Parliamentary Democracy in the United Kingdom

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, after 44 years in Westminster, do I believe that UK parliamentary democracy has been strengthened? On the contrary: I believe it has been weakened. What is my measure? General election turnouts, which are a good measure of confidence. The turnout was 77% in 1992 and 67% in the last election. Why the 10% decline?

There are two explanations: the conduct of a few in Westminster’s political class; and the internet, which has hugely increased transparency across the political divide. What has it revealed? First, a breakdown in our criminal justice system, with escalating street and online crime, to which the Government’s response is just more cuts. Secondly, the shift in policy towards the personal funding of hitherto public service provision, breeding inequality while penalising the poor. Thirdly, the state’s ruthless indifference to the scandal of housing policy, which through managed scarcity enriches property owners and exploits those who rent. Finally, government indifference to the income greed of a few, whose settlements insult the intelligence of a hard-working majority living in the real world of deprivation and struggling to survive.

It is against that background that the public increasingly shun the polling booth. I predict that when the scandalous gerrymandering of the electoral system through individual registration is fully exposed, there will be an angry outcry from an alienated, disfranchised public.

Elections Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is a particularly difficult issue for me. I strongly support the deletion of Clause 11; it is no more than an attempt to abolish an electoral system that has stood the test of time so as to secure an electoral advantage for the Conservatives. The Government are effectively seeking to corrupt a system that is fair and, in the absence of full proportional representation, more proportionally reflects the opinion of the wider electorate.

The Conservatives have always opposed the supplementary vote system since its birth as it challenges the Conservative bias built into the first past the post electoral system—nothing more and nothing less than that. They have opposed it for over 20 years. I know, because I designed it, researched it, named it, wrote the original paper advocating it, gave evidence to the Plant commission advising its introduction, and saw it through to its introduction by the Labour Government. I brought in Professor Patrick Dunleavy from the London School of Economics—a world-renowned academic known for his independence of mind—to approve it as it developed. At every stage, to validate it, we did thousands of runs under different scenarios on a computer in the House of Commons Library when I was an MP. We spent 12 months working on it; Patrick Dunleavy gave it the academic approval and credibility that I lacked.

The driver behind all the work was that any system that totally ignores the centre vote in British politics, essentially a Liberal Democrat vote, will inevitably favour the minority right. First past the post helps in the election of Conservative Governments. If the Conservatives thought for one moment that there was some electoral advantage in AV, SV, AMS, STV or any form of this system, I believe they would support reform of the electoral system.

There was a very interesting article in a recent issue of Prospect magazine on mayoral elections by Stephen Fisher, associate professor in political sociology at Trinity College, Oxford. He carried out research into the use of the supplementary vote. He noted first that 41% of the people in England now live in areas where SV is now in use for one election or another.

Electoral System (Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 Committee Report)

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I was a member of the electoral registration ad hoc Select Committee, so ably chaired by the late Lord Shutt. The tributes will be many and, if I might say so, well deserved. He was a man who I learned to greatly admire for his political integrity. He was, more than anything, down to earth and ever conscious of his roots. He never forgot them.

I turn to the issue of electoral registration, recognising the burden that recent changes to registration and voter ID will impose on local authorities. Lindsay Tomlinson, the electoral registration officer for Allerdale, in Cumbria, in my former constituency, gave evidence to the committee, and I asked her to summarise her views and those of her colleagues across the country on the reforms now under way, following the session where she gave evidence. This is what she sent me the other day—Ministers should take close note of it:

“We would appreciate some reassurance from the government that early clarity will be given over process and implementation details for Voter ID. This is particularly important for those authorities, such as in Cumbria, who are currently going through local government reorganisation and who will need to have their voter ID arrangements for the new authorities in place before those new authorities come into existence. This will have implications for example in terms of which Electoral Registration Officer has responsibility, how the government online registration service will integrate with the existing and new authorities, how electors will understand which authority they need to apply to etc.


