens are kept have been agreed at EU level and there is monitoring of birds for poor on-farm welfare. That incorporates some of the animal welfare concerns, which are very recent concerns in EU legislation, so I welcome that.
The Minister was also right to stress that this is an important industry for us. Very often in the EU context we tend to think that other countries are more agriculturally focused than we are, but in terms of this industry, as the Minister pointed out, the UK is one of the largest chicken producers in the European Union. The industry's total value has been estimated at £1.6 billion.
Obviously, the regulations also relate to public concern in terms of the increased demand for food that is produced to higher welfare standards. There has been an increase in the number of consumers wanting assured produce in terms of animal welfare as well as other things. Speaking as a consumer rather than a parliamentarian, I find that the labels can sometimes be confusing with all the different assurance schemes that exist. I know that this has been tried for a number of years, but it would be good if we could move towards more simplification and greater certainty for consumers in this respect. None the less, the trend that we have seen overall is a welcome one.
In general, the Government have tried to strike a balance between animal welfare concerns and the dangers of getting into a situation where we become over-reliant on imports that do not meet the same high standards. It has been a difficult balance to strike. I agree with the Government that the limit of 39 kilos per square metre should be supported, as should not going up to 42.
The Minister rightly said that Wales and Scotland are working along similar lines. I understand, however, that in Northern Ireland a limit of 42 kilos per square metre has been sought. While I fully respect the devolution settlement and the ability of different jurisdictions to decide on their policies, it none the less would be a desirable goal for the UK to operate similar conditions for trading reasons, just as it is a good idea for similar high standards to operate throughout the EU as a whole, even though that is a much more ambitious goal. I do not know whether the Minister has had any discussions with his Northern Ireland counterparts about this, or whether there are special reasons for this of which I am not aware.
The Minister also said that we are not going to walk away from trying to improve standards as time goes on. I think that those were his words. While we have not gone much beyond the minimum standards of the EU in these regulations, what does the Minister see as the possibilities for reducing stocking densities further—from, say, 39 to 33 kilograms per square metre? Does he see us moving in that direction over the next few years?
The regulations are slightly late in being introduced to Parliament but that is not surprising, given that an election took place earlier this year. Does the Minister have any information about whether the regulations and the directive have now come into force in other member states, or whether there are some member states that have not yet adopted the legislation in the way that they are supposed to?
Information from the British Veterinary Association raised some concerns that it originally had about the proposed regulations. It wanted more detail on environmental enrichment to reduce the risk of leg problems in poultry, on litter management to maintain optimum conditions and on the importance of floor temperature. Does the Minister know whether the various concerns raised by the British Veterinary Association have been met?
I recognise that there are costs attached to these regulations. What I did not quite understand from the Explanatory Memorandum is how much of the costs involved are on-farm costs and how much are off-farm, relating to slaughterhouses, inspection processes and so on, to see whether animal welfare issues have arisen. If the Minister does not have that information immediately to hand, I would be happy for him to write to me. It could be, however, that it is in the information and I just have not managed to spot it.
Compliance with these regulations will be very important. The impact assessment accompanying the directive states that there was a 19.1 per cent failure rate for compliance with existing meat chicken welfare standards. Do the bodies concerned, which I understand are the Food Standards Agency and Animal Health, have the resources to try to ensure full compliance with these regulations? I know that the Minister in another place said firmly that he was determined to stamp out abuses in animal welfare practice, but it would be good if the Minister could give us any further information on this.
Finally, repeating something that I said earlier, which the Minister was kind enough to agree with, building alliances for higher welfare standards will be very important at European Union level. I wish the Government well in that task.
Baroness Parminter
My Lords, the stocking densities of chickens cause huge animal welfare problems, so I can be a little more congratulatory to the Government on taking this step in setting a lower density for the housing of chickens in England and for some of our counterparts across Europe and elsewhere. It is hugely to be welcomed and I hope that many animal welfare organisations will take the opportunity to ensure that a wider public see this as an early indication of how this Government intend to treat animal welfare as the coalition moves forward.
I have one question, which follows on from what the Baroness, Lady Quin, said, because one of the issues is around not just stocking density but the enrichment of the cages. I think the Minister mentioned the potential review in 2012. Will the enrichment of cages be part of that review? It clearly has benefits not just for the chickens but for the industry in minimising lameness and the resulting costs of treating it.
I am not sure whether I am allowed a quick comment, so please stop me if I am not. As these regulations show the Government’s commitment to dealing with the welfare issues around the stocking density for chickens, I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to look urgently at the housing issues for dairy cows in view of a planning application in Lincolnshire, where an early indication of the Government’s approach to stocking densities is needed to ensure that some of the application’s appalling welfare implications do not come into being.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, I declare my interest as a farmer, although it has absolutely nothing to do with poultry. My noble friend said that this was the first time that these regulations had been brought into the poultry industry, and I notice that one of the provisions says that every keeper will have to have a certificate. This is a novelty in the agricultural industry as a whole, and some farming elements are very sensitive to it and to the question of whether having a certificate will become a requirement for agricultural production generally.
I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing the measure; it certainly is welcome. I wonder whether the quantity of record-keeping required is likely to increase greatly from what the industry currently does. I am sure that people keep records in the interests of their own production and so on, and the current requirement is fairly detailed, but Regulation 13 talks about recording,
“the number of chickens introduced … the number of chickens found dead ... and … the number of chickens”,
removed. I wonder whether the inspection will require reconciliation at the end of the day, which is always a headache in farming. I do not suppose that chickens evaporate in quite the same way as hill sheep tend to, but it is sometimes a rather difficult job to reconcile numbers. The regulations also want a record kept of the daily mortality rate. I presume that that is for every day that the chickens are kept.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for her general support for the regulations and for her comments on the meat chicken industry, which, as she suggests, is very important. I would like to deal with one or two points.
First, the noble Baroness talked about problems for the consumer in terms of confusion about labelling. I agree that there is still much confusion here, but I hope that, gradually, bit by bit, through the industry and in other ways, we can address it so that there is greater transparency and so that consumers can ultimately make appropriate and rational choices. However, it should mainly be a matter for the industry to get these things right, and I am pleased with what has recently been happening in this area.
Secondly, the noble Baroness talked about what was happening in Northern Ireland, where they have a higher limit and have gone for 42 kilograms per square metre. One has to say that this is devolution and that is where we are. That decision was taken following a consultation in Northern Ireland about these matters and we have to accept that. I have certainly had no discussions with devolved Ministers there, although I do not know whether my honourable friend Mr Paice has. However, I agree with the noble Baroness to some extent, in that these things are important not just in relation to Northern Ireland but across the whole EU. We should all be talking to each other, particularly if it is felt that there is an unfair advantage with one country having a higher stocking rate. In terms of animal welfare, we never want to be in a position where we are, as it were, exporting bad treatment of animals to other countries by sometimes overdoing our rules when other countries do not do the same.
That leads me to what was almost the noble Baroness’s final statement, in which she asked whether we would continue to discuss these matters with colleagues in the EU Parliament and Council. We will certainly do that because it is important to get things right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, also asked whether we wanted to go further in reviewing the stocking density in the future. Certainly, as part of our consideration of policy, a post-implementation review of the new legislation is required to be carried out. In addition, the Commission will publish a report in 2012 looking at the directive’s application and influence on chicken welfare and, as I said, we intend to commission further research into that. Therefore, we will look at this matter, although I obviously cannot give any assurances at the moment.
As regards implementation of the legislation in the rest of the EU, the noble Baroness understood why there had been a delay. This year we had an election, which often causes delays in these matters. My understanding is that it is now in force in the majority of other member states. However, we are aware that Italy and the Netherlands have only just started the process of implementation, so we will not necessarily be the last to do so.
The noble Baroness also asked about the costs on-farm and elsewhere—in slaughterhouses. I am afraid that I do not have the figures, so I shall write to the noble Baroness in due course if I can find something of use to say to her, otherwise I shall not do so. I am sure she will accept that.
Again, I thank my noble friend Lady Parminter for offering congratulations to the Government on doing something. She asked about the enrichment of cages. These regulations relate to meat chickens and do not cover the enrichment of cages. I understand that meat chickens are not kept in cages in this country, so that matter is not relevant.
My noble friend then moved on to problems which go slightly wide of the regulations. She asked about cattle and some of the new super-dairies. I shall not comment on that, other than to say that this is very much a planning issue and not one for us. However, whatever the conditions in which cattle, chicken or other animals are kept and stored, we will ensure that animal welfare issues are always taken into account.
I hope that I have dealt with the questions put to me and I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Appropriate Amount) (Amendment) Order 2010
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Appropriate Amount) (Amendment) Order 2010.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce the Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Appropriate Amount) (Amendment) Order. The purpose of this order is to prescribe the amount of financial penalty deposit that can be requested from an alleged offender—by the police or by an examiner from the Department for Transport’s Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, VOSA—in respect of some particular fixed penalty offences.
This draft order before the Committee is one of three related draft statutory instruments which are needed to keep the provisions affecting the issue of fixed penalties and financial penalty deposits for road traffic offences up to date. The other two draft instruments are subject to the negative resolution, so we have only the one to consider here today. However, since the three instruments are interrelated I will be saying a few words about the draft negative instruments because doing so will help to explain what the order before the Committee is about.
Before doing so, the Committee may wish to be reminded that the purpose of financial penalty deposits is to provide a convenient mechanism for fixed penalties to be effective. The point is that when a fixed penalty is issued to an alleged offender who does not have a “satisfactory UK address”, there is no enforcement mechanism in existence that could subsequently ensure that a fixed penalty is paid. Consequently, by taking a deposit payment from such a person on the spot, it is possible to guarantee payment, since the deposit will automatically be used to pay off the fixed penalty after 28 days, unless the alleged offender asks before that time for the case to proceed instead to court.
Deposits are commonly taken from drivers from abroad, who may fail to respond to a fixed penalty on leaving the UK, though the law applies to any individual who fails to provide a satisfactory UK address to the enforcement authorities. As the Committee will see, this is an essential procedure because it enables the enforcement authorities to deal in a practical way with offenders based outside of the UK, who are otherwise extremely difficult to pursue.
All fixed penalty levels, and the deposit amount corresponding to the relevant fixed penalty, are kept under review, and there are three main reasons why this needs to be done: first, in order to ensure that penalty levels and deposit amounts are set appropriately, to help deter offending; secondly, to ensure that penalty levels and deposit amounts are broadly consistent for similar offences—in other words to help ensure that the fixed penalty scheme itself is self-consistent; and, thirdly, to ensure that fixed penalties and the corresponding deposit amounts remain broadly in line with average court fines for the relevant offence.
Returning to this particular order, its purpose is to harmonise the financial penalty deposit amounts for similar registration plate offences, and for three offences relating to seat-belt wearing, so that all of these deposit amounts correspond with the relevant fixed penalty levels for these offences. Its purpose is also to reduce the deposit payable in respect of the offence of having insufficient motorcycle tyre tread depth, which is a necessary change for a reason I will explain in a moment.
As I mentioned, the two related statutory instruments are subject to the negative resolution procedure, although they are necessarily being taken forward as part of a package, together with the draft order before the Committee. One of the draft negative instruments is the Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Amendment) Order 2010. This will make the offence of failing to fix a prescribed registration mark to a vehicle a fixed penalty offence in respect of which a financial penalty deposit can be requested.
The other draft negative instrument is the Fixed Penalty (Amendment) Order 2010. This will increase the fixed penalty level from £30 to £60 for driving or keeping a vehicle without a registration mark on display; and increase from £30 to £60 the fixed penalty level for driving or keeping a vehicle with an obscured registration mark. That order will also reduce from £120 to £60 the fixed penalty level for insufficient tyre tread depth on a motorcycle tyre.
Of course, failing to have a clearly visible registration mark can have significant implications for law enforcement and tracing criminals. The need to have a correct and visible registration mark on display is especially important from the point of view of the police and their increasing use of modern technology to help trace criminals and other persons in whom they may have an interest. Indeed, many people in whom the police have an interest are nowadays detected and apprehended as a result of the use of so-called automatic number plate recognition—ANPR—cameras. Consequently, increasing the fixed penalty and financial penalty deposit amounts in respect of registration mark offences will help to encourage compliance with the rules, and therefore be helpful for law enforcement more generally.
The fixed penalty scheme also prescribes a £60 fixed penalty for failing to have a registration plate of the correct size, shape and colour, and the Fixed Penalty (Amendment) Order 2010 will increase from £30 to £60 the two other registration mark offences I have already mentioned. The intention is therefore to make equivalent provision in the order we are considering here for the financial penalty deposits, which will secure payment from offenders without a satisfactory address in the UK who might otherwise not pay. If we were not to make these changes we would be left in the situation where no deposit amount would be prescribed for having an incorrect registration mark, and none could be taken in respect of a £60 fixed penalty. It would also mean that in the case of an obscured registration mark, or having none at all, a deposit of only £30 could be taken against a fixed penalty of twice that sum.
The changes in this order will also increase the financial penalty deposit level for certain seat-belt offences from £30 to £60. The reason for making this change is so that the amount of deposit that can be taken from offenders for these offences is the same as the existing fixed penalty level. Currently there is a £30 differential between the fixed penalty for these offences and the deposit amount that may be taken in respect of them.
Finally, the changes in this order will reduce from £120 to £60 the financial penalty deposit amount for insufficient tyre tread depth on a motorcycle tyre. This change is necessary in order to mirror a similar change in the fixed penalty level for this offence which will be made under the Fixed Penalty (Amendment) Order 2010.
The reason for the reduction in the fixed penalty level for this offence, and consequently for the reduction in the deposit amount for this offence, is that the penalty level was inadvertently increased to £120 in April 2009, and the action being taken now is simply to restore the penalty to its former level. The reason why the fixed penalty and deposit levels for this offence were unintentionally increased in 2009 was due to the fact that such a large number of legislative changes were needed when the financial penalty deposits scheme was introduced and a small error occurred.
To summarise, the overall purpose of prescribing financial penalty deposit appropriate amounts is to enable the fixed penalty scheme to operate effectively for offenders based outside the UK in the same way as it does for those with a satisfactory UK address. Small maintenance changes need to be made to this scheme from time to time, as I have explained. I therefore commend the order to the Committee.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, neither have I, but I am going to speak at slightly greater length than the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, if only to congratulate the Minister on the lucid way in which he presented the order. He deserves a larger audience when the Government are for once doing good things. I commend him on what he is doing and I am sorry that he has a limited response here today. He has wholehearted support on my part and, so far as I can detect from the brief remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, he has 100 per cent from him too.
I appreciate the particular and gentle way in which the Minister indicated that there had been an error with regard to motorcycles in 2009. I am glad that that has been corrected, not least because those in the motorbike community sometimes feel that they are hard pressed even to the point of being victimised because they travel on two wheels. We all know from the incidence of accidents that it is a more hazardous form of travel. Therefore, at times motor cyclists are prone to considerable criticism for the accident rate, particularly since, as we know, a very small number are guilty of offending against speed limits in ways that cannot possibly be condoned. I am therefore glad that, on this occasion, we are indicating that fair is fair and making sure that the minor error that occurred in 2009 is put right.
We particularly commend that part of the order dealing with seat belts. There is no doubt that in the range of legislation that has helped to reduce fatalities and injuries over the years, seat-belt legislation takes pride of place. It has been of enormous significance. That is why successive Governments have extended its range and salience. We are entirely in favour of this order, which increases the deposit as far as seat belts are concerned.
I am interested in the noble Earl’s point about registration numbers. Perhaps he will correct what may be my somewhat dated perspective; can he make it absolutely clear whether number plate law obtains to the same specifications across the European Community? He emphasised the aspect to do with foreign vehicles and he is absolutely right that number plate recognition is an important part of law enforcement. I believe, for instance, that at present several countries do not expect motor bikes to have front number plates. I recall—this is where I am slightly hesitant because I may be a little dated—when Italian front number plates, particularly on fast Alfa Romeos, were of a microscopic quality, so even those with the keenest eyesight had difficulty in recognising them. I am not sure that the new technology is up to that. Can the Minister therefore offer that element of reassurance on number plates? Is there a degree of standardisation, and does that which obtains as far as the British motorist is concerned apply also to foreign motorists when they bring cars into this country and may be guilty of traffic offences?
I know we have tightened up on this matter but there is always the tendency for people to select a number plate that has an affectionate dimension to it. Therefore, the characters are produced in ways that mean they may not always be entirely recognisable. I saw one the other day that I was certain was the driver’s favourite nickname for his girlfriend. You had to get pretty close to the car—I do not know about the girlfriend—before you could easily recognise the number plate. I am just seeking reassurance on that score.
The noble Earl should recognise that we very much approve of the order and realise that it is under the affirmative procedure. That is why we are debating it today. If not, we would have been content for the order to go through.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their response to the order. As I explained at the outset, this is one of three related statutory instruments. The other two have been laid before the House under the negative resolution procedure.
I was surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, did not have a good go at me about foreign lorries; I had a lovely speech ready to roll but I did not need to use it.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, for his contribution. He raised a number of points. This order builds on the work of the Road Safety Act, which the noble Lord himself piloted through your Lordships’ House. I remember our debates on that. The noble Lord talked about seat belts. I cannot sit in a moving car fitted with seat belts without fitting them. I would feel so uncomfortable. It is a mystery to me why anyone would want to travel in a motor vehicle without wearing a seat belt, but they do. We do as much as we possibly can to stop people from doing that. I went out with the Metropolitan Police, and one of the things that they were paying attention to was motorists driving without wearing a seat belt.
The noble Lord talked about number plates. He is right that there is a wide range of styles of number plates. VOSA is particularly concerned about foreign goods vehicles. I believe that VOSA can read foreign number plates with its automatic number plate reading equipment. That is important because VOSA targets its efforts against certain operators and certain vehicles when it knows that they are rogue operators. The fixed penalties might seem to be quite small in relation to the operation of a goods vehicle. However, every fixed penalty offence will be recorded on the VOSA database. If the vehicle is detected again, it will be stopped to try to ensure that it is operating in compliance with the law.
The financial penalty deposit scheme helps to provide our enforcement authorities with an effective enforcement mechanism for dealing with alleged road traffic offenders who would otherwise be extremely difficult to pursue. The scheme needs minor housekeeping changes from time to time to keep it in line with the fixed penalty scheme so that UK resident offenders and offenders who have no satisfactory address in the UK can be dealt with in an equivalent way. Such minor changes are being proposed under this order and I believe that most motorists would understand and support these amendments irrespective of whether they are UK residents or non-UK residents. I therefore commend the order to the Committee.
Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme (Amendment) Order 2010
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Wilcox
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme (Amendment) Order 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, I remember, as other noble Lords certainly will, a time when what we now call Royal Mail was known as the Post Office, and then, briefly, Consignia. So perhaps I may start by being absolutely clear about what we mean by the Post Office and what we are here to discuss. The Post Office is an unrivalled network of around 11,500 shops where you can post your parcel or collect your pension. Royal Mail is responsible for collecting and delivering our letters. It provides the universal postal service that connects any post box to every address in the country.
The Government are committed to a strong and sustainable Post Office network. That is why on 27 October we announced funding of £1.34 billion for the Post Office network over the spending review period, subject to state aid approval from the European Commission. On 9 November, we published the policy statement, Securing the Post Office Network in the Digital Age, setting out our plans and commitments for the network. On 13 October, we published the Postal Services Bill, which is currently being debated in Committee in the other place. I shall expand on our plans for the Post Office network shortly, but perhaps I may first address the substance of the instrument currently before the Committee—which is all we are really seeking to discuss today.
The previous Administration introduced the Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme Order 2007 under provisions in Section 103 of the Postal Services Act 2000. The Act allows the Secretary of State to make an order permitting payments for the purpose of assisting in the provision of public post offices or assisting in the provision of services to be provided from public post offices.
Under the terms of the subsidy scheme order, the Government can provide funding to keep post offices open or to enable the establishment of post offices in areas of the country where, without funding, it is unlikely that they would be provided. The current scheme allows the Secretary of State to make payments of up to £160 million in any 12-month period beginning on 1 April. As we want to provide more funding than at present, we are seeking to amend the current order to increase the limit to £500 million.
For the next four years, the largest tranche of funding that we have committed in any one year is £415 million. Increasing the cap on the level of payments made under the subsidy scheme order to £500 million allows for some flexibility and contingency; for example, in case of changes to the tax treatment of the funding. We know that this is a large increase but I am sure that noble Lords will agree that the Post Office is a valuable national asset. It is much more than a commercial entity and serves a distinct social purpose. That is why the Postal Services Bill ensures that the Post Office will not be for sale.
The previous Government provided funding for the closure of 5,000 post offices; our approach is different. We will address the real economic challenges that the network faces. Our funding will enable the Post Office to do more than simply maintain the status quo. As well as receiving funding for loss-making branches, the Post Office will be able to invest in the network and introduce new technologies so that branches can be brought up to date. As the previous Government did not fully compensate Post Office Ltd in association with its maintenance of the Post Office network, our funding will give it the opportunity to invest its own resources in developing new revenue streams.
There will be no programme of post office closures on our watch. This funding will ensure that there continues to be a network of around 11,500 post office branches in the UK that continues to meet the post office access criteria. They ensure that 99 per cent of the UK population is within three miles of the nearest post office outlet, while 90 per cent is within one mile. They also contain specific protections for people in rural and deprived urban areas.
Furthermore, the proposed modernisation of the network which we set out in the policy statement will allow for longer opening hours and a faster service. This will make the Post Office more convenient for customers. It will also make it a stronger retail partner for Royal Mail.
However, the number of letters that we send is projected to continue declining over the coming years. Although the growth of online shopping and parcels offers opportunities for the Post Office, it will also need to develop revenues from other sources. These can be divided into two main areas: government services and financial services. We want the Post Office to become a genuine front office for government at both national and local levels. We are exploring the scope for greater local authority involvement in the planning, delivery and level of post office service provision. In terms of financial services, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Post Office reached agreement last month to allow their customers, including those of NatWest, to access their accounts at post offices. This means that almost 80 per cent of current account customers will be able to withdraw cash free of charge at a Post Office branch.
However, we—and especially me, as I am getting rather over-excited by all this—must remember that today we are here to discuss the Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme (Amendment) Order 2010. New funding will help to ensure that the Post Office network has a secure and sustainable future. I hope that noble Lords will agree that the Post Office network should continue to play an important role throughout this country and will therefore approve the order.
Lord Cotter
I support the Minister on this measure. It is extremely encouraging that the coalition’s approach is a determination to keep our sub-post offices open. I do not wish to have a go at the Opposition but that is extremely welcome in contrast with the previous Government, under whom there were a lot of closures.
When it comes to regulations and Bills, I am always very keen to see whether there is an impact assessment. On this occasion, there is apparently no impact, but I simply raise it as a point that I always tend to raise because, if there is an impact, we must be sure that the matter is addressed when a regulation is brought forward. However, in this case, it does not apply.
I congratulate the Minister on taking the wind out of my sails. I was going to ask for details of what the subsidy would be used towards and so on, but she came forward with some very tangible points which, as I said, took the wind out of my sails. I was going to ask what measures there might be, particularly with, as the Minister said, the decline in the number of letters and in the sale of stamps and so on. Therefore, it is very good to talk about new revenue schemes, longer opening hours and the network being a very strong part of Royal Mail. The Minister also talked about central and local government services being directed, wherever possible, to the Post Office, and of course we have learnt that the banks are going to be engaged in the new arrangements.
Therefore, I shall not waste Members’ time and shall say no more, other than that I very much applaud what has been discussed and I thank the Minister very much for explaining it so clearly. Tangible measures and initiatives will be brought forward to implement what is proposed.
Lord Jones
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her introduction, which was helpful. I support the order and think that those who originated the network subsidy scheme deserve high praise. It is heartening to hear of a continued determination to keep what is left of the Post Office network. Support for the network of 11,500 branches is good news and I think that it will be acclaimed across the nation.
From my work in another place over many years, it quickly became obvious that any community worthy of the name needed a post office and a school, and this order may well hold the line in terms of our communities. These are big amounts of money and they must be welcomed.
One always speaks from experience, so I instance the sub-post office of Llanfynydd in Flintshire. It is tiny, it is valued and it is the village centre. Nothing is too much trouble for the family who run it. Situated on a Welsh hillside at 800 feet, adjacent to a church and a school, it is the centre of a far-flung, Welsh-speaking community. I do not think that any praise is too high for this particular sub-post office, and I make that statement in the knowledge that there are many hundreds of such sub-post offices across the nation. Long may they remain open, giving our communities the service that they need.
I hope that this order will guarantee the survival of post offices such as the one in Llanfynydd in Flintshire. I think that Wales will benefit from what is being proposed and I welcome the order very much.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I could not help smiling when the Minister defined the Royal Mail and the Post Office because I remember when it was called the GPO, which dates me slightly. I was also an employee and, as I recall, the postmaster-general at the time was Anthony Wedgwood Benn. How time passes when you are enjoying yourself.
We welcome the increased subsidy. However, as the Merits Committee helpfully issued a health warning and said that the Order should be considered in conjunction with the Postal Services Bill, it is only appropriate that we register our concern about the impact of the Postal Services Bill. Of course we welcome the increased subsidy, but we would like to see enshrined in legislation the principle that the Post Office network should be used as the access points for Royal Mail.
We believe that the Secretary of State should have the power to specify exactly how many access points there should be. The reason for that is that it has been suggested that a privatised Royal Mail company might think that its needs could be served by a network of some 4,000 outlets. Currently, we have 11,900 post offices. I certainly endorse the comments of my noble friend Lord Jones about the vital importance of these post offices to the local community. Of that number, some 7,000 or so could be adequate to meet the access criteria that were introduced by the last Labour Government and have been accepted by this Government and spelt out again in their recent document on the future of the Post Office network in the digital age.
The criteria spell out that the access criteria introduced by Labour meant that, as the Minister said, 99 per cent are to be within three miles of their nearest outlet and 90 per cent should be within one mile. The access criteria continue with a more detailed definition in relation to urban and rural areas. The purpose of the criteria is to ensure reasonable access to post offices in both urban and rural areas. Without them, there would be no control of the overall shape of the Post Office network. We believe that a viable sustainable Post Office network is a critical part of the social infrastructure for many communities, which I was pleased to hear the Minister seemed to endorse. That is why we introduced the access criteria: to ensure that communities would continue to be fairly served by a national Post Office network. As I said, these access criteria could be met with something like 7,000 post offices, but we put in an additional investment so that we could keep the number at 11,900.
If the Government are serious about wanting to keep that number of post offices open and keep the network as we know it now, there should be a mechanism that the Government can use. The Secretary of State should have the power to specify the number of post offices to be used as access points for the services of the provider of the universal postal service. I am talking about that in the context of a privatised Royal Mail.
The Minister might argue that it is up to the privatised business what it decides to do, how many access points it uses and where those access point are located. That is precisely our concern. The nature of the relationship between Royal Mail and the Post Office in a privatised environment would be different. Will there be the current inter-business agreement that safeguards that relationship? We are talking about a national network and a universal service that we all agree we want to be easily accessible to everyone in the UK. Given that all parties on both sides of the House now agree on the access criteria of post offices, we cannot see any good argument for the Secretary of State not having the power to specify not only that the provider of the universal service should use post offices as access points but how many post offices that should be. If the Government are serious about protecting the Post Office network, the straightforward solution would be to enshrine in the Postal Services Bill that the Secretary of State should have that power.
We are talking about using large amounts of taxpayers’ money to subsidise the Post Office network. Therefore we want to make sure that that money is used to preserve that as part of the universal postal service. It seems that other countries have no problem about not letting the Government have a say in this. Elsewhere, where there has been privatisation of the mail service—we make it clear that we are opposed to complete privatisation—there has also been legislation to protect the post office network and specify its use as access points for the universal postal service.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I am grateful to those of your Lordships who have participated. The Post Office network is an important national asset and it is important that we ensure it has a secure and sustainable future. My noble friend Lord Cotter paid me the compliment of saying that I had taken the wind out of his sails. As I am a sailing woman, I hope very much that I can reverse that. I hope that I raised the wind in his sails rather than taking it out of them.
My noble friend went on to talk about an impact assessment and I have a little note here on why we do not have one. It says that, as stated in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme (Amendment) Order, we do not believe that this order requires an impact assessment. The Government’s core policy is to ensure a Post Office network of at least 11,500 branches, which continues to meet the access criteria that were implemented in 2007 after national public consultation. This is a continuation of existing government policy and therefore does not constitute change for which the impact should be assessed. Moreover, the Government’s guidance on impact assessments states that spending proposals do not generally require them, as they are developed through a business case process. Well, there we are. However, I was delighted to have his support and I hope to continue to have it when the Bill comes to this House, fairly soon.
I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Jones, for his support. I was listening to his experience in another place and heard of the Flintshire village in the Welsh hillside, whose name I could not pronounce.
Lord Jones
Which, being translated, means the little church on the hillside.
Baroness Wilcox
Well, how lovely indeed. Of the post offices, the rural ones are obviously those which we are all most concerned to do everything that we can to try and keep open.
In the last two outings that we have had facing each other, I have managed each time to call the noble Lord, Lord Young, “the Minister”. I shall try this time not to do it and to remember that I am the Minister. I also forgot the noble Lord’s background in the industry, when he reminded us of the GPO. I am not going to be tempted by him—I have been warned about this—to wander into the Bill, which will of course be with us some time at the beginning of next year. I look forward very much indeed to debating with him when the Bill comes, because of all his experience when he was a Minister. I am sure that he will have some pretty splendid arguments to put up.
I think that I have covered most of the points made. People have been very good. Your Lordships have seemed to be in support so all I need say at this stage, Deputy Chairman, is that I commend the order to the Committee.
National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2010
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Wilcox
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, I am pleased today to present these regulations to the Committee. The regulations before us provide that, where an employer makes money payments for travelling expenses that are eligible for tax relief, these payments do not count towards the national minimum wage. They address the problems we have identified with what are commonly called travel and subsistence schemes, operated by some employment businesses that involve low-paid workers. I will briefly outline how these schemes work and why we are tightening their rules.
Traditionally, employment businesses have engaged workers under agency contracts. In this situation, the worker is not an employee of the employment business. As a result, each assignment with a client is, for tax legislation purposes, considered to be the worker’s permanent place of employment. Increasingly, however, some employment businesses are engaging workers under an employment contract, rather than under an agency contract. These contracts are also sometimes referred to as “overarching contracts of employment” because they link, or claim to link, a series of different assignments into one overarching employment with the employment business. One of the consequences of this approach is that, for the purposes of tax legislation, each assignment with a client is considered to be the worker’s temporary place of employment.
This distinction between a temporary and permanent place of employment is an important one. Since 1998, workers travelling from home to a temporary workplace have been eligible for tax relief on their travel expenses, which includes associated subsistence costs. Travel from home to a permanent workplace, on the other hand, does not qualify for tax relief. Therefore, by engaging workers under employment contracts, employment businesses are able to use travel and subsistence schemes to reduce the amount of tax and national insurance contributions that the worker pays and the amount of national insurance contributions that the employer pays.
Travel and subsistence schemes operate through an arrangement known as salary sacrifice. Under it, an employee contractually agrees to give up part of their taxable income in exchange for something else that is either non-taxable or taxable at a lower rate. In this case, the employee receives travel—and usually subsistence—expenses. These expenses are free of tax and national insurance contributions because they relate to travel to a temporary workplace. Payments of expenses for travel from home to these temporary workplaces and associated subsistence count as pay under national minimum wage rules. Therefore, as long as the taxable pay and the expenses paid by the employer are equal to or greater than the minimum wage, the employer is compliant for minimum wage purposes. The worker benefits from these arrangements as they receive a slightly higher take-home pay than they would otherwise have done. The employer also benefits, as the amount of salary on which they have to pay the employer’s national insurance contributions is decreased. In many cases, the expenses that the employer pays to the worker are less than the salary that the worker has surrendered.
The Government consider that there are several problems with the use of travel and subsistence schemes for workers on the national minimum wage. The first is about preserving the integrity of the minimum wage as a wage floor. As I am sure noble Lords are aware, the coalition Government are committed to the minimum wage because we recognise the protection it gives to low-income workers and the incentive to work that it provides. For the minimum wage regime to be effective, employers must be able to demonstrate easily that they have met their legal obligations.
Workers need to know what they are entitled to, which is particularly important given the vulnerability of those with whom we are concerned today. Allowing some salary sacrifices to count towards the minimum wage where others, such as childcare vouchers, do not unduly complicates the regime. There is evidence that the employer gains far more from these schemes than the worker, and that the majority of workers do not understand how the schemes work. The Government consider this to be a form of exploitation of low-paid workers.
