Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for moving the amendment, as he said, on behalf of the coalition. He described the reasons for it. The Bill as it stood was defective, because, while the noble Lord specified that the referendum had to take place before 31 October, there was no means for identifying when the date had to be set—hence the need for an order.
The amendment also sets an appropriate test for Ministers to satisfy before using any order-making power, whereby,
“it is impossible or impractical for the referendum to be held on 5 May 2011, or that it cannot be conducted properly if held on that day”.
The test is right, because the referendum date can be moved away from 5 May only for practical reasons. It would be wrong, and have very serious implications, if the reason for that was the result of some delay that had not allowed consideration of the Bill to be completed in time.
The associated amendment to Clause 4 is also necessary in this context to ensure that the scheme which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, envisages is properly workable. It provides a new power to make provision in secondary legislation to take account of a situation in which other polls are due to be held on any other referendum date set by the order.
Clause 4 as it stands will ensure that any poll which that clause already mentions is automatically combined with the referendum if it takes place on a new date set for the referendum. Any polls which Clause 4 does not mention would not be combined with the poll. It is impossible to say at this stage whether it would desirable to combine a referendum with other polls. A decision on that would need to be taken at the time and will depend on the types of polls.
In conclusion, I reassure noble Lords that, given the flexibility that these powers need to provide, any order made using the new powers will necessarily be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. I end on a note of caution, because I cannot speak on this subject without saying how unfortunate it would be if the referendum were not to take place on 5 May.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, can my noble friend comment on the concern expressed north of the border about the coincidence of the referendum and the elections to the Scottish Parliament, and the difficulties that returning officers will have in ensuring that the count is available? The results may not be available on the Friday and be delayed. Will this be a problem, and have the Government any plans to avoid the difficulty whereby Members of the Scottish Parliament will not know for some time whether they have been elected and the position of the Administration in the Scottish Parliament, because of the difficulties of counting both polls at the same time?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I do not wish to detain my noble friend. I understand what he said in Committee, namely that the counting of votes for the Scottish election will take priority. However, the issue is whether the process of validating the ballot papers will result in the election result being delayed. I have no idea what the results of the election will be, but it is conceivable that one political party will have a majority. It does not follow necessarily that there will be a period of the kind that my noble friend described. Given that the Government have decided to hold the referendum at the same time as the Scottish elections, they have an obligation to make sure that the result of the Scottish elections are delivered on time and are not disrupted.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I will add that they should also be delivered accurately. Therefore, this is a matter for the returning officers and counting officers, who are best placed to judge whether counting should start immediately or the following morning.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I move this revised amendment in substitution for the original Amendment 5F. I thank the Clerks in the Public Bill Office for helping me to revise the amendment and bring it into order. It appears before noble Lords rather late in the day, but that would not have happened if there had been the normal period between Committee and Report stage. I hope that the House will forgive me for moving this revised amendment. I am most grateful to the Clerks for their speedy revision on my behalf.
Last Monday, following a report in the Scotland on Sunday, I said that there was great concern throughout Scotland that—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said earlier, and as my noble friend Lady Liddell of Coatdyke has also said—if the count is not taken immediately after the close of polls in the Scottish parliamentary election, some of the excitement, and a speedy follow-up with the announcement of the result, could be lost as a result. As noble Lords who have participated directly in elections will appreciate, the public’s interest in the election is important. It is an entirely separate issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, pointed out, from the question of whether the count for the parliamentary election is held before the referendum count. We accept the sequence—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, explained it on a previous occasion, although it is the subject of another amendment in this group—and we accept the explanation. The question relates not to the order in which the counts are taken but to their immediacy.
As noble Lords from Scotland will know, I am not one to kowtow to the Scottish media—far from it. There are some people in the Scottish media for whom I have great respect. There are others for whom I do not. Nevertheless, it is an important part of elections that, immediately after the casting of votes, people go to the count with adrenaline coursing wherever adrenaline courses. They take part in the count and see the way things are going, and the result—in particular in Scotland in the 73 first past the post constituencies. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, rightly said, after this election there may not be a coalition that will take some time to form; there may be a clear result. The way that the polls are going, with a substantial lead for Labour, a clear result is becoming more likely. People will want to know how things are going in the constituencies.
