Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I certainly agree that it would be self-defeating if a reformed House of Lords tried in any way to mimic the House of Commons. Most bicameral systems around the world manage a clear division of labour between one Chamber and another. That is why the devil is in the detail—we must consider how long the terms are for any elected Members of a reformed House of Lords and in what manner they are elected in order to create a clear division of labour between the two Chambers.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman’s proposals on Lords reform refer in any shape or form to the historic convention on collective responsibility? I note that the new ministerial code of conduct refers to collective responsibility in exactly the same words as the old ministerial code of conduct, namely by saying that all Ministers must adopt the same position in public, but now contains the extraordinary new phrase,
“save where it is expressly set aside”.
There is an extraordinary rumour that the Deputy Prime Minister is thinking of not voting with the Government later today. Surely that cannot be right. Surely he is man enough to stand up and sign up to what he voted for in the general election—or at least to sign up to what he voted for in the coalition agreement. Otherwise, nobody will be able to trust a word he says again.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs Laing
I appreciate that line from Shakespeare, too.
The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) is correct. There is some difficulty with the arithmetic threshold set out in the amendment, but there is also a matter of principle, and on this point I will argue with myself—or rather I will, as an individual, disagree with the relevant part of the Select Committee report. I think the correct democratic process is to consult the House as a whole, not merely the leaders of particular parties in the House. There is then a problem in defining how the democratic process should work when the House is considering consulting the leaders of political parties. If there was a party that had only one Member, one leader and a very small proportion of the vote, it would be ignored and that does not quite work.
Mr Straw
We need to speak about possibilities in the real world. The only example in recent times that I can think of when a Prime Minister has wanted to call an election of choice, without any necessity due to his parliamentary majority, is that of Edward Heath in January 1974. There was no way he would have got a two-thirds majority in favour of a Dissolution. In my view, the country as a whole and the Conservative party would have been saved a great deal if there had not been an early Dissolution at that point. I simply say that if we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, which is a good idea but will have consequences, we must ensure that a Government can get booted out only if a motion of no confidence is passed.
Chris Bryant
Is there not one other very significant difference between the drafting of the Scotland Act 1998 and of this Bill? In Scotland, the process involves considerable consultation with wider civic society and all the political parties, because it was concluded that the electoral system should virtually guarantee that one political party would never enjoy a majority. That is very different from the situation here.
Mr Shepherd
I am getting increasingly impatient in one sense, but on the distinction between what is a confidence motion and what is not, I put this proposition to the Committee. If the Government lose the Budget, that is it. My understanding of our constitution is that that would be the end of the Government.
Chris Bryant
It is a delight to see the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) back in her seat. She introduced a new concept of votes of no consequence. On the Opposition Benches, it often feels as though every vote is one of no consequence, but we hope that with more support in the coming days, we will manage to turn that around.
The hon. Lady said one important thing—[Interruption.] She has doubtless said many important things, as the Minister rightly reminds me. In particular, she said that she disagrees with the amendment she tabled, which was interesting. She also referred to the fact that her Committee had had virtually no time to do what she called pre-legislative scrutiny. In fact, I suggest that a far more sensible procedure for engaging in all legislation, and particularly that on constitutional reform, is to publish the Bill in draft, send it to a Joint Committee of both Houses and provide an opportunity for evidence to be taken, and at the end of that process it can be brought to the House. That is not what has happened in this case. She and others referred to the coalition as something of a matrimony, but the Book of Common Prayer states that holy matrimony should not be enterprised or entered into
“unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly or to satisfy…carnal lusts.”
My fear is that this part of the Bill has been entered into unadvisedly, wantonly and to satisfy the lusts of the coalition partners who want to ensure that they remain in power for as long as possible.
The process has been wrong, and I say gently to the Minister that in our debates last week he referred at the last minute to consultation that he was going to engage in with the devolved Administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I understand that he has written to one Member of the House about that, but he has not written to me, and he has not written to any other hon. Members who were involved in the Committee stage, so I hope that he will take this opportunity to assure us that he will write to us immediately.
Mr Harper
Frankly, the point of order that the hon. Gentleman raised last week was nonsense. He did not give me notice of it, so I was unable to respond. I listened carefully to last week’s debate and responded to it. I then made an announcement of Government policy in this House at the Dispatch Box, which I thought was the usual way of conducting business.
The following day, I wrote to the leaders of parties in each of the devolved Assemblies, as I said I would. I did not put anything in those letters that I had not announced in the debate. I also wrote to the shadow Justice Secretary, who leads on political and constitutional reform for the Opposition, to keep him properly informed. I placed copies of all those letters in the Library.
The Chairman
Order. We should not be rehashing previous points of order. We should be dealing with the amendment. I am sure that Mr Bryant wishes to do so.
Chris Bryant
Yes, indeed. This is just about the process and the fact that it has been the convention in every Committee stage in which I have been involved for Ministers to write to all members of the Committee, and, when the Committee is sitting on the Floor of the House, to all those who have taken part in the debate.
My point is that clause 2 has no electoral mandate. Clause 1 has some degree of mandate, in that we had proposed in our manifesto that there should be fixed-term Parliaments, and the Liberal Democrats had made a similar proposal. I do not believe that there is a mandate for a five-year fixed-term Parliament, as both political parties had previously said that they were in favour of four-year fixed-term Parliaments. Clause 2 has absolutely no mandate from the electorate. Indeed, the proposals in it run directly counter to those in the Conservative manifesto, and to what the Prime Minister said as Leader of the Opposition in relation to the reform of the power of Dissolution. He said that he would introduce legislation to ensure that, should there be a change of Prime Minister as a result of the party in power changing its leader, there would be a general election within six months, but that is not the proposal that we have before us today.
Chris Bryant
Of course I will give way to the lion of the right, as I believe he is now known.
Mr Jenkin
Lion, maybe. I should like to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that the parliamentary Conservative party gave no mandate to the leadership of our party for a fixed-term arrangement of any description. The parliamentary party was consulted about whether there should be a coalition, and whether there should be a commitment to a referendum on the alternative vote, but the question of a fixed-term Parliament was never mentioned. Nobody knew anything about it until it appeared in the coalition agreement.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is true not only of his party but of the Liberal Democrats, who said that they were in favour of a fixed-term Parliament although there was no reference in their election material or manifesto, or in any of the speeches made by the now Deputy Prime Minister, to any provisions for determining when an election might be held or for introducing a super-majority. When their lordships consider this legislation, it is important that they bear in mind the fact that the conventions relating to matters that are adumbrated in a general election manifesto simply do not apply in this case. There is absolutely no electoral mandate for this provision.
The aetiology of clause 2 is pretty straightforward. It comes from the coalition agreement. I know that the hon. Member for Epping Forest is keen, for her own reasons of propriety, to stick to voting for proposals that are in the coalition agreement. However, she has complete freedom in relation to today’s amendments, because these provisions are not mentioned in the agreement. It states:
“We will establish five-year fixed-term Parliaments. We will put a binding motion before the House of Commons stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, we will legislate to make provision for fixed-term Parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”
I completely agree with the articles that were then written by several Members, the most impressive of which was probably that by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and published in The Daily Telegraph. In it, he stated:
“The requirement for a 55 per cent majority to dissolve parliament, and thereby dismiss a government, dramatically reduces the ability of Parliament to hold the executive to account.”
If that was true of a 55% requirement, it is even more true of a 67% requirement. Moreover, that requirement would involve 67% of not only those who voted but of all the seats in the House, even those that were vacant at the time and also, presumably, those of the Deputy Speakers and the Speaker, who would presumably not be allowed to vote. Those seats would therefore automatically be included with those who had voted against holding an early general election.
There is absolutely no mandate for the provisions in clause 2. I believe that it will entrench the powers of the Executive, rather than releasing their grip on Parliament. An important point has been made by several hon. Members, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Home Secretary—I could list all his jobs as he has held almost every job in the Government apart from Prime Minister; perhaps that will come one day. They pointed out that the clause introduces a new super-majority, which is alien to the processes of this House. There has never been a super-majority provision. The provision is introduced by statute rather than through the Standing Orders, so again it is the Executive forcing their will on the House rather than the House taking this forward.
Mr MacNeil
Philosophically, this change has come about because of the practice of Prime Ministers choosing to go to the country at a moment that suits them and their political party rather than the country or anybody else. Margaret Thatcher did this and plenty of other Prime Ministers have done it. How does the hon. Gentleman square the circle of getting away from that rotten practice and moving towards a fairer and more equitable practice?
Chris Bryant
The most important element of the Bill as a whole is the introduction of a fixed term. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I would prefer a four-year period, but it is five years in the Bill. The presumption should be in favour of a fixed term. It is absolutely right that the Prime Minister should no longer have the power to dissolve Parliament and that the Dissolution should rest solely with Parliament rather than with the Prime Minister. To achieve such a handing over of power, we also have to change the prerogative power to prorogue Parliament. Otherwise, it would be perfectly simple for a Prime Minister who wanted to ensure an early general election—for whatever set of reasons—to bypass the two thirds majority required in subsection (1), to engineer a vote of no confidence and then to prorogue Parliament immediately so that no vote of confidence in another Government could be called.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the workings of this place, whereby a Prime Minister could simply use his Whips to whip his party and secure a simple majority. How is that circle to be squared? We could say that in one sense Parliament has the power, but in another sense it does not if the Prime Minister can use his Whips to dragoon his parliamentary party into having an election. [Interruption.]
Chris Bryant
The Deputy Leader of the House is chuntering away. I think he is trying to talk to you, Mr Hoyle, because he keeps on saying that I am out of order and that I am not speaking to the right part of the clause. Perhaps he could have his conversation with you privately.
The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is absolutely right in one sense. We have to achieve a balancing act. This House needs to exert its power through its majority to hold the Government to account and, if necessary, to sack the Government. In most circumstances, that has happened when a political party has splintered or when a leader of a party has proved unable to control his or her troops—his, in most cases—through the Division Lobbies. We have seen that happen with the Irish Home Rule Bill and with the Budget at different times, leading to a collapse of confidence in the Government on the Government side and the subsequent fall of that Government. I think that we should still stick with that process.
In case hon. Members feel that in recent times motions of no confidence—and particularly successful motions of no confidence—have been pretty rare, it is worth pointing out that we should look at a longer period of history than just the last few years if we are to set out constitutional change that will stand the test of time. We have no way of knowing what will happen to the political parties, as presently constituted, in five, 10, 15 or 20 years’ time.
Looking back over the last 150 or so years, we find that no confidence motions have been used quite regularly and have frequently led to the collapse of Governments. Lord North’s Government, for example, fell in 1782. There was also a sustained period in which no confidence motions were common from 1885 onwards; indeed, there were two such motions in 1886, when first Lord Salisbury’s Government and then Gladstone’s Government fell again on the issue of Irish home rule, which divided the Liberal party—
The Chairman
Order. I am sure that the Committee, like me, welcomes the history lesson, but we must stick to the amendments, from which we are drifting away. The hon. Gentleman may feel that he is in order, but he is not. I would like him to come back to order, and it would also be helpful if he faced the Chair.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful, Mr Hoyle. I will address myself to you more directly. The point I am trying to make is that clause 2 deals with motions of no confidence and early elections and these have been a sustained part of what we have put up with. I am not sure whether you are going to allow a clause 2 stand part debate later. I note that you are saying no, but I hope it will be possible to allow a degree of latitude so that we can consider all the elements of the clause.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) observed that Governments had fallen by virtue of their Budgets’ being opposed. One of my arguments is that the whole concept of a no confidence motion is excluded from the Bill. It is not clear what counts as a no confidence motion; nor is it clear, in the part of the Bill that we are currently considering, what counts as a motion calling for an early general election.
Mr Shepherd
Might that lack of clarity be a mark of the wisdom of past generations? They knew when it had happened that a Government were not sustainable, and they knew when it had not happened. The mood of the House in relation to that of the country was an open question.
Chris Bryant
I am not sure that that is true. It depended on the Crown—that is, the Government or Executive—retaining the power to dissolve Parliament. I do not think that a measure that was considered to be a motion of no confidence in 1866—namely,
“to leave out the words ‘clear yearly’ and put ‘rateable’ instead thereof”—
would be considered to be one today, and I therefore think that it would be inappropriate for that power to remain.
The Chairman
Order. The next set of amendments deals with no confidence motions. I think that the hon. Gentleman is in danger of jumping ahead, and I am sure that he does not want to do that.
Grahame M. Morris
I am concerned less about hon. Members’ definition of a confidence issue than about whether that definition would be acceptable to the court if a certificate were challenged. However, I accept that that is the subject of a later clause.
Chris Bryant
We will undoubtedly discuss the Speaker’s certificate when we deal with later amendments.
The Government have relied for their provision on calling a general election on the fact that there are similar provisions in the Scotland Act 1998. It is true that that Act provides for an early general election when, and only when, there is a super-majority among those voting. However, as I tried to explain to my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, the two measures are completely different. The presumption in the Scotland Act was that it would be virtually impossible for any one political party ever to have a majority in the Scottish Parliament. Incidentally, the Act also contains a provision that is entirely different from the provision in clause 1: it provides that the date of the next general election, if there is one in Scotland, will not be changed at all.
Moreover, the provisions in the Scotland Act mean that if there is no First Minister—which is the equivalent of no one being able to gain a motion of confidence on a simple majority—a general election must follow in any event. That, in my view, clearly invalidates the super-majority process, which I think will be used very rarely in the Scottish Parliament.
The problem with the provision in clause 2 relating to a super-majority is that either it is profoundly dangerous because it removes Parliament’s power to hold the Government to account, and to be able to sack the Government or the Prime Minister, or it is otiose, because a Prime Minister who wanted to ensure an early general election at a time of his or her own choosing would simply engineer a motion of no confidence or, for that matter—as there is no determinant for what counts as a motion of no confidence—table a motion of confidence in which the Government then chose not to vote. The Opposition would almost certainly vote against the motion of confidence, and an early general election would follow.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Scotland. An election called by the Scottish Parliament during the period of that Parliament would not necessarily reset the clock. An election would still take place, say, a year or two years later. I understand that here the clock would be reset. There is clearly an incentive to go to the country at different points which does not exist in Scotland.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for echoing a point that I made three minutes ago. I still agree with the point that I made three minutes ago, and I now agree with the hon. Gentleman, which is great. We are gathering support in the debate, which is very exciting. I hope that he will support the same amendments as me.
My problem with amendment 33 is that it places all the power in the hands of the party leaders. That is a profound problem, as I hope we are moving into a period when Parliament finds more opportunities to take its destiny into its own hands. I hope various measures that have already been introduced will help in that, and will revitalise the role of Back Benchers and therefore make it possible for not everything to be decided by the party leaders. That is an important principle, and it is why we do not support the amendment—although I realise that the hon. Member for Epping Forest will not press it to a Division in any case.
Chris Bryant
I wonder whether I can carry the hon. Lady a little further into even greater acts of agreement. Bearing in mind the stricture she has set herself of not opposing anything that is in the coalition agreement, she should feel free to support us in respect of later amendments on the two-thirds majority, unless she has found some other reason not to do so.
We have tabled one amendment to clause 2: amendment 21. The clause provides for the calling of an early general election, but it does not specify what “early” means in that context. It does not state whether the motion that could be moved in the House would say, for instance, “This House calls for a general election in the autumn of next year,” and if so whether that means the general election would be held next autumn or prior to that, as current legislation still allows for the precise date of a general election to be set by royal proclamation, which would obviously be on the basis of advice from the Privy Council, and therefore would in practice come from the Prime Minister.
Therefore, the Bill as currently drafted lacks clarity in this respect. That is why we have suggested that the clause should refer to an “immediate” rather than an “early” general election. That fits with amendments we have tabled to other provisions saying the power to determine the precise date of the general election should not be left to the Prime Minister, and that instead the date should be set.
Chris Bryant
In a moment.
Once the Speaker’s certificate has been certified or provided, the general election should be held on a specified date as provided for in legislation, rather than one decided elsewhere.
Mr MacNeil
Will the hon. Gentleman define precisely what he means by “immediate” in this context?
Chris Bryant
Again, the hon. Gentleman is catching up with me; I explained that in my last sentence, but he had already sought to intervene. What I was trying to say was that under amendments we have tabled to other parts of the Bill, the election would take place on the sixth Thursday after the day on which the Speaker had issued the certificate, whereas the clause states that the general election will be held on the date provided for by royal proclamation—I presume under the Great Seal—as advised by the Privy Council, and therefore, effectively, determined by the Prime Minister. I presume those measures have been put in place so as to stick with the current timetable for general elections, which is six days after Dissolution for the close of nominations and 11 days after that for the day of poll, but perhaps the Minister will confirm whether that is the case. If we are putting other provisions on to the statute book, there is no reason why we should not be able to provide in statute the precise day on which the general election would take place. That is my definition of “immediate”.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was right in saying that he did not consult the Opposition in tabling his amendment. I have to confess that he got to the Table Office about 20 minutes before we did, so I am afraid that on this occasion we have had to row in behind him. Whereas we disagree on many issues, on this issue we simply agree. Either the provision of a super-majority for the calling of an early general election is dangerous or, like Z, it is the unnecessary letter—it is otiose and is not necessary in legislation. The hon. Gentleman’s amendment would remove the super-majority. It would return us almost exactly to the provisions of the South African constitution and allow for an early election on the basis of a simple majority, even though South Africa has fixed-term Parliaments, which have been pretty much adhered to since 1994.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend think that such arrangements make things more transparent to the public? Super-majorities are very opaque and are not understandable in these matters, whereas what he is arguing for is much more transparent and understandable, and much better.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that for there to be a super-majority in this Parliament, 434 votes in favour would be required, although that is before the Bill currently before the other place, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, comes into operation in an unamended form. We are talking about 434 out of the 650 seats at the moment. As I have said, the arrangement leaves some things completely uncertain; I presume that the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers would not be allowed to vote.
That brings us to another interesting point, which is that, as you will know, Mr Hoyle, under the Standing Orders and the custom of this House, the Speaker and the Chair do not vote unless there is an equality of votes. That is different from the arrangement in the other House, where the Speaker or the Chair of the Committee is able to vote twice. The commonly accepted provision, as stated in “Erskine May”, has then been as follows for the Speaker:
“it is usual for him, when practicable, to vote in such a manner as not to make the decision of the House final”.
In a vote such as I am describing, there would not have been equality of votes, but if one side had got to 433 seats, would the Speaker be allowed to vote or not? This is slightly complicated when there are 650 seats, but if the number is reduced to 600, as suggested in the Government’s proposals in the other Bill, 400 seats would be the mark that we would have to reach. If the vote is on a knife-edge, would the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, or the Chair of the Committee, be allowed to vote on such a measure? Importantly, this is not just about the Speaker. If the vote were on a Budget and if we took the advice of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills that in some situations a Budget decision or a financial decision would be considered a motion of no confidence, the provision would relate not to the Speaker, but to the Chairman of Ways and Means or one of the other Committee Chairmen, who would be chairing.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, many difficult elements are involved in operating a super-majority. The biggest problem arises where the Government or the Opposition table a motion seeking to get to that figure and an early general election, and obtain more than half the seats in the House but do not reach the two-thirds majority. In what state would that leave the Government? Would a motion of no confidence immediately have to be tabled for us then to be able to proceed to the other measures? Or would that original motion, by its very nature, have been considered a motion of no confidence, because the Government declared it to be a matter on which winning the vote was an issue of confidence? Again, this provision is either a dangerous or entirely unnecessary element.
Chris Bryant
I am enthusiastically in favour of having a vote on amendment 4, because it goes to the nub of the issue; in large measure, it deals with the only issue of significance in this group of amendments.
Chris Bryant
In case there were any doubt about it, I shall join the hon. Gentleman in the Division Lobby unless the Whips manage to get to him, which is very unlikely. They rarely manage to get to him—he is an undiscovered country beyond whose bourn no Whip has ever returned, since we are doing “Hamlet” this afternoon.
The Chairman
Order. It may help the hon. Gentleman to know that the Chair will decide on which amendments the Committee may vote.
Chris Bryant
Of course, but I will not look for you to join us in the Division Lobby, Mr Hoyle.
The Government might say in their charming, elegant and smooth way that this is a hypothetical situation because the honest truth is that in all normal circumstances no Government and no Prime Minister would ever choose to circumvent the power of the House on the two thirds majority that would be needed to call an early general election by enforcing a motion of no confidence. I echo the words of the Clerk of the House in a memorandum on the Bill to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform: there may be little risk of an accident if one drives up the motorway on the wrong side of the road at 4 o’clock in the morning, but the impact if there were an accident is likely to be very serious, and so although the risk of a dispute about a vote to dissolve Parliament being argued out in the courts might be small if it were to happen, its impact politically and constitutionally would be very great. That is why I say to the Government that although I understand how they have ended up with this legislation—it is not that I detest every element of it, although I dislike the process and I dislike the use of the period of five years instead of four and so on—and although I think there are elements of the clause that are right and proper, I think that they have not thought through the full possible consequences of the legislation.
I can easily foresee a time when a Prime Minister who is desperate to have a general election because of war, an immense financial collapse or something else that he thought was of absolute centrality to the Government that he—
Chris Bryant
Or she. I thought I just heard my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) speaking in my ear.
If that Prime Minister felt that it was essential in the interests of the nation that there should be an early general election, the Government would be prepared to bypass and use every trick in the book to secure an early election. They might well have this Bill in their back pocket as a means of achieving that. So although this Government were supposedly trying to release the grip of the Executive, they would have enhanced it.
I want to reaffirm our commitment to fixed-term Parliaments. That means that we have to lay down in statute that it is for the House, not the Prime Minister, to dissolve Parliament. It should also be for the House to decide the precise date of the general election, which should be in statute, and we should have only one process of calling an early general election. We must be clear that the Government need always retain the confidence of the House of Commons and that should be written in statute now.
For most of the 20th century, we have had very few hung Parliaments, but I suspect that there might well be more in future. We need to ensure that our provisions will stand the test of time rather than simply being drawn up to appease the coalition agreement.
Mr Shepherd
Mr Hoyle, I have a point of inquiry following your response to the Opposition’s Front-Bench spokesman, which is about the stand part debate. As the amendments are theories in concatenation, it is difficult to address an amendment in isolation without reference to a wider context.
Mark Durkan
The hon. Gentleman raises some wider questions, and you, Mr Hoyle, have said that the next group of amendments deals with confidence, but this debate has strayed well on to that ground and conflated the two issues of whether the House, by a weighted majority, calls for an early election or whether it passes a motion of no confidence in the Government.
In 1994, the Government changed in the Dail. The Labour party left its coalition with Fianna Fail, supported a motion of no confidence in the then Taoiseach and reappeared in a new coalition with Fine Gael and the then Democratic Left. In that situation, as in the Bill before us, provision has been made for a Government to change—a new Government to be constituted—in the lifetime of a Parliament, and in 1994 the people of Ireland settled quite happily for that.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend does not like my “immediate” provision, but I shall suggest one reason why he is wrong. The Bill, if unamended, means that Her Majesty by royal proclamation under the Great Seal, after conferring presumably with the Privy Council, determines the date of the general election, but that in essence is down to the Prime Minister. Surely, if the whole point is to take that power away from the Crown and to place it here in Parliament, there should be provision for an “immediate” general election.
Mark Durkan
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about trying to remove powers from the Prime Minister, but I am not sure that all the amendments that he supports would do that. I think that, in a fairly effective way, the powers would remain pretty heavily with the Executive.
I am not fully persuaded of the case for the amendment. I fully accept the argument that it would bring some clarity and put some control in the hands of the House. However, there could well be good, logical reasons for having an election that occurred to people at the time, possibly well in advance of a due election date. There could be political difficulties in one of the devolved regions that are leading to elections there, or particular market issues, or all sorts of crises in Europe—although I do not want to excite the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) with that prospect. A variety of reasons could create a coincidence of interest across a number of parties from a number of places to say, “We’ll have an early election”, and a date could be set without necessarily having to do it in crisis mode for six weeks hence.
The beauty of a fixed-term Parliament is meant to be that, because we all know the dates, we do not create uncertainty and have political rushes and get all sorts of brinkmanship games being played. However, if this House is to have the power to dissolve early, it can have that power but not necessarily the power to do it immediately. It can have the power to give due notice that the date is being brought forward but without waiting until just six weeks beforehand. If there is merit in a fixed-term Parliament, there is also merit in leaving this House the opportunity to bring forward a date other than just by a vote six weeks beforehand, because that would create surprise and difficulties and a sense of crisis. I fully accept that the terms of the clause are not fully adequate: the hon. Member for Rhondda is absolutely right about that. We do not have a complete or adequate provision on fixed-term arrangements.
Amendment 4 would remove the requirement for a two-thirds majority. I accept the argument made by many hon. Members that that is a very high threshold. I do not agree that it should be two thirds of all Members regardless of whether they are voting. If we are going to set any majority, or any weighted majority, it should comprise those who are present and voting, so I do not accept the Bill as it stands. However, I cannot just simply go along with the argument that says that there should not be any sort of weighted majority, because then we are not sure what proof we are providing against anybody abusing the numbers in this House to dissolve Parliament early. Other hon. Members have referred to the powers of the Prime Minister and the powers that are exercised through party machinery—the Whips, and so on. Leaving the calling of an early election to a simple majority that can be activated to call an election within six weeks means that huge power remains in the hands of the Prime Minister.
Chris Bryant
I would not want the Minister inadvertently to mislead the Committee. He said that extra time has been provided, but he has not allowed any extra time; he has merely allowed the injury time for the three statements that interfered with the debate. [Interruption.] If the Deputy Leader of the House wants to make a speech, I am sure he will be able to catch your eye, Mr Hoyle. [Interruption.]
The Chairman
Order. I would like to stop this bickering between the Front Benchers. Let us move on.
Mr Harper
I entirely agree. Indeed, I think I acknowledged that that had been the purpose for which the amendment had been tabled.
I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest that there is no danger of my accepting her amendment, and that as there is not to be a Division—at least if we have anything to do with it—she will not be forced to vote against it.
Amendment 21, tabled by Opposition Members, simply changes the word “early” in clause 2 to “immediate”. I have two comments to make. First, under our own arrangements—this too emerged earlier in the debate—we do not have immediate general elections anyway. There is always a wash-up period. Before the 1979 election—which seems to have prompted the most discussion—25 Bills were passed during the wash-up period, including a number that completed all their stages during that period. Some of those Bills were very valuable. I spotted among them the Pneumoconiosis Etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which is still helping people today.
Secondly, all that the amendment does is change the language in the clause. It does not, in itself, have any effect. I know that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned a later amendment that did introduce a change, but this amendment would not bring an election further forward.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is right: we are not trying to make an enormous point. I simply wanted to tease out of the Government precisely what they understand by a motion calling for an early general election. I wanted to know, for instance, whether—as suggested by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan)—he believed that it would be possible to call such an election, and that the Speaker would be able to sign a certificate saying that one had been called, when the House had, say on Wednesday next week, passed a motion calling for a general election in nine months’ time.
Mr Harper
I do not think that that is drawn out by the amendment, but I agree with the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) that some flexibility is required. The Speaker will certify that a motion has been passed, but we do not know what all the circumstances will be. The hon. Gentleman gave a good example when he cited the way in which Ireland has arranged for procedures to take place to provide some certainty. I do not think that we want to set all the rules in stone. We want to allow the Speaker to be clear with the House—I am sure that he would be clear with the House before it debated the motion—about whether he is able to certify that the motion would trigger an early general election. It is better to leave such matters to the judgment of the Speaker. I will come to the point about the Clerk’s concern about justiciability, but I do not think that being too specific would be helpful.
Chris Bryant
What the Minister has said makes me rather more worried, and gives me much greater cause for concern than other elements of the clause. The danger is that if we are not clear enough about the precise moment when a Speaker is required by the House to act, we will be asking the Speaker to break his or her impartiality at a moment that may be very, very politically sensitive.
Mr Harper
I do not agree. I think that the Speaker would ensure that the House was clear both about a motion that would trigger an early general election and about a motion of confidence, and about what he would certify, before the debate. I do not think it would be sensible for the House to have a debate when it was not clear about those matters.
We discussed the 1979 debate earlier. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) tried to suggest that Members had voted on that motion for other reasons, but the motion was very clear in asking whether the House had confidence in the Government, and I suggested that Members could not have been in any doubt about what they were voting for. I think that the Speaker would always want to ensure that the House understood what it was voting for, and the effect of its vote.
Chris Bryant
That is even more worrying. The Minister is now saying that the Speaker would decide whether a motion before the House was a motion of confidence in Her Majesty’s Government, which is profoundly worrying. Motions on the Adjournment, motions on all sorts of legislation and motions of censure of individual members of the Government have been determined to be such by the House. If it were for the Speaker to make such a determination, we would have shot the Speaker’s impartiality to pieces.
Mr Harper
There are two parts to clause 2. Importantly—some Members were getting this confused—a motion of no confidence in the Government can still be passed by a simple majority. So if a Government did not command the confidence of the House, the House could express that lack of confidence. I shall not go into that in detail, because we will deal with it when we discuss a later group of amendments—Mr Hoyle is clear about that—but the House can vote in support of a motion of no confidence and the Government will then have the period of examining whether another Government can be formed from within that Parliament.
As the hon. Member for Foyle said earlier, when I do not believe my hon. Friend was present, the Bill also provides the opportunity to renew the Parliament if there is a sense that events mean that it needs to be renewed—I believe that is the view in Ireland at the moment. If a simple majority has lost faith in the Government, a motion of no confidence can be passed. If there is a general sense that there should be an election, we have given the House that opportunity—a power that it does not currently possess. I am surprised, as the hon. Gentleman said he was, that some Members of the House sound as though they do not want a power that is not possessed by the House and has previously been possessed only by the Prime Minister.
Chris Bryant
What happens if the Government table a motion calling for an early parliamentary general election—I presume only they will be able to do so—and it is carried by 330 votes, but not by the 434 votes necessary? Could the Speaker, or for that matter the Prime Minister, determine that to be a motion of no confidence in the Government?
The Chairman
Order. I am sorry, but I am making a ruling from the Chair. I feel that this is a debate that we are going to have and I am concerned that we are getting drawn into it now. The Minister may answer quickly, if he wishes, but I do not want to let this go any further after that.
Mr Cash
There is one simple reason why some of us voted for the confidence motion on Maastricht. I remember pointing to the late John Smith, who was then Leader of the Opposition, and saying, “There is only one reason why I am going to vote for the present Government on this occasion, and that is because you are more of a federalist than they are.” That is why that vote went that way—it is as simple as that.
This is not only about the shenanigans with the Whips, the patronage, the promises, the chicanery behind closed doors, and all that, leading to yet another coalition agreement, no doubt based on different principles, in order to stay in power. The other aspect—we can get to it later, which is why I am about to bring my remarks to an end—is that it is dependent on the Speaker of the House of Commons issuing a certificate certifying the motion of no confidence. That is an extremely important matter, which we need to discuss properly after the debate on this group of amendments.
I think I have spoken quite enough for the time being, and I would be very glad to expedite matters by moving on as soon as possible to the next issue. I think we will have a very interesting and, if I may so, seminal debate on the role of the judiciary in relation to parliamentary sovereignty.
Chris Bryant
The last moments of the speech of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) sounded a bit like a trailer for the next debate. If he does not mind we will stick with this one for the moment, although he is absolutely right to say that the way in which all the different elements of the Bill tumble together in a concatenation will make for a fairly dangerous precedent if we are not given further clarification.
It is important that we establish some basic first principles on no confidence motions. First, the Government should at all times enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. It is important to state that that should be a matter solely for the House of Commons, no matter whether we change the composition of the House of Lords in future, as I hope we do. I note that motions of no confidence have been tabled and debated in the House of Lords, but that is inappropriate. The elected House of Commons, the primary Chamber, should determine whether the Government enjoy the confidence of Parliament.
Secondly, it is important to say that just because the Government lose a vote, they do not necessarily have to fall. That is an important principle because I think that there are only two Prime Ministers since the second world war who have not lost votes at some point. Even Churchill lost one vote in his period as Prime Minister after the war. Attlee lost four, even when he had a majority, and Wilson lost 31, six in his first time as Prime Minister and 25 in his second. Callaghan lost 34, none of which did for him—well, obviously one did in the end. It is a sign of a healthy relationship between the Executive and Parliament if the legislature is able to defeat the Government on occasion on bits and pieces of legislation.
Obviously there comes a point at which a Government might not be able to continue, for instance because they have not been able to get their Budget through in any shape or form, or because they cannot take through some major piece of legislation. In practice, as the hon. Member for Stone mentioned, what has normally happened is that the Government have brought forward legislation and then lost a vote on an amendment or some motion. Often, the Opposition have then tabled a motion of no confidence the next day.
The convention of the House—I note that it is only a convention—is that the Government automatically give precedence to a motion of no confidence, so that it can be debated immediately. It is obviously in the Government’s interests to resolve the matter of whether the House has confidence in them. I merely note that now we are putting elements of the matter into statute rather than depending on convention and Standing Orders, there is no provision to ensure that a motion of no confidence is guaranteed precedence and can be debated swiftly, one would hope the next day.