A number of adverse consequences flow from the participation of low-paid workers in such schemes. The amount that a worker pays in national insurance contributions potentially affects their entitlement to certain benefits. For low-paid workers in travel and subsistence schemes, the most significant impact is on the basic and additional state pension. If they participate in the schemes, the pay that is liable for national insurance contributions is reduced, thereby increasing the number of weeks that they must work and pay national insurance contributions to secure the qualifying earnings for the state pension. It thus increases the risk of the worker not meeting the eligibility criteria for contributory benefits.
In addition, businesses not using travel and subsistence schemes can find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to those which do. Businesses using such schemes can undercut them on price or general profit margins, which would not be possible without the tax and national insurance contribution benefits available.
Some businesses have told us that they do not wish to implement travel and subsistence schemes for employees because they consider them to be exploitative and morally wrong. For some, this is an ethical matter. They believe that such schemes might be against low-paid workers’ long-term interests, that workers do not properly understand how the schemes work and that some schemes do not, in reality, give workers the employment rights associated with an employment contract. For others, the implementation costs mean they are cost-effective only where a large number of workers is involved. As a result, smaller businesses are less able to use such schemes.
There are further issues of fairness. Artificially reducing the pay liable for tax and national insurance contributions means that a low-paid worker in a travel scheme becomes entitled to an higher level of certain benefits, such as tax credits, than a low-paid worker who is paid the same amount but not through a travel scheme. We do not believe that this is right. Nor do we consider it right that the burden of financing benefits should be passed from the employer and the worker to the general taxpayer.
For the reasons that I have set out, the Government consider that payments of travel and associated subsistence expenses relating to travel from home to a temporary workplace should not count as pay for minimum wage purposes. The draft regulations before us today will preserve the integrity of the minimum wage. They will reduce the risk of reducing low-paid workers’ entitlement to certain social security benefits. They will ensure a level playing field for those businesses unwilling or unable to use such schemes. They will remove the unfairness in the present situation. I beg to move.
Lord Cotter
I thank the Minister. I declare an interest as having been a member of the committee on the national minimum wage in the other place. I was very pleased to play a part in seeing that legislation through. We sat on one occasion for what I think was the longest-ever sitting in Parliament—close to 24 hours—going overnight to consider the Bill. While many others spoke all the time, I spoke only occasionally. I promise not to speak for 24 hours today, which I am sure is a great relief to everybody. That includes me, because I would run out of steam.
Suffice to say, I thank the Minister once again for the explanation and for drawing out the intention of this measure to preserve the minimum wage, preserve its integrity and ensure that the workforce is not exploited in any way. The regulations are being put before Parliament for approval and I see no reason not to approve their implementation today. In terms of impact, I was glad that small businesses were also mentioned in the regulations. On that basis, I thank the Minister and hope that this goes forward successfully.
Lord Myners
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chairman of the Low Pay Commission. I am grateful to the Minister for her clear explanation of the regulations. I welcome the simplification that is being suggested and I am delighted to be reminded again of the coalition Government’s commitment to the national minimum wage.
I have four questions relating to the regulations. Would I be correct in understanding that an employee currently receiving precisely the adult national minimum wage who was also receiving assistance for transport to work would, as a result of this regulation, effectively have a lower benefit as a consequence of employment?
Secondly, I was somewhat surprised to see the explanation in paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum that,
“only around 90,000 low paid workers”,
will be affected. The figure of 90,000 seems to be quite large. What percentage is that of the total number of employees estimated to be earning the national minimum wage? I suspect that the use of the word “only” may be misleading.
I would also like to know a little more about the impact of the judicial review explained at paragraph 8.2 and what impact that might have on the timing of the implementation of these revised regulations. Finally, perhaps the Minister can explain paragraph 10.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which makes no sense to me at all.
While officials in the Box prepare the answers, I will do the Minister the courtesy of talking on another subject so that they can prepare their notes. I know how much anxiety can be prompted when you look around and they are filing their nails and not writing a note for you.
I have four general points on the national minimum wage. I was delighted to hear the Minister reiterate her commitment to the minimum wage in a Question to the House last week in connection with internship. Am I correct in understanding that her clear statement that there would be no change in the way in which the minimum wage operates reflects the fact that we continue to believe that the RPI is the appropriate index for inflation that should be used when assessing whether the minimum wage represents an increase or decrease in real income?
Secondly, can the Low Pay Commission be asked to look at the accommodation allowance, which has not kept pace with the cost of accommodation and is falling behind in terms of value?
Thirdly, the Low Pay Commission should also give its attention to piece work. For example, hotel service operatives—or chambermaids as we used to call them—are sometimes assumed to be able to complete four bedrooms an hour for the purposes of earning the minimum wage. There is a lot of evidence that the rate of productivity assumed is altogether too high. Therefore, the minimum wage is being breached in both spirit and purpose.
Finally, can the Minister confirm that, as part of the coalition Government’s commitment to the minimum wage, there will be no diminution in the resource available for compliance and enforcement? The word “fairness” was used earlier. The national minimum wage has to be fair both to employees and to employers who comply. When employers in the vicinity do not comply, that means a disadvantage for businesses which meet their legal obligations. I came across many examples of firms which did not comply. Resource was already very stretched in terms of monitoring compliance and enforcement. If the Government were in any way to reduce the resource made available for these functions, that would undermine the national minimum wage, which I believe the Institute for Government recently listed as one of the top 10 achievements of recent Governments. I think it is fair to say that the national minimum wage has had universal support from all political parties, and commitment to compliance, monitoring and enforcement is critical.
I think that I have now allowed sufficient time for those in the Box to perform their duties. I support the proposed regulations.
Lord Jones
Perhaps I will give them a little more time. I thank the Minister for her exposition at the onset. I am very glad to follow my noble friend Lord Myners, who on these matters has a very distinguished track record. The Committee may well learn from his expertise.
I welcome the details given, which were detailed enough. I support the regulations and would not be able to contribute without praising the minimum wage legislation overall. It was a very great social advance in Britain. It has been hugely beneficial to my own country of Wales and perhaps also particularly to sparsely populated areas across Britain—those, for example, which are dependent on tourism, the hospitality industry and aspects of agriculture and forestry for employment. It is a huge advance for many ordinary people in our nation.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, in another place I observed the clamour, controversy and opposition when the Blair Administration brought forward the minimum wage legislation. It was almost unbelievable. The opposition was strong and, looking back, there was much sound and fury. I am glad that I was able to support that legislation and use my vote in the other place. I, for one, am very proud that the minimum wage is on the statute book and I am grateful for the information that the Minister has given us today.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I, too, welcome the statutory instrument before us, which proposes to make a change so that payments by an employer for travel expenses to a temporary workplace which are eligible for tax relief will not count as pay for national minimum wage purposes. I certainly endorse the comments made by my noble friend Lord Jones, and I shall come later to the tour de force and analysis from my noble friend Lord Myners.
It is right to remind ourselves that the national minimum wage was introduced by the Labour Government in 1999 in spite of all manner of scaremongering. I remember talk from some sections of the right-wing press of 2 million jobs being at risk, and of course the legislation was opposed by the Conservative Party at the time, so we welcome the conversion, although I would not call it a pauline conversion. When it was introduced, the minimum wage raised pay for more than 2 million people. Thereafter, the Labour Government ensured that there were regular above-inflation increases so that, in the first 10 years of its existence, the national minimum wage rose by 59 per cent. Those increases raised the living standards of the lowest paid and helped to close the gap between men’s and women’s pay. We should not forget those fundamental changes that took place.
I certainly endorse the point that my noble friend Lord Myners made about the importance of compliance and enforcement. It took us a while before HMRC and the employment agency services group got around to ensuring that they prosecuted those people who failed to pay the minimum wage. I would welcome some reassurance on that. I very much hope that the coalition parties will continue our policy—to endorse again a point made by my noble friend Lord Myners—of increasing the national minimum wage at or above the level of inflation. I also hope that there is no intention on the coalition’s part to allow the national minimum wage to wither on the vine. I express those fears because we have already seen the coalition Government decide to use the consumer prices index instead of the retail prices index to calculate rises in pensions and benefits, which will gradually erode pensioners’ income.
How does the use of such a scheme affect the workers? I pay tribute to the helpful analysis of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, which gave us a useful assessment of the effect on workers and their take-home pay. Just as important is what it will mean for them in future entitlements. If the money that one takes home equates to the minimum wage and is made up partly of wages and partly of an amount for travel, the actual wage is rather less than the minimum wage. In cases that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has seen, workers who are paid the national minimum wage and who use a travel and subsistence scheme can find that as much as 40 per cent of their wages are paid as travel and subsistence expenses.
In making up our mind about whether we should support the proposed instrument, one of the things that certainly influenced us was that the Low Pay Commission, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority all endorsed it, as the Minister said. Over the past five years the HMRC compliance teams have interviewed an estimated 400 to 500 workers, the majority of whom were paid at or near the minimum wage. Virtually none of them understood in any meaningful way the contractual terms of their engagement. The possibility of exploitation is a real worry.
The access to earnings-related contributory benefits, which is based on a worker attaining the qualifying earnings factor, can therefore be affected. The effect of participating in travel and subsistence schemes is to reduce the amount of a worker’s pay on which national insurance contributions are paid, depending on how many weeks they are unable to work for, and puts at risk their ability to achieve the qualifying earnings factor. That is most likely to affect eligibility for both basic and additional state pension.
I understand from the impact assessment that the schemes we are discussing are likely to involve some 90,000 out of a possible 1 million people. I would like some confirmation of that. It endorses another point that my noble friend Lord Myners made. The change proposed in the legislation could have a negative impact on some workers who are currently in such travel and subsistence schemes because only part of the amount that a worker takes home is pay, and gross pay is assessed for tax purposes. Some workers, because they receive less pay, may be entitled to more working tax credit. Under the regulations, some people could find that they are entitled to less working tax credit because more of their take-home money will be pay. However, such individuals have until now had an advantage over other workers with similar levels of income who are not in such schemes. This legislation will end the unfairness that travel and subsistence schemes create. We endorse the point that the Minister made: workers who participate in them artificially benefit from enhanced eligibility for tax credits, compared to other workers who do not or cannot participate.
What steps will the Government take to ensure that any workers whose eligibility for working tax credit will be affected are properly informed about the change? That is important. We know that tax credits have been a huge boost to those on low incomes and have been recognised as helping to reduce the gap between rich and poor. I am sure that I am not the only Peer who has had to deal with people whose circumstances have changed and where workers are then faced with a clawback, where they must pay back an overpayment of tax credit. I stress that we want to know what the Government will do to ensure that anyone affected by the measure is kept fully informed and does not end up, months down the line, in a situation of being asked to pay back money that they simply do not have.
That said, we support the motivation behind this statutory instrument because we believe that it will prevent exploitation and ensure that the contributory benefit position of temporary workers paid at or near the national minimum wage is not prejudiced by the reduction of earnings liable to pass on national insurance contributions. We also support it because the intention is to ensure that employment businesses and umbrella companies do not gain an unfair competitive advantage through the use of travel and subsistence schemes for temporary workers. I, too, look forward to the answers to the issues raised by my noble friend Lord Myners.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. I believe that the regulations raise important issues of principle about the minimum wage and the rights of workers and employers, so it is essential that we give them very careful consideration. I was therefore happy to hear the comments today and to hear some supporting views, which is always nice. I really had not taken it on board that my noble friend Lord Cotter had been a member of the national minimum wage committee in another place. Hearing that he sat for 24 hours, our Chief Whip would, no doubt, remind us that other people in other places sit longer than we do. However, it was a wonderful piece of work and it has been supported over the years.
The noble Lord, Lord Myners, asked several questions and I think that I can answer a goodly few. On the first, we recognise that workers participating in travel and subsistence schemes may see a small reduction in their take-home pay as a result of the changes in the regulations. However, our experience is that the direct cash benefit to the worker is minimal in comparison to the direct cash benefit to the employment business. We consider it wrong in principle that profits should be made by employers from low-paid workers through the application of salary sacrifice schemes. There is evidence that significant numbers of low-paid workers do not understand the way in which these schemes work. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed that out in his remarks.
The regulations will remove the risk that, by participating in travel schemes, low-paid workers will not be able to meet the requirements for entitlements to earnings-related benefits, in particular the basic and additional state pension. Again, I pick up on something that the noble Lord, Lord Young, said: let us make sure that everybody knows and understands what is happening to them because they are already complaining that they do not at the minute. We must be very sure that what we do makes that clearer.
On the second question from the noble Lord, Lord Myners, about a percentage of temporary workers as opposed to workers on the national minimum wage, we estimate that approximately 1 million workers are earning that national minimum wage so 90,000 is, for interest, roughly 10 per cent of that total. His third question was on why we have not waited until the result of the judicial review to put forward the regulations. We consider that the judicial review application has no merit and we are strongly defending ourselves against it. There are good reasons for the Government to make these regulations and we are confident that the court will agree with us. We therefore see no reason to delay the regulations until the result of the judicial review is known.
On the noble Lord’s fourth question, it says here that there is an error in paragraph 10.1 of the memorandum, for which we apologise. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Myners, very much for bringing it to our attention. Yes, jolly good. On enforcement compliance, this Government are firmly committed to the national minimum wage and to effective risk-based enforcement. Enforcement is essential in ensuring a level playing field for legitimate businesses and in protecting workers who are at risk of abuse by those who refuse to play by the rules. BIS has published a strategy for national minimum wage compliance. It focuses on how the compliance and enforcement landscape should look over the next three to five years and recognises that our approach must continue to be based on intelligence and data. In the context of reduced budgets we will need to prioritise, but we are clear that underpayment is not an option. The strategy will help us to make informed choices to ensure that we have the right tools for the job and that resources are focused where they are most effective.
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, also talked about his time in the other place. He spoke with Welsh passion about the national minimum wage. It was very nice to hear him and good to have his support for the work going forward. I hope that we do not disappoint him.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, talked of the beneficial effects of the previous Government’s work in this area and of closing the gap between men and women’s pay. To that, I would say, “Yes, but we are not there yet”. We will keep trying to improve on the previous Government’s work. The noble Lord also paid tribute to the excellent work of the Merits Committee. I agree with that, as I am sure would all other noble Lords.
I was asked whether we would make sure that people were properly informed of the changes. Yes, we certainly will. I was asked also whether workers will face a claw-back of overpaid tax credits at the end of the year as a result of their pay being adjusted. No, they will not. For tax credits to be adjusted downwards for 2010-11, there would need to be a substantially greater increase in taxable pay for 2010-11 than will arise from the proposed amendment to the regulations.
There were one or two other questions which the noble Lord, Lord Myners, very kindly put to me as I was waiting for the answers to the first ones. I am not sure that I am able to answer them all at the moment; if that is the case, I shall write to him.
Lord Myners
I congratulate the Minister on doing a superb job in answering the questions. Many members of the coalition Government would do well to study the skill, openness and sincerity with which she attempts to answer questions and, indeed, succeeds in doing so.
I have only one question to ask at this point; it is fortunate that we have a Minister from the Department of Business with us to answer it. Which is the right rate of inflation? The Government are using CPI for changing benefits and pensions, but they are using RPI for increasing the payments that students make in connection with university education. Both decisions come from the same department of state. Can the Minister put my mind at ease and tell me which is the relevant index to be used for the purpose of determining fair value for people on low incomes or of paying for their education?
Baroness Wilcox
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Myners, will understand the answer that I can give him. The Government will consider the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission when deciding on the appropriate rates for the national minimum wage.
Lord Myners
That is a very good answer to a question that I did not ask but I am happy to leave it at that.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
That was exactly the point that I was coming to. When the Minister said that she would “consider”, did that mean that she is not committed to accepting the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission? Are the Government prepared to accept its recommendations, as previous Governments have done?
Baroness Wilcox
I am told that this Government never commit—at least, not at this moment—so I think that I just have to say that we are considering the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations.
Lord Myners
This Government may never commit. They pledge, but we know what the pledges are worth. However, it is right to point out that the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations on hourly rates have never been rejected by government. I sincerely hope that this Government will respect the commission’s independence, integrity, foresight and professionalism and not lightly even contemplate rejecting its recommendations.
Baroness Wilcox
I am sorry, my Lords. I was being flippant and was somewhat thrown by the question, which is a little wide of the regulations that I am introducing today. Yes, of course, we shall be listening very carefully to the Low Pay Commission. We shall remember its independence and integrity, which we will honour. If there are no further questions that anyone wishes to put at the moment, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
House of Lords
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Youth Justice Board
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how, when taking the Youth Justice Board into the Ministry of Justice, they will ensure that there remains a distinct focus on youth justice separate from the adult system.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government are committed to maintaining a distinct focus on the needs of children and young people in the youth justice system. By integrating the Youth Justice Board into the Ministry of Justice, we will bring together the existing experience and knowledge of the YJB and the MoJ. Independent oversight of the youth justice system is no longer required and the MoJ is best placed to lead an effective system going forward that builds on the improvements that have already been made.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer and for the Green Paper. He will know that in the past two years of the Youth Justice Board’s operation there has been a reduction of some 27 per cent in the use of custody for young offenders. How will this strategy be taken forward in the Ministry of Justice, especially in the light of the decentralising emphasis of the Green Paper?
Lord McNally
My Lords, in many ways, the YJB is a success story. In the late 1990s, youth services were Cinderella organisations but they are also mainly the responsibility of local authorities. We are ensuring that the system is decentralised and devolved in a positive way. In the past few years, there has been a very successful move away from putting young people into custody and towards using other methods, which has brought about the reduction. We will continue to encourage and follow this process.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I was the Chief Inspector of Prisons when the Youth Justice Board was introduced. I entirely agree with the Minister that the board has been a success story. One of the very telling things that occurred was that, at last, a named person was responsible and accountable for looking after these people—and that told. Can the Minister say whether, when the arrangements are changed, there will be someone in the system who is responsible and accountable for young people?
Lord McNally
Most certainly so. I have made it very clear that the Ministry of Justice is taking on the responsibility for continuing a success story. Therefore, what is put in place to carry forward these responsibilities must maintain that very clear and distinct responsibility for the service. I assure noble Lords that the new system will reflect that kind of structure.
Lord Clinton-Davis
Why change something that has been so successful? Is change for change’s sake the watchword of this Government?
Lord McNally
I am sorry to hear that barb at the end. The job of the Youth Justice Board was to establish an effective, local system of operating youth justice, which is now carried out by the youth offending teams. Therefore, this extra layer of administration and control is not required. That success means that youth justice is now under local control and is carried out by youth offending teams. We at the Ministry of Justice will carry out an arm’s-length supervisory role, but youth justice is a local responsibility that will be carried out at local level.
Lord Elton
My Lords, to complete the reply to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, could the Minister kindly tell us which Minister within the department will be responsible for children within the criminal justice system?
Lord McNally
I would love to say that the relevant Minister would be Mr X or Mr Y, or even Lord B, but the appropriate time for that is when the legislation has gone through. It is no use the Front Bench clucking—they know darn well that this process has to be gone through. There are transitional arrangements to be made, and at the appropriate time, the appropriate line of responsibility will be defined very clearly. I can assure noble Lords of that.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal
My Lords, is not the noble Lord rather dismayed by his own answer? Cannot he tell us which officeholder will be responsible for this role? The noble Lord knows perfectly well that, before we introduced the Youth Justice Board, the criminal justice system’s response to young people was in a parlous state. The noble Lord is quite right to say that the Youth Justice Board has been a total success, as it has reduced the level of young people coming into the criminal justice system. The board does exactly what the Lord Chancellor wants in reducing prisoner numbers. Can the noble Lord tell us, first, why the board is being changed and, secondly, how it will be changed for the better?
Lord McNally
That is extraordinary from someone who has held the position that the noble and learned Baroness has held. The straight answer is that, because the board is coming into the Ministry of Justice, the responsibility will be that of the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. That is very clear. However, within the Ministry of Justice, we are in a transition period. We are going through this along with the Youth Justice Board, which is co-operating very effectively in the transition. When those lines of responsibility are cleared and when the legislation has cleared Parliament, we will be able to go ahead with implementation and those lines will be clear. As I said, I acknowledge that the system of youth justice has moved from being a Cinderella organisation in the 1990s to one that has been extremely effective, but we are now removing that layer of national control to ensure that there is proper, local responsibility by devolving responsibility to youth offending teams. That was also part of the initial plans that the previous Government put in place.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Will my noble friend consider, in the medium term, investigating the way that youth justice operates and replacing youth courts with something along the lines of the children’s panels that operate very successfully in Scotland, in which the magistrates sit down together with parents and social workers to try to work out the proper solution for the individual offender?
Lord McNally
That is the kind of constructive suggestion that I hope will come forward from the Green Paper that my department published yesterday. The Green Paper shows that we have been successful in establishing youth justice as a priority in our system, as the paper has a distinct chapter on youth justice. There is an invitation to all parts of this House—and indeed to all bodies—to feed in constructive views. This is not the end of the youth justice story. The Youth Justice Board has been a successful chapter and we intend to carry on with that work. We will study ideas that come from the Scottish and Northern Irish systems.
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Glentoran
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in light of the proposed cuts in public expenditure, how they will maintain the standard expected from HM Coastguard; and how they will protect the international reputation of the organisation.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Coastguard rightly enjoys a proud history of initiating and co-ordinating responses to search and rescue incidents at sea and around our coasts. The Government are committed to maintaining standards and protecting the reputation of HM Coastguard in the years ahead. HM Coastguard will continue to task and co-ordinate the efforts of our national search and rescue capability, including lifeboats, helicopters and Coastguard Rescue Service volunteers.
Lord Glentoran
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that positive Answer. I declare an interest as a long-term seafarer who has a number of concerns about the future of Her Majesty’s Coastguard. First, the VHF DF system for quickly locating distress signals and the like is being removed. Apparently, the system is not going to be replaced. What do the Government propose to do about that? I have it on good authority that the decision was made as a result of a series of wrong and misleading intelligence. Secondly, my information is that HM Coastguard intends to reduce the number of coastguard centres around the entire coast of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, Wales and Ireland, from the present considerable number, which I am afraid I do not know, to two. What does the noble Earl intend his department to do, and is it correct that all the coastguard stations around the coast will disappear and we will be left with two, with people sitting in boxes with radios?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord should be aware that the UK coast is fully covered by radio aerials to receive distress alerts. This network is second to none, is more comprehensive than in many other EU countries, and will be maintained. Noble Lords may wish to note that all UK commercial vessels have to carry a radio for use in an emergency. Modern technology, including rescue beacons, has now overtaken the need for DF systems in operation rooms. However, lifeboats and helicopters are still fitted with direction-finding equipment, as necessary. There is less need for the search element of search and rescue.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, given the noble Earl’s answer, in which he indicated the technological basis upon which the coastguard service relies, and given the cuts in public expenditure, what assurance can he give us that those systems will be adequately protected against some form of cyberattack or cybervirus? In May 2004, at a time of rather more lavish public spending, the coastguard service’s systems collapsed because it had failed to ignore no fewer than six separate alerts sent to it through the Cabinet Office about patching the systems. What assurance can he give us that that will not happen in the future?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I would be surprised if that had not been covered by the studies of our critical national infrastructure, but I shall write to the noble Lord on the detail.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, the Minister quite rightly referred to the need for the best possible technology. I was witness to the work of the coastguard helicopters and others at Boscastle and Crackington Haven during the devastating floods of six years ago. Can he assure me that the problems encountered then of liaison between the helicopters in difficult terrain along our coastline have been dealt with in terms of improved technology?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I cannot give specific assurances, but the proposal is to make sure that the radio systems are up to date, particularly in the use of digital networks.
Lord Greenway
My Lords, financial implications apart, is it not true that Her Majesty’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency has been going through a rather difficult period over the past five years? Does the Minister share my confidence in the new chief executive, which is felt widely in the maritime community, and agree with me that he will sort out the present problems, although it may take a little time to do so?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I, too, hope that we can ensure that we have the very best Maritime and Coastguard Agency that we can provide. We are reviewing it and we will be making an announcement about consultation shortly.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, could the Minister please guarantee that the input by the coastguard agency to the NMIC, the National Maritime Information Centre, which is so crucial to the counterterrorist security of this nation, will not be touched by what is being agreed to at the moment in terms of reductions.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, unfortunately I am not briefed on that. It is a very good point and I will write to the noble Lord.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, is the Minister briefed on his obvious point? This is the second question where we have had a response from the Front Bench which is driven by the necessity for cuts and not for protection of the quality of the service. Will he address himself to that question?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the necessity for the cuts arises from the party opposite.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we are committed to maintaining an effective coastguard service.
Youth Sport Trust
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the decision to withdraw the grant from the Youth Sport Trust; and what consultations were undertaken before the decision was made.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, we looked carefully at the impact of the Youth Sport Trust and the school sport partnerships in recent years. While there has certainly been progress in some areas, the overall level of participation in competitive sport remains disappointingly low. The Government are bringing forward proposals to promote an Olympic and Paralympic-style programme where the Youth Sport Trust has been on the steering committee. We hope that this will lead to more involvement by more children at all levels.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, but it is important to understand that the decision by the Secretary of State to cut completely the dedicated fund for school sports, condemned by head teachers, sports people and 600,000 young people yesterday, will mean the demolition of the 450 school sport partnerships across the country; partnerships that include every single school, including the smallest primaries and special schools. Despite the Secretary of State’s view that they are inefficient, repeated I understand by the Prime Minister today, independent evaluation has said that the partnerships have led a remarkable revival in school sports. I also understand that the Department of Health and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport want them to continue.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
In that regard, will the Minister not ensure that funding at least for the continuation of that infrastructure will be found within the department?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, as the debates in another place revealed a couple of weeks ago, there is broad agreement across the House on the importance of sport and on the fact that we want to have a very strong legacy from the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
In terms of the performance of the school sport partnerships, again there was broad acceptance that the record is mixed. I certainly do not subscribe to the view that there was not good work done—there clearly was good work done—but equally there is acceptance that it was not universally good across the piece, and there are many people in sport who would also make that argument. In terms of going forward, what I hope we are united on is the need to find an effective way—we may differ on the means—of making sure that there is a strong and lasting Olympic and Paralympic legacy.
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, can the Minister explain what options were considered for consulting more locally—perhaps with head teachers, schools, or even some of the children who were so vocal outside yesterday—before this decision was made? It is not just about an elite sports pathway; it is about the serious impact that a fall in participation could have on all our children’s future health and well-being.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I always listen with particular care to the points made by the noble Baroness. In a debate a few weeks ago, she made a very powerful intervention. I take her points very much to heart. My honourable friend Mr Loughton, the Minister for Children, is working with colleagues at DCMS to make sure that head teachers have the opportunity to express their views. As someone who could never have been described as an elite sports person—unlike the noble Baroness—I also agree very much with the point that we want to encourage participation for people at all levels, as well as making sure that there is a proper legacy.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, many of our Olympians and top sports stars were discovered and cultivated by sport specialists at schools and went on to make our country very proud—the noble Baroness is an example. Can my noble friend the Minister assure us that measures will be put in place to compel head teachers to spend money on sports and sport specialists, and not to divert funds into other areas at the long-term expense of sport and sporting legends?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with the thrust of the point made by my noble friend about the need to make sure that sport is given due weight. Part of what we need to look at in our overall considerations is the review of the national curriculum, to make sure that the emphasis that PE is given—in particular the competitive aspects of PE—is properly reflected. Our contention, as the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, suggested, is that we are trying to devolve responsibility and funds to heads of schools across the board to make those decisions. We expect that heads will want to continue to make sure that sport is given due and proper weight.
Baroness Billingham
I apologise. Members of this House will remember that when the announcement was made about the withdrawal of funding, there was a firestorm of fury across the whole sporting family. It came from schools, colleges, elite athletes and people supporting the legacy of the Olympics. This outrage was no surprise. I think that No. 10 was somewhat taken by surprise, to the extent that it issued a statement saying that it would rethink this. At today's PMQs, the Prime Minister said that there would be no rethink. My question to the Minister is: will you have a rethink or will you rush headlong into the devastation of sport for a whole generation and many years to come?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The situation is that, in the light of the debate around sport following our announcement, my department and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are considering how best to ensure that we have a proper legacy for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In due course, we will come forward to set out more detail.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
As a mere Back-Bencher, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord whether it is true that this function was previously devolved to headmasters. They had the responsibility for ensuring that there was competitive sport. However, in practice it did not work, which is why we had to establish the bodies that we have been speaking about. If they are to be abolished, what will the Government put in place to make sure that we do not slip back to what we had previously?
Lord Hill of Oareford
As I said in my previous reply, work is going on to set out our thoughts going forward. It is also true that when the system with the Youth Sport Trust and the school sport partnerships was set up, a former Labour Sports Minister said that the expectation had always been that if it worked well—and after £2.4 billion of expenditure, there are good examples of where obviously it has worked—it would be embedded in the system, and therefore it would be more appropriate for head teachers to take that responsibility.
World Cup: Football
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what lessons can be learnt from the failure of England’s 2018 FIFA World Cup bid.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an unpaid interest as vice-president of the Football Conference and as an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, there is obviously great disappointment over FIFA’s decision. England’s 2018 team put together a strong technical bid which FIFA recognised. It is difficult to think what more the Government could have done to support it. I congratulate Russia and Qatar on being selected and wish them luck for hosting the tournaments in 2018 and 2022. It is too early to draw lessons at this stage but that process will now begin.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I think most reasonable people will take the view that this Government and their predecessor did all they legally could to win the bid. I suspect that many of your Lordships will have had the experience of being promised votes from people who turn out to be inveterate liars. Does the Minister agree that this is now the time for a far-reaching government inquiry into the state of English football, looking at such matters as the governance of the Football Association, the influence of the Premier League on the England national team and the effects of all these developments on the grassroots of the game?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I acknowledge the noble Lord’s long-standing commitment to football and his wide-ranging contributions to the sport. On the matters of governance, it is not for the Government to run football. We have been clear that we are looking to football to put its house in order and we would expect it to address governance and regulation issues internally before there is any question of government regulation. But on the broad gist of his remarks, yes, we would agree with that.
Lord Mawhinney
My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as deputy chairman of England’s 2018 bid and, secondly, as honorary president of the Football League. I have two questions for my noble friend. Does she accept on behalf of the Government that when an excess of money combines with a deficit in truthfulness, the main casualty is the integrity of competition, whether it is national or international football? Secondly, is it the Government’s view that the charges and issues raised by the Sunday Times and by the BBC “Panorama” programme remain on the table to be resolved?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, one of the aspects of the Sunday Times exposé is that FIFA responded by expelling two executive committee members in November. Its ethics committee has shown that it takes allegations of corruption seriously, but the issues and the sanctions FIFA imposes are a matter for it.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, is there not one clear lesson from this, and that is the gross injustice done to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, who was right but was right before his time?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I think perhaps on that matter I had better not comment.
Lord Addington
My Lords, would my noble friend agree that if football wants help from the Government, it must, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, says, put its own house in order before it goes back to Parliament or any other part of Government asking for any support or help? In that light, can my noble friend give us an assurance that the Government will make sure that football has at least started on that process before we start listening to it again?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I thank my noble friend for that question. It refers back to what I previously said. We would expect the Football Association to put its house in order and we look forward to that being learnt. Quite possibly, the result of not getting the World Cup will mean that football takes another look at the way in which it operates, although in no way would I suggest that football was at fault in our not gaining the World Cup in 2018.
Baroness Billingham
Many people have said that the best antidote to the rebuttal that we have had is to actually get on the pitch and win the World Cup at the next possible opportunity. If it is any help to the Minister, is she aware that there is already the Burns report which did an amazing review of football governance in this country? It may well be time that we looked at the Burns report again and brought it into action.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Baroness that getting on the pitch and winning some matches would be a very good rebuttal of what has happened with FIFA. On the funding side, the Government remain committed to investing in grassroots football through the money which Sport England provides to the Football Association and, as she says, learning lessons from the Burns review.
Lord Inglewood
Does the Minister agree that it is open to those against whom these very serious allegations have been made by the Sunday Times and “Panorama” to issue court proceedings for defamation, and that we can draw our own conclusion on whether they do so?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
Again, my noble friend makes a very valid point but, I think, that is outside the remit of government to control.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, can the Minister confirm the accuracy of a report in the Guardian newspaper on 1 December that, as a condition of being allowed to bid, the Government agreed to exempt FIFA and its representatives from aspects of the money-laundering regulations if they were to come to this country for the tournament in 2018? Can she also confirm that no such extraordinary condition was imposed by the IOC in relation to the Olympic bid for London 2012?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, a number of conditions were agreed by the previous Administration before the bid went forward and guarantees were required by FIFA. The guarantees were generic and did not take into account matters such as EU law. There were also some things that we were required to do—for example, we were required to charge VAT by EU law—but we made it clear to FIFA that, as with the Olympics, arrangements would be put in place to minimise the impact and not distort our own systems.
