Tehran: British Embassy
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they intend that the chargé d’affaires to Iran should be operating from a reopened British embassy in Tehran.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government remain committed to reopening the British embassy in Tehran once we have resolved the outstanding steps required to bring the embassy back to a functional level and conclude the arrangements for re-establishing a visa service in Tehran. We are in ongoing discussion with the Iranian Government to identify solutions for both sides.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that somewhat opaque reply. Do the Government agree that the case for establishing, on a continuing basis, a voice and a presence in Tehran is more compelling than it has ever been in the light of the ongoing negotiations on nuclear matters, whichever way they come out? Either they will be successful, in which case they will probably lead to a loosening of sanctions and considerable commercial opportunities for British businesses, with which they will need help, or Tehran will become the centre of one of the most dangerous world situations. We surely need to be there, raising our voice and reporting about what is going on.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely agree that Iran is an important country and an important player in the broader politics of the Middle East. However, the British embassy in Tehran was trashed extensively in 2011, much of the equipment was destroyed and a number of local employees were mistreated. There are a number of issues to get around before we go back there. Meanwhile, chargés d’affaires from both sides are spending extended periods visiting each other’s country, so we are already engaged in a dialogue, as far as we can.
Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, the UK Home Secretary is quite right to place an emphasis on visa overstayers being returned to their respective countries and, of course, embassies play a vital role in that. Can my noble friend say what the UK Government are doing to ensure that the Iranian embassy here can be fully opened so that it can help and support the Iranian visa overstayers to return to Iran?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the problems of overstayers are not on the British side. It is much more a matter of the Iranian Government’s willingness to accept people back, in particular if they are being expelled from Britain and have overstayed their formal status here. There is a trade-off between opening a visa service in Tehran and the issue of overstayers in Britain. That is one of the issues that, unfortunately, has not yet been resolved.
Lord Kinnock (Lab)
My Lords, in the improved relationship that would be signified by the reopening of the embassy in Tehran, will the Government give emphasis to efforts to re-establish the British Council operations in Iran, which were flourishing and of massive use both to the relationships between our countries and to Iranians? That could signify a really important step forward in the building of constructive relationships.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
As the noble Lord probably knows, discussions are already under way about the possibility of reopening the British Council operation in Tehran. I declare an interest in that my wife is an officer of the British Academy and the British Institute of Persian Studies also had to close. We have to recognise that there are some delicate issues at stake. There is the protection of British nationals when they are there and there is the problem with the human rights situation in Iran which we should not ignore.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord has raised the question of human rights in Iran, will he undertake that the Government, if they do reopen the embassy, will start a discussion again on human rights in Iran and, very particularly, the hanging of underage young people?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am happy, on behalf of the Government, to give that complete assurance. The treatment of journalists, the number of executions and the treatment of women are all very substantial issues on which we will wish to maintain an active dialogue with the Iranian authorities.
Baroness Afshar (CB)
My Lords, are the Government aware that the best way of maintaining that dialogue and controlling some of the abuses in Iran is by having a presence and by having students from Iran coming here and students from here going there? It is only through interactive relations that it will be possible to intervene from the inside in the terrible politics of Iran. Standing on the outside will not help.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are very well aware of that and we are anxious to reopen the embassy. However, we need some reassurances on the return of equipment to re-equip the embassy, the safety of employees and a number of other issues before we can finish the negotiations.
Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)
My Lords, Labour welcomes the appointment of the chargé d’affaires for Iran as a step towards the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations with the country. Can the Minister elaborate on what assurances the Iranian Government have given to the UK Government for the protection of British diplomatic staff and their ability to carry out work without hindrance if and when the embassy is opened?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that the Iranian Government are not simply a monolith. We negotiate on nuclear matters as well as on reopening the embassy with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are other elements in the current Iranian regime which are not as easy to negotiate with or to gain assurances from as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
Following the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, will the Minister also talk to the Iranian Government about the treatment of children?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
We will certainly talk about the treatment of children and also about the treatment of religious minorities. We are all aware of the treatment of the Bahai, in particular, in Iran who have suffered very grievously because the Iranian Government recognise only Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism as religions alongside Islam. Other sects are considered heretical and some Christians are also persecuted within Iran.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The answer is yes. If the MP’s own colleagues—I do not want to use the word “peers”, as it is a bit confusing—believe that the issue is serious enough for a suspension of at least 10 days, they would do so, although I find it hard to believe that they would so for a mistake. That is what this Bill is all about. The trigger may be 10 days or my noble friend may be right and perhaps it should be 12 days or nine days—I do not know exactly because it is a judgment call—but this Bill is about saying that, where their fellow Members of Parliament consider that the issue is serious enough, that is the trigger for a recall.
It is also important that the figure is not so low that we undermine in any way either the sort of normal protest that could happen in the House of Commons or the mistake—although I doubt that it would apply for a mistake—or misdemeanour that so offends other MPs that they take the MP to the Standards Committee. The essence of the Bill is that a recall will be triggered when the suspension is for a certain length of time.
There is another, separate point. Whether the threshold is five, 10, 15 or indeed 40 days, there will always be the difficulty—as happens when magistrates hear cases—where the knowledge that the decision can trigger a by-election will add an extra dimension to the judgments that are taken. That applies both to magistrates in a court case, if it is about whether there should be a sentence of imprisonment rather than a fine, and to those dealing with these situations. That is tough. Decision-making is tough. I recognise that, but I do not think that the number of days minimises that effect.
We will deal later with a very helpful amendment from my noble friend about the Standards Committee, which I hope will address some of the challenges that will be before members of the Standards Committee. On this amendment, the decision has been taken by the other place and I think it is right. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the commitment and care with which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has pursued this issue. The Government have of course therefore actively considered it over some period of time.
I have to say that I do not recognise what the noble Lord described as the widespread anger in the Commons over all this. I have just been checking with my noble friend Lord Gardiner and thinking that through. During the period when the Bill has been going through its Lords stages, I have met members of my own party in the Commons and my noble friend Lord Gardiner has met members of his own party there. We have met people from the Labour Party, our opposite numbers and the Bill managers within the Commons on a number of occasions. It is remarkable to me that what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has heard has not managed to reach our ears. It has been relatively public knowledge that we were indeed managing the Bill through this House.
The suggestion that the House of Commons voted on a substantial change to the Bill without understanding what it was doing seems to be stretching matters a little. It may be that this was a catastrophic mistake of the Labour Party in the Commons, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. I recognise the strength of feeling among a number of Labour Peers within this House that it was a catastrophic mistake by their own party. All I can say is that this has not reached the Government’s ears. We have not had protests, or suggestions that we need to save the Commons from itself in the way proposed.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, talked about eroding the sovereignty of Parliament and how we have again to protect that dimension. However, all those of us who have been out campaigning in recent weeks know that what those of us who are attached to the traditions of the British constitution think of as the sovereignty of Parliament is thought by too many of those on whose doors we knock as the Westminster bubble. We have great difficulty in persuading them that it is worth voting at all. They think that all politicians are in here for themselves. This is part of why the recall Bill has gone through a series of consultations over the last three years and is now going, not hastily, through both Houses.
We have considered at length this question of the proper period of suspension which should trigger recall in this House and in other discussions outside the House. We do not see a strong case for reversing the decision which the House of Commons took on an amendment from the Labour Opposition and, having considered it, we are therefore not willing to accept the noble Lord’s amendment.
The decision of the other place was clearly based on the precedent of past suspensions for misconduct recommended by the Standards Committee. The Standards Committee has in the past recommended 10-day suspensions for receiving payment to ask questions in the House, misuse of access to the House and breaching the Code of Conduct—cases which should undoubtedly be considered as serious wrongdoing. We are not considering cases of innocence or unproven allegation.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I am listening carefully to my noble friend’s argument, but surely the Government considered these matters very carefully when they came forward in the first place with their proposal for 20 days. Can he explain to the House why the Government thought that 20 days was appropriate, with all the knowledge about previous penalties imposed by the Standards Committee?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The noble Lord knows very well that the choice of the exact number of days is a matter for judgment. We recognise that the House of Commons took a judgment on that and we are accepting that judgment.
The question of the role and composition of the Standards Committee is also tied up in this. Looking at the next group of amendments, we will continue discussing the important question of the Standards Committee, on which I recognise that a number of members of this House have served. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his considerable efforts, which I respect, but I nevertheless ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate—and not simply because it is an easier one to respond to. As I said when we discussed this subject in Committee, or possibly on Report, we strongly support having more lay members on the Standards Committee. We believe that it is crucial for that body to have the confidence of the public, so opening up its work to people who are not MPs is an excellent step towards gaining that confidence. In other areas of life—in the medical profession, the legal profession and other professions—outside independent members are now the norm in any disciplinary process. That gives confidence to patients and clients that someone other than the cohort of those whose behaviour is being judged is involved in the decisions. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that in most of those other professions there is now a lay chair of the relevant disciplinary body.