Governments have lost large numbers of votes since the second world war and before, and that is important. Some of them have been finance votes, and it is perfectly satisfactory for some finance votes to be lost, for instance on stamp duty or the rate of income tax. On 16 July 1974, the Government lost a vote on a Liberal amendment to the Finance Bill. On 8 May 1978 the Conservatives moved that income tax be cut from 34% to 33%, which was carried against the Government’s wishes. On 10 May that year another Conservative amendment to the Finance Bill was agreed to, and the Government lost another motion the next day in relation to sending the Finance Bill off to Committee.
I do not believe that such losses should of necessity mean that the Government should fall, or indeed that they have lost the confidence of the House in its totality. I also do not believe that a motion to censure an individual member of the Government should, of necessity, lead to the fall of the Government, a new general election or to inciting the provisions in the Bill. There have been occasions in the past, when, effectively, a motion to censure an individual member of the Government has been so considered. The last occasion when a Government who had a majority of seats in the House of Commons lost a motion of no confidence was in 1895. The motion was on reducing the salary of the Secretary of State for War, Mr Campbell-Bannerman, by £100 because he had not provided enough cordite to the troops. The motion was carried. Even though Campbell-Bannerman was probably the most popular Member of the Government at the time, he resigned and the Prime Minister decided that he would consider it to have been a motion of confidence, and the Government resigned. The incoming Conservative Government decided to seek a Dissolution and hold an election and the Conservatives came to power.
Mrs Laing
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that there are rules and conventions about when a motion before this House is a confidence motion and when it is not? Twenty years ago this week, I recall the then Prime Minister, now Baroness Thatcher, saying that she was going to stand down as Prime Minister. The Opposition then tabled a motion of no confidence in the Government, which was quite rightly debated as such on the Floor of the House because we were at a point of crisis. The Government, headed as it still was by Margaret Thatcher, won that vote very distinctly, but it was a motion of confidence. There are strict rules about when it is and when it is not.
Chris Bryant
I do not think that the hon. Lady is right about the strict rule. Her memory of the occasion is right; it was Thursday 22 November 1990. The motion was very clear. It said:
“That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government.”—[Official Report, 22 November 1990; Vol. 181, c. 439.]
The debate was led by Neil Kinnock, now Lord Kinnock, and the motion was defeated by 367 votes to 247. The hon. Lady makes my point for me. The rules have been very nebulous except where the words are very clear on the Order Paper. Very often, the words on the Order Paper have not been clear.
Mrs Laing
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I made a mistake when I talked about a “strict rule”. I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon. The point is that there are rules and there are conventions, but they are not sufficiently clear, so I agree with the hon. Gentleman on this point.
Chris Bryant
I am delighted that we agree because I am sure that that will mean that the hon. Lady will join me in the Division Lobby in a wee while.
Clearly, conventions have operated in this House, but they have wandered with the age. There was a period when there were frequent motions of no confidence and the Opposition thought that it was a good way in which to transact business. For the past 15 years or so, we have not had motions of no confidence, largely because the Government have enjoyed fairly large majorities. Another reason, I suspect, is that there is nothing worse than losing a motion of no confidence and the Government tend to unite in their confidence in themselves. I will come later to discuss one of the dangers of this nebulous relationship. All too often, as the hon. Member for Stone said, the Prime Minister of the day starts saying, “I really want to get this piece of legislation through. If we don’t get this through, there will be a general election and I will have to resign. Effectively, it’s a motion of no confidence.” All too often, pieces of legislation or votes are carried because of the threat of the no confidence motion. It would be better if one had clarity in statute as to what constituted a motion of no confidence.
Mr Cash
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely interesting case. He has demonstrated that motions of confidence come in all shapes and sizes—the essence of such motions is whether the House of Commons has lost confidence in the Government—but the question whether the courts will get their hands on such matters is the big issue, and that troubles me. However interesting it may be to go through the various facets of this group of amendments, if we are to have a vote on the courts, we must get on to the next group of amendments, because we need to debate that.
Chris Bryant
I very much hope that we do. There are two elements to why this debate matters: first, the role of the Speaker, and secondly, the role of the courts, which is what the hon. Gentleman wants to debate.
Contrary to what the Minister said, the Opposition rather than the Prime Minister often determine what is and is not a motion of confidence. As we heard, the Prime Minister could decide that the question whether the House adjourns is a matter of confidence, or he or she could refer to minor legislation as such. However, the Opposition can not only table a motion of no confidence, but declare that another matter is a matter of confidence. Effectively, they can demand that the Prime Minister address such a matter personally.
On 15 January 1972, Second Reading of the European Communities Act 1972, which I suspect the hon. Member for Stone knows well, was declared by the then Prime Minister to be a matter of confidence. He said that if he lost, there would be a general election. Undoubtedly, some decided to support him for that very reason.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
Surely this debate about votes of no confidence is really all about the exercise of the Prime Minister’s power, because as the hon. Gentleman has just implied, it is the Prime Minister who decides whether we will have a general election. When Ted Heath used that threat in 1972, he clearly did so quite deliberately, in order to force his side to vote in favour of joining the European Union, and it was his decision whether there would be a general election. Given that, I cannot really see why the hon. Gentleman is going in the direction that he is.
Chris Bryant
Because the legislation is changing that provision in two regards, one of which is the subject of an amendment in this group. The Government—I think rightly—want to say that after a motion of no confidence, there could be two weeks during which the House could, if it wanted, pass a motion of confidence in either the same Government, presumably, or another Government, with either the same Prime Minister or a different Prime Minister, with a different set of ministerial colleagues. That is a change from the situation thus far. There are those who want to remove that two-week element from the Bill. We on the Labour Benches disagree with them, so we will not be supporting that amendment.
There were two occasions, on 11 March 1976 and 20 July 1977, when the motion “That this House do now adjourn” was declared by the then Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition to be a motion of no confidence, first by Harold Wilson and then by Mrs Thatcher, now Baroness Thatcher. On occasion, the mere involvement of the Prime Minister, by turning up at the Dispatch Box to defend a particular motion or piece of legislation, has effectively turned it into a motion of confidence, and that has transpired during the debate. As we are abolishing the Prime Minister’s right to dissolve Parliament and placing that right in the hands of Parliament—we are putting that in statute—it would be better to state in the Bill, in clear language, precisely what constitutes a motion of no confidence, so that there can be no doubt.
I say that for several reasons. First, it would remove the Prime Minister’s power to force legislation through by calling it a matter of confidence. Perhaps Members on the Government Benches have not got used to this yet, but when we were in government, it was a fairly common occurrence whenever there was a difficult piece of legislation—whether on trade unions, the war in Iraq or whatever—for the Prime Minister to say, not necessarily in public but certainly in private, that it was a matter of confidence. That has led to some bad legislation in the past, which was certainly not helpful to us, and I am sure that there will be plenty of moments like that coming along for Government Members.
Mark Durkan
Just to reinforce the hon. Gentleman’s argument, a case in point when legislation was forced through with the threat that it would be treated as a confidence issue was the Counter-Terrorism Bill allowing for 42-day detention. The then Prime Minister made it clear in his pleadings to me that it would be treated as a confidence motion. He said, “Do you want an election? If you turn up and vote against, there will be an election.” He tried threatening me and his Back-Bench colleagues with an election, precisely abusing the notion of a confidence motion, which is why amendment 25, which the hon. Gentleman has tabled, is so good.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. He is absolutely right. However, I must confess to the Committee that Prime Ministers rarely said that to me personally, because I was too ludicrously loyal. Almost before the Prime Minister had even thought that a vote might be difficult, I had already decided I would be supportive. In fact, I rarely got to see the Prime Minister for that very reason. I would therefore advise Government Members that if they want to see the Prime Minister on a regular basis, they should start wondering whether they will support Government provisions. However, the serious point is that the freedom of individual Back Benchers will be tethered, because they will constantly be persuaded by the argument, “You don’t want a general election, do you? You must support this piece of legislation, because otherwise I’m going to call it a motion of no confidence.”
The second reason touches on an important element, on which the Minister got into difficult waters—I know that he does not think that he did, but others of us do, and I think that the courts will feel that too. He said that it would be for the Speaker to decide and to announce before any debate what counts as a motion of confidence or, presumably, a motion of no confidence. A minor point is whether a motion of confidence will count as a motion of no confidence if it is not carried. In the past it has, but I am not sure whether the Government intend that.
It would be wholly inappropriate for the Chair to say at the beginning of, for example, a Budget debate that if the House does not carry the Budget and if the Finance Bill falls on Second Reading or Third Reading that would be a motion of confidence in the Government, so he would issue a certificate. The Minister was sighing but is now smiling, and we prefer the smiling. I accept that in that example I am imagining what might happen, but I am more concerned what would happen if hon. Members chose to ask the Speaker whether a motion of censure counted as a motion of confidence. As I understand it, the Minister is saying that the Speaker would be required to adjudicate on whether it was a motion of no confidence. That would be wholly inappropriate, particularly at a time of political uncertainty and high drama, because the Speaker would lose his or her impartiality and be drawn into the political mêlée, and that would be wrong.
Amendment 5 would remove the two-week provision for a new Government to be formed on the basis of a confidence motion. We may have to return to some of these issues on Report, and I would be grateful if the Minister will clarify whether, if that second motion fell, there could then be a subsequent two weeks. We quite like the provision for two weeks—it seems sensible if an alternative coalition or Government could be formed. I see some hon. Members casting a wry glance as though I am eyeing up the Liberal Democrats. We are not getting on very well with the Liberal Democrats at the moment, so I do not think he needs to worry about that, but obviously if the offer is on the table, we will take it.
Amendment 22 is a minor one, and I would be interested in the Government’s view. The clause refers to the provision of 14 days being allowed after a motion of no confidence. We have suggested that it should be 10 working days simply because all other references in the Bill are to working days. I suppose it is possible that the period could coincide with a royal wedding, a day of thanksgiving, a bank holiday, Easter or Christmas, and it would seem to be sensible to specify working days instead of days.
However, we have not moved to the suggestion in other Committees of 10 sitting days, because if the House were adjourned, there would be a specific problem. I hope that the Minister will say what he thinks should happen if the House had been adjourned for a recess—for example, the day after a motion of no confidence. Should there be a requirement for the Government to bring the House back, and should there be a specific provision for the Speaker to be able to require the House to be recalled within the two weeks? We will come to Prorogation later.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
On a point of order, Mr Amess. Have you have received any indication from the Home Secretary that she might be coming to the House tonight to make a statement on whether she believes that police tactics outside the House are proportionate? Many hundreds of students and schoolchildren have been kettled for more than four hours and, according to the police, will be out there for several more hours in the freezing cold. Whatever one thinks about the student protest, holding people against their will for no reason is neither proportionate nor effective.
Chris Bryant
Thank you, Mr Amess. I thought that the hon. Lady was intervening on me, but I soon realised that she was not.
I have commented on amendment 22, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond. Amendment 36 would provide extra time, if the House were already adjourned or prorogued, for the House to come up with a new motion of confidence. In some ways, this mirrors quite a lot of existing legislation relating to Dissolution and Prorogation and to the use of extraordinary powers. For instance, if the reserve forces were to be summoned when the House was adjourned or prorogued, there is a special power for Parliament to be called back early. The amendment seems sensible, and I hope that the Minister will respond to these points before we decide whether we want to vote on it.
Amendment 37 insists that the Prime Minister should resign within seven days of a motion of no confidence being passed. Again, I hope that the Minister will give the Committee his views on this, because this was an element of the Conservative manifesto in the general election. We might therefore want to return to the matter on Report. What does he understand would happen to the Prime Minister if a motion of no confidence in him personally, as opposed to a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government, were carried? What does he think would happen if a motion of no confidence just in the Government were carried?
Our amendment 25 would provide two categories of no confidence motions. The first would be expressed in the terms:
“This House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”.
The second would have to be expressed in the terms:
“This House has no confidence in the Prime Minister”.
That obviously precludes any of the other elements. I think it would be clearer if we set down in statute the stipulation that the section would kick in only in those two instances, as set out in the Bill, and that only in those circumstances would the Speaker be able to issue a certificate.
I understand that some hon. Members think that there should be great leniency and that it should be entirely up to the Prime Minister to determine whether there is a motion of no confidence. I believe that, especially as we move towards a system in which the Government assert that the Prime Minister is relinquishing the power to dissolve Parliament himself, it makes far more sense to make these matters clear in the Bill, rather than dragging the Speaker into what is and is not a motion of no confidence.
Thomas Docherty
It might help the House to know that the Scottish Parliament has very specific rules about what counts as a motion of no confidence in the Government. For example, failing to get a Budget through does not count, as we saw just two years ago when the Scottish National party Government could not get their Budget through on the first attempt.
Chris Bryant
I think my hon. Friend normally thinks of himself as a Thomas, rather than a Tommy, Mr Amess. He is similar to Tommy McAvoy, but not quite the same. I think he will take that as a compliment, but I am not entirely sure. He will doubtless tell me later. He is absolutely right about the Scottish Parliament.
The whole thrust of my argument is that, in the past, the House has for the most part proceeded on the basis of gentleman’s agreements and of conventions that are not written down anywhere, and on the basis that “Erskine May” is a more important bible than statute law in relation to these matters. However, we are now fixing the length of our Parliaments and moving towards determining many other elements of our constitutional settlement in statute law, and it is vital that we should be clear about what we mean by a motion of no confidence.
I fully accept that other Members might want to include certain other categories. The one other aspect that might be considered always to be a motion of no confidence—so it should perhaps be included—is the acceptance of an amendment to the Loyal Address after a general election. The Bill does not provide for circumstances in which a new Government are formed by a motion of confidence, although that happens elsewhere—in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, for example, where the First Ministers are appointed by a vote.
Thomas Docherty
For further clarification, it is not only the First Minister but each of the Ministers that he or she subsequently appoints who require a formal vote in the Scottish Parliament. Some hon. and right hon. Gentlemen might find that to be a useful mechanism.
Chris Bryant
You would rule me out of order, Mr Amess, if I debated whether there should be confirmation hearings for all Ministers and related matters. I understand why some might say that my amendment could be improved upon by including a third category of no confidence motion—one relating to the tabling of an amendment to the Loyal Address at the beginning of a new Parliament. To those who think that way, I say that it would be better to carry the amendment today so that we improve the legislation and then move further forward to suggest amendments to amplify that provision on Report.
With that, I conclude. I shall want to press amendment 25. If you took the view that we could divide on that amendment later, Mr Amess, I would be grateful.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
This is my first opportunity to speak on the Bill. Before I deal with the specific clause and amendments, I want to say that I generally support the idea of having fixed-term Parliaments because it will promote the basic concept of electoral fairness, end some of the deal-making and lack of scrutiny we have seen inherent in the wash-up procedures, improve electoral planning for the Electoral Commission and avoid some of the return to hype and confusion that we saw dominate the last three years of the previous Parliament.
In one area, however, I have to reserve my unequivocal support. That concerns the consequences of a successful vote of no confidence in a Government. It must be right for such votes to continue to be decided by a simple majority. If a Government cannot command the support of a simple majority of elected representatives, they should fall. I welcome the Government’s withdrawal of the qualified majority provision that was previously under consideration. However, clause 2(2)(b) sets out a novel and rather anomalous parliamentary procedure.
Reference has been made to this country’s practice, which is that a successful mid-term vote of no confidence leads to an immediate election. In the last century, there were just two examples of that, both of which led to the announcement of Dissolution the following day. The exception—I stand to be corrected if I am wrong—was after the election of December 1923, which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned. A minority Conservative Government led by Stanley Baldwin switched to a minority Labour Government led by Ramsay MacDonald. However, that took place immediately after an election, so it arguably reflected rather than ignored the shifting will of the electorate.
Practice therefore shows that this convention is reasonably clear, yet clause 2(2)(b) undoes it. It provides a window of up to 14 days after a no confidence vote before a general election must be called. I stand to be corrected again and ask the Minister for some clarification, but the aim appears to be to allow the formation of an alternative Government without an election. The mechanism appears almost explicitly designed to facilitate a third party leaving a coalition in order to form an entirely new Government of an entirely different character—mid-term and without seeking a democratic mandate for such a profound change. I see no sound reason or any good justification for such an inherently undemocratic device—even one formulated in permissive terms. I see only the risk of this clause being used for political expediency, sidestepping the democratic process.
It might be said that the existing arrangements already allow for this to happen, but they do not encourage it and they do not institutionalise it. At best, this provision is unnecessary; at worst, it is undemocratic. I would therefore be grateful for some further explanation and clarification from Ministers of the explicit purpose of this window— and, indeed, of why it is necessary at all.
Mrs Laing
Amendments 36 and 37 were also submitted by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. I am pleased to say that, unlike the last group of amendments, these are amendments with which I agree. I apologise again on behalf of the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who would have liked to be here to speak on the Committee’s behalf. I am pleased that other Select Committee members are present, along with other hon. Members who have supported the amendments.
The purpose of amendments 36 and 37 is to improve the Bill and help the Government to clarify a very important issue. There cannot be anything more important than knowing when the House is facing a motion of confidence in the Government and when it is not. This is not a matter that ought to be left open to speculation. When we face a confidence motion we need to know that it is a confidence motion, and—as has been said by Members on both sides of the Committee—it should not be used by the Whips as a tool to coerce people to vote for a particular issue lest their Government fall if the vote be lost. A motion of confidence is not a tool of the Whips; it is a very important convention of our constitution.
Amendment 36 is designed to address the Select Committee’s finding in our pre-legislative scrutiny report that, under the Bill,
“the requirement that the House would need to show that it had confidence in any alternative government within fourteen days to avoid an early general election could be made impossible if the Government ensured that the House was adjourned or prorogued for any substantial length of time.”
The amendment would prevent the incumbent Government from using the prerogative power of prorogation to frustrate the formation of an alternative Government, which they could do under the Bill as it is currently drafted. At present, the Government could get around the provisions in clause 2 by simply proroguing Parliament.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. This is one of my biggest worries. Ministers may say that the Prime Minister would never do that—that he or she could not possibly choose to use such an evil power—but the truth is that the power to prorogue lies completely, utterly and solely with the Government. I think it important for us to remove that power from Government and put it in the hands of the House, just as the power to adjourn the House for recesses lies with the House.
Mrs Laing
Indeed, and that power has been used by the Government many times. I have noticed over the past 13 years that there have been very long recesses when it suited the last Government for the House of Commons not to be sitting and able to hold them to account. It is within the power of the Government to do that, and although I have accused the last Labour Government of behaving in a way that could be described as dishonourable in that respect, I would be the first to say that other Governments have been able to use the power in the same way.
Mrs Laing
I concede that point to the hon. Gentleman. It was right to introduce September sittings. When I was a new Member, serious events were occurring in Northern Ireland in, I think, 1998 and the House was recalled in September. We flew in from all over the world—well, from Millport and similar places. We all flew back from far-flung places, even Essex. It was realised that having a very long summer recess means the Government are not being held to account and that this House is not the forum and focus for national debate that it should be.
However, I put it to Members that there is an even worse possible outcome from these proposed measures. I know the current Government under the current leadership of the current Prime Minister and the Minister who is currently sitting on the Front Bench would never behave in a dishonourable fashion, but that is not the point. The point is that legislation passed by this House should make sure that no Government can ever use their prerogative power of prorogation—I have got better at saying such tongue-twisters during the day—to frustrate the formation of an alternative Government.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady is right again, and she is very good at saying the “prerogative power of prorogation”. The additional power the Government currently have is the power to decide whether a motion gains precedence on the Order Paper or not. One of the difficulties with the current draft of the Bill is that there is no provision to ensure that a prospective new Prime Minister trying to form a Government would be able to table a motion of confidence.
Mrs Laing
Yes, the shadow Minister is correct. I am sure the Minister will have very good responses to these questions when he replies, but it is important that the House addresses them, and that is why the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has tabled these amendments as a result of its pre-legislative scrutiny report.
Amendment 36 would, in essence, encourage the incumbent Government to keep the House sitting, and not use the prerogative power of prorogation for purposes for which it should not be used.
Amendment 37 reflects the Committee’s findings that the Bill still leaves to unwritten convention the requirement that a Government should resign if they lose the confidence of the House. The Deputy Prime Minister said to the House in July this year that the Bill would
“strengthen the power of this House to throw out a Government through a motion of no confidence”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 32.]
However, although that might have been the Deputy Prime Minister’s intention, the Bill does not do that. Amendment 37 would require the Prime Minister to resign within seven days of a motion of no confidence being passed, and to advise the Queen to appoint a new Prime Minister who had the best chance of securing the House’s confidence.
The Government’s response to the Committee’s report appears to show that they do not intend that an incumbent Government faced with a successful vote of no confidence should be required to resign. The response states:
“A Government is able now, and would be able under the Bill, to remain in office after a no confidence motion and contest a general election.”
That is a very serious state of affairs. The Committee carefully examined the consequences of the Bill before putting that in its report, but the fact is that the Bill will allow a Government to remain in office after a no confidence motion and to contest a general election.
That raises a number of constitutional questions, and I wish to put four to the Minister. First, do the Government intend that the incumbent Government should be able to force an early general election following a vote of no confidence even where an alternative Government with a potential majority in the House are clearly waiting in the wings?
My second question relates to a matter that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) referred to: have the Government considered that an incumbent Government might engineer a vote of no confidence in themselves, requiring only a simple majority, and then simply sit it out for two weeks to force an early general election? Once again, although I have every confidence that the current Government and the Minister at the Dispatch Box would not behaviour dishonourably, the Bill gives a future Government the power to do that.
As I mentioned in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, some Members of the Canadian Parliament raised this issue at a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference held here last week. There is a constitutional difficulty in Canada at the moment, because more than one vote of confidence has been held at the instigation of the Government. My hon. Friend said that he is not particularly interested in examples from other countries, and I agree that just because something happens in Canada does not mean that it will happen here. However, Canada’s constitution and Government are constructed similarly to ours and we ought to learn lessons or at least look at the warning signs from a place whose legislature is so similar.
Thirdly, have the Government considered that an incumbent Prime Minister whose party has narrowly lost a general election might refuse to resign and instead choose to face the House of Commons, as Stanley Baldwin did in January 1924—the shadow Minister referred to that—and as the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) could, in theory, have done this May? A vote of no confidence in those circumstances would give the incumbent Prime Minister the choice of either resigning or forcing another general election.
An incumbent Prime Minister would not be able to exercise that choice at the moment, because the convention is that the monarch, under her existing prerogative powers, would almost certainly not agree to dissolve Parliament so soon after an election where there was a viable alternative Government. Nevertheless, the Bill, as drafted, would leave the question open, and it is our duty as a Parliament not to put the monarch under pressure to make a decision; we should never have a situation where the monarch has to exercise her prerogative power in order to keep the incumbent Prime Minister in line, as it were.
This is another matter that could easily be dealt with by amendment 37, which states:
“Where the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government, the Prime Minister shall tender his resignation to Her Majesty within a period of seven days of the motion being passed.”
The amendment is quite simple and, again, is not intended to run a coach and horses through the Bill—far from it. As I have said on many occasions, I support the Bill and I want it to go through, because it is necessary for the stability of the Government and of the coalition at a time when we need stability. What the Select Committee is trying to do through these amendments is simply assist the Government to improve the Bill.
My final question to the Minister is on how the Bill strengthens the power of the House to throw out a Government by a motion of no confidence. The Select Committee considered that question as carefully as we could in the time given for pre-legislative scrutiny and there is a general opinion that the Bill does not strengthen the power of the House to throw out a Government on a motion of no confidence. I would argue, however, that the House has at present a pretty good power that it can exercise to throw out a Government on a motion of no confidence. I do not believe that the Bill strengthens that position and the Deputy Prime Minister ought not to say that it does when it does not.
Sheila Gilmore
My comments arose out of the confidence issue. If we have a clear definition in relation to confidence at least, the proceedings of the House will be clearer to the public, which is important. If we agreed to the definition in the amendment, we would all be clear about when we were dealing with such an important matter. That is a very simple change.
Chris Bryant
As my hon. Friend is on the Select Committee, will she comment on its recommendation that there should be greater clarity regarding the circumstances in which a Government lose the confidence of the House and when that would trigger a general election? Were she and members of the Committee satisfied with the Government’s response to that recommendation? This still seems immensely ambiguous to me.
Thomas Docherty
I thank my hon. Friend for that remark and I congratulate him, as well as the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), on the work of the Select Committee. My hon. Friend is entirely correct. As the Bill stands, it gives the Prime Minister and the Chief Whip vast power. It is the responsibility of Parliament to be a check on the Executive branch. I seem to be filling the Chamber, so this is of some interest. Members on both sides of the House have consistently made the argument that we have a duty to hold the Executive to account.
I am, as I said, a massive fan of the Speaker, although I accept that I do not have much with which to compare his activities. There is a serious danger that if the Bill continues its passage without suitable alteration, we are placing our Speaker and subsequent Speakers in an extremely difficult position. I counsel the Committee to think carefully when we come to vote.
Chris Bryant
In relation to that, may I put to my hon. Friend the point that I tried to put to the Minister earlier, but which he was not able to answer? Under the provisions of the clause, if the House had carried a motion calling for an early general election by a majority of 10 or 20 votes but not by the required super-majority, would the Speaker be able to determine that that was a motion of confidence, or would the Prime Minister be able to declare that it was a matter of confidence or no confidence in his Government, thereby qualifying under the second category and in effect, therefore, manufacturing an early general election?
Thomas Docherty
As ever, my hon. Friend succinctly hits the nail on the head. The Bill is a mess because the Government did not take full advantage of the opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny.
NATO Summit
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend and I go back years on this issue, to the time when we almost shared an office. At that time, we were fighting a very unilateralist Labour party that wanted us to give up our nuclear weapons and get nothing in return. The assurance that I can give my hon. Friend is that I believe that while others have nuclear weapons, we should retain ours. That is why I said what I said in the statement. He is being a little unfair, however, because in this Parliament, we will be spending many tens or even hundreds of millions of pounds on the preparation for our Trident replacement—which is on schedule to go ahead—to ensure that there is continuous at-sea deterrence and no capability gap between the deterrent that we have now and the deterrent of the future. The Government, including the Liberal Democrats, are fully committed to that.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly congratulate the Prime Minister on raising the matter of Georgia with President Medvedev. When the right hon. Gentleman visited Tbilisi in 2008, he said that this was an illegal invasion. It certainly was, and it still is today. May I urge the Prime Minister to be a bit more robust in some other respects with the Russians? Corruption is so endemic at the very highest level in Russia that British businesses find it very difficult to do business there. Will he expressly raise the human rights issues, particularly in respect of the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev?
The Prime Minister
I take what the hon. Gentleman says very seriously. We are trying to have better relations with Russia—that is, I think, in our interest—but without trying to gloss over the bilateral impediments to those relations. When I have met President Medvedev, I have raised the Litvinenko case and other concerns, which is also right. At the same time, we must try to overcome some of these problems and raise the cases that the hon. Gentleman mentions. The impediments to relations between Britain and Russia are well known, but that does not mean that we should fail to speak about those and other things and try to have a slightly better relationship than we have had up to now.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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Jonathan Edwards
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I was remiss not to mention it.
Jonathan Edwards
We will have that debate later.
A five-year Parliament was not in either governing party’s manifesto, and was not put to a public vote. I often wonder, as I watch the coalition Government’s policies morph before me and see stories about the coalition discussions leak out in books and in the Sunday press, just how much influence Back-Bench Lib Dems had over the policy negotiations. I wonder whether they, like me, wake up and wonder which policy of theirs will be changed today. As we are getting used to saying in Wales, “Another day, another Lib-Dem U-turn.”
So, we are still no closer to understanding why five and not four years is the chosen length for a fixed term of the UK Parliament. Perhaps a wag on the Government Benches—by that I mean a wit, not the more common tabloid usage of the word—was correct when she referred to the next election date as being “ the date of the next election, cementing the coalition”. Others think that this is a response to the economic cycle, and the hope is that by 2015 the worm will have turned and the tremendous gamble with our economy, our livelihoods and our communities that we witnessed in the comprehensive spending review will have paid off, and we will be enjoying the fruits of a hard-won recovery. Either way, it appears to be a decision made from political expediency, and that is not in the best interests of the electorate or democracy.
Jonathan Edwards
These changes will have a clear impact as electors find themselves not merely with the added burden of an extra piece of paper to complete, as they will in the clashing elections next May and the alternative vote referendum, but voting for different constituency locations. I am proud to serve on the Welsh Affairs Committee in my first term in Parliament. The Committee received evidence from a number of organisations on these potential problems, and reported on them in our first publication of this Session, entitled “'The implications for Wales of the Government’s proposals on constitutional reform”. We heard, for example, testimony from Lewis Baston, senior research fellow with Democratic Audit. He said that
“the elections for Westminster and the Assembly would be taking place on different systems on the same day, and more complicatedly on two sets of boundaries which will hardly ever correlate with each other.”
Philip Johnson told our Committee that the coincidence of elections could have “horrendous” consequences in 2015.
Chris Bryant
I respect Lewis Baston enormously, but he is slightly wrong: there would be three different sets of boundaries in Wales and Scotland, because there are majority elected seats as well as regional seats. There is no guarantee in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that UK parliamentary boundaries will respect the boundaries of the regions used for Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament elections, so there will be three different boundaries.
Jonathan Edwards
I was coming to exactly that point. Electors will have three ballot papers: one for the Westminster constituency, which will be a separate location from the Assembly constituency, and a third paper for Assembly regional candidates. Scotland already has distinct UK and Scottish Parliament boundaries, but they remain fixed in Northern Ireland.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is being a little unfair to the Liberal Democrats. So far it is not a broken promise, but just a promise. It might become a broken promise, but at the moment it is just a promise.
Jonathan Edwards
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that correction.
On Second Reading, the Deputy Prime Minister appeared somewhat surprised that having elections on the same day might cause problems. In fact, he seemed slightly perplexed, as if he had not previously considered the possibility. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who noted that there was provision in the various devolution Acts for those legislatures to vary elections by up to four weeks only, the Deputy Prime Minister said:
“That is exactly…why we need to consider whether the existing provisions are sufficient.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 627.]
That was commented on shortly after by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who, quite understandably, wondered why, if the Deputy Prime Minister was already aware of the potential for problems, no provision had been made in the Bill to counter them. Admissions of that sort show up this Bill as having been flung together, rather than considered and properly scrutinised.
Mr Shepherd
I have lost my place as a result of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, so let me recap what Professor Blackburn said:
“It was the period expressly approved of as being normal in practice, when the Parliament Act set the period of five years as a maximum. In an ideal democracy it may be that there should be elections as frequently as possible—even annually as supported by the Chartists in the eighteenth century—but a government must be allowed a sufficient period of time in which to put its programme of public policies into effect before submitting its record of achievement, or otherwise, to the voters. Three full legislative sessions, and certainly four, is sufficient for this purpose.”
I believe that that is correct.
Chris Bryant
I agree with the point made in that quotation; indeed, I was going to refer to that passage in my speech. For the sake of accuracy, however, I should point out that the Chartists were really in the 19th century, not the 18th. I hope that that does not invalidate the historical record.
Mr Shepherd
What a trivial point, but I thought I had said the 19th century. I stand corrected if I did not, and I am sorry if I misinformed the Committee. [Interruption.] No, I do not think I was quoting at that point. [Interruption.] I said the 19th century, I think. I am well aware of that fact; it was part of my own training.
The central issue, however, is the legitimacy of Governments and the determination of what is the right period for enabling the people to have a view, and control, over the Crown as represented by the Government in this place.
Andrew Percy
I was involved in that in New Jersey in 2000. Such matters were determined on a state-by-state basis and depended very much on who was in control in that state. It is not quite the case that Congressmen themselves are busy dividing up their own seats, but there are examples where that happens.
I conclude where I started. For me, a four-year term feels more natural. As I said, I have no academic support for this argument. To go to the electorate every four years, which fits in properly with the elections in Scotland and Wales, feels the right thing to do. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments and I look forward to the comments of Opposition Members who, having enjoyed a five-year term, now seek to criticise the Government for seeking to continue them.
Chris Bryant
I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on advancing his amendment before I got to the Table Office when I would have tabled exactly the same amendment. His alacrity is in the interest of the whole House, and he is right to have tabled his amendments, as I hope to lay out.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), who always speaks with an independence of mind, which compliments both the House and his electors. He is right that this is about the entrenchment of Government. This measure is not proposed because there has been some grand constitutional convention that has consulted the country about the appropriate length of the Parliament and has consulted academics or voters; it is simply here to entrench this Government at least until May 2015. That is primarily why it exists. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said that he felt—I was not sure whether he said in his waters or in his guts—that four years was better than five, and he is absolutely right. If one looks at the contributions made by most constitutional experts, as the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills asked us to do, all have said that four years is a better term than five. It is also right to say that the process that has been gone through for the Bill is inappropriate.
Neil Carmichael
Surely those points ram home the argument that five years is a good spell, because the hon. Gentleman has just admitted that from time to time we could break it and have an election earlier, but the norm would still be five years.