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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
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18:22 - Division on Amendment 31 - Ayes: 135 / Noes: 196 - Amendment 31 disagreed.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 25. In moving this amendment, I need to step back, without in any way wishing to delay the House, to remind the House and those unable to be present last week that the central argument in the case for many of us is that the Government have picked the wrong system in the referendum question. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and I both support electoral reform, but we oppose the multioptional preferential voting system as set out in the legislation. The problem is that the Government failed to do their homework when deciding upon a system. They had three systems from which they could select. First is the classic AV federal system that is operated in Australia. Secondly, there is the multioptional preferential system—the one that they have selected in the Bill. Thirdly, there is the supplementary vote, otherwise known as the London alternative vote.
The Government picked the system in a rush against a background of frantic coalition negotiations. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said in his speech the day before yesterday, it seems that they had in mind when they selected the scheme the fact that the Labour Government had picked a similar scheme when we presented our Bill earlier this year.
My view, and that of many of my colleagues, is that the system that has been selected is nonsense and riddled with flaws. That is why I argue for an inquiry in Amendment 22. I am convinced that whenever more than two or three are gathered together to consider AV systems, they invariably end up with the supplementary vote or London AV, which is the basis for Amendment 25. This amendment would modify the question in Clause 1 where it states:
“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the ‘alternative vote’ system be used instead?”.
I simply delete the word “the” alternative vote, and change it to read “an” alternative vote system.
Amendment 25 would enable Parliament to select an alternative voting system out of the three variants of AV available, to which I have referred. The Bill preselects an AV system which many of us reject, as indeed an overwhelming majority of the House would probably do on a free vote. An affirmative vote in a referendum would lead to an inquiry being established to recommend an electoral system to the House, and that inquiry would be able to select from the three systems. It deals with the distinction alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on Second Reading on 15 November—at col. 569 of Hansard—when he drew a distinction between pre-legislative referendums procedure as proposed by the Labour Government during the Scots and Welsh referendums: in other words, a referendum decision first and legislative detail after; as against the post-legislative referendum as set out in the Bill, which means legislative detail first followed by a referendum.
The question is simple: why cannot we have a referendum that simply seeks approval for the introduction of an AV system in principle? Parliament could then carry out a timetabled inquiry—perhaps even an independent commission of inquiry—to do the work. The Government could then introduce an order following a debate in Parliament, and at least then the merits of the various forms of AV would be debated. We would then have a system that might prove more acceptable to the voting public. My amendment would secure that pre-legislative referendum, which clearly preoccupies the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and many of his colleagues on those Benches. It would mean that the building block of an electoral system, which I want to see in place—the supplementary vote, or London AV as it is otherwise known—would be on the agenda for consideration in an inquiry.
Amendment 25—the second of my amendments in this block—is the supplementary vote amendment. This would substitute the alternative vote proposal in the Bill in the referendum question with the supplementary vote, which is a tried and tested system in the United Kingdom. It is a variant of the alternative vote. The system has been the subject of substantial international debate among academics who specialise in electoral systems. It has been the subject of critical and supportive review in both its theory and its practice by academics in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Holland, Australia and Belgium. It is the system which supporters of AV have consistently sought to rubbish, as it exposes the flaws in AV. It is simpler to use, is more easily understood by the electors and is invariably supported when subjected to rigorous debate. It is opposed by the Liberal Democrat element in the coalition because Liberal Democrats, and only they, believe that it would not deliver for them the windfall gains which they believe are available to them under the optional preferential system of the Bill.
The supplementary vote is the system that is used to elect the United Kingdom's 13 elected mayors, including Boris Johnson. The coalition hopes to create a further 12 directly elected mayors—which many of us support—presumably under the same, successful system which is now being used and supported by millions of voters in more than 30 mayoral election contests nationally in London, Bedford, Doncaster, Hartlepool, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Northside, Torbay and Watford.
It is curious to note that when a noticeable number of advocates in the United Kingdom of AV or even full proportional representation are commenting on electoral systems, they studiously avoid reference to the supplementary vote. It is the system that the Government adopted when they were forced to choose between AV and SV in 1998. How does it work? With the supplementary vote, there are two columns on the ballot paper: one for the first choice and one for the second. Voters can mark an X in each column if they so wish. All the first preferences are counted. If a candidate has more than 50 per cent of the votes, they are elected. If no candidate receives 50 per cent, the top two remain and the rest are eliminated. The second preference votes of the eliminated are added to the votes of the top two candidates and counted. The candidate with most first and second preferences is the winner: simple and fair. I say to the Conservative end of the coalition that when we first presented that in 1989—it is 21 years since it was first presented in Parliament—there was support on their Benches in the Commons for that system.
I have been promoting the supplementary vote since 1989. It arose after a dinner in the Commons where there had been argument over a number of weeks about proportional representation and a system that would be acceptable to Parliament. At the end of the conversation at the last dinner, I announced to my colleagues that I would go away to research a new system, drawing on the experience of others in different parts of the world, which I believed would be favourably treated if it was fairly debated in Westminster. I spent nine months researching that system. I brought in Professor Patrick Dunleavy from the London School of Economics, who gave the work academic substance by testing the system using a whole series of electoral scenarios and subjecting it to the rigour of academic examination under his close supervision. We named the new system “supplementary” over a dinner in my constituency, and followed it up with a number of articles in the press and other journals in 1990. It has been the subject of a large number of reviews over all those years.
Soon after, the Labour Party established the Plant commission, which examined electoral systems including AV over four months, again in great detail. It produced the Plant report. The Plant commission, while not completely rejecting AV, came down in favour of a single-member constituency system in recognition of the desire of MPs of all parties in the Commons to retain single-member constituencies. In its comprehensive canter around the course of electoral systems, it came down strongly in favour of the supplementary vote with the following words:
“While other systems provide scope for variation from time to time, according to fashion or political whim, SV is relatively immutable; although it could be abolished (or turned into AV), there is little scope for altering the formula by which it operates. Hence, it is more likely to be durable in an unchanged form, and therefore to acquire legitimacy.
Secondly:
“Although it does not entail ‘proportional representation’ (in the sense of a direct link between votes cast nationally or regionally for a party, and the number of seats allocated to that party), it is possible that it would go some way to limit the imbalance between votes and seats that has characterised many election results ... While it would reduce the likelihood of any one party gaining an overall majority on the basis of much less than an overall majority of votes, it would not make single-party overall majorities impossible. Landslide victories, firmly establishing a major party in government without minor party support, would still be possible … In sum, the Supplementary Vote appears to have the advantages that it is a reform which, although possibly far reaching in its consequences, would nevertheless be practical, straightforward, comparatively modest, and would generally be perceived to be fair. However, it emerged that, while there was a clear majority in favour of some form of change from the present system, there was also a clear majority in favour of a single-member constituency majoritarian system. Both the Alternative Vote and the Supplementary Vote would represent a change retaining these features. Between the two, there was, though, a clear preference for the Supplementary Vote; and, accordingly, this is the majority recommendation of the Working Party”.
However, what should be of interest to the Liberal Democrats is the comments of the minority on Plant who favoured first past the post. Its view was that:
“The Supplementary Vote would be likely to increase the representation of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons—and so be more likely to produce hung parliaments and thus the possibility of coalition or minority government”.
That is why I simply cannot understand the scale of their opposition. In some ways, I hope that that comment deals with remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, at our team meeting the other week in Room 3A when he put it to the meeting that it was some sort of Labour Party stitch-up. It was never a Labour Party stitch-up; it was a very neutrally-based system.
The problem with the whole AV/SV debate is that the benefits of SV are often attributed by proponents of AV to the alternative vote, more often than not out of ignorance or a failure to subject both systems to detailed examination. Even the House of Lords Constitution Committee in its report on the Bill likened the system to AV when it stated in paragraph 14:
“This voting system”—
AV—
“is not currently used for any other public election in the United Kingdom, although a similar system, the Supplementary Vote, is used for mayoral elections in London and elsewhere”.
It is similar, but it is very different in operation and in how the votes are counted. For a start, under SV, bottom-placed candidates’ additional preferences do not have priority over the additional preferences cast for other candidates other than those cast for the top two. This avoids results where extremes, such as the BNP, can determine the results of elections, which can happen under the AV system in the Bill.
Also under SV, third and fourth-placed candidates cannot leapfrog into first place, undermining the credibility of election results. I understand that leapfrogging is the reason why the Liberal Democrats support AV—because it does precisely that—but that is a two-edged sword. They may wish to consider what would happen if there was an election tomorrow under the AV system in the Bill. They should remember that they are part of a coalition that is having to take some very unpopular and difficult decisions. As Plant put it:
“The main disadvantages of AV are as follows … it is possible for low ranked candidates actually to break through and be elected so that the most weakly preferred candidate could gain a majority … Following from the fact that the winning candidate has to get”
—at that stage he thought that was the case—
“50 per cent of the vote plus one might seem to be a less compelling principle, if that absolute majority involves weak preferences being counted”.
However, that was under the Australian system, which we are not even considering. Only under the Australian system do you have to get more than 50 per cent of the vote.
The other day I referred to the work of Professor Rawlings and Professor Thrasher at length, and I do not want to repeat what I said, except to say that, following their research into voting behaviour in Queensland, Australia, which uses the same optional preference AV system as proposed in the Bill, they concluded that,
“the most likely scenario over time is that many voters will treat an AV election just like ‘first past the post’, and not cast multiple preferences. Incredibly, under this very same AV system, in Queensland in 2009, fully 63 per cent of those who turned out in the state elections voted for just one candidate”.
Their comments on the operation of optional preferential AV completely undermine the justification for AV in this Bill whereby you give the electorate the opportunity to cast multiple preferences.
Rawlings and Thrasher argue that not everyone uses their additional preferences, whereas under SV they are more likely to do so. On 10 November 2010, in an article, they stated:
“At the three London mayoral elections in 2000, 2004 and 2008”,
under SV only, 20 per cent of,
“voters either voted just once or cast both their available votes for a single party candidate”.
In other words, 80 per cent voted for more. I would add that the complication in that early SV election arose from the way in which the question was tabled on the ballot paper.
I argue that SV is simple, easily understood, well tried, internationally recognised, more likely to lead to the casting of additional preference votes and easy to count. I have not even dealt with the problems that arise over counting—perhaps I can do that on Report. In replying to this debate, perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity to tell us whether it is proposed under their system to count the votes manually or electronically, which is significant. Unless they are counted electronically it will not be possible to work out how effective this system is. That view is expressed by returning officers in Scotland, with whom our people have spoken over the past few days. It reduces the influence of the extremes. Finally, it concentrates the mind of the voter on the need not to waste votes. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker
I support my noble friend in this amendment. I do not want to repeat what I have said in previous debates, but we are given an opportunity here to deploy once again—certainly, it will be deployed if and when a referendum takes place—the fact that the proposal in the Bill is fraught with difficulties. What is more, untruths are told about it. It will be the case that every time someone appears on a platform or a television station and says, “Oh, they have got to get more than 50 per cent to win”, someone will pop up and say, “Not true”. It is not true under the system in this Bill that every MP will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the votes. It cannot happen with an open system. It is impossible. Every time it is said, whether by the Deputy Prime Minister or anyone else, it is not the case. The public are being misled.
We have to look at which system of AV is being used. I know that it is the case—it was the case with the previous Cabinet and will be with this one—that there has been no proper discussion in the Government. There has been no seminar in the Cabinet Room for Cabinet Ministers to say, “There are three ways of doing AV. Which one do you want in the Bill?”. There has been no discussion at all. That is why we have a Bill based on ignorance. I am not saying that people are personally ignorant; I am saying that there is ignorance of the system.
It would not be so bad if the Government were offering up the system and telling the whole truth about it or if they said, “Well, this is the system we have got. It is not perfect, but none of them is. Most MPs will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the vote, but some of them won’t be. So we won’t make the claim that they all will be”. But the Government are not saying that, because they cannot say it under this system. They must know that by now because their advisers must have told them about it. As I have said, there is ignorance and lack of party discussion. It was the same with the last lot—no one was ever consulted and it just turned up in the Bill earlier in the year. Part of the reason why there has been no discussion is that there are never any discussions because the Government never meet. The public think that they do, of course, but they do not. That is a difficulty and it is where the Government face a problem.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, a question. Under the supplementary system, would it be possible for a candidate who had no first preferences to be elected?
Lord Rooker
No, as my noble friend explained in even greater detail. However many candidates there are on the list, noble Lords should envisage the current ballot paper but with two columns. Voters put an X in the first column and an X in the second column—obviously for different people—and the contest is then between those two candidates only. One person could get elected, of course, with more than 50 per cent in the first column, as is the case with AV now, and that would be great. However, it would not be possible for the least popular candidate to leapfrog the popular candidate, as can happen with AV.
Lord Greaves
This is the first time that I have spoken on the Bill. I apologise that I did not speak at Second Reading and I do not expect to speak very often in Committee, which will please my noble friends.
I rise to speak because the debate is about the supplementary vote, which I consider to be an awful voting system. I want to explain why. Before I do, however, in response to the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, I should explain that it is not possible under AV for a candidate who gets no first preference votes to be elected. It is possible, but highly unlikely, under STV in a multimember seat; it is not possible under AV. That is a red herring.
I normally expect the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, to speak a great deal of sense and to put forward sensible proposals, even when I am not allowed to support them. Nevertheless, I am astonished that he thinks that the supplementary vote is a good system. However, as he said, he was in at the genesis of the system, which was put together at a dinner party when people were talking around the table. It was something like that, anyway; it is a nice story. The noble Lord also said that it is tried and tested—as, indeed, it is—and that many people seek to rubbish it. That may be because it is a rubbish system. It is inefficient—I shall explain why in a moment—and it results in people being cheated. They think that they are voting and expect their vote to be counted, but it is not counted.
As the noble Lord said, the system is used in 12 mayoral elections for councils and for the election of the Mayor of London, so there is, indeed, a great deal of experience. However, on the evidence that we have, it is not particularly beneficial to any of the political parties. It often seems beneficial to candidates of weird and wonderful varieties but, at the moment, of the 12 mayors, three are Labour, two are Conservative, two are Liberal Democrat, four are independent and one is an English Democrat. People ought to at least ask questions about any system that allows the election of an English Democrat, as the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, against AV included the suggestion that that system might lead to influence for BNP voters.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On that point, will the noble Lord confirm that in the cases that he referred to the successful candidates would all have been elected under first past the post as well?
Lord Greaves
They would, yes. However, whether they would have stood and whether it would have resulted in their election is a different matter altogether. It may be that the problem is with elected mayors and not with the system used to elect them. However, we will have that discussion under the localism Bill when we come to it. Indeed, at least five of the existing elected mayors were elected with over 50 per cent of first preferences, so whatever electoral system you have makes no difference whatsoever.
I think that you have to look at the outcomes, but my objections and, I think, those of the Liberal Democrats to the supplementary vote are not based on whether it is good for Liberal Democrats. The noble Lord was seductive in trying to find an electoral system that would be best for us, but that is not how we look at election systems. It is certainly not how I look at election systems. We look at election systems as a matter of principle.
Lord Greaves
That is certainly how I look at election systems. We have here a system that is bad in principle but also shown in practice to be defective. I shall refer to three or four actual elections to explain what happened.
At the last ordinary election in Bedford—we have had a by-election since then—the total number of votes cast was 43,525. The top two candidates, who, under the supplementary vote system, as the noble Lord accurately described, go through to the final round, got 26,676. That means that the first preferences of other candidates amounted to 16,849. Of those, only 6,335 transferred to one of the two candidates who remained in the final round. Therefore, of the second preference votes, 10,514 could not transfer—62.4 per cent of the second votes did not transfer. Some of them may have been spoiled, but I cannot get that information. Nearly a quarter of the total—24.2 per cent—voted for candidates in the second column, for their second preference, but their second preference was thrown away without being counted. I believe that those voters were being cheated of what the system pretends that they can do, which is to cast a first preference and then cast a second preference.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On that matter, again, if the noble Lord is comparing the system with AV and alluding to what he might regard as wasted votes, or unused votes, is it not true that under the system in the Bill a bottom-placed candidate could take a top-placed candidate over the 50 per cent limit? Therefore, every additional preference for all the other candidates would be unused under the Government’s proposed system. You would have a whole ballot paper wiped out on the basis of the simple transfer of the bottom eliminated candidate taking the first-placed candidate over 50 per cent. That is an outrageous waste of votes. If the noble Lord’s case is based on wasted votes, there are far more votes wasted under AV when you start doing research into election results.
Lord Greaves
I do not want to talk about AV; I want to talk about the supplementary vote. However, the main votes wasted under AV are where people do not express any further preferences and therefore that vote is not transferable, but that is their decision. It is their decision not to express a further preference after they have decided whom they want to vote for down to however far they vote. Under this system, people very clearly express a preference and that preference is discarded. In Bedford in 2007, as I said, it was a quarter of the vote.
In Mansfield in 2007, where the two top candidates got a much larger proportion of the total vote, it was still the case that, of those eliminated on the second count, 2,350 transferred and 3,853 did not transfer. Of those, 1,199 were void as unmarked or for reasons of uncertainty. It may be, of course, that people did not want to express a second preference, but one of the problems of the supplementary vote is that it leads to a much higher proportion of votes being void because they are not filled in accurately. For example, there are many people who vote for the same candidate in both columns. It is perfectly easy to do that, but you cannot do it under the alternative vote system, only under the supplementary vote system. It is clear that that is what people did.
Lord Greaves
The noble Lord will have plenty of opportunities to respond. However, I will give way.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I just want to correct the noble Lord. The reason why that happened in the first mayoral elections in London was that the civil servants meddled with the drafting of the ballot paper that some of us had proposed to the Government. Thanks to that meddling, people ended up misunderstanding how to use their votes in the first London elections. Following that mistake, there was an argument in the House of Commons and the ballot paper was corrected. In the subsequent elections, the problem did not arise.
Lord Greaves
The problem did not arise to the same extent. I do not have the figures for the London mayoral elections, although those are available—for most counts, no figures are issued to show exactly why people’s votes were rejected.
In the 2007 Mansfield mayoral elections, 892 votes were rejected at the first count. At 3 per cent of the total, that is significantly higher than the normal number of rejected ballot papers in an election. Of those 892 ballot papers, 483 were rejected because the person had voted for more than one candidate in the first column. Such errors are to be expected when people are told only, “You’ve got two votes—you vote for one person as your first preference and one person as your second preference”. It is not surprising that a significant number of people vote twice in the first column. Only an inefficient voting system encourages people to make mistakes like that.
Lord Campbell-Savours
These points should be answered because this is a debate on the technical working of the system. Research into AV in Australia found that the requirement to number the candidates meant that people simply numbered “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6”, “7” and so on down the ballot paper, without even thinking of the candidates involved. That is how people thought that they had to use the system, so there are equally problems with AV over how people understand the ballot paper.
Lord Greaves
I am talking about the supplementary vote and trying to point out why that is a bad system. However, in any long ballot paper with lots of candidates, people near the top of the ballot paper always do better than people near the bottom. That happens with multiseat elections under the first-past-the-post system, for example. If noble Lords have ideas on how to counter that issue—there are several ideas around—perhaps they can put them forward, but that is not what we are talking about today.
In the 2010 Watford mayoral election—which was won by a Liberal Democrat, so I am not making a party-political point about rejected votes, which might have been against the Liberal Democrat candidate—the number of eliminated ballot papers was 12,202. Of those, the number of valid ballot papers was only 5,381, which is less than half.
The most ludicrous example of all comes from the most recent mayoral election in Torbay in 2005—I do not think that there has been another election since—where the 14 candidates, which I agree is an extreme example, included a Conservative, a Liberal Democrat, a Labour candidate and 11 independents. The Conservative was elected on the second count after the first preferences were added to those few second preferences that transferred to the top two candidates, with a grand total of 28.9 per cent of the vote. Surely that is not a particularly efficient electoral system. The 9,094 first-preference votes for the top two candidates—who were Conservative and Liberal Democrat—accounted for 37.6 per cent of the vote. The other candidates got 15,076 first-preference votes, which is 62.4 per cent of the vote, but only 3,199 of those 15,000-odd votes—that is, 21 per cent—could be transferred. Almost half—49 per cent—of all second preferences votes did not count because they were not transferred, although they accounted for nearly 79 per cent of second preferences. I am not complaining about the fact that the Conservative was elected—the Conservative might have been elected under AV—but what a hopeless voting system to end up with a result like that.
The supplementary vote results in people being cheated out of their second preferences. SV is an inefficient and unnecessary system that was invented for party-political reasons by the Labour Party, which imposed it on the mayoral elections. The supplementary vote is a very bad system that should be rejected.
Lord Howarth of Newport
In Amendment 25, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has offered a lifeboat to the coalition, just as my noble friend Lord Rooker did the other day, when—slightly to their surprise—the coalition Government found themselves in another lifeboat. For two reasons, they might do well to take a ride in it.
First, the alternative vote system proposed in the Bill plainly will not work. It would be very foolish for the Government to plough ahead with the proposal because the inadequacies of the system will be exposed in the process of the campaign. There may not have been a seminar on that in the Cabinet room, but there will be a national seminar. If the system is as fallacious as I believe it to be, those weaknesses will ineluctably be exposed and the campaign for the alternative vote will disintegrate and become a fiasco. That might be a matter for some quiet satisfaction to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, but it should be a matter of some anxiety to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and indeed to all of us. Whatever our views on the rights and wrongs of holding a referendum, getting rid of first past the post and having AV instead, none of us wants to see this process reduced to complete impracticality and ridicule, which is what I fear will happen.
Noble Lords would do well to heed the arguments of, and to use the opportunity put forward by, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has sought to persuade the House that the supplementary vote is a bad system. In those very interesting exchanges, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours seemed to have the better of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in the argument. The supplementary vote system has been road-tested in this country through the practicalities of election campaigns. I am not aware of any significant public dissatisfaction of the practical operation of the supplementary vote system. In Amendments 22 and 25, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has offered a lifeboat to the Government; they would be very wise to accept the opportunity that he has presented to them.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this is an important debate on an issue that might figure in the course of the referendum campaign. Clause 9 sets out in detail the alternative vote system that the referendum will be about, which is a system in which people could vote “1”, “2”, “3”, “4” and “5” but would not have to use all five preferences. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has identified two other AV systems. Under the AV system used in the federation of Australia, voters are compelled to use all their preferences. Under the third alternative vote system—called the supplementary vote system—voters identify their top two preferences and the second preferences of those who voted for the other candidates are shared out between the top two.
As Clause 9 establishes, the Government have chosen the AV system that is used in Queensland, Australia. For the sake of the electorate, it is important for the Government to set out why they have chosen that alternative vote system in preference to both the system used in federal elections in Australia and the supplementary vote system that has been described by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Once the Government set out what their reasoning is, this House can judge whether the AV system chosen is the right one or whether amendments should be made in relation to the alternative vote. Perhaps more importantly, the public voting in the referendum will be able to judge whether it is sensible to vote in favour of the particular alternative vote system that the Government have adopted. As we have identified before, this is—as it were—a compulsory referendum because our previous amendment failed. The effect of a majority yes vote, once the new constituency boundaries are in—those are tied in as well in Clause 8—is that the system in Clause 9 will automatically come into effect. The public will be voting not just on the principle of AV but on the detail of the particular system adopted. Therefore, it would be helpful if the Minister would set out the reasoning behind Clause 9.
My children have always thought that I am a bit of a nerd because I am so interested in politics, but if they had heard the invigorating debate between the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, they would think that I was the coolest man alive.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, I very much admire the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, introduced the amendment. I also admire his perseverance, eloquence and sincerity. He gave us the history of the genesis of the supplementary vote since one of his dinner parties that occurred in 1989. I make no joke about his dinner parties, as I am sure that it was very good. Historians will want to know what on earth he ate at that dinner party, but that is for history.
My Lords, I am a reader of the Guardian newspaper—
Lord Strathclyde
That might shock some of my noble friends. However, I was astonished to read in this morning’s Guardian a letter from the leading lights of the Labour Party, including many Labour Peers, who support AV in a very different way from that of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Therefore, he has not quite won over all Labour Party members since 1989. He prayed in aid the noble Lord, Lord Plant—who was not present at the time but appeared later and has now gone again, which is a pity—who was one of the signatories to the letter in the Guardian. Whatever the Plant commission thought then, the noble Lord, Lord Plant, now thinks that AV is the right system to champion and he will vote for it.
Before I get into the detail of what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, intends by Amendments 22 and 25, I must stress again that it is fundamentally important that the referendum gives the public a clear choice about the systems that they are asked to choose between. That is the only way that we will get a clear result that will allow voters truly to express what they want. We cannot simply ask the people whether they want “an alternative voting system”; we need to be honest with them right from the start by letting them know exactly which alternative system they are being asked to vote on.
A key problem with Amendment 22 is that, by its very nature, it does not make clear whether the revised question would ask whether voters want an alternative to the current voting system—meaning a system that is not first past the post—or, more specifically, the alternative vote electoral system. Consequently, the noble Lord's amendment raises a very significant risk that some members of the public might vote in favour of “an alternative vote system” because they want something different from the current first-past-the-post system, but they may think that they are voting for the single transferable vote system or the additional member system—they might not want a form of “the” alternative vote system at all. The crucial change of “the” to “an” would make the question so ambiguous that the result of the referendum could be impossible to decipher. We would not know what the people really wanted at all.
Given the noble Lord’s interest in the various alternative vote systems—in particular, the supplementary vote system to which Amendment 25 refers—he may intend by Amendments 22 and 25 to debate the merits of those different types of alternative vote systems. The noble Lord referred to his amendment concerning a committee of inquiry that we discussed on the first Committee day. I do not wish to reopen that debate, but I understand that the point that he made then is at least tangential to the point that he is making today. We had a full debate on that then, so I will not reopen it.
However, a number of noble Lords have suggested—including, indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton—that they would welcome a clear explanation of why the Government are putting forward this specific form of AV. I will address that point here, which I hope will reassure the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, on why the alternative vote system set out in the Bill is the right choice to put before the public in the referendum.
Lord Rooker
The Leader of the House is deploying arguments that he has not used so far in this debate. He is to be congratulated for the exposition that he has just given. It naturally follows from what he has just said that it would be completely misleading for members of the Government to persist in claiming that the proposed system will mean that MPs will be elected with more than 50 per cent of the vote. That has got to stop. If he said that that will stop, that would knock one of the misleading issues off the agenda so far as the public are concerned.
Lord Strathclyde
I like to think that I have made an authoritative statement from the Dispatch Box as to what the Government believe to be the case. However, as the noble Lord knows, we will not be controlling the campaign—different people will make their different views known as to the merits or demerits of AV. However, the noble Lord is right. I have agreed with him, and I thank him for his earlier words about this case.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry to come back at this stage, but the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is sitting next to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, so we really need to have this sorted out. During the course of an interview on Monday 15 November on the Radio 4 “Today” programme, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was asked a question, to which he replied:
“This reform will mean you will go to Parliament with at least half of your constituents having consciously voted for you”.
Now, that is why my noble friend intervened. It is really important that this is sorted out if Ministers from now on are to go on television and admit that. I would make the same point to the very articulate Mr Barclay, I think, who is part of the AV campaign, who also goes on television and repeats this 50-plus per cent argument. Can we be sure now that that is really at an end?
Lord Strathclyde
Those who are in favour of the system will no doubt be responsible for what they say during the course of the campaign, but that is not part of the debate that we need to have now. However, I can assure the noble Lord that the Electoral Commission—
Lord Grocott
My Lords, it is no use saying that those who are in favour of the proposal will deploy whatever arguments they like. Given that the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the House of Lords have joint responsibility for presenting the Bill to Parliament, presumably they have joint responsibility for presenting some of the arguments to people in the country. If it is not true, as my noble friend has made perfectly clear, that successful candidates under the proposed system would have the support of 50 per cent of the voters in their constituency, could we have that loud and clear, preferably from both the Leader of the House and—after all, this is a double act—the Deputy Leader of the House at the Dispatch Box? Accuracy is important. Surely the noble Lord would agree with me on that?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, on this Front Bench we are entirely tied by collective responsibility and my noble friend is totally aware of that. The point is that in the generality we would expect more than 50 per cent of voters to have voted for MPs, but there are circumstances, as I and the noble Lord have explained, where that will not be the case.
I was saying as a matter of assurance that the Electoral Commission will provide information on the different voting systems so that people will understand how the optional preferential system works.
Lord Wills
Exactly what are the circumstances in which someone could be elected with less than the 50 per cent support of some of the voters?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the circumstance is when most people who vote express only a first preference and do not then list any further preferences.
The Electoral Commission will be providing this kind of information, and voters will know what they are voting for in the referendum. If they choose AV, it will, I assume, be because they want to express more than one preference at an election, because if they do not, they may as well vote for what we have currently got. So I do not think that there is really any need to worry about voters not exercising this right, if that is the very system that they voted for in the first place. Just as we are not convinced that voters should be made to express a preference for all candidates, we are not persuaded that the Bill should limit the number of preferences that a voter may express at an election. Therefore, we do not agree that the supplementary vote system is the appropriate alternative vote system to present.
I have set out our reasoning and I do not want to go on about arguments that I have already made, but I assume that this is the same reasoning that was behind the previous Government’s proposals for a referendum on this same type of alternative vote system. I know that we have spent some time on this amendment, but it was worth while doing so and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I shall briefly comment on the interventions. I say to my noble friend Lord Rooker that we have travelled down exactly that route—from first past the post, through an AV variant to an additional member system. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that I dispute the figures he used during his intervention and I shall trawl over them. He is perhaps unaware of the failure to use additional preferences, which goes to the heart of the argument over the AV system that he supports. During the debate on whether this clause should stand part of the Bill, I hope to produce evidence of what happened in Scotland on these very matters.
My noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport is absolutely right to identify the TV campaign as being critical to what is going to happen. I can envisage circumstances in which advocates of this AV system are demolished in argument in front of the nation on news bulletins, on “Newsnight” and so on. We will see slowly dripping away any residual support that there is for this system. I say to the Government that they might be looking forward to that prospect, but on that basis the Liberal Democrats should certainly not be looking forward to it.
I again thank my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for his clear, lawyer’s explanation of my system, and I apologise to the House for intervening repeatedly. However, I did so because it is important in advance of the referendum that we strike down some of the myths that have been used throughout this whole debate. I understand the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on the wording of the amendment and the question of “an” alternative vote system, and I might well return at Report with another amendment precisely to deal with that matter.
Finally, I say this to the Government because I really think that Conservative Back-Benchers, Conservative members of the coalition, should carefully consider what they are doing. In my mind, the question to ask is whether they, as Conservative Members of Parliament, Members of the House, are prepared, for the sake of a possible five-year survival of a coalition, to take the immense risk of allowing a referendum result which could completely transform the British electoral system, could cause huge damage and undermine the whole credibility of parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom. Maybe it is that they are confident that the referendum will be lost, but are they really prepared to take that risk? I say to Conservative noble Lords: be very careful, you are playing with fire.
I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Rooker
Lord Rooker
With respect to Amendment 24, in view of the clarity of the Leader’s speech this afternoon, as a reward and to avoid further embarrassment to the Liberal Democrats, I will not move Amendment 24.
Lord Snape
“( ) There is to be another question on the ballot papers as follows—
For electing your Member of Parliament in future, would you prefer to vote on a—
(a) Thursday; or(b) Saturday?”
Lord Snape
A lot of the debate that has taken place so far on this Bill has been about the referendum itself, about the wording of the referendum or whether different voting systems should be adopted. But, whatever the views that have been expressed by both sides in your Lordships’ House, by all parties and by none, the one thing I suspect unites us all is the desire to see higher turnouts in elections generally in the United Kingdom. For that reason, my noble friend Lady McDonagh and I have tabled this amendment about polling day.
It seems to be generally accepted that, in elections, polling day should be held on a Thursday. That is a fairly modern trend. It is not something that we have had for centuries, or even decades. Indeed, my first election to a local authority—to the Bredbury and Romiley urban district council in 1971—took place on a Saturday. Polling for local authorities, particularly UDCs and RDCs, at that time took place on various days of the week. It allowed those of us who had perhaps outgrown train spotting, but were looking for something else to do, to campaign on behalf of colleagues in other elections in other parts—in my case, in the north-west.