As my honourable friend on the Front Bench in the other place said, we want to see a,
“radical overhaul of the Committee. That would include the removal of the Government’s majority and an increase in the role and authority of its lay members. We propose that at least half the Committee should be lay members and that the Chair of the Committee should not be a Member of Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/14; col. 69.]
It is encouraging that today there has been backing from all sides of the House on the need to move forward in this respect. The Government may say that the Bill is not the appropriate place to make such a change—although I note the astute amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others—but whether that is the case or not, we are sending an important message that all the political parties are determined to see the Standards Committee work effectively, fairly and transparently, and in a way that gives voters confidence in its work.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his references back to the historical developments. My brief says that there is a record of lay members serving on a Commons committee as far back as 1836, and that it was in 1876 that Erskine May laid down that while it was perfectly acceptable for lay members to serve on Commons committees it was not acceptable, within the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, for them to vote on such committees. I understand that that is the position that we still hold. There have been lay members of Commons committees in the past and there are now three on the Standards Committee, whose recent report suggests that the number should increase to seven.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, have taken us back to Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and a range of other things. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that I am currently reading Professor David Carpenter’s very helpful, and massive, book on Magna Carta, and I am becoming a little more doubtful about the beauty of Magna Carta, fully put, than I was. Its treatment of women and Jews, for example, is not exactly in line with modern habits—just as, if one reads the Bill of Rights carefully, as I have also done, one learns that its assumptions about Roman Catholics are not ones that would meet with automatic approval in the 21st century.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Yes, we will make exceptions in some cases—particularly for the sons of Church of England clergymen.
Standards have developed and moved, and we are discussing how we would advise the House of Commons and how the Government should respond to the House of Commons on its proposals to move the Standards Committee further. The recent report calls for an increase in the number of lay members—we have had three lay members since 2013—and in their representation as a proportion of the committee. The Government already have a high regard for the lay members of the Standards Committee and appreciate the very important role they play in the work of the committee. The three lay members who currently serve have clearly made a valuable contribution and add an important level of independence to the process.
The Standards Committee report has only very recently been published and the Government have not found time to agree a formal response—the matter is, after all, in principle for the Commons itself. If I may say as clearly as I can, the Government can see no reason at all why there should not be an increase in the number of lay members of the committee, as proposed in the Standards Committee’s report. The disciplinary procedures of the House of Commons are, in principle, a matter for that House as a whole. It is for the Government to facilitate a debate in which the report of the Standards Committee can be considered in detail and consequent changes agreed.
I would urge this House to ponder carefully any course of action that might be interpreted as pressuring, influencing or leaning on the other place to make such a significant change to its disciplinary procedure. After all, we come up against issues of parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary privilege.
Lord Tyler
I am grateful to my noble friend and recognise that he is in a difficult position for the reasons he has just enunciated. We do not want to look as if we are telling the House of Commons when it should take its business, but can he at least, say, on behalf of the Government, that it would be the hope and intention of the business managers for the extremely important report from the Standards Committee to be addressed and, I hope, action taken before the Dissolution of this Parliament later this month? May I appeal to the Minister to ignore the pleas from the ultra-conservative tendency in this House, represented by the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Cormack, who I think have not read the report of the Standards Committee which addresses very carefully the issues of parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary privilege?
Lord Campbell-Savours
Can I clarify the position and go back to what I was asking? What is the Government’s position on voting in that committee in the event that it were to proceed to implement the increased lay membership, to which the Minister referred?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am trying to be as helpful as I can on a very recently published Standards Committee report. I remind the House of some of the history. When the Kelly report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2009 recommended that there should be lay members on the Standards Committee, the recommendation was accepted in principle and referred to the Procedure Committee. That committee, in line with parliamentary precedent, reported that, while there was a long history of non-voting lay committee members, there was also a long-established precedent that only Members of the House could vote. The Government do not see any reason why we should override that long-standing precedent.
To add a further dimension on the complexity of the constitutional issues with which we are dealing, the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in June 2013 advised very clearly against legislating on the lay membership of the committee. To do so would risk bringing the operation of parliamentary privilege, as it currently applies to the standards and other committees, into question. The membership and operation of the Standards Committee is a matter for the House of Commons and the provisions in the Bill have been designed in such a way as to fit in with its disciplinary arrangements, however they are constituted. The second recall trigger would work in exactly the same way whether there were three, seven, 10 or 15 lay members on the Standards Committee, so it would not be justified to stop the second trigger from operating unless the number of lay members was increased.
The Standards Committee report also specifically says:
“The Committee has said that it will work to implement whatever Parliament decides on recall”.
Whether or not the other place decides to act on the Standards Committee’s recommendations—and, as I have said, the Government certainly see no reason why it should not in respect of the lay members of that committee—the committee’s essential role in holding MPs to account for their conduct will remain unchanged.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked me to guarantee in the remaining short weeks of this Parliament that the Commons will reach that decision before Parliament is dissolved. I am unable, standing here, to give any such absolute guarantee, but I will certainly take that back to my colleagues in the other place and make the point.
Having given as warm assurances as I can to this House, I hope that enables the two noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I am indebted to the Minister because he has made the position clear. We now know that the Government do not support the Standards Committee’s lay membership being given the right to vote, which brings me right back to my Amendment 6 which I moved on Report, which I now believe is a real option. I was also against the lay membership being given the right to vote informal proceedings, which was what I was trying to flush out, because it makes my amendment more sensible.
All I would like from the Minister is an assurance that the debate that took place on Report, and if I might modestly say in particular the proposal in my amendment, will be considered by the appropriate authorities. I would ask those who are charged with reading these matters in the other place, as invariably they do when we deal in this place with House of Commons business, to read the debate and consider that amendment. I think that my proposal was a very reasonable way to proceed. It would ensure that the lay membership really felt they were making a contribution and it would not take us down road concerning the issue of parliamentary privilege, which my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport was essentially alluding to. On that basis I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, since this is the last group in this debate, I thank those who have taken part for the constructive role that they have played in the very thorough scrutiny that this Bill has had. I was a little upset when the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, suggested that we had done our business hastily. I think that we have done our business—from Second Reading, through Committee to Report, and now to Third Reading—in the appropriate way in which this House behaves. We have met with those who have expressed their greatest concerns on the Bill, and, as the names on the amendment to which I am now speaking show, we have done our best to reach a consensus with the Opposition where they have made reasonable points, which the Government feel should be taken into account.
I am also very grateful that we have had such an extraordinarily good and efficient Bill team for this Bill. Over the last four and three-quarter years, I have met rather more Bill teams than I would like to have done, and on one or two occasions I have realised what you suffer if a Bill team does not do what you need for a Monday afternoon Committee stage—on one particular occasion, the legal adviser had missed the ferry back that morning from the Isle of Wight and we arrived without the full pack that we needed. I am confident in saying that this is one of the best Bill teams that I have had.
Government Amendments 6, 7 and 8 require the petition officer to deliver all recall petition returns to the Electoral Commission as soon as reasonably practicable after the documents have been received. These support the more substantive government Amendment 10, which will require the Electoral Commission to prepare and publish a report after every recall petition. These amendments build on those first tabled by the Opposition on Report, and I welcome their support for our amendments today. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for their constructive engagement on this issue.
In drafting the Bill, the Government have been keen to ensure that we create a regulatory environment that is consistent with existing electoral law. However, we recognise that recall petitions are a new style of electoral event for which there is no one-size-fits-all set of rules that can be applied. That said, we have drawn heavily, as far as we can, on underlying principles from wider electoral law—notably, encouraging participation through proportionate regulation and preventing undue influence by wealthy groups and individuals.
The Government have been grateful to noble Lords for their contributions throughout the passage of the Bill in terms of how the campaign should be regulated. The Government have also been consistent in our view that the spending and donation rules that we have put in place are appropriate to the nature of a recall petition and are fair and workable in practice. We appreciate the desire to ensure that the process is properly assessed in what we hope will be the very rare event of a recall petition taking place.
The Bill as introduced to this House provides for the Electoral Commission to report on the conduct of a recall petition, including how the spending and donation rules work, at its own initiative. Noble Lords have expressed a desire to see a formalisation of this process, requiring the Electoral Commission to report after every recall petition. These amendments will provide for this. Amendment 9 corrects a minor and technical issue with the drafting of Schedule 5 to the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town and I have also put our names to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on the role of the Electoral Commission. As the Minister has described, the amendments have the effect of requiring the Electoral Commission to take a greater role in the scrutiny of recall proceedings, which is to be welcomed. As a general principle, the Electoral Commission needs to move on from its present position of offering advice and guidance to more specific areas that it is responsible for, and to be held account properly by Parliament for its work in those areas. That is my position, although it is a matter for another day.