Chris Bryant
I will come on to why I think five years is an inappropriate length of time. However, I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I will admit lots of things in this speech, but I will not admit what he has just told me to admit.
My argument is essentially that four years is a better term for a fixed Parliament than five years. A five-year legislative provision for a maximum length of a Parliament has served us not too badly and may well be okay, not least because it has meant in practical terms that Parliaments have tended to be more like four years, precisely as Asquith intended in 1911. But a fixed five-year term is overlong, and the main reason why we have that is that the Government want to continue until May 2015, which is an inappropriate use of constitutional reform.
The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole said that he was absolutely certain that there could not have been any underhand skulduggery. I think he was using irony, if not sarcasm, and irony does not always translate perfectly into Hansard. His Dog and Duck test is right. The vast majority of voters are not obsessed with the length of a Parliament, but they do know when a Parliament has had its day, and for the most part, by the time we get to four years in this country, certainly since the second world war, most electorates have started to say, “You know what, it’s time we had a general election.”
Alec Shelbrooke
First, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that there is no reason right now why this Parliament will not go to May 2015—it is perhaps just wishful thinking on the Opposition Benches—and, secondly, will he confirm whether his party supports fixed-term Parliaments?
Chris Bryant
Yes, I was just about to come on to the point that I wholeheartedly agree with fixed-term Parliaments. It was wrong for Conservative, Labour and, for that matter in the past, Liberal, Whig and any other kind of Government to be able either to cut and run, as the Deputy Leader of the House said in a sedentary comment earlier, or to choose to hang on until something comes along. It is better to have a fixed term.
Interestingly, in 1950, Stafford Cripps—your predecessor, Ms Primarolo, by I do not know how many—argued forcefully to Clement Attlee that there should be a general election before a Budget, because, if the election were held after, it would look as if the Government were trying to bribe the electorate, which would be wholly inappropriate.
Chris Bryant
Those were the days, eh? When high-mindedness ruled.
The point is surely that it should not be within the power of the Government to determine the rules. It is like the situation in which everybody is running a 100 metre race, but the starting gun is held by the person in charge, and sometimes he decides to shoot some of the runners instead of just starting the race.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I agree that constituents reach the point at which they feel that the Government need to change, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is often in part because constituents are desperate for the Prime Minister of the day to announce a general election? Having such certainty to a reasonable extent will therefore obviate the need for constituents to wonder, “When is the election going to happen? When is the date? It can’t happen soon enough.” That certainty will surely improve the situation.
Chris Bryant
Yes, of course. The hon. Lady is right in the sense that constituents will not have to worry about the date of the election. In fact, newspapers and the BBC will have to employ considerably fewer journalists, because they will know the date of the general election and actually have to obsess about something else. However, the past 50 years have shown that, for the most part, once a Parliament has run for more than four years, either the Parliament itself is so fed up with the Prime Minister that it chooses to change the Prime Minister before holding a subsequent general election, or the country is becoming pretty fed up.
Mr Cash
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, really, this is not a fixed-term Parliament Bill at all? I mean not to criticise but to ask him a question, because, contrary to what he says, the Government do not make all the rules, the House of Commons does. If the House decided to go for a confidence motion because it happened to be fed up with the Government in question, as it did over Maastricht, we could end up with the situation in which the Government lost control. Then there would be a general election, and there would be no fixed term at all.
Chris Bryant
That is right, but that is a point in relation to clause 2 and at the moment we are dealing with clause 1. [Interruption.] At the moment we are talking about clause 1. In fact, the Bill is not really a fixed-term Parliaments Bill, because it does not determine how many days it should sit within those five years; it is a fixed-term elections Bill: it determines when elections shall be. There are things that we need to change in relation to Prorogation and so on, and we shall come on to that at another point in the debate, but, for the most part in this country, after four years and often before, the mandate on which the Government were elected becomes pretty thin, and they start doing things—sometimes pretty unpopular things—that were not clearly outlined in their manifesto. The party or parties might have made all sorts of commitments before they went into government, but events come along or the Government suddenly discover things that mean they have to break those manifesto promises or commitments, and the longer that a Government go on after four years, if they do so, the more likely they are to undermine respect for Parliament.
Alec Shelbrooke
The hon. Gentleman, in his outrage, is almost saying that we are attempting to increase the length of a Parliament, but we could go to May 2015 as things stand in statute today. That does not involve extending the length of this Parliament. His other point is that Parliaments can run out of steam over five years, but that has been the problem of previous Governments, because they have governed in the short term, rather than for the long term and for the good of the country.
Chris Bryant
That is where there is a need for a balancing act, and that is why I do not support a three-year Parliament, which my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) advocates, or a five-year Parliament. I support a four-year Parliament, which in most constitutions throughout the world seems to be the period at which people have arrived. The Government would have at least three good Sessions in which they could advance their legislative cause, and if they wanted to do difficult things in the first and second years but retain their ability to recover their position in time for an election after four years, they would be able to do so.
One of the other things that happens in government itself is that, after four years, a lot of people become pretty tired. That was certainly true in the previous Parliament, in John Major’s Government and in Baroness Thatcher’s Government, and, because of that concatenation of tired people, many more ex-Ministers no longer have an investment in the future and do not intend to stand at the next general election, so in practice attendance in the House is much lower during the last year of a five-year Parliament than in the preceding years.
Mr Stewart Jackson
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way, and he is making an engaging argument on a threadbare premise, if I may say so. Is not his argument essentially weakened by the fact that there is a mechanism to deal with an atypical event? I refer him to the controversy of 1979 over the Scotland Act 1978. That Parliament had been going for four years, and there was a vote of confidence on 28 March 1979. In other words, four-and-a-half years into that Parliament, the issue was considered of such import to the affairs of state and to the House that a motion of no confidence was tabled. Such a motion can still be tabled under this Bill. Therefore the value judgment between four and five years falls down. It would only really stand if the House had no capacity to dismiss itself and enter into a period prior to an election.
Chris Bryant
I have to presume, as does the House, that the Government will go through with all the various provisions that they have laid down in the Bill, and in clause 2 there are two provisions for an early general election: the first determines what happens if there is a motion of no confidence, although it does not say what such a motion is; and the second relates to a motion for an early general election, although it does not say whether such a motion would name the precise date of that election. The Government presume that we will need a two-thirds majority in the House to achieve an early poll, so on the Government’s argument—and, if the hon. Gentleman is going to support the Bill as it is, on his argument therefore—the presupposition is that there will not be many early general elections. Indeed, the Bill, by trying to make it almost impossible to have an early general election, is much tougher than the vast majority of other constitutions that I have looked at throughout the world. That is another reason why four years is better than five. In fact, the hon. Gentleman has helped me to make part of my argument.
In relation to the intervention by the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), I believe that in practice the Bill will lengthen the Parliaments of this country. Since 1832 there have been 45 general elections: the average peacetime length has been three years and eight months, as the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr said; even including the lengthy wartime Parliaments of the first and second world wars, the average has been only four years; and, during the period when the maximum allowable duration under the Septennial Act was seven years, from 1832 to 1911, the average was three years and 10 months. In practice, by fixing elections as “every five years”, we will lengthen Parliaments and ensure less frequent general elections.
Stephen Williams
While we are discussing historical events, will the hon. Gentleman concede that some of those shortened Parliaments occurred because of the practice, which no longer exists, that when a monarch died, Parliament was dissolved?
Chris Bryant
In fact, looking through the list, that applies to remarkably few of them. It is absolutely true that there used to be the provision that there should be a general election on the demise of the monarch. That has not pertained for quite some time, however, and it certainly does not apply to any of the general elections of the 20th century.
Ms Bagshawe
It is false to say, as the hon. Gentleman and many of his hon. Friends have said, that the aim of this Bill is to entrench the power of the Government. If the Government wish to remain in office until 2015, they need do absolutely nothing, as they already have that within their power. Does not some of the weariness in Government to which he referred—a salient point—come from endless speculation about the date of the election, as in the previous Parliament, dating from 2007 when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) ascended to the prime ministership? [Interruption.] I am sorry for mispronouncing Kirkcaldy. If we know that there will be a fixed date for the general election, will not that remove the endless speculation that leads to weariness in Government?
Chris Bryant
Since the hon. Lady represents Corby, she should at least be able to pronounce the names of the Scottish parliamentary constituencies, as most of her constituents are Scottish. It is a great delight to see her joining us in the debate—we have missed her for most of it thus far.
Chris Bryant
I apologise if the hon. Lady has been there and I have not happened to notice her—she usually sits closer to the Front Benches.
The hon. Lady’s point is wrong. The main reason for large elements of the Bill, particularly in relation to when an earlier general election can be called, is the desire to keep the coalition together. That is why we had the options for 55% majorities, as originally proposed, and then 66%. It is the superglue element of the legislation, which is there wholly for cynical purposes to try to keep the coalition together. Otherwise, I suspect that there might be a point at which the leader of the hon. Lady’s party might want to cut and run and get rid of her unpopular lightning conductor of a Deputy Prime Minister.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not a fixed-term Parliaments Bill that will entrench anything in the system, but rather a “fix for this Parliament” Bill that merely represents the expedient and the ephemeral embracing each other to cope with the unexpected?
Chris Bryant
Yes, indeed. That would be the ultimate “Brokeback coalition”, I suppose.
Neil Carmichael
I want to talk about the hon. Gentleman’s statistics. Looking back at the previous century, we had two elections in 1910, elections in 1923, 1924, 1951, 1959, 1964 and 1966, and two elections in 1974. He cannot give us an argument based on an average. He needs to highlight the Parliaments that really mattered, most of which were Conservative ones, as opposed to trying to massage his argument by bringing in Parliaments of a few months or a bit more. Funnily enough—[Interruption.] I was about to finish.
Chris Bryant
Funnily enough, of course I can advance an argument that is based on the average length of Parliaments, because the practical experience of voters over the past two centuries is that Parliaments have not gone on for more than four years. Therefore, if we are going to fix it for the future that they will always go on for five years, the hon. Gentleman and those who wish to take the Bill forward without amendment intend to extend Parliaments and provide for fewer general elections—that is just a fact.
Only four Parliaments since 1945 have lasted roughly five years. In three cases, a change of Prime Minister had intervened in the meantime: the Parliaments from 8 October 1959 to 15 October 1964, when Harold Macmillan handed over to Sir Alec Douglas-Home; from 11 June 1987 to 9 April 1992, when Baroness Thatcher —she was not a baroness then, obviously—handed over to John Major; and from 5 May 2005 to 6 May 2010, when Tony Blair handed over to the former Prime Minister. In addition, the longest Parliament of all in this period was John Major’s, which ran from 9 April 1992 to 1 May 1997. It is difficult not to argue that in each of those cases the electorate had wanted an election before the election was eventually held.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman think, by that measure, that the European Parliament should not have five-year terms and that they should be reduced to four years? If so, why was it not done when Labour was in government? [Interruption.]
Chris Bryant
You are telling me to deal with one Parliament at a time, Ms Primarolo, and I rather agree.
I have to say that I probably agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, that would require treaty change, and I do not know whether we would then end up with a referendum, which would be very difficult for the Government.
Mrs McGuire
I may have misheard my hon. Friend, but I do not think he included the Parliament of ’74 to ’79, which also had a change of Prime Minister when Harold Wilson handed over to James Callaghan. Even adding in that Parliament, only six out of 16 Parliaments since the second world war ran for five years.
Chris Bryant
Indeed. My right hon. Friend makes a very good point; she is right. I think that that Parliament ran for four years and seven months.
The second reason I think that five years is too long and four years would be better is that five years is longer, in practice, than applies virtually everywhere else, certainly within the European Union. Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Spain all have, for their lower Houses, fixed or maximum Parliament lengths of four years.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for sitting there in his rotund way—[Interruption] I am sorry, orotund way—and providing me with the suggestion that I might refer to France. He is absolutely right, and I will indeed come to France. He might also have mentioned, orotundly, that Italy, Austria, Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg have provisions for five years. It is worth pointing out that in Italy there have been 17 elections for its Camera dei Deputati since 1945, and only twice in that time has the Parliament run for the full five years.
Mr Cash
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman might take on board the fact that the systems of all the other countries in Europe that he has rightly cited are based on written constitutions. Does he accept that the virtue of the British system is its flexibility? Moreover, there is the example of 10 May 1940—the day I was born, as it turned out—when Chamberlain was effectively dispatched because he had completely failed and Winston Churchill took over. That was on the very day that Hitler invaded the lowlands. In other words, we make our decisions based on whether we in this House, on behalf of the people, decide that the Government have had their day.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is, in effect, making an argument against the whole of the Bill, because he is basically saying that we should not have fixed-term Parliaments. [Interruption.] I am sorry—he is chuntering so I cannot quite hear what he is saying. However, I disagree with him. My argument is that if we are going to have fixed-term Parliaments, they should not be of five years but of four years, partly because otherwise we will end up having the longest-running Parliaments in the European Union.
In Italy, very few Parliaments have gone on for five years because the President has the power to suspend the Parliament early. In Austria, there have been even more general elections—20—although that country has had a fixed five-year term since the war. Malta has had 16 elections since the war, and only since 1998 has it stuck to the five-year period. Cyprus has had regular changes to its constitution for a whole series of different reasons, not least in relation to Turkey. Only Luxembourg has a fixed five-year term that it has stuck to since 1974. In all these cases—I thought that this is the point that the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was going to make—the elections are held on the basis of a system of proportional representation, where there is an expectation that Parliaments might fall rather more frequently because elections do not tend to bring in one party with an absolute majority of seats in the relevant House.
Andrew Percy
As interesting as the examples from Europe are, does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the countries that share our monarch and have exactly the same problems with prerogative powers and so on provide a better example of where we should be heading?
Chris Bryant
I will come on to them, and indeed they add to my argument, but I just wish to finish with France, for the further satisfaction and delight of the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke). As I am sure he is aware, there have been 18 general elections to the Assemblée Nationale since 1945, which in large measure is because the President has the power to suspend the Parliament early if he wants to, and has frequently done so since 1945. The only restriction is that he cannot do that if he has already done so in the past year. In effect, therefore, there is not a fixed five-year term but a maximum five-year term, and elections have been held in October, November, March and June. In fact, the number of full five-year terms has been low. Again, that makes my point that a fixed five-year term for the British Parliament will mean that we have the longest Parliaments and the least frequent general elections of any country in the European Union.
As the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, it is not just the situation in the European Union that should matter. Five years is longer than in any of the other Westminster democracies as well. As he and others have said, New Zealand and Australia have three-year terms. They are not actually fixed terms in either case, they are maximum three-year terms, and I know that plenty of people there would like to be able to change to a four-year term because they think that three years is too short a time. In practice, three years ends up being a fixed term, because who would want to have elections more frequently than that? He is also right about Canada, where there is a four-year term.
However, there are some exceptions. I thought that the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell would leap up and ask, “What about India?” The Lok Sabha, whose Members are elected in a similar way to ours in the sense that there are single-member constituencies, is elected for a maximum of five years. However, leaving aside the suspension of elections during the state of emergency from 1975 to 1977, there have been Parliaments of one, two, three or four years on several occasions since 1952. In practice, because it is quite easy to hold early general elections in India, it does not feel as though there is a fixed term of five years. Again, we will be going longer than most.
In South Africa, the National Assembly has supposedly been elected for five years ever since independence, but every term between 1966 and 1989 lasted four years or less—some might say “fewer”, but it depends on how one looks at it.
Alec Shelbrooke
I say again to the hon. Gentleman that this Parliament will still have the power to have an election before the end of the fixed term.
Chris Bryant
Unless the hon. Gentleman is going to support us on amendments to clause 2—I look forward to his arguments, because we will have to ensure that he is consistent—he must accept that the Bill provides tough measures to ensure that the calling of an early general election will be pretty difficult, if not virtually impossible, given the parliamentary system.
To continue with Parliaments in the Westminster-style democracies, Papua New Guinea has consistently had fixed-term elections every five years since 1972, but it has more than 20 political parties, and only one party in the Papua New Guinean Parliament has more than eight members out of the 109. Again, that is a very different situation.
I therefore point out to Members that since the 1970s the only two places that have stuck to five year Parliaments, which are what the Bill is intended to give us on a permanent basis, are Papua New Guinea and Luxembourg. I just do not think that they provide an appropriate model. Even in the Dáil, which obviously has a five-year term and has done since 1923, the average term has been three years and three months. I argue that the Government are trying to extend the practical length of Parliaments, which is inappropriate.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr referred to Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh elections. His amendment 11 refers to the elections in 2015. I do not know whether the Government want to have a lot of elections on the same day, or whether they want to try to separate elections out consistently. In the USA, as several hon. Members have said, there is a deliberate constitutional construction to ensure that a lot of elections happen at the same time on the same day, on a two-yearly cycle. That is not the model that we have tended to adopt in the UK, although we have ended up with local elections, and now the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections, happening on the first Thursday in May.
Jo Swinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Does he accept that the situation he describes is not solely a result of this Bill, and that it was bound to happen anyway in 2015, when it is likely the general election would have been? As he says, there are already different boundaries in Scotland. It is right that we find some way of enabling the devolved legislatures to move their elections if they wish, but the situation is not just the result of this Bill.
Chris Bryant
No, no, no, the hon. Lady is wrong. She has a much easier way to solve all this—she can vote with us tonight. She only has to do so twice, first to ensure that the 2015 election is brought forward to 2014 and then to ensure that elections are every four years, not every five. She has to do both, she cannot just do one, because otherwise we would still end up with elections happening at the same time every 20 years.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I wonder whether we can get down to the brass tacks of this. In 2007, some 140,000 ballots in Scotland were void, nullified and not counted. People were disfranchised because there were two elections of different sorts on the same day. This matter is not ethereal, it is about practical politics and the enfranchisement of people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When that point was made earlier in the debate some people said it was all about how the ballot papers were presented, and undoubtedly that was part of the problem. However, the point is that in Wales, an Assembly election feels like a general election. It will feel like a general election next May. Elections to the Scottish Parliament feel like a general election in Scotland, and I am sure the situation is somewhat similar in Northern Ireland. If they coincide with the UK elections every 20 years, it will be a bit of a muddle and voters will be confused. This is not about our convenience, it is about the convenience of voters and the clarity of the mandate that is provided. Without a clear mandate, we end up without good politics and with people distrusting the political system.
I say in passing that another element of the Bill is that the Government intend to stick to a short election campaign, both in any early general election that might be held and in the specific 2015 election. That will not be the same campaign as for the local elections or for the Welsh or Scottish elections. That will provide another level of uncertainty, particularly for treasurers of local election campaigns. They may be the treasurer for their local constituency association or their local party, and they are already given a pretty tough job to do with stringent legal provisions. Often they are nervous about what that might mean for them and whether they will end up in prison. We should not make the situation even more complicated by firing the starting gun for expenses for the various elections on different days. In addition to that, by choosing May we will always hit the problem of Easter. In 2015, polling day will be on 7 May and, because it is a relatively early Easter, Dissolution will be on Monday 13 April. In 2020, unless we change the legislation, polling day will be on 7 May, which will mean that Dissolution will be on Maundy Thursday 9 April, as both 10 and 13 April will not be working days.
Maundy Thursday used to be a day on which one did not have elections. It used to be provided as a bank holiday, but legislation in 1995 removed it from the list. None the less, it would be inappropriate to dissolve Parliament on Maundy Thursday in 2020. The bigger point is that we will constantly have the problem with the start date of the electoral campaign because Easter moves.
Ms Bagshawe
Although I respect the hon. Gentleman’s ecclesiastical background, I cannot resist asking him why it would be a problem for the Dissolution of Parliament to take place on a Maundy Thursday. It seems quite a bizarre point to make. Will he please elucidate?
Chris Bryant
Both days provide a specific role for the monarch. The point that I am trying to make is that because Easter moves, the number of working days’ measures that is allowed for in the Bill at the moment makes it more difficult to predetermine exactly how many days there will be. For the most part, it is inappropriate to have a general election across the passage of Easter; it makes it more difficult. I do not want to lay that down in legislation. I merely make the point.
The main point, however, is that it has always been the ambition of freedom that there should be frequent elections. There is a significant difference between having a fixed term and a maximum term for a Parliament. The Meeting of Parliament Act 1694—it used to be known as the Triennial Act 1694—stated:
“Whereas, by the ancient laws and statutes of this kingdom, frequent parliaments ought to be held; and whereas frequent and new parliaments tend very much to the happy union and good agreement of the king and people”.
It then went on to make provision for three-year parliaments, which is what, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby is advocating.
I fear that the argument of the Government—in particular the argument of the Deputy Prime Minister—that plenty of time is needed to do unpopular things is rather closer to the Septennial Act 1715. That said:
“And whereas it has been found by experience that the said clause”—-
namely the one that provided for three-year Parliaments—
“hath proved very grievous and burthensome, by occasioning much greater and more continued expences in order to elections of members to serve in Parliament, and more violent and lasting heats and animosities among the subjects of this realm, than were ever known before the said clause was enacted; and the said provision, if it should continue, may probably at this juncture, when a restless and popish faction are designing and endeavouring to renew the rebellion within this kingdom, and an invasion from abroad, be destructive to the peace and security of the government.”
In other words, as in 1715, the Government want to be able to remain longer in power because they think that it is better for the country. On the whole, we should presume that shorter Parliaments are better. It is no wonder that the Chartists campaigned for annual elections. The petition that was presented to this House on 2 May 1842 by Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, the MP for Finsbury, argued for it and for the payment of MPs. The Parliament Act 1911, to which several hon. Members referred, came about in response to the battle over the powers of the House of Lords and the people’s Budget in 1910. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith then said that the change would probably amount in practice to an actual working term of four years.
In 1992, the Labour manifesto said:
“This general election was called only after months of on-again, off-again dithering which damaged our economy and weakened our democracy. No government with a majority should be allowed to put the interests of party above country as the Conservatives have done. Although an early election will sometimes be necessary, we will introduce as a general rule a fixed parliamentary term.”
In 2002, Tony Wright, the former Member for Cannock Chase—he was previously the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee—brought in a ten-minute rule Bill, calling for fixed-term Parliaments. He pointedly said that the fixed term had to be four years rather than five years.
In 2007, another ten-minute rule Bill was brought forward in the name of David Howarth, a very fine man who was then the Liberal Democrat Member for Cambridge. He argued very forcefully, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, that there should be a fixed-term Parliament. The Liberal Democrats have long argued for fixed-term Parliaments, but fixed at four years and not five. Their policy paper 83 “For the People By the People”—[Interruption.] I will not repeat what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has just said. The policy paper, which was introduced to the autumn conference in 2007, set out the commitment to a written constitution, which included fixed parliamentary terms of four years. It stated:
“Liberal Democrats have long argued that parliaments should last for a fixed term of four years. In a reformed political system coalition government might be the norm and stability can only be encouraged by a system which does not allow for snap elections when political relationships suffer temporary disruption.”
The best advocate of such legislation was the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath). Indeed, he brought a Bill before Parliament. I have seen lots of photographs of him advocating a four-year fixed Parliament. As he is an honourable man who believes in consistency, I know that he will support us tonight in favour of a four-year rather than a five-year term.
Welcome to the Chair, Miss Begg. It is a delight to see you for the first time in the Chair in the full Chamber of the House. Let me repeat, there is no mandate for this provision. This provision is not the one that was in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto. It is not the provision that was in the Conservative party’s manifesto, because the Conservative party said that it would introduce legislation to provide that if a party in Government changed its leader, and therefore the Prime Minister, there would be a general election within six months. That provision has completely disappeared, so there is no mandate for the precise nature of this Bill.
I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House and the Minister have persuaded themselves of their argument. They have scrunched up their eyes and desperately persuaded themselves that this Bill does not try to extend the length of Parliaments. They have screwed themselves to the sticking point, and they are determined to get it through. The honest truth, however, is that this is a wrong measure. It is anti-democratic. It will mean that general elections happen less frequently. This House should support the amendments that have been tabled by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr and all the other amendments that call for four-year Parliaments rather than five-year Parliaments and the next general election in May 2014 and not 2015.
Mrs Laing
I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Miss Begg.
In the unavoidable absence of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), I should like to put before the House amendment 32, which has been tabled by members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, of which the hon. Gentleman is chairman. I and other hon. Members here present are also members. Not all members of the Select Committee have put their names to this amendment, and I do not wish to press it to a Division. None the less, I want to put it before the House on behalf of the Select Committee because it was part of our process of pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill. In the Select Committee’s words, the House should consider whether
“a Parliament following an early general election should last for only as long as the remainder of the term of the previous Parliament, and whether such a provision would make a super-majority for a dissolution unnecessary?”
I am sorry to be speaking about this matter after the shadow Minister because he may have wished to say something about the Select Committee’s deliberations.
Three eminent academics gave evidence to the Select Committee. Professor Robert Blackburn of King’s college, London, wrote that the amendment would help to
“ensure a governing majority does not abuse its ability to push through an early election resolution for no good reason other than being a favourable time to itself to go to the polls”.
Professor Robert Hazell of the constitution unit at University College London, wrote that the proposal would provide
“a strong disincentive to a government inclined to call an early election”
as well as
“a disincentive to opposition parties tempted to force a mid term dissolution”.
The proposal is also supported by Professor Hazell’s colleague, Professor Dawn Oliver, for similar reasons.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point. It will be difficult for people to know on what basis elections are held if we do not accept amendment 32 or an amendment to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill to ensure that boundary commissions report 18 months or so before the date of an election.
Mrs Laing
Indeed. The hon. Gentleman and I disagree profusely on the boundary commission issues that are currently being debated in Parliament, but we agree that it is essential that regular boundary reviews coincide with parliamentary terms. I expect that the Minister will also agree with that.
As I have often said when speaking to amendments that have arisen from the pre-legislative scrutiny undertaken by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, amendment 32 is genuinely meant to be helpful to Ministers, and to forewarn them. If there are early elections, boundary commission reviews will be out of step. Having said that, this is a purely practical matter. I am sure that the Minister, once he has given it about two or three minutes’ thought, will have a perfectly good response. It is right that this Committee considers such points, because that is the purpose and meaning of pre-legislative scrutiny.
The Government put their argument against the amendment in their response to the Select Committee’s report. They say that
“a Government could be returned following an early general election with a large majority, in which case it would make little sense to ask the voters to return to the polls in as little as a few months.”
That is a perfectly good point and I cannot argue with it. They also argue:
“The people expect that when they go to the polls, they are being asked to elect a Government which will last for a full term with a full programme.”
If the Bill passes, the people will indeed expect that. Those points answer some of the points that the Select Committee made in its pre-legislative scrutiny, but not all.
As I said, not all members of the Select Committee support amendment 32, and I do not wish to press it to a Division. I am speaking to it on behalf of the Select Committee simply so that this Committee has an opportunity to consider the balance of the arguments. I am sure that the Minister will give very good reasons why he does not wish to accept the amendment, but I hope he will reassure us that the Government have considered the points made—perfectly properly—by the Select Committee.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady referred to the evidence given by Professor Hazell, so I am sure that she would also want to point out that he said that fixed terms should be for four and not five years. Does she remember 16 May 2008? She intervened on David Howarth in the Chamber to attack the idea of a fixed-term Parliament. She said:
“Are the Liberal Democrats in favour of this Bill because for nearly a century they have not had an incumbent Prime Minister, and have no prospect of having one for the next century?”—[Official Report, 16 May 2008; Vol. 475, c. 1704.]
Mrs Laing
I am glad the hon. Gentleman raises that and grateful to him. I very well remember 16 May 2008 —I have the Hansard here in my hand—and I am delighted that when I spoke from the Dispatch Box from which he just spoke, I did not encourage my party to vote against provisions for a fixed-term Parliament Bill. I doubted the motives of the Liberal Democrats at that point.
Mrs Laing
No. With respect, the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. The Bill is not about extending Parliament. Four year Parliaments are not normal. Let us be realistic and honest about that, in political terms. We have had four-year Parliaments because they have suited Prime Ministers who believed that they had a better chance of securing a majority in the country after four years than if they went on for another year. The current system gives enormous power to Prime Ministers, and quite rightly so. There must be some power of incumbency, which is what the power to make such decisions is. There is no norm of four-year Parliaments, and averages are irrelevant—they are just arithmetic.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady is talking about what is normal. I venture to say that it has not been normal in the British system, since 1832, to have a five-year Parliament. There have been a few, but there have been very few. It has been more normal to have four-year Parliaments.
Mrs Laing
No I did not, but I would argue with the hon. Gentleman that, if he seeks consistency, which would not be unreasonable, the Scottish Parliament should change to five years. There is no problem with that.
The point made by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) about comparisons with local authorities is interesting but irrelevant, because we are talking about Parliament, the work of which has a long time lag.
Mrs Laing
The hon. Gentleman can wave it away, but he cannot change the fact that our country’s economic situation is dire, and that is because of what his Government did in their last five-year Parliament. I wish it had not lasted five years, but that is another point—[Hon. Members: “Ah!] Yes, but when I say that, I say it purely out of party political prejudice, and other people in the Chamber ought to admit the same when they are looking for a general election to be sooner, rather than later. It is not constitutional principle, but party political prejudice.
Mrs Laing
It does not say that. It says: “One day the Don’t knows will get in, and then where will we be?” [Hon. Members: “They did.”] Precisely my point! I used to laugh at that fridge magnet and think that Spike Milligan was funny, but now I am sorry to say his prophecy was correct. Where would we be, if the electorate decided, “Don’t know”? We would be where we are now. We need a coalition, because that is what the electorate, in Spike Milligan fashion, decided. We have to have a coalition because it is necessary for stability, and that stability is necessary to resolve the economic situation and put this country back on its feet after 13 years of misrule by Labour Governments.
On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), speaking from the Dispatch Box for the Opposition, was not cynical—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said today that parts of the Bill are cynical—but practical when she said:
“The long title of this Bill should be ‘A Bill to ensure that the inherent contradictions in the coalition Government are suppressed for a full five years; to make sure that neither party can double cross the other; and for connected purposes.’”—[Official Report, 13 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 697.]
Well, she was absolutely right: that is not cynical; it is practical. We need to have stability. We therefore need to have a stable coalition, and if having fixed-term Parliaments is part of that, we need to have fixed-term Parliaments. The Government are right to state that such a Parliament should last for five years, because in order to bring about the stability that this country needs, it needs to have the same Government continuing with the same coherent, stable economic and social principles in the long term, rather than for short-term political expediency. That is why five years is so important.
Chris Bryant
I think I must have wandered over to the Government Benches and left my notes for my speech there, because the hon. Lady seems to be reading them out. I can see why it might be practical to say that the next general election should be on 7 May 2015. However, against her argument, I cannot see why it is a good constitutional principle—one that should be set in legislation—that Parliaments should sit for five-year terms.
Mrs Laing
I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman cannot see that, but I have said that I can see it. It is a perfectly proper constitutional principle that a Parliament should sit for five years. Now I am putting the practical side of the argument, which is that in the political and economic situation in which we find ourselves—as a result of the mismanagement of our country’s economy and social policy for 13 years by a bad, Labour Government, who did the people of the United Kingdom no favours whatever—it will take more than just two or three years to put this country back on its feet. Therefore, we should have a five-year term. It is what the people of our country need; it is what we as parliamentarians have a duty, in the name of stability, to give the people.
Sheila Gilmore
I absolutely agree. The problem is not to do with people taking different positions; it is to do with what will happen in the month or few weeks before an election when the issues are being debated on the hustings and being reported in the newspapers. I have an awful vision of us running two sets of hustings and trying to get people to come out to slightly chilly church halls to listen to completely different debates on different nights—although it is perfectly possible to get people to come out to such events when elections take place at different times. Why make this happen when we do not have to?
Chris Bryant
Is the point not that elections to the Assemblies of Wales and Northern Ireland and to the Parliament in Scotland feel like general elections? Indeed, effectively the law treats them like general elections in that a free post is allowed through the Royal Mail and the broadcasters have to report events in certain ways. A conflict will arise if every 20 years we hold these elections on the same day.
Stephen Pound
I stand abashed, ashamed and corrected, but, as ever, eager to serve, Miss Begg. I was about to turn specifically to the amendment of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), who speaks for Plaid Cymru. The amendment is supported by a broad coalition of the better brains in the House, including the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), whose constituency is possibly the most unpronounceable in Scotland. The amendment offers an alternative to the centralist, Stalinist, steel-like structure of a five-year Parliament. It offers something that we are prepared to support for the good of the nation although not all of us believe in it entirely in our hearts—a four-year fixed-term Parliament.
To see the amendments in the specific context, we have to think of what happened in May this year, when two groups of people were trying to buy a house. They were trying to bid for that great mansion of state that is this United Kingdom, and they found that even as the previous occupants were leaving with dignity from the front door, neither of them had enough money to buy the house, so they both moved in at the same time. Maybe they daubed the soffit with a bit of yellow and put a touch of blue on the eaves, but they had no choice.
You will no doubt be asking yourself, Miss Begg, how this relates to the amendments before us. That is precisely what I was coming to. I do not wish to comment on the sleeping habits of Liberal Democrats. That is far too exotic an area for me, but the camp bed in the living room and, in the master bedroom, surrounded by damask silken curtains, the great four-poster bed that the Conservatives occupy represent a compromise, which is the basis of the coalition.