This would not be an issue, but some—although not all—returning officers have said that it will be difficult to carry out the count immediately because the counters will be too tired. They may have been polling officers in polling stations before moving on to do the count. Of course, that problem can be dealt with if different people are used for the count. Fresh people can be brought in, if necessary, so that we get the result. The candidates, agents and supporters of the parties will stay up late into the night for the results to come through. It is part of the British and Scottish tradition that we see the results come through. The TV will cover it. It will get more people interested in the Scottish elections and make them more likely to take part in future.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Perhaps I have misunderstood this. Obviously the noble Lord has studied it more carefully than I have. Perhaps he can explain why this could not be resolved simply by having two ballot boxes, one for MSPs and one for the referendum. Would that not resolve the problem of tiredness? I do not think that people will be waiting anxiously for the result of the poll on AV.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
That question was raised on a previous occasion in Committee. The Minister—I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness—said the problem was that some electors might inadvertently put a ballot paper for the election into the ballot box for the referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, sighs and shrugs his shoulders, but that was the explanation given by the Minister. I agree that the first thing that needs to be done is the validation of ballot papers. However, once they have been validated, which should not take very long, the referendum ballot papers can then be put aside for whenever that count will take place, and the count can be started of all the ballot papers for the Scottish Parliament elections. I do not think that opening ballot boxes and verifying ballot papers will cause much delay. It will delay things a bit, but not as much as stopping the count altogether and starting the next day, which is what some returning officers have suggested.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I return to the point about people putting ballot papers in the wrong boxes. Surely it is not beyond the wit of returning officers to organise a polling station in such a way that that is avoided.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I agree with the noble Lord. I was going to say “my noble friend”: that is the way things are going. There are some strange bedfellows already in the coalition, but I am not suggesting that there should be any others. If the amendment is passed, accounting officers and returning officers are more likely to ensure that all the ballot papers go into the appropriate boxes. It will put greater pressure on them if, in the terms of my revised amendment,
“the count for the Scottish parliamentary general election shall not be delayed as a consequence of the combination of polls”.
If that is agreed by this House and by Parliament, that would put pressure on the returning officers to make sure that people cast their votes in the appropriate ballot boxes.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Perhaps I am mistaken, but did not the Gould report also recommend that we should not combine referenda or other electoral tests with elections to the Scottish Parliament?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, different bodies have said different things on different occasions. We are entirely happy that we have the confidence of the Electoral Commission and other bodies to do it in this way.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, asked about later announcements—how they would be made across the United Kingdom and whether they would all be made at one point. I can confirm to the House that there will be one announcement for the whole of the United Kingdom. That is one of the reasons why the Electoral Commission is organising the counts.
Any provision that seeks to add specific provisions to the timing of the count may well be complex and would be apt to confuse administrators at this late stage. It is likely that any amendment would need to be replicated for each election on 5 May. We have a clear statement of government policy and the clear view of the Electoral Commission. I hope that that is sufficient for the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to withdraw his amendment and for the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, not to move his.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, it is a pleasure to support my noble friend Lord Fowler in his amendment, and to support Mr Andrew Turner, the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a Member of a governing party, or a party in a coalition, and find that a proposal is put forward to link your constituency with a part of the mainland for which there is no logical link. He has behaved with very considerable restraint. I have personally appreciated the way in which he has briefed us about the background to those issues.
At Second Reading, I made it clear that I do not like this Bill very much. Ideally, these issues of reducing the size of Parliament and deciding on how the boundaries are achieved would have been done by a Speaker’s Conference and not by a Bill of this kind. Ideally, there should not have been the two separate issues of AV and the reduction of the size of Parliament in the same Bill. That, however, is all water under the bridge. I confess I looked at the Bill with a certain degree of hostility, and perhaps because I am cynical, when I saw that there was an exception for Orkney and Shetland, I thought that that must be a bit of a deal with the Liberals, because that is a Liberal constituency. I realise that that was a wicked and improper thought. The Western Isles, of course, is a nationalist constituency. Then I had lunch today with Mr Charles Kennedy and I said, wrongly, “Of course, your seat is not affected”. He quite rightly pointed out that that was a widely held mistaken belief; although his seat is the largest—Ross, Skye and Lochaber—it is, of course, not exempted because the Boundary Commission simply has that as a size. He is in the same boat as everyone else. I accept that the reason that the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland are made exceptions in the Bill is that, quite rightly, somebody recognised that they are distinctive communities. There are many islands that form part of Argyll which have all the problem of ferries and the rest that affect the Isle of Wight, but the key point is whether it is a distinctive community. Clearly the Isle of Wight is a distinctive community.
I do not wish to detain the House, but I would like to make one other general point. I return to what I had to say about Mr Andrew Turner. All of us in this House—especially those I expect who were Members of the other place—must feel great distress at the way in which the status and standing of Members of Parliament have taken a knock of late. One thing, however, that is really encouraging in all the polls and surveys is that people still hold their own Member of Parliament in high regard, even if they have a jaded view of Members of Parliament as a group.
One of the reasons for that is because the Member of Parliament is seen to be the Member for their area or community. I was a Tory in Sterling where two-thirds of the voters had never experienced or wanted a Tory but, as such, you were respected as the Member of Parliament—their man or their woman in Parliament. Even in the days of the rotten boroughs people came to represent the rotten borough, they did not come to represent a block of so many voters on the map. I support my noble friend’s amendment in the hope that the Government will listen—
Lord Martin of Springburn
I am sorry to disturb the noble Lord’s thought, but I would also like to say that I have a very high regard for Mr Turner. Andrew is a lovely person and a very hard working individual. It disturbs me that he had only a few moments on the Floor of the House to put the arguments that the noble Lord has put so succinctly. The noble Lord touched upon Argyll, and this disturbs me too—a great island community; I think we are talking about 15 islands—as the same went for Alan Reid, who was unable to speak or had very little say. The noble Lord is quite right that a Speaker’s Conference would have allowed those Back-Benchers to put the case for their communities.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I bow to the noble Lord’s very great experience, not just as a former Speaker but as a parliamentarian. But, of course, we are where we are. The point that I wanted to make was that the identity between communities and Members of Parliament is very important. I am supporting my noble friend in the hope that the Government will recognise that the Isle of Wight has just as strong a case. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, that it should have one constituency; it could have two and still be closer to the criteria set under the Bill than either the Western Isles or Orkney and Shetland.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, the Government, in looking at the Isle of Wight, should also think about this point about the identity between Members of Parliament and constituencies. This is not just a numbers game. If we end up making it a numbers game, we may very well find that the respect, support and influence that Parliament is able to bring to bear through its Members in their constituencies are greatly diminished at a time when we need to strengthen Parliament. That seems to me to be a very retrograde step.