The specific amendments address the points that I have argued were lacking throughout the Bill. I am grateful to the Minister for mirroring the amendments that we on these Benches put forward in previous stages of the Bill. The first set of amendments to Schedule 5 ensures that all returns by campaigners are subject to checks by the Electoral Commission and delete the phrase “on request”, thereby requiring the petition officer to deliver a copy of all the recall petition returns when they have been received. We strongly disputed the Electoral Commission’s view that these would be little local events with a local feel. I took the view that that was a silly claim by the commission; we all know that these will be national events attracting enormous media attention. The commission is best equipped to look at the work being done with returns, as it has both the resources and the expertise at its disposal. I did not accept the commission’s note on this when it said that it may need additional resources to make this work. We all hope that these provisions will be enacted very rarely, and I am very confident, as a former commissioner, that this extra work can be done from existing resources.
We believe that these amendments are particularly important, given that the Government have not accepted our concerns about the potential loopholes that have been left open with regards to donations and expenditure received by both accredited and non-accredited campaigners. This at least goes some way towards ensuring that the financial circumstances of campaigns are subject to some level of scrutiny. Although we are disappointed that the Government have failed to address what we from these Benches regard as the inherent unfairness in the equality of arms of accredited campaigners, as well as the lack of safeguards on permissible donors, we are at least glad that we have managed to persuade Ministers that it is paramount that donation returns are checked.
It is hoped that this will go some way to providing confidence in the financial aspects of recall campaign procedures, which we on this side of the House believe could be open to abuse. The Government’s other amendment to Schedule 5 is a technical amendment, which clarifies the Bill, and we support it. The amendments to Schedule 6 require the Electoral Commission to produce a report on the recall petition proceedings once they have been completed. As I said previously, given that this is an entirely new facet of campaigning, I believe that an independent assessment of the process would be greatly welcomed, not only by constituents but by those affected or involved in the process, and by everyone else involved.
In conclusion, the amendments made in your Lordships’ House have been small but significant in making it more workable for all involved. Perhaps the most important inclusion in the forthcoming regulations will be the requirement on the petition notification card to inform electors of the fact that they are signing what could become a public petition. Given that the Government rejected our judgment that this was de facto a public petition, this is at least something to address the issue of secrecy and the availability of the marked register, the details of which still have to be worked out.
Regrettably, little attention has been given to such practicalities or even the principles of the recall process, which explains why so much has been left to regulations —fairly inexcusable, given that the Government have had an entire Parliament to draft a 25-clause Bill. Despite this, the help that we received from the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Gardiner of Kimble, was much appreciated, and we welcomed it very much. They were willing to meet us to discuss the detail and the principle, so I record my thanks and those of my colleagues on these Benches for their hard work. Also, I join them in supporting and thanking the Bill team for their hard work; they have been courteous and helpful throughout the process.
I thank my noble friend Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town. We were friends for many years before we came into the House—we came in on the same list nearly five years ago. It is always a pleasure to work with her. Her leadership and hard work on this are much appreciated by everyone involved. I thank my colleague Helen Williams from the opposition office for her contribution; though it was behind the scenes, it was very much appreciated by me and my colleagues here. I also thank noble Lords on all sides of the House for their work. We have done our job as a revising Chamber, and I am grateful to everyone involved.
We have all expressed the wish that the Bill will never need to be used. However, it is right that it should be as fit as possible in case it is. The Minister knows that we remain concerned about the possible intrusion of big money into the consideration of whether an MP should continue in Parliament. I hope that he is right and we are wrong in worrying about this. That apart, we have made the Bill a bit better than when it arrived in your Lordships’ House. I hope that it can now be moved on so it is an Act of Parliament very soon.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, perhaps I should add that it has been interesting that, in the best traditions of this House, the Divisions on the Bill have not been one party group against another but have often been within and across political party groups. That is how it should often be in this Chamber: it is part of a healthy debate.
I have been sitting here today wondering whether the colour of the coat of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, was intended to be a heavy hint at her preferred post-election coalition, but perhaps we can continue that discussion outside the Chamber. I conclude by thanking everyone for the lengthy amount of time that we have spent on the Bill. I commend the amendment.
Representation of the People (Combination of Polls) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2015
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 15 January be approved.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, after that short interlude we come to what is clearly the most fascinating business of the day. I assure the Opposition that, as far as I am aware, these are the last SIs concerning electoral administration to be laid before the election, so the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I will cease to have this opportunity for such regular meetings.
These measures are not part of the transition to individual electoral registration. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has a Question tabled on that in some 10 days’ time. I look forward to discussing it further. The transition is still going well, although not as well as we would like. As I announced to the House in an Answer to another Question some weeks ago, we are still putting further resources into it. I anticipate, particularly as far as young people are concerned, that the surge in registration will come in the last week before it becomes impossible to do so. Sadly, that is the way that things go.
For today, in addition to the Representation of the People (Combination of Polls) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, I will also speak to the Representation of the People (Ballot Paper) Regulations 2015 and the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections Order 2015. These are being brought forward for the general election, which, as noble Lords may have noticed, will be on 7 May this year. The Police and Crime Commissioner Elections Order 2015 is being made as a consequence of the combination of polls regulations, to which I now turn.
The regulations remove the restriction that prevents returning officers commencing the count of UK parliamentary ballot papers at combined elections—as we will have in many parts of the country in May—before verification has been completed for all ballot papers for all the polls taking place. They do this by amending provisions in the Representation of the People (Combination of Polls) (England and Wales) Regulations 2004, which modify the parliamentary elections rules where the parliamentary election is combined with other elections—most commonly, of course, local elections, as is the case this year. The order applies the provisions in the regulations to police and crime commissioner elections where they are combined with UK parliamentary elections. If approved by Parliament, the instruments would come into effect on 7 May, the day of the general election, and would therefore apply to the counts for the general election and the May local elections, which will then be taking place.
The provisions allow counting of parliamentary ballot papers from a ballot box to take place once they have been verified and mixed with parliamentary ballot papers from another ballot box for which the ballot paper accounts have also been verified. They allow counting of postal ballot papers to take place once they have been mixed with ballot papers from at least one ballot box, for which the ballot paper accounts have been verified. By allowing the count of UK parliamentary ballot papers to proceed in this way and by allowing the count to commence before the verification process has been completed, the count of UK parliamentary ballot papers can commence sooner where there may be delays in the delivery of some ballot boxes from polling stations to the returning officer. Returning officers can thus more easily meet the requirement in the Representation of the People Act 1983 to take reasonable steps to begin counting the votes given on parliamentary ballot papers within four hours of the close of poll.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, may I, too, raise a small point? I was not in my seat for the whole of the Minister’s speech but I was standing at the other end of the Chamber, so I hope I may be allowed to intervene briefly. My noble friend referred to the voting provisions for blind persons, and the ballot papers that are available for them. Is it not possible to have available in polling stations a small number of voting papers in Braille, which blind persons can have access to, so that they are more fully informed about the choices that they are making?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I first met the noble Lord, Lord Deben, rather a long time ago, but I did not realise until many years later that he was such an expert on esotericism. I shall now always think of him as an esotericist of the highest order. All I can say is that I will take his point back—it is extremely esoteric—and ask the officials to reply.
The answer to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne—I think that I did mention this in passing—is that devices are provided in polling stations for the visually impaired, to guide them round the ballot paper. These devices have adhesive elements that stick them in the right place on the back of the ballot paper. I have not actually seen them myself, but that is what I understand to be the case. My understanding—I shall write to the noble Lord if I am wrong—is that what is necessary is provided.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that we all recognise that electoral registration in Britain is a voluntary activity, with mild penalties for those who do not do it. It is not a necessary obligation as part of citizenship. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, would like us to have identity cards and registration would be part of that, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, would like registration—and, I think, voting too—to be compulsory. But we must recognise that part of the reason why, over the past 20 years, people have not registered—I stress that we have faced this problem for some considerable time—is the fact that they are disengaged from politics. In campaigning over the past few weekends I have found, in some areas more than in others, that we come up against a wall of, “You’re all the same”, “Politics is nothing to do with us”, “There’s no point in voting in this constituency”, and so on. I regret to say that some recent events in Westminster are likely to feed into that.