The Bill on the Floor of the House today at the Committee stage refers to the creation of a structure that will bind together two disparate groups of people—the people who virtually bought the house and the lodgers on the camp bed in the front room. You may think that that is not relevant, and I would have to say, Miss Begg, that I agree with you, but the point that I am trying to make is that the Bill must be seen in the context from which it comes.
Chris Bryant
Is not the point, in relation to five-year or four-year fixed-term Parliaments, the one that was made by the professor of constitutional law at King’s college London, Robert Blackburn who, in his evidence to the Select Committee, said of the genesis of the Bill that
“it is, I think, fairly clear that it is driven by the political self-interest of the coalition Government. They want to fix the lifetime of this Government—not the Parliament, but the Government”?
Chris Bryant
The Minister is being extremely disingenuous. He said that the Prime Minister can keep going until 2015 if he wants to, but that is not the case—he does not have a majority. In fact, the words of Robert Blackburn to the Select Committee are right:
“The Liberal Democrats want to be sure that the Conservative leadership would not cut and run in the same way that a minority Administration with an informal pact with the Liberal Democrats in Parliament might—as in 1974”.
The other side of the coin is that the Conservatives want some guarantee that the Liberal Democrats will not change their minds. The Prime Minister needs this Bill to keep the coalition in power until 2015.
The Temporary Chairman (Miss Anne Begg): Order. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that “disingenuous” is not necessarily a parliamentary word?
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, Miss Begg—I did not mean to suggest that the Minister was misleading the House. I think that his argument is misleading, but I am sure that he is not trying to mislead the House.
Chris Bryant
I apologise if this is a similar point to the one made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). The legislatures already have the power to bring forward elections, but there is to be a power to extend. In effect, therefore, the Government are extending this Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly for the convenience of the coalition. In essence, the Minister is saying that the motto of the Government is “Fewer Elections”.
Mr Harper
No. The hon. Gentleman must not keep giving the Committee misleading arguments. The Bill does not extend the term of this Parliament—this Parliament can run for five years. Members of the devolved Parliament and Assemblies have asked the Government to think about how they can make a decision on whether to move the date—a sensible provision—of elections.
Mr Harper
Let me finish setting out this point, because I might be about to deal with any questions that the hon. Gentlemen have.
The Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly currently have the power to vote with a two-thirds majority for early Dissolution. In Scotland and Wales, the relevant Acts provide that if the early Dissolution is more than six months before the scheduled election, the scheduled election must still take place. Elections to the devolved legislatures must be held on the first Thursday in May. We want to give them the power to extend, because if they have only the power to hold elections earlier, elections would effectively have to be held in the depths of winter. The Government have listened on that point, which is why we want to consult the legislatures on the ability to extend the date, which will give them much more flexibility.
It is worth making two other points. First, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections are materially different from local government elections in England. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are legislatures, and they already have a limited power to vary the date of their elections. In England in recent decades, general elections have frequently been combined with local elections. Combining local and mayoral elections with a UK general election is normal practice in England. It is easily managed and should continue unchanged.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is obviously making a sensible proposal in that regard, but I presume that such a change requires primary legislation, and that he intends to advance that in the Bill. I hope that he does not expect to make amendments in the House of Lords. Will he give an undertaking this evening that any such proposal will be made on Report in this House, and not at any later stage?
Mr Harper
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman on behalf of the Labour party recognises that my proposal is sensible. We will consult with the parties in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and introduce those changes at a later stage—I hope to do so sooner rather than later.
Mr Harper
I hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.
The position in Northern Ireland is slightly different. One difference in the Northern Ireland settlement is that if the date of the election is brought forward by whatever period, the original scheduled election does not have to be held. Also, the responsibility for Assembly elections, including the date, remains a matter for the Northern Ireland Secretary. He also holds the power to shift the date by two months either way, whereas the date for Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections can be shifted by only one month. I have discussed that in great detail with Northern Ireland Ministers.
Given the difference of the Northern Ireland settlement, and that next year there is a triple combination of Assembly elections, local elections and the referendum, Northern Ireland Ministers want to learn form that experience to see whether the existing power is sufficient or whether they wish to modify it. They will consult parties in Northern Ireland, both now and after next May, to see whether a further change needs to be made. If so, we will legislate to bring it into force.
Mr Harper
Let me make some progress.
Finally, new clauses 4 and 5 would provide that elections to this House and the devolved legislatures could not occur on the same day. The problem with that proposal is that if it were agreed, it would provide that where a devolved legislature’s general election had been moved, the following poll would take place on the first Thursday in May four years later. For example, if one of the devolved legislatures delayed its 2015 elections by one year, elections to that legislature and the House of Commons would coincide again in 2020. New clauses 4 and 5 would mean that those elections would have to be moved again in 2020, so they are actually a back-door method of substituting a five-year term for the devolved legislatures.
I do not know whether that was the intention of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, who spoke so powerfully against a five-year term and in favour of a four-year term, but the effect of his new clauses would be to deliver a five-year term through the back door. For that reason I do not think that it would be very sensible to accept them. Also, new clauses 4 and 5 do not make provision for a super-majority, which appears to suggest that a majority Government in a devolved legislature could just play around with the election date to suit themselves, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve in this Bill. The Government therefore cannot accept new clauses 4 and 5, and I would ask the hon. Gentleman not to press them to a Division.
In conclusion, I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this debate, particularly those who were here for the whole debate and those who have tabled or supported amendments to clause 1. The Government are convinced that our Bill as drafted provides the right approach. I would urge hon. Members not to press their amendments to a Division and to support clause 1.
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am going to allow Mr Chris Bryant in, but I know that he is going to make a very brief contribution.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to you, Mr Hoyle. I want to speak only because the Minister made some announcements in his speech that are obviously significant. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says, in a rather self-righteous tone, that he made them to Parliament, and we are delighted that he has done so—I presume that that is a criticism of his colleagues, not of anybody else in the Chamber. However, he has made some important announcements. He excoriated my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) for referring to the Government position before we had heard what it was, but as the Government chose not to make their position known until the very end of the debate, it is hardly her fault. As he knew that he was going to make his announcement this evening, he could perfectly well have written to all parties concerned to make it clear that he wanted to consult on the issue. I suggest that that would have shown slightly more respect to the Committee and to the various political parties involved.
The Minister is proposing a change, but I note that so far he has not been prepared to say whether, if he intends to table further amendments, he will do so in this House. I wholly respect the powers and intelligence of the House of Lords to make sensible amendments, and I hope that it will do so to several pieces of legislation. However, I believe that amendments to legislation that affects elections should be debated and made in the elected House, not in the unelected Chamber. That is why I hope that at some point the Minister will make good his suggestions, that he will guarantee to debate those amendments in this House first, and that we will not have Report stage until such time as those amendments have been made in this House.
Jonathan Edwards
Diolch, Mr Hoyle. We have had an interesting and informative debate. I shall quickly run through some of the contributions. As ever, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) made some passionate and honest points. He is always respected throughout the House. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) argued coherently and in detail. I cannot support his amendments, but I am glad that he will support ours this evening. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made excellent points about the need to ensure that UK general elections are held separately, and I am glad that the Minister accepted those points. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made pertinent points about the Bill essentially entrenching the coalition rather than being concerned with democracy. I can only apologise to him for getting to the Table Office before him.
With her usual eloquence, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) highlighted the views of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and I thank her for her comments. The right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) spoke passionately about the political motives behind the Bill. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) gave an insightful historical lesson on the US constitution and relevant comparisons. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) reminded us of the 147,000 spoiled ballots in Scotland in 2007 due to the coupling of the local government elections and the Scottish Parliament elections on the same day.
The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), as ever, made a compelling and entertaining speech, and I only wish that I had his oratorical talents.
G20 Summit
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Some people say that it is quite old-fashioned to pile an aeroplane full of business leaders and fly them off to India, China and the rest of it. I do not agree. It is important to try to bash down the door in order to secure trade in different countries, and the enthusiasm and energy that you show does actually have an impact, because you want to make sure that Indian universities are looking to link with British universities and Indian firms are looking to link with British firms. So, yes, making a bit of noise and taking a good team of business leaders over does make a difference, and I think that we will see trade, jobs and two-way investment as a result.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
One of the inequalities in the world is the tax haven status that many territories enjoy. It has a profoundly deleterious effect on the economies of some of the poorest countries in the world, so does the Prime Minister believe that Cayman should maintain its tax haven status, or will he take action to prevent it from retaining that status?
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I do remember giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee and I enjoyed it tremendously. I was sorry only that the experience was too short.
I do not remember whether the hon. Gentleman was present when we debated the postal vote provisions in Committee, but the Government decided that the most sensible arrangement would be for standing postal vote provisions for a United Kingdom parliamentary election to kick in automatically for the referendum, but for that not to apply to people with postal vote provisions for a different election.
When voters receive their polling card, it will helpfully set out for them the elections and the referendum to which their voting entitlement applies—that will deal with the circumstances in which there are different franchises—and will also make clear how their postal vote has been set up. They may not have one set up for the referendum, for instance, but they may have one set up for a local election. That will enable them to take action at that stage and, if they prefer to vote by post, ensure that they can do so in the elections and the referendum.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Form 4, which appears on page 245 of the Bill, results from an amendment that the Minister tabled to the original Bill. There is now a new form, which appears in amendment 156. Why did the Minister not simply table amendment 156 in the first place, given that the forms are very different?
Mr Harper
As I said earlier, the changes that we have tabled today to the combination provisions reflect the changes in the conduct of the election orders that were laid before the House. We wanted to ensure that it was as easy as possible to combine the polls, and that the instructions given to voters for the referendum and the elections were aligned with each other. The original amendments and combination provisions were based on the law as it was before the territorial orders had been laid. I think that that is quite straightforward.
Chris Bryant
Obviously I understand the process—as I am sure the Minister has foreseen, it is one of the matters on which I shall express my disagreement with him—but the requirement for people to write in black ink, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), is not included in the form that appears in the amended version of the Bill, but is included in the form that appears in the amendment. Why was that change made?
Chris Bryant
Let me deal first with the process. The Minister referred to statutory instruments. All the amendments we are discussing, bar the one tabled by members of the Scottish National party, were tabled by the Government, and they cover some 28 pages of the amendment paper. They were not tabled because the House demanded amendments, or because the Government said in Committee that they would consider probing amendments and return with further amendments on Report. They have been introduced because the Government have gone through a process of putting various carts and horses in the wrong order. I fully recognise that I am not as versed in country ways as the Minister, who represents the Forest of Dean, but I recognise when parliamentary procedure is being put in the wrong order, and it would have made far more sense to have proceeded with pre-legislative scrutiny and proper consultation with the devolved Administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and then to have proposed legislation in draft form. We should bear it in mind that not a single devolved Administration wants a combination of polls next May, but if the Government’s view is nevertheless that they wish to push forward with that, against the wishes of the three devolved Administrations, they can then introduce statutory instruments to make provision under the Scotland Act 1998, the two Wales Acts of 2000 and 2006 and the Northern Ireland provisions. They would do that first, and the proposals would then be considered in this House and the House of Lords and, if agreed to, the Government would introduce the final version of their Bill. Instead, because the Government are running at an inappropriately fast pace for this kind of legislation, there has been no consultation whatever with any of the devolved Administrations—with either the Assemblies or the Parliament or the Executives or Governments in each of those nations.
There has been no process of consultation on the Bill, but there has also been no process of consultation on the orders. The Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) Order 2010 is some 205 pages long; it is not a minor tome. It includes measures on election expenses, disputed claims, corruption, entreating, the control of donations to candidates, the appointment of election agents, the requirement of secrecy, the breach of official duty, tampering with nomination papers, and personation and other voting offences. I am sure the Government will say that this entire matter is a reserved responsibility and that it is for the Westminster Government to decide, but it would have showed greater respect for the devolved Administrations if they had consulted them before the orders were laid.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
On the consultation issue, I know from experience that regular meetings used to take place, and presumably still do, between the First Minister in Wales and the Secretary of State for Wales, and I guess that the situation in Scotland is the same. The meetings take place frequently—sometimes once a week, or even more—so there is no reason why there cannot be dialogue and consultation at a relatively early stage. Can my hon. Friend explain why even the most basic communication has not taken place?
Chris Bryant
I cannot give any explanation for that. All I know in relation to the Secretary of State for Wales is that, with regard to another matter, I asked on the Floor of the House in June for a meeting with her on a cross-party basis and she said she was quite happy to have one as soon as possible. The first date that was provided was this afternoon. The Secretary of State did not turn up and her officials had booked the wrong room. It is therefore quite possible that if any consultation on the matter under discussion had been planned, it would not have actually taken place.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that nowhere will he find a requirement that a discussion should be held if the boundaries in Scotland have to change—yet again? There should also have been a discussion with MSPs about the Scottish boundaries, and about local authority areas. That would have made more sense in terms of our working together and coming up with a solution that is not a patchwork quilt.
Chris Bryant
Or, indeed, just a muddle. One of the things that Welsh Members have been trying to say during the discussion of this Bill is that on the combination of polls, lessons need to be learned from the situation in Scotland, where the boundaries for MSPs are no longer coterminous with those of Members of Parliament. In addition, in Scotland but not in England or in Wales, wards are being split between constituencies because of the local government arrangements that have been made as a result of large single transferable vote wards.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
My hon. Friend, like many others on the Opposition Benches, will have sat through proceedings on large Bills with a huge number of clauses and schedules. When a lot of late amendments are tabled, that is, in general, a tribute to the civil service, who are working through the night and burning the midnight oil to draft them. However, we have come to recognise that it is also a symptom—not unique to this Bill—of legislation that is not ready. My concern, which I hope is also the concern of those in the other place, is that this may not be the last we will see of batches and pages upon pages of amendments. I hope that those in the other place will act on that concern, because this is rushed legislation.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend, and near neighbour, is absolutely right about that. Interestingly, the Scottish Executive have made direct representations to the Secretary of State for Scotland about the statutory instruments, as has the convener of the Local Government and Communities Committee in the Scottish Parliament. So it was a bit disappointing to see the reply from the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland , which said:
“I would however like to personally reassure you that Scotland Office officials are working closely with the Cabinet Office; the Electoral Commission; the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland; and electoral administrators to ensure that both the referendum and the Scottish Parliament election will run smoothly on 5 May next year.”
I do not think that that represents the respect agenda originally referred to by the Prime Minister, and it does not really represent new politics either. I fully understand that the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) complained bitterly about the way in which we introduced legislation, but introducing it in a way that does not allow amendments to be properly considered in a timely fashion or in the proper order is a ludicrous way of doing business.
Kevin Brennan
My hon. Friend knows it is unwise not to give way to me, because it might end up in a point of order. I have described this Bill as a Wallace and Gromit Bill because of the way in which, rather like Gromit in “The Wrong Trousers”, the Government are laying down the track as they go along. Indeed it is worse than that, because this group of amendments is consequential on a set of statutory instruments that this House has not yet even considered. If that is not getting things back to front, I do not know what is.
Chris Bryant
I do recall my hon. Friend raising the matter of “The Wrong Trousers” and Wallace and Gromit, but I think his metaphor does not work in this case. Gromit was laying down pieces of track ahead of him, whereas the Government are laying down pieces of track behind them—pieces of track that they have not been over; this is putting the horse before the cart before the horse before the cart. There is a real problem in the process that the Government have adopted, and I very much hope that their lordships will want to examine it carefully.
What is also wrong is that because the Government have tabled 28 pages of amendments that we have to debate on Report, they have had to set aside a chunk of time for us to do so. That has been done not because the House wanted it, or to bring about greater consensus on the Bill, but to meet the Government’s own business needs, and as a result of their own haste. The fact that we have not had a single moment’s debate about the decoupling of seats in the Welsh Assembly and their coterminosity with Westminster seats is a disgrace. If, as we had requested, a knife had not been put in yesterday night’s proceedings, it would have been possible for us to have debated that matter now, rather than the measures that we have to debate at this point.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree when a clause is specific to a constituent part of the United Kingdom, there should be allotted time to debate that clause?
Chris Bryant
I am afraid that I sort of disagree with the hon. Gentleman. It is important that there should be time to debate such a clause. We tabled an amendment yesterday that a clause should be deleted from the Bill, just so that we could have that debate. On Report there is no other way of having that debate—but I am not sure that it is always right to put in knives, because that leads to some complexities in the management of time. That is why we argued that we should not have knives.
Mr Harper
While the hon. Gentleman is replying to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), will he explain something to the House? It is true that we did not get to the debate on the decoupling provisions, but he will know that the provisions to decouple the Welsh Assembly constituencies from the Westminster ones are supported by the First Minister of Wales. The First Minister has written to the Secretary of State to state that in terms, so it is surprising that the Labour party in Westminster is taking a different position from the Labour party in Wales.
Chris Bryant
It is surprising that a Government that consists of Conservatives and Liberals is taking a view on the number of seats in Parliament that is different from what was in both parties’ manifestos at the general election. The point is that we should have had time to debate these matters, and we have not had a single moment to debate them. I would merely say that I hope that their lordships will take the opportunity to debate the matters that it has not been possible for us to reach.
Let me swiftly deal with some of the amendments. The Minister is absolutely right that the vast majority of the amendments are relatively technical. However, that does not mean that we should be able to agree them today, because we have not agreed any of the statutory instruments on which they depend—he said “if” the statutory instruments are approved by Parliament. There is an enormous presumption in tabling amendments to meet a piece of legislation that has not yet been agreed. That treats this House with a degree of disrespect that is inappropriate.
Amendment 222, tabled by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), is about the costs of running the polls being met by the UK Government. The Minister is right to say that the costs are all met by the Consolidated Fund, but I presume that the hon. Gentleman’s amendment has been tabled to make the point that he thinks that the responsibility for running the Scottish parliamentary elections should be the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament—[Interruption.] He is not nodding; he is looking inscrutable at the moment. That is unusual for him, because he is normally extremely scrutable. Perhaps we will have to wait for his contribution to the debate.
The vast majority of these amendments make changes such as substituting “2010” for “2007”, because of the different statutory instrument that would be referred to. Although I suppose it would in theory be possible for us to vote on all of them, because we think that it would be inappropriate to decide on them until the statutory instruments have been decided on, we will none the less want to press at least one to a vote simply to make the point that the process has not been sensible.
Government amendment 78, however, refers to the abandonment of a poll in Scotland. When the Minister sums up, will he explain precisely why he has moved in that direction? The amendment relates to line 3 of page 226, in schedule 7. The Minister also referred to Government amendment 177, which is, as he says, a quite substantial amendment. It runs to several pages and concerns Northern Ireland. It runs from page 1047 of the amendment paper onwards. Proposed new paragraph 40(2) states:
“The following provisions have effect as if the persons listed in them included persons who would be entitled to be present at the proceedings on the issue or receipt of postal ballot papers in respect of the referendum or a relevant election if those proceedings were taken on their own.”
I wonder why the Minister has chosen that precise wording. Likewise, paragraph 42(2) states:
“Otherwise, the provisions listed in sub-paragraph (3) have effect as if the words before ‘the colour’ were omitted.”
It may be that I am very dim, but I simply do not understand that provision in relation to Northern Ireland; it will be for the House’s convenience if the Minister explains it.
Similarly, paragraph 44, on spoilt postal ballot papers—again in relation to Northern Ireland—states at sub-paragraph (2):
“The spoilt postal ballot paper may not be replaced unless all the postal ballot papers issued to the person are returned.”
I do not understand why, if a voter has been given three ballot papers and has spoilt only one of them and therefore wants a replacement only for that one, they have to return the other two as well. Will the Government explain that? I ask about this because some people believe we should make postal balloting more difficult.
In Northern Ireland there has been a tradition of separate rules and regulations for postal voting, because of concerns about corruption. In case the Government are considering substantially restricting the use of postal voting in England and Wales, I must tell the Minister that the current provisions have made it far easier for a large number of my voters to vote in any election. Previously, people had to get a member of the medical profession to sign them off as ill to get a postal ballot. In many cases, my voters were charged £6 a head for the right to vote in an election by post, which I think is completely wrong. Of course we want to ensure that there is no opportunity for corruption in the use of postal ballots, but my experience is that many elderly and other people, particularly those who cannot predict the precise timing of their work commitments, value the current provisions on postal voting.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to the Minister for sending me an e-mail today about the definition of newspapers and periodicals, but unfortunately the parliamentary system would not let me open the attachment, so I do not have the faintest idea what it says. I would be grateful if he could find some means of letting me know what he was trying to communicate.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I hear about amendments that are probing, wrecking and reasoned, but amendment 222, in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), is simply protesting. It is protesting about what could have been achieved with a lot less resistance had the Government been reasonable and not tried to usurp Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’s day of democracy—a day that was set in stone, in legislation anyway, 12 years ago.
The Deputy Prime Minister has stuck his neck out on this—indeed, I wonder whether he is prepared for the consequences as it will be his neck on the block if things go wrong—and the Government have proceeded at breakneck speed, disregarding people’s feelings and beliefs as well as the important issues that will arise in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales next May. That is not a slight against the two Ministers present—the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons—who have been handling a very sticky wicket quite well indeed.
No time has been taken to consult the devolved Governments on the Bill. However, that was also a mistake of the Labour party in government when it delivered devolution to Scotland and Wales almost in direct correlation to the strengths of the nationalist parties in those countries. [Hon. Members: “Rubbish!”] That is not rubbish: it is absolutely right. We in Scotland got our Parliament because the Scottish National party is stronger than Plaid Cymru, which is why Wales got an Assembly. I often wonder why Scotland does not have even the powers of the Isle of Man—population 100,000.
In the past several weeks we have had five days to discuss the Bill in Committee. When the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was not speaking, we even had some time to get the odd word in before the guillotine. The debate was cut off at important points and some very interesting and reasonable amendments were put on to the waste heap of parliamentary time. One of the most interesting amendments came from the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who tried to ensure that all the Bill’s measures, not only those on the voting system but those on the changes to boundaries and the number of Members, would have depended on gaining a positive result in the referendum.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman just slipped in, I hope, a reference to a voting system that will be used only every five years. I hope he will not support a five-year fixed-term Parliament, and that I might be able to entice him towards a four-year fixed-term Parliament, which would be a means of guaranteeing that the UK general election did not fall on the same day as a Scottish or a Welsh general election.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The salient point is not whether the election takes place every four years, five years, three years or whatever, but that the referendum coming up next May is usurping the day of democracy and affecting issues over four years. The Minister said that the UK will be solely responsible for the costs, which implies that the amendment has, in effect, been accepted. I welcome that.
When the referendum comes around, I cannot see parties such as the Scottish National party campaigning very strongly for or against. We will have more important things to do. I would encourage the Liberal Democrats to campaign on the referendum, because we will then go and hoover up their seats. A massive mistake is being made by holding that poll on the same day as the elections in Scotland. That is why I am making the protest, and I hope it is being heard. I do not know what will happen in another place, but it should change the provision.
Gate-crashing Scotland’s day of democracy shows a lack of respect on the part of the Government. They say that they would have respected the devolved Administrations, but when pressed they tell us that the opinions of the governing parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not matter—a case of words and actions diverging greatly.
The Government need our input. They need all our voices. We need to present issues to the Government and make sure that they do the right thing.
Mr Harper
I did not detect any focus on the amendments in the last few speeches, so I shall not address the points that were made in them. I shall focus instead on those Members who troubled themselves to speak to the amendments and raised sensible points, as did the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). He and others mentioned that the orders relate to the elections and not to the referendum. The conduct of the elections is not devolved, as my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe) said. The hon. Gentleman will know that, under the Calman proposals, we propose to move the administration of those elections to the Scottish Parliament.
The orders that the hon. Gentleman mentioned are not amendable, and I hope that the House will support them. If it does not, I have already said that we will revert to the original provisions in the Bill, which have been debated and voted on by the House. Either way, the House of Commons will have had the opportunity to consider both scenarios—without the new orders and with them—and to pronounce on them. I am therefore confident that the House and the other place will have taken those decisions, whatever they might be.
Chris Bryant
When the hon. Gentleman says that the Government would revert to the previous provisions, I presume he means that he would table amendments in the House of Lords, because he would not be able to table them here. In that case, he would not have met his own criterion that matters relating to the elections would be decided on here.
Mr Harper
No, not at all. If Parliament did not adopt the orders, we would indeed have to table the amendments in the House of Lords, but in so doing, we would simply be bringing the Bill back to the stage that it is at with the amendments that have already been debated and voted on by this House. Either way, it would be this House that had effectively decided on the machinery for our electoral arrangements. I hope that I have set that out clearly, even though I know that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with it.
I listened carefully to the speech by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is no longer in his place, or, indeed, any other place—[Hon. Members: “He must be somewhere!”] Well, he is not in the Chamber. He must be somewhere, but he is not here. He talked about the respect agenda, and he and others talked about holding elections and referendums on the same day. We have had this debate before, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will not try your patience.
The hon. Gentleman made some sensible points on the coincidence of elections, notably of a UK general election and devolved elections. He knows that that matter has been highlighted—although not actually put in place—by the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, and we have already said that we are thinking about possible solutions. When the Government have settled on a position, we will consult parties in each of the devolved nations—not the devolved Administrations, because they only represent one or more parties—to come up with a solution. That relates to the coincidence of elections; the Government do not think that the combination of a referendum and elections will have the same qualitative impact.
Mr Harper
I will not dwell on that point at length, because you would rule me out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Briefly, however, I will say that it would be possible, if there were an early UK general election or if the devolved Administrations’ cycles changed, to have four-year terms for both Administrations. That could result in coincidence on every occasion, rather than just once every 20 years. I will not pursue that, however, as it relates to a different piece of legislation, which the House will have the chance to debate in due course.
Chris Bryant
I know that the Minister will not want to dwell on this point either, but he was talking about process, and about the amendments that he might or might not have to table. If the Government change the law on prisoners’ voting, they will have to do so in primary legislation. Will the Minister make it clear that he would not do that by tabling amendments to this Bill in the House of Lords?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is getting ahead of himself a little. I made it clear in the statement that the Government had not yet made any decisions on how to implement that judgment. We have made it quite clear on a number of other issues relating to this Bill that it is about the referendum. Indeed, we have resisted amendments in which people have tried to make changes that would have a wider policy impact and that should be made elsewhere. For example, we had a debate on the appropriate age at which people should be able to vote. There was a general view on the Government Benches, even among those who support that provision for elections in general, that this Bill was not the right place in which to make those arrangements. I think that I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks.
The hon. Gentleman asked why the form for the postal voting statement to be used for Scottish Parliament elections in which the issue and receipt of postal ballot papers was not combined had been changed. The Scotland Office has updated the form in the 2010 order, and we have followed that in the Bill for the purposes of the Scottish Parliament elections next May.
The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) asked why, in Northern Ireland, all postal ballot papers had to be returned if one was spoiled. In cases of a combined poll, there will be a pack containing all the ballot papers, and another pack would have to be issued in such circumstances. Someone could end up with multiple ballot papers for the same election, if the first set were not returned. That is also the long-standing practice in England, Wales and Scotland. I shall come to the hon. Member for Foyle’s other points in a second, and he can come back to me if he does not think that that answer is appropriate.
The hon. Member for Rhondda also asked why proposed new paragraph 42 in amendment 177 referred to the words before “the colour” being omitted. The words are being omitted when the poll at one election is taken with the poll at another election. The reason that we have omitted them is because, if the elections happen on 5 May, we know that there will be combinations and that the words will be redundant. He also asked why amendment 78 changed the wording in line 3 of page 266. It is a consequential minor change—consequential to the drafting change made to the order governing the Scottish Parliament elections—and it is not intended to have any practical effect.
I was asked about amendment 78 and the changes to provisions on abandonment of poll in the Scottish parliamentary elections. Again, this follows changes to the 2010 order, which separates out for the first time provisions dealing with the death of a candidate in a regional election from those dealing with the death of a candidate in a constituency election. This means we have to amend the provision, making it clear how the abandonment of either poll would affect the referendum. The policy remains that the referendum poll would continue.
Chris Bryant
Does that meet the requirements of the later amendment that deals with the equality of votes where a candidate has died?
Mr Harper
They are about different things; they are not linked. [Interruption.] No, the later amendment is about how the AV rules would work, whereas this one is about the working of the elections taking place next year. They are separate issues.
I was also asked about the use of black ink on the postal voting statement. Because it is for the postal voting statement, it is not relevant to the forms used in the polling station. My understanding and my advice is that the use of black ink is to make the document easier to verify when it is checked and scanned when the postal vote identifiers are being checked. I will make further inquiries, however, and write to the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) if this proves not to be the case.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) knows that I have great respect for him. He is adamantine in his positions, holding to them with consistency and firmness, and I respect him for it enormously. Often I disagree with him, but I almost entirely agree with him on this Bill, and I also think that he has made a good case this evening. He referred to Conservative principles, so I wish to nick a few words that the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) reminded some Welsh colleagues of this morning in Westminster Hall. As he said, Evelyn Waugh asked what the point of a Conservative Government is if it does not turn the clock back, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Stone will agree with that.
However, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman about thresholds in referendums because, broadly, they are not a good idea. As these amendments have shown, it is difficult to know whether the threshold should relate to the turnout—the number of people who vote—or the turnout of those who express a preference. In other words, should it leave out or include those who spoiled their ballot paper? Alternatively, should it relate to those who vote yes to change? Obviously, in countries that have written constitutions all this tends to be laid down; it is one of the key elements that is written down. If someone wants to change any element of the constitution in Germany, Spain or many other countries, they have to obtain a fixed percentage—normally greater than an absolute majority—to be able to effect change. In the German constitution, any change has to be given a successful mandate after two subsequent general elections. I do not believe that that is the way we have tended to do things in the British system.
Mr Leigh
I am curious to know why the Labour party takes the attitude it does. Is it because it is, in principle, opposed to thresholds or is it because it is scarred by its experience in 1979, when the referendum would have gone through but for the threshold, which ushered in the vote of confidence, 18 years of Tory role and all the rest of it? Does Labour have a principled objection or is it just history?
Chris Bryant
The scars of history can give us principles—that is the truth of it. That may well apply to the Conservative party too in relation to some of the things it has had to change in recent years. I point out that if there were to be a threshold for election to this House or to council seats, especially in council by-elections, there would undoubtedly be some occasions when people would not be returned, because voters might choose to do precisely what happens, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) has said, in some countries where there is a threshold.
Chris Bryant
I will give way in a moment. In some countries that have thresholds, people are persuaded to boycott. If people felt that they did not like any of the candidates, they might decide that the best way not to return a candidate was to boycott the election.
Chris Bryant
I had offers from Labour Members, so, tempting as the hon. Lady’s offer is, I am going to give way—
Chris Bryant
I am not so sure actually. No, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer).
Graham Stringer
I cannot imagine why my hon. Friend is not so sure about that. I would be grateful if he told us where in the Labour manifesto—or anywhere else in Labour party policy—there is a commitment against thresholds. More importantly, is not the serious argument for the Labour party, the Conservative party or any other party in this Chamber the question of what we would do if there was only a 15% turnout? What would the Government do and what would the House of Commons do? Surely we could not accept that.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is no fixed determined policy that we are completely and utterly in all cases implacably opposed to thresholds. Nor, for that matter, is there a belief that we ardently should have thresholds. However, I suspect that the hon. Member for Stone has tabled this amendment in some sense as a wrecking amendment, in that he does not really want AV, and that is part of his intention.
Chris Bryant
I shall not give way to him, because there is very little time for debate. I accept that that might not be his intention, but none the less it might be the result of such a thing.
Dr Wollaston
Does the hon. Gentleman have any threshold at which he thinks we would be completely without any validity at all? Perhaps he would like to suggest a threshold.
Chris Bryant
I was actually trying not to suggest a threshold. The hon. Lady is right in one sense, of course. I hope that this might appease my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton as regards some of what he said. There is a complexity about the referendum that we might have next May, because we might have very differential turnout in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.
If, for instance, there were to be a very low turnout in England that returned a no vote and a very high turnout in the other places—there is a Scottish parliamentary election, in Northern Ireland there are two other sets of elections and in Wales there is the Assembly election at the same time, and in Wales and Scotland those feel in many senses like general elections—returned significant yes votes, people might start to question the validity of what we were doing. This is all the more important because the referendum is not just an advisory referendum—as referendums have always been in the past—but an implementing referendum. In other words, if there is a yes vote, it comes into law. It happens, and the next general election will be held on the basis of the alternative vote.
I am not convinced by the arguments that are being advanced in favour of thresholds. I personally will be voting yes in the referendum. I do not believe that there should be a referendum, but there is a legitimate argument that others might want to consider about whether the fact that we are combining the polls will produce a differential turnout in different parts of the country that might make a necessity of a threshold.
Mr David
As well as making a powerful comment—and judgment, really—on the proposal for a threshold, is my hon. Friend not harking back to what we talked about earlier, making a convincing case not to have the elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on the same day or to have the AV vote on the same day?