Thursday as polling day for elections is not set in stone or in concrete. Nor is it set in stone or in concrete as regards parliamentary elections, or, for that matter, parliamentary by-elections. Back in July 2007, the previous Government published a Green Paper, The Governance of Britain, and followed it with a consultation paper about this very point: whether turnout in elections would be increased or improved if polling was held at the weekend rather than during the week. Perhaps I may quote briefly from the foreword to that consultation document written by my noble friend Lord Wills, who at that time was the Minister of State for Justice. The Government envisaged a summit and notified over 20 bodies as well as publicising to the general public as widely as possible the desire for people to participate in this particular exercise. In this document, my noble friend proposed a citizens’ summit to look at the point. He stated:
“I also want to use that Summit to have a broader discussion about the factors that motivate people to exercise their right to vote. The sense of a civic ‘duty’ to vote has eroded over the last 50 years. It is vital for all of us that we understand the reasons”.
Whether turnout on polling day would be improved if we moved the day is perhaps an issue on which he received some replies. I am not sure why we did not take those replies forward. If my noble friend intervenes in this debate, no doubt he will tell us. The idea that polling should not necessarily be held on a Thursday is one that we should look at.
It is only since the Local Government Act 1972, which abolished the Bredbury and Romiley urban district council along with many other units of local government throughout the United Kingdom, that Thursday has been set as the day on which elections should be held. When one looks back at the history of general elections, Thursday appears only infrequently. Up to and including the First World War, it was possible in many parts of the country to vote over a four-week period. I am not suggesting that we return to those days. However, the election on 14 December 1918, immediately after the cessation of the First World War, was held on a Saturday. Until 1931, general elections were held on three or four other days of the week. We should not regard Thursday as the only possible day to exercise our democratic right. I would be interested in the Government’s view on whether it would be better to hold elections on a Saturday, or at the weekend, rather than on a Thursday.
It is a similar story with by-elections. They have been held on various days of the week over many years. As recently as 1978, the Hamilton by-election in Scotland was held on 31 May, which happens to be a Wednesday. I tread carefully here. It was held on Wednesday because the first match in Scotland's World Cup campaign was held the following day. As a supporter of Stockport County, I well understand the desire of my Scottish colleagues not to see the by-election clash with a major football match. I hesitate to mention, particularly with so many Scots present in the Chamber—but I will do so, perhaps recklessly—that on that occasion the Scots came up against the footballing might of Iran and were disappointed at the outcome. In case my Scottish colleagues feel that I am making an undue point, I suggest that perhaps, given England's dismal performance in this year's World Cup, we should set polling day on whatever day our national side happens to be playing, in order to distract the populace of both our countries from the resulting misery.
I hope that the Government will look seriously at this. It is sensible to look at weekend voting in the United Kingdom. Whether this would be on Saturdays or Sundays I will leave to the opinion of the Government Front Bench. Of course, there are objections to both days on religious grounds, but most of our EU neighbours vote on Sundays and the attendance at various churches throughout the EU does not seem to be adversely affected. It would even be possible to hold elections over both Saturday and Sunday. This would deprive the Dimbleby family of the opportunity to appear on our various television channels presenting the results during the evening, but that is probably a cross that all of us would be able to bear, if not with equanimity than at least without too much disappointment. I will not detain your Lordships further on this point. It is worthy of consideration and I will be interested to hear the views either of the Leader of the House or of his deputy.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I remember the words of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, in an earlier debate when he said, “If it’s not broke, don’t break it”. That seems to fit most of the prejudices with which I approach politics. But I think we should look again at the question of voting on Thursdays. That was set up in an age when people did not move very much. We are now dealing with a much more mobile population and people who travel all over the country. How many of us have canvassed on election day, knocking on doors to find that somebody has travelled the length of the country and is sitting in some city a very long way away from where they can vote? There are arguments for moving the date of an election to the weekend because it is much more likely that people would then be at home. This is something that needs consideration. As the noble Lord, Lord Snape, pointed out, the Europeans on the whole vote on Sundays and that seems to be eminently sensible. This has a degree of merit and should be seriously considered because the habits of people are changing.
A noble friend said to me when I was considering supporting this amendment that we now have postal voting and so therefore this becomes less of a problem. I am not certain about that. Postal voting has opened up enormous opportunities for fraud and it seems to be possible to create electors in inordinately large numbers who do not actually exist. There is something to be said for restraining the growth in postal voting and possibly considering moving the election day to the weekend when there will be more people at home and in a position to vote.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, on this and to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Snape. Both noble Lords are right to draw attention to the fact that in the past there has been a great flexibility on election day and the changing circumstances of the British people now suggest that we ought to be looking at this again. That is why the previous Government held a consultation on this issue. That consultation, for which I was the Minister responsible, proved a very interesting one. There was a mixed response, as one would expect. There were a lot of voices in favour of moving election day. There were equally, I think it is fair to say, a lot of voices very much opposed to it. But what it showed was that there are a great number of issues that have to be taken into account on this: participation in elections, which is a fundamental of our democracy, questions of faith, the patterns of the working day for the great majority of the British electorate and the cost of shifting the election day.
These are complex issues. In the end the previous Government took the view that it was right that the British people should have a decisive say in that. It is their democracy. It is not for us but for them to decide what day would be most convenient, bearing in mind all those other considerations that both noble Lords have alluded to and which the consultation highlighted. We thought in Government that the best way of allowing the British people to have their say was through a citizens’ summit, as my noble friend Lord Snape has reminded us. I still think that probably is the best way but I realise that that is not on offer from the Government. I regret that, but we have a unique opportunity with a referendum. It is the next best thing and I urge the Government to consider this. Both noble Lords have made powerful cases for the consideration of this. It is not a question of deciding to shift it from Thursday. This is really about giving the British people the right to decide. I have heard the Leader of the House say many times that the British people are wise and sagacious enough to make these decisions for themselves. Those on both sides of the debate will put their arguments forward but then the British people in their wisdom will decide. He has said that many times in our debates on this Bill already so I urge him to follow his own logic and accept the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Snape and at least put it to the British people to decide.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry
Before the noble Lord sits down, I am rather surprised by what he is saying. I apologise for the fact that I was not in the House for the beginning of this debate, but is he saying that he would like to see the British people being given the choice as to whether it is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday? If he is, the people will simply split and you will have 10 per cent saying one thing, 10 per cent saying another, et cetera. I have stood in seven or eight general elections, all of them on a Thursday, and I never saw anything wrong with it being on a Thursday. People are used to that and personally I would continue having them on Thursdays only.
Lord Wills
I had sat down, but I shall briefly respond to the noble Lord’s question. He asked what was wrong with having elections on a Thursday. Quite simply, we have seen turnout falling. It is extraordinarily low in local elections and deplorably low even in general elections, which is the British people deciding on the future of their country and 60 per cent of them turn out. We owe it to them to look at every obstacle to people turning out. I absolutely accept that it is not only to do with the convenience of polling and whether there is electronic voting or voting on election day. Politicians—I include myself in this—are at fault as well in this deplorably low turnout. We should do everything we possibly can. At the very least we have to examine, as one of the options, the question of polling day. That is why I think it is worth examining this matter. The Government in their wisdom have already made a judgment on how we should judge the outcome of a referendum on the alternative vote system. We do this every time we have a referendum. This is not an insoluble problem. The need is pressing and we owe the British people the option of deciding on this.
Lord Monson
If one is thinking of opting for weekend voting, it would be preferable to choose a Sunday rather than a Saturday. Of course, it is true that many shops and places of entertainment are open on Sundays nowadays but not nearly as many as are open on a Saturday, when there are a great many choices which the average voter might prefer to queuing up at a polling station. If one wants to optimise turnout, as I think most of us do, of the two I would certainly plump for a Sunday.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
I would not follow my noble friend along that very controversial path, but perhaps I may make a broader point, broader than the amendment itself. It seems to me that there is a case for drawing a clear distinction between general elections and all other elections. General elections have, for many decades, been held on a Thursday for a particular reason, which is that by Friday morning one pretty well knows who is likely to form the government and it gives the new Prime Minister, or the continuing Prime Minister, the opportunity of a couple of days to cobble together all those considerations that are so pertinent to the formation of a new government. That applies only to general elections and not to all other elections. Therefore, it seems to me that one should draw that distinction. I have a fairly open mind about the amendment, but if one considers that there is much greater latitude for all non-general elections than for general elections, I think that should be a practical background to our consideration.
Lord Grenfell
I wish to express my support for the amendment of my noble friend, Lord Snape. This may be an esoteric point but reference has been made to elections in other parts of Europe. Over the years, I have witnessed many elections in France and it is not just tradition that demands that they be held at a weekend; there are also some practical reasons and I shall cite just one. It may sound a little bit like French Cartesian logic gone mad, but it is much easier to get people to the polls at a weekend than on a weekday. Where there are still many one-car families, as there are in France, on the weekend the car will be at home and not at the office. That is one example of the kind of thinking in France and it is the kind of thinking that we might want to apply here to see what kind of practical advantages there are as regards weekend elections as opposed to elections on a Thursday.
Lord Rooker
I was not going to speak on the amendment but perhaps I could add to the debate by referring to the next amendment. Everything short of compulsory voting should be tried to raise the turnout. I am dead against compulsory voting. In my view, that is quite preposterous in a democracy. However, the barriers to increased turnout, such as the hours of polling, or the days of voting, are all things that could be addressed. There is a lot more as well. All these things should be in play. I realise that the Leader of the House is going to ask what on earth this has to do with this Bill, but one has to look for a peg to hang these things on. The localism Bill will probably be another one—it is exactly the same. I have been disabused of the history this afternoon. I always thought that it was a Thursday—and I have repeated this at meetings—because in the old days, that was the day the squires went to market and bought and sold constituencies. It seems as though I may have been wrong.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, it strikes me that the amendment prompts three questions. The first is whether we should change the date, and that is what my noble friend Lord Hamilton and some others have addressed. The second is whether this is a question that is appropriate to be included in the referendum. That is the substantial point that we should address. There are various problems in including this question. One has already been alluded to: it is a limited choice. It may be that electors prefer to go on a Monday or a Sunday, so we do not know whether providing this dichotomous choice will reflect the actual preferences of electors, as they are being offered too limited a choice. Another problem—it is a technical point—concerns what would happen if electors expressed a preference for Saturday rather than Thursday as far as the Bill is drawn. We know what will happen if they vote yes on the question of AV, but the Bill is merely silent as to what the consequence would be, so in effect it would be akin to an opinion poll.
The third and most important point is why we should have this question rather than others. We will be looking at other questions to be included, but priorities are important. If we start adding to it, there is a danger of overdoing it, and I am not sure this question should take priority for the simple reason that we could find out through an opinion poll. I think that that would be sufficient for these purposes.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate. It is one that is had practically every time we have any Bill that mentions voting. The facts are interesting. Since 1935, every general election has been held on a Thursday. In 1931, it was held on a Tuesday. In 1922 and 1924, elections took place on Wednesdays, and in December 1918, as my noble friend Lord Snape said, election day was a Saturday, so weekend voting is not a new idea. There is no statutory requirement for elections to held on Thursdays. They could be held on any weekday except Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Good Friday, a Bank Holiday, or any day appointed for public thanksgiving or mourning. It was in 1983 that Saturday and Sunday were also designated as dies non under the parliamentary election rules in the Representation of the People Act. This amendment gives an opportunity to debate whether Saturday should be a dies non, but not Sunday.
To deal with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, I emphatically think this is obviously not a question for a referendum. If we start voting in a referendum on whether it should be Thursday or Saturday, goodness knows what we will then be voting on in a referendum. I am opposed to it being in a referendum. Referendums should be kept for constitutional questions. I know from talking to my noble friend Lord Snape that that of course was not his intention. His intention was that we should debate the issue in relation to whether it is appropriate. I agree completely with the approach taken by my noble friend Lord Rooker on whether it increases turnout. We all agree that we should try to increase turnout. Attractive as the approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry is, that he has never had any trouble on Thursdays—because he has always won his elections, presumably, that is why he likes Thursday—I am not necessarily sure that should be the bar to it.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that we should look into the question. In fact, pilots have taken place in local elections in relation to Saturdays and it would be helpful to hear from the Government what the evaluation of those pilots was and what the conclusion in relation to it is. Ultimately the test is the one that my noble friend Lord Rooker sets: does it increase turnout? If it does, then I hope that the Government will think about doing it seriously.
Lord Strathclyde
The main reason why I shall disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Snape, is precisely the one that we have witnessed over the past 23 minutes. It is a fascinating debate and different people have different views about different days of the week. This debate has yet to mature, so it is not one for the Bill, which is about a specific referendum on AV. In fact, I remember the noble Lord and some of his colleagues complaining that we should not have more than one difficult issue on a day, but here he is proposing one himself. However, I also know that he wanted to tease out the Government's view on this subject.
We believe that a further question on the referendum ballot paper would detract from the Government’s main purpose, which is to see whether voters wish to change from the current first past the post voting system to the alternative vote system. As we have heard this afternoon, there are arguments for and against moving polling day from the traditional Thursday to a Saturday, and lots of evidence, supporting or not, on turnout and the use of postal votes. In experiments and consultation, there are divided opinions on whether such a change would be more convenient for voters and whether it would lead to an increased turnout. There are also resource and cost issues, alongside concerns about practicability.
In weighing up those arguments, the Government have seen no evidence that such a move would bring any clear benefits. It is not obvious that moving polling day from the traditional Thursday to a Saturday or Sunday would make it easier for electors to vote. This is probably the subject of a wider debate, or even a Private Member’s Bill. I am unable to support the noble Lord.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I appreciate that the noble Lord may not have the answer, but could he write to me with the results of the pilots?
Lord Snape
I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the House for participating in this debate. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that this is not a particularly suitable amendment for the Bill, but if not here, where? We repeat as a mantra from all quarters of the House that we are desperate to involve more people in our democratic processes, and this strikes me as one way of doing so.
I am especially grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, who knows what I am thinking when I move these amendments before I have thought of it myself. It is truly the mark of a major and outstanding parliamentarian that he can be so perceptive. I not only accept that this legislation is not suitable for the amendment but I accept the views of the government Front Bench. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for what he had to say. I was not aware that I had complained personally about the number of different issues in the Bill; indeed, I thought that I was responsible for some of them rather than complaining about them. However, in the spirit of co-operation with which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, replied to the debate, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Snape
“( ) There is to be another question on the ballot papers as follows—
Do you think there should be compulsory voting for general elections?
(a) Yes; or(b) No”
Lord Snape
My Lords, I fear that this is yet another amendment that may rouse the ire of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, because of its lack of suitability, but there is perhaps a more important point in this amendment than in the previous one. As I have said, and has been said from all quarters of the House, we are interested in increasing turnout at elections. This is one certain way to do that.
We are aware from previous debates that although only Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia have favoured the system of AV inherent in the Bill, lots more countries have a system of compulsory voting. Across all those countries, turnout has increased dramatically. One might argue that that is because of the punishments for those who fail to vote, but by and large those punishments are minimal, if they are enforced at all. Yet, in Australia, for example, which has the system of AV that we are going to wish on ourselves if this Bill is carried, turnout at general elections is consistently over 90 per cent, although the penalties for failure to vote are very small indeed.
My noble friend Lord Rooker pre-empted this amendment in his comments on the previous amendment by saying that he feels that compulsory voting is unacceptable in a democracy. Instead of having punitive punishments for those who fail to vote, why not have some sort of incentive if we are going to have compulsory voting? A voucher for £10, £15 or £20 off your rates bill, for example, would provide an incentive without the fear of punitive punishment if one fails to vote.
Interestingly enough, countries closer to us than Australia have compulsory voting. I had not realised until I researched this amendment that in France it is compulsory to vote in a Senate election, although I have no doubt that experts on these matters in other parts of your Lordships' House would have realised that. That compulsion is not enforced, but it is believed to bring about an increase in turnout for Senate elections. Although I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will say that this amendment is unsuitable in the Bill, I hope that it will bring about a dramatic increase in voter turnout at this and every other election for that reason in particular.
There is one other reason that I meant to mention: that additional voter participation in general elections would at least remove to some degree the exorbitant and enormous expenditure that political parties indulge in now at general elections. Something like £30 million was spent in advertising and promotional material at the recent general election. I will not go into the division of that money between the various parties. That money could be better spent elsewhere, and if we could guarantee a proper turnout under compulsion, that would be a better way of increasing turnout than throwing the sort of money that all the political parties have to throw at the moment in an attempt to bring about voter participation. I beg to move.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, unusually, I disagree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I believe that forcing people to vote is eminently undemocratic. In a democracy, people should have the opportunity to vote or not to vote. If you want to say to people, “You must indulge in this democracy and you must go to the polling station or put a cross on a ballot paper and post it”, you are taking away their freedom not to participate in an election to elect people who you perhaps do not like or perhaps dislike completely. I am not at all sure that this is a good amendment in any sense at all. Although more people may very well turn out to cast their ballot, you will have to persuade them in some way that they should do so, and the only way you can do that is by imposing a fine on them. Indeed, that is another argument against trying to force people to vote when they might not want to.
It might also be difficult for people to vote. Indeed, polling stations in some constituencies are getting further and further away these days from the voters than they used to be so that it may very well be inconvenient, to say the least, for some people to go to vote in person. However, I come back to the general position that in a democracy people should be allowed to vote for whom they wish and should make the decision themselves as to whether they should vote at all. Anything other than that smacks of autocracy rather than democracy. If this amendment is put to the vote, I should be delighted to vote against it.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am always struck by the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, but what might happen in such a constituency—not his former constituency, of course: nor, I hope, in mine—if the majority of people who performed their democratic function of going to the polling station wrote on the ballot paper, “None of the above”.?
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart: and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on his previous interventions. We are greatly reluctant about compulsory voting, which has to be right. People have to have the option of not voting at all. I am afraid that on this issue I am not with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as I was on his previous amendment, but I was rather attracted by his suggestion of incentives to vote, rather than doing what the Australians always purport to do, which is to fine people who do not vote. I do not quite know how many Australians get fined for not voting, but I suspect that it is not a very efficient system.
However, an incentive to enable people to vote strikes me as rather attractive. An incentive that takes the form of, say, a voucher to knock something off your rates or something of that sort, which you are given in the polling station, would encourage people to vote in person. That would get us away from the problem of the growing number of postal votes and all the fraud involved in that, which was alluded to in an earlier discussion.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I shall not repeat my earlier points about whether it should be included in the Bill, which I will take as given. I will briefly address the substance of the argument. I acknowledge that there are quite substantial arguments for compulsory voting, but my view is very much along the lines advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Voting should be regarded as a civic duty. It should not be a statutory obligation. If people do not wish to vote, we should not force them to vote. I am also a bit wary of the argument that is sometimes used in favour of compulsory voting: that there is an increasing disaffection with politics, which is why people are not voting, so there should be compulsory voting.
I do not find particularly attractive the argument that we should say to people, “Look, you are being put off politics, therefore we are going to force you to vote”. That would increase their disaffection rather than ameliorate it. I do not find the argument persuasive, although I accept that there are arguments on the other side. I rather warm to the thinking advanced about incentives to get people to the polling station. That is well worth exploring, but with the obvious proviso of “not in this Bill”.
Lord Bach
My Lords, this is another interesting debate that was started by my noble friend. The amendment does not necessarily say that compulsory voting is a good or a bad thing. It just asks that this might be added to the referendum that the Government intend. At great risk of taking a slight difference of opinion to that of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, this is probably a better question for a referendum than the previous amendment.
Lord Norton of Louth
It strikes me that there is an interesting argument here. If this is put in a referendum, the sort of people who will turn out to vote will probably favour compulsory voting. Of course, those who are against it will not go to the polling station.
Lord Bach
That, of course, is the danger with the referendum in the first place perhaps. The right to vote is obviously very precious, and we should encourage people to use it as much as possible. As a descendent of Mrs Pankhurst, dare I say that the suffragettes who fought—some, of course, died—in that cause would see this debate as important. Of course they were fighting for the right to vote, not for the compulsion to do so, but at some stage in the future the House might want to give rather more time to this interesting debate than it will this afternoon, for obvious reasons.
Let me make one thing clear. While it may not be a brave view—but it is the truth—I can say from the Front Bench that we have no particular opinion either way as to whether compulsory voting is right or wrong, and I daresay that may also be the view of the Government. It is very much a matter of individual judgment. Compulsory voting has a long and distinguished history. I believe it began in ancient Greece where it was every citizen’s duty to participate in decision-making. Those in favour of compulsory votes point to the argument that a Government elected in such circumstances can claim greater legitimacy because it removes the possibility of a party winning an election on 40 per cent of the vote when the turnout stands at just over 60 per cent.
Lord Norton of Louth
I refer back to the earlier point made by the noble Lord. He said that he does not have a view either way. What would he do if there was compulsory voting in this House?
Lord Bach
My Lords, I was careful to say that it was the Front Bench of the Official Opposition that had no official view either way. As it happens I, too, do not have a particularly strong view either way. However, I would say that the Australian experiment in compulsory voting is one that we need to look at quite carefully. It does not seem to be a complete failure, to put it mildly. What is important is that it appears to be understood and accepted by voters in Australia. Obviously compulsory voting boosts turnout and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has already told us, spoiling one’s ballot paper is a distinct option if one is not minded to vote. The voter’s power to choose remains unrestrained, and there is obviously a bit of learning by experience if you have to vote, although there are problems with compulsory voting.
Voting was described as a civic duty by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, but perhaps it is a civic right and one that no one in a free country should be compelled to exercise. Fines imposed for non-voting could be regarded as some kind of restriction on individual freedom, and in this country in particular there would be administrative difficulties, to put it mildly, in making voting compulsory, as well as many other more historic difficulties in actually putting it into effect.
I want to ask the Leader of the House one question, because different views have been expressed from the government Front Bench over the past few months, although not in this debate. As I understand it, it is compulsory in this country to register to vote. In other words, there is a sanction if you do not register. This is not meant to be a trick question. It is quite important for the House to understand whether it is compulsory to register, and what we mean by “compulsory” in this sense. In theory, at least, fines can be imposed on those who do not register, but of course in practice that does not happen. If that is true about registration, it would certainly be true for compulsory voting.
This is a subject for a much longer and more detailed debate than we can give it this evening. A referendum question might be a way of canvassing public opinion on the matter.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord has asked his question about compulsory registration because it is an important one. I well remember that the back of the registration document stated that if you failed to fill in the form, you could be fined £25. As far as I can see, that statement no longer appears on the form.
Lord Rooker
This raises an interesting issue for Part 2 of the Bill. If, as I have always understood, it is legally compulsory to register to vote, surely the other side of the coin is that there ought to be a legal obligation on the Government to ensure that every citizen is registered to vote, especially given that those numbers will be instrumental in determining the size of constituencies and all the other matters that come under Part 2. That opens up the possibility of some interesting amendments to Part 2 on compulsory registration to ensure that both those sides of the coin are dealt with. There must be a clear obligation on the Government to ensure that citizens obey the law, so that the millions of people who are allegedly missed off are not missed off before the constituency boundaries are redrawn.
Lord Bach
I agree with my noble friend that this is an important point. Various answers have been given over the past months that have suggested that registration is not compulsory in this country. I am not pressing the Leader of the House to answer on that today; a Written Answer would be satisfactory. However, the issue is relevant to Part 2, as my noble friend said. However, Amendment 29 is on compulsory voting, on which I look forward to hearing what the Leader of the House has to say.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is always fascinating in these debates to discover new information. We were treated to new information—at least it was the first time for me—that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is a descendant of Mrs Pankhurst. I am not quite sure what to do with that information, but it is none the less interesting.
We have had an interesting discussion as part of the wider debate on electoral reform. The debate has been similar to the one that we had a few minutes ago, although this debate has been on the subject of compulsion. Those who argue in favour of compulsory voting believe that the greater turnout that would likely ensue would enhance the legitimacy of the Government elected because the result of the election would be closer to the will of the population as a whole rather than that of those individuals who have voted. Those who are against compulsion say that the argument that greater legitimacy would flow from a higher turnout may be challenged on the grounds that people may be either ill informed or have no wish to support the existing system. Opponents of compulsion may also refute the suggestion that low turnouts compromise the legitimacy of existing elections because not voting may be a valid expression of a voter’s opinion—indicating, for instance, satisfaction with the political establishment.
I assure the House that the Government are committed to engaging the electorate in elections and wider democratic activity. In weighing up the arguments for and against compulsion, however, the Government believe that voting should be a civic responsibility and that the importance of political participation should be reinforced without the introduction of any sanction for non-compliance.
That leads us to the interesting exchange about the compulsion to register. Although it was kind of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to say that I could write to him, I have the answer and I can clean up the mystery now: there is no compulsion to register under statute and, therefore, there is no penalty for failing to do so. I hope that that clarifies that mystery. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Snape, not to continue to press Amendment 29.
Lord Snape
I am grateful to noble Lords on both sides of your Lordships’ House for their participation in the debate. I thought that the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was a little cynical. Of course there is provision under the compulsive system of voting for a person to make any mark that they like on a ballot paper. I noticed that he exempted both our former constituencies on the grounds that we were so enormously popular that that situation would not have arisen in either West Bromwich or in Cornwall in his former seat. According to my researches, as far as they go, there has not been a recorded instance of “None of the above” ever topping the poll. Although that is not quite the answer that the noble Lord wanted, it is the best that I can do at present.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, deplored the idea that in a democracy we should, as he put it, force people to vote. I do not think that France, Belgium and Australia—to name but three—are any less democracies because they have some degree of compulsion about voting. Without wishing to embarrass the noble Lord, I should tell him that I have his picture, among others, on a wall in my home in Birmingham. The picture is of the Government Whips’ Office in 1976 and was taken in No. 10 Downing Street with Jim Callaghan, who was then Prime Minister. I always thought that we were paid to force people to vote in those days, so he was not quite as scrupulous then as he obviously is now.
I am grateful for the partial support of the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Norton. They were both against compulsion, but both thought that there was some merit in the idea of a voucher towards people’s rates, or whatever. Perhaps, in withdrawing the amendment, I can point to some degree of unity.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
The noble Lord is right about the happy times that we had together in the Whips’ Office in the House of Commons, but he will recall that we did not have compulsory voting. We wished, sometimes, that we did have compulsory voting, but very often, when I went round my little flock of MPs and told them that they must vote, they told me exactly where to go.
Lord Snape
I do not want to argue with the noble Lord’s view of what took place 30-odd years ago, but that was not quite the impression that I had in the Whips’ Office at the time. However, that was quite a long time ago.
Lord Grocott
As one who was a foot-soldier when my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, were exerting authority, I can say only that voting did not seem to be an optional matter from where I was sitting.
Lord Snape
We had better leave it at that then.
I referred to the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Norton. I am grateful for their partial support. Both were against compulsion but favoured the idea of a voucher or some financial incentive to the voters to turn up to vote. Perhaps, in withdrawing the amendment, I can point out that we three are all against compulsion but in favour of bribery. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
“( ) In Scotland, a Gaelic version of the question is also to appear on the ballot papers.”
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I move Amendment 31, standing in my name and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke. I understand that my noble friend Lord McAvoy has put his name to it as well. I am pleased to see so many noble Lords with Scottish titles in the Chamber today. I presume that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will be replying to it. No? Well, another Scot will be replying to it—that is, the Leader of the House.
When I looked through the Bill and saw that the question was to be posed in Welsh for voting in Wales, I thought, what a very good idea. I immediately assumed that it would also be posed in Gaelic in Scotland. Going further through the Bill, I was disappointed to discover that that was not the case. I presume that the reason why it is being put in Welsh in Wales is that people who are native Welsh speakers will understand better the nuances of the question, the implications of voting one way or another will become clearer to them, when they read it in their native language, their first language. That is a very good argument and a very good reason for having the question in Welsh.
There is exactly the same reason for having the question in Gaelic in Scotland. There are a number of native Gaelic speakers in parts of Scotland, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, and most particularly in the Western Isles, whose first language is Gaelic. These people will understand the question better, understand the nuances and implications of it, in the same way that Welsh speakers will in Wales.
Then I thought that maybe the argument for having it in Welsh in Wales and not in Gaelic in Scotland was that in Wales there are people who speak only Welsh, whereas in Scotland there are no people who speak only Gaelic. In fact, the situation in Scotland is that in the last few years it has become the case that all native Gaelic speakers now speak English as their second language. However, the situation in Wales is almost exactly the same. I quote from Wikipedia—I am not sure if that is the best source, but it is correct on this occasion:
“monoglot Welsh speakers are now virtually non-existent … Almost without exception, Welsh speakers in Wales also speak English … Welsh speakers are more comfortable expressing themselves in Welsh than in English”—
but that is true also of Gaelic speakers. So the situation in both countries is effectively the same.
I also thought that there might be an argument that there were more Polish and German speakers and speakers of other European languages in Scotland. This would complicate things and mean that we ought to have the question in those languages as well. At present, though, citizens of the European Union resident in the United Kingdom will not be eligible to vote in the referendum. As it happens, I also tabled Amendment 36A, which, if accepted, would allow them to vote and to have the same franchise for both the referendum and the election, which would be helpful. At the moment, though, Polish, German, French and other European citizens will not have the right to vote. So that argument does not arise.
Like Welsh, Gaelic is increasingly being used alongside English in Scotland. I took a journey by rail recently from Edinburgh to Ayr—it is not always easy to make any journeys in Scotland at the moment—and Scotrail now has all the names of the railway stations in Gaelic as well as in English. That is happening throughout Scotland. That is just one example of many.
The argument might be put—perhaps by the Leader of the House, if he is replying—that Welsh is an official language. Since 2005, however, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will attest to because he was Deputy First Minister of Scotland at the time, under the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, Gaelic is now an official language in Scotland.
The argument might be that the question is being put in Welsh in Wales because there are more Welsh speakers—in fact, there are 611,000. In Scotland there are 58,652 Gaelic speakers. However, I would argue that the issue is not the number of speakers; rather, it is an issue of principle. Even if there were only a handful of Gaelic speakers, the argument would be the same. Still, there are 58,652 native Gaelic speakers.
There have been a number of considerations regarding this at the European level. In fact, it was pointed out recently, in relation not to Scottish Gaelic but to Northern Irish Gaelic, that the United Nations committee looking at the European Convention on Human Rights recommended that the Administration in Northern Ireland adopt an Irish language Act with a view to preserving and promoting minority languages and cultural heritage in the same way as the Welsh Language Act and the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act. So there was a recognition there, and there is increasing recognition generally that Gaelic is an official language in Scotland.
Given the setting up of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, if we put the Bill through in its present form there would be a case for Gaelic speakers in Scotland to take a case to it on the basis that they were not being dealt with in the same way as native Welsh speakers. We are all in the same United Kingdom but they are not being dealt with in the same way.
This is a very serious matter. Some people thought that some of the comments I made on previous matters were debating points. This is not a debating point or issue. It has become known among some people who speak Gaelic that I had planned to move this amendment, for which I have had expressions of support. Gaelic speakers think that this amendment would be a great advantage to the Bill.
The Leader of the House—or I think the noble Lord, Lord McNally—has put down some amendments to the Bill. We passed a change to the Bill on Monday, so the Bill has to go back to the other place anyway. I hope that the Leader of the House will accept this amendment and that it will go back to the House with a clear instruction or expression of review from the House of Lords that the speakers of Scottish Gaelic should be treated in exactly the same way as Welsh speakers in Wales.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, not for the first time I rise in Committee to support my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. On this occasion my noble friend has identified a very important issue of support for minority language rights and identities. He has afforded your Lordships’ House an opportunity to make a statement about such support in supporting his amendment. As I have said before, I have made a point of reviewing everything that has been said in these Houses in relation to this Bill. I have to say that I was surprised, given the makeup of the other place, that this issue was not raised in Committee or in any other part of the debate that they had about this legislation. This fact and the issue that my noble friend identified have indicated how important it is that we look at this legislation as carefully as we have been doing in Committee because I am sure that we will find many other opportunities to improve it quite significantly and improve the appreciation that the electorate have of the body politic in this country—a point that I made earlier.
In researching my contribution to this short debate—and I am sure that it will be a short but valuable one—I came across the writings of a man, who I had previously not read, called Robert Dunbar, who was, at least in 2006, at the school of law in the University of Aberdeen. I will share his words with your Lordships’ House because they make the holistic case for my noble friend Lord Foulkes’s argument very well. In the Journal of Law and Society in 2006 in volume 33, number one, in an article entitled, “Is there a duty to legislate for linguistic minorities?”, he wrote:
“All three Celtic languages are … threatened minority languages. Gaelic particularly so, and Welsh and Gaelic are only spoken as community languages—and will therefore only survive—in the United Kingdom. These demographic and sociolinguistic facts are a product, to a very significant degree, of state language policy, which until fairly recently has been directed at promoting the acquisition of English, with little or no regard to the impact of this policy on minority languages”.