I repeat that we all, political parties as well as the Government and others, have to work extremely hard to enthuse the electorate. The Government have not yet completed all their efforts. In the week of National Voter Registration Day we managed to register nearly half a million extra people, and we will be continuing to maintain these efforts right up to the last day that people can register for voting. We have provided extra money for a number of agencies, as well as for electoral administrators in the areas of greatest need. As I said in opening the debate, we are not satisfied with the current position but we are maintaining our efforts, and we hope that by 20 April we will have as accurate and as full an electoral register as possible.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I accept that the noble Lord is as concerned about this matter as I am, and we regularly raise it, particularly in the Moses Room. However, as I said, the House is not exactly pushed for business and the election is fast coming down the track. Will the noble Lord talk to his colleagues as I do not see why the Government could not table a Motion to enable us to discuss this one evening so that he can set out the Government’s plans in full? This is a crisis and it is really serious now. I am very worried about the 20 April deadline. I do not understand why that is in force. A lot of people will not register in time. We will hear lots of dreadful stories during the election and on polling day about people who have lost their right to vote. We should do everything we possibly can to avoid that. I hope that the noble Lord will take that point back and initiate a debate on this issue before the Dissolution.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thought that I and others were keeping the House as regularly informed on this as possible. I have long since lost count of the number of Questions I have answered on individual electoral registration over the last 12 months. However, I will take the noble Lord’s suggestion back to the usual channels and we will see what we can do. I think that I have answered all the points that were raised.
Representation of the People (Ballot Paper) Regulations 2015
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 13 January be approved.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Police and Crime Commissioner Elections Order 2015
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft order laid before the House on 15 January be approved.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Voter Registration: Students
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government have no plans to legislate to require electoral registration officers or schools and colleges to provide for pupils to register to vote at school. EROs are free to arrange registration sessions in their local education establishments, and many already do. The Government have recently provided additional funding to encourage activities which promote the registration of young people among other target groups.
Lord Storey (LD)
I note what my noble friend says, but, given the success of the initiative in Northern Ireland, is there not a case for having an independent evaluation to see whether it is worth using that scheme in the rest of the UK? The fact that 189,000 17 year-olds in college will turn 18 before the deadline shows even more clearly how we need to get the message across.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have, of course, evaluated the Northern Ireland experience. We were dealing with paper transactions then and we are now moving to online transactions. Since the beginning of February, there have been nearly 500,000 online registrations, so we are very much achieving what we want, and we look forward to seeing more coming. The Northern Ireland experience was useful at the time. However, it was not a great success in maintaining registration: that there was a very substantial drop-off after the first year of registration for 17 year-olds to the level of registration of 18 to 19 year-olds.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, first, I declare an interest as the chair of the All-Party Group on Voter Registration. When I asked the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, last week what the Government were doing to deal with the scandalous situation whereby, according to the Electoral Commission, 30% of 18 to 24 year-olds are not registered, he avoided answering the question, so I will give him another chance to do so today. What are the Government doing to deal with this serious matter, because from here it seems that they are doing very little to get these young people registered by 20 April to vote in the general election?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are doing a great deal. We have provided an additional £14 million over the last 18 months precisely to deal with help in those areas. Most of that has gone to EROs in local authorities, with the largest proportion going to those in areas with a substantial number of students. We have also just funded a number of groups, many of which work with young people and disadvantaged groups, to assist in this process.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that it sends at best a very weak message to young would-be voters if we do not equip them while at school to take their place as citizens in a highly complex society? Will he do something about the steady decline in citizenship education?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a different question. However, as the noble Lord knows, I strongly support that and have worked to support it in government. I point out that young people are increasingly online. One of the things that government and local authorities are doing is to provide links to registration when you go into GOV.UK. For example, we have links for those inquiring about student jobs or paying tax, those looking for higher education courses who need to find and apply, those looking for tenancy deposit protection, a careers helpline for teenagers and so on to make registering to vote easier and to nudge people into thinking about it.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister realise that in many areas of the country his answers will seem very complacent? Much of the problem arises because for many young people it is the first time that they are registering. I will give another example, involving, admittedly, not a young person but my husband. Having moved, he was asked to go to the town hall with his passport to prove who he was before he was registered. Most people will never do that, and that is one of the reasons why individual registration is proving very taxing in some areas.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am extremely sorry to hear about the difficulties of the noble Baroness’s husband in having to demonstrate that he existed, and I look forward to hearing more offline. In the last two or three weeks, the number of people registering has risen considerably. Part of that has clearly been due to the extra publicity around National Voter Registration Day, and I give credit to those who organised it. However, all of us have to help in raising the level of interest. For example, I took part with candidates and spokesmen of other parties in a packed meeting at the University of York on Friday evening. Some students came up at the end and said, “We had not been thinking about voting so far, but now perhaps we will”. We all need to get out there to encourage young people.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, there is a real problem with student hostels, where a number of young people live together and the delivery of post to individual students is not the easiest thing in the world. What are the Government doing to try to address the problem of group registration?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have switched from group registration to individual registration, but the Government are working with the Student Forum, which brings together universities, student organisations and representatives of FE colleges, to raise awareness through a whole range of activities for students arriving in universities. There were pilots in Sheffield and Manchester linking registration at university with registering to vote—so we are very active in this area.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for referring to last week’s National Voter Registration Day. As part of that, I went into Townsend School in St Albans with two dynamic members of Bite the Ballot, who were able to bring the whole thing alive in an interactive and very lively session. They handed out registration forms at the end and offered to take them back in—so they are already doing this sort of work. Have Her Majesty’s Government considered supporting that organisation and other similar ones that are already doing this work in a very creative way?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have played the game Rock Enrol!, and I hope that a lot of other noble Lords have done so, too. It demonstrates to young people how politics matters to them. I hope that that is going on all over the place. The Government have their own version of this, and Bite the Ballot has adapted another one. We are discussing with Bite the Ballot the question of support and we very much encourage what it and a number of other organisations are doing to bring young people back into being interested and involved in politics.
European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2015
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 6, 7 and 8 January be approved.
Relevant documents: 18th and 19th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 9 February.
Deregulation Bill
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Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, we should be protecting desperate patients from being ripped off by clinics whose main interest is to make money. I hope that the Minister will look at this again.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this debate has ranged widely over a number of health issues, and I realise the seriousness of the issues that have been raised. Given that I am painfully aware of the cost of a new hip, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is telling me cost of IVF treatment is in the same league, there are some major questions. I am also conscious, partly as a result of conversations with the noble Lord, that the United Kingdom has identified biomedical research and development as one of the core areas that we want to develop. One member of my family is heavily involved in some of that. London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and other places are centres of expertise, and this is therefore an important area in which aspects of economic growth are entirely relevant, but careful regulation also has to be part of it. The question of care homes has also been raised. That is another very broad area where sustainability, how far profit should be part of the process and how far we should be promoting mutuals are some other major questions.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
That is absolutely right. The noble Lord then went on to say that we should be fine because the provisions in the Bill say that all the regulator has to do is to “have regard to” the desirability of promoting economic growth. However, the moment you include those words, the regulator becomes liable if it can be shown that he does not have regard to that, even though the noble Lord recognises that in many cases he ought not to have regard to it.
It is quite inadequate to say that we are consulting on this. This is absolutely wrong. We need to know by Third Reading whether the Government are going to keep in the HFEA and the PSA. I think that the noble Lord ought to allow further discussions to take place between now and Third Reading, and he ought to discuss this with his colleague—particularly the impact on the new regulations on mitochondrial donations that will be coming forward. As for his assurance that any of these bodies will be included by an affirmative resolution, how many times has an SI been defeated in Parliament? It is fewer than 10 times, so it is a meaningless safeguard in effect. I invite the Minister to say that he will at least give this further consideration before Third Reading before I make my decision.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will be glad to take this back and confer with others, but I cannot give any assurances that the Government will come back with anything different on Third Reading. However, I am always open to conversations off the Floor.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, that is very handsome of the Minister and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness King of Bow (Lab)
My Lords, I am speaking in support of Amendment 44 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in place of my noble friend Lady Thornton. On these Benches, we are very pleased that the noble Lord has brought this matter back to the Floor of the House. We fully support having the EHRC’s exclusion from the list of regulators included in the Bill, and the noble Lord has already explained the importance of doing so—it is what he described as a copper-bottomed guarantee. We really cannot see why the Government would not want to support this. Essentially, as the noble Lord says, it would just ensure that the Government’s good intentions actually hold up regardless of what a future Administration might wish to do. We are also in no doubt that even the risk that the EHRC might be included in the regulations in future could have an adverse effect on its A status as a UN accredited national human rights institution—an NHRI. That, in turn, might impact on the UK’s compliance with European Union law.
However, the real issue here is around the independence of the EHRC. The UN International Coordinating Committee has said to the UK Government that independence from government is an essential element of a national human rights institution. In considering whether an NHRI is independent, the ICC looks at all the ways in which the particular institution in question is subject to control or direction. Although the Deregulation Bill may not intend to affect the independence of the EHRC, attaching an additional duty could be seen as competing with or limiting its existing duties, and may have that effect on its decision-making. Being subject to ministerial direction and the possibility of legal challenge could have a detrimental effect on the EHRC’s ability to make decisions in relation to upholding human rights. When combined with the existing connections and accountabilities to the British Government, these clauses will raise questions about the compliance of the EHRC with the UN Paris principles—the principles which uphold the protection of human rights by national institutions.