Chris Bryant
Absolutely. As somebody who supports alternative vote, which I know my hon. Friend does not, and as somebody who will want to see a yes vote in the referendum, I find that one of the most depressing things—I think this is true of others in the Chamber who want to see change to the electoral system—is that the way in which the Government and, in particular, the Deputy Prime Minister have proceeded with this has made it more difficult for many to advocate that cause and to push for reform. Now, I shall give way to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing)—
Chris Bryant
She no longer wants me.
As the hon. Member for Stone said earlier, two different thresholds are proposed. One is that there will be a 25% yes threshold—that is, that we would have to secure 25% of the electorate to count for a yes, and that can be found in amendment 197. The other is the turnout referendum of 40% that the hon. Gentleman has already proposed. I think that it would be inappropriate to move forward with either of the two thresholds and I urge hon. Members to vote against them.
John Mann
Like my hon. Friend, I am a supporter—and always have been—of AV. He mentioned the Labour party, and of course the Labour party has no policy, but has not the Labour movement long held the principle that in trade union rule changes there should be a threshold precisely because rule changes are irreversible, in that they must be implemented? Should not the principle of a threshold mean that the Government should be looking for significantly more than 326 votes on Third Reading tonight to demonstrate any kind of support for this rotten Bill?
Chris Bryant
The difficulty about thresholds in the Labour movement is that, for instance, I suppose one could have said that there should be a threshold for the election of candidates for the Labour party—or, for that matter, for the leader of the Labour party. I think that that would be inappropriate. When we have an election, we in the Labour movement have always proceeded on the basis of alternative vote—[Interruption.] To be fair, in the past, for a brief period, we used a single vote but then there was a run-off that was used for several years. For several years now—for several decades, in fact—we have used the alternative vote to select candidates when there is a single member standing. When there are multiple members, we use first past the post. The point that I want to make is that I do not think that it is appropriate to bring in a threshold at this time, but I fully understand that there are others who say that because of the way in which the Government are pushing forward with this legislation and because it is an implementing referendum, a threshold would be appropriate.
I think I can see the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) cogitating, so I shall give way to him.
Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I was not cogitating—I was bemused by the rationality of the hon. Gentleman’s argument. If I understood it correctly, he was saying that there was a level of turnout that would not authorise, essentially, so dramatic a change in the public mind. If it does not have the authority of a certain percentage enabling us to claim that it was the will of the people, at what level does he think that should be set? There must surely be a level for such a profound constitutional change to be authorised, as was suggested with reference to the union movement, for instance.
Chris Bryant
To be honest, I would prefer us to have a written constitution in which all those elements were laid out, but that is not what is before us tonight. One could go around this Chamber and see on what proportion of the vote of the total electorate any one of us was elected—after all, the proposition in amendment 197 is that one would have to be elected by a proportion of the electorate. I think that that would be inappropriate. We have a system in this country where someone either wins or loses the vote. There would be a strong point in arguing that this should not be an implementing referendum, but merely an advisory referendum. The House would therefore be able to take a decision on the basis of what turnout there had or had not been. I would hate to see the campaign simply to boycott the referendum that would almost certainly arise from those who are opposed to a change.
Chris Bryant
I am very keen to abandon the Dispatch Box as soon as I possibly can, but I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan).
Mark Durkan
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the impact of thresholds on referendums—remember that we are told that the whole issue of constituency changes in this Bill is about creating equal votes—is that they create unequal votes? Those who do not vote—even those who do not vote because they are dead—have more influence and more say than those who go to the bother of voting. Is not the real issue that people want to learn the lesson from Irish referendums? As well as creating confusion and saying, “If you don’t know, vote no,” they will say in some places, “If you don’t know, don’t vote.”
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend made that point in a previous discussion, and he is absolutely right. We should have a straightforward system where people fight to win their side of the argument. They win that side of the argument by getting people past the ballot box to vote either yes or no. That is why I am, broadly speaking, opposed to referendums.
Let me issue one tiny note of caution, which comes from the problems that the Government are giving us by combining the polls on 5 May. As the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said earlier, this has absolutely nothing to do with whether people are bright enough or stupid enough to understand two different propositions that might be put to them—the voters are perfectly intelligent enough to be able to do that—but we will have different turnouts in different parts of the country, which will cause a significant problem. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) said earlier that a no vote in the referendum would be a significant problem for the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deputy Leader of the House said from a sedentary position, “No, it wouldn’t really.” So the cat is out of the bag: the Deputy Prime Minister could not care less whether the referendum is successful—whether it leads to a yes or no vote. I think, as do many Members on both sides of the House who would really like a reform of the electoral system, that that betrays the cause that many people had thought essential to the Liberal party. That is why many of us have a profound suspicion that the Deputy Prime Minister is in this less for sound principle than for self-advancement.
Mrs Laing
By tabling amendments 197 and 198 I am again trying to help the Government. The Minister made it clear when we tried to debate this matter in Committee on 18 October that he wanted a debate and a vote on the vital issue of thresholds. He, we and the House were denied that opportunity in Committee so I hope that I am being helpful in giving him the opportunity to debate it now. Alas, however, because very long speeches were made by Opposition Members earlier, we do not have long to debate this matter.
The amendment that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and I submitted in Committee was for a turnout threshold not of 60%, as I have been derided in the press for suggesting, but of 50%. [Interruption.] Not by the shadow Minister, no—by The Daily Telegraph. There is a surprise! I would never have suggested 60%. However, I have listened to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and I have listened, surprising as it might seem, to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mrs Laing
I believe it probably was Bismarck. If ever that were true, it is true of this Bill. However, this is also a necessary Bill. I said at the beginning that I appreciated why we had to have it and that I would support it, and I will continue to do so.
The Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform did its best, on a rushed timetable, to perform what legislative scrutiny of the Bill we could. On behalf of the Committee, let me say that I hope that our reports and investigations, and the evidence that we have made available to Members has been useful in informing some of the debates that have taken place. While mentioning the Committee, let me say that the Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), will be sad to have missed this part of the proceedings on the Bill, just as he has had to miss many of the Committee’s sittings, because he has been unwell. I am sure that the House will join me in wishing him a speedy recovery, although he is not seriously ill, so I believe that he will be back soon—it is okay, I should tell Opposition Members that he will not be missed for too long. The Committee has done its best to help the House to consider this Bill properly.
The second part of the Bill is excellent—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will not be surprised to hear me say that. It is correct that we should at last grasp the difficult nettle of the composition of the House of Commons. It is correct that we should reduce the number of Members of Parliament to the perfectly round and reasonable figure of 600. It is correct that this House and this Parliament should make that decision, as it is doing this evening. It is also correct and inarguable that every constituency in the United Kingdom, whether in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England or Wales, that sends a Member to this United Kingdom Parliament should be of equal size.
Mrs Laing
Mr Deputy Speaker might say that that point is not relevant to this Bill. It is not for me to argue the matter. I do not want prisoners to have the vote, but that is not the point at issue. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) gave perfectly good responses to that this afternoon.
Labour Members have produced all the little arguments they can possibly think of to try to preserve the current unfair imbalance in constituency structures that gives the Labour party an unfair electoral advantage. Every statistic shows that, and it cannot be argued against because it is a matter of simple arithmetic. It is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact—[Interruption.]
Hon. Members say, “gerrymandering”, but the gerrymandering was done by the last two Boundary Commissions under the then Labour Government. Of that there is no doubt whatever.
Simon Hughes
I will deal straight away with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). This is not a perfect Bill—I am not pretending that it is—but it is a good Bill, and the two things that it does needed to be done.
First, we needed to give the British people a chance to improve the electoral system. The alternative vote is not a proportional system—I have never claimed that it is—but it has two advantages that our current system does not have. I appeal to anybody who is a progressive politician in any party to come to the view that we should support a system that, yes, keeps single-Member representation, but sends us here with a majority of support from those of our electorate who vote—
Simon Hughes
Yes it does, compared with the current system. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman will just calm down—he is far too overexcited most of the time.
Secondly, the system allows people to express preferences—it is positive, not negative, voting that allows them to say what they really want politically as opposed to being forced to say what they do not want politically. That is definitely progress.
There is another practical consideration, as the right hon. Member for Knowsley knows. This House does not have a majority in favour of a proportional system at the moment—I accept that. I want a proportional system. Personally, I prefer alternative vote plus, because it has the balance of a single-Member seat plus top-up. But there is not a majority for those things. This measure allows Parliament to come to a view, as put forward by the Labour party in the general election, that the British people should be given the option of moving to a better system. It is not the perfect system—there is no such thing as a perfect system—and not the best system, but it is a better system. I hope that this House and the other place will allow the great British public to decide on this. Then, if the referendum comes up with a yes vote, as I hope it will, we will have a better political system and a better democracy.
I share one of the views of the right hon. Member for Knowsley and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram). It is a scandal and a shame that in this country, throughout the time of the Labour Government and now, 3 million or more people are not on the electoral register when they should be. I have made it clear to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and colleagues that there is a duty on our Government, just as there was a duty on the Labour Government that they did not discharge, to work across parties and outside parties to ensure that we get all those registered who should be registered.
European Council
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister accept that it is welcome, if unusual, to see so many Heads of State supporting a British Prime Minister on an issue on which the European Parliament takes a different view? Does he agree that perhaps there is a role for national Parliaments, which, right across Europe, are facing difficult economic decisions, to support these Heads of State, including, of course, the Prime Minister, because it is right—
The Prime Minister
Yes. I did have that conversation, because the German Chancellor stayed at Chequers over the weekend, and we discussed a range of those issues. Obviously the aeroplane in question, having left Yemen, had landed in Germany and then in Britain before it was due to go on to the United States. That reminds us of how interconnected we are, so the British and the Germans, quite close together, made the announcement about not receiving packages and parcels from Yemen. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will be giving further details in a moment or two, when she makes her statement.
Chris Bryant
Let me get this right. The Prime Minister failed to put together a blocking minority in July, and he did not even manage to get the Polish on board, despite the fact that the Polish Foreign Secretary was in the Bullingdon club with him at Oxford. He failed to put together a blocking minority, he let the matter go through in August, he tried again at the beginning of last week, he failed—and then he proclaims himself the great saviour of this country. How can it possibly be a success until he comes back to this country with a guarantee from the French that they intend to cut the common agricultural policy?
The Prime Minister
The difference between the hon. Gentleman and me is that when we were both at Oxford he was a member of the Conservative association and I was not.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Programme) (No. 4)
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
No, we disagree with the knives in this motion, and we made that absolutely clear when asked about it last week. We believe that allowing this amount of time today and tomorrow is inappropriate; we believe that it is inappropriate not to allow any specific time for votes, because it is the right of this House not only to debate but to vote on such matters; we believe that it is inappropriate in particular to have so little time tomorrow, when we will be dealing with 28 pages of Government amendments, not a single one of which is the result of discussions in Committee; and we think that it is inappropriate for no further time to be allowed today, particularly as we have had two, albeit important, statements. So we will be opposing the motion.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we will be publishing a Bill early in the new year, which we are drafting at the moment on a cross-party basis, to reform the other place. In the meantime, in keeping with traditions that were also pursued by his Government, appointments will be made as a proportion of and in line with the results of the general election.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is estimated that 200,000 people will be forced out of major metropolitan areas as a result of the Government’s niggardly proposals on welfare reform, which will turn London into Paris, with the poor consigned to the outer ring. That is the equivalent of three parliamentary constituencies, according to the Deputy Prime Minister’s desiccated calculating machine of a Bill. Would it not be iniquitous if, on top of being socially engineered and sociologically cleansed out of London, the poor were also disfranchised by his Bill? How does he propose to make electoral provision for those displaced people?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We all indulge in a bit of hyperbole, but I have to say to the hon. Gentleman quite seriously that to refer to “cleansing” will be deeply offensive to people who have witnessed ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world. It is an outrageous way of describing—
The Deputy Prime Minister
No. We are saying that it is perfectly reasonable for the Government to say that they will not hand out more in housing benefit than those who go out to work, pay their taxes and play by the rules would pay when looking for housing themselves. We are simply suggesting that there should be a cap for family homes with four bedrooms of £400 a week. That is £21,000 a year. Does the hon. Gentleman really think it is wrong that the state should not subsidise people to the tune of more than £21,000, when people cannot afford to live privately in those areas? I do not think so.
The Solicitor-General
I congratulate the hon. Lady on her appointment as shadow Solicitor-General. There are many people who think that the Law Officers themselves are pretty shadowy, but I—
The Solicitor-General
I would never accuse the hon. Gentleman of being shabby. His dress code is always immaculate.
The Solicitor-General
I think that the train of my thought is concentrating on the shadow Solicitor-General.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Evans. The new clause is a straightforward and clear response intended to cure, for the alternative vote referendum, a possible ambiguity in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 framework on the regulation of referendum expenses. It clearly states that the costs of covering and reporting on the referendum in the media are not referendum expenses for the purposes of that Act. That means that those costs will fall outside the regulatory regime that the PPERA puts in place.
I want to be absolutely clear that the new clause does not change the position on the regulation of advertising in the media by campaigning individuals or organisations. Such media costs will continue to be subject to the usual spending restrictions in the 2000 Act. However, we believe it is important to ensure that media outlets are not caught by the spending restrictions in place for the referendum when publishing information about it, since they will play a vital role in building public awareness.
I take this opportunity to thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform for the scrutiny of the Bill that they carried out despite the time available. The Committee’s members tabled a similar amendment, and I am grateful for their focus on the issue. They identified the problem and the potential ambiguity, and argued that it needed to be dealt with. The Committee identified a potential problem with the framework for referendums, as set out in the PPERA. Where there is ambiguity in statute there may be arguments either way, but I accept that on an issue as important as this, the law should be clear. That is why the Government have tabled their own new clause, similar to that tabled by the Committee’s members and identical in its intention. However, I believe that there are sound technical reasons why our version is preferable.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the fact that the Government have tabled the new clause. Broadly speaking, the Minister is absolutely right that it was never anybody’s intention that ordinary newspapers, magazines, television broadcasts and so on should be included in the referendum expenses regime. However, there are some complications because of some of the terms used in the new clause.
I note that the Minister said en passant that the Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) managed to come up with a report despite the time available, but of course the lack of availability of time was entirely down to the Minister, not down to anybody else. As the Minister noted, the Committee produced its own version of what a new clause might look like, and a lot of us have been lobbied by different parts of the media in favour of some version or other of an amendment such as this one. The Minister said that the Government’s version was slightly different, and I hope that he will be able to take us through why.
The new clause mentions, first:
“Expenses incurred in respect of the publication of any matter relating to the referendum, other than an advertisement, in…a newspaper or periodical”.
As I understand it, it is remarkably difficult to specify in law what is a newspaper or periodical. So far as I can see, there is no one clear definition of newspaper or periodical. I assume that the Government understand “newspaper or periodical” to be the same, not two separate concepts.
I can find two instances of a definition in statute. The first is the Newspaper Libel and Registration Act 1881, which states:
“The word ‘newspaper’ shall mean any paper containing public news, intelligence, or occurrences, or any remarks or observations therein printed for sale, and published in England or Ireland periodically, or in parts or numbers at intervals not exceeding twenty-six days between the publication of any two such papers, parts, or numbers.
Also any paper printed in order to be dispersed, and made public weekly or oftener,”—
“oftener” is slightly strange language—
“or at intervals not exceeding twenty-six days, containing only or principally advertisements.”
I presume that the Government are not relying on that definition, because it applies only to England and Ireland, which is in a Bill that tried to ensure that all newspapers and periodicals were registered. That registration process no longer exists—now anyone is free to publish a newspaper or a periodical.
The second instance is in section 7(5) of the Defamation Act 1952, which states that
“the expression ‘newspaper’ means any paper containing public news or observations thereon, or consisting wholly or mainly of advertisements, which is printed for sale and is published in the United Kingdom either periodically or in parts or numbers at intervals not exceeding thirty-six days.”
I am sure that keen-eared Members noted that between 1881 and 1952, there was a difference of 10 days in the frequency with which a printed item might be described as a newspaper or a periodical.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
That may have had something to do with Christmas and a monthly publication potentially covering five weeks at that time of year. However, the shadow Minister may have stronger ideas about the reason for that difference—or mistake.
Chris Bryant
It seems slightly odd to go to 36 days because there is no specific definition of the date of publication. Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right that if the Christmas edition of a monthly publication is published around 15 November—after doubtless being written around 15 July—there might be more than 26 days between it and the next edition. However, large elements of the Defamation Act have been repealed, although the precise definition of newspaper seems still to exist. The territorial extent of that Act is not only England and Ireland, but Wales and Scotland.
Election law has for some considerable time made allowance for newspapers and periodicals so that, for example, an edition of The Times that advocates people voting Conservative or The Guardian bizarrely supporting the Liberal Democrats in a general election are not suddenly caught for election expenditure. I understand that, but the new clause needs greater clarity, not least because many more people now engage in publication. Under the 1881 Act, people had to be licensed to do that. Today, anybody can publish, and there is no specification in law of the number of copies that must be published, only of the frequency. I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary’s Conservative association produces a regular newsletter. Whether it is counted as a newspaper or periodical is of material significance to election expenditure.
I therefore hope that the Parliamentary Secretary can first explain his understanding of newspaper or periodical and from where he derives the definition, not least because the new clause does not refer to the derivation of the interpretation.
Secondly, subsection (b) of new clause 19 refers to
“a broadcast made by the British Broadcasting Corporation”
or Channel 4, but Channel 4 is going to be part of the BBC in the near future—
Chris Bryant
Sorry, S4C, not Channel 4. S4C is going to be part of the BBC in the near future. I presume that subsection (b), which might be presumed at a later date to transfer to other referendums, would not be disturbed by the congruence of the two organisations, I think in 2013-14.
Subsection (b) also uses the term “broadcast”, a word that, in legislation, specifically refers to broadcasting from one to many points. That is to say, the broadcaster does not determine the precise number of people who receive a programme, network or channel, as opposed to cable, which has never before been referred to as broadcasting, because it is point-to-point. That is to say, the cable organisation knows exactly where the programme is going, because there is a direct connection between A and B, as opposed to what happens in terrestrial broadcasting, whether digital or otherwise. That is why the Communications Act 2003 has separate provisions for broadcasting and cable. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that when he says “broadcast” he does not just mean broadcasting, but includes cable and the provision of any such programme via any other means.
I ask that because subsection (c) refers explicitly to
“a programme included in any service licensed under Part 1 or 3 of the Broadcasting Act 1990 or Part 1 or 2 of the Broadcasting Act 1996”.
I do not understand why subsection (b) refers to a broadcast—as opposed to either a programme provided by the two organisations listed or one included in any service provided by them—and it contrasts with how subsection (c) has been constructed. In addition, there is an issue relating to the provision of party political broadcasts, because there will be a different level of provision of party election broadcasts in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, as a result of the elections being held there, from that provided in England during the run-up to the referendum and the short campaign for those elections. I suppose that any of the political parties in those areas could decide that it wanted to major on the alternative vote provisions and the referendum in its party election broadcast, and therefore might be considered to be in conflict with the provisions under the terms of the 2000 Act or the Broadcasting Act 1990.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
A party might indeed consider doing that, but would the hon. Gentleman concede that the political reality of the situation is that most parties and combatants in the Scottish and Welsh elections will have better things to do than consider the AV referendum? That further underlines the folly of holding the referendum on the same day as those elections, thereby not giving the issue its proper space in those territories.
Chris Bryant
Indeed. Many of the provisions that we will talk about in the main debate this afternoon relate to the combining of polls, but this is the only point in the debate on the Bill when there can be any discussion about party election broadcasts, because this is the only point in the Bill that they are referred to. All the other elements—how many registers of electors there should be, what colour the ballot papers should be, how many polling cards there should be and so on—are referred to in the new schedules that we will come to a little later, but not broadcasting, which is a reserved responsibility.
The Broadcasting Act 1990 makes it clear that
“any regional Channel 3 licence or licence to provide Channel 4 or 5 shall include—
(a) conditions requiring the licence holder to include party political broadcasts in the licensed service; and
(b) conditions requiring the licence holder to observe such rules with respect to party political broadcasts as the Commission may determine.”
In addition, we specified in section 127 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 that
“(1) A broadcaster shall not include in its broadcasting services any referendum campaign broadcast made on behalf of any person or body other than one designated in respect of the referendum in question under section 108.
(2) In this section, ‘referendum campaign broadcast’ means any broadcast whose purpose (or main purpose) is or may reasonably be assumed to be—
(a) to further any campaign conducted with a view to promoting or procuring a particular outcome in relation to any question asked in a referendum to which this Part applies, or
(b) otherwise to promote or procure any such outcome.”
Mr Harper
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) for raising a number of questions. Let me step back a little and explain why we tabled the new clause.
The problem arises from the definition of the word “material” in schedule 13 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The reason for the concern —some media organisations were worried—is that there was some ambiguity about the meaning. We think “material” means leaflets and other campaigning items, but we decided to fix any ambiguity.
The hon. Member for Rhondda asked me why we prefer our new clause to the amendment that the Committee had tabled. That amendment changed section 117 of the 2000 Act, with the effect that media costs were still categorised as referendum expenses within the regulatory regime. The amendment further specified that although these were referendum expenses, there was no need for individual bodies to be permitted participants if they wanted to spend more than that. That might not have been the Committee’s intention, but that is how we thought it would work. By comparison, our amendment simply says that those media costs are not referendum expenses at all, so they are not subject to the regulatory regime set down by the Act. We think that that provides a more direct and less confusing approach than the Committee set out in its amendment. Our new clause has the same spirit and purpose, but we prefer it, as I have explained.
The hon. Member for Rhondda asked a number of questions. As to the definition and use of language, our approach is to use the equivalent provisions in the PPRA that regulate third-party activity in elections, which have been in place since 2000. The commission responsible for regulating the provisions is happy with how it has been defined and will issue some guidance setting out the case in a little more detail. As I have learned, it is not terribly helpful—to use a ghastly phrase—to have undue specificity on the face of the Bill, whereby every single possible definition of a media outlet is set out. If that is done, but one possible meaning is not captured by the definitions, it makes it easy for a person to argue that they are not covered. Having a broader definition, about which the commission can issue guidance, is much more likely to hold up legally, particularly when it comes to some of the new media to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has rightly drawn our attention.
I shall come to my hon. Friend’s point about the future in a moment, but we have followed the approach in the PPRA and made it explicit that, in the case of this particular referendum, the regulations will be the same as those applying to third-party activity in elections. I think that, because the referendum and the elections are to take place on the same day, it is important for us to apply the same regime to both.
Chris Bryant
The Minister is talking complete sense, but I should like to be absolutely certain about what constitutes “a newspaper or periodical”, notwithstanding the issue of the convergence of a number of different media. There is a clear definition in the 2000 Act; perhaps he could give it to us.
Chris Bryant
I understand that. My point is that I am not sure that there is a definition in law of “newspaper or periodical”, and I think that it is about time we had one. Definitions appeared in legislation in 1881 and 1952, but they conflict with each other.
Mr Harper
As I think I made clear in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, it is much better to leave such definitions to case law, which can evolve over time. If they are defined too tightly in statute law, and then new media appear and changes take place in the way in which the media are produced, we shall find that we must continually update primary legislation in order to keep up with the changes. The hon. Gentleman put his finger on it when he referred to those older definitions and the fact that they have changed. It is better to set a wider definition. The commission can issue guidance, and if problems arise, the courts can interpret the definitions in the light of changes in the way in which media organisations work, and changes in technology. That way of proceeding will produce a tighter definition than trying to include too much detail in primary legislation, which will then become out of date.
The hon. Gentleman asked about our use of the words “broadcast” and “programme”. Again, we wanted the clause to be consistent with the third-party expenditure provisions in the PPRA, and also with the parent terms in the Broadcasting Act 1996, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We did not want to open up gaps enabling people to argue that the words did not mean what they had in those original pieces of legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster referred to new media and changes in communication and technology, particularly in the context of the internet, e-mail and similar techniques. Because this will be the first United Kingdom-wide referendum to use the framework in the PPRA, one of the commitments that the Government have given to the Lords Constitution Committee, which has prepared a report on referendums, is that once it has taken place we will review the way in which it has operated, in order to establish whether we should make any legislative changes—changes in the framework, not just in specific referendums.
As my hon. Friend will know, the coalition Government are committed to introducing more referendums on both European and local matters. We now have a good opportunity to review the working of the system and to establish what practical changes are needed, given that there are likely to be more referendums in the future.
Chris Bryant
I thought that there would only be more referendums on European matters if treaties were proposed that would take powers away, but that is—I hope—a debate for another day.
I am still somewhat perplexed about the Minister’s understanding of “broadcast” and “programme”. I recognise that there are parallels in other legislation, but the concept of what constitutes the expense is material in this context. Is it the expense of making the referendum broadcast, which might include the cost of filming and so forth, or is it the expense of broadcasting the programme?
Mr Harper
I have not yet dealt with the hon. Gentleman’s point about party election broadcasts and referendum broadcasts.
On the issue of election broadcasts as against referendum broadcasts, it will be for the Electoral Commission to address the matter of referendum broadcasts with the yes and no campaigns once they have been designated. I listened very carefully to the remarks of the hon. Member for Rhondda about the differences between the rules for party election broadcasts and for referendum broadcasts and the provisions on them, and I thought—if I may say so as he was very courteous about me—that he explained them very clearly. On his specific point about the rules in respect of combination and what correspondence there was on that with Ministers in devolved Governments, as he will know, Ministers in devolved Governments are not responsible for the administration of elections. At present, that is the responsibility of the three territorial Secretaries of State and my officials and I have been discussing these matters with them. The hon. Gentleman will also know that the Calman proposals include recommendations to devolve the administration of elections in Scotland to the Scottish Government, but that has not yet taken place.
Chris Bryant
So there has been absolutely no consultation with the Administrations in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland about the combining of polls, the statutory instruments that are to be laid later this week, or the referendum broadcasts, which in Wales are the responsibility of the Welsh Assembly not Ofcom?
Mr Harper
No, that is not what I said. The hon. Gentleman asked about what correspondence I had had on administering the elections, and I was just making the point that that is not the responsibility of Ministers in the devolved Administrations. There has, of course, been some contact, however. The hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has had discussions with the First Minister about, for example, the combination and whether the Welsh Assembly Government wanted to move the date of their election. They made it very clear that they did not. The hon. Gentleman will also know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has also had such conversations. Furthermore, I forwarded copies of the letter I sent to the hon. Gentleman and other Members explaining how we were going to lay the new clause and new schedules on combination that we will debate today not only to Ministers in the devolved Administrations but to the leaders of each of the parties represented in all three devolved bodies—the Parliament and the two Assemblies—in order to keep them informed. That is a perfectly reasonable way to conduct our business, and it is properly respectful of those nations.
Chris Bryant
Except that it is not much of a consultation if the Secretary of State for Wales goes to the First Minister in Wales and says, “The referendum is going to be held on the date of your Assembly elections. Do you want to move your Assembly elections?” That is a pretty rum sort of consultation—more a case of holding a gun to the other side’s head than a proper consultation.
Mr Harper
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is characterising that in a sensible fashion. This is a national referendum to be held in the United Kingdom, and it is a reserved matter for the UK Government to decide upon. When this whole issue arose and my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made a statement to the House, some Members asked what consultation had taken place and he made it clear that this is a matter for the UK Government and that it was right that this House heard the announcement first, before any conversations took place with the devolved Administrations. I do not think that is disrespectful; rather, it is properly respectful of the rights of this House.
Mr Harper
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. In my response to the hon. Member for Rhondda, I set out what the arrangements are now for the administration of elections. One of the things that has been discussed as part of the Calman proposals is the suggestion to devolve the administration of elections to the Scottish Government. I hope that we can take that forward, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) would welcome it. I think that I have run through the issues raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda and by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. He is no longer in his place and that demonstrates that his questions have been adequately answered.
Mr Harper
I think that in this particular case it does follow. It might not follow if the hon. Gentleman left his place, but I think that my hon. Friend has left the Chamber because he was satisfied. Therefore, I ask hon. Members to support the new clause.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 19 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 20
Combination of polls
‘(1) Where the date of the poll for one or more of the following is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together—
(a) a local authority election in England;
(b) a local referendum in England;
(c) a mayoral election in England.
(2) The polls for the referendum and the Welsh Assembly general election in 2011 are to be taken together.
(3) The polls for the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary general election in 2011 are to be taken together.
(4) Where the date of the poll for one or more of the following is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together—
(a) a Northern Ireland Assembly Election;
(b) a Northern Ireland local election.
(5) The following have effect—
Schedule [Combination of polls: England], in relation to the polls to be taken together in England under subsection (1);
Schedule [Combination of polls: Wales], in relation to the polls to be taken together in Wales under subsection (2);
Schedule [Combination of polls: Scotland], in relation to the polls to be taken together in Scotland under subsection (3);
Schedule [Combination of polls: Northern Ireland], in relation to the polls to be taken together in Northern Ireland under subsection (4).
(6) Polls taken together under this section must not be taken together with any other polls (despite provision in any enactment to the contrary).
(7) Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (postponement of poll at parish elections etc) does not apply to any polls taken together under subsection (1).
(8) In this section—
“local authority election in England” means the election of a councillor of any of the following— a county council in England; a district council in England; a London borough council; a parish council;
(a) a county council in England;
(b) a district council in England;
(c) a London borough council;
(d) a parish council;
“local referendum in England” means a referendum held in England under Part 2 of the Local Government Act 2000;
“mayoral election in England” means an election in England for the return of an elected mayor as defined by section 39(1) of the Local Government Act 2000;
“Northern Ireland Assembly election” means an election to the Northern Ireland Assembly;
“Northern Ireland local election” means a local election as defined by section 130(1) of the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1962;
“Scottish parliamentary general election” means an ordinary election under section 2 of the Scotland Act 1998;
“Welsh Assembly general election” means an ordinary election under section 3 of the Government of Wales Act 2006.’.—(Mr Harper.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment (a) to new clause 20, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
(1) Where the date of the poll for a local authority election in England is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together.’.
Amendment (b) to new clause 20, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
(4) Where the date of the poll for a Northern Ireland Assembly Election is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together.’.
Amendment (c) to new clause 20, in subsection (8), leave out from ‘“local referendum in England”’ to the second “Local Government Act 2000;”
Amendment (d) to new clause 20, in subsection (8), leave out from ‘“Northern Ireland local election”’ to “Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1962”.
Government new schedule 2—Combination of polls: England.
Amendment (a) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 11, in sub-paragraph (1) leave out ‘15th’ and insert ‘28th’.
Amendment (b) to new schedule 2, after paragraph 12, insert—
‘Absent voter application
12A An application under regulation 51(4)b of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, SI 2001/341, for an absent vote must state whether it is made for parliamentary elections, local government elections, referendums or all of them.’.
Amendment (c) to new schedule 2, leave out paragraph 15 and insert—
‘15 (1) The Chief Counting Officer shall select the colour of the ballot paper used for the referendum.
(2) The other ballot papers used for any relevant election shall be of a different colour from that selected by the Chief Counting Officer.’.
Amendment (d) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 17, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and insert—
‘(1) The official poll cards used for the referendum and for the relevant elections must be combined for all electors qualified to vote in all the polls.’.
Amendment (e) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 18, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and (2) and insert—
(1) Separate ballot boxes must be used for the referendum to those used for other relevant elections taking place on the same day.
(2) Each ballot box must be marked to show—
(a) the referendum or relevant election to which it relates, and
(b) the colour of ballot papers that should be placed in it.’.
Amendment (g) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 27, in sub-paragraph (1), leave out
‘If the counting officer thinks fit, the same copy of the register of electors may’
and insert
‘Separate registers of electors must’.
Amendment (h) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 27, leave out sub-paragraphs (2) to (4).
Amendment (i) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 40, at the end of sub-paragraph (3) insert
‘or
(c) the person is a Member of Parliament.’.
Amendment (j) to new schedule 2, after paragraph 43 insert—
‘Priority in counting of votes
43A Counting officers must give priority to the counting of ballots cast in—
(a) the respective elections to the Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales devolved administrations, and
(b) local council elections in each part of the United Kingdom.’.
Amendment (k) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 44, at the end of sub-paragraph (1), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (a) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (l) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 44, at the end of sub-paragraph (1), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (m) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 44, at the end of sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (a) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (n) to new schedule 2, in paragraph 44, at the end of sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (o) to new schedule 2, in Part 2, in the second column, in the entry relating to Regulation 71, leave out ‘eleventh’ and insert ‘fifteenth’.
Government new schedule 3—Combination of polls: Wales.
Amendment (a) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 15, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and insert—
"(1) The official poll cards used for the referendum and the Assembly elections must be combined for all electors qualified to vote in all the polls.’.
Amendment (b) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 17, leave out sub-paragraphs (1) and (2) and insert—
“(1) Separate ballot boxes must be used for the referendum to that used for the Assembly elections.
(2) Each ballot box must be marked to show—
(a) the referendum or Assembly election to which it relates, and
(b) the colour of ballot papers that should be placed in it.’.
Amendment (c) to new schedule 3, leave out paragraph 18 and insert—
“18 (1) The Chief Counting Officer shall select the colour of the ballot paper used for the referendum.