He goes on:
“Frequently, minority languages such as the Celtic languages have been viewed by the majority as not merely ‘less widely spoken’, but also as ‘inferior’, ‘backward’, ‘parochial’, and these value judgments have too often coloured attitudes to the speakers of such languages. When such attitudes guide the implementation of an integrationist policy, the effect changes from one of equipping the minority with skills in the majority languages to one of removing the minority language and identity altogether”.
I apologise to your Lordships’ House for reading that at length. However, in those few sentences, Mr Dunbar made the argument for respecting the minority language of Gaelic, the Scottish people and the identity of those who speak that language in a very good way. I could have adopted his argument and changed the words, which, as a consequence of my researches, I have to say I have done in the past. However, I thought that I should attribute those arguments to him.
Lord Strathclyde
Can the noble Lord tell us what role he played in this when he was Secretary of State for Scotland?
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I do not recollect that this legislation was before any House of Parliament when I was the Secretary of State for Scotland. The point the noble Lord wishes to make is that somehow we should not do the right thing now, because perhaps I or others did not do the right thing before. However, if this is the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do at the point at which we identify it is the right thing to do. I am sure that the noble Lord is not going to make that argument because it would be disrespectful to the House and disrespectful to himself. We have an opportunity to send a very strong message back to the people of Scotland and to Gaelic speakers, a message that I think all the Members of the House would want to send back. If the Front Bench rejects this amendment, I would ask my noble friend to insist upon it.
Lord Palmer
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, really could not have made a better case for the constitution of this House in its present form. The noble Lord mentioned that the House of Commons did not look at this aspect of the Bill at all. This is exactly what this House has the time and the experience to look at. With the greatest possible respect, I think the noble Lord defused quite a lot of the arguments in favour of his noble friend’s amendment. When I was at school the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was one of my childhood heroes. He was a wonderfully bombastic loose cannon in the House of Commons when I was still wet behind the ears. However, I do feel incredibly strongly that this amendment would be a total and utter waste of parliamentary time, let alone a waste of money, if it was to be carried. The noble Lord and I obviously have exactly the same figures—58,652 Gaelic speakers north of the border, and it is thought not a single one of them is incapable of understanding fully, speaking and reading English. I would therefore appeal to your Lordships to reject this amendment with the strongest possible feeling.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, it is not a question of numbers, although my noble friend Lord Browne was perhaps tempting fate in suggesting that there are no monoglot Welsh speakers. I suspect that now he has said that, the Welsh media will be searching in the valleys of the Lleyn Peninsula and will find some dear old lady—perhaps there is even some Cornish lady still—who speaks only Welsh, but I am not sure frankly that that is really material to the argument. Nor is the question of cost, as the cost must be very minor indeed. I shall argue on the basis of Celtic solidarity—hands across the Irish Sea—that this is a matter more of dignity and symbolism, and is all the more important for that.
The coalition has made much of overconcentration in Westminster and Whitehall. That has been part of the leitmotif—that there will be decentralisation, that there will be more status and more dignity given to local communities to manage their own affairs. Surely, to recognise the differences within the United Kingdom is very much in the spirit of that. I concede this is symbolic, but it will do no harm and may well do some good. I speak as someone with a Welsh background, although I concede that I am a monoglot English speaker—I went to a Welsh grammar school at a time when Wales was not being pushed, and I was taught Greek and Latin rather than Welsh, which I gave up at an early stage. However, like most Welsh people, even the monoglot majority who speak only English, I have a tremendous feeling of pride in the Welsh language. One of the great debates over the past decades has been over the ways in which we can encourage the use of the Welsh language without making it a divisive issue. I give credit to the Conservative Party for the Welsh Language Act, which I believe avoided making Welsh a divisive and explosive issue, as happened with regard to language in Belgium. Overwhelmingly in Wales there is a pride in the language, and not a nasty response to it. That Belgian-style row has been avoided here by a process of being consensual and by recognising the importance of difference. It is indeed a source of pride for most of us.
I concede that there are differences, because we have gone further in Wales with the principle of equal validity, but the identity of the nation is linked with that of the language and, however small the number of Gaelic speakers may be, the identity of the Scottish nation is also linked with that language. This is wholly consonant with the new spirit of seeking to encourage diversity in Europe by all possible means—not just in the European Union but in the Council of Europe. Doing that is not only politically important to avoid language being a source of division, but a matter of pride in that which is different.
My final principle is to accept this as a symbolic gesture. It will not cost much and it will do no harm. In terms of diversity and recognising the differences within our United Kingdom, it can do some good.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I would be serving the cause of pan-Celticism badly were I not to say that I wholeheartedly supported the amendment; indeed, I support it with great enthusiasm. The situation in Wales is a very powerful and pertinent precedent for the Gaelic situation. In Wales, the Welsh language is a living language; it is some 1,500 years old and has been recognised in statute since 1967. The combined effect of the 1967 and 1993 Acts gave the Welsh language equal validity with the English language in all formal legal situations.
In that regard, there would appear to be an unanswerable case for putting the AV referendum question in Welsh as well as in English. In the clause stand part debate, I will have something to say about the quality of translation, but that is a different matter altogether. The Welsh case is based on the fact that there are a substantial number of people, particularly elderly people, for whom the Welsh language is essentially the only language in which they communicate. They might not be monoglot as one would strictly define that term, but certainly many tens of thousands of people speak Welsh; it is certainly the first language of hundreds of thousands of people in Wales. On that basis alone, it is right and proper that this provision should be arranged. That was the situation in the referendums on the Common Market in 1975 and on devolution in 1979 and the 1990s.
In addition, Welsh is often referred to as “our language” by people who do not speak it. That gives me enormous pride and comfort. I have no doubt that much the same attitude prevails in Scotland. Therefore, there is an unanswerable legalistic case for the Welsh language—a case in chivalry and in the fact that it is part of the rich cultural heritage of the United Kingdom. In the main, that applies equally to Scotland, and it is on that basis that I fervently and proudly support the amendment.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, I shall make one or two points briefly. My noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton mentioned the number of speakers of Welsh and who is monoglot and who is not monoglot. In referring to Wales, he specifically mentioned that he had drawn his figures from the census. My point is not so much about numbers but about proportions. The Scottish Gaelic world is concentrated in the Western Isles and the western part of Scotland, so the proportion of people affected is quite considerable, although the numbers and proportion in the whole of Scotland are certainly less than in Wales. That is why it should be recognised, not only in symbolism but in reality.
Symbolism is important. It should be remembered that, particularly after April 1746, there was a campaign against the culture of that world. The communities were destroyed; they were persecuted by the UK Government, driven into corners and discriminated against, not only for their activities between August 1745 and April 1746, but because of their culture and the communities they represented, so there is a bit of a siege mentality in that world.
That world is not only represented by the Western Isles but by the county of Argyll. Argyllshire comes into it as well. When I was on Strathclyde regional council—Argyll was part of the regional council’s area—we went to great lengths to preserve and encourage the Gaelic language, not only in schools within the region’s remit but because of the Gaelic population in the west of Scotland, particularly in the city of Glasgow. It could have been argued that a disproportionate amount of money was spent on this, but we thought it important and it was much appreciated by the Gaelic community. As my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock has already mentioned, Liberal Members of this House should support this, but there seemed to be some surprise at that point of view.
Argyll is relevant to what I am going to say next. My very good friend, with whom I shared a lot in common, was the late Lady Michie—Ray Michie—a tremendous person: a Bannerman who represented the Bannerman family. She once said to me that that was because her family carried the banner of Scotland and its many battles, particularly against our now English friends. I remember Ray and I down at Tilbury Docks, along with the noble Lord, Lord Martin. The local council down there was commemorating the centenary of the Jacobite prisoners at Tilbury Docks. That was a war crime if there ever was one. The proportion of the Jacobites who died in those prison holes was quite shocking. That day there was a procession; the noble Lord, Lord Martin, played the bagpipes, followed by the late Ray Michie, me and Andrew Mackinlay, who was then MP for Thurrock. In my opinion, Lady Michie would have been a firm supporter of this amendment. I have no doubt at all about that. There is a lot of principle involved.
An amendment like this would be of relevant use to people in the Western Isles, where, again, the proportion is striking. To its credit, the Scottish Parliament has taken great steps to try and look after the Gaelic language. That is absolutely right. This is a revising Chamber and this amendment could and should be accepted by the Government without any great principle being at stake and without involving any attack on the Bill. It surprises me that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, should behave in such a House of Commons manner by trying to inject a note of controversy by questioning my noble friend Lord Browne. It was really quite shocking and hurtful to see. I hope that he will get away from that House of Commons attitude—a hope that he himself has expressed so many times—and accept the amendment.
Lord MacKenzie of Culkein
My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Foulkes. Indeed, I suppose it would be surprising if I did not, having my roots in north-west Sutherland, the heart of the Gaeltacht of Scotland. Most of my education was in the Isle of Lewis and the Isle of Skye a long time ago. In those days Gaelic was taught, sadly, as a foreign language. I was given a choice, because at the age of 11 one had to make decisions. My parents thought that they might like me to do medicine, so Latin was prescribed for me. Those who had a hankering for divinity were required to learn Greek. If you wanted to do Latin or Greek, you could not study Gaelic. That was part of the education system as it then existed in Scotland. My Gaelic is extremely rudimentary. My father was a native Gaelic speaker and my mother could not speak it, so, sadly, I never became fluent in it.
Things have improved and changed in Scotland, certainly since devolution. There are many Gaelic-medium schools now in Scotland, and they are extremely successful. We have the BBC ALBA channel, which is very successful and which will shortly, I hope, be available on Freeview so that many more can have access to it. However, there is still pressure in Scotland and the view that, because everyone can speak English fluently and read English, there is no need for Gaelic. That is where I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. We hear this all the time about road signs and railway signs in Gaelic; “it’s a waste of money”. No, it is not a waste of money. There is still suspicion in the Highlands, among Gaels, that the establishment and the Civil Service still have anti-Gaelic sentiment running through them. We should dispel that; we can dispel it tonight if the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, can accept this amendment or indicate that similar wording will be put into the Act, as is the case for Welsh.
We hear a great deal about Ulster Scots and Irish and parity of esteem. Indeed, we hear a lot about this, certainly in Written Questions, in this House. If we have parity of esteem between Ulster Scots and Irish in the Belfast agreement, and Welsh is already embedded in this Bill, we must indeed have Gaelic as well, because there must be parity of esteem for Scottish Gaelic.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, talked about the Welsh speaking of Welsh as “our language” even if they could not speak it themselves, but that points to the fact that Welsh is the adjective from Wales, whereas Gaelic is not the adjective from Scotland in any sense of that expression. There might be an inaccuracy, at least in this amendment, in that it does not refer to Scottish Gaelic, because, as has been said, there is Gaelic in Ulster and of course in the Republic of Ireland. Indeed, I think Welsh itself is probably a branch of Gaelic—it is certainly a Celtic language.
The other point is that the amendment suggests that,
“a Gaelic version of the question is also to appear”.
I submit that “a Gaelic version” leaves very open the question of exactly how it would be expressed. That is not particularly satisfactory. It might also be required to specify that a person who wishes to use that question as his information should also have to answer it in Gaelic.
Lord Boyd of Duncansby
My Lords, I just want to make one short point. This amendment would sit with the rest of the Bill, because under Clause 11, the rules for distribution of seats take out two constituencies: Orkney and Sheltand. I will not attempt to pronounce the Gaelic name of the Western Isles and the Western Isles Council. They are already there because recognition is being given to the Gaelic language. For that reason, the amendment would be wholly consistent with the rest of the Bill.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I will speak very briefly. We have heard very powerful arguments for the amendment. We on the Front Bench support the amendment. We do not claim that it is the biggest or most important amendment, but it does have an importance in the Bill. I hope that the Government are big enough to accept a well argued amendment that would improve the Bill. It is about fairness. The Bill already covers Wales in this way; surely it should do the same here. The amendment specifies that the ballot papers would be printed in the two languages only in Scotland. Surely the cost of printing the question in two languages would not be great. Administratively, it would not be difficult to organise; and, practically, such a change could be straightforward.
We have heard from a number of speakers how, in this age of devolution—
Lord Tyler
I know that the noble Lord wants to be brief, but I put a question to him to which I genuinely do not know the answer. Can the noble Lord remind the House whether his Administration included a Gaelic version of the question for the Scottish devolution referendum?
Lord Bach
My Lords, I cannot remind the House because I do not know the answer. However, I think that there is someone who does: the noble Lord who will speak after me. Even if we did not, we were not always right. It is a terrible admission to make, and not one that the present Government are prepared to make at this stage. Perhaps later on they will.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I think my noble friend will also remember that the question for the Welsh referendum was not put in Welsh.
Lord Bach
Again, I am afraid that I cannot remember, but no doubt the Leader of the House will be able to help us.
We have moved on since those times. Devolution is a much more significant factor now in British politics than it was. A number of noble Lords have made that clear. My noble friend Lord MacKenzie of Culkein, who comes from the relevant area of Scotland, expressed the view that the Gaelic language is more widely used and appreciated now than it was in times past. In October 2009, a new agreement was made that allows Scottish Gaelic to be used formally between Scottish Ministers and European Union officials. Of course, this does not give Scottish Gaelic official status in the European Union, but it does make it a means of formal communication with EU institutions, and politicians on different sides welcomed the step. This amendment does not ask for much. We ask the Government to be big and to accept it.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, this has been, not unsurprisingly, a most interesting and useful debate. The ideas that underlie the amendment are not without merit. What is more arguable is whether this is the right Bill and the right time to deal with the matter. I am nothing but impressed by those who master a second language. I am even more impressed by those who master Gaelic. It is interesting to note that next year's Scottish elections will not have Gaelic on the ballot paper or on any of the pages of information that will be provided by statute. Recently, the Scottish Parliament decided to disaggregate the Scottish elections from the local elections; and again, in those local elections, there is no requirement for Gaelic to appear on the ballot paper.
I will refer to my intervention in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, had no reason to protect him; he is perfectly capable of doing that himself. My interest was genuine; I felt the passion and interest of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, and thought perhaps that when he was Secretary of State for Scotland, there was a reason why he was unable to progress this. I am not sure that there was a reason. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, explained that although 13 years was a long time, the then Government did not find time to deal with this, or did not think that it was sufficiently important or necessary; I have no idea which was the case.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the Leader of the House, and do not rise to defend myself. I do not feel that my record in the Scottish Office requires defending. However, reflecting on the point that he made, I say that there was no obvious opportunity when I was Secretary of State, for a comparatively short time, to deal with the issue. I admit honestly that it did not occur to me until my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock brought it to my attention with the amendment. He has done the House a service.
The point that I will make to the noble Lord is that his party, our party and the Liberal Democrats in Scotland—indeed, all parties—publish their manifesto in Gaelic and distribute leaflets in Gaelic. Why do we conduct only part of the electoral process in Gaelic and not give the Gaelic speakers of Scotland the right to cast their vote against a question that is put in Gaelic?
Lord Strathclyde
I am not saying that the idea that underlies this amendment is without merit: simply that it is the wrong amendment to the wrong Bill at the wrong time. In the long term, after due investigation, there may be those who believe that there should be that change in Scotland at all levels of elections.
There is a clear difference between Wales and Scotland, as the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, pointed out. Under the Welsh Language Act 1993, it is common for Ministers to prescribe by order Welsh versions of statements that appear on ballot papers, in postal voting documents and so on. In Scotland, Gaelic versions of electoral material have not previously been included in legislation, on ballot papers or on other official materials for elections, even when the elections have related only to Scotland. Therein lies the next issue; I am not aware that this has caused any administrative problems on the ground. That should be a test for whether in this referendum we depart from the parliamentary elections approach.
I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was raising a general point that has received some support from around the House. However, my noble and learned friend, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, pointed out a serious flaw in the amendment that I hope the noble Lord will consider. I also hope that, if he wishes to continue his campaign, he will do so not just in this House but in the Scottish Parliament, of which I believe he is still a distinguished Member.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I am grateful to the Leader of the House, in particular for his closing remark. However, I intend to vacate my position in the Scottish Parliament in May next year to spend more time in this Chamber, because I find it so interesting. I have been grateful tonight for the overwhelming and powerful support for the amendment from my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton, who is a distinguished academic lawyer and a former member of the Cabinet, and for the Welsh support from the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Elystan-Morgan. When the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, referred to the Welsh precedent being powerful and pertinent, that was a strong argument as well as a wonderful alliteration.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, for his Jacobite version of the argument, which is all the more powerful for it, and to the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie, with his background in Gaeldom, for his powerful support. The support has been overwhelming. I have one or two points of criticism. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who referred to the Scottish referendum not having the question in Gaelic, that the major change since then is that the Scottish Parliament, with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and my noble and learned friend the former Lord Advocate as Members, passed the 2005 Act, which changed the whole position of Gaelic in Scotland. And I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, for whom I have great respect—he was a very distinguished Lord Chancellor and he and I have had lots of other dealings outside this Chamber—that I accept that it should say “Scottish Gaelic” and that the question should be specified. There could be an opportunity later to do that. If I could have written it myself in Gaelic, I would have done so, but this was the quickest way of expressing support for this and moving in this direction. With his help and with the help of Gaelic speakers, we can refine it so that we can get it right before this Bill finally goes through.
This is an issue of principle and I feel strongly about it. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, pointed out that the 2001 census showed that there are no monoglot speakers of either Welsh or Gaelic, so the position is exactly the same. I do not understand the Leader’s argument that this is the wrong Bill in which to have the amendment. This amendment relates precisely to this Bill because it deals with the referendum and because there is a Welsh version. I argue that there should also be a Gaelic version. I thank noble Members for their support. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, pointed out, this is Scottish Liberal Democrat policy. I look forward to seeing my noble friends—I can still call some of them that—in the Lobby with us tonight because I intend to test the will of this House by pressing this amendment to a vote.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, this clause, establishing the referendum, sets the question. This is probably my last intervention on this part of the Bill. Although I believe in electoral reform and the need for a referendum, I do not believe in this referendum because it sets the wrong question. The Bill seeks approval for a system that I believe is a nonsense.
Now, I almost want to act as a sweep and to place on record a summary of my objections to this referendum and the question being asked. I believe that the core of my objections will surface during the television campaign against the referendum question. I object on the basis that this may well be our last opportunity for a generation to put electoral reform on the agenda. If the public say no, it will be almost impossible to resurrect the electoral reform debate, so we have to get the system right.
The opponents of electoral reform will sell AV as the product of a panic-driven stitch-up between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in the coalition, the intention being to create a coalition. That will not fool the public. The Conservative acceptance of AV as part of the coalition deal will be seen as a cynical ploy when it comes out during the TV campaign that almost the entire Conservative Party, both inside and outside Parliament, is opposed to the AV system on offer and, to some extent, proportional representation altogether.
The coalition is taking the issue of electoral reform to the electorate at a time when there is great political and economic uncertainty. Divisions within the coalition, which will deepen, will inevitably lead to calls for strong governance. Curiously, I believe that coalitions, which I actually favour, are capable of strong government, but coalitions built on the shifting sands of economic uncertainty and the consequential public expenditure reductions are bound to lead to division and the public will inevitably identify division within the coalition with coalition Governments and, sadly, with electoral reform. This is the wrong time to be asking this question, particularly in a referendum that proposes such a controversial system.
The Liberal Democrats, in particular, will have major difficulties in the campaign in squaring their historic position. How do they answer the question: “Do you really believe in the system on offer?”. The answer has to be no. If they answer that this is the best on offer, the public will simply turn away. The truth is that the only people who have advocated this system are members of the Labour Party and, even in the Labour Party, they are a minority. Furthermore, we are opposed to this Bill because of the stitch-up on seats, which many Members find objectionable.
Then we have the false prospectus. Many people believe that they are being offered the full Australian classic AV system, but that is not so. They are getting what is being called “a miserable little compromise”. We then have those who, either through ignorance or recognition of the inherent weaknesses in multioptional, preferential AV, use arguments to support AV and to justify the system such as, “It works like the London mayoral voting system”. That is just a dishonest argument, but we shall hear it in the campaign. It will be fed on the doorstep by proponents of this AV system. They will say that it is like the system used in the London mayoral election. I regard that as fundamentally dishonest.
I also have a fundamental objection to a system that gives equal weight to voters’ least favoured preferences and the first preference votes of other voters. How can the seventh preference of a voter in a seven-candidate election be as valid as the first preference of another voter? It is a nonsense.
Equally, I deplore the myth being peddled that AV avoids tactical voting. That is simply untrue. Under the heading, “Factors determining the results in an AV election”, the Constitution Society stated in its brief on AV:
“In order to maximise the chances of a preferred candidate, a voter must rank the other candidates in an optimum order, taking account of past results and polling information. (This is a potentially complex exercise which most voters will not attempt themselves: in Australia, the Party organisations publish lists instructing their supporters how to rank the candidates for maximum advantage.)”.
In other words, AV provides for tactical voting. I have had some interesting conversations over this past weekend with people in Scotland. I can tell the Committee that the Labour Party, my own party, used tactical voting techniques—and we say it openly in Scotland—during the local authority elections in Scotland. It accepts it as part of the new arrangements that exist while that system is in operation.
Then we have leapfrogging. Under the AV system proposed, third-placed and fourth-placed candidates on the first count can break through and win seats on subsequent counts. This is particularly likely to happen in places such as Scotland, where you have a number of parties seriously contesting what could turn out to be tightly fought marginal parliamentary constituencies. I object most strongly to a system where the sequence in which candidates are eliminated can disproportionately influence who wins an election. Let us take the example of a seat where the top candidate on the first count wins 45 per cent or 46 per cent of the vote. If the bottom candidate, the BNP, wins, say, 8 per cent or 10 per cent of the vote on the first count and 50 per cent of the BNP second preferences transfer to the top candidate, the top candidate wins. The BNP will have determined the result because, following elimination of the bottom candidate and the transfer of eliminated candidates’ second preferences, the top candidate has more than 50 per cent and wins. What is most significant about that kind of result, in that count, is that all other additional preferences for all other candidates are ignored, which is the point that I was making earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.
Lord Greaves
Does the noble Lord not agree that all single-member constituency contests are majoritarian contests because the final result is a contest between the person who wins and either one other candidate or a number of other candidates? Therefore, in a majoritarian contest in a single-member seat, at the final count there are always people who have voted for the successful candidate and people who have voted for an unsuccessful candidate or candidates. That is inherent in a single-member majoritarian system. The important thing is that those votes remain in the system at the end, unlike in the supplementary vote system, which the noble Lord espouses, where votes are simply cast aside and not even included in the final count.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The noble Lord is asking me to reopen the debate that we had on the Floor in a series of interventions, when I answered that point specifically. Before Report, we might be able to do more work on this; we might be able to show that there is a greater loss under the AV system. Perhaps he could ask his researcher to have a look at some of the results in Scotland that I am going to refer to.
Lord Greaves
Does the noble Lord accept that I do all my own research, as I am a poor, pauper Peer?
Lord Campbell-Savours
Forgive me.
We then have this major problem of the electorate’s understanding of the proposed system. The Constitution Society in its briefing for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Constitution drew attention to a series of YouGov polls on the issues set out in the Bill. The poll commissioned at the end of August this year interviewed 2,548 respondents. One-third claimed that they knew how AV worked, one-third claimed that they had heard of it but did not know how it worked and one-third claimed that they had never heard of it. The response of supporters of the proposed AV system is that a public information campaign should help public understanding of the system. That is the view, I understand, of the Electoral Commission. However, noble Lords then have to consider the impact of such information campaigns. My noble friend Lord Rooker drew attention to this issue the other day to some extent, but perhaps I can add a little more information. Under the YouGov poll question,
“How would you vote in a referendum on AV? (Before and after being given information)”,
this is the response under paragraph 2.5.3 of the report:
“Before being exposed to information, responses were evenly balanced between ‘Yes’ (32 per cent) and ‘no’ (33 per cent). After receiving factual information, the ‘no’ vote increased to 38 per cent suggesting that exposure to information about AV tends to convince undecided voters against it”.
That is a precarious basis on which to hold a public information campaign or, indeed, to hold a referendum.
I now turn to other extremely important issues. The first is the 50 per cent myth, which I hope we may have destroyed during our earlier debate today. Let us note how the Constitution Society sees it. In its alternative voting briefing paper, it said:
“Nor, in the ‘optional preference’ proposed for the UK, does the winning candidate necessarily have an outright majority of the total vote (ie of the total number of people who voted). In Australia, where the AV system is used for House of Representatives elections, voting is compulsory and voters are thus required to allocate a preference to every candidate on the ballot. As a consequence, the winning candidate does always achieve an outright majority of the total”.
Then we have Rallings and Thrasher, professors at the University of Plymouth, who say:
“Proponents of AV often claim that the need for successful candidates to be able to show local majority support is one of the system’s main attractions. Yet our Table above”—
that is a part of a wider briefing from Rallings and Thrasher—
“would also mean, given the limited vote transfers between parties, that more than 4 out of every 10 MPs would still be elected with the endorsement of less than 50 per cent of the voters in their constituency. The claim that AV will guarantee local majority support can only be validated if every voter is compelled or chooses to cast a full range of preferences. There seems little prospect of that happening in a general election conducted under AV in the UK”.
Professor Patrick Dunleavy, whose work on electoral systems is internationally acclaimed, treats as risible the suggestion that you need 50 per cent to win. He is not a great supporter of AV; he sees it as a compromise system that to some extent has to be supported. But he, like me, is a supporter of electoral reform, in that both of us support AMS-based systems.
However, the real evidence on this came to me by a curious route, following the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and I will quote him because I want to take on this question of Scotland. He said:
“In particular, Scotland operates STV when all its council elections are due but the alternative vote when it has a council by-election”.—[Official Report, 30/11/10; col. 1402.]
Here we have STV operating in Scotland, apart from in by-elections, when the system automatically switches to AV, because we are talking about single-member wards. The noble Lord goes on to suggest that we pray in aid the information gleaned from the Scottish experience. I have done precisely that. With the help of Mr Paul White, a researcher whose expertise on these matters—in particular his statistical analysis—has been of great benefit to me, I tracked down all 32 AV by-elections in Scotland since the system’s introduction. I want to place the 32 by-elections on the record, because this is relevant to the campaign that is to take place. Eight of them were won with less than 50 per cent of the vote. In Aberdeen City, Midstocket/Rosemount, it was 43 per cent; in Elgin City ward in Moray, it was 42 per cent; in Lerwick South, Shetland, it was 44 per cent; in Abbey ward, Dumfries and Galloway, it was 48 per cent; in Aboyne, Upper Deeside and Donside, Aberdeenshire, it was 43 per cent; in Bannockburn, Stirling, it was 45 per cent; in Coatbridge North and Glenboig, North Lanarkshire, it was 42 per cent; and in Forres, in Moray, it was 44 per cent. There is the evidence of an AV system in operation where members are elected with less than 50 per cent of the poll.
Lord Rennard
Can the noble Lord calculate from those figures how many of those by-elections would have been won by a candidate with less than 50 per cent of the vote in the event of the first-past-the-post system being used? He has clearly demonstrated that, in three-quarters of those cases or thereabouts, the candidate elected had to have 50 per cent of the vote. How many cases would have been won by someone with less than 50 per cent had first past the post been retained?
Lord Campbell-Savours
That is not the question. We are dealing here with those who argue that a candidate should need 50 per cent of the poll to win, so do not switch the question to another area. I am only addressing what happens. There are problems with first past the post, which is why I am in favour of electoral reform. I am trying to place on record material to show that those who argue that we need a majority of the electorate to win are simply wrong.
The second important issue is the incidence of the use of additional preferences, which is the principal argument used to justify AV. Last week, I referred to the work of Rallings and Thrasher on results in Queensland, Australia. Colleagues may recall that in the 2009 state elections, 63 per cent of all those who voted “plumped”, or voted for, only one candidate. In some areas, as many as three-quarters of all those voting voted for only one candidate. The question is: what would happen in the United Kingdom?
Again following the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I enlisted the help of Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde. Let me make it clear that I am not reflecting his views—I do not know what he believes in—as I simply asked him for statistical information to be provided. Professor Curtice has given me factual data. I tracked down the six by-election results in Scotland that provide data that indicate the usage of additional preferences under AV. Such data can be secured only where votes are counted electronically, which is why I asked the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, whether the counts would be based on an electronic or a manual basis. Remember that we are dealing here with AV. However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is shaking his head. Perhaps I have misunderstood something.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
I am not entirely sure why the count had to be electronic to get the information on where the transfers went.
Lord Campbell-Savours
To be frank, I do not understand that either. However, I asked that question and I understand that it is because of the way that votes are counted manually. One returning officer in a seat in Scotland told us that he had different buckets into which he placed different votes and, as the tellers went from count to count, they moved the votes from one bucket to another. Perhaps that has something to do with how they count the additional preferences. As I said, I have not been able to trace that information up to now.
As I said, remember that we are dealing with what are normally STV local authority arrangements where there are by-elections in individual seats. Let me take six seats that were up for single-member election. In Glasgow Ballieston, of those who voted: 100 per cent —obviously—used their first preference vote; 51 per cent did not use their second preference vote; 68 per cent did not use their third preference vote; 84 per cent did not use their fourth preference vote; 91 per cent did not use their fifth preference vote; 92 per cent did not use their sixth preference; and 93 per cent did not use their seventh preference. At another Glasgow Ballieston by-election, of those who voted: 47 per cent did not use their second preference vote; 74 per cent did not use their third preference vote; 83 per cent did not use their fourth preference vote; 92 per cent did not use their fifth preference vote; 93 per cent did not use their sixth preference vote; 94 per cent did not use their seventh preference vote; 94 per cent did not use their eighth preference vote; and 95 per cent did not use their ninth preference. What a system. People are not using their additional preferences.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am slightly perplexed by that argument, which seems to point in the direction of second and further preferences being purposive. One of the noble Lord’s earlier arguments was that they were inconsequential.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
The argument that the noble Lord is advancing suggests that the use of second and further preferences is purposive—that is, the voters are exercising a real choice. If voters are indifferent to some candidates, they may not use their other preferences at all. That is surely right and good, but it works against his earlier argument.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The noble Lord is correct and has hit the point right on the head. Voters often use their second preferences. That is why we go back to the supplementary vote. Under the supplementary vote system, all the second preferences for all the other candidates are transferred to the top two, whereas under the AV system, that is not the case.
Lord Greaves
The noble Lord is now going back to the supplementary vote. The whole purport of what I said earlier about the supplementary vote is that not all the second preferences of those who voted for other candidates are transferred to the top two candidates. I provided a number of statistics showing that usually a clear majority—sometimes an overwhelming majority—of such votes are not transferred to the top two. That is what is wrong with the supplementary vote. If, in exercising their preferences under the alternative vote, people choose at any stage not to choose between remaining candidates, that is entirely their right. However, if people exercise their right to record a second preference, all such votes should remain in the count to the very end.
Lord Campbell-Savours
However, we are measuring the efficacy of the system. We want the system to work. We want it to make a difference in results. If we are to change to a system in which people simply do not use their additional preferences, why change the system? The advantage of the supplementary vote is that people would use their second preferences. That is what has happened in the mayoral elections, as the noble Lord will know from having seen the data.
In the by-election for the Doon Valley ward of East Ayrshire Council, 52 per cent did not use their second preference vote, 68 per cent did not use their third preference vote, 77 per cent did not use their fourth preference vote and 81 per cent did not use their fifth.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I hope that my noble friend is not casting any aspersions on the good people of Doon Valley, whom I represented for 26 years in the other place. They are the salt of the earth—good mining stock—and people whom he would be proud to know as friends. Indeed, many of them I know as friends. I am sure that he does not mean in any way to disparage them.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sure that they are the crème de la crème and the very best, but I am just trying to help them. I want to see a system in operation that works and that does not result in people wasting their votes.
The interesting thing about all these results is shown in my final example. In the by-election for the ward of Drumchapel/Anniesland, 38 per cent did not use their second preferences, 51 per cent did not use their third preferences, 62 per cent did not use their fourth preferences and 68 per cent did not use their fifth preferences. All of that comes from the beginning of the use of AV in the United Kingdom, in Scotland.
On top of that, as we find in Australia, once the parties begin to devise strategies for “plumping”, people stop using their preferences altogether and treat the election as a first-past-the-post election. In effect, that means that there is no major change to the system, apart from when people deliberately set out to remove particular Members of Parliament. Those are the circumstances in which there may well be freak results.