The real point here is that it would be a shame if—when we are all agreed that the EHRC should have that independence, and we all want to see that status maintained by the UN—we were yet again to pass the law that we pass most often here, the law of unintended consequences, and thereby damage the ECHR’s prospects when it goes through the process of UN reaccreditation. The accreditation process, when the UN considers whether an NHRI will retain its accreditation, takes place around once every five years. I am sure the Minister will be aware that the EHRC is up for that process this year. Given that, is this not the worst possible time for us to introduce uncertainty? The way to remove that uncertainty is, as we are all aware, to put the amendment on to the face of the Bill.
We know that the Minister will say that the Secretary of State for BIS has written to the EHRC to say that the Government have decided to,
“fully exclude the EHRC from the growth duty”.—[Official Report, 20/11/14; col. GC229.]
If the Government want to do that, they will accept the amendment because it delivers the Government’s aims. This is a matter of huge importance and we assume from what the noble Lord said in introducing the amendment that he will press it to a vote. However, if for any reason he decides not to do so, we on these Benches certainly will. It would be an extraordinary own goal to limit the perceived independence of the EHRC and it is something that we should not allow to happen, even if only inadvertently or by accident. I hope that the Government and indeed the House will accept the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Baroness has given us a lot of hypothetical, “If a future Government were to”, and so on. The Government have made it entirely clear and said publicly that they intend the EHRC to be excluded from the growth duty. No Parliament can bind its successors. I cannot imagine that any major party or minor party that might be part of a future Government is likely to want to do this, and as I say, no Parliament can bind its successors. Indeed, if that were to happen we would encounter heaven knows what. At the present moment the Government have taken the clear decision to exclude the EHRC from the growth duty in order to remove any threat to its international standing. We have provided the commission with a reassurance of that decision and, as has already been said twice in this debate by my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Baroness, Lady King, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills wrote to the EHRC in November to confirm the decision. We have also reaffirmed the commitment to exclude the commission from the duty in the recent consultation document on extending the growth of the duty.
The Government Equalities Office, which is the EHRC’s government sponsor, does not see a significant threat to the commission’s A status by not excluding it on the face of the Deregulation Bill, and the GEO has advised the commission to accept those reassurances.
Baroness King of Bow
When does the Minister expect that these regulations would actually be brought forward?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, my understanding is that it is going to be very difficult to bring them forward before the election. However, I will take that back and will be sure to write to the noble Baroness with any exact dates for the regulations.
No specific regulatory functions of any other particular named body are listed on the face of the Bill, and it is not necessary to do so in relation to the regulatory functions of the EHRC. The regulatory functions to which the growth duty is to apply will be set out in secondary legislation, as I have said before. Meanwhile, the Government have given a range of assurances that the EHRC is outside the scope of the growth duty and will be excluded.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak because, as chair of the EHRC, it is difficult for me to do so, but before the Minister sits down, I think I can allow myself to say one factual thing. This is an unusual regulatory body in that it is subject to international inspection and rating—which will be done by the ICC. Unfortunately, as a matter of timing, all the evidence that the ICC requires will have to be submitted in June this year, and I think the Minister has just informed us that it will not be possible to lay the statutory instruments that exclude the commission from scope before that time.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I would simply reply that we are of course well aware that this is not the only body for which there are a range of international complications and obligations. Indeed, the RSPB briefing, which some Members will have seen, raises questions about EU legislation. We are very conscious that everything we do in this area, biomedical issues included, carries international implications.
Lord Jones of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, before the Minister sits down, could I just draw on two aspects—
The Earl of Lindsay (Con)
My Lords, in speaking to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I should note my current involvement with the Better Regulation Strategy Group, the independent body that advises the present Government on better regulation. I should also note, as it is relevant to my perspective on the amendment, my former involvement in the two predecessor bodies that advised the previous Government—the Better Regulation Commission, of which I was vice-chairman, and the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council.
Based on my experience of those three independent bodies advising government on better regulation, I question the need for Amendment 44A. If the proposed duty as set out in the Bill were to override regulators’ powers of protection, compromise their decision-making or supersede their existing regulatory duties—or if there were any ambiguity about those three important assessments—I would wholly understand the need for the amendment. But in my judgment that is not the case.
The proposed growth duty will not override or cut across regulators’ powers of protection. It is simply an additional factor for regulators to take into account when they are making their decisions. It will not compromise their decision-making and, as I understand it, it will not supersede regulators’ existing duties. It will not remove the responsibility of businesses to comply with what the law or regulations require of them. The duty will therefore not compromise the independence of regulators. They will continue to have decision-making autonomy, exactly as they do now. Regulators will therefore remain free to decide how best to incorporate the duty into the decision- making involved in performing their primary statutory functions.
I have been looking at the published draft guidance that the Government issued in January, and I believe that it makes very clear many of the points that I have just mentioned. I understand that the guidance is continuing to be developed in discussion with the regulators so that it can be finalised before the policy comes into force. That guidance makes it clear that the proposed duty does not encourage regulators to reduce protections or to ignore non-compliance.
For the benefit of noble Lords who have not seen the published draft guidance, Non-economic Regulators: Duty to Have Regard to Growth, I draw their attention to the beginning of chapter 2, on page 5, which sets out the purpose of the duty. The very first sentence reads:
“Regulators exist primarily to protect people or achieve other social or environmental outcomes”.
That is an important headline sentence, which reminds us of the principal duty that regulators must subscribe to. The second paragraph on that page says:
“The duty requires that economic growth is a factor”—
not the factor, but a factor—
“to be taken into account alongside regulators’ other statutory duties … The duty does not set out how economic growth ranks against existing duties as this is a judgment only a regulator can and should make … The duty does not oblige the regulator to place a particular weight on growth”.
Those are only a few extracts from one page of the draft guidance, but they set out a clear proposition in terms of the importance of maintaining the balance between regulators having regard, as appropriate, to growth and their maintaining protections. As I see it, the proposed duty will complement existing duties and will not override or cut across regulators’ powers of protection, nor their responsibilities for ensuring protection. It will be for a regulator to weigh up the desirability of economic growth against each of the other factors it must consider, and tailor its approach accordingly.
In some circumstances those factors will sit well together; in others the regulator will need to decide how much weight to afford to each factor for the best outcome. On the basis of the wisdom that was developed through the Better Regulation Commission, the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council and so on, I believe that the regulator’s expertise means that it is best placed to decide what weight it is appropriate to afford growth in the relevant circumstances.
I therefore disagree with the insistence of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that only Parliament can rank those factors. In a good regulatory regime there should be discretion for the regulators to make judgments between parallel factors, because they can take account of the exact circumstances in which they are regulating. Therefore, although the growth duty clause as drafted requires that growth be put on the same footing as other duties—in other words, it enables regulators to have regard to growth—it also ensures that essential protections are maintained.
We should not lose sight of the importance of the new growth duty and the benefits that will flow from it. Regulators spend some £2 billion each year on regulatory activities, and still to this day more than half of businesses see regulation as a barrier to their success. The duty is required to clarify the fact that growth is an important factor for regulators to take into account, and it will ensure that regulation is delivered in a way that best supports growth. It will also ensure that the protection intended to be given by regulations is still delivered. On those grounds, although I understand the motives behind the amendment, I genuinely believe that it is unnecessary, and that the balance will be not only maintained but enhanced by the Bill as drafted.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have heard three excellent and very sober speeches on the amendment, for which I thank noble Lords. There is only a small difference between the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and myself, on behalf of the Government. We are talking about balance—the balance among a range of factors that we wish regulators to consider.
“( ) section (Tenancy deposits: provision of information by agents);”
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, when we come to the end of the scrutiny of any Bill, we come to issues of consequential amendments, territorial extent and commencement. On Clause 94, the question of territorial extent for some of the clauses of the Bill needs negotiation with the devolved Administrations. Some of those negotiations and consultations are still under way, so I take the opportunity to commit to bring back at Third Reading any changes needed to the territorial extent subsections where discussions with the devolved Administrations are not yet complete.
Several government amendments seek to amend Clause 95 on the question of the commencement provisions. The clause specifies, as usual, which provisions are to come into force on the day the Act is passed; which provisions are to come into force, in this case, two months after that day; and which provisions are to come into force by order made by the Secretary of State. It also provides for certain clauses to come into force on Royal Assent for the limited purpose of switching on the power in those clauses to make subordinate legislation.
Amendments 57C to 58B are consequential on new clauses added to the Bill in the course of its consideration. Other amendments move some existing clauses from one part of Clause 95 to another to reflect the department’s current commencement plans. There are also a number of consequential and drafting amendments linked to the other changes in the clause. I hope these amendments are acceptable to the House. I beg to move.
