Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Bach

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

I shall make a brief response to the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I was not intending to speak in this debate but I have three points to make, one of which he will not know. Until two years ago, I had served as a Minister for eight years on the Front Bench here, having come from the other place. I am on record in several places as saying—and I repeat it, although I know that it annoys people down the other end when I say it—that I was under greater scrutiny in my eight years here as a Minister than I ever was in the other place. I am quite happy to say that. It was because of the nature of the way this place works, whether Question Time, Select Committees, or the Floor of the House. There is no doubt about it. I speak only from my own experience. It takes a while to get used to this place, and it can be irritating.

My other two brief points are these. I have been here on this Bill virtually every day, missing only a couple of hours one day, because I just happen to be interested. I do not agree with everything that is happening, as I will make clear in a moment. I have taken several Bills through this House, and in no Committee stage in which I was involved was I aware of ever being forced to say, or of agreeing to say, to the House, “I will take it away and think about it”; or of saying, “I will take that part of this argument away, think about it, and then promise to come back on Report”. If you cannot make a change of rule, you come back openly, having looked at it in the department. Not once, as far as I know, in these debates in six days has any Minister ever said, “A good idea, or maybe a good idea, and we will take that away. There might be something we can do. It does not wreck the Bill, and it may add to things”.

Not once has that happened, and that is fairly unique, in my experience, I say in all humility.

[Lord Bach]

There was one occasion, probably in the two hours that the noble Lord was not here, when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, promised to take one item away, but the point that my noble friend makes is a good one.

[Lord Rooker]

I stand corrected then. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for that. As I say, I was here for all but two hours.

The other point is that there was talk about the previous elections and, to be honest, on this issue concerning equality of constituencies I agree 100 per cent with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. There is nothing between us. If you are going to have one person one vote in a constituency-based system, you have to have the constituencies as near as damn it the same size. This was argued out years ago in the 1970s. I can remember there was an argument at a boundary inquiry. I even remember the late Denis Howell lecturing us and saying, “Look, we might argue for smaller seats in the inner areas because our workload is greater, there is deprivation and there are all the other issues. On the other hand, you have to balance that against the massive distances that country members have to travel. It is different”. What is important is the number people who are voting for one parliament.

Frankly, if you look at the history and take the trouble to read or listen to John Curtice, you will see that Labour lost the 2005 election. I know the arithmetic says we came back with a majority of 66 but, if you look at all the facts and stats that came out, the writing was on the wall then simply because of the way the electoral system worked, the shape of the constituencies, and the slowness of the boundary inquiries. For that reason—it is also why I have no amendments to table to the second half of the Bill—I do not think there should be more than 500 Members of the other place. However, as I do not want to upset anybody by tabling such an amendment, this is my only opportunity to say so.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Bach

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I am surprised that my little amendment has developed into the excitement that we have enjoyed in Committee for the past few minutes. I have one serious point to make. I ask the Minister to reconsider his attack—maybe he did not mean the words, I do not know—on a particular individual at the other end who is a colleague of mine in the opposition justice team. It is an unwarranted attack on an individual. If the noble Lord wants to attack tactics, that is fine, but do not attack an individual, a Member of Parliament, for doing what most of us would consider to be his duty—and indeed what the noble Lord did so well when he was sitting on the Opposition Benches just a few months ago. Before I withdraw the amendment, I ask the Minister to consider—

[Lord Rooker]

I do not want to prolong this, but this is the result of this place not having a Speaker. In the other place, if anybody down there had said about somebody up here what was said by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, the Speaker would have ruled it out of order. You are not allowed to criticise named Members of this place down in the other place. There is no benefit to it, because we do not get anywhere doing it. We have no Speaker here to stop that kind of immature comment and we ought to have.

[Lord Bach]

I give the noble Lord the chance, please, if he will do that—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Bach

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for telling the Committee that, but my feeling is that it is, strictly speaking, something that a citizen is obliged to do.

[Lord Rooker]

This raises an interesting issue for Part 2 of the Bill. If, as I have always understood, it is legally compulsory to register to vote, surely the other side of the coin is that there ought to be a legal obligation on the Government to ensure that every citizen is registered to vote, especially given that those numbers will be instrumental in determining the size of constituencies and all the other matters that come under Part 2. That opens up the possibility of some interesting amendments to Part 2 on compulsory registration to ensure that both those sides of the coin are dealt with. There must be a clear obligation on the Government to ensure that citizens obey the law, so that the millions of people who are allegedly missed off are not missed off before the constituency boundaries are redrawn.

[Lord Bach]

I agree with my noble friend that this is an important point. Various answers have been given over the past months that have suggested that registration is not compulsory in this country. I am not pressing the Leader of the House to answer on that today; a Written Answer would be satisfactory. However, the issue is relevant to Part 2, as my noble friend said. However, Amendment 29 is on compulsory voting, on which I look forward to hearing what the Leader of the House has to say.