Lord McFall of Alcluith
We who have campaigned in such elections, including in another one in East Ayrshire in my former constituency that produced similar statistics, along with all the parties who are represented in this House—and some that are not—know that that is exactly what happens. Before we impose this system more extensively and more widely as the only choice in the referendum paper, we should think carefully about the electorate’s experience of the system. I have to say to my noble friend that there is no party represented in this House that does not do exactly what he has identified—I include in that those who are the most active proponents of some form of proportionality.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My noble friend referred to an election in his former constituency, for which I have the results here. Was that the election in Ballochmyle in East Ayrshire?
Lord Campbell-Savours
Being a Welshman, I do not know how to pronounce these names. However, 43 per cent of second preferences, 63 per cent of third preferences, 74 per cent of fourth preferences and 77 per cent of fifth preferences were not used. That is before we get into the big “plumping” campaigns that will be imported from Australia. The results indicate massive abstentions on additional preferences. What are the implications of AV for general elections?
Lord Greaves
Will the noble Lord tell us to what extent he is cherry-picking the results? Would the same sort of figures be produced if he took all 35 council by-elections in Scotland into account?
Lord Campbell-Savours
When I asked Professor Curtice for all the results that could be identified, he said that, because of the distinction between manual and electronic counting, we can identify only six results that provide us with the data. If I can secure any more, I will make sure that I make them available to the noble Lord.
The candidates who will be most under threat at the next election under AV will be the Conservatives. Let there be no doubt at all about that. The Conservatives will probably run a fairly straight-forward campaign as they normally do, but the Liberal Democrats will not. In council leaflets being put out by focus groups in parts of the United Kingdom, we are already seeing derogatory references to people in the coalition and to its policies. That is only the start. By the time that we get to the elections next year, we will see some pretty scurrilous literature coming out of the Liberal Democrats about what is going on nationally within the coalition. The Liberal Democrats will put out leaflets claiming credit for the more progressive coalition policies and advising electors to vote tactically, which they will.
The Liberal Democrats election guru—I see the noble Lord, Lord Rennard in his place—cannot stand up now and deny that they will use the AV system tactically in the way that I am suggesting, despite the fact that advocates of the AV component in the Bill say that people will not vote tactically when it is clear that they will be advised to do so. The Liberal Democrats objective will be to unseat Conservatives wherever possible by advising the electorate to use their additional preferences on outsider no-hope candidates. In seats where Labour has been marginalised, they will desperately set out to woo Labour additional preferences by disassociating themselves from their coalition partners. All I can do is warn the Conservatives in advance to watch their backs. I cannot understand why Conservative Peers are tolerating this nonsense. Liberal Democrat campaigns are unlikely to work—
Lord Greaves
I promise that this is the last time that I will intervene—I am just getting the noble Lord back for his previous interventions on me—but I am not at all sure what right and wrongs of a particular electoral system have to do with all this tittle-tattle about political campaigning at local level.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I think that there is a direct connection because the coalition is comprised of two elements, one of which—the Conservative element—is almost completely hostile to the AV system. All that I am pointing out in advance is the danger of allowing this system to slip through on the back of a referendum. I do not think that the referendum will be won, but it may be won and the Conservatives will have it historically around their necks.
I remind the House and colleagues that the three dirtiest campaigns that I have witnessed in my political life were in the Chester-le-Street by-election, the Manchester Exchange by-election and the Bermondsey by-election. It may well be that many Members here today worked in those campaigns. Those three by-elections had one thing in common: the Liberals were in contention, believed that they could win and were absolutely determined to do so. The Lib Dems believe that they can break through on the back of—
Lord Rennard
We seem to be drifting from the referendum. Has the noble Lord forgotten the recent example in Oldham East and Saddleworth in the general election?
Lord Campbell-Savours
That is not something that I condone, but it is insignificant compared to what happened and to what we picked up on the doorstep during the course of the three campaigns to which I referred. I remember the Bermondsey campaign, which was utterly appalling. The Liberal Democrats believe that they can break through on the back of AV, and they will ruthlessly use this system. I warn the Conservative element in this coalition that this will backfire.
Lord Lipsey
It is very tempting for me to think that, having heard the formidable argument put forward by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, it is necessary to reply to each of the points he made because as a supporter of AV, I could, and would, readily do so. I think I have some sense that the House would prefer to proceed a little more rapidly than that would imply, and therefore I will resist that temptation and keep my remarks as brief as they can be in view of the substance that I need to impart.
I noticed that during my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours’s speech, the Lord Speaker deserted our proceedings. I can only think that she was so convinced by my noble friend’s arguments that she realised that she was not a legitimate Speaker of this House. She was elected by AV, a system which my noble friend was destroying, and perhaps because she had not heard me put the counter-case, she felt it necessary to desert her seat. However, I can assure her that she was legitimately chosen by a proper AV system, as are the leaders of the political party of which I am a member, and it is a very good system too.
When debating between SV and AV, as opposed to between first past the post and AV, I sometimes feel that I am back watching television some years ago and watching the Tooting Popular Liberation Front fighting it out with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tooting. As I am Lord Lipsey of Tooting Bec, I particularly enjoy that contest. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours and I agree on one thing. It is more important than the things on which we disagree—SV against AV. We are both electoral reformers and therefore hope to see electoral reform emerge eventually from this Bill.
There is at least as formidable a case to be made against SV as my noble friend made against AV. Let us take a point on which the House has spent much too long this afternoon; that is, whether AV requires someone to get 50 per cent or more of the vote. Without going into detail, quite apparently, SV leads to people being elected with a much lower share of the eventual vote than does AV. This can be very serious in four-party marginals, particularly in Scotland. SV simply does not allow the same breadth of choice and the same degree of voter choice as AV. That is just one example of the many points that could be levied against SV.
I shall go through some of the arguments put by my noble friend. He said that this was a panic creation by the coalition. Clearly, it was stitched together in order to create the coalition, but there is nothing panicky about AV. My party has stood for it for quite a while. The Leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, favours it. If noble Lords care to look, there is a long list of signatures of very distinguished members of my party who favour AV. Whatever the circumstances that have brought it on to the stage now—I would much rather that it had come on to the stage as the result of a Labour victory in the general election and a Bill containing this clause was being put forward by a Labour Government—I do not think that they are sufficient reason to be against it today. It is not a newly forged system, as noble Lords opposite have pointed out. It has been about for about 100 years and quite often nearly came about.
Moreover, it has been closely examined in recent times by the Jenkins commission, of which I was a member. AV formed part of what was recommended by Jenkins. SV did not. AV maximises voter choice whereas SV gives a relatively limited voter choice. I regard the issue of lower preferences being of lesser importance as being completely without foundation. I would greatly prefer, for example, a Green candidate to a candidate from the British National Party. That is quite low on my list of preferences. If I am wholly honest, once upon a time I did not terribly care whether I voted Lib Dem or Labour, but I always voted Labour, of course. That seemed to me to be a much less important choice. However, at the next general election, as a result of this coalition, I daresay I will approach that question in a different frame of mind.
I would not claim that AV eliminates tactical voting altogether. Of course, it does not. But it eliminates the most difficult choice for a voter; namely, what will a person do with his single vote if it is a first-past-the- post-system? Will he put first the party that he really prefers or will he put first the party that he would prefer to the third party for which he might vote? That becomes vastly more important between SV and AV in four-member seats.
We will have a long referendum campaign. Whatever system comes out of this Bill and is the system debated in the referendum, I very much hope that all electoral reformers will choose eventually to rally behind it, although having heard my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, it may be that that is an overoptimistic prediction. It is certainly true that the great majority of electoral reformers, including the electoral reformers in the Electoral Reform Society, which historically is almost keener on STV than the Liberal Democrats, have chosen to back this system.
Let us have the debate. This clause will enable it to be put before the people in the referendum, particularly if, in the course of further amendment of the Bill, we make sure that that referendum does not take place, as the coalition proposes, on 5 May 2011.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I failed to contribute to the Second Reading debate on this Bill and have not had the opportunity to spell out the reasons why I am so deeply unhappy about Part 1. Unlike the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Lipsey, I do not believe in any form of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system has served us extremely well. I do not think that we should move away from it. The problem is that if you believe in any form of proportional representation, you have to believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in coalition government. I know that we have such a Government, but I do not think that that is an overwhelming reason to change the electoral system, which would make it more likely that we would have coalition government in perpetuity.
Surely, the problems of coalition government are being pointed out very well. For example, one could think of the problems that the Liberal Democrats have on the whole question of student fees. The press say to the Liberal Democrats, “Ah, it was a commitment in your manifesto that you would stop student fees rising. Why aren’t you voting against the rises in student fees?”. But the whole point of coalition government is that the coalition partners bin all their manifesto commitments. That is what comes from coalition government. You end up not with any precise party that you voted for with its commitments in its manifesto; you end up with a mish-mash and certain commitments are dropped. I as a Conservative am rather unhappy that the coalition Government seem to have dropped all the commitments that we had in opposition. I think I remember the Prime Minister saying when he was in opposition that he regarded reform of your Lordships’ House as a third-Parliament issue. Now we have reform of the House of Lords trundling down the road as fast as it can be organised.
Lord Garel-Jones
Would my noble friend be prepared to go a little further and say that one of the inevitable consequences of a fully proportional system is that the Government and the programme that emerges thereafter is, by definition, a programme that no one has voted for?
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
I totally agree with my noble friend. Indeed, you could argue that the coalition agreement drawn up immediately after the election was something that no one voted for. I thought that the Conservative commitment was to repatriating powers from Europe, but nothing much seems to have happened on that front, and I thought that we were going to repeal human rights legislation. A number of things have gone from the Conservative manifesto. I am rather surprised that the Liberal Democrats have been attacked in the way that they have been for binning commitments in their manifesto. That comes with coalition. If the country votes for coalition, which basically is what it has done, it must expect to end up with a Government who produce a number of policies for which no one has voted. That is why I am extremely unhappy about changing our electoral system to make coalition government more likely.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
I agree absolutely with the noble Lord that coalitions are likely to arise almost inevitably from a proportional system. But I was interested to hear what he said about the coalition. In the light of his remarks, does he agree that what is happening is that the tail is wagging the dog?
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Indeed, that is another argument. I have been agreeably surprised by the achievements of this coalition Government in terms of the fact that they seem to have grasped many issues, such as welfare reform and reforms in education which former Prime Minister Tony Blair used to dream about and which have been long overdue. I am a great supporter of much of what the coalition is doing, but that does not mean that I want to see coalition governments in perpetuity from hereon.
I was very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about the YouGov poll on the alternative vote. In fact, there was a bare majority from a completely ill informed electorate—in fact, there was a no vote by 1 per cent. But when the implications of the alternative vote were spelt out a 33 per cent no vote went up to 38 per cent. I would say to any Conservative that that is very significant indeed. If you have time to explain to people how perfectly ghastly the alternative vote is, the chances of defeating it are greater. Under this Bill, however, we are insisting on cramming the referendum together with the local elections, a point we debated earlier on in this clause.
It worries me tremendously that, if we are not careful, this thing will get muddled through with the local elections. The issues will not be debated properly in the country because people will be much more concerned about whether they are winning or losing in the local elections, and they are not going to come to understand the appalling difficulties that the whole business of an alternative vote brings into the argument. I am deeply apprehensive about it. I keep hearing from people on my side of the House that they support the Bill and think it is a frightfully good idea. They all say, “Don’t worry. We are going to defeat it in the referendum”. But I notice that a lot of them are the same people who told me that we would get a commanding and overall majority at the general election.
None of us knows what the outcome of any referendum will be. It cannot be forecast with any accuracy because many other factors come into play. I do not have that deep feeling of assurance that we are going to defeat the idea of an alternative vote without any difficulty. Things could very easily go wrong, and if they do, I believe that it will put the Conservative Party at a permanent disadvantage.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, the arguments about AV, SV and STV are fascinating arguments that embrace ethics, philosophy and, one might almost say, theology. But the House will be relieved to hear that what I want to raise is a very limited point which I need only mention in limine, as it were. It relates to the Welsh translation of the question that will be put on the AV ballot paper. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and I have already raised this matter with the department, but it seems that it may be too late for anything to be done about it. The reason, as I understand it, is that time is of the essence and that it would involve a long exercise in ping-pong between the Electoral Commission, the Welsh Language Board and possibly other bodies which might take many months. Possibly that is the reason why the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, did not go any further than it did.
Be that as it may, perhaps I may point out that the translation that appears in the Bill is one that it would be wholly impossible for the ordinary, intelligent Welsh speaker to understand. I do not doubt that a panel of distinguished academics could justify many parts of it, but in total it is as obscure as ancient Sanskrit to anyone who speaks Welsh from day to day. I speak as one of the half a dozen Members of this House for whom Welsh is their first language, and I must say that it beats me that anyone could have arrived at such an agglomeration of so many different facets.
First, the term, “the UK” is perfectly understandable to anyone living in the United Kingdom, the full term in Welsh, “Deyrnas Unedig”, is also well understood, but the initials “DU” have no meaning whatever. “Duw” means “almighty God” in Welsh. I am sure that many people will wonder why there is a reference to the Almighty in this translation. The next matter is the first past the post system, which is referred to in the English version. Whether there is an aversion to taking a reference from the field of horse racing, I know not. It may be something that Non-Conformists would reject totally as a matter of instinct. But in Welsh it reads as, “y cyntaf i’r felin”. There is a saying in Welsh,
“Y cyntaf i’r felin gaeth falu”.
My noble friend opposite is nodding his head. It means, “The first to the mill shall grind”. If one wanted to translate that back into English, one might say something like, “The early bird catches the worm”, which would be more understandable. But it has nothing at all to do with first past the post. Someone looking at the English version might ask, “What has this to do with mills and grinding?”.
Then we have, “pleidlais amgen”, which translates to “the alternative vote”. I am no grammarian, but I think I am right in saying that the word “amgen” came into the Welsh language 20 or 30 years ago. Strictly it means “an alternative”, but it came into the language in the context of alternative energy, “ynni amgen”. Again, people will ask, “What has this to do with energy?”.
The totality of this is utterly grotesque and impossible. It may be that nothing can be done about it, but it does no great service to the Welsh language, it does no great service to those whose first language is Welsh, and indeed it is less than worthy of whoever was responsible for the drafting of this part of the Bill.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I am sorry to forestall the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. We have an unusual situation here in that the debate on whether this clause should stand part has excited so much interest and depth of discussion. However, it might be for the convenience of the whole House, particularly of the speakers who are expecting to take part in the Question for Short Debate, which would normally commence at about this time, if noble Lords would agree to a proposal by the usual channels that the Committee might adjourn in the middle of this debate and reconvene after the Question for Short Debate. I note that my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath, who is to lead the debate, is in his place, and I believe that most of the other Members who are due to take part are here. I think I can see agreement around the House to this proposal, so it would be appropriate for me to move that the House should now resume. I also suggest that the Committee should not resolve itself into a Committee again until 8.27 pm.
Tote
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord James of Blackheath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how their plans for disposing of the Tote take account of the interests of horse and dog racing.
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, I am somewhat embarrassed to have to start this debate of my choice by apologising for the fact that it was wrongly entitled to include a reference to dog racing on the Tote, which is not an issue because dog racing has already been ceded to the ownership of the various dog stadia. Perhaps there is a lesson in that for us all, as we shall see. This is such a big subject that I am going to trim my words down to the bare essentials of the issue that immediately concern us, given the imminence of what may be an extremely critical and very retrograde decision by the Government following the completion of their invitation to indicative offers for the purchase of the Tote which are due to be completed by Friday evening. We have less than 48 hours to go.
Both this Government and the last Government announced separately their intention to dispose of the Tote. The last Government also said that they would offer to racing half of the realisation value of that disposal. The present Government have set out on a path to explore the potential for the disposal of the Tote, but have made no offer of proceeds going to the benefit of racing. That is not necessarily to say that they are being mean-minded because they may have realised more clearly than the previous Government the problems associated with this disposal. The first question that arises is who owns the Tote. Many people may own the Tote, but the one certainty we have is that the Government do not. So we have the odd situation where both this Government and the last Government are setting out to sell something which they do not have.
I recall a case recently of a bricklayer who tried to sell the Savoy Hotel for a couple of million pounds. He went to prison for theft or fraud. It sounds to me as though the Government, in offering to sell something they do not own, are doing no more than the bricklayer did with the Savoy Hotel. Let us consider the consequences of this. The previous Government, perhaps perceiving this problem, decided that they would put the ownership of the Tote beyond all possible doubt by passing the 2004 Act for horserace betting and the Olympic lottery. That Act remains in place today but has not been fully implemented—certainly not as far as the Tote is concerned—and we now have a situation where, if it was implemented, undoubtedly the Government would be entitled to sell the Tote; but, equally, they would then fall foul of the Brussels controls on state support and would not be allowed to pass any of the proceeds down to the benefit of racing—so racing would be a very big loser.
Let us consider how far the racing industry would be a loser. First, whoever bought the Tote—presumably a bookmaker—would immediately look at the huge burden involved in running Tote operations on the 60 racecourses in the United Kingdom every day of the year, with the need to recruit local staff wherever they were and administer a complex business. It would be only a matter of time before the bookmaker decided that he would be very happy to keep the 550 betting shops and put the potential pool betting benefits into his pocket and to close down, or to so impose charges on the racecourses for running the Tote that the whole of the British racecourse structure would become immediately non-viable and be either forced to close down or to so curtail its activities that the finances of racing would be destroyed.
If that happened, the 2 million or so people who go racing nowadays, and who are attracted to do so by the benefit of being able to bet small stakes of £1 or so at a time instead of the bookmakers’ minimum stake of £5 or £10 for a bet, would be put into a position where they would not wish to go any further and racing would be destroyed at the social level as a reasonable sporting activity for the multitude.
The bookmakers would take their 550 betting shops and consider them as a worthwhile dividend to put in their pockets, and would almost certainly aggregate them within the totality of their existing betting operations and transfer them to either Gibraltar or Spain and outside the fiscal reach of the United Kingdom. This would have grave consequences for revenue generation in the UK economy. That would be an absolute certainty. Furthermore, racing would cease to derive its contribution from the levy of about £10 million a year. In fact the Tote has generated £84 million of direct benefit in sponsorship and levy for the continuation of the racing structure of the UK in the past four years alone; it is a continuing and vital income stream.
If those things were to happen and there were no racecourse meetings because no one was turning up for them, there would be an immediate curtailment of the United Kingdom thoroughbred breeding industry and its big export potential and huge dollar earnings would be squeezed out of existence. No one will breed horses or buy them when there are no racecourses or attractive meetings at which they can run them. So that would go. One hundred and twenty thousand jobs in Britain—comprising 20,000 full-time employees and 100,000 important temporary and part-time workers—would be destroyed. For these people racing is an extremely important part of the rural economy, without which they would otherwise live in straitened circumstances. Everyone connected with racing would lose if one of the bookmakers came in with an attractive bid and the Government decided to take it.
If that is the predicament and the consequence that racing is facing, what are the alternatives? There are three. I have just described the first one—which is ruinous to racing—where the Tote is sold to the highest bid from whichever bookmaker has the deepest pockets; and then, because of Brussels’ strictures, the Government would not be able to pay any proceeds into racing and would destroy racing’s livelihood by removing the on-course facilities beyond recovery.
The second alternative is a partial disposal of the tote in stages, whereby they offer the on-course Tote facility to the racing industry—either the British Horseracing Authority or the Jockey Club—and leave in the hands of the Jockey Club enough facilities to continue to run each day. Immediately, I suspect, it would be much worse off because there would be considerable extra costs in doing it on its own because the betting shops chain makes a significant contribution to the overheads required to run the Tote on-course. So that would be a loser straightaway. The pool betting operation, which is renewed once every seven years by government licence, would have to go to the racecourses and they would have to establish a system for licensing it for use by other people. That might help a partial recovery but it would be unsatisfactory. Ultimately, a partial disposal would probably be the start of a process that would end up being very similar to the first steps of a total disposal.
The third alternative is that if the Government decided not to fully implement the 2004 Act, they would be free to do what they want with the Tote without interference from Brussels. So give the whole Tote to racing, lock, stock and barrel, and charge nothing for doing so. The Government would then be a bigger financial winner than they would be by selling the Tote. For example, first, the British Tote turnover would not be aggregated with those of companies that have already decamped to Spain and Gibraltar and the Government would continue to receive the fiscal income deriving from the operation of the Tote in the UK; secondly, they would have all the advantages of the corporation tax arising on the various breeding concerns and the profits that they make on thoroughbred breeding activities—they would be on a winner there; and, thirdly, the Tote, which generates £10 million a year for the continued health and vitality of racing through its contribution to the levy, would continue to operate in such a way as would help sustain 120,000 much needed jobs in rural locations. It sounds like a win-win situation to me.
In those circumstances, I hope the Government will now look very closely at the indicative offers they will receive by Friday evening—which will come from bookmakers who are, with two exceptions, already based in Gibraltar and Spain—and decide that the better option is to go along the path of allowing racing to retain its integrity as an entity, with the ownership of the Tote within it. Racing will then, at long last, come out of the dark night of the soul through which it has been going, where it does not know what it is or what its future is to be, and get on with the job of running itself in good order.
The origins of the racing industry go back 350 years. When Nell Gwynn and her lady friends at Newmarket decided they needed a rest from the King and his courtiers in the afternoon, they told them all to go out and ride races. That led to the creation of the Jockey Club and, in turn, the Jockey Club created one of the great glories of British sporting life—the racing industry as it is today. Do not let the Government throw it away. They can keep it and allow it to foster new wealth and achievement and to maintain its place as a leading glory of British sporting life on the world stage. In the words of the Nike ad—“Just do it, Government, please”.
Lord Lipsey
My Lords, I declare a remote interest as a member of the Starting Price Regulatory Commission; in a broader sense as a former director of the Tote; as chairman of the Shadow Racing Trust, which was set up to buy the Tote for racing; and as a former chair of the British Greyhound Racing Board.
I shall start with greyhound racing, to which the noble Lord referred only briefly. I hate to rebuke the noble Lord, because we are grateful to him for raising this subject and bringing his knowledge to the House today, but the Motion refers to “dog racing”. Dog racing is a sport where assorted mutts chase a mechanical lure at a local show. The sport with which I am proud to have been associated is greyhound racing. It is Britain’s fourth largest spectator sport, after football, rugby union and horseracing but ahead of cricket. Some 2.2 million spectators go to watch it each year; there are 5,150 meetings and 64,440 races are run. The noble Lord has probably owned the winners of some of them, although I have not had a good winner since my Tooting Becky last ran some years ago. But greyhound racing it is and some of us adore it.
The second thing that I want to clarify—I am sure that I do not need to clarify it for the noble Lord—is the relationship between the Tote and greyhound racing. The Tote, like most other bookmakers, pays a voluntary contribution towards the sustenance of greyhound racing—0.6 per cent of its greyhound racing turnover—and does a small amount of sponsorship. This is not totally insignificant; it is a voluntary levy that goes to greyhound racing and not all bookmakers pay it in full. If the Government proceed to a sale—we will come back to that in a moment—and the Tote is sold to one of those bookmakers that fail to meet their obligations and do not pay the full levy, that would be a tremendous blow for greyhound racing. Those kinds of bookmaker do not deserve to own the Tote, because they do not contribute money that goes mostly to the welfare of retired greyhounds. I am very tempted this evening to name those that do not pay. They have been warned and I am sure that the Government know who they are.
That is what greyhound racing gets out of the Tote. I should say, for the sake of clarity, that the Tote—the outfit in Wigan that we are debating tonight—does not run Tote pools, the pool betting at greyhound tracks. Those are run by individual tracks. A scheme is forthcoming under which tracks will be able to link their totes in order to offer daily placepot and jackpot bets, which I am sure will yield huge returns for greyhound racing. Unfortunately, the last Government decided to legislate so that tracks would not have a monopoly on providing pool betting after 2012. They did not know, when they chose 2012, that we would still be fiddling around with the Tote so many years later.
That brings me to the core of my remarks on the Motion, which concern the Tote and horseracing. There is a very long history to this. One Prime Minister talked about bearing the scars on his back. The noble Baroness, Lady Golding, can probably see the scars on my back, through my suit, of the Government’s attempt to rid the public sector of the Tote. The last Conservative Government tried to do it, but could not manage it. Gordon Brown, who did not like to be out-privatised by anyone, immediately tried to do it, but he did not succeed. The Shadow Racing Trust, which I chaired, was set up to buy it for racing, but it ran into the roadblock of the European Union, which decided that, if we were to buy it for anything under the market price, that would be a form of artificial state aid. I am afraid that the then Government, like, I suspect, most British Governments, did not have the guts and courage that the noble Lord, Lord James, suggests to the House should be adopted to totally ignore the European Union, the rule of law and all the other things that go with it. So the issue went back into limbo. Gordon Brown, about 15 months before the election, did not want anybody to think that he had given up just because nobody had any idea what the policy was, so he again promised to sell it. This Government have half picked up the baton. They want to do something with the Tote, but they do not want to go as far as our Government did and sell it. In fact, they are not at all sure what they want to do and the policy remains in an appalling limbo.
For more than a decade, the poor old business of the Tote has operated with a sword of Damocles hovering above its neck. Is it to be privately owned, racing owned or something cobbled together? Uncertainty, caused by government dither, is no way to run a railroad. What the Tote now needs, above all, is a period of stability. This could involve a permanent retention of the status quo, which, after all, has worked reasonably well for the business and for racing over the years. If there is to be a change, let us have quick, clear decisions from Ministers, as an act of mercy to the Tote’s board, its management and its superb staff. This matter cannot be left in limbo any longer just so that Ministers can exercise political virility by saying that they are determined to do something about it when it may well be that there is nothing sensible to be done.
Viscount Falkland
My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord James, for introducing the subject. He embarked on his discourse by questioning the ownership of the Tote. I absolutely agree. What business do the Government have to claim that they own the Tote? I had the temerity to bring up the subject at a meeting of the All-Party Racing and Bloodstock Group during the period of the last Administration, on an evening when the Minister for Sport was in a tired and emotional mood. He turned to me rather sharply and said, “You may not have realised—it may have passed you by—that we won the election with a majority of 179”, or whatever it was, “and the reason why we’re going to take the Tote into our possession is political will”. There was no point in further conversation, but I am not absolutely clear where we are now. The noble Lord brought up ownership: I thought that it was, by fair means or foul, in the hands of the Government.
I apologise to the House if the rest of my remarks are in rather simple terms. I am designing them for those who, more and more, zap the television. The last couple of times I have been in your Lordships’ House, I have had people come up to me saying, “I fell upon the parliamentary channel. Your speech was very nice, but I did not understand a word of what you were talking about”. With the greatest respect to the two noble Lords who spoke before me, I wonder whether somebody listening to the debate who does not go racing would know what we were talking about.
It is a very simple matter. Racing, which is an important part of this country’s sporting and cultural life, is in a parlous state. Very few people know that. The all-seeing and all-knowing noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, answered a Question in this House about whether it was appropriate to offer Her Majesty the Queen a race to commemorate her Jubilee, an idea which I thought was charming and which I hope comes to fruition. I asked the noble Lord, in my supplementary, whether a happy event such as this might take one’s mind off the parlous financial state of racing. His reply to that was, “I am surprised that the noble Lord feels that racing is in a parlous state. I had no idea, but I have to admit that I have not given it very close attention”. That was not very encouraging. I wonder whether the coalition has any further ideas as to how this could be progressed; I fancy that the answer is rather less at this stage, but I always live in hope.
It is important to explain to those who tune in to the parliamentary channel that the Tote is a brand name. I say with the greatest respect to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that when he talks about the Tote, he is talking about two things. He is talking about the betting shops that were acquired over a period of years, thanks to a former head of the Tote who found that he could borrow money to create some bottom-line profit to the totalisator organisation—these shops compete with the other betting shops owned by the major chains—and he is talking about the pool.
It is the pool that interests me, because, when the sale comes about, if it does come about, the shops will have quite a considerable value, though not as considerable as the value was three or four years ago. Some people were talking about £400 million. I doubt whether it would be anything near that today, for all kinds of reasons, notably because people are not betting on horses in betting shops in the way that they were; they are betting on other sports. The turnover and profit of bookmakers have suffered to the extent that the levy, which is the machinery designed to get a contribution from the bookmakers for allowing them to take bets on horses, has sunk to a level at which it is impossible to maintain the funding of racing. Other solutions have been sought and the sale of the Tote is part of those solutions. We have been discussing this for years, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, says. Part and parcel of the whole business of dealing with racing at the moment, I am afraid, is that it has been impossible to find any consistency or common direction of thought among racing’s constituent parts. I shall be interested to see what the next move is.
The pool itself came about in the 1920s to run alongside bookmakers, who were allowed to continue with their profession, but in betting terms it has always been the poor partner in the business of accepting bets from people who are foolish enough—I have been one—to bet on horses on a regular basis. If the pool has a future, we cannot have a Tote monopoly. We cannot even talk about one any longer. Most other countries decided, though, that a Tote monopoly was the way to go; it was the only way in which you could fund racing. Curiously, and I do not know whether the Minister can respond on this, within the past few years, I am not quite clear by what means—I do not know whether the bookmakers had an influence on the Office of Fair Trading, because they are very good at what they do—the OFT came out with what seems to be an utterly ridiculous decision. It said that the totalisator pool operations—I think that that is what they meant, not the betting shops—were non-competitive because of the monopoly. No one said that about the lottery, so far as I am concerned.
For a pool to work properly, you have to have a lot of people paying into it—in this case, a lot of people who bet on horses at race meetings going to the Tote in large numbers. It is no good carving it up, giving it to racecourses and saying, “You run your own Tote”. I wonder who made the decision at the Office of Fair Trading and what the motive behind it was. We still have this hanging over us, and I hope that the Minister will tell us if there is any way in which we can get that decision revoked. You cannot sell the Tote for anything if it has a lifespan of—it was seven years originally—only three years to go.
In the long term, though, the pool is the interesting part of race betting because we have new technologies and wider markets. People around the world are interested in British racing and may well want to bet into totalisator pools here. If enough energy and funding were put into setting the ball rolling, that might be the answer to a lot of our problems. People may think that I am again advocating a Tote monopoly. Maybe subconsciously I am, but I know that it is not a possibility. You cannot tell the bookmakers to go; they would have to be recompensed and that is not something that a Government would tolerate. Still, I would like an answer on that from the Government if possible.
It is amazing how the racing world is split into various compartmentalised interests. We now have a campaign, on which a great deal of money has been spent, called Racing for Change. That is complete nonsense. It is trying to get a whole new public to get interested in racing, when those of us who are already interested in it know that racing is like coin collecting or bridge—you become passionately fond of it and obsessed by it. You get interested in every part of racing. I do not see how Racing for Change, in getting lots of young men to go out and drink in the afternoons at Kempton Park, is going to alter that position substantially. I think that the horseracing authority is mad to pay £6 million, or however much it is.
My conclusion is that the Government must understand this subject, as I hope that anyone who is listening to me on the parliamentary channel will have done, and that they really must try to get a grip of this thing and decide which is the best way to go. I will lay my position on the table: the Tote should remain where it is, in a relationship with the Government. Sell the betting shops and get what you can for the Government—I suppose that the Treasury will take the greater part of that—but put the rest of the money into developing the Tote pool, because there you have some hope. Then I will not have go to the meetings with the All-Party Racing and Bloodstock Group, where everyone looks at each other, repeats themselves endlessly for years on end and we get nowhere.
Lord Patten
My Lords, given the choice, I would choose to address the House rather than the Parliament Channel. I was interested to hear that the noble Viscount get perilously close to suggesting that, because of the allegedly parlous state of the racing industry, there might be some government support. Indeed, I was about to get to my feet and ask him about that, but I did not want to interrupt his performance on the Parliament Channel. Perhaps he will tell me later whether that was indeed his intention.
I have no financial or institutional interests in racing of any kind, although I would have a hide as thick as a rhinoceros if, living where we do in the West Country, a few miles away from the epicentre of National Hunt training in Paul Nicholls’s stable at Ditcheat, a certain amount of racing had not entered my DNA. It is certainly much in the local area, so much so that the excellent shoe and boot mender in Wincanton, a local market town, when not mending shoes and boots, owns a leg of a horse here and a couple of legs of a horse there. Notoriously, three weekends ago a number of us went to collect our orders on Saturday but there was a large sign in the shop saying “Gone racing. Have a horse running today. Sorry”. Everyone understood, and no one demurred at all from his decision.
