Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord McAvoy and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, it often happens that you can see something in a schedule that raises quite an important more general point. I am referring to the cost of the combined polls, which is on page 137 in Schedule 5. It says quite simply, and I am sure that voters would regard this as common sense, that when two or three elections are taking place in the same area at the same time you divvy up the cost of delivering that election between them. I ask myself whether that is the building block that has resulted in the calculation that the Government have made, a very important calculation, about the cost of the referendum and, more importantly, the saving to national funds from holding the referendum, with all the difficulties that entails, which we acknowledge to be not insurmountable, on the same day as a number of elections in a number of different places.



Unfortunately, I have not brought my precise note, but I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has these details engraved on his mind. The Government and the Deputy Prime Minister have repeatedly told us a precise figure—from memory I think that it is £35 million but I stand to be corrected—which will be saved by holding the referendum on the same day as a number of local elections. I have always thought that using the word “saved” there makes about as much sense as saying that you buy a fridge for £150 in a sale, as opposed to paying £200, and that therefore you have saved money. You would save a lot more if you did not buy the fridge and we would certainly save a lot more if we did not hold a referendum. Sadly, that argument has now passed.

Clause 7 sets out the complexity of the way in which the referendum will be counted and the voting areas. I will not list them all, but they range from,

“a district in England … a county in England in which there are no districts with councils … a London borough … the City of London”,

et cetera. I want to ask a straight, factual question. How have the Government calculated what the saving will be to the Exchequer from holding the referendum on the same day as these other elections? As to the “cost of combined polls” under Schedule 5, page 137, the Government have obviously attributed to the referendum the whole cost of those areas where there are no local elections, which I suppose is intelligible enough, and I assume that they have divvied up—I may be making huge assumptions here—the proportionate cost of the referendum in those districts where other elections are taking place.

Most of all, I have always been wary about the glib statistic of how much is being saved by holding the referendum on the same day. If that is the building block of this calculation, which presumably somewhere along the line it must be—that is, the cost of combined polls—I would ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, to give us a note on whether the calculation is built on these individual bricks. I rather fear that it might be a construction built on sand. But at least I should like to know the calculations that have led to this alleged saving.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, once again, interventions made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seek only to extend the time being spent on this Bill. Time after time, the noble Lord questions the integrity of the scrutiny that we are having here. In the brief time in which I have been in the Chamber, this scrutiny is well within the spirit of the understanding that I believe we have. The questioning of integrity does not help matters. I would ask the noble and learned Lord to bear in mind that, as far as I am aware, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, does not have a clue because he was not present during the Scottish elections of 2007. Any comments he has about that should be discounted.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord McAvoy and Lord Grocott

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McAvoy]

I do not want to raise the temperature again, but nevertheless this point has to be made: does that intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, not indicate clearly that there is no filibustering going on, there is no organisation and what is happening here is genuine scrutiny?

[Lord Grocott]

Since the degree to which we are genuine is being tested at the moment, the House will simply have to accept my absolute, total, 100 per cent, categorical—I cannot think of any other adjectives—assurance that when I tabled this amendment, I did so, believe it or not, because I thought that it would be a better referendum if the results were declared by constituency, which is never normally a problem in general elections. It came as a surprise to me that the Electoral Commission thought that there would be all sorts of administrative problems in doing so, particularly—I am repeating myself now, I know—because time and again local elections and parliamentary constituency elections have been held on the same day.

I hope that the Minister’s notes do not say that this is just another silly amendment from the Opposition and that it should be knocked down. I hope that he recognises that there are people who have lived and worked in areas of this country, many of them for generations, who are used to the system under which they are operating and who wish to cast their vote—though not enough of them, I believe, as I fear that the turnout will not be very high. Still, there is a good possibility, although perhaps this is wishful thinking, that the majority will decide that they think the system under which they have been operating is quite good, and they should be allowed to express their own views within their own individual constituencies. That is all that my amendment is trying to do. I beg to move.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord McAvoy and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McAvoy]

Certainly. I represented 77,000 constituents. Let me say right away that, as for the affection that the noble Lord holds me in, I will think about that.

[Lord Grocott]

I suppose that my noble friend is as surprised as I am that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, did not follow the basic rule of parliamentary questions, which is never to ask a question unless you know the answer.

[Lord McAvoy]

As ever, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has hit the nail right on the head.

Let me tackle the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. First, I felt a sense not of unease but of strangeness in being described as a past master, because that phrase is not usually associated with a name such as Thomas Anthony Martin McLaughlin McAvoy. If he is not sure what he is talking about, he should come up to the west of Scotland. I certainly believe in more equalisation, and I have no problems with the Government tackling that. How the Government are going about that is the problem for me.

I am absolutely delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, has come in to the House, because he is the second Conservative Peer that I would like to quote. He need not look so worried, because it is a semi-compliment, although perhaps that might upset him. He said yesterday that constitutional change should be as a result of consensus. Those are wise words, but we do not have consensus here. That starts with the timing of the referendum in Scotland in particular, where the timing could do damage in relation to turnout. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, mentioned, there was a large number of spoiled votes in the Scottish elections of 2007 because of confusion and change.

My noble friend Lord Grocott talked about the MPs’ constituency links, which are the bedrock of the parliamentary system. Dividing constituencies on numbers alone by taking boxes of 75,000 people would totally destroy the concept of that bond. Any MP whom I have ever met—no matter which party they were in—felt that special bond with their constituency. I was surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Maples—I am sorry to say this because I have always found him personally amenable—apparently denigrate both his former constituencies. I do not think that he meant to do so, but that was how it came across. That link between the Member of Parliament and the constituency is undervalued in the Bill. However, I do not want to repeat how an MP can link up with his or her constituency, because that has been dealt with quite a bit already.

Noble Lords have referred to the fact that a referendum on AV was mentioned in the Labour Party manifesto. I do not have a problem with having a referendum. I am opposed to AV and I shall campaign against it if a referendum comes about, as I believe in first past the post. To come back to my friends the Liberals, with proportional representation—or any variation of it—parties and their leaders will say one thing before an election and then, once they get into the smoke-filled room, they will do a deal and forget what they promised the public. For example, right up to days and hours before the general election, Mr Clegg pledged not to vote for increased tuition fees, despite the fact that, internally, the Liberals had acknowledged two months before the general election that going back on such a pledge would be a distinct possibility. Yet what happened? They made a deal. Proportional representation is undemocratic. I do not believe that people should get their way on PR, which just allows the hierarchies and elites to go and make their deals.

It has been acknowledged on all sides of the House that 3.5 million people are not on the register that will be used to draw up these parliamentary boundaries. It is particularly undemocratic that there are to be no local inquiries; that is an affront to democracy. If Liberal-held constituencies can get special treatment, why cannot my former constituency? My former constituency faces being split, despite regaining our community cohesion as being part of South Lanarkshire rather than, as was the case previously, being situated in Glasgow. Yesterday, the Leader of the House—again, I note that he is not in his place—invited my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton to come up to the Western Isles to face the people there about the size of their constituency. I invite the Leader of the House, in his absence, to come to another constituency by coming to Rutherglen or Cambuslang or Halfway.

Even better, I invite the noble Lord, Lord McNally, or the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to come to Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Halfway to advocate that the constituents should again be in with Glasgow. If the noble Lord, Lord McNally, accepts my invitation, I will be absolutely delighted to make the arrangements now. As the chair of the meeting, I will give him fair and impartial treatment. I would like to see him come and tell the people of my former constituency that they do not care whether they still have their own local community, which we have been in for 500 years. We are going to be ripped apart by a deal done for political convenience.