We would therefore request an assurance from government that EROs and electoral administrators have early guidance and clarity so that they can start to put plans in place for voter ID and can communicate from an early stage and with appropriate detail with local electors.”


Will the Minister reply to me in writing, in detail, on each of the issues that she has raised? I am sure she will want to circulate those notes among her colleagues around the country and, equally, to the administration officers.

In the sad absence of the former chairman, I want to flag up some of the comments in our report on mandatory voter ID, a subject which I know caused our chairman some concern. First, as we say in our report:

“We are concerned about the potential impact voter ID could have on the participation rates of BAME groups, young people and students”.


Can we have a response on that matter from the Government?

In paragraph 335, we state:

“The Electoral Reform Society described itself as ‘strongly opposed to the introduction of mandatory voter ID’ arguing that it risks ‘undermining the principles of fair and equal representation that have been at the heart of British democracy since the adoption of universal, equal suffrage in 1928’. Darren Hughes, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society … told us that voter ID as a means of tackling personation fraud was like using ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’ and said the Government should be making policy based on evidence and not ‘on things that people think might be a problem, even though the data and the evidence tell us that they are not’.”


What are the total estimates by the Government on reduced turnout, which will be the real measure of whether this works?

In paragraph 271, we said:

“The Electoral Commission told us that there was no evidence from police data in recent elections of widespread attempts to commit fraud.”


In that light, what is the Government’s estimate of the level of fraud?

For the Conservative Party, Alan Mabbutt told us:

“Most allegations of fraud appear to be based on hearsay rather than fact”—


and he is a supporter of the Government. He continued:

“It is likely that most fraud takes place within the confines of a household where a … person tells everyone in the house how to cast their postal ballot.”


Was Mr Mabbutt asked to give evidence or meet Ministers, even in private, prior to this legislation being introduced?

The electoral registration officers then told us in their evidence that they all agreed that a national ID card system would make voter ID requirements easier to administer. They were supported by Richard Mawrey QC, who said that a national ID system would be an effective means of tackling certain types of electoral fraud and could be used both to register an individual and to check people at the polling station, adding that

“electoral fraud of the kind we have had here … is almost unknown in continental countries”

that have a national ID card system. I had the feeling throughout the inquiry that ID cards were the answer to the problem, and we could save millions of pounds in the event of their being introduced.

They are just some of my comments and those of others, drawn mostly from the evidence that we were given by our witnesses. I hope that the Government are listening. I believe that this whole agenda is being driven for the electoral advantage of the Conservative Party at the ballot box, and I find that quite deplorable.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely and I invite her to speak now.

EU–UK Partnership Council

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, wishes to speak virtually. I think this is a convenient point for me to call him.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, could we seek to place on the council agenda the whole issue of French threats to blockade channel ports, transport arrangements and compromised channel fishing rights? Can the Minister raise at such a meeting that it might be prudent for the United Kingdom to start moving cross-channel, roll-on roll-off trade to Belgian ports? We cannot go on under constant threats from France to block our European trade routes, because British jobs are at stake—and I say that as someone who loves France.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I share the noble Lord’s opinion about France, and it is therefore all the more regrettable that France made threats against us earlier this year as a result of the ongoing disputes on fishing. I am very glad that those threats were withdrawn, and actually we have been able to continue the fishing discussions on a relatively constructive basis and bring them more or less to a conclusion recently. I think those threats would have been a breach of the treaty and therefore would have been something that it would have been necessary to raise at the Partnership Council—but I hope that we will not be in that situation when the Partnership Council meets.

Downing Street Christmas Parties

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I just responded to that in answering the question from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, would the Minister confirm that deliberately misleading Parliament and the House of Commons is contempt under the rules of Parliament? If it is shown that the Prime Minister deliberately misled Parliament on what he knew, he would be in contempt of the House of Commons, and he would have to resign. Will the Minister confirm that that is the position?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the rules of the House of Commons are for the other place. As far as I am concerned, every Minister acts on his or her honour to be truthful to whichever House they are a member of.