“( ) section 44 and Schedule 12;”
Recall of MPs Bill
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry to delay my noble friend; I shall not do so for more than a moment or two. I made it quite plain in Committee that I thought this was a dreadful Bill, unimprovable and really unamendable. That remains my position. I could not take exception to the extremely cogent speech of the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench. This is a terrible Bill that the Commons are inflicting upon themselves. I wish they were not. It betrays a lack of self-confidence in a great institution that is superior to any other in this country. Recall is the process that goes on at a general election. That is where I rest my case, and that is why I shall not put myself in either Division Lobby tonight.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for that very brief Second Reading speech, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the meticulousness with which she has pursued this delicate issue—although perhaps not for some of her slightly ungenerous little comments in moving her amendment.
There are a number of difficult issues here. There are issues of potential intimidation and certainly issues of electoral fraud that require that a marked register be assembled and is available to those who want to check against impersonation—so we are conscious both that this cannot be an entirely secret process and that there are arguments that it should not be an entirely public process. The Government have considered this and consider that we can designate a process that guards against impersonation but which also provides some safeguards against intimidation.
As I said in Committee, signing a petition, particularly in person, is unavoidably, to a degree, a public act. However, that does not go so far as sanctioning the publication of the full list of those who have signed the petition—the marked register—as is implied by the Opposition’s amendment. I agree that regulations should specify—
Baroness Corston (Lab)
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. I think he just said that there were safeguards: can he say what they are?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I hope that I will be able to explain, as I continue, what some of the safeguards against intimidation might be.
The regulations should specify that the marked register will be available for inspection, although, as at elections, that will be dependent on certain restrictions and an application to the petition officer. There are also some protections we can provide, such as choosing not to mirror the provision at elections where the marked register can be requested as a document for campaigning purposes by political parties and candidates. There is a good argument here that inspection should be allowed for reasons of preventing personation, but that the document itself should be kept securely and used only to test whether or not personation has been attempted.
Furthermore, the wording of the amendments implies a degree of ease of access to, and publicity of, the marked register, which does not exist even at elections. Those who wish to view the marked register must justify to the returning officer, or the Chief Electoral Officer in Northern Ireland, where problems of intimidation exist very clearly, why they need to inspect the marked register itself and could not glean sufficient information from the full register. Inspection is under supervision and the law specifies that, although handwritten notes are permitted, portions of, or indeed the whole of, the marked register may not be copied down.
I hope that this provides the assurance needed. There is only a small amount of space between the Government’s intentions for the regulations and the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendments. There will be a marked register and it will be a document which can be made available for inspection—although, as I have said, there will be controls mirroring those at elections and, in some respects, further controls in that the Government do not intend that copies should be made available for campaigning purposes, for the very evident reasons given. I also accept that signing is, to a degree, a public act, although there will be those who prefer to sign by post and avoid attending a signing place; that is their choice to make. I also see the merit in the petition notice card making clear the degree to which signing is an open process; it will therefore ensure that suitable wording is included before it is user tested.
However, I believe that the regulation-making powers in the Bill are sufficient to deliver the policy outcomes under discussion. I therefore thank the noble Baroness for the care that she has taken to ensure that we address this delicate and difficult issue. I hope that we have satisfied her and, on that basis, I hope that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)
My Lords, I am puzzled by what the Minister just said: that signing a petition is somehow—what was the word he used?—“delicate” or “difficult”. I am astonished. My understanding is that, once the election is past, the marked register is available to be purchased by election agents and political parties. He talked about the marked register being a campaigning tool. We are obviously all totally against names being made available while the petition period is going on, but surely to goodness, if a citizen of this country is asked to determine the fate of a Member of Parliament, he or she should not sign that petition carelessly, without thought to the possible repercussions. I really think that the Minister is quite wrong on the attempted secrecy of the marked register. I hope he will reflect, because he is not doing democracy any good whatever.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, it is always fun to watch the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, having a go at his own side and at one of the Government Ministers. Apart from that, I think it has been an interesting and useful debate, particularly on Amendment 2 about widening the kind of behaviour which could trigger a by-election. As an old campaigner on drinking and driving, this warmed the cockles of my heart and I thought it would have a great impact on the leisure behaviour of MPs, but maybe that is looking at it slightly too narrowly.
I really do not think that having just any criminal conviction is what our manifestos, the coalition agreement, the Government or indeed the House of Commons intended when they brought forward the recall Bill. Nor do I think it is what the public expected—and I was a member of the public rather than in your Lordships’ House when the misdemeanours that we have talked about happened—of the promise that where MPs were found guilty of deliberately falsifying their expenses claims or were sentenced to imprisonment, they should no longer automatically return to work after their sentence. Rather, I think recall was seen as a chance for the MP to explain himself or herself, to apologise or to ask for forbearance, and for the chance for voters to decide whether, despite the sentence, the MP was fit to continue to represent them in Parliament. Lowering the bar so that it covers any conviction risks a rush of petitions, perhaps over quite minor issues, which would take MPs away from their duties in the House for months. It would involve large sums of money, and importantly it would devalue the serious nature of a recall petition.
Incidentally, given that it is JPs—magistrates—who deal with 90% of crime, it is likely to be them rather than judges who will be dealing with these sorts of offences. As my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport reminds us, the recall thus triggered could easily become a vote of confidence in the Government or a referendum on fracking rather than actually seeking the electorate’s opinion of their MP’s behaviour, which was the purpose of this Bill and the reason that we support it. There has to be a sensible balance as to what can constitute a trigger. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester suggests, being sentenced to prison, whether suspended or not, seems to be the right place to draw that line.
Amendment 3 would remove any role for Parliament via its Standards Committee and a subsequent vote in the Commons to trigger a recall petition. This seems very hard to support. It does two things. First, it would absolve MPs in the Commons from a role in self-regulation and from any responsibility for policing the behaviour of their own colleagues. That is something which I do not think is right either in principle or in practice. Secondly, it would leave only criminal convictions and not gross unparliamentary behaviour such as breaches of the Code of Conduct or a failure to undertake democratic duties as the trigger for potential recall. The other place may need to make changes to its Standards Committee in order to build public trust, but that is probably not a matter for the Recall of MPs Bill. I know that my Labour colleagues in the other place support a radical overhaul of the committee, in particular to remove the government majority and to increase the role and authority of its lay members. Indeed, Labour has proposed considering whether with at least half the members being lay, there should also be a chair who is no longer an MP.
However, improving the way this trigger would act is different from removing the trigger. It was clearly the will of the Commons to include this trigger, which gives the Commons a role in the Bill, and we should respect that decision for its willingness to accept some collective responsibility for the behaviour of its Members. Furthermore, we should remember that without the second trigger, a number of non-criminal offences could occur without MPs having to face a possible recall, such as cash for questions or the failure to declare serious conflicts of interest. It would be a very radical suggestion to delete an entire trigger from the clause at this stage in the Bill when it was overwhelmingly agreed at the other end, and it would possibly go beyond our normal role of scrutinising legislation. However, that is not my reason for opposing it. I do so because it must surely be right that Members of the Commons should take some responsibility for their own behaviour and that of their colleagues and they should not wash their hands of their role in this.
Amendment 6 has been tabled by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, and we happily support it. We have encouraged the inclusion of lay members on the committee. Indeed, as I have said, we floated the idea of one of them being the chair and of lay members being the majority. While the Government may not feel that this is a matter for the Bill, we hope they will join us in supporting the principle and commit themselves to further moves in the direction I have outlined.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this debate has ranged very widely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for raising the Bill of Rights. I was thinking about it last week when looking at Magna Carta and how these various things pull together. The British constitution has parliamentary privilege as one of its core elements, and we recognise that in this Bill we are walking a delicate line between the maintenance of parliamentary privilege and the inclusion of a greater degree of popular sovereignty alongside parliamentary sovereignty. It is a delicate balance that we all wish to maintain.
Perhaps I may say what a pleasure it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, again. He told me in the corridor that he had been lying in his hospital bed at two o’clock in the morning watching Lords debates on his iPad. What he did not tell me was whether they kept him awake or provided him with a cure for insomnia.
As I understand the Standards Committee report, which I have not had a chance to read in full yet, it takes us rather closer towards the model which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would like than we have been before. It is a progression to move from a lay minority to an equal proportion of lay members and MPs, which is probably what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would regard as moving in the right direction. It is a progression but not a reversal; it is not a radical overhaul of the entire Bill.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The report does not suggest that they should have a vote.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Page 6 of the report states:
“We believe self-regulation, with external input, is the appropriate system”.
As someone who recognises that parliamentary privilege is not something we wish to throw out of the window, I agree strongly with that sentiment.