(2) The other ballot papers used for the Assembly elections shall be of a different colour from that selected by the Chief Counting Officer.’.
Amendment (e) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 45, at the end of sub-paragraph (3) insert
‘or
(c) the person is a Member of Parliament.’.
Amendment (f) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 47, in sub-paragraph (1)(d), leave out ‘separate’ and insert ‘keep separate throughout’.
Amendment (g) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 49, sub-paragraph (1), at the end of sub-sub-paragraph (a) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (h) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 49, at the end of sub-paragraph (1), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (i) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 49, at the end of sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (a) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (j) to new schedule 3, in paragraph 49, at the end of sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Government new schedule 4—Combination of polls: Scotland.
Amendment (a) to new schedule 4, paragraph 15, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and insert—
“(1) The official poll cards used for the referendum and for the Scottish parliamentary election must be combined for all electors qualified to vote in all the polls.’.
Amendment (b) to new schedule 4, paragraph 17, leave out sub-paragraphs (1) and (2) and insert—
“(1) Separate ballot boxes must be used for the referendum to that used for the Scottish parliamentary elections.
(2) Each ballot box must be marked to show—
(a) the referendum or parliamentary election to which it relates, and
(b) the colour of ballot papers that should be placed in it.’.
Amendment (c) to new schedule 4, leave out paragraph 18 and insert—
“18 (1) The Chief Counting Officer shall select the colour of the ballot paper used for the referendum.
(2) The ballot papers used for constituency or regional ballots shall be of a different colour from that selected by the Chief Counting Officer.’.
Amendment (e) to new schedule 4, in paragraph 42, at the end of sub-paragraph (3) insert
‘or
(c) the person is a Member of Parliament.’.
Amendment (f) to new schedule 4, in paragraph 46, in sub-paragraph (1)(d), leave out ‘separate’ and insert ‘keep separate throughout.’.
Amendment (g) to new schedule 4, in paragraph 48, at the end of sub-paragraph (1) (a)insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (h) to new schedule 4, in paragraph 48, at the end of sub-paragraph (1), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (1)(b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (i) to new schedule 4, in paragraph 48, at the end of sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (a) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (j) to new schedule 4, in paragraph 48, at the end of sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Government new schedule 5—Combination of polls: Northern Ireland.
Amendment (a) to new schedule 5, leave out paragraph 12 and insert—
“12 (1) The Chief Electoral Officer shall select the colour of the ballot paper used for the referendum.
(2) The ballot papers used for any relevant elections shall be of a different colour from that selected by the Chief Electoral Officer.’.
Amendment (b) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 14, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and insert—
“(1) The official poll cards used for the referendum and for the relevant elections must be combined for all electors qualified to vote in all the polls.’.
Amendment (c ) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 15, leave out sub-paragraphs (1) and (2) and insert—
“(1) Separate ballot boxes must be used for the referendum to that used for other relevant elections taking place on the same day.
(2) Each ballot box must be marked to show—
(a) the referendum or relevant election to which it relates, and
(b) the colour of ballot papers that should be placed in it.’.
Amendment (e) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 31, at the end of sub-paragraph (3) insert
‘or is a Member of Parliament.’.
Amendment (f) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 32, in sub-paragraph (1)(c), leave out ‘separate’ and insert ‘keep separate throughout.’.
Amendment (g) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 33, at the end of sub-paragraph (1)(a), insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (h) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 33, at the end of sub-paragraph (1)(b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (i) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 48, at the end of sub-paragraph (3)(a) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Amendment (j) to new schedule 5, in paragraph 48, sub-paragraph (3), at end of sub-sub-paragraph (b) insert
‘containing ballot papers for the referendum vote.’.
Chris Bryant
On a point of order, Mr Evans. This is a large group of amendments, schedules and a new clause; indeed, it constitutes some 120 pages of the amendment paper. I need a little clarity about when we come to vote on amendments and about whether, if we were to agree to the new clause, it would then be possible to vote on amendments to the schedule later.
Chris Bryant
It will get a semi-serious response; I do not want the hon. Gentleman to worry about this. I merely wish to remind him that the Deputy Leader of the House, who is sitting next to him, has said:
“I am saying that every Member of this House has the right to express their opinion before this House in whatever way they feel is appropriate and to be listened to.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2010; Vol. 504, c. 173.]
I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House still feels that that is true.
Mr Harper
I agree, and indeed we did listen to the hon. Gentleman at length—I am just not sure that what he said would not have been improved had it been a little more brief. [Interruption.] It is a jest; do not take it so seriously.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the new clause and the new schedules are fairly sizeable. I am not going to labour the discussion on them, but they are important and so I shall go through them in some detail—I hope not to detain the House for longer than is absolutely necessary. They are required to provide that the referendum on the voting system can be combined with the eight different elections or local referendums across the UK that could take place on 5 May 2011. The “combination amendments”—I use a collective noun for them—consist of one new clause and four schedules. There is a schedule to deal with the combination with elections or local government referendums for each of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Each schedule is divided into three parts: part 1 deals with general provisions; part 2 deals with postal voting provisions; and part 3 deals with forms.
I think it is helpful to state that we decided not to include the combination provisions in the Bill when it was introduced on 22 July in order, as we said then, to allow us time to work with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and others in government, particularly those in the territorial offices, to make sure that if we did hold the referendum on the same day as elections, notwithstanding the arguments that Members of the Committee have made about whether or not we should do so, those polls would be well conducted and well run.
Our general approach has been to adopt a consistent approach for the referendum across the UK, but we have recognised that in some areas there is a need for variation to reflect local circumstances. For example, following consultation with the Scotland Office, the Wales Office and the chair of the interim Scottish electoral management board it became apparent that it would make the conduct of the referendum and elections easier for administrators if, in Wales and Scotland, the referendums were run on the same respective boundaries as the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish parliamentary elections. Appropriate provisions were consequently added to the Bill following a successful Government amendment last Monday and further provisions to support this are included in new schedules 3 and 4.
I am conscious that this is a sizeable set of amendments and it is only right and proper that we should go through them in some detail, so let me set them out for the benefit of the Committee. At the end of my remarks I shall say something about the territorial orders, so if the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) feels the urge to intervene on me about that point, I want him to know that I will get to it and, if he will hold his horses, I will set it out.
New clause 20 provides that the referendum on the voting system will be combined with the following polls, which are scheduled to take place on 5 May next year: elections to the Welsh Assembly, elections to the Scottish Parliament, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, local elections in England, local elections in Northern Ireland, mayoral elections in five local authorities in England and parish elections in England. There is also a strong likelihood that there might be some local mayoral referendums in England on 5 May and we have included provisions to allow those polls to be combined with the referendum.
New clause 20 includes provisions on parish elections, which reflect the commitment that I made to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on Second Reading. In England, parish council elections will be combined with the local elections and the referendum on the voting system and not postponed for three weeks. The Government’s decision takes into account the positive impact on turnout and the savings that can be made by combining these polls. Before making that decision, I was reassured by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators that it would be possible in practice to combine the referendum, local elections and parish council elections on 5 May. I understand that that position is also supported by the National Association of Local Councils.
Subsection (6) of new clause 20 provides that, with the exception of the polls I have mentioned, no further polls will be combined with the referendum if they are arranged for 5 May. If there are any other unscheduled polls, such as a UK parliamentary by-election or a local government by-election in Wales, that run on separate boundaries, they will be run as separate elections, which will be easier and more straightforward for electoral administrators.
New schedule 2 sets out the provisions for the combination of the referendum with local parish and mayoral elections and local government referendums in England. I can advise the Committee that the majority of these provisions mirror those that already exist for combining polls under the various combination rules included under relevant pieces of legislation, such as the “Mayoral Elections (Combination of Polls) Rules” set out in schedule 3 to the Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007. I fear that I might refer to similarly exciting-sounding parts of the legislative book during this debate.
Part 1 of new schedule 2 contains the following provisions, which I am sure that the Committee will be interested to note. Paragraph 3 provides that at a combined poll, a counting officer will be able discharge a number of the functions for which a returning officer would usually be responsible at an election. In short, it means that those functions that are discharged by referendum counting officers, such as the provision of polling stations, appointment of poll clerks and issuing of combined poll cards, will automatically determine practice at both polls. We have allowed for decisions on most core functions that relate to the conduct of a combined poll to be made at the discretion of the counting officer. That follows the approach taken in existing combination legislation that when polls are combined, certain functions in relation to the conduct of both polls are carried out by one officer.
There are two key exceptions. The printing of the ballot paper for the election polls will remain under the control of returning officers. Decisions about whether or not to combine postal ballot packs will be made through the counting officer agreeing a position with the relevant returning officer. The latter position ensures that decisions will be made in accordance with local needs. There are situations in which combining those postal ballot packs would simply not be practical and legislating for counting officers and returning officers to do things that are simply not practically possible does not seem to be very sensible.
Paragraph 5 provides that the cost of the combined polls will be equally apportioned between them. For example, in the case of a combined referendum on the voting system and local government elections in England, the cost would be split 50:50 between the Consolidated Fund and the local authority concerned.
Paragraph 9 permits the counting officer to decide whether combined corresponding number lists should be used for the combined polls. Paragraph 11 provides that the notice of poll for the combined elections should be published
“not later than the 15th day before the date of the poll.”
The 15-day deadline is necessary to ensure that a consistent approach is taken for all the polls that we are combining on 5 May.
Paragraph 15 provides that the ballot papers used for the referendum must be a different colour from the ballot papers used for any combined poll, thereby preventing any risk that voters might confuse the ballot papers. Paragraph 16 provides clarity that the polling stations that the counting officer chooses for the referendum will be used for all combined polls taking place in the voting area.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the Minister for going through in some detail the large number of pages containing the amendments, new clauses and new schedules. The register for local elections in England will be different from the register used for the referendum, and from the register in Wales. The Government’s provisions suggest that there should be just one register in each polling station and that some kind of mark will be made somewhere to suggest who has had, and who has not had, each of the ballot papers. Is he confident that that will meet the requirement to make sure that nobody has a ballot paper to which they are not entitled? How will the returning officer make sure that the list of voters who have voted, or who have been given ballot papers, is accurately provided to the regional counting officer and then the counting officer, as well as to the local authority?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We are confident that the provisions will work appropriately. Combining the referendum with the elections may be controversial—although more for issues relating to the mechanics of the election—but it is not as though we never hold combined elections. We hold combined general elections and local elections, which have different franchises. There may be the odd problem, but in the main they work well, so this is not a new departure for those who run elections. We are confident about the rules, which we reached after close working with the Electoral Commission, which is responsible for running the referendum, and the Association of Electoral Administrators, which is responsible for delivering elections. They are confident that we have come up with a set of rules that maximise the ability of all individuals on the ground to run a smooth set of combined polls on 5 May 2011.
Part 2 of new schedule 2 includes provisions for the issue and receipt of postal ballot packs. The provisions apply existing legislation and make the necessary modifications. When read together, they set out the Government’s policy that the proceedings on the issue and receipt of postal ballot papers can be combined if returning and counting officers think fit. They also set out how the procedure works when papers are combined and when they are issued separately; the procedure and timing for the issue and receipt of postal ballot papers; the persons who are entitled to be present at proceedings on receipt of postal ballot papers for both the referendum and the relevant election; and the procedure for forwarding and retaining documents relating to the postal voting process—for example, postal voting statements, the proxy voters log and the postal voters list.
Part 3 of new schedule 2 sets out the combined forms that can be used for the purposes of the combined polls. The forms include corresponding number lists, postal voting statements, guidance for voters and a certificate of employment. As is the case for forms contained in the referendum rules, the Electoral Commission will be able to modify the forms for the purpose of making them easier for voters to understand or use.
I can confirm to the Committee that equivalent provisions with necessary modifications to take into account local needs have been provided for the combination of polls in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland under new schedules 3, 4 and 5.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend is spot-on. To be frank, I think that voters are perfectly capable of working out what elections or referendums are taking place. Voters in Wales will have had some warm-up practice in March, because they will have had an important referendum on the powers that the Welsh Assembly Government should have. They will therefore have had the opportunity to think about whether they want an absent vote. That will mean, I am sure, that at the front of their minds, as they approach the elections and referendum on 5 May, they will be thinking hard about whether they will be around and able to vote in person, or whether they should apply for an absent vote. At least in Wales, therefore, what the hon. Member for Glasgow South suggests might happen is unlikely to do so.
Now, where did I get to? [Laughter.] There have been so many interventions. I suspect that it was nice for everyone to break up the monotony of my voice reading out these exciting provisions, so I am happy to have taken those criticisms from the Committee.
Given that the provisions in schedules 3 to 5 are largely consistent with those I have outlined for England, I am sure that the Committee will be relieved to hear that I do not intend to go through their contents in the same detail. However, I will go through some of the key provisions we have made for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. As I confirmed earlier, we have amended the definition of a voting area for the referendum as it applies in Scotland and Wales to provide that the referendum is to be run on the same respective boundaries as Scottish parliamentary and National Assembly for Wales elections. That will help with the administration of the elections, as the officials involved in delivering them have said.
We have kept the provisions on the timing of the count silent in the legislation to allow sufficient flexibility for the counts for the devolved elections to take place prior to the referendum count. We have based the postal voting provisions in part 2 of schedules 3 and 4 on those that apply for Welsh Assembly and Scottish parliamentary elections, making modifications where necessary to take account of the referendum. That will ensure that small differences in regional practice on postal voting will carry through to the referendum.
Chris Bryant
But why? Why should there be variations in postal vote practices around the country for a UK-wide referendum?
Mr Harper
It is because we are combining it with elections that are different in different parts of the UK. Picking up on points that hon. Members were making earlier, I can say that the poll cards issued will confirm the voting arrangements that will apply to a particular elector for each poll. They will explain to electors the arrangements in place, and people will be able to apply to the registration office to vary their postal voting arrangements up until 11 days before the poll, or six days before the poll where a proxy vote takes place. That will be helpful.
The Committee will want to be aware—certainly the hon. Member for Rhondda will—that I can confirm that all the new orders have been laid by the territorial offices today to update the rules for the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales. Given that the combination amendments just discussed are based on existing legislation, as is usual practice, any consequential amendments reflecting those new territorial orders will be tabled for debate on Report next week, as I said last week.
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will come to him when I have completed this point.
We recognise that there is a different qualitative issue raised by the combination of the general election and these elections. As I have said in previous debates, we are thinking about how that issue may be dealt with, and we will come back to the House and the devolved Administrations in due course.
Chris Bryant
It seems extraordinary that the Government are taking this attitude in relation to consulting the devolved Administrations about their own elections. I fully understand that they do not have legislative competence for that matter—it is a competence reserved to Westminster—but it would be common human decency to be able to consult them. In the past, the Minister has tried to argue that he wanted to tell this House before he told anybody else. However, he knows perfectly well that through the Joint Ministerial Committee there are provisions for the Government to speak to the Welsh Assembly Government, the Executive in Scotland and so on. There is no reason why he could not have used those processes perfectly well.
Mr Harper
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will not add to his point, but I am now slightly envious that I am not a Member of the Scottish Parliament too, and so cannot indulge in such debates on a daily basis. I now know what I am missing out on by not participating in Scottish politics.
In answer to the hon. Member for Rhondda, I can confirm that these issues have been discussed at the JMC. If he does not believe that they have, I will happily write to him and give him the details.
Chris Bryant
To be honest, I do not want the Minister to write to me, I want him to consult the respective Executives in—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) should calm down. The Government are ensuring that he has his own rotten borough, so he does not have to worry about the Bill.
I want to ensure that consultation happens properly. We rightly insist that before any European Union legislation is brought in we should have 10 weeks to do our proper parliamentary duty, and the same should apply to the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Minister is deliberately eliding two concepts. Raising the matter at the JMC is one thing, but consulting expressly on written documents, which has not happened in relation to any of these issues, is something else altogether.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman said that he wanted to ensure that these issues had been discussed, and they have been raised and discussed at the JMC. The devolved Administrations probably still disagree with the Westminster Government’s decision, but the matter has been discussed. He is not making a very sensible point.
Mr Harper
No, I do not think there is, actually. People are perfectly capable of laying out the prospectus on which they stand and the important issues on which they are campaigning in the elections to the Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and Scottish Parliament, and also joining the yes or no campaign on a voting system for this Parliament. That is not very complicated at all, and our voters will show us that we are underrating them if we take that view. Incidentally, next week, Americans will vote in an extraordinary number of elections—I shall pursue that thought only briefly, Mr Evans, for fear that you will rule me out of order—and they are perfectly capable of doing that, in the same way as voters here are perfectly capable of voting in two or three sets of elections next year.
Chris Bryant
The Parliamentary Secretary knows that the system that evolved in the United States because they have so many elections at the same time means simply pulling a Democrat or a Republican switch. Surely he does not intend to move to that system.
Mr Harper
I have dealt with the point that the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) made, perhaps not to his satisfaction, but at length. I have a few more sentences and I am done. Hon. Members can make their own speeches then. I have been reasonably generous in giving way.
The territorial orders were tabled today. When the Committee stage is complete we will table the amendments, as I promised hon. Members last week, so that the House can debate them to reflect the new territorial orders—
Mr Harper
The territorial orders have been laid before the House, and are therefore available to Members. They are not amendable, but it is possible for the House to vote them down, in which case we would simply revert to the combination provisions that we are discussing. If the House votes for them, and for our amendments next week, we will have been able to debate all the rules that will be in place next year, and will not have left it to their lordships.
Chris Bryant
However, neither the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments nor the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee in the House of Lords has yet considered the orders. I presume that the House will not consider the three territorial orders in Committee this week, nor will the House have disposed of them among the remaining Orders of the Day before next Monday. It surely cannot be possible to table amendments to legislation regarding other legislation that has not yet come into existence.
Mr Harper
As I set out earlier in this debate, clearly it would not have been sensible for us to table changes to the Bill to reflect orders that had not yet been laid before the House, but they have been laid before the House today, so—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says that they have not been agreed. I have said that they have not been agreed, but they have been laid before the House—both of them under the affirmative procedure, so they have to be voted for. If this House or the other place were to vote them down, we would revert to the rules that exist already. We would then be able to go back to the provisions that I am explaining today, which will have been debated in this Committee. Either way, this House will have had the opportunity, on this Bill, to debate the provisions that will be in place for elections next year. That is what I committed to arrange, and that is important.
Mr Harper
I know that the hon. Gentleman is going to find whatever convoluted way he can to try to pretend that that is not the case, but on any reasonable reading of the situation, we have ensured that before the Bill leaves this place, this House will have had the opportunity to debate the provisions, rather than leaving that to the other place.
Chris Bryant
It does not need to be convoluted; it is pretty straightforward. I presume that the Minister will agree with me that the law on combination of polls in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales next Monday will be precisely the same as it is today, so we will not be able to debate amendments to anything other than speculative legislation that will not have been carried by then and will therefore not be the law.
Mr Harper
It is correct that that legislation will not have been carried by the House, but it will be available for Members to debate. There are two scenarios: either the House will approve the orders that my right hon. Friends have laid before the House today—in which case the amendments that we will table once the Committee stage is finished, which we will debate on Report next week, will come into force—or the House will vote those orders down, in which case we will revert to what we are talking about today. In either situation, this House will have had the opportunity to debate those provisions—I suspect at length—and they will therefore not be left to the upper House.
We have tried hard to ensure that the elected House has been able to debate both the provisions on the referendum and those on boundaries. If I remember rightly, in the previous Parliament, in which I served, the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a member were not so fastidious about ensuring that this House was able to debate provisions. Significant pieces of legislation went to the other place without any debate at all on enormous portions of it. To the extent that it has been within the power of the Government, we have taken great care to ensure that by the time this legislation leaves this House next Tuesday, all the key issues will have been debated and voted on by this House. We may not have achieved perfection, but we have made a pretty good stab at it, and I have to say—honestly—that what we have done is a considerable improvement on much of what the previous Government did. I would ask Members to bear that in mind.
The provisions on postal voting in local elections in Northern Ireland are changed substantially by one of the orders laid today, so it would not have been sensible to deal with that in the current group of amendments. However, to finish on a point that I hope will bring the hon. Gentleman great cheer, I can confirm that no amendments will be necessary in relation to the combination provisions for Wales, as the changes to be made to the rules governing the conduct of the Welsh Assembly elections do not affect any rules relevant to combination with the referendum. On that note, which I am sure will gladden his heart, let me conclude by saying that the combination provisions that we have provided are necessary for the smooth running of all the polls that are scheduled to take place next May.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful to the Minister for giving us some of the detail on the amendments, although he has not given all of it, which is significant. I would like to start by picking up where he finished—on the due process that needs to be followed in relation to anything when it reflects the representation of the people, constitutional matters, or the constitutional relationship between Westminster and the devolved Administrations, but which has not, I believe, been followed in this case.
Of course, there should first be pre-legislative scrutiny, but, as we have heard, the Bill has had absolutely none. It is true that the Government published the Bill, but it exists not because of some grand constitutional principle but because of some naked partisan gerrymandering of a Bill. I am sure that if it had been published in pre-legislative form, so that a Committee of this House or a Joint Committee of both Houses had been able to consider it, that Committee would have said, right at the beginning, “You shouldn’t be spatchcocking together these two elements of the Bill”—[Interruption.] Or, “You shouldn’t be kebabbing the legislation in this way.” The Parliamentary Secretary helps me. It is not really spatchcocking; it is more kebabbing. It requires more of an inner-city image than a rural image; he is quite right.
Chris Ruane
Why does my hon. Friend think there has been such undue haste in rushing the Bill, or Bills, through the House?
Chris Bryant
This is entirely speculative, but it might be something to do with the Bill acting as the Araldite that holds the coalition together. The fact is, however, that the Deputy Prime Minister—or Sandie Shaw, as we normally know her, or him, now—is so Araldited to the Prime Minister that there is probably no need for the Bill to be introduced in precisely this way.
There should have been pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. I am sure that a Joint Committee would have said that it should not have been constituted in this way, and that it was inappropriate to try to foist combined polls on Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland when they had expressly said that they did not want a combination of a referendum and their own elections, especially in Northern Ireland, where on the same day there will be local elections as well as Assembly elections. I am pretty certain that such a Committee would have found that inappropriate.
Indeed, we can be pretty confident of that because the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), made it absolutely clear that it believed that it had not had enough time to consider the Bill before it suddenly had its Second Reading. The Select Committee had only five days in which to read the Bill and to get constitutional experts to talk to its members and provide evidence. Those witnesses themselves thought that it was inappropriate that such haste was being adopted.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the report from the Welsh Affairs Committee that came out today? No doubt he will already have read it in detail. It reaches precisely the same conclusion as he has drawn. The Committee has a Government majority, but it nevertheless concluded that the Bill was being railroaded through with undue haste, and with completely insufficient scrutiny by this House. It also believed that it would have a significant constitutional impact on Wales. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a disgrace?
Chris Bryant
I do not agree with my hon. Friend if he is suggesting that the Committee’s report is a disgrace, because it is excellent in highlighting the implications for Wales of the Government’s proposals on constitutional reform. But my neighbourly Friend makes a good point: the Committee is not comprised of rabid left-wingers—or, for that matter, entirely of members of the Labour party—and those who voted on this matter, those who turned up, were predominantly Conservatives. In fact, one of them is now a Parliamentary Private Secretary. Many of us deprecate the fact that there are PPSs sitting on Select Committees, but I note that the PPS who sits on this one chose to absent himself from the vote. I can presume only that that was because he agreed with the findings of the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) is absolutely right to say that the Committee makes it clear that there has not been adequate scrutiny of the Bill, particularly in regard to Wales. It also makes the wider point about the amount of time that has been allowed in general.
Mr David
My hon. Friend has many neighbourly friends. He puts his finger on a crucial point about the speed with which this Bill is being introduced. Does he agree that not only that a number of Conservative Members sit on the Welsh Affairs Committee but that, significantly, its Chairman is a Conservative?
Chris Bryant
Yes, and I not think anybody could call the Committee’s Chair a patsy. He is a man of fierce independence—sometimes overly fierce, and sometimes overly independent—and the Select Committee’s findings were extremely clear. It reported:
“The Government is determined to pass this legislation quickly in order that the referendum on the Parliamentary electoral system can take place in May 2011. However, we agree with the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee”,
which, incidentally, does not have a Labour majority on it either,
“that the Bill has been given insufficient time for proper scrutiny. ”
It continued:
“The Welsh Grand Committee gives all Welsh Members the opportunity fully to debate issues relating to Wales. That the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill impacts significantly on Wales is clear. In the light of this, we consider the Secretary of State for Wales’s decision not to convene a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee in this instance to be very disappointing.”
Conservative Members are attacking a Conservative Secretary of State for Wales. It seems extraordinary that the Committee has not had an adequate opportunity to consider the Welsh element of the Bill, particularly the Welsh elements that are before us this afternoon, which are extensive.
Let me make another point about the proper process that should have been observed. We believe in pre-legislative scrutiny and consultation on any constitutional Bill, but this Bill additionally affects elections in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The previous elections for the Scottish Parliament led to significant problems, which my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) mentioned. This shows how important it is to have proper consultation with each of the devolved Administrations. By that, I mean, first and foremost, consultation “from Government to Government” as it were—that is, the Westminster Government speaking to the Scottish Executive, to Ministers in Northern Ireland and to the Welsh Assembly Government. That could have happened confidentially on a “Government to Government” basis; there is absolutely no reason why that should not have happened.
As I understand it, prior to the comprehensive spending review, extensive confidential discussions took place between relevant Ministers so that Ministers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland knew more than this House did about what elements would affect their budgets. I have no complaint about that happening with the comprehensive spending review; my argument is that it should apply to the devolved Administrations in respect of this Bill.
Mr Harper
As I have said in response to interventions from other Members, the devolved Administrations—and even the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies—do not have a role in delivering elections. Although, as I have said, the position will change for Scotland, the Secretary of State is responsible for administering elections. The hon. Gentleman may not like that, but it is the position and we have worked closely with the territorial offices to ensure that procedures for the referendum work closely with the procedures for elections. That is the position.
Chris Bryant
Of course I understand the legal position. Local elections may or may not be happening at the same time in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—they will happen across Northern Ireland but perhaps only because of a by-election in Scotland or Wales—but the Assemblies have a degree of responsibility for the conduct of the elections to the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Bill decouples the Welsh Assembly constituencies from the parliamentary constituencies so that the Government are able to reduce the number of seats in Wales by 25%. I would have thought that that creates an additional need to consult.
I think that there should have been consultation at two levels. There should have been a degree of consultation at ministerial level, but, because these issues affect the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly in their entirety, it would have been common courtesy to consult the Assemblies and the Parliament as Assemblies and a Parliament. In respect of European legislation, we now have a standard and proper process of consultation between the relevant European Committees in the House of Commons and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In respect of the Bill, however, there has been no adequate consultation either with the Parliament and Assemblies or with Ministers.
Mark Tami
The point, surely, is not who has the legal responsibility, but who has the experience. There should have been plenty of consultation—certainly in Scotland—enabling Ministers to learn from that experience, and to decide on the basis of it whether it would be appropriate to hold the referendum and elections on the same day.
Chris Bryant
Obviously that is the case. I should have thought that, given that none of the Ministers in either of the teams affected represents a Welsh, Scottish or Northern Ireland seat, it would have been more important for them to consult the relevant devolved Administrations just to be able to get the position right.
Cathy Jamieson
Was it not worrying to hear the Minister say that even if the Scottish Parliament passed a resolution that made clear that it did not support the Bill, he would not take account of that and would not change his mind in any way?
Chris Bryant
The Government came to power arguing that coalition politics were somehow better for Britain. Whatever we may think of that proposition, if they are then not prepared to extend the courtesy beyond the internal dynamics of the coalition to others who are engaged in the political endeavour, they have let down their own basic first principles.
Of course the wish to foist a referendum on the same day as elections elsewhere is extraordinary, especially given that the people who now sit on the Government Benches are the people who criticised the Labour party most for the way in which the last combination of elections took place in Scotland.
Chris Ruane
Does my hon. Friend agree that the way in which the current Administration have dealt with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—
Chris Ruane
This is my intervention, if my hon. Friend does not mind!
Are not the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales behaving more like governors-general than Secretaries of State?
Chris Bryant
To be honest, I think that they are behaving more like satraps.
I think it extraordinary that there has not been proper consultation, and I do not understand why the referendum has to be held in May next year. It is pretty clear that in the respective Governments, Assemblies and Parliaments there is a firm view that it should not take place at the same time as the elections. Although most people in Wales do not view a Welsh Assembly election in quite the same way as a general election for the whole United Kingdom, many will refer to it as a Welsh general election. That is why it is so extraordinary that the people of Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland have not been shown the same degree of respect as would have been extended to anyone else. That, I think, slightly betrays the rather London-centric view of the Government. I suspect that if there were a free vote on the Bill, many fewer Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would vote for it than will go through the Lobby later today. In particular, I should be surprised if a single Welsh Member voted for it.
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) wants to intervene. Oh no, I am sorry—I am giving way to a Scottish man next.
Jim McGovern
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He mentioned that some of his constituency neighbours are also his political friends. I hope I will be able to stand up and say that one day, because at present not many of my political neighbours are political friends.
As I am sure my hon. Friend will be aware, the local government elections in Scotland have been moved back a year to ensure that they do not conflict with the Scottish general election. Government Members claim it is offensive to the intelligence of the Scottish people to say that holding polls on the same day would be confusing, but it is offensive to the author of the Gould report for them to say they will not accept his recommendations.
Chris Bryant
I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope that one day he will have more friends in neighbouring constituencies, which I think means that we will have to win some more Labour seats in Scotland. The key point is that, on the whole, it is better not to combine polls. I fully accept that the Minister has referred today—as have several other Members in previous debates—to the situation in the United States of America. It has an election day and the vast majority of elections are held on one single day. We have not gone down that route, and thus far it has been thought to be inappropriate to combine them on the same day, especially where a variety of different electoral systems are involved. I hope to come on to some of the specific problems of that.
Angela Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way to an English woman on this point. Does he agree that in this instance it is not just that two different polls are to be held on the same day, but that one of them is an election and the other is a referendum, and as referendums have completely different processes from those for elections, that will complicate things and could well cause confusion?
Chris Bryant
Indeed, and I will come on to some of the specific problems that could arise. My hon. Friend did not add, however, that they are on completely different franchises as well. The Minister seems to think that the franchise for the next general election will be the same as the franchise for the referendum. They will not be, however, because of the inclusion of peers in the referendum. It has to be said that we do not have many peers in the Rhondda, however. We have one: Baroness Gale of Blaenrhondda who, unfortunately, is in hospital at the moment—she is across the road at St Thomas’—and I wish her well. There will be confusion in respect of the different franchises and issues such as whether we have the same register or two registers, and I will talk about those specific issues a little later.
The Minister referred to all the schedules before us and how we will address them, and he said that the territorial Departments for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have today—I presume that means since the beginning of the debate this afternoon—tabled the statutory instruments that are required fully to combine the polls in each of the areas. There is no provision in statute for the combination of polls in Northern Ireland, whether for local government and Assembly elections or any other kind of elections. In Scotland, there is provision by virtue of an order, which I think was introduced in 2007, hanging off the Scotland Act 1998. That order makes it clear that local elections and parliamentary elections can be combined, but in fact it has now been decided not to combine them. In Wales, the situation is different again, because a 2007 order on the representation of the people and the Welsh Assembly makes provision to combine local elections and Welsh Assembly elections, but until now there has been no provision to enable the combining of referendums and elections.
The dangers of combining referendums are completely different from the dangers of combining elections. That is why the Government have had to introduce these statutory instruments to make provision for the referendums to be combined in each of the three territorial areas. Unfortunately, that is not the legislation that exists today, so these instruments have been tabled without, as far as I know, having been sent in advance to anybody involved in this Committee or anybody in the shadow offices in relation to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and without the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly having been consulted on them; they have simply been published. I presume the Minister will be tabling things tomorrow, once we have finished in Committee, and he will then table a series of new amendments, which we will be able to debate on Report. I simply say that such an approach puts the horse before the cart.
Mark Tami
My hon. Friend finished on the point that I was going to make. Does he agree that the Government are clearly just making this up as they go along? At last Thursday’s business questions, even the Leader of the House was unable to confirm whether the affirmative procedure would be used or whether the instruments would be taken on the Floor of the House. Perhaps my hon. Friend could update us on whether he has been given more information.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proper process for a statutory instrument is that, first, consideration is given to whether it should be taken on the Floor of the House or in Committee. Given that all three of these statutory instruments relate to elections and are of a constitutional nature, my preference, and that of Labour Members, is for them to be taken on the Floor of the House and not in some Committee without general public scrutiny. Secondly, statutory instruments have to be considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which has a limited remit but can examine whether the affirmative or the negative resolution process should be used. Last week, as my hon. Friend rightly says, Ministers, including the Leader of the House, did not seem to have the faintest idea whether or not these would be subject to the affirmative procedure. I am glad to say that the Minister has now made it clear today—
Chris Bryant
He has now made it clear, and we are deeply grateful to him, that these instruments will be dealt with by the affirmative procedure. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) received a letter to that effect—I was copied into it—on Friday.