House of Lords: Appointments Process

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords—[Inaudible]—particularly in the original form proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. He is to be congratulated on taking this initiative. He has truly captured the spirit of public concern about the granting of honours. A review is desperately needed. The reputation of the House is being grossly undermined and gravely damaged by a slow drip of adverse comment in the media on Lords appointments.

Why do we still grant peerages to donors? Why do we not object on their introduction? They bring the House into constant disrepute. Some treat the House like a sort of London gentlemen’s club, thereby totally undermining our credibility. To be frank, I am heartily sick of it.

We are not being helped by a Prime Minister whose lack of probity in public office has opened Parliament up to ridicule. A year ago, I predicted that he would be gone by mid-2022 and I think we are on course. His conduct has exposed Parliament as a whole to a new period of intense scrutiny. Questions are now being asked about appointment arrangements to the Lords; our disciplinary processes; the role of individuals in Parliament in the handling of legislation; the question of access to and the relationship between parliamentarians and civil servants; and, in particular, the now questionable relationships between some Ministers and commercial lobbyists. We cannot go on like this. The proposed committee could begin a process of restoring our credibility and some public trust.

Budget Statement

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I strongly support the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I shall concentrate my remarks on inheritance taxes. The Budget statement proposes a freeze on nil-rate bands until April 2026. This means qualifying estates can pass on up to £500,000, and the qualifying estate of a surviving spouse or civil partner can pass on up to £1 million, without tax.

On 1 February 2007, I proposed an amendment to the law governing inheritance taxes. I proposed then—and do so again today—that we use inheritance tax on death as an opportunity for the wider distribution of wealth with a substantial increase in net beneficiaries. We should abolish the tax completely, transfer the liability to tax from the deceased estate to the recipients, and tax the recipient beneficiaries at their marginal rate. We could introduce an inheritance allowance, thereby increasing a recipient individual’s tax threshold. Inter-spouse transfers would remain tax-free, as would protections for working farms and family businesses, as well as donations to genuine charities and some heritage assets.

This reform would transform the recipient base as many estates would be tapered, or profiled, to minimise liability. A wider beneficiary base would have a huge effect on enterprise and innovation by introducing a real incentive for the development of small businesses with knock-on consequences for competition policy. It would also increase the tax take. I make it clear once again that there are no circumstances under which either I or my wife would accept, or have accepted, inherited wealth. This was a decision taken in principle to last a lifetime, at considerable cost to myself, I might say.

Covid-19: Vaccination Passport

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, but these are two entirely separate issues. I assure him that the UK is working with a wide range of other countries and that the Government will make this a reality through ongoing work not only with other countries, but with the World Health Organization and other multilateral organisations, and through the UK’s presidency of the G7. The point the noble Lord has made is an important one.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

Is it not true that if the Government had not blocked ID cards in 2011—a perfect form of vaccination passport—then we could have avoided problems about vaccination recording by entering annual vaccination data that would have been readable on the card chip, covered the entire population with a track-and-trace system, and, in effect, brought this nightmare of an epidemic to an earlier end? The Government missed a trick that could have saved billions of pounds and perhaps even thousands of lives.