We have also touched on the question of how far we restore popular trust in Parliament and the political system, or indeed how far any of us can ever restore trust in Parliament or our political system. I think we all recognise that this Bill is intended to assist in that process, but none of us has any illusion that it will solve the problem. It is much broader than that.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked whether the process of amending Motions to report recommendations to the Standards Committee on the Floor of the other House will continue. That is a matter for the other place. It is a matter of its procedures into which the Bill and this House will not wish to intrude. In introducing the amendments, my noble friend Lord Tyler said that this quite radical proposal would remove two of the three triggers, thus radically changing the basis of the Bill, which has been through the scrutiny of the other House and a good deal of other scrutiny besides. I thank my noble friend for the very constructive conversation we have had since Committee and for his active engagement in discussions about the most appropriate triggers for recall petitions.
The Government considered a number of options and came to the conclusion that a custodial sentence was one of the appropriate levels for a trigger. It is of course difficult to know exactly what line one wishes to draw, but we have concerns, which have been expressed by a number of noble Lords in this debate, that lowering the threshold to include all convictions would risk MPs having to face recall in circumstances where it was not appropriate: for example, for minor traffic offences or for offences of strict liability where no criminal intention needed to be proven. The Government’s intention for the Bill is that the recall process should be there as a safeguard which does not, we hope, need to be used very often in an atmosphere of generally good behaviour. My noble friend Lord Tyler’s amendments might well lead to recall becoming a quite frequent procedure, one which a very large number of people would not regard as justified.
I understand my noble friend is concerned that the second trigger for recall petitions relies on recommendations of the Standards Committee, and he is doubtful about that. We all recognise many of these problems, but we do not see his solution of removing two of the three triggers from the Bill as being the answer. I understand my noble friend’s concern about politicising the Standards Committee and also about MPs themselves being involved in the triggering of recall. However, I do not think the answer is to take away from a constituent the ability to recall their MP for wrongdoing that might be serious enough for them to question whether they want their MP to represent them. Collapsing the three triggers into one would drive a coach and horses through the Bill.
This brings me to Amendment 6, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which would add to the definition of the Standards Committee in Clause 1. I simply say that we will consider the Standards Committee report and whether there needs to be anything in the Bill that relates to the report or whether, on the basis that things are moving in the direction in which the noble Lord wishes, we should leave well alone and leave out matters that are not central to the Bill. We will consider that between now and Third Reading.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will the Government provide their response to the Standards Committee’s report before they proceed to the Third Reading in this House?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will certainly take that back and see what the Government can do. I hope that I have provided constructive answers to a very constructive debate, and I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tyler
May I ask my noble friend, with his very important noble friends on the Front Bench, to give the House an assurance that there will be no accelerated process towards Third Reading until these matters are properly discussed and resolved both in this House and in the other place?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we intend to proceed to Third Reading with all deliberate speed. The House will, of course, be in recess next week.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am grateful to all Members who have contributed to this debate. I wish that we had had a general debate of this nature rather earlier in the process on this Bill. The central point is that my noble friend has just said that he does not agree with our solution. He does not appear to agree with that of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, either, but he seems to recognise that some solution is necessary. That leaves us in a most extraordinary situation. The Government agree that this is unfinished business, yet they have produced no solution. I am afraid that that is an unsatisfactory situation.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I really do not think it is for me to tell the House of Commons how best to call its votes. What I do say is that if we are to trust the House of Commons then hearing that it agreed this by 203 votes to 124 on a one-line Whip is a fairly ringing endorsement of its decision. However, I am concerned about the discussion of this amendment rather than the wording of it. Some of the discussion has been more about the pressure on the decision-makers involved—be that the Standards Committee as it is or as it is going to be—than whether the number of days is correct and whether the electorate should be able to petition following the wrongdoing of a Member of the House of Commons. I do not think pressure on decision-makers ought to be higher in our minds than the rights of electors. I say this as someone who has been a magistrate, has had to send people to prison and has sat as a lay adjudicator on all sorts of disputes in other professions when they have lay members in, including removing people completely from their profession. I have been in those sorts of positions. Noble Lords, particularly those on the Cross Benches who have been judges, have taken even bigger decisions than I have. People have backbones and I do not believe that the worry of the pressures on these good people should be uppermost, over and above the rights of the electors to take an opinion on their MP where they have obviously done something serious enough to be suspended by their colleagues in the other place.
The Bill as it stands strikes the right balance on this issue. It strengthens the right of constituents to consider recall without jeopardising parliamentary democracy. I think the other place got it right and we should support it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, triggering the opening of a recall after a 10-day suspension rather than 20 or 21 days certainly means there is the potential for petitions to open in a wider range of circumstances. My calculation, which I hope I got correct, of what would have happened over the past 15 years during all the rumbling expenses scandal is that on a 10-day suspension trigger some seven Members of the House of Commons in 15 years would have come under it and on a 20-day suspension only two.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The noble Lord is missing the point of my contribution. The climate has completely changed. Do not go by what has happened in the past. Punishments, suspensions, fines or whatever in the past are irrelevant. It is about what happens in the future. That is why all these arguments about the past are totally irrelevant.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take on board the noble Lord’s deep concern for the strain on the members of the Standards Committee but the Standards Committee is evolving. The committee is likely to be up to the task it faces. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said in Committee, Members who have committed wrongdoings sufficiently serious to attract a suspension of 10 sitting days ought to be held to account by their constituents. That is what the other place decided and we should hesitate to suggest that it is our duty to save the other place from itself, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is getting close to saying.
The noble Lord has expressed fears that this would politicise the Standards Committee on decisions regarding suspension and would affect its decision as to how long to suspend a Member. Of course there is always a degree of political sensitivity to the suspension of a Member of Parliament. The Standards Committee and the House of Commons have exercised their discretion in the past over the suspension of Members and I am confident that they will continue to do so effectively when looking at future cases. Members of the other place have amended the Bill so that a recall petition will open where the House of Commons has agreed to suspend an MP for 10 days or more. One of the reasons for that was the consideration of previous cases where an MP was suspended for less than 21 days but their behaviour was such that they ought to have faced recall if it had existed at the time. Since this Bill relates only to Members of the other place, we should reflect very carefully before seeking to overturn what the other place has decided. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I have had a rather difficult few weeks. I have had all sorts of discussions with colleagues about what we should do and whether we should divide the House. Until about 10 minutes ago I was going to divide the House. Having heard the intervention from my noble friend Lord Soley appealing, even now there are those who want me to divide the House. Surely something can be done before Third Reading. Can there not be consultations with people in the Commons about what is happening? Can the noble Lord not say something to suggest a basis on which the Government could return at Third Reading? My noble friend Lady Hayter from the Front Bench is shaking her head because she is wedded to this principle, while on the Back Benches, both in the House of Commons and here, there are people who desperately want to get rid of this 10-day trigger.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, as my noble friends have spelt out, the Bill raises the interesting question not just of the interplay between this process and that of the election court but also of what I think is the Government's slap-dash drafting of the Bill, with their cut-and-paste from other legislation, without actually thinking through the best way of dealing with allegations of wrongdoing. As I have said, and as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has echoed, we do not want ever to see this Bill used. We hope that MPs will never find themselves in the position of triggering a recall petition. However, if it happens, we need to be sure that the most appropriate mechanisms and penalties are available to suit the particular misconduct. We may have it in this Bill, but we may not; it may not be right. Indeed, on the reverse side, it might be much better for other misconduct to trigger a recall petition rather than straight expulsion, as my noble friend Lord Dubs suggested. The proposal of a report to consider this in the round and come forward with proposals on that basis seems eminently sensible. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, behind this issue are some large questions about the role of election courts and the seriousness of electoral offences such as electoral fraud. The role of election courts is to assess whether electoral fraud has taken place and to determine whether it has had a material impact on the outcome of an election. I know that what happened to Phil Woolas preoccupies a number of noble Lords on the Labour Benches. I went back and looked at that sad history and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, suggested in Committee that he be acquitted on appeal. He was indeed acquitted of one of the three offences but the other two were affirmed.
Electoral fraud is a serious business. I can think of other potential occasions where we could find ourselves with contested results of elections. We had a contested issue in east London in local elections where the severity of what is pled or what might perhaps have happened is not—as I think is being suggested here—something less serious than other potential misconduct. I understand the noble Lord’s intentions in tabling his amendment but I am not persuaded that, after two years, a particular fact will have come to light which would necessarily cause the Government of the day to reappraise the role of election courts, which is what this is really about.
I am also concerned that granting election courts the discretion to initiate a recall petition risks sending a confused message about the seriousness of electoral fraud as such. At present, there is a public expectation that those who commit offences that breach electoral law should face the appropriate penalty and that the appropriate penalty is set. Those offences are particularly relevant to the MP’s democratic mandate, and they are intended to affect the MP’s democratic mandate because, thankfully in this country, we have a very low level of electoral misconduct during campaigns and of electoral fraud; but we are conscious that the potential is always there. In the event that fraud has been committed by a sitting MP, his or her constituents might be confused if they were asked to sign a recall petition, knowing that an election court had already identified proven wrongdoing on the MP’s part.