We are lucky to have him in Wincanton high street, by the way. So many high streets in market towns are struggling against the depredations of large superstores put by unwise councils on the edges of towns, dragging the centre of gravity away from such market towns as still struggle on. I wish that the local district council had not done so in that particular area. I am happy to be in coalition with my noble friend Lady Garden on the Front Bench, but I certainly do not regard myself as being in coalition with South Somerset District Council and her dotty Liberal Democrat friends down there; I have signed no pledge in that respect. However, that is a matter for another day.
I move from the destruction of market towns to selling off the “nanny goat”, as the Tote is sometimes inelegantly referred to on some racecourses. This has been going on for far too long. In the mid-1980s, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, referred to, the Tories had a good look. Merchant bankers were actually employed, at some price, but the process ran into the sands after a number of years. From 2001 onwards there was the Labour manifesto commitment, which has already been referred to. Once again, advisers were employed at huge cost, although the so-called merchant bankers of the 1990s had in the mean time been transmogrified into the renamed “investment bankers” of the early noughties, though their trade in essence remains exactly the same. Heaven knows how much money has been spent on advisers since the 1980s and how much Civil Service time has been taken up by what to do with the Tote. How many special advisers have given their special advice to Ministers, unable in the end to get the business through? Shedloads of time and money have been expended, to no avail.
So I applaud the coalition and its pledges. The most recent announcement was from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 15 September, launching the open market process this autumn. I congratulate the coalition Government on sticking to their seasonality because “the autumn” is an infinitely expandable and extendable term, sometimes going well on into the new year and into the year after that. The process, however, is happening and the bidders are putting their bids in, as my noble friend said in his introductory speech. That announcement followed the pledge by the coalition in July 2010 that over the next 12 months it had the intention to,
“resolve the future of the Tote in a way that secures value for the taxpayer”.
I seek confirmation from my noble friend Lady Garden on one thing when she winds up tonight. Is the timetable of the resolution of this issue—the dusting and selling off of the Tote by July 2012—still in place? Is there any room whatever for delay, yes or no? As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said in his speech, this process has been going on for far too long. It needs to be resolved. The selling off of the Tote will soon turn into flogging a pretty dead nanny goat for its share of horseracing betting is in decline—it has now about 5 or 6 per cent of the market left in the face of competition from much bigger players, not least the online providers. So the answer better be “yes” in reality. Unless we get on with it, there will not be much left to sell; no one will want this beast. Value is being exhausted by the month.
So is it all worth it? Should one go through this whole agonising process for a very low number of hundreds of millions of pounds? The answer is, yes, we should, because this country is in great difficulty. Every little helps. We have the desperate need to re-establish equilibrium between government, corporate and personal debt in this country and to reduce all three. We can do a lot to reduce government debt. We can sell assets. For example the lands that are in the ownership of many government departments will produce very substantial sums. At the same time smaller assets like the Tote will not produce very much. However, they are all assets and in this process there can be no special pleading. If we are serious about reducing government debt over the life of this Parliament—as I know my noble friend Lady Garden is—we have to raise all the money that we possibly can. This is particularly the case in racing. Some people in racing may be in difficulty but an awful lot of 50 per cent taxpayers in racing are in no personal financial difficulty of any sort at all. My friend, the Wincanton cobbler, does not come into that tax bracket.
There should not be any special pleading in reductions of Government expenditure in the matter of the hypothecation of certain sums because it would be nice to help this or that special interest. If we go down this route, we will not get anywhere close enough to reducing debt in the way in which we should in the lifetime of this Parliament. I expect that the Chancellor, the Chief Secretary and, in this place, my noble friend Lord Sassoon, should set their faces like iced marble against blandishments to the contrary and should not allow special pleading of the sort that we have heard across the Chamber this evening. They will have my strong support if they do.
I also hope that the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, who is winding up for the Opposition and is a distinguished private banker, who understands matters about balance sheets in his bank as much as balance sheets in the national account, will take the same robust approach. The proceeds of the Tote sale should go in toto to paying down financial government debt. We should not give in to the blandishments of special pleading.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting
My Lords, I rise not as a private banker but as somebody who has listened with enormous interest to this debate. I knew very little about the Tote before I started the research for this evening. I found the speeches fascinating. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, on initiating this debate and in particular on the very interesting ideas that he came up with during his speech. Some of the number of topics that I wish to question the Minister on have been raised obliquely by other speakers. I will try to be as direct as possible.
John Penrose MP, the DCMS Minister, said that the Government would seek bids for the Tote this autumn—as we have heard. We now know that the bids have to be in by Friday. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, said and wants confirmation that the Tote will be sold next June. Fascinatingly, the noble Lord, Lord James, suggests that the Government do not have the right to sell the Tote because they do not own it. I would be particularly interested—as I am sure you all would be—in an answer to that question.
Given that the operating profit of the Tote was £13 million, up considerably on the year before, it is critical—and I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Patten—that the money from the proceeds should go back into horseracing. Related to that, will the Minister confirm what will happen with any sale proceeds? George Osborne said in a Budget Statement that the Government would,
“resolve the future of the Tote in a way that secures value for the taxpayer while recognising the support that the Tote currently provides the racing industry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 09/10/10; col. 41W.]
It is a rather different view from that of the noble Lord, Lord Patten.
What commitment can the Minister give in regard to the staff who work at the Tote’s headquarters in Wigan and the other 4,000 estimated staff who work for the Tote? The Government must say what they plan to do with the Tote to resolve the uncertainty for the staff and management as well as the horseracing industry. One of the themes that has emerged this evening is the lack of certainty about the future.
My final point is one that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord James. How will the Government satisfy the EU that any money from the sale ploughed back into horseracing will not be ruled as an illegitimate state aid to the horseracing industry? Again, thank you all for such an interesting and informative debate. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I join in the thanks to my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath for securing this debate. He will be aware that the Government announced in the Budget on 22 June that they would resolve the future of the Tote over the next 12 months in a way that secures value for the taxpayer and recognises the support that the Tote currently provides to the racing industry—which is a point that has been picked up by a number of noble Lords in their speeches. The noble Lord, Lord James, set out his concerns about this very clearly in his opening speech. I hope that in the course of my remarks some—if not all—of those concerns will be addressed.
As we have heard, the Tote is the key provider of funds to the racing industry, providing approximately £11 million per annum in the form of commissions, sponsorships and grants over and above the statutory levy that all bookmakers pay. As noble Lords will know, the previous Government were also fully committed to removing the Tote from Government ownership and put in a very considerable effort over a 12-year period to achieve that aim. This length of time has been referred to in noble Lords’ comments. However, a combination of factors, notably market conditions and European competition rules, worked against them. We recognise the challenges that selling the Tote presents but we believe that the conditions are right to remove the Government from involvement in the Tote. The Government reaffirmed their resolve to do so in a Statement to the House of Commons on 15 September.
I am happy to confirm that the Government remain firmly on course to achieve the objectives set out in the Budget by resolving the future of the Tote by June 2011—about which my noble friend Lord Patten asked for specific clarification In line with that objective, the Government launched an open market process last month, inviting proposals from interested parties. As we know, the closing date for submitting proposals to Lazard, the Government’s financial advisers in this process, is Friday, 10 December. The process is open to all organisations that have an interest in the Tote. We recognise the uncertainty that this long, drawn-out process has generated among those who work for the Tote.
The statutory framework governing the Government’s right to sell the Tote is found in Part 1 of the Horserace Betting and Olympic Lottery Act 2004. In broad terms, the Act provides that on a day appointed by the Secretary of State the Tote will cease to exist and all its property, rights and liabilities will transfer to a new company known as the successor company, being a company limited by shares and wholly owned by the Crown. The 2004 Act also provides that the Gambling Commission may, if the Secretary of State so requires, issue to the successor company an exclusive seven-year licence. The exclusive licence will grant the successor company the right to carry on pool betting business in connection with horseraces on approved horserace courses. I hope that gives some reassurance to my noble friend Lord Falkland, given his enthusiasm for the pool betting side of the business. It is expected that, as a condition of the licence, the successor company must ensure that adequate facilities for pool betting are made available in all areas of each approved horserace course on days when horseracing takes place on that racecourse. The exclusive licence can be granted only once. After the seven-year period has expired, the pool betting business will be open to competition.
I am sure noble Lords will appreciate that in advance of the closing date by which proposals have to be submitted, and for reasons of commercial confidentiality, I am not in a position at present to comment further on the process by which we intend to resolve the future of the Tote. Nevertheless, I stress that the Government are very keen to secure a successful outcome to this process in a timely fashion and are working closely with all the main parties involved. Naturally, the Government are continuing to liaise closely with the board of the Tote and with racing interests as the process unfolds. We want to remove government from direct involvement in an industry that it regulates in a way that secures value for the taxpayer and recognises the support which the Tote provides to the racing industry. Its financial importance has been stressed by my noble friend Lord James, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and others. In removing that direct involvement, we want to give certainty to the Tote to enable it to grow as a business. We also want as far as possible to respect the interests of the employees who work for the Tote and those of the local economy in Wigan where the Tote is based. The Government expect to be in a position to update Parliament early in the new year once we are clearer about the outcome of the current market process.
My noble friend Lord James expressed his concerns on a number of fronts. The Government do not anticipate the dire consequences of removing themselves from the Tote that he suggests. I am afraid that the Government cannot simply hand over the Tote to racing; the Tote being a statutory corporation. To do so would undoubtedly constitute a state aid. I can also confirm that any new owner of the Tote will still be obliged to pay levy at the going rate. The pool betting, too, is a profitable business which we expect will continue to flourish and grow in any new ownership. However, I stress that final decisions have yet to be taken. The process that is under way has received a wide range of proposals and the Government will carefully analyse all of these before reaching their decision on the way forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, talked about the Greyhound Racing Trust and the greyhounds, which did not feature so prominently in other speeches. We all recognise the popularity of greyhound racing in communities, how important it is to many people and the enthusiasm that it generates. In 2010, the Tote made a donation of more than £400,000 to the Greyhound Racing Trust. We hope that the Tote’s successor company will continue to make these charitable donations. However, I am sure your Lordships will understand that we cannot, of course, make this a condition of the open market process.
I am happy to clarify for the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, what will happen to the Tote’s statutory monopoly on horserace pool betting. As I mentioned, any new owner will be granted an exclusive seven-year licence to run pool betting, and will be required to do so on all racecourses. After seven years, the pool betting will be open to competition, but on terms that will need to satisfy the Gambling Commission. However, the owner of the first and only exclusive licence will be in a good position in that respect at that distant point in the debate.
I think that I have responded to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Patten, about the date. I am delighted that he mentioned that he was glad to be in the coalition, at least in this Parliament. I am sorry that he has differences with his local government coalition partners, but we hope to continue to carry forward the coalition in friendship, at least in these Houses of Parliament.
I think that I have answered most of the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Evans. As regards his specific question about the EU, the Government have not yet reached a decision on how to proceed, so it is premature to speculate about what might happen to the proceeds of any sale. However, any sharing of proceeds will need to comply with EU state aid and competition rules. We shall have to await further notice on those.
If there are questions that I have not answered, I shall pick them up in Hansard and undertake to write to noble Lords. I renew my thanks to my noble friend Lord James, for initiating this debate. It has, indeed, been enlightening for me as well as for the noble Lord, Lord Evans. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in it. We shall see what happens after the offers for the Tote come in.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Grocott
My Lords, I was rudely interrupted by the usual channels, who adjourned the House just as I was on the point of delivering my remarks. I shall try to pick up the morale of the whole debate by opening out this time. We are debating whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. What I really want to say, perhaps more than anything else, is that any observer watching the debate on this clause so far would have noticed one thing above all else—that there was absolutely no real detectable enthusiasm whatever for having a referendum: and if we did have a referendum, there was certainly no enthusiasm for the choice of having the alternative vote.
We are having a debate about a flagship Bill of this Government. It is more than a flagship Bill; it is a major constitutional Bill. Indeed, as Nick Clegg has said, it is part of the most ambitious programme of constitutional reform since 1832. Three members of his party at the moment want to be part of this great constitutional Bill, the greatest since the Great Reform Act. I am absolutely certain that if my Government had brought forward a great constitutional Bill, not only would a fair number of people have wanted to take part in the debates, they would do so enthusiastically. It does not happen very often—we have the statistics and it happens only once every 170 years, or however many years it has been since the last huge reform, according to Nick Clegg. That has been noticeably absent. The overwhelming majority of the speakers have either been very strongly in favour of first past the post, as I am, or else they have been people like my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Rooker who, while not being supporters of first past the post, have given so many good reasons why the option that is being delivered to the electorate is a very bad one. That is something that any neutral observer would have to report on. I do not know whether that will change during the passage of the Bill, but I doubt it.
I have to say that I was slightly fearful of contributing a lot to this debate, because I acknowledge that I am one of life’s anoraks when it comes to looking at electoral systems, and I really do not want to be labelled as an anorak, although I have not got past first base on being an anorak. Another thing was really noticeable in, for example, the exchanges between my noble and very good friend Lord Campbell-Savours and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. It scrambled my brain, and I do not know what it would have done to the electorate in the course of a referendum. That is one of the many, many reasons why this is a bad Bill and this clause is a bad clause. Although the debate is important and significant, it has been in some parts almost unintelligible, certainly incredibly detailed. Now, if that is the case when we are discussing it among people who acknowledge that we are in a tiny minority of the electorate who are actually very interested in these things, how on earth will that be a substantial debate in the country? You can just imagine the near impossibility of getting some of these arguments over to the electorate. Of course I am not saying that it is because the electorate are dim, of course I am not saying that. I am saying that it is of no great concern to people, and if it is of no great concern to you, you do not apply yourself to the arguments. That is what I confidently expect will happen as and when this referendum takes place.
We all know that we have the authority of the Electoral Commission in its report, which is in a pile of documents in my office. I am sure that Members on the Front Benches will have read it cover to cover. The report states clearly that the public simply do not understand AV. Noble Lords may check it. If any of the proponents of AV are happy, as my noble friend Lord Snape has said, to go down any road that they are familiar with in any part of Britain, in any constituency, they should ask the public what they make of AV, let alone the single transferable vote or whatever else is on the menu.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On that question of understanding, when I asked MPs how AV worked, the great majority did not know or gave a completely wrong explanation. So if MPs do not understand it, how can we expect the great British public to understand it?
Lord Grocott
As we know, my noble friend is a reformer who supports change, and he is honest enough to acknowledge just that. The debate that we are having—the subject that we proposing to spend a large sum of money on and put to the public—is basically of interest to only one or two university departments. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who is sound on a lot these issues, in his place. If I was the parent of a university-age son or daughter who was thinking of taking politics, I would say, “Go to the University of Hull”.
Lord Grocott
That is very wise. I bet that he comes out of his course sensible on Lords reform.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I should say that my daughter also studied at Hull, but she is absolutely staunchly in favour of AV. She had the right influence from the noble Lord, Lord Norton.
Lord Grocott
My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours asked which AV system, but no doubt there is a specialist MA course on that. Does that not give us some of the answers? A few university departments quite properly consider these things, as well as one or two writers for the Guardian newspaper, which seems to think that this is the way that you can solve most of life’s ills, and I assume that these debates take place at branch meetings of the Liberal Democrat party. They must be a lot of fun. I am sorry that I missed them.
Lord Grocott
We are spending millions of pounds on dealing with, as far as the public are concerned, a non-existent problem. That is one of several reasons why I am not sure it is worth proceeding with the Bill, let alone endorsing Clause 1.
On the Government’s defence of the Bill, I should make one or two observations that are fair. Perhaps the most serious is that there has been no attempt, so far as I can see, even to address the issue that Nick Clegg raised: that this is part of a great reforming programme. There has been no attempt to relate what we are doing in this Bill to what is happening on any other constitutional reform measure. This is particularly true when considering electoral systems.
You would not think that somewhere down the track—I hope, or expect, a long way down the track—a Bill will come forward about Lords reform. We are already told that the electoral system to be used is proportional representation. What form of proportional representation? I really do not know. There are far more forms of it than there are of AV. I did not know about all the alternatives to AV until my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours got cracking on it. He will be a joy to listen to when we discuss the various forms of proportional representation in detail. Whenever I have had a debate with proponents of proportional representation—I have had several—and whenever I thought I was close to winning the case for first past the post, their rejoinder was always the same: “Oh, it’s not that kind of proportional representation that we are in favour of. It is some other kind”. So those private debates and discussions go on.
I would really like to know from Members on the Front Bench opposite, before we proceed any further with the Bill, how many different electoral systems they think it is proper for the United Kingdom—a country of 60 million people—to have. We already have five different systems.
Lord Strathclyde
I hope that the noble Lord will remind us that in 1997 there was only one system. By 2010, there were considerably more, and they had been brought in, on his watch, by the noble Lord’s Government, whom he avidly supported.
Lord Grocott
I have to admit in the privacy of this Chamber that I did my very best to stop them. However, you do not get all that you want in life, as the two parties in the coalition know well enough. It is an issue that must be addressed, and I tell the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, if he would like to report this back to senior management—
Lord Grocott
He is senior management, but not top management. Perhaps he should bring back a Bill that said, “Let’s have a single electoral system for the United Kingdom”. He can attack the Labour Government if he wants; I would not agree with him on that, although I will on this issue. We have tried all these other systems. They all have serious failures. Is anyone going to challenge me on that on the systems that we have actually seen and observed? They all have serious failures. They do not end the debate. If any Scottish colleague wants to suggest to me that there are no longer any discussions in Scotland about the merits of the additional member system—
Lord Rooker
Here is where my noble friend and I part. The additional member system in Scotland gave, for the first time in years, Conservative representation to Conservative voters. So there is a discussion: that is, that it works. That was the problem. My noble friend was defending first past the post at very high levels during our time in government. Can he explain how, during the 13 years while the iron curtain was collapsing and democracy was starting to flourish in eastern Europe, we could not export first past the post to a single country? Add to that South Africa, eastern Europe. There was not one. We could not export the system that we had in 1997, so it is quite right that we tried other systems, because they proved to be wholly beneficial.
Baroness Adams of Craigielea
I have to tell the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that the additional member system does not work. We may have Conservatives representing not Conservative voters but Conservative Party policy and cherry picking issues because they do not represent any particular constituents. We have a system in which those directly elected by the local people have up to eight members following them around from the additional list, picking off issues and raising them in policies. I am sorry; it does not work.
Lord Grocott
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Adams. I would just like to gently remind my good friend Lord Roper, and he will remain my good friend whatever different views we take on this issue, that the Berlin Wall did not come down during a Labour Government. The new democracies in eastern Europe predated our beloved Labour Government, but the international comparisons—for me, at any rate—can never be as telling and compelling as the operation of different systems in a single unitary system. That is the most telling evidence: not what happens in any other country in the world, but what has happened here in European elections, Scottish and Welsh elections, local government elections, mayoral elections and the rest of it. Let us have an academic debate no longer. Let us have an honest discussion about how well these systems have performed.
The only comments I would make on the performance of these systems are these. First, the question does not solve the debate about electoral reform, for the very simple reason that as soon as these systems come into operation, their faults become manifest. To me, the one good thing about having all these systems is that I no longer have to debate with people on the basis of an existing system with failings—I acknowledge that first past the post has its failings—against some El Dorado of a system that solves all known ills. I am able to say, “You told us this would happen with this particular electoral system, and I can demonstrate that it did not happen”. If someone has continually told you over a period of many years—most of my political career—that proportional representation for Europe, for example, would greatly increase public interest and involvement in elections because it would offer a real opportunity to get Labour members in the south-east or Conservative members in the north-east, where both parties are badly underrepresented, now you can say, “It simply has not happened”.
There are two real characteristics of the various attempts at different electoral systems, and they are crystal clear for anyone who takes an objective view. First, they are associated with low turnouts. There is no greater involvement by the public, and no greater connection that we heard so much about from one or two people before, than between the public and their elected representatives. The second characteristic, which I fear very much for the AV system and which is very noticeable and should be of concern to everyone in the House, is that they are associated with very high levels of spoilt ballot papers.
I do not want to predict what would happen if the AV vote were carried—God forbid that it were—but if it were, you can be absolutely certain that the numbers of spoilt ballot papers would increase, and increase dramatically. There are more spoilt ballot papers for the European elections, where the turnout is about 35 per cent, than there are for Westminster elections, where the turnout is 64 per cent. If that is not a statistic that should be put on the table and be of concern to anyone who cares about our democracy and its operation, then it really should be.
Finally, the only really solid justification that I have heard from the supporters of AV, as it is in this Bill, is that it ensures that MPs are elected on a majority vote. I loved the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and my noble friend Lord Rooker, and I thought—you would expect me to say this—that my two noble friends comprehensively demolished the argument that even under AV there was a guarantee that the winning candidate would be a majoritarian.
Lord Greaves
The noble Lord does me the privilege of talking about me the moment I walk into the Chamber. Can I just say that I have never made that argument about AV. Others no doubt have but I have not and never would, because it is clearly not strictly true. It is, as noble Lords have said previously, clearly more true than for first past the post or for the supplementary vote, but it is not strictly 100 per cent true. That is obvious. I would never claim that.
Lord Grocott
I think that is a very honourable and honest thing to say. I was not so much referring to what he had said so much as to the debate between the two of them. I do wish that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, with his characteristic honesty on these matters, would gently, while we are debating things over here, move forward and whisper in the ear of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who constructs his near total defence of the AV system on the idea that it guarantees that MPs would have majority support. I do not know who is right. Is there another division among the Liberal Democrats on this particular issue? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord McNally, could address that. I do not know whether he is responding to this debate or not. He is not. He looks relieved as he says not.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I was listening to a “News at Ten” bulletin the other day and there was a discussion about AV. Again the newscaster referred to it requiring more than 50 per cent. We have to get the story out to a lot of people that the 50 per cent issue does not arise under AV. The national media still keep peddling this story.
Lord Grocott
I am not surprised. During the time in office of the previous Labour Government, the national media frequently said that Labour had a majority in the House of Lords. They do not know the difference between “majority” and “largest party”: we are used to that. My concern about the constant reference to a majority is more fundamental. I simply report to the House that I was not as clever as some of my friends who ensured that they represented seats in the Commons where there was majority support in election after election. I had that luxury on only one of the four occasions when I managed to convince the electorate that I should be their Member under the first past the post system. I cannot remember the figures. They were about 42, 44 or 46 per cent: then in the end—bingo—it was more than 50 per cent. I did not think that it was of any great significance until I started reading some of the debates in the run-up to this one.
I assure the House—and if any noble Lord wishes to intervene, they are welcome to do so—that I do not know whether I had 50 per cent of the vote. I had to check it because I am now a fully paid-up member of the anorak society and had to know the facts about my own electoral history. It does not make a shred of difference. First, your voters do not know whether you have a majority. If I did not know, I am sure that they did not. It does not make a scrap of difference to your work as a Member of Parliament. The notion that it is vital for Lib Dem, Conservative or Labour voters in constituency A, B or C to have a Member of Parliament of their party is wrong, because 99.9 per cent—and that is a low estimate—of the people who come to you when you are a Member of Parliament do so irrespective of your party or theirs. They come to you with exactly the same range of issues whether you have a majority or not.
Lord Rennard
If the noble Lord is so convinced by the strength of his arguments over the past 21 minutes, why is he so frightened of putting this to the British people in a referendum so that they can decide the issues?
Lord Grocott
I would not have taken so long if I had not had so many interesting interventions. I am afraid that I will have to toss this back at the noble Lord. If the Lib Dems are so convinced, as they have been telling me ad nauseam over the years, that the British public are crying out for electoral reform, why on earth are they desperately putting the referendum on the same day as other elections, in the hope that they might get 30 or 35 per cent of the electorate to turn out? I understood that the public were queueing up to take part in any opportunity to get rid of the old, discredited system, as the Lib Dems call it. I am afraid that that is another theory that has been tested under fire and found wanting.
This clause will stand part of the Bill. It has limped along, drawing no enthusiasm from any of its proponents. I understand that there are always dilemmas about whether you can support your own Government in office. I do not criticise anyone, but I have no doubt what would happen if we had a good old-fashioned secret ballot on the Bill, nor about what would have happened if a secret ballot had been held in the Commons before they sent the Bill here. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, knows this as well as I do. He is well versed in the machinations of the higher echelons of parties—at least he was when I knew him—and he knows perfectly well that this is a friendless Bill and that this clause is certainly a friendless clause. I hope that we will remember that when we continue debating the Bill.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has been rather unfair on his noble friend Lord Lipsey, who gave an excellent and much briefer speech in support of Clause 1. I will follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, by being brief and to the point. I will concentrate for a few minutes on the issue of turnout, which has been a constant concern of all of us across the House this evening—and rightly so, because we are all anxious to look again at the involvement of our fellow citizens in the way in which we vote.
There have been one or two trips down memory lane this evening, and I hope your Lordships will indulge me for a couple of minutes. On the last wintry day of February 1974, in a very scattered rural constituency in Cornwall, 83 per cent of those who were registered to vote turned out. In those days, there were many fewer postal votes, so most voters went to the polls. Why? Because those very wise Cornish men and women knew that the result would be very close. It had been relatively close at the previous election. They were right: I had a majority of nine, which, even in those days, was thought to make mine a rather unsafe seat. In subsequent elections I did better. I confess to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that I cannot remember whether I constantly got more than 50 per cent of the vote, but I certainly did on one or two occasions, and I built a majority of 9,000. What happened?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Perhaps the noble Lord could explain that the importance of that day—which I, too, remember well—was that it was a verdict on the Government rather than on his good self. Perhaps he could also remind us of the outcome of that election.
Lord Tyler
That is not true, because in other parts of the country the turnout was not 83 per cent. It was 83 per cent in my constituency because the contest was seen to be very close. When I had a majority of 9,000 plus, down it went. Because it was not so interesting and the votes were not going to be so important, it dropped to 63 per cent. There is a direct correlation between safer seats and turnout. Nobody can deny that. I see the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is agreeing with me. Where constituents feel that there is not a real chance of change—whether they fear it or hope for it is immaterial—they do not register on the same level and they do not turn out. For example, in May 2010 the lowest turnout—well under 50 per cent in Birmingham Ladywood, Manchester Central and Leeds Central—was in seats where the electors knew there was very little chance of change, whether they wanted it or not. On the other hand, in Westmorland and Lonsdale and in Richmond Park, where there was clearly going to be a very close result, up went the turnout to 77 per cent. People vote and register to vote when they think that their votes are going to be important in terms of the outcome. That is surely the most important lesson we should all learn.
Short of compulsion, which we discussed earlier, the most effective incentive for people to vote is because they think their vote will make a difference and that is the case for AV. I have never pretended—I agree with my noble friend Lord Greaves—that somehow this is the magic solution and everybody is going to turn out and will inevitably go for a first preference. It does not necessarily mean that everybody will have a majority. But look at the alternatives; look at first past the post. It is a staggering fact that there is not a single Member of the other place who can put their hand on their heart after the May 2010 election and say, “I am supported by more than half the people who could vote in my constituency”. Not one can say they have more than 50 per cent of those registered to vote in their constituency. Not one. If we are saying that AV is not perfect, first past the post is much less perfect.
Lord Rooker
I missed the first part of the debate on Clause 1 and I regret that. The noble Lord gave the example of the second defect, which my noble friend Lord Grocott did not address—not so much the argument about everybody getting 50 per cent but the second porky that it does away with tactical voting. We heard that today from the people who launched the pro-AV campaign. Yet the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has just said it will be their second preference. That is what will get them out to vote. That is where the tactical voting comes in. What we need on the record, like we had from the Leader earlier on, is a definitive statement from the Government that it is not true that every MP will get elected by 50 per cent. We also need on the record that AV does not do away with tactical voting because the tactical vote is on the second preference, not on the first vote. It would be quite useful if this debate could get that on the record because all our words will be used in leaflets next year, I can assure noble Lords.
Lord Tyler
It is obviously true that if the elector chooses not to vote tactically, they do not have to. But it is also perfectly true—as the noble Lord’s colleague, Mr Ben Bradshaw, has acknowledged on behalf of all those members in the Labour Party who are supporting AV, including the leader of the party of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who has come out very strongly in favour of AV—that it reduces the need for tactical voting. Ben Bradshaw said yesterday that AV gives more power to the people—nobody can deny that—freeing them from the pressure to vote tactically. They do not have to vote tactically. They can do their first preference and their second preference. But the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is quite right. It does not necessarily abolish tactical voting. It makes it much less effective and much less necessary. Mr Bradshaw, his colleague in the other place, is right on that.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I want to take him back to a point which I heard him make a moment or two ago to confirm that I understood him correctly. His criticism of the first past the post system—he seemed to be building up to this criticism because he made it so vehemently—was that there was not one Member of the House of Commons who could claim to be elected by 50 per cent of the registered voters in his or her constituency. Do I understand that the noble Lord is now setting that as the bar for a credible voting system? If he is, can he point me, an ingénue in these matters and not in any sense an anorak or a wonk, to one example of the operation of this alternative vote system that meets that challenge that he has now set?
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am not saying that AV would automatically mean that every Member of the other House would have 50 per cent but first past the post clearly goes nowhere near to achieving that result. AV can make that more possible. More people can have more influence on the outcome of their constituency election and as a result there will be many more seats in the country—not all of them, there will still be safe seats—where it will be possible for people to have more confidence that their vote will make a difference.
Lord Browne of Belmont
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord. He is very patient with me. Other Members of his party have shown exasperation when I have intervened, but if he will bear with me, I need education on this issue. I have listened carefully to what he has to say and resisted the temptation to intervene on him on two or three occasions because I wanted to see the point he was building up to. I am not asking him for an assurance that this will deliver that benchmark all the time. I am asking him, as a self-professed expert on these matters, to give me just one example of the system of AV which he is promoting in this referendum delivering against that benchmark.
Lord Tyler
The noble Lord is simply taking a question that I have not posed and which I do not intend to claim. All I am saying is that the present system discourages people in large tranches of the country from thinking that their vote will make a difference and, therefore, they do not bother to register or to vote. That is a fact. No one can deny it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Let me hit the flaw in the noble Lord’s argument. He is presuming that the remotest preference cast by an elector, which might be the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth preference, should be given the same value within the electoral system as the first preference. That argument is ludicrous. His whole case is based on that and that is why he is wrong.
Lord Tyler
That is what happens under the present system. The present system is totally inadequate in that respect because you have to plump. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who undoubtedly understands the point I am making, I say that under the present system many people in this country feel that they are forced to vote in a very artificial way because their first preference is not likely to win. I am arguing that in many parts of the country people do not bother to register or to vote at all because they think that their first preference is not likely to win. The safer the seat—
Lord Norton of Louth
My noble friend’s argument is based on the premise that people are aware that under a different system—in this case AV—their votes will make more of a difference than under the present system. I should be interested to know what his empirical evidence is for that.
Lord Tyler
The empirical evidence, of course, is the way in which so many other elections, outwith elections to Parliament, operate. I think I am right in saying that all the parties now select their candidates through a form of AV and it is seen to be very effective. Many other professional organisations and trade unions use it and, as was pointed out earlier, the Lord Speaker was elected under that system. There are plenty of examples where people understand that by making a number of choices or preferences they can make a difference.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
On one of the noble Lord’s examples, trade unions, there was recently an election in the Unite trade union for the general secretary. There was a huge campaign around the country, which was very hotly contested between two very different front-running candidates. Does the noble Lord know what the turnout was? It was less than 20 per cent. Surely, that is one of many examples which fully undermines his case.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Indeed, if the noble Lord looks at the Scottish results to which I referred, he will see that the average turnout was just over 25 per cent under the system he is advocating.
Lord Tyler
As was pointed out only a few minutes ago, the noble Lord was very selective in the ones that he quoted, and 25 per cent is not a bad turnout in a local election. I would argue that AV is not perfect and I have never said it is perfect, but I believe it has real advantages in terms of the relationship between the elected Member and his or her constituency. In that respect, in many ways it has advantages over a pure proportional representation system. Incidentally, my noble friend Lord Hamilton was utterly wrong in describing anything in the Bill now as a proportional system. It is not. Some of us might think that in due course there may be a proportional system, but this is not a proportional system and I would never claim that it is. If his opposition to AV is based on that, I am afraid he is deluded.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Does my noble friend accept that if we move to an AV system, we are more likely to have coalition governments and, if we have coalition governments, we have coalition agreements, such as we had at the beginning of this Parliament, and we end up with a government who are governing with a new manifesto that is only vaguely related to the two manifestos of the parties in the coalition?