Covid-19: Economy Update

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. By coincidence, I am the Minister working on the programme to move civil servants out of London, which was recently announced. The Prime Minister will be making more comments on this shortly but, given that I have lived this for six months, I can reassure my noble friend that we have identified 14 hubs with spokes across Britain, including the devolved authorities. The most important part is to get the senior civil servants out of London, because they make decisions on the lives of people from whom they are, in my view, far too detached. At the moment, some 65% of all senior civil servants in the country are here in London, and the vast majority in this postcode. We are committed to ensuring that opportunities for those senior jobs are outside the capital, and that they make policies that affect citizens in those areas.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the availability of an effective coronavirus testing regime is critical to reopening the economy. With the reported Good Law Project prospective legal action on the procurement of testing equipment in mind, can we have an assurance that the procurement programme has, extraordinarily, either National Audit Office prior approval or that government lawyers are satisfied that contracts do not breach the 2015 Public Contract Regulations? Can we have that assurance in writing, as it is very important for business confidence?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord’s question is timely, because part of my responsibility is for the procurement reform rules which we are putting into place and will be able to use once we leave the EU on 1 January. Part of the problem we have had over this crisis is the extremely clunky method of procurement that is imposed on us by the OJEU rules. It will need primary legislation, but we have designed a programme that will deal with exactly the issues that the noble Lord raises. If he is interested, I am happy to send him a draft copy of the Green Paper, which will be available in the next week or two.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24, which is in the same territory as that which has just been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, but this is not tickling the Boundary Commission’s fancy; it would require government action. It is particularly influenced by my serving as chairman of the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, on which a dozen Peers served and toiled over several months to produce its report. As an interesting point, I looked up today that between us we had contested at least 47 parliamentary elections and I do not know how many local government elections.

The decision to introduce individual electoral registration in place of head-of-household registration was the major feature of the Act that we were looking at. This is not the time to have a fulsome debate on that report: that is for another day. The report was published on 8 July and the Government have got until today to respond; they have less than six hours. Bearing in mind what we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, there is a chance that we might get something at 9 o’clock tonight—is there not—depending on who is responsible for this. We look forward to that, and that debate on another occasion.

The concern of the Committee on the state of the accuracy and completeness of electoral registers was our number one item of our six key recommendations. The polling district and ward registers affect constituency electoral boundaries: they are the building blocks. Our recommendations include: piloting automatic registration for attainers—that is young people over 16; introducing assisted voter registration—we heard a little about that in the earlier amendment; greater use of data matching; civic engagement and public engagement, particularly in respect of young people and under-represented groups. The UK looks closely at international experience, where other countries have a far greater percentage of the population registered to vote. It was good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, speak earlier today commending overseas experience. We should not be frightened of it.

We were surprised to learn that the completeness of registers is no better under IER than under the old system. It cannot be right that only 85% of the eligible population is registered, while in Canada it is 96%. In Northern Ireland, where IER was introduced much earlier, back in 2002, completeness was reported to us as being only 74% in a 2018 survey. You would think that having had the experience of that for 16 years, we would be getting a more complete register there. It is evident that IER has not enhanced completeness.

The IER system has led to much event-led registration. On the cusp of an election we heard that 3.85 million people applied to register to vote between the MPs voting for an election on 29 October 2019 and the last date when it was possible to register, 26 November. Only half were subsequently added to the register, as half of them were already registered. Nevertheless, 2 million people were added to the register in that brief period. It cannot be right that our hard-working electoral officers—we met several of them—have to cope with all these registration events alongside the plethora of activity in organising an election and the increasing multitude of postal votes.

This late registration has meant that the registers immediately after the December 2019 election are perhaps as good as it gets under the old registration that we now have. It is in line with the committee’s view that the Government have agreed that it is the register of 2 March 2020 that is to be used for the electorate for the 2023 review. This amendment is to make certain that, as well as endeavouring to maximise the register so that everyone entitled is able to vote, henceforth the constituency boundaries will be based as near as possible to 100% of the eligible population rather than the 85% or so that it is at present.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have refrained from speaking on other amendments so as to concentrate my remarks on Amendment 24. I was a member of the ad hoc electoral registration Select Committee, brilliantly chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland. I express my gratitude to Professor Maria Sobolewska and Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg, who were the brilliant advisers to our committee. Equally, it was a pleasure to work with members of that committee from different political persuasions without rancour. Our only real division was, and remains, over ID cards and their use in polling booths. As I keep repeating, their day will come but we kept that division under wraps.