We also need to consider what their lordships should do. I contend that we should proceed steadily, rather than at a gallop, on constitutional reform. That means, first, that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee in the House of Lords should go through their processes. We should then decide on the Floor of this House whether we agree the order, as should the House of Lords. That process is particularly important because these orders are not amendable and so we ought to ensure that we have a proper process in place before we reach the Report stage—I do not see how we can consider matters on Report until that has been done.
Angela Smith
My hon. Friend is making an excellent case about the lack of proper consultation and process on these proposals. If we had had such a thorough consultation and procedure in this place it would have allowed us to consider not only the principles but the various costs of holding the referendum, whether or not it be on the same day as the other polls. That is a very important principle in the context of last week’s spending review.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One sadness about the way in which the business ends up having to be transacted today is that because the Government have constructed this in the form of a new clause with four new schedules attendant upon it, the votes on the schedules will be separated from the votes on the new clause—unless, Ms Primarolo, you are going to allow us to proceed in a slightly different way from how these matters are normally conducted. I understand that we will end up having a debate on new clause 7 before we proceed to votes on the new schedules, rather than having a separate debate on the new schedules. That is precisely because of how the Government have constructed their approach to the amendments.
It is also worth pointing out that the Government have not put minor amendments before us today. New schedule 2, which refers to England, is 35 pages long, as is new schedule 3, which relates to Wales. New schedule 4 is 37 pages long—Scotland gets rather more than Wales or England—and new schedule 5, on Northern Ireland, is just 19 pages long. I presume that the Minister’s final throwaway comments on postal voting in Northern Ireland, which he made swiftly at the end of his speech, are why the number of pages on Northern Ireland is substantially smaller than the number on Scotland and Wales, and that he intends to introduce significant amendments at a later stage. Obviously, I do not believe that that should be next week—I think it should be once the statutory instruments have been considered and, if necessary, approved. However, that is all the more reason for us to ensure that the Northern Ireland statutory instrument is debated on the Floor of the House before Report.
Ian Lucas
One particular aspect of the franchise relating to the alternative vote referendum and the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament elections concerns me. Is the referendum franchise made up of the same franchise as the general election or as the Assembly election? As my hon. Friend will know, those two franchises are different.
Chris Bryant
It is neither A nor B—in fact, it is C. It is a new creation. The franchise for the AV referendum will be, broadly speaking, the same as that for a general election—that is, it will not include EU citizens—but will include, rather exceptionally, peers, including a peer who is able to have that vote only by virtue of their having a business interest in the City of London. A particularly bizarre franchise has been invented, which is why we tried to amend some of the elements of it in a previous discussion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) makes a good point. In many polling districts, the register will be substantially different. In Newport, for instance, 1,000 voters will be able to vote in the Assembly elections but not in the referendum. I am not sure how many voters will be able to vote in the referendum but not in the Assembly elections by virtue of their being peers.
Chris Bryant
Indeed. There is a series of complications that I shall come on to, if my hon. Friend will bear with me for a while. Amendments specifically refer to that point, but they amend the Government’s new schedules rather than the new clause, and I want first to deal with the amendments to new clause 20 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, other colleagues and me.
The first amendment is amendment (a) to new clause 20. I realise that some hon. Members might be slightly confused that there are lots of amendments (a) in this group, because some refer to the new clause and some to each of the new schedules. Amendment (a) to Government new clause 20 states:
“Where the date of the poll for a local authority election in England is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together.”
That is narrower than that which the Government have provided. The Government are suggesting that the polls can happen together when there is the referendum, and a local authority election in England, and a local referendum in England, and a mayoral election in England. In other words, it is theoretically possible that, if we stick with the Government’s proposal, one voter might come in to vote on the referendum on AV, a local authority election, a local referendum and a mayoral election all at the same time. It is one thing to consider all this in relation to someone coming into a polling station, and people might conclude that it is perfectly legitimate—that there is the franchise for the AV referendum, which we have already discussed, and the franchise for all three other issues, which would be the same—but what happens with postal votes for all those polls? If there are four postal votes and four polling cards, that provides a right old tagliatelle of a constitutional settlement for ordinary voters to try to sort out. That is why our amendment, instead of allowing all four polls at the same time, would allow only a local authority election in England to happen at the same time as the referendum. We do not think that is ideal, but at least it would tidy things up a little. I very much hope that the Minister will accede to that amendment.
Amendment (b) would also amend new clause 20 in relation to Northern Ireland. The Government propose:
“Where the date of the poll for one or more of the following is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together—
(a) a Northern Ireland Assembly Election;
(b) a Northern Ireland local election.”
In other words, they are providing for all three to happen at the same time. Up to now, there has been no legal provision enabling that to happen in Northern Ireland, which is why the Government are bringing forward relevant statutory instruments. We do not believe it is right to have all three elections at the same time, so we suggest, in a consensual way, that the Government might at least limit the combinations to a degree by taking one of the polls out of the measure.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
A few minutes ago, my hon. Friend was very critical of the Government’s lack of consultation with the devolved interests, but who in Northern Ireland has he consulted regarding his amendment, which would prevent local elections from taking place on the same day as the referendum and Assembly elections? People in Northern Ireland have said that they do not want the referendum on the same day, and that they want the two elections together, but his amendment would mean that the elections could not take place on the same day.
Chris Bryant
The difficulty that we have as Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition is that if I had tabled an amendment to that effect, it would have been ruled out of order and would not have been considered because we have already debated, in relation to clause 1, amendments on separating the referendum from those elections. I fully understand my hon. Friend’s point and there have been extensive conversations on the amendment over the weekend with a wide variety of his friends and others in Northern Ireland. The point that we are trying to make is fairly simple: combining everything on the same day brings not clarity for voters but more obscurity.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Let me endorse the point made by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and make it clear that we have no difficulty with the date of the referendum being moved but that we certainly do not agree with the date of the Assembly and council elections being moved from their current scheduled date next May.
Chris Bryant
For the most part, we agree that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Broadly speaking, we agree that where it has been determined that elections should take place on a four-yearly or other basis, and advance notice of their date has been given, it would be inappropriate to move them. Our point is that the referendum should not be on the same day as all those elections. I hope that he understands our reasoning; I think we are moving in the same direction.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Unfortunately, this is one issue on which, notwithstanding the changes that have taken place in relation to the Backbench Business Committee, there has not been much change of heart in the way that business is brought before the House. Government Members say that Labour was appalling when it was in government because it took things through at too great a speed and sometimes did not allow enough time for consultation, but they have been preaching to us since May about the new politics. I should have thought, in the context of the new politics, that major, significant constitutional reform that will affect different parts of the Union in different ways and that will change in myriad ways the way in which the House is elected should be given proper time. That means proceeding more like a stately galleon than a coyote.
Ian Lucas
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does he agree that the consultation is even more important because the proposal for the alternative vote referendum was in neither the Liberal Democrat nor the Conservative manifesto and because there is no electoral mandate for it?
Chris Bryant
Again, I agree with my hon. Friend: the Bill was in nobody’s manifesto and that is why it seems like a piece of kebab legislation. It has been bunged together to provide the Araldite that the coalition otherwise would not have.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would have been difficult to have pre-legislative scrutiny of whatever legislation was brought forward at this time? Is he suggesting that we should have a period at the beginning of a Parliament in which there is no legislation at all?
Chris Bryant
If we are talking about this legislation, then, yes, probably. The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point: there is a difficult period at the beginning of a Parliament in which a Government have to go from standing still to providing legislation. I fully understand that, but it is ill-advised to introduce major constitutional legislation at that time. I do not understand the rush with this legislation. I presume he hopes that it will not be needed until 2015, if AV is agreed to and the constituencies are all redrawn, because I am sure that he supports the five-year terms in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. There is no particular rush and this could all have been done at a slightly more leisurely pace. That would have improved the general feel of the way in which the Government are conducting this constitutional reform. Let us be clear: the party that would like to help, in some regards, those who want to reform the way in which we do politics in this country is sitting on the Opposition side of the House. The hon. Gentleman and I could be allies on many issues of constitutional reform, but the way in which the Government, particularly the Deputy Prime Minister, have approached many of these issues has made that far more difficult for us.
Chris Bryant
I give way to my hon. Friend, who probably does not agree with my last sentence.
John Mann
I do not agree with my hon. Friend’s use of the adjective “ill-advised”. A more appropriate description might be “anti-democratic and gerrymandering in order to hold together this fragile and useless coalition.” I point out that in a by-election last Thursday, the Liberals’ share of the vote fell to 2% in my area.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is almost getting into Rhondda territory. I think there is only one parliamentary constituency in which both the Conservatives and the Liberals have lost their deposits in the past 10 years—the Rhondda. [Interruption.] That was not at this general election, but the last one. I am sure that we will return to that situation at the next general election.
Returning to the Northern Ireland issue, the Government want everything to happen on the same day next May, but we think that is inappropriate and that is why we have tabled these amendments. We have tabled two other amendments to new clause 20: amendments (c) and (d). Amendment (c) would leave out lines 35 to 39, concerning a local referendum and a mayoral election in England. The Minister might enlighten us later on why the Government felt it necessary to include those measures. Are they expecting mayoral elections or local referendums on that date? If there are to be local referendums in England on the same day as an AV referendum, there will be a right old muddle. Most voters do not spend their waking hours, let alone their sleeping hours, worrying about the constitutional settlement in Britain. For the most part, they are more interested in other aspects of their lives than in the political machinations of Westminster or any other part of the constitution. That is why they often choose not to focus on the specifics until a late stage in the process. I am sure we have all had people come up to us two days before an election, saying, “I’m not registered to vote but I really want to vote in the election.” I am glad that one of the changes we introduced during the past 13 years was to make it easier for people to register after an election had been called. Far more people now register.
I am also glad that we made it easier for people to obtain postal votes. In the past, if someone wanted to vote by post, they had to have the application signed off by a medical practitioner of some kind, and in many parts of the country doctors and nurses charged £6 to sign the form. That meant that large numbers of poorer voters did not apply for a postal vote and were disfranchised, which is why it is all the more important to make sure there is clarity and consistency in the Bill.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend knows more about local elections in England than I do, so he will correct me if I am wrong, but I presumed that such referendums would be included in the local referendums in England category. However, he is right: a series of different propositions may be put to people. Following the comprehensive spending review last week, which included a drastic attack on local government funding, many local authorities will be worrying about whether they should spend £10,000 on a registration campaign, to make sure that as many people as possible are on the register, or whether they should spend the money on keeping a swimming pool open or on some other element of their services. They may decide that the only way to protect the public services they believe local people want will be to ensure that they hold a referendum on whether they should increase the amount of money that comes in from council tax.
I used to be a local government development officer for the Labour party, so I understand the argument that because between 75% and 80% of the local government budget is provided by the Government, it does not easily allow local democracy to flourish. However, if local referendums on those powers were held in May next year, it would add even greater complexity, as I think my hon. Friend was suggesting.
We have tabled several amendments to new schedule 2, and I shall go through them in order. However, because of the way in which the Government have structured the amendments, it is quite complicated for most ordinary Members to understand precisely where they are. When we consider amendments to clauses, new clauses or schedules, there are line numbers on the page, but not for new schedules. Consequently, in a lengthy new schedule of 35 pages, it is sometimes difficult to find the specific provisions to which the amendments refer.
Our first amendment is (a), on the notice for combined polls in England. It relates to paragraph 11, which Members can find on page 757 of the amendment paper. We suggest that there is no reason why the Government should insist that notice of poll be provided on the 15th day before the poll, when the 28th day before would perfectly easily give substantially more notice, so our amendment would replace “15th” with “28th”.
Our second amendment—(b)—relates to absent voter applications. Several Members have referred to postal and proxy voters, who constitute absent voters. A key issue is that someone might believe they had applied for a postal vote in respect of all elections and polls—anything on which they can vote. They might not draw a distinction between an election and a referendum; they have decided never to go to a polling station, and they prefer to vote by post. However, that is not actually what the provision is. Although some people might explicitly choose an all-elections postal vote, but not want a postal vote for referendums, such a situation is pretty unlikely, which is why our amendment states:
“An application under regulation 51(4)b of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, SI 2001/341, for an absent vote must state whether it is made for parliamentary elections, local government elections, referendums or all of them.”
People should be able to sign up to all of them, otherwise they will encounter terrible complexity not just when they ask for a postal vote, but also on polling day. As we know, some people lose their postal vote, some cannot send it on time and others may leave it until fairly late because they are uncertain how to vote and end up bringing the postal vote to the polling station. If someone has a postal vote for one poll but not for another, there may be considerable complexity about precisely what they are allowed to do.
Andrew Gwynne
In my constituency, a not insubstantial number of people are registered for a postal vote only for local elections, and not necessarily because they are EU residents who are unable to vote in a general election. Although they opted to register for a postal vote only for the local elections, they will expect a postal vote both for those elections and for the referendum and will be disappointed when they receive a ballot paper only for the council elections. Does my hon. Friend think there ought to be more publicity to make such people aware that they will not be able to vote by post in the referendum?
Chris Bryant
Yes, I agree. In addition, someone could have applied for a postal vote for one or other of the elections—the referendum, or the Assembly or Scottish Parliament elections. When their postal vote arrives for one of the elections, they might presume that it is the only election happening that day—most people do not obsess about whether there will be more than one election on a given date. They might feel they had been told that was their only chance to vote, so they would vote only in one or other of the elections. That is another complexity that could arise, which is why later on I shall refer to some of the amendments we have tabled on polling cards. We have to follow through the whole process. At the moment, I am referring to new schedule 2 as it relates to England, but later I shall discuss Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where some of the same issues could arise, albeit in a slightly different format.
Chris Bryant
Undoubtedly so, and that is one reason for my proposal. However, we sometimes overstate our concerns about the cost of elections. It is sometimes more important to say that we need the right regulations to provide clarity to voters. Holding several polls at the same time in the same polling station or by postal ballot adds complexity, which is not in the interests of good democracy. Incidentally, I am sure that if any of the hon. Members who act as observers of elections in other countries saw that situation, they would say, “The provision of postal votes was a complete and utter mess.”
John Mann
I accept my hon. Friend’s point that cost is not everything, but that is not what we have heard from those on both sides of the House in recent times. Does he agree that there is also an opportunity cost, because the returning officer and his or her staff will lose time on additional bureaucracy in the important run-up period to an election when they should be engaging properly with the electorate if the Government, with their ongoing lack of common sense, fail to accept amendment (b)?
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, I was recently subjected to the complexity into which returning officers sometimes go. Westminster council has now sent me eight missives in relation to the postal vote in Westminster. I never exercise my vote in London because my vote is in the Rhondda, which is my home. However, I had to register in my property in London, which I rent. People have to return the form to say whether—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) wants to intervene, I am quite happy to give way to him.
Chris Bryant
No. He is just going to continue chuntering. Fine.
My point is that quite often, voters must go through an unnecessarily onerous process to register for a postal vote. Likewise, the returning officer goes through far too many hoops. Sometimes it makes sense to make administrative savings when one can.
Amendment (c) to new schedule 2 is on the colour of ballot papers. Hon. Members might think that that is a recondite subject for a Bill, but notwithstanding the Minister’s remarks last week—he said that he did not want to tell returning officers precisely what to do at any point—the law already makes provisions on it, including in new schedule 2.
Government new schedule 2, which relates only to England, would simply state:
“The ballot papers used for the referendum must be of a different colour from the ballot papers used for any relevant election.”
That is sensible, because people might get two ballot papers when they arrive to vote—one for the referendum and one for the local election—and we want to ensure that the papers go into their respective ballot boxes. Different colours of ballot paper would make it easier for people to do that. However, in amendment (c), we are suggesting that it would be sensible for the same colour ballot paper to be used for the referendum throughout the United Kingdom. I suspect that the Electoral Commission will produce publicity on the referendum and encourage people to vote—not how to vote—and it would be helpful if it could refer to the colour of the ballot paper. The only way for that to happen is for the chief counting officer to decide the colour of the referendum ballot paper. The Government could then follow that up by providing that other ballot papers must be a different colour.
That is why, in amendment (c), we propose to remove paragraph 15 of new schedule 2 and insert:
“The Chief Counting Officer shall select the colour of the ballot paper used for the referendum…The other ballot papers used for any relevant election shall be of a different colour from that selected by the Chief Counting Officer.”
Cathy Jamieson
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Will he invite the Minister to ensure that the colour selected for the referendum ballot paper is not a colour that is traditionally used in Scottish Parliament elections?
Chris Bryant
That makes sense. If we had had enough time to go through this process at a slightly more leisurely pace, it would have been possible to consult on and agree to all such things. If the proposals were generally accepted, there would be a rather better feeling about the Bill.
We toyed with tabling an amendment to seek to determine the colour of the ballot paper, but we decided against that bearing in mind what the Minister said last week about leaving some decisions to officers. I have received representations from people who say that it would be inappropriate to use on the ballot paper a colour that is normally used by a political party, because we would then get into the complexities of defining which is a major political party and which is not, and what colours relate to them, which is a problem not least because I am not sure whether the Liberal Democrats are yellow or orange these days. I note that the Minister is wearing a Liberal Democrat tie today—it is mostly yellow but with little bits of blue.
Amendment (d) to new schedule 2 is on official poll cards. In new schedule 2, the Government state:
“If the counting officer thinks fit, the official poll cards used for the referendum and for the relevant elections may be combined.”
The problem is this: how is the counting officer to determine whether he or she “thinks fit”? Why ought we to allow that degree of freedom locally when it might make a material difference to the conduct of the ballot or referendum? We propose that:
“The official poll cards used for the referendum and for the relevant elections must be combined for all electors qualified to vote in all the polls.”
We all get a lot of junk mail these days. The danger is that voters will be confused if they receive two or three—or potentially four, five or six—polling cards for the different elections that are happening at the same time. They will not see how one affects the other. It would be far more sensible, wherever there is a combined poll, for the official poll cards to make it absolutely clear how many votes must be cast, how many elections there are, whether the voter has a postal vote, how they go about registering for a postal vote and so on. Our proposal would mean that there is clarity on a single piece of paper for the ordinary voter rather than a series of polling cards. The Government should make clear the nature of the franchise for each election and poll. As a proposed amendment to new schedule 2, amendment (d) relates exclusively to England.
Mr Tom Harris
I seek to be helpful. Will my hon. Friend explain why it is so important that someone who receives a polling card is made aware of the extent of the franchise for that election? If they are aware that they can vote, does it matter if they are aware of the extent of the franchise in a particular referendum or election?
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is right. I did not mean to say that there should be a treatise on the polling card about the nature of the franchise, how it applies to peers and so on. I was making the point that the card should state clearly that the elector is entitled to vote in all the elections, one of them, two or whatever. It should make it clear that there is more than one ballot taking place at the same time.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the clearest thing of all would be a separate polling card for each election, to enable people to use that polling card to vote in a specific election?
Chris Bryant
I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman is supporting the Government’s position. The Government say that where the counting officer thinks fit, he or she should be allowed to combine the polling cards. Logically, if the hon. Gentleman is to follow his own argument, he should have tabled an amendment that deleted that element and stated that there should always be separate polling cards.
The difficulty is that many people think they must have a polling card to be able to vote, which is not the case. If people have lost one of their polling cards—for instance, their referendum or their local election polling card—the danger is that they will think they are able to vote in one, rather than both. That is why it would be better to combine.
John Mann
I am following my hon. Friend’s logic, though he is beginning to lose me. Surely if there were more than one polling card per election, the chance of losing the polling card would be reduced, and more of our voters would turn out and vote because they have a polling card. Is he not proposing an anti-Labour amendment?
Chris Bryant
It is not those of us on the Opposition Benches who table partisan amendments. Only those on the Government Benches table partisan legislation. It is not my intention to benefit or disbenefit anybody, other than benefiting the ordinary voter who wants to be able to cast their vote in as many elections as they choose.
Mr Dodds
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that whether there are combined or separate polling cards, there is a need for the chief electoral officer in all areas, particularly in Northern Ireland, to do more to protect the integrity of all such official documents? We had examples in the last parliamentary election of one party in particular producing its own official polling cards, which caused utter confusion and deceived people. Can we ensure that when the polling cards are produced, proper policing takes place to prevent people from abusing those official cards?
Chris Bryant
If multiple polling cards go to each individual elector, in a household where there are five people living and two elections taking place, that would be 10 polling cards turning up. Apart from anything else, there is quite a strong likelihood that they will all get binned. The other difficulty is that political parties will step into the breach and produce leaflets which say, “You may not want to vote in the AV referendum, or you may want to vote in a particular way, but don’t forget, you’ve also got the Assembly elections.” Different political parties may want to step into the breach in various ways.
Mark Durkan
Surely if we have separate polling cards for each of the polls taking place, whether those are elections or referendums, we will get more of the problem of some cards being delivered and some not, which has been a constant problem in recent elections in Northern Ireland. In my constituency in particular, there has been an ongoing issue concerning postal workers, who feel that they are not getting paid the same for delivering election-related material, whether it is from parties or from the electoral officer. We will only add to those difficulties, which have meant that party material is not delivered.
Chris Bryant
Schedule 2 relates only to England, and the Post Office does not make such deliveries. Most local authorities use council staff to deliver polling cards. That is certainly true in some parts of England. I have a concern that with many fewer council staff, following the cuts that are likely to come, it will be more difficult for them to do so.
My basic point is that the returning officer should make it clear to each voter that they can vote in X election, Y election and the referendum, and that they can take their pick whether they want to take part in all of them, and whether they want to vote by post or turn up. Providing one piece of paper would make more sense than providing two, three, four or whatever to each voter. That might also save paper and administrative costs.
Incidentally, since each polling card must show the voter’s name, address and polling number and the address of the polling station, there is no reason why it should not state clearly which ballots that voter can take part in. That would meet what I think will be quite a complex issue—the fact that the franchise for the referendum is different from that for any of the other elections taking place on the same day.
Still on new schedule 2, which relates to England, our amendment (e) deals with separate ballot boxes. The Government state in paragraph 18:
“(1) If the counting officer thinks fit”—
a phrase they often use—
“the same ballot box may be used at the polls for the referendum and the relevant elections.
(2) Where separate ballot boxes are used, each must be clearly marked to show—
(a) the poll to which it relates, and
(b) the colour of the ballot papers that should be placed in it.”
That is wholly inappropriate. It would make far more sense to have separate ballot boxes for the referendum and for the relevant elections. The Government already say that the colour of the ballot papers should be different, so it would mean greater simplicity for voters to be able to turn up to a polling station, get, let us say, a light green ballot paper for the referendum and a white ballot paper for the local election in England, and see a little sign saying that green ballot papers go into one box and white ballot papers into another. I should have thought that that would make the process of verification of votes simpler for the vast majority of returning officers and counting officers.
John Mann
Aside from the problems that would be caused to those, including Members of the House, who are colour blind, why is my hon. Friend putting such additional complexities on voters, including elderly voters who may well have eyesight problems? Some voters in their 80s or 90s choose to go to the polling station. Why put complications in the system of voting? Where is the logic?
Chris Bryant
I do not think I am making the system more complex. It makes the system more complex if there is just one ballot box for two completely different sets of propositions. There will be two different electoral registers—we will come to the issue of electoral registers later—and those who can vote in one ballot will not be the same as those who can vote in another. To make sure that the ballot is correct, and that people are not given ballot papers when they are not entitled to them, and to make sure that the administration of the counting of the votes can take place properly, it would be better to have separate ballot boxes.
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
I dread dragging the debate on any longer than is necessary, but in Burnley at the election in May we had one ballot box for both the local election ballot papers and the general election ballot papers. It caused no trouble whatever. If we had two boxes, the reconciliation of the ballot papers in either box would require them all to be emptied out, because people will make mistakes. I can see no sense in having various ballot boxes. The present system has worked for years. Why change it now?
Chris Bryant
I just think it is simpler to be able to separate them before starting. Of course, if somebody puts the wrong ballot paper in the wrong box, that is not a problem. Some other countries use what the Labour party used for its elections—of the leader of the Labour party, the national executive committee and so on—earlier this year: a single ballot paper covering a multitude of different elections. The voting system used in each of those elections was different, which confused some voters. Instead of a single ballot paper with lots of different elements on it, it is better to have separate ballot papers, and therefore separate ballot boxes.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman think that the system used in Wales for the National Assembly elections needs reforming on that basis, because we have two ballot papers—one for the list and one for the constituency contest? They all go in the same ballot box and are sorted out later.
Chris Bryant
We will come later to the question of which ballots is counted first. The Minister has said that he would like the elections counted first, but it will be difficult to do that until all the ballot boxes have been emptied and all the verification done. It would be swifter if we had a ballot box that, in 99% of cases, contained no mistakes and was for one set of ballot papers and not more.
Andrew Gwynne
May I advise my hon. Friend that the experience in Denton and Reddish on 6 May this year was quite different from that of the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle)? In some of the polling stations, particularly in the Stockport part of my constituency, the ballot boxes were full before the end of the day, leading to the polling clerk having to shove rulers into the ballot boxes to try to make space for extra ballot papers.
Chris Bryant
I have seen the same myself in by-elections in Hackney and council elections elsewhere. That can happen in just one election, so it is far more likely to happen in combined elections, which is why it would be simpler to be able to separate the ballot papers.
Andrew Gwynne
To clarify, on 6 May, we had combined elections in Denton and Reddish, to both Stockport and Tameside metropolitan borough councils and to this place.
Chris Bryant
I am glad that my hon. Friend was returned with a decent majority; there cannot have been too much of a problem. None the less, I think that my amendment would provide greater clarity.
Amendment (f) to new schedule 2, entitled “Combination of polls: England”, relates to the publicity provided in polling stations. Polling stations contain some information about how people are to vote, mark their vote and all the rest of it. Our simple point is that there should be similar information on the referendum. Our amendment reads:
“The Electoral Commission are to supply posters to be displayed in every polling station used for the referendum, which give neutral information on first past the post and alternative vote systems that are the subject of the referendum, subject to agreement by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission.”
The only additional element that need concern us is our suggestion that the matter be referred to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. We suggest that simply because what might not look to one person like a partisan presentation of the case for the alternative vote or first past the post might do so to the weathered eye of a politician. That is why information should be provided in the polling station. However, anything trying to explain the two voting systems should have been agreed by those here who represent different sides of the argument on the referendum.
Amendment (g) relates to registers. The Government’s measures allow for a single electoral register in the polling station. A voter will come in, provide their name and address—in Northern Ireland, they have to provide more information—or their polling or identifying number, and then be given the relevant number of ballot papers. The problem is, however, that the franchises are different. In Newport, for instance, 1,000 voters will be able to vote in the Welsh Assembly elections who will not be able to vote in the referendum. The Government’s provisions allow for that by suggesting that one mark be made against the names of those voting in all of the elections, and another against those of anyone who chooses not to vote, or who cannot vote, in one or more of them. That will lead to instances in which people are given ballot papers inappropriately. We have all heard of instances when that has happened because there has been a shared register. I therefore urge the Government to accept separate registers for the separate franchises. That is the best way to ensure that there is no inappropriate giving of ballot papers to people who cannot vote in one or other of the polls.
John Mann
On this occasion, my hon. Friend has not lost me with his amendment, although I am astonished at where it has originated. Will he explain exactly how it will be more effective and quicker for staff at a polling station to have two separate registers, given that they will not know which elections people are eligible to vote in, and especially given that, under another of his amendments, voters would have only one polling card to present? Would his amendment (g) not lead to the possibility of queues not just at 10 o’clock but throughout the day, with people trying to find out whether they were eligible to vote, because staff would have to check two registers rather than one?
Chris Bryant
No, what should be happening is this: a voter eligible for one election presents themselves at a polling station and goes to the electoral registration officer, who marks them off on the list and gives them a ballot paper for just one election. If the voter is eligible for the second election, the officer marks them off on the other list and gives them the relevant ballot paper. That is not vastly different. It simply means separate marked registers for each election, which will lead to fewer confusions about who is entitled to vote in each election.
Roger Williams
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in the vicinity of the polling station there might be a helpful Liberal Democrat, who could help the voters and point out to them in which elections they could take part?
Chris Bryant
It depends which kind of Liberal Democrat it is. If they are from one side of the street, they will say one thing, and if they are from the other side, they will say exactly the opposite. Anyway, people with rosettes will not be in the polling stations advising people. It is not a good idea for people with partisan affiliations to be telling people whether they can vote when they turn up at a polling station. However, I note that that is the partisan direction in which the Liberal Democrats are going. I had thought better of the hon. Gentleman.
John Mann
I remain mystified, because my hon. Friend is now saying that there is an issue with the marked register. Does the issue with the marked register not relate to how postal votes, particularly late postal votes, are added to the marked register, not to whether a European vote can be identified on the register?
Chris Bryant
I think my hon. Friend misunderstands the situation. The Government want a single register with the officer deciding how many elections a person may vote in. I am suggesting two registers, one for the referendum and one for all the other elections, because the franchise for the elections would be the same. That would provide greater clarity when people are voting. [Interruption.] It would be the same in England. We are discussing new schedule 2, as I am sure the Minister, who is quietly chuntering in his charming way, will acknowledge.
Jake Berry
I should be interested to know how many elections the hon. Gentleman has run, or how many returning officers he has spoken to about the amendments, because they all seem to imply that what he thinks should happen in the election trumps what a returning officer believes should happen in his own election in his own division.
Chris Bryant
No. In relation to some of the measures, we think it important to look at whether there should be uniformity throughout the country for a referendum that applies to the whole country, such as in the colour of ballot papers. Broadly speaking, I think that there should be such uniformity, as does my party. Some of the other amendments are probing, because the aim of legislative scrutiny, especially when the Government have at a late stage tabled 110 pages or so of amendments, is to go through them and ensure that we have made the right decision. The hon. Gentleman is upset because he did not manage to table an amendment to the Government’s proposed changes. He had not spotted that he disagreed with them, but perhaps next time, when another piece of legislation comes forward, he will table one.
Jake Berry
My point is that I do agree with the Government. The returning officer should have the right to make the decision.
Chris Bryant
Well, the hon. Gentleman did not make that point earlier, but if he now agrees with the Government that must be because a Whip has spoken to him—or somehow or other. Anyway, he agrees with the Government, and I am sure that the Minister will be absolutely delighted about that.
Chris Bryant
As my hon. Friend says, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) has obviously become the hon. Member for Damascus. There are quite a lot of them in the Liberal Democrat party as well, so I am sure he and his friends will feel very much at home.
We have also tabled some consequential amendments, such as amendment (h), and that brings us to amendment (i) to new schedule 2, which is entitled, “Combination of Polls: England”. The amendment relates to who is able to attend the count. I accept that I have not consulted widely with returning officers on this matter, because my experience is that different returning officers—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) mouths at me, “What page?” Amendment (i) is on page 790 of the amendment paper, and it reads:
“Paragraph 40, at the end of sub-paragraph (3) insert ‘or
(c) the person is a Member of Parliament.’.”
The amendment would merely allow Members, as of right, to attend the count on the AV referendum. We have not been able to word the amendment, “the person is the Member of Parliament for that constituency”, because thus far we have not won the argument with the Minister about making the count happen at a Westminster parliamentary constituency level, but the amendment would allow Members to attend the count.
Mr Tom Harris
I rise only to remind the Committee and particularly the hon. Member for Damascus about our argument in the previous Parliament which proved there is little point in consulting returning officers on some matters. Even though it was the will of the House that the general election count take place on the night of polling, primary legislation was required to force returning officers to agree to count the ballot papers.
Chris Bryant
I am not quite so negative as my hon. Friend about returning officers, but the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) had an excellent debate in Westminster Hall the other day—[Interruption.] She is not in her place at the moment, but I am sure she will be later.
Chris Bryant
Yes, I was gesturing to the hon. Lady as if she were there, because in spirit she is sitting just over the Minister’s shoulder, keeping a beady eye on him.
My point is that returning officers often have not only the law breathing down their neck, but elected Members who, in particular at the moment, are understandably worried about the financial situation. They will be wondering whether it is better to spend money on electoral registration, the proper running of election counts and buying more polling station equipment, or on keeping a swimming pool open. I understand the pressure on returning officers, who want clarity from Parliament, but sometimes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) said, they are wrong.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend made a very good point about basing the referendum count on parliamentary constituency boundaries. One third of my constituency is in Stockport metropolitan borough and two thirds are in Tameside metropolitan borough, and, were the referendum to be counted on a local authority basis, I would have two counts taking place at the same time.
Chris Bryant
Yes—[Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House says that he has that all the time. He obviously likes being “kebabbed” in that way—or perhaps that is spatchcocked, I am not sure.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
That is more spatchcocked.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman agrees.
The point is that our amendment is so drafted because, otherwise, a Member might be able to attend half the count in relation to the referendum on the alternative vote, but not the other half in relation to his constituency. We have tabled the amendment so that any Member of Parliament would be able to attend a referendum count. I would hope that most returning officers would not feel troubled by that, but some have explicitly said that the Member of Parliament is not, as of right, allowed to attend.