On the other point that the noble Lord made, we have had a long debate about the procedure which in effect is bringing a guillotine to this House. That would, of course, bring all the disadvantages that we see in the Commons, which is why our workload has gone up. It was Robespierre who invented the guillotine and he ended up being a victim of it himself. I venture to suggest that this House may like to consider that example.
Lord Pannick
The strength of the case for this amendment confirms the mischief in this part of the Bill which we debated in Committee yesterday. The rigidity in the formula contained in rule 2 allows for these vital geographical and local considerations to be taken into account only in the two specific cases or within the rubric of the 5 per cent tolerance that the Boundary Commission has. We can seek to address this specific case, and there are many other examples—perhaps not quite as strong as the Isle of Wight—of particular local and geographical considerations, by adding one or two more exceptions to rule 2. Or, as I would prefer, the Government could now recognise that the rigidity of the Bill is quite indefensible. We desperately need a broader exception which allows the Boundary Commission to take account of these factors in what it regards as exceptional cases, of which the Isle of Wight is plainly one.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Perhaps the Royal Mail might find that useful for their coffers, but I am not sure whether that is going to happen. Perhaps I might draw it to the Committee’s attention that the Isle of Wight shares its police force with Hampshire and that, in other areas, the island is already making the most of its links with the mainland. On 28 October last, the Government approved a bid to create a Solent local enterprise partnership covering the economic area of south Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Indeed, one of the expectations for successful bids was whether the geography proposed represented a reasonable, natural and economic geography. I am confident that an MP would be able to represent a constituency that meets those criteria, such as in a cross-Solent seat. The island has indicated a willingness to develop its long-term interests, where appropriate, in conjunction with its mainland neighbours.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I find the point that my noble and learned friend has made about the police force curious. Orkney and Shetland share a police force with the mainland. What is the relevance of the police force?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I was acutely aware of that. I was just indicating that there were links. I was almost immediately going to come on to the point that the distinction which we believe that there is between the Isle of Wight and the two named exceptions in the Bill is that they cannot readily be included physically in a constituency with the mainland, owing to their distance and to the dispersed nature of those constituencies, which we believe are distinctive. Indeed, as has been said—the Committee was reminded of this by my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom—there is the principle in the Bill of equal votes and equal value. The Government recognise the strong views that have been expressed and believe that, at the end of the day, the principle which I have articulated would not be achieved by this amendment. I nevertheless want to say in conclusion—
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Indeed. I said that because I know for a fact that he does read these debates. I will certainly ensure that, before I have any meeting with my noble friend, my honourable friend, Mr Mark Harper, has read the terms of this debate and that would then inform the discussion that I am offering to have.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I will put this very gently. What are we doing here? This is a Chamber of Parliament. We are debating legislation. My noble and learned friend speaks for the Government and says that a Minister in the other place reads our proceedings and will have a meeting. I am sorry, but that is treating this House with contempt. None of us wants to create a Division here, but the arguments have been put, this is Parliament, and surely the Minister’s duty is either to say “Your arguments are rubbish and we do not accept them”, or “I will go and talk to my colleagues to see if we can get collective agreement to meet them”. Simply to say “We will have a meeting” is not acceptable and not treating this House as a House of Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
In response to my noble friend, this is a Committee stage, there will be a Report stage and there will be an opportunity—the opportunity I offered—for the outcome of the discussions that take place to be considered. The House will return to it and if my noble friend Lord Fowler is not satisfied with the outcome of that meeting, I have no doubt that he will be willing to table an amendment again.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
In my experience, different Members of Parliament have different ways in which they think they should address their constituents’ problems and issues. It would be invidious to say that one was right and one was wrong, because different people can take a different approach. That may relate to the character and personality of the individual Member of Parliament, which may also determine what is right and what is wrong. At the end of the day, the constituents should decide.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Is not the different behaviour of the Members of Parliament determined by the size of their majority? When I had a majority of 503, I would have written to everyone whose name appeared on a petition. If you have a safe seat, you take a different view. Generally speaking, I think that all Members of Parliament work for their constituents, but it does not half concentrate the mind when you have a small majority.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend makes a good point. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that he honed his skills when answering every petition when he had a majority of about 400, although he said that he also did so when he had a majority of 18,000. That just shows that there are different approaches. I do not think that anyone has the answer for what is absolutely right and what is wrong, but a scientific inquiry would not find an answer either—other than possibly 650 different answers.