The Government do not consider that this Bill should be a vehicle for the election court’s functions to be adapted, or for the consequences of established electoral offences to be altered; that is a different and other serious set of issues. There is also a risk that an MP, having been subjected to a recall petition by the election court, could then be prosecuted and sentenced in the criminal courts for an offence of which the election court had found him or her guilty. If the MP had held on to his or her seat following the first recall petition and were then sentenced to a period of imprisonment of 12 months or less, this could trigger another recall petition under the first recall condition.
There are some complicated issues here, but I end where I started. Election fraud or an election offence during a campaign that materially affects the outcome of that election are serious offences. That is the role of election courts. However, the Government are not persuaded that we should now downgrade the severity of that offence.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am disappointed in the Minister’s reply because he has not really faced the point that we were seeking to make in this amendment—and I thank noble Lords who gave their support to it. What happens now, under the Government’s present Bill, is that a Member of Parliament can be sentenced to six or nine months’ imprisonment, yet he would still be subject to the recall procedure and he could stand again. It seems to me that a sentence of six to nine months’ imprisonment is pretty serious, yet the Government, in their wisdom, have a Bill that says, “Yes, but you can be subject to the recall procedure and you might well be re-elected”. Indeed, in our history, Members of Parliament who have been refused their seats have stood again and have got re-elected—so that is up to the voters. The whole point of this amendment is that we must trust the local voters to make the right decision, and they can decide one way or the other.
On the subject of severity, I do not have all the details of the Phil Woolas case in front of me, and I do not think that I said in Committee that he had been acquitted. What I am saying is that the electoral court proceedings lost him his seat, but there was no further sanction in terms of imprisonment. Imprisonment is serious, yet under the Bill an MP can be imprisoned and can still be subject to the recall procedure. So the position is entirely inconsistent; it does not make any sense. The amendment simply proposes that the Secretary of State assess the merits and feasibility of granting election courts this discretion. If it is too difficult, the feasibility study would say, “No: it is too difficult”, for the reasons the Minister gave. We are asking only for the Government to have a more detailed look at this than the Minister suggested in reply.
We have been debating for quite a long time and there are further amendments to come. Part of me is tempted to test the opinion of the House. I will not do that, but I wish that the Government could be a little more flexible. Frankly, they have lost the argument. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, Amendments 13 and 14 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. I moved similar amendments in Committee. Amendment 13 removes the petition wording from the Bill, and Amendment 14 makes provision for the wording to be agreed following consultation with both the Electoral Commission and the Welsh Language Commissioner.
At present we have words in the Bill that have not been user-tested. The Electoral Commission has given some advice, but unlike the referendums in Wales and Scotland, it will not be involved in the user-testing. According to its briefing, it seems quite content with that, which in itself is a bit odd. In Committee I asked the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, which organisation would be undertaking the user-testing of the wording. He was not able to answer me then but agreed to write to me, which he has done and I am most grateful to him for that.
I would like to understand why the Cabinet Office launched a tender exercise on user-testing rather than asking the Electoral Commission to do the work. What was the discussion in government that came up with that decision? The Government have not been clear on that so far and it is not referred to in the briefing note from the Electoral Commission either, but discussion on this issue must have taken place. This is all very rushed and not a good way to undertake an important exercise. Putting untested petition words in the Bill, although they can be amended by regulation, is not the most satisfactory way to go about this.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, as I hope he will confirm the involvement of the Welsh Language Commissioner in the process but, as I said, it should be done in a much better way. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, should reconsider the position he took in Committee. This is not a very encouraging way to move forward and I think it is a bad case of putting the cart before the horse. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it seems to me that the horse is actually before the cart. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, suggested—I thought rather unkindly—that there was a lot of cut and paste in the Bill. Actually, we have followed wherever possible agreed and established rules in comparable cases of electoral law. That seems to be an entirely appropriate way to do it.
Our decision to include the specified wording in the Bill mirrors the position for UK parliamentary elections where the form of the ballot paper appears in primary legislation but may be amended through regulations. As I said in Committee, a modest but worthwhile advantage of the appearance of the signing sheet’s wording in the Bill is that any future changes made to it will then be reflected in the text of the parent Act, which helps to make the law as clear as possible for petition administrators, parties and campaigners.
I agree that it is important to check that the wording is fit for purpose. That is why we have committed to user-test it with input from the Electoral Commission on the user-testing specification. If changes are identified, these can be made through regulations which require the approval of both Houses. We currently have a tender out for a supplier to undertake this work in consultation with the Electoral Commission.
On the question of consultation with the Welsh Language Commissioner, I can reaffirm that the Government will prepare a Welsh translation of the wording in secondary legislation, as is the practice at other statutory polls, using a power and following a principle established in the Welsh Language Act 1993. This translation will be subject to user-testing in the same way as the English version, and we will consult the Electoral Commission’s Welsh language experts to ensure that the translation is accurate and user- friendly.
The Welsh Language Commissioner has no formal statutory role in assessing electoral forms and notices. I am in favour of those with an interest in the process being involved in and aware of user-testing, although it would be unusual to provide a statutory role for the commissioner here and not in respect of other polls. In summary, I believe it is important that the wording of the petition appears in the Bill, and that it is user-tested and commented on to ensure that any improvements which are identified can be made. With those reassurances that we are following established practice in both respects, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Lord for his response. I still think it is an odd way to be moving forward. I am not sure that the Government have thought this through particularly well. We are trying to help the Government with these matters, but at this stage I am prepared to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, the two amendments in this group are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. Amendment 16 mirrors an amendment tabled in Committee by my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside.
I disagree with both the Government and the Electoral Commission on whether, when the recall provisions have been triggered, it will be a local event with a local feel. It would be a grave error for a running total to be published throughout the eight-week signing period. It will be a national event and a potential media circus, with different outlets reporting daily on the number of people who have signed the petition. If the noble Lord is not minded to accept my amendment, I hope that he will confirm very clearly to your Lordships’ House that this will not be allowed to happen and that in the regulations that will be issued it will be explicit that the number of people who have signed the petition cannot be released under any circumstances during the signing period.
Amendment 18 requires the petition officer to make public the number of people on the electoral register at the cut-off period before the petition process opens. This will enable everyone to be clear on the number of signatures needed to trigger the recall process. It is very important that everyone involved in the process is clear on the number of signatures needed to have a Member of Parliament recalled, and for there to be no doubt about what that figure is.
Again, if the Minister is not minded to accept my amendment, I hope that in responding he will give a clear assurance to the House that this will be explicit in the regulations he issues. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am very happy to confirm that the Government’s intention is that the regulations will require the petition officer to make public the number of eligible electors in the constituency—as has been suggested—and that the regulations would not sanction the issuing of a running total during the petition process itself.
As I said in Committee, the Bill does not specify whether a running total should be published, but further detail would be a matter for the conduct regulations. It would not be consistent with the level of detail in the Bill to specify these matters here but I can assure the noble Lord that we have heard and understood his arguments, that we agree with them and that they will be adequately covered in the regulations. On that basis I again hope that he is sufficiently reassured to be able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for his response. I am reassured and am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendments 17, 19 and 20 again are in my name and the name of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town.
Amendment 17 would bring in a deadline of the end of the fifth week to be able to apply to sign the petition by post. At both Committee stage and in the memorandum which outlines the draft regulation, the only information provided by the Government on the limitations on signing the petition by post was that the procedures for elections and referendums would not be appropriate for the recall process. However, a letter to my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside stated that the Government intended to maintain the same time limits. So can the Minister tell the House why 11 days is deemed appropriate? Who has been consulted on this?
Even with the Government’s commitment to increase the number of signing places from four to 10—which is welcome—it is reasonable to believe that there will be a greater demand to sign the petition by post. Given all that, does the Minister think that 11 working days will be long enough to check—and double-check—all the applications that may be received? Our amendment allows for a longer period to check that everything is okay. It enhances security and enables greater vigilance to be deployed by petition officers, as they will have more time to undertake their work.
Amendments 19 and 20 are the same as those I moved in Committee. They raise the penalty for double signing from an illegal practice to a corrupt one. I was disappointed that the Minister did not accept those amendments then. I have had some discussions with him outside the Chamber and I would be interested to hear careful words from him that clearly state that the reasons for double signing will not necessarily be the same and that therefore on some occasions prosecutions in the corrupt band would be necessary, while in others they would be in the illegal band.
As I said in Committee, a corrupt practice at an election includes things such as impersonating another individual to use their vote, signing and submitting a false election expense return or attempting to bribe, treat or use undue influence on a voter, whereas an illegal practice includes not putting an imprint on your leaflet. The noble Lord must surely accept that the former offences are more in keeping with the double signing offence than are the latter. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to this and other points I have raised. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for again raising these issues, which we have discussed in Committee. As I stated in Committee, the detail of how postal and proxy signing will operate will be dealt with in the regulations made under Clause 18. This again mirrors the approach