We have tabled one further amendment that is of significance and not just consequential on others. Amendment (j) relates to new schedule 2 and is about the priority in counting election papers.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
I may have missed this point earlier, but will the referendum votes be counted by ward and then by either local authority or constituency area, or by constituency area or local authority first? Will they be mixed together and counted, or will they be counted by local authority electoral ward first?
Chris Bryant
No, they will not be counted by local authority ward. The procedure is different in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland of course—just to make it easier for everybody. We tabled an amendment saying that it should be done in the same way throughout the whole country. [Interruption.] The Minister says that his provisions would make the procedure easier, but I am not sure that they would. In Wales, the procedure will be based on Assembly constituency boundaries, which are the same as parliamentary boundaries. In England, it will be based on local authority boundaries. In Scotland, it will be based on Scottish parliamentary boundaries, which are not coterminous with Westminster parliamentary boundaries—
Chris Bryant
In Dudley, which is not a separate nation yet, the procedure will be based on local authority boundaries. I cannot remember the provision in relation to Northern Ireland, but I am sure that the Minister will enlighten us. [Interruption.] It will be based on the whole of Northern Ireland; that is right.
On the question of priority when counting votes, we believe, as I think the Minister does, that it is important to count first the ballots for elections in which somebody is standing for office, and the referendum afterwards. If the rules in the Government’s proposed changes are agreed to, however, that will not be entirely possible, because the ballots will first require a degree of verification, and we will have to empty all the ballot boxes in order to do so. None the less, we believe that in order to ensure that counting officers give priority to the counting of ballots cast in the respective elections to the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh devolved Administrations, and to local council elections in each part of the United Kingdom, amendment (j) would need to be added to new schedule 2 in relation to England.
I am sure that you will be aware, Ms Primarolo, that we have tabled similar amendments to new schedules 3, 4 and 5 in relation to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I do not intend to refer to those now, because this is not the last time that the Government will present amendments on this subject, having decided to go through the ludicrous process of having statutory instruments that will not have been considered in advance of next week’s Report stage before they then table additional amendments. I think that that is inappropriate.
Let me refer to the report that was published today by the Welsh Affairs Committee, in which John Turner, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, who, as the hon. Member for Damascus—the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen—will know, is head honcho among returning officers, said that
“drawing on the experience of Scotland in 2007, the AEA considered there was a high possibility for great confusion amongst voters…electoral events, if they are of a different nature, should not take place at the same time. As a matter of policy and principle, we subscribe to that. Therefore, we have concerns about the possible implications for voters in understanding, or being confused by, the different ballot papers they are presented with for different electoral events on the same day.”
We would contend, particularly because of the haste with which the Bill has been brought forward and the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny, that it will be even more difficult for returning officers to be able to do their job in the elections and to provide greater clarity for local voters.
Mr Harris
Has my hon. Friend received any information from the Government about the decision by the Scottish Parliament to move the local authority elections in Scotland back by one year specifically to avoid the confusion encountered in 2007? As the Government now want to have a referendum on the same day as the Scottish Parliament elections, does that mean that they believe that the Scottish Parliament was wrong to move the local elections back by one year?
Chris Bryant
I presume that they must, because that is why we are now going to have all three of these things on the same day in Northern Ireland, despite the experiences in Scotland, which were aggressively excoriated by the Liberal Democrats when they were on the Opposition Benches—although they seem to have forgotten all the speeches that they made then.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware, the difference is that the Scottish council elections are held under the single transferable vote, so the voter has to number the ballot paper with their first, second and third preferences. In this case, all ballot papers will be marked with a single cross, so the possibility of confusion does not arise as it would if we were having two elections on the same day under different electoral systems.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is a Liberal Democrat, and I am sure that he knows all about confusion, especially at the moment. I think that he is trying to quibble to end up with a position that he can proudly defend. In 2007, he would probably have been saying that the elections should not have been held at the same time, so he should be advancing the same argument now. However, I leave that for him and his conscience.
The Welsh Affairs Committee cited Lewis Baston, the senior research fellow with Democratic Audit, who argued that the coincidence in 2015—if the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill goes through in the way that the Government intend—of a general election with Assembly elections in Wales and parliamentary elections in Scotland is even more troubling because
“the elections for Westminster and the Assembly would be taking place on different systems”—
precisely the point made by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid)—
“on the same day and, more complicatedly, on two sets of boundaries which will hardly ever correlate with each other.”
I am absolutely certain that because the hon. Gentleman is a very honourable gentleman who is always consistent with his arguments, he will therefore vote against provisions in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill whereby elections in Scotland and Wales are to be held on the same day as the general election. I can see from his smile that I already have his vote in relation to any such amendments.
I am sorry that I have been unable to deal with all the other amendments that we tabled on Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but some of them merely repeat the other amendments to new schedule 2 as regards England. I hope that we will have an opportunity to vote on quite a number of these proposals.
Mr Harper
First, I will pick up several issues raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and other Members, and at the end of my remarks I will ask the Committee to vote for my new clause and new schedules and to vote against all the amendments tabled by the hon. Gentleman. For colleagues requiring a simple way of thinking about it, that is what I am asking them to do, and they can now choose whether they want to listen to the rest of my remarks.
Mr Harper
I will not, but I will of course correctly assign the comment to the hon. Member for Rhondda. It perhaps demonstrates that he needs to learn a little more about horses and carts before he makes such allusions.
The hon. Member for Rhondda mentioned combined elections and said that the Government had chosen the date of other elections for the referendum. I cannot help but observe that in both 2001 and 2005 the previous Government specifically chose to have general elections on dates when county council elections were already planned. They knew that in advance, and the elections were combined. They ran perfectly well and passed off without incident. I do not have any complaint about that, but for the Opposition to complain about our choosing to have a referendum on a date when there are other elections seems a bit rich.
Chris Bryant
I think I am right in saying that the hon. Gentleman has just said that the 2001 general election was held on the same day as the local elections. It was not: it was held in June, which was when I was first elected. That is yet another reason for him to resign.
Mr Harper
No, not at all, because the local elections were also held in June, because of the foot and mouth outbreak. Both sets of elections were moved, and they were on the same day, so it is the hon. Gentleman who should resign. I remember that very well, because my constituency was badly hit by the foot and mouth outbreak and the shambolic way in which it was handled by the Labour Government. That was one good reason why I was elected in 2005, and re-elected this year.
Mr Harper
I have said both today and on earlier days that notwithstanding the short time available to it, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee did a sterling job of taking evidence and producing a comprehensive report on the Bill. We have examined what it said with great care, even though we do not necessarily agree with it.
The other point that I would make on that subject is that at business questions last week, when some hon. Members were complaining about the amount of time available, an Opposition Member who speaks for her party from the Front Bench complained that we were allowing too much time. She said that it was not very helpful that the House was sitting late, and asked what we were going to do to make the hours of the House more “predictable and family-friendly”. I can only observe that there is a balance to be struck. Some Members think we should sit all night, but when we allow more time, others criticise us for making the House less family-friendly. Opposition Front Benchers cannot have it both ways.
I wish to pick up some of the points that the hon. Member for Rhondda made. He alluded to what I said about combining elections in Northern Ireland, and said that there was not currently any provision to do so. There is provision to combine local elections in Northern Ireland with UK parliamentary elections, and that already takes place, but there is no power in existing legislation to combine Northern Ireland Assembly elections with Northern Ireland local elections. If we did not have such provision in the Bill, they could not be combined and would have to be run separately.
The hon. Gentleman’s amendments seeking to remove the provision for combining elections would not prevent elections from happening on the same day. They would just make it impossible to combine them. They would have to be run completely separately, which would incur extra cost and more complexity. Returning officers and counting officers could not ensure that the arrangements for those elections were brought together to work more sensibly. Those proposals would therefore not take us any further forward. We would still have the elections, but there would be more cost and complexity. He does us no favours by suggesting that.
I made a point about poll cards earlier, but I shall repeat it, because it came up in the contributions of the hon. Gentleman and a number of other hon. Members. Poll cards will confirm the voting arrangements that will apply to particular electors. When they get their cards, electors will know whether they have a postal vote in place, which of the elections they are entitled to vote in, and therefore whether they need to apply for a postal vote for any of the elections. The fact that poll cards will have that information on them will be very helpful.
The hon. Member for Rhondda also mentioned some of the other elections that we propose to combine. I want to correct a small error. I think that I said that five mayoral elections were planned for next year, but the figure is four. I shall list the places for the hon. Gentleman’s benefit: Bedford, Middlesbrough, Mansfield and Torbay. It is possible that further mayoral elections or by-elections might take place next year, and our combination provisions would cover them.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned local government referendums. I understand that several petitions have been registered with local authorities about referendums for directly elected mayors. We think that at least some local referendums are likely to take place. If they are held on the same day, we and the administrators believe that it would be sensible to combine them.
I have already spoken about amendment (a) to new clause 20 to limit the combination of elections. The amendment would not stop the elections happening; it would simply mean that administrators could not take them together. That does not help. I understand the views of hon. Members who do not agree with combination, but we had a lengthy debate of around five and quarter hours about that on the first day of our Committee proceedings. We had the argument and the Committee made a decision. If we accept that the elections will take place on 5 May, the Government amendments intend to ensure that they work sensibly, instead of rerunning the debate about whether they should be held on the same day.
Chris Bryant
I understand the thrust of the Parliamentary Secretary’s remarks, but I am not sure that he is right. New schedule 2 refers to England, and although we discussed other elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, we did not have a debate about whether English local elections should be held on the same day as the referendum.
Mr Harper
No, but we had a debate about whether the referendum should take place next May. If it does, it will be on the same day as the local authority elections. The Committee made a decision about the day on which it wanted the elections to take place—5 May.
Amendment (c) to new schedule 2 deals with the colour of the ballot paper. The current wording of new schedule 2 matches the version that is used in existing combination legislation, which has worked well for several years. The first sub-paragraph of amendment (c) is unnecessary. We do not believe that it is appropriate to give the chief counting officer first choice of colour for the ballot paper for the referendum, partly because of showing respect to the other polls on that day. I cannot remember who raised the point, but there may well be custom and practice about the colour of ballot papers for particular elections in different parts of the UK. We think it appropriate to allow returning officers to continue with their usual custom and practice and to choose a different colour for the ballot paper for the referendum to make it easy for voters to tell the papers apart.
Much to my surprise, amendment (d) is one of two topics on which I agree with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). The flexibility that we have allowed on combining poll cards would allow counting officers to make local decisions, which reflect conditions on the ground. There may be particular reasons for that. Returning officers have adduced logistical reasons why printers, distributors and sometimes other administrators cannot combine poll cards. It is not sensible to legislate for something that cannot be delivered on the ground. Our proposals are more sensible and leave the decisions in the hands of officials who can respond to local conditions.
On ballot boxes, my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle), who is in his place, made the point well that we want to allow flexibility for administrators to do what makes sense. In some places, where there is only a small polling station, multiple ballot boxes might constitute overkill. Even if there are separate ballot boxes, one cannot guarantee that papers from the election or the referendum do not go into the other ballot box. One must therefore still take all the papers out, separate and verify them. Again, it is much more sensible to leave that decision to administrators, who can take account of local circumstances.
Chris Bryant
I seek clarification from the Parliamentary Secretary. He said that the three territorial authorities had laid their statutory instruments, but there is nothing in the Vote Office yet. The Scottish statutory instrument is available online, but not in the Vote Office. I hope that he will check the facts for us later.
Chris Bryant
The Minister may be right that somebody has given the statutory instruments to the Table Office, but they are not available in the Vote Office. It would be for the convenience of the Committee if the Government provided copies to the Vote Office today, so that hon. Members can read them before we finish the amendments.
Mr Harper
I said that the Government would table the territorial orders today, because it is in relation to those orders—now that we have them and they are available—that we will be able to table amendments after the Committee stage finishes, for discussion on Report. The new clause and the Government new schedules that we have been debating today, and on which I will ask hon. Members to vote, refer to the law as it currently is, prior to the tabling of the territorial orders. Those orders are not needed for Members to deliberate today; they are needed for Members to table amendments for debate on Report, and they will be available to Members in good time for those debates.
Chris Bryant
I am just asking a simple thing, which is that the Minister should help the Committee. He says that all the statutory instruments have been tabled, but although the Scottish one is available online, the Welsh and the Northern Ireland ones are not. Would it not be simpler if he provided a few copies to the Vote Office? What possible difficulty can that give him?
Mr Harper
As with his lengthy speech, the hon. Gentleman is just going around creating confusion where there is none. The territorial orders that we have laid today—and we have laid them today—will be available for Members in good time for the debate on Report. The debate that we are having today is about new clause 20 and the Government new schedules, which, as he well knows, relate to the law as it currently is, prior to the tabling of the territorial orders, so he is creating a problem where none exists.
Chris Bryant
On a point of order, Mr Streeter. As there was some discussion before that last set of votes about the statutory instruments to be laid by the Welsh Office, the Northern Ireland Office and the Scotland Office—
Chris Bryant
I apologise and am very grateful to the Whip for that.
These statutory instruments are now available in the Vote Office and I note that the Scottish one is 205 pages long. There are two Northern Ireland instruments, not just one as was stated earlier. One is 59 pages long and the other is somewhat shorter; the Welsh one is quite short too. Would it not be extraordinary if these were not to be debated properly before Report?
The Temporary Chair (Mr Gary Streeter)
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I am sure that his comments have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench and the House is grateful to him for his assistance.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I had not intended to speak in the debate, although I support the proposal in the new clause. I am quite certain that our most important role in this place is that of representing our constituents, and I agree with the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) that that relationship between the Member and our electors is the most special thing about my job. That is what most Members of Parliament think.
The problem is that that relationship is not sufficiently rewarded by the structures of this place, and in some ways the new clause goes to that issue. It challenges a reward system which says that success is achieved only by being a Minister. I have history here, because I am one of the very few people who, when they were a Minister, asked the Prime Minister to stop making me a Minister because I had had enough. I wanted to jump off that gravy train, for a number of reasons. One of them was that I believed that my responsibilities as a Minister interfered with the relationship that I had with the people of Slough whom I have the privilege to represent.
I have been complaining about late-night debates on the Bill and I did not plan to intervene until the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle spoke. We need to listen carefully to what he said, because his speech was not just about the new clause. It was not just about the number of Ministers. It was an analysis that showed that the Bill is looking down the wrong end of the telescope. The Bill protects the interests of those in government—in power—at the expense of those who put us there. It is not sufficiently focused on the electorate of Britain, on the masses whom we have the privilege to represent, and it is too focused on those who have scooped up the power in what he calls a coup d’état.
In a way, the hon. Gentleman is entirely right. I do not quibble with the fact that the result of the election required a coalition to be created. I am also of the view that the coalition had to be created between the largest party and a partner. But I quibble with the kind of constitutional change that the Bill seeks to bring about, not prefigured properly in any party’s manifesto, being rammed through the House of Commons without proper consideration.
That speaks to us about the consequences of not having a written constitution. There are some merits in not having a written constitution. It can create some flexibility and some opportunities to be imaginative and to solve problems as they arise, but it has risks, and today we are in the middle of one of the biggest risks. Without a written constitution, people can take liberties with the constitution. That is happening right now. Liberties are being taken, and those taking the liberties are those in government, who see the reward of elections—the highest thing that they can achieve—as Government office, not representing the masses.
Those of us who think that representing the people of Britain is our highest achievement should say that we will support the new clause and that we will not accept a situation in which a third of those on the Government Benches are on the payroll. That is not acceptable. It is not satisfactory and it creates huge cynicism among the electorate of Britain. I cannot blame them for thinking that politicians are rogues. Most of us in this place know that most are not, but when the system means that people cannot say what hon. Members and I know they think because they are on the Government Benches and they have to just suck it up, that makes people think that politics has no authenticity and that it is dishonest. That is damaging to democracy.
Chris Bryant
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her splendid speech. I had not realised that she was going to end so swiftly.
We have had excellent contributions. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said that he lacked ambition. That is clear, I suppose. That has been underlined with three lines from the Whips, but I praise the motion that he tabled. It puts into a new clause the question that I asked the Deputy Prime Minister some few months ago: if the Government plan to cut the number of seats in the House of Commons and do not plan to cut the number of Ministers, surely that will increase the influence of the Government—the Executive—over Parliament. I wholeheartedly support the argument that the hon. Member for Broxbourne made this evening.
Mr MacNeil
May I charitably suggest that although the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) might lack personal ambition, he certainly does not lack ambition for the House and its wider membership, which will have been noted on both sides of the House?
Chris Bryant
Of course; I did not mean to be ungenerous to the hon. Member for Broxbourne, as I think he well knows. I was praising his ambition, which need not be for the greasy pole—it might be for other things in life.
The right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell)—
Chris Bryant
Well, the hon. Gentleman should be. He carries himself as if he were right honourable—if not most reverend as well.
Chris Bryant
Yes, he delivered his remarks with a magisterial largesse—[Interruption.] No, I was not going to say laissez faire.
The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle made some extremely good points, and I hope that many Members will reject the Bill on Third Reading for precisely the reasons he advanced. One of the arguments I have tried to make throughout is that I fully understand why many hon. Members feel that, following the expenses saga in particular, we need to be very humble about the authority of the House and individual Members. However, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should be proud of our representative democracy and the system we have. It does not work perfectly. There are things that have to be improved. As in the church, there will always be things that are semper reformanda. However, we should not in the process suddenly start to say that the whole of the political system is corrupt, wrong and rotten, and that therefore we have to start all over again.
I differ from the hon. Gentleman on one point. He said that the system is not much different from that in 1945, 1918 and 1850—
Chris Bryant
Well, my point remains. Neither in 1815 nor in 1850 were miners able to vote, because they did not qualify under the franchise. In 1885, they were allowed to, but women were not. One can make significant changes to the system, although I think the hon. Gentleman holds a different view from me about reform of the House of Lords. That is where I agree more with the Government Front-Bench team. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman had any particular tadpoles or nincompoops in mind—I can see some images flitting across his mind now, which suggests he had some specific people in mind.
The hon. Member for Broxbourne referred directly to the argument that the Deputy Prime Minister made in January in favour of cutting the House of Commons to 500 Members and the number of Ministers to 73, but of course that is not at all the proposal before us. The right hon. Gentleman has adopted neither measure. It might be that having picked one tune on “Desert Island Discs” on Sunday, he changes his tune entirely when it is replayed on Thursday. That is clearly the situation we have at the moment.
Our system has changed over the generations because it has not been considered right and proper that Ministers thought of their salary or pension as just a tiny part of their remuneration for being in hock to the Crown and that all the other monopolies and benefits accruing by virtue of how they operated their ministerial office brought in far more money. It was Edmund Burke who, in 1782, first introduced changes that meant that Ministers of the Crown had to rely on the properly arrived at financial provisions, rather than on the previous system which was completely and utterly corrupt. As Macaulay said of the 18th century:
“From the noblemen who held the white staff and the great seal, down to the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what would now be called gross corruption was practiced without disguise and without reproach.”
Many in previous generations exercised their ministerial functions solely on the basis of financial corruption. Ministers accumulated enormous fortunes by virtue of being Ministers. It is right and proper that we do not have that system today, and if anybody in the British political system does accumulate, by virtue of their political office, an enormous fortune, there is something going wrong—IPSA must have allocated everything that we have all claimed to just one individual Member.
There was substantial change in 1831 through the Select Committee on the Reduction of Salaries. It suggested a completely different structure, which ended up with William Pitt the Younger, when he was First Lord of the Treasury, earning just £5,000 by virtue of that post, although he had other posts that earned him some £4,300. Today, that would be a considerable amount of money for ministerial office, but at the time MPs were not paid at all.
Today’s system relies on two pieces of legislation from 1975, the Ministerial and other Salaries Act, and the House of Commons Disqualification Act, to which the new clause in the name of the hon. Member for Broxbourne refers. Both specify that the number of Ministers shall be 95. The Ministerial and other Salaries Act also lays out how many Cabinet Ministers, Ministers of State, Whips and so on there can be, and it is my simple contention that if one wants to limit the number of Members and ensure that the proper legislative scrutiny function of this House is performed, one has to cut the number of Ministers.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
When the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) spoke to his new clause, he made the very good point that, at a time when we are talking about reducing not the number of councillors throughout the UK, but the administrative costs, the chief executives, the directors and so on, it is incumbent on us to talk about changing the Executive and reducing the Executive’s power.
Chris Bryant
That is right. If we really are to have new politics—that rather amorphous term to which the coalition agreement alludes—it must accept something that we the Opposition were too reluctant to accept when we sat on the Government Benches: that Parliament, when it is free to do its job, does its job better than when it is constrained.
The constraints are multiplying. The number of parliamentary secretaries is not quite growing daily, as the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle suggested. He made it sound as if they were breeding and reproducing. The number is not growing daily. However, it is certainly true—
Chris Bryant
Ah! Parliamentary Private Secretaries. Indeed, I was going to come to the point about PPSs, because the hon. Member for Broxbourne was absolutely right to say that they are included in the ministerial code of conduct. It is a bit odd that a list of PPSs is still not available to the public. If one goes to the Cabinet Office website, one finds that the most recent list refers to July 2009. There is a list on conservativehome.com, which is a website that Government Members might consult sometimes, detailing 22 Parliamentary Private Secretaries, but as I understand it there are considerably more than that. The Government should be straight with the House and tell us precisely how many people are really on the payroll. By payroll, I do not mean that PPSs are in receipt of moneys.
The ministerial code of conduct, which incidentally every PPS should have been provided with and signed, although I suspect that most have not, makes it absolutely clear:
“Parliamentary Private Secretaries are expected to support the Government in important Divisions in the House. No Parliamentary Private Secretary who votes against the Government can retain his or her position.”
I say again that this House does its job as a reviewing, revising and legislative body when it is freest from the shackles of patronage, but with the numbers of Ministers and PPSs having grown, there is already an unnecessary constraint on the real power of this House to do its job.
We have talked about what happens on the Government Benches, but what also happens is that the Opposition feel that they have to match the ministerial team—and of course, the PPS team—man for man and woman for woman, so we end up not with 95 Ministers but 190. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) is saying from a sedentary position that Labour did the same—yes, and I have already said that we were too slow to accept these points. However, there is a big difference. He is supporting a Bill to remove 50 Members of Parliament while keeping the number of the Ministers the same, which means that Ministers will form a larger percentage of the House.
When one includes Ministers and PPSs on the Government side and their shadows on the Opposition side, one ends up with a large number of people who are not entirely free to speak their mind because they are bound by collective responsibility. There are many things to be said in favour of collective responsibility: nobody wants to be run by a shower who are completely and utterly unable to organise themselves and exercise some discipline. However, we also need a significant number of people on the Back Benches who are able to deliver their verdict on legislation and to vote at all times entirely with their conscience.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is trying to have it both ways. He is arguing that people who are not members of the Government are a bulwark against an oppressive Executive, and I accept that. At the same time, he admits that his own Government—the previous Administration—got it wrong, and I agree. However, this is not necessarily just a numerical issue. We should cast our minds back to the Iraq war debates, when a huge Back-Bench cohort failed to hold the Executive to account on one of the most important issues of foreign policy in our country’s history since the war.
Chris Bryant
I think I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In the previous Government we were not always as alive as we might have been to the fact that this House does its job best when it is most free to be able to do so. However, the difference that he has to face is that unless he intends to agree with the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle, he is supporting a Bill that wants to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. That will, in effect, cut the number of Back Benchers, because it does not cut the number of Ministers. My argument is that if we are going to cut one group, we should cut the other. That is entirely in line with the new clause.
Mr Mark Field
Everybody accepts that collective responsibility is an important function, particularly in this media-savvy world in which we live, where it is important to ensure that any Government do not look like a shambles. Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that there is a distinction between collective responsibility for much of the legislation that goes through this House and this sort of Bill—a constitutional Bill that should not be subject to quite the same shackles to which he has referred?
Chris Bryant
I agree. That is why I have been trying to argue that Members such as the hon. Gentleman who have taken a long-standing interest in constitutional issues should feel free not necessarily to vote with their Front Benchers. I know that he has already exercised that right on several occasions.
Daniel Kawczynski
The hon. Gentleman says that having a large group of PPSs will make it more difficult to hold the Government to account, but some might argue that when Mr Blair was Prime Minister it was the rebellion among PPSs threatening to resign that finally forced him to go.
Chris Bryant
I know too much about that episode to want to divulge exactly what went on. The hon. Gentleman is a PPS now, is he not?
Chris Bryant
Right, but he is not yet listed on any publicly available list of PPSs. [Interruption.] Well, I am sure that the country is grateful and that people will welcome the hon. Gentleman with acclaim and instantly start putting up red and white bunting in honour of his historical associations with Poland.
My point is that the payroll vote has increased. It has increased because of the dramatic increase in the number of PPSs, which partly happened under our rule but I think is happening again at the moment. The increased payroll vote is not just because of that, though. It is also because of unpaid Ministers. I was an unpaid Minister for a while and sympathise with the Deputy Leader of the House, who is one now. We now also have a particularly interesting concept, which is a Liberal Democrat Whip who is not even an unpaid Minister but an organiser of the Liberal Democrats, but who is sort of on the payroll as part of the ministerial team. Clearly, because their job has the word “Whip” in it, they are expected to vote with the Government at all times.
In addition, a vast extent of patronage is still available to Prime Ministers. They can make Members chair an ad hoc committee or ask them to be a delegate to some conference here or there. The whole business of patronage can be profoundly dangerous to how we do our business. I have already referred to how that applies to Opposition parties.
I will be warm towards the Government briefly and say that they have made some moves to remove one element of that patronage, which we had suggested before and for which I remember fighting when Robin Cook was Leader of the House. They have done that through the election of Select Committee Chairs. That has been entirely beneficial and I support it fully. I can see at least one Committee Chair in his place, and he is a splendid chap. He might not have become Chair of that Committee if it had been a matter of patronage, or if he had become Chair by virtue of patronage, he might not have felt so free to use his voice in these debates over the past few days. He has pointed in the direction of the new politics, but we can still go much further.
Of course we must consider the financial costs of ministerial office that can be saved, although I do not want to go too far down the populist route attached to that. Sometimes it is valuable to have Ministers who are properly supported and can do their job well. When I was in the Foreign Office it had only three Ministers in the House of Commons, which made it very difficult for foreign delegations to be met by a Minister from the Foreign Office. I do not know whether that did the United Kingdom any favours. I do not wish to adopt every populist measure that is thrown in front of us, or to kick it in the net, but I do want to ensure that the House has sufficient Members with Back-Bench independence to be able to hold the Executive to account.
Many of those who have made the most significant contributions to the House over the centuries have not only never sought ministerial office but actively declined it, from Andrew Marvell, who turned down office on five or six occasions, to Plimsoll, Bradlaugh and a series of others. They made dramatic changes to the lives of many ordinary people in this country, and they did not need ministerial office to do it. They were able to do it from the Back Benches.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I wish to speak very briefly in favour of the new clause. There is a long history in this House of Members challenging the ever-increasing power of the Executive. We heard recently from the Leader of the House, who is not in his place:
“The terms of the trade between Government and Parliament have shifted too far in the executive’s favour. That is not good for Parliament; but neither does it lead to better government.”
The Prime Minister also highlighted those concerns in February, saying:
“We’d want to reduce the power of the executive and increase the power of Parliament even if politics hadn’t fallen into disrepute.”
We also heard from the Deputy Prime Minister before the election, which he described as
“an opportunity to turn the page on decades of relentless centralisation within government.”
He argued for a dispersal of power away from the centre and a cut in the number of Ministers and Government Whips, saying:
“The rules of the game at Westminster are stacked in favour of the ruling party; parliament is rendered largely impotent to hold ministers to account.”
We have heard over the past few days and weeks very strong arguments for equalising the size of constituencies and reducing the number of MPs, but to do that without also reducing the number of Ministers would profoundly undermine the authority of Parliament. The proposal is not radical, or even a solution to the problem that so many hon. Members have identified. It would neither minimise the power of the Executive nor increase that of the legislature. It merely calls for a reduction in the size of Government in line with the planned cuts to the number of Members of Parliament. In effect, it will do no more than prevent trends from getting worse.
If the Government are truly committed to decentralisation, they can demonstrate that today by backing the new clause. I strongly urge them to do that.
Mark Durkan
I support the new clause, to which my name, along with those of so many others from different parties, is attached in the unpublished list.
When considering the new clause, the Committee should bear in mind not only the experiences of the parties that form the Government and occupy the Government Benches, but those of the rest of us who come to the Chamber and the Committees of the House and are confronted with the realities of the Government Whip system and Parliamentary Private Secretaries—part of the peculiar ecosystem here—who can represent their constituents but are at times bound not to represent their consciences. The idea that someone can represent their constituents but never their conscience is a peculiar political creation, from which the House should try to get away. It brings politics into some disrepute if we appear effectively to neuter ourselves. The straits into which PPSs are cast are unnecessary; they should be allowed more freedom than they generally exercise or are encouraged or permitted to exercise.
New clause 7 led me to that issue by way of making a general observation about the dominance of the Executive in the House. In recent years there have been attempts to reduce the Executive’s absolute control of the agenda and the timetable, and changes have been made from appointing Chairs of Select Committees to electing them. That is all to the good, but new clause 7 is the reality check. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said, it is the genuine test of whether the new politics means anything.
I have no argument with reducing the number of Members of Parliament. I did not vote for 650 the other night; I am happy if there is a reduction. However, alongside that, we need a reduction in the size and voting dominance of the Executive in the Chamber.
Of course the answer to the problem of the over-supply of Ministers in this House is not to over-supply them in another place. In the previous Parliament not only many Ministers, but Cabinet Ministers—Secretaries of State—sat in another place. I joined others in criticising that lack of accountability. For me, the answer was not to bring Ministers from the Lords into this House—the last thing I wanted was to bring Peter Mandelson back anywhere, not least to the Dispatch Box, given our experiences of the man. On that famous occasion in Hartlepool, he said that he was not a quitter but a fighter. I always believed that his theme tune should have been the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer”—not for the lyrics of the verses but for the chorus, which is simply “Lie la lie” throughout.
Mark Durkan
I said, not for any of the words of the verses, but for the chorus. That alone would make a good theme tune for Peter Mandelson.
The answer was not to bring Lords Ministers into this place; the question was: why were there so many Cabinet Ministers in the Lords? The hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that there are limits in statute on the number of Cabinet Ministers, but we saw how the previous Government got round that. They went to the limit for Cabinet Ministers and then had a series of ministerial high chairs put around the Cabinet table, so that lots of other Ministers had rights of attendance at Cabinet, simply to ensure that more Members of the House of Commons were in the Cabinet room than would have been there otherwise. That is the sort of lazy, sloppy, self-serving thinking that seizes parties in government. They use and abuse, and bend and flex rules and limits in ways that suit themselves, which does nothing to enhance the reputation of politics in general or this House in particular.
Mr Heath
I think this has been an interesting and illuminating debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for tabling his new clause and for the way in which he spoke to it. I am also particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee, not only for contributing to this evening’s debate but for his Committee’s work—and that of its predecessor, which, as he rightly said, published the first report.
We have heard from a number of Members of all parties, including from the Father of the House. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) often gets criticised—or, perhaps, slightly cheesed—for his lapidary style, but I know from my experience over many years that he is well worth listening to on many issues. Although I do not agree with everything he says—I do not think he would expect me to—I always find listening to him a useful exercise.
The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is not in his place at the moment, intervened earlier and sought to persuade the Committee that the Republic of Ireland is the epitome of prosperity, which I am not sure is an argument that holds great water. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who is also not in her place, was moved to tell us why during the last Parliament she asked to be a Minister no longer.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said repeatedly that the Government of whom he was a part were too slow to take on these issues. Too right they were! They never took on these issues one single bit; there was never the slightest attempt to reduce the size of government or to relax the grip of the Executive on Parliament. It is only since the present Government have been elected that we have been able to deal with some of these issues. He also said, in passing, that he was suspicious that Parliamentary Private Secretaries were not acquainted with the ministerial code. He is quite wrong on that; of course they are—they are given the ministerial code to sign on taking up their positions. That is as it should be. The hon. Gentleman will have to look at the websites himself.
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but no list of Parliamentary Private Secretaries is currently available on a website or anywhere else. Unless the hon. Gentleman can provide the address of a website that features the information, it is not available.
Mr Heath
That is a Second Reading point, but it is not a point that I agree with or accept in any way. We have already had extensive debate on the timing of the Bill; I believe we have given that subject a substantial amount of debating time. The most important point is that it is necessary to make rapid progress on the Bill if we are to have in good order both the referendum and the boundary changes suggested in the Bill.
Chris Bryant
Whether or not it is germane is obviously for the Chair, not the hon. Gentleman, to decide, but I am grateful that he has given way.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman would not want to mislead the House. He has suggested that Parliamentary Private Secretaries are listed on each of the websites—[Interruption.] Government Members, and in particular Ministers, groan, but that is perhaps because they want to see the extension of patronage rather than the extent of patronage to be known to the whole of the House. The truth of the matter is that I have looked at the websites of four Departments and there is absolutely no evidence in any of them of who the departmental PPSs are.