Lord Tyler
All the evidence from Professor John Curtice, who was mentioned earlier, is that AV is less likely to result in a balanced Parliament, as we have now, than first past the post. The noble Lord may be able to look to the future and have a better idea, but the academic evidence is that AV is less likely to do that because there is a sort of bonus towards the larger party as a result of the election.
I find it incredible that so many Members opposite are ignoring what has been said by their party leader—and in the Guardian today—by saying in absolutely firm terms that they believe that AV is the right way forward. Of course, they are being consistent with what they said previously in Parliament and in the election, but I find it quite extraordinary that so many Members opposite feel that it is necessary to rebel against their own party at this juncture and to weaken the position of their new leader.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I would like to help my noble friend. It is not the position of the Labour Party that there cannot be an open debate—I hope that he will encourage an open debate as well—and there is no party obligation to support AV. We support the idea of a referendum, but not necessarily AV. We want the country to debate it, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord for contributing to that debate.
Lord Tyler
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, because he has pre-empted the question that I was about to ask. I am assuming, from what he has just said, that he will support—not just not vote against—the motion that Clause 1 stand part, because what he has said implies that he will do so. If we had known that an hour or so ago, this debate might have been rather shorter.
It is true that the previous Labour Government twice committed itself to this precise form of words for putting the issue to the people. I believe, as Churchill said, that we should trust the people on this issue. I am quite prepared to debate in any television studio with the noble Lord—
Lord Rooker
Churchill did not want AV. As the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, told us, Churchill is on record as doing the best rubbishing job on AV that anyone has done.
Lord Tyler
I have to tell the noble Lord that Churchill was a supporter of electoral reform when he was a Liberal, and then—I am sorry to say—disappeared off into a different party.
I believe with both the coalition Government and the Labour Party that those same citizens who have been cheated by our current system for so long should be given an early opportunity to vote for a better system. The proposal may not be perfect—I agree with those who made that point—but we have had the moment of truth, in that the Opposition Front Bench are now saying that they will support the motion that Clause 1 stand part of the Bill. That is good news. I hope that we can make equally good progress with the rest of the Bill.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
What a rip-roaringly good debate it has been. Only the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who keeps putting words into my mouth, slightly spoils it.
These are the questions that need to be addressed as a result of the debate. First, there is a strand in the debate from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and my noble friend Lord Grocott, who said there should not be a referendum at all. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said it would lead to a worse system; the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that there is no case made out adequately for AV. One of the purposes of us debating it in Committee is for the case to be looked at. The first question that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, should deal with, is why should there be a referendum with AV as the only alternative in it? He should answer the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Grocott, because for people voting in the referendum, there needs to be a credible case for it made by the Government, which goes beyond saying, “I agreed it with my coalition partners, therefore it must happen”. That carries no weight with the electorate.
The second question that has been raised is: why choose this sort of AV? That was the debate between the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Greaves, which is beyond most of our abilities to comprehend. I say seriously that it is important because the Government are saying, “A detailed proposal for an alternative vote system is set out in Clause 9 and if you vote “yes”, that is the one you will get”. The noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Campbell-Savours, are at each other’s throats about whether that is the right system of alternative vote, and in voting yes, the individual members of the electorate in the referendum have to decide whether they think it is the best.
I say in parenthesis how glad I was to see the Deputy Chief Whip, the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, going to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—I think, to encourage him to continue to participate in the debate. The moment that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, spoke to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, instead of keeping to his seat, he immediately got up to intervene in the debate. I congratulate the Liberal Democrats on that.
Lord Greaves
I reveal that my noble friend was actually passing on a piece of scurrilous gossip which I would never reveal to the House.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, deteriorates dramatically in the light of that.
The explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, of why they were choosing what I may describe as the Queensland alternative vote system, as opposed to the federal system, had detail and substance to it. His explanation of why they were choosing the alternative vote system as opposed to the supplementary vote system was tragically lacking in any detail. I invite him to take the opportunity of replying to this debate to give that explanation, because it is not possible to say that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has not got the ball well over the net on the question of the supplementary vote system, which is accepted as being a sort of alternative vote. That requires consideration. Why are the Government not adopting that form of alternative vote rather than the form set out in Clause 9? The public are entitled to know.
The third question which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, needs to deal with in this significant debate is: why not give other choices to the electorate—a point made by the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Rooker? Why is an alternative vote system favoured by the coalition? Yes, it was the one favoured by the Labour Party in both the CRAG Bill and the manifesto but, unfortunately, in the context where parliamentarians are not that respected by the public, the argument has to be advanced. It is not enough to say, “We have agreed with the Liberal Democrats, therefore we imagine that you members of the electorate will accept that as sufficient reason”. They will not. There must be an argument. I assume that there is an argument why it was accepted in the coalition agreement.
Those are the three points of principle that need to be addressed. There are five other points of detail that are of significance. The first is the point made in the incredibly impressive speech by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, about the Welsh translation. I do not know whether noble Lords know this, but I do not speak Welsh. I accept completely that the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, understands Welsh. What he said left me worried about the position of the Welsh translation. If, for example, DU means God willing, not the United Kingdom, to the people of Wales, something has gone badly wrong in the translation. I invite the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who has had the whole of the dinner hour to deal with that, to tell us why the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, is wrong. I regard it as a significant issue. Welsh is a recognised language in Wales, and although I do not think that there is now anyone in Wales who is monolingual and speaks only Welsh, it will be the first language for some of the 200,000 people who speak Welsh, who may well go to that translation first.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
There are 600,000 people who speak Welsh. It is the first language of many hundreds of thousands of them. It is the first language of half a dozen Members of this House, including me. If I may say so without straying beyond propriety, it is the first language of the Reading Clerk of this House, whose English is flawless but whose Welsh is perfect.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am quite sure that the Reading Clerk will therefore go to the Welsh question and wonder what it is about the electoral system for God that we are now seeking to deal with. I did not know about this point. Had we known about it, we would have put down probing amendments in order to get it. I think it is quite an important point.
The next detailed point is that this is being dealt with at unseemly speed. We sought to deal with that through the amendment that this House agreed on Monday giving the Government the opportunity to bring the referendum forward between May and October. I have to tell noble Lords that this has caused the Electoral Commission much upset. It has asked the Government to please get Parliament to make up its mind quickly about the position. I shall read what the chair of the Electoral Commission has written to the right honourable Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, at the Cabinet Office at 70 Whitehall:
“Given the importance of clarity about the rules on how the referendum will be conducted so that the commission and others can successfully deliver their responsibilities and campaigners can plan properly to put their arguments to voters, I urge you to set out how the Government intends to proceed to ensure Parliament can specify the date of the proposed referendum as soon as possible”.
As I understand it, the Electoral Commission is asking the Government to ensure that Parliament can specify the date of the proposed referendum as soon as possible.
Lord Rooker
When I saw the note from the Electoral Commission, which it copied to many of us moving the amendments, I wrote back briefly, saying:
“I am sure high quality lawyers will see a route forward and grab the chance of flexibility. Why don’t you recommend an order making power in the Bill. Make a draft order with May 5th while maintaining the fall back of … 31 October in the Bill”.
It is very simple. We all say that the target date is 5 May. The way to do it is to put an order-making power in the Bill and put a draft order before the House while the Bill is going through so that the public sector, the private sector and everybody knows that that is the target date. The Bill itself—the Act of Parliament—will have “before 31 October” so if something goes wrong, it is possible to change the order. It is simple.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I think it is pretty clear that the Electoral Commission is very dissatisfied with the way that we have behaved in relation to this and have amended the Bill because it wants clarity as quickly as possible. It wants to ensure that Parliament can specify the date of the proposed referendum as soon as possible. Could the Minister indicate what the Government’s position in relation to that is?
My noble friend Lord Rooker puts forward a sensible solution. I would have thought that the solution is even simpler than what he said. There is nothing wrong with the Government saying that they intend to have the referendum on 5 May, but if they cannot, they will have it on a date when they can have it.
There is another significant point. The timing is presumably a pressure only if the referendum is on 5 May. I think it is very hard to understand that you would need clarity about the date if the referendum was to be later in the year. Therefore, I assume that this letter from the Electoral Commission applies only if the referendum is to be on or about 5 May. If it is to be in June, July, September or October, I do not see why you would need the date to be fixed now, but perhaps the Minister can tell me whether I am right or wrong on that.
I have a letter from Mr Mark Harper MP, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, 70 Whitehall, London SW1A 2AS. He writes:
“We will therefore seek to ensure that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill includes provision for that date”.
Perhaps the Minister can indicate what he has in mind to achieve that course of action. So, on the question of date, is it too fast? We are happy with the approach that has been adopted by this House. What is the Government’s position on that?
Secondly, we wanted it to be indicative, not compulsory, so that Parliament could subsequently debate, if there was a yes vote in relation to alternative votes, what the right method of alternative vote systems would be. Thirdly, we did not want it to be combined with other elections. Again, I would ask the Government to set out their position in relation to that. I assume that their position remains as set out in Clause 4. Those are the four significant points.
We have made it clear that we support in principle the idea of a referendum on AV, but I should like to hear the Government’s justification on the three points of principle. Should there be a referendum at all? Why choose this sort of AV? Why not go for other opportunities? I would also like to hear the Government’s position on whether this is too fast, whether it is indicative, not compulsory and whether it should not be combined.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
I have already said it.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble Lord should say it again. It is up to the noble Lord whether he wants to answer these points. Something that has been particularly good about today is that the electorate has had the opportunity to hear for the first time some of the Government’s defence for this political change. Prior to that, the noble Lord the Leader of the House has indulged in fantastically attractive and amusing political points, which unfortunately the electorate will not find very attractive.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it has been a useful and interesting debate. We have covered a lot of ground. A lot of different views have come from those opposite, including those who are wholly opposed to a referendum of any kind or to any change. The noble and learned Lord seemed to say slightly half-heartedly that he wishes to have a referendum. I cannot help feeling that secretly he rather wished that there would not be one. I am in favour of having a referendum.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
If the noble Lord is prying into my personal views, will he tell the House his personal view on a referendum?
Lord Strathclyde
I am wholly in favour of us having a referendum because I am in favour of people having a choice and being able to deal with the issue. It is important that they should. I have no difficulty in supporting a referendum. I think that I have already told the House that I will not be supporting the yeses; I will be supporting the noes when we get to it.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Perhaps the noble Lord could express his view as to how disappointed he was that the Conservative manifesto did not contain a commitment to such a referendum.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is for the noble and learned Lord to apologise as to why it was in his own manifesto. What did Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, say—not six months ago when he was writing the manifesto—today? He said:
“I believe that changing our electoral system so that every MP has the support of”—
I am not trying to rile the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—
“more than half their constituents is one way in which we can begin to restore trust in politics”.
The leader of the Labour Party said that. I am responsible for many things, but I am not responsible for the leader of the Labour Party—thank goodness.
The Welsh issue was an important and substantive point, which worried me when it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. It worried the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. One thing I am trying to do during the course of these debates is relieve the noble and learned Lord of worry. I understand that Cabinet Office Ministers will write to the noble Lord shortly with a full explanation of the Government’s position. But I can furthermore advise the Committee—this is really interesting—that the Electoral Commission is statutorily responsible for advising on the intelligibility of the English and Welsh versions of the question. Not only did it consult the Welsh Language Board, but it has conducted focus groups with Welsh speaking voters on the Welsh question now in the Bill. In its public report, it advises that concerns on intelligibility, along the lines raised by the noble Lord, did not arise. The Electoral Commission will send explanatory leaflets in English and Welsh in Wales to all voters to explain the issues. I have no idea whether that is good enough for the noble Lord. He will be receiving further letters from the Cabinet Office on that important point.
This is a clause stand part debate, so what is the clause about? It provides for a referendum to be held on 5 May 2011 on whether to change the voting system for parliamentary elections. Following the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which the Government resisted, the clause also allows for the referendum date to be moved. The Government remain committed, because we believe it to be achievable, to holding this referendum on 5 May next year. That view was set out in Mark Harper’s letter to Jenny Watson today. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said in the debate and I thank him for what was a positive and constructive suggestion on the way forward.
The clause also sets out the question that will appear on the ballot papers in English and Welsh. The noble and learned Lord asked why we are bringing forward a referendum on the alternative vote system. We are doing it because it has been agreed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as the coalition partners in government—I know that noble Lords do not like the idea, but that is what has happened—that it will form part of our coalition programme for government. The two parties in the coalition have differing views on the merits of the two voting systems, and those views will no doubt be played out in the campaign. The Government are clear that there should be a referendum on the issue and that it is for the electorate to make the choice between the systems. This is not a panic driven stitch-up, which is what I think either the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, or the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, called it.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, simply disagrees with any change to first past the post, so he is making a campaigning case—
Lord Strathclyde
I am sorry. The noble Lord is in favour of the system he dreamt up over dinner. It is the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who is opposed to any change from first past the post, thus making his campaigning points now, but he is rehearsing. All power to his elbow, but in a few weeks’ time I hope that he will be tramping the streets of Britain to make his case. He does not need to make them here. We have heard them and I understand them.
The noble and learned Lord also asked whether we are still in favour of combining the date. We are because 84 per cent of the UK electorate will already have a reason to go to the polls on 5 May. That strikes me as being a good thing. It is a benefit for the electorate already to be going to the polls. Ensuring that electors do not have to make another visit is more convenient and will save money.
Baroness Adams of Craigielea
Can the Leader of the House help me on a point? At the moment, my household falls into two different constituencies. For the Scottish Parliament we are in Paisley North, and for the Westminster Parliament the votes of my household fall into Paisley South. If, as I will be entitled to do, I go to the polls for the Scottish Parliament elections, I will vote in the north-east corner of Paisley, but if my household is going to vote in the Westminster election, they must vote in the south-west corner of Paisley. Where will my referendum vote be held?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, that is a great question because I find myself in exactly the same position. I am also in two different constituencies, one for Westminster, which I do not vote in, and another for the Scottish Parliamentary elections, where I will vote. So this is of as much interest to me as to the noble Baroness. I shall be demanding an answer very soon and I will make sure she knows what it is. But that does not cut across anything else because this is a unique situation for the noble Baroness and I—perhaps near unique because there may be one or two others as well.
Baroness Adams of Craigielea
It is not a unique situation to the noble Lord and I. It affects all the people in these constituencies. They are in exactly the same situation. Do they have to vote for the Scottish Parliament candidate and then race diagonally across the town to vote in the referendum if it is to be based on the Westminster constituency?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am assuming that they will still vote in the same polling booth, although there may be different registers. However, I have said that I will get a substantive answer for the noble Baroness, and I shall do so.
It is not unusual for different voters to be asked to vote on different issues at different levels on the same day. There has been a great deal of talk about this from noble Lords opposite, but it is not unusual and there is no reason why people should not be able to make up their minds. The question has been fully tested and cleared, not by the Government but by the Electoral Commission, and should enable the electorate to understand the choice they are being asked to make and to express their views. That is why there is no alternative; that is why we are saying, “Make it clear and easy for people to decide between one system and the other”, which will be duly explained.
Why this kind of AV? In no particular order, we chose it for the following good and legitimate reasons: this is the system for which the House of Commons voted; it voted on all the others and this is the one on which it could unite; it is the system on which the two parties of the coalition could unite and agree on; it maintains the constituency link; and it tends to return Members with more than half of the electors voting for them, although not on every occasion. These strike me as good reasons for why the coalition chose AV above all other systems.
However, the fundamental part of this clause is the referendum. We are removing choice from parliamentarians and we are giving it to the people of this country. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that; it is an extremely good thing to do. We do it very occasionally, but it is right that we should do so.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
The Leader has given a number of reasons why this AV system was chosen and has argued the case very powerfully. Why then did Nicholas Clegg call it a miserable little compromise?
Lord Strathclyde
My noble friend Lord McNally said, “Ask Nicholas Clegg”. I have no idea why he said that; I suppose it is what he thought at the time.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Earlier in the debate—I have sat through most of it, listening carefully—the Leader of the House said on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that there is collective responsibility, so surely he can explain what the Deputy Prime Minister meant.
Lord Strathclyde
I have not asked him; I have not got a line on it; and it is not a question that will trouble me much at all.
I have laid out the reasons why I believe the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Lord Grocott
I am grateful to the Leader of the House, who has been very patient and good humoured. However, perhaps I might ask him one final serious question while he is dealing with the referendum. He thinks the referendum is absolutely right and is the proper thing to do when you are making a constitutional change of this kind. Given that we were told that all the constitutional change Bills were part of a coherent whole—I repeat, 1832—he must be able to confirm now that should there be a proposal to abolish the House of Lords in its present form he would clearly want to see that referred to a referendum.
Lord Strathclyde
That is a good question. The committee on which the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition sits is discussing these issues. No final view has been taken but, when it is, no doubt it will be transmitted to the noble Lord—if not directly by her then when a Statement is in due course made to Parliament at some stage in the new year.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble Lord shows a consistent admiration for the importance of the referendum and allowing the people to decide, but he is not allowing the people to decide on whether or not they would prefer the supplementary vote system—which is a form of alternative vote—to first past the post. He has not yet answered that question and the public would be grateful to hear why that system of alternative vote has not been adopted.
Lord Strathclyde
We made two decisions. First, we made a decision about AV, and I have given the reasons why we thought that the system should be AV. The second decision, not to give a further choice, was because we wanted to have a very clear indication from the people of this country on whether they want to make a change to AV, which we feel is the best of the alternative systems, or to retain first past the post.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am sorry to press this, but the supplementary vote system is a form of AV that does not compel people—as the federal Australian AV system does—to vote for unsatisfactory candidates. What was the basis of decision to provide for the system described in Clause 9 rather than the supplementary vote system?
Lord Strathclyde
I have explained all the reasons, not the least of which is that the House of Commons united around this particular system, which I am very happy to support.
Lord Campbell-Savours
When these matters were being considered in the coalition talks, there must have been a point at which a decision was taken to proceed with AV. Were all three AV variants on the table? Were they all considered? Was there a discussion about each of the various systems? The proposal in the Bill derives from the coalition agreement, so there must have been, at some stage, some discussion about the detail. Did those discussions take place on the basis that I am referring to?
Lord Strathclyde
The discussions took place before we came into Government. They were part of the agreement on becoming the Government. I was not there and I was not part of the discussions. However, I cannot imagine that we decided on AV without having taken a view about the other systems and taken a decision that AV was the right one.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Let me put it more simply. In the Government’s view, why is the system in Clause 9 better than the supplementary vote system? If the noble Lord could explain that, the public would have some understanding of why we have the Clause 9 system. That is what I am getting at.
Lord Strathclyde
In a series of votes in the House of Commons, Members of the other place united behind this system and decided to put it forward to this House.
Lord Tyler
Can my noble friend tell the House whether the Government took cognisance of the fact that the previous Government, having obviously gone through a very similar thought process, decided on precisely this form of AV for the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act and then repeated the proposal in the general election?
Lord Campbell-Savours
As the noble Lord is aware, it was a Conservative Member of Parliament, Mr Christopher Chope, who moved what was in effect the supplementary vote amendment in the House of Commons. He had support from Members on his own Benches, but it is a pity that he did not drive them into the Division Lobbies.
Lord Strathclyde
My noble friend Lord Tyler makes a great point. Six months ago, that was the view of the Labour Party. That is the view that we have taken as well, for the reasons that I laid out. The system that we propose gives the widest possible choice to voters. That is why it is a good idea.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Should I understand from the warm embrace that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has given to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that the Government are proceeding with the system because we did so?
Lord Strathclyde
Not just today, but on the last time that we met—and, I expect, the time before that—I laid out the reasons why we chose AV. The noble and learned Lord may not like it, but that is what we said. There is very little left to say
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The one thing, I am afraid, that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, cannot get away with is that he has never laid out the reasons why the Government have favoured the alternative vote system proposed in Clause 9 over the supplementary vote system. The paucity of his arguments was demonstrated, if I may say so, by his saying, “We are doing it because the Commons voted for it”.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I give an undertaking that, although Amendment 34 is relevant and important, it has nothing to do with the type of voting system that I favour. However, I am very happy to be flexible on that, if that is the wish of my colleagues.
My aim is to achieve something basic for all Members of this House by bringing it about that we have the right to vote in general elections. At first sight, the Bill is not be the right Bill for that, except that, if the Bill provided that we as Members of this House were entitled to vote in a referendum that will determine the system of voting in elections, we should also have the right to vote in any subsequent general election.
We have just had a good debate, in which there were legitimate arguments on all sides. There is no question that there is no legitimate argument against giving us the right to vote—that is crystal clear. The only people who are against that are those who say things such as, “Well, we’ve never done it before, so why should we start now?” or “Oh, it’s not important enough”.
In the debate that we have just had, it was clear that Members of this House are passionately interested in voting systems and the way that people may vote. There is a high level of interest. It is then a small step indeed to say, “Given that level of interest, shouldn’t we be able to cast a vote in general elections?”. It seems such a modest thing to ask for. I am quite sure that, whatever answer I get, everyone in this House would agree that that is the right thing to do.
I have said that the Bill is not the right vehicle to achieve such a change, but a Bill dealing with such a referendum is the first and best occasion that I have had since the election to put forward my suggestion. I give an undertaking to the noble Lord the Leader of the House that, if the Government do not feel able to accept the approach in Amendment 34, there will be other occasions. Although I am reluctant to make a nuisance of myself by going on about a particular issue, I undertake that I will do so—not today, but on a future occasion—when there is a Bill that is absolutely right for such a change. However, why do the Government not pre-empt me by bringing about a change that is self-evidently right?
I understand that, before long, the Government will bring forward their proposals to give prisoners the right to vote—there is a later amendment on that—so we will be the only inmates left who are not allowed to vote. It is even more absurd that prisoners in jail will be given the right to vote in general elections, in which we may not vote. Even the general public would agree that that is an anomaly. If we had a referendum on that subject, we would win hands down.
I do not want to go on at great length—it is fairly late—but I say to the noble Lord the Leader of the House that I genuinely feel deeply about this. Although people say to me that I did not have to accept the privilege of being a Member of this House, the fact is that I did so. I am delighted that I am here, but every time that there is a general election I feel a sense of pain that I am not able to take part in a process after I have canvassed, knocked on doors and done my best to further the democratic process.
To those individuals who say that we have so much influence here that we do not need the right to vote, I say that there is a world of difference between influencing legislation as it goes through the House and playing a part in deciding who will be the Government of this country. That is why we have a vote in general elections for most people. It is because at the moment we are not able to influence any Government when there is a general election that I feel that there should be a change—it is quite wrong.
I agree that there are not going to be demonstrations in Parliament Square supporting my position. I accept that, because I am honest and realistic about it. That does not mean, however, that there is not an important point of principle here. I challenge the noble Lord the Leader of the House or the noble Lord, Lord McNally—whoever is going to answer this debate—to give me any good reason why my amendment should not be accepted. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I will speak only very briefly on this. Being one of the newest Members of this House, I have yet to have a general election where I have not been able to vote. I have to say that I am very grateful to the new coalition Government for having announced some more Peers because, shortly, I will not be one of the newest Members of the House, which I look forward to greatly.
The question that I pose is slightly less about voting in general elections than about giving Peers the vote in the referendum. Two groups cannot vote in general elections: Members of this House and European Union citizens from other member states, who can vote in our local and European elections. I am particularly interested to know why one group of people who are excluded from parliamentary votes have been given the right to vote in the referendum, whereas another group—those European citizens who appear on our electoral register—have not been given the right to vote in the referendum.
Obviously there are some Members of this House who are great experts on AV and other systems. I am not. I am an anorak on other things but, your Lordships will be pleased to know, not on this one. The people who really understand different electoral systems, however, are European citizens living in our country and voting in our European and local government elections, who have enormous experience of systems from their own countries. If ever there was a well informed group to vote on what system would work here, it would be them. The question that I hope may be answered is why one group of excluded voters was singled out to vote in the referendum but not the other group.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I am a bit troubled by the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, because I am a passionate believer in an appointed House. The passion with which I believe in an appointed House will become more apparent as the Lords reform Bill finds its way through this Chamber. One thing that worries me about the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is that Members of the other place have a vote in general elections but also stand for election in those general elections. If Members of this House were to press to have the vote in general elections, we would make it more likely that others would suggest that we should therefore stand for election here as well. There is a correlation between standing for election and having the vote. It is a dangerous business to play with the idea of Peers in this House having the vote, when many of us will be trying to resist the whole idea that this should become an elected Chamber. That is one of the reasons why I totally oppose the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
How much I admire the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, for his courage at every stage of this Bill. This is obviously not an appropriate Bill to make a change in relation to whether Members of this House should vote, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, accepts. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs is right, however, to put the amendment down. Under this Bill, Peers will have the right to vote in the referendum on what the voting system should be and yet, once they have played their part in deciding what the voting system should be, they have no right to vote using that voting system. This is an opportunity for a short debate as to what the right course in relation to Lords voting is.
It is obvious, historically, why the Lords cannot vote in Commons elections. The nature of Parliament was that the Commons were elected because they were representative. We were not representative. The whole lot of us turned up in the upper House. Therefore, there was no need for any elections. The whole lot of us still turn up in the House, except for the hereditary Peers, who vote for hereditary representatives. Does that mean, therefore, that we do not need to have a vote in relation to the Commons? The answer is no, because the Lords no longer select the Government. The Government are selected exclusively by the Commons. We have influence in relation to Bills. We have a say in what happens in relation to policy. However, it is only a say. We do not vote in relation to the body that selects the Government.
Therefore, once the prisoner issue is dealt with, we, and we alone, are the only group in the country that has no say in selecting the Government of the day. The fact that we do not have the vote is an historical anomaly. There are 700 or 800 of us; no doubt the figure would go up to about 2,000 if the coalition had its way. Therefore, the number suffering the effects of this anomaly will increase, but it is an anomaly that no longer has constitutional justification. In those circumstances, one is obviously looking not for agreement from the Government that this matter should be dealt with in this Bill, but simply for the Government’s view on the matter. I do not expect any time to be allocated to this matter in any legislative programme, but if the Government were to express the view that it needed to be dealt with at an appropriate time, that would have a very significant effect on the processing of the issue.
I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, that if we have the vote people will want us to be elected. The public will not think that because we can vote we should be elected. The question of whether we should be elected depends very much on the quality of what we do and the extent to which we persuade the public either that we should go on as we are or that there is a need for change. It is an important issue and one that will not get an airing in this House except on Bills such as this.
I return to the point that I started with. We are rightly accepted as participants in the decision-making process of whether there should be a change in the system. We are accepted as participants in that process because there is no basis on which it could be said that we should be excluded from that. That is the view that the Government have taken. We are included in Clause 2 as people entitled to vote in the referendum. The Government think that it is wrong that we should be excluded from that. There must be a basis on which the Government have come to that conclusion. I support that conclusion, because the obvious reason for saying that we should be included in the process by which a voting system change should be effected—if it is to be effected—is that there is no democratic reason why we should not be allowed to be included. It is wrong to say that this is a matter for other people; everybody accepts that it is a matter for us. It is an important issue. It is like a whole range of anomalies that you can say do not really cause any problems. However, how you put the constitution together and the extent to which there are consistencies in the constitution are very important. A justification for Peers not being entitled to vote is now required in a constitutional sense. If there is not one, the right course for a Government who are prepared to follow the logic of their constitutional position is to say—
Lord Grocott
Does my noble and learned friend acknowledge that it is an enormous privilege—obviously, it is not a unique privilege, but it is given only to the 800 or so Peers—to take part for life in the determination of the Bills that go through one of the two Houses? If you have that near unique influence on the legislative process, I do not think that it is too much to ask that you should not then have a clear determining role in deciding who the Members of the other House should be. It is rough justice but it seems to me a kind of justice. You forfeit that voting right because of the advantage that you have over all your fellow citizens of being able to take part in debates and influence the progress of legislation.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I disagree with what my noble friend Lord Grocott says for two reasons. First, there are other people who have very important roles in relation to what happens to policy legislation. Even in the period of my noble friend’s pomp, I suspect that the Cabinet Secretary was more important than he was, but nobody ever suggested that he should be deprived of his vote. The Chief Justice is more important than almost everybody in the country in determining what legislation means, but nobody suggests—
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Does the noble and learned Lord accept that the Cabinet Secretary would not have had any vote on legislation?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The Cabinet Secretary would not have had any vote on legislation, but he might have had an even more important influence, I respectfully suggest, on legislation than people voting here would. What is more, as we can see from the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, he could reasonably have expected to come here to legislate at the end of it. There are lots of important people in the state and a lot of people with privileges, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, says. However, I respectfully suggest that the key point is that this is a democracy and the Government are chosen not from the Lords but from the Commons. The key question is: why are we excluded from being democratic participants in choosing the Government? The essence of democracy is that it is not just a process; it also represents values. The critical value that democracy represents is that we are all equal in the choice of the Government. Why are we not equal in that respect? I do not think, with respect, that either the answer that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, gives—“They will elect us next”—or the answer that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, gives, which is, “Well, we are jolly privileged”, is an answer to that essential democratic argument. I would be interested to hear what the Leader of the House has to say.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I would be equally interested in what the Deputy Leader of the House has to say.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I have been stripped and ready for action for three days. As the Leader of the House has pointed out, he and I are joined at the hip on this Bill. However, in that spirit of co-operation, he said, “Tom, you take Clause 2 and I’ll take Clause 1”. That seemed fine at about 7 pm on the first day of this debate, when I thought that I would be coming on straight after the dinner hour. Three days later, I come on with three minutes to go.
This has been an excellent mini-debate and I suggest that those who are interested in it should read the speech given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. No wonder he was facing the other way to deliver it; he was giving us both sides of the argument. It is very good that he should do so.
I fully respect the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I know that he has campaigned on this and that he feels strongly about it. I hope, given what he has said, that perhaps we will get one of the opposition days to debate the issue, or perhaps a Question for Short Debate. The issue is worth debating and I look forward to him carrying on his campaign. The problem is, as he himself acknowledged and, indeed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, acknowledged, that this is not the place for it. It is a good political ploy to use a Bill to hang a campaign on and to get the issue raised and I fully respect the noble Lord for doing so. However, we are concerned specifically with who should vote in the referendum on the parliamentary voting system. Basing the franchise for the referendum on that for the Westminster general election seemed the most sensible thing to do. Yes, we have made a concession in that we have put alongside that noble Lords, who are entitled to vote in other elections. The Government thought that that was a fair and logical approach. I suspect that, if we had not included noble Lords, there would have been an amendment to include them.
Lord Rooker
Does the noble Lord genuinely mean that? I regret losing my vote, but I agree more with the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Hamilton, than with the Front Bench. Why make the concession? If you are going to keep the Bill narrow, clean and tidy, whereby it relates purely to the electoral system for the other place, we are entitled to scrutinise the Bill; so there is no argument about that. There is no justification for giving Members of this place a role in choosing the voting system for the other place. If you are logical about it and you want to keep the Bill clean and simple, why make that concession in the first place?
Lord McNally
It is because we judge that to be a fair and logical approach. As I said, whichever way we had done it, amendments would have been tabled. Perhaps the noble Lord wants to table an amendment for Report to take out Peers’ votes? See how that goes.
Lord Rooker
My name is not on the other amendment. This amendment is to remove part of Clause 2. I shall leave it now; it is time enough.
Lord McNally
There will be other times. Now is not the right place for this debate. I understand why the issue has been raised, but I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will not press his amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I was wondering whether the noble Lord was going to respond to my question on why, having put one excluded group into the referendum, the Government did not include citizens of other European Union countries.
Lord McNally
It is because I was intending to reply to Amendment 36A, which is in a later group, and deals particularly with that point. When we all return—I hope including the noble Baroness—we can have that debate.
Lord Dubs
I shall respond only briefly. First, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, that I have heard many arguments against what I have proposed, but I have never heard that one before. It characterises a feature of this House—the “thin end of the wedge” argument that whatever change one brings about, it will lead to other undesirable changes. Surely to goodness, it is possible for us individually to troop off to a polling station and cast a vote, without opening all sorts of other floodgates. I would simply be doing what in every election I encourage a lot of people to do, which is to go and vote. In my case, I of course urge them to vote Labour. I watch them go into the polling station knowing that I cannot do so, if it happens to be a general election. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, he made a good effort at the thin end of the wedge, but I do not think that that is a good argument.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, did not give any hint that he agreed with me. In his heart of hearts, of course he does. He is too sensible a person not to agree with me. In his heart of hearts—
Lord McNally
I encouraged the noble Lord keep on with his campaign. As they say where I come from, a nod is as good as a wink.
Lord Dubs
I am really grateful, because I was about to say, when the noble Lord said that an issue is worth debating, that that left it in the realms of Questions for Short Debate, or whatever. I take a lot of comfort from what he has just said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 34 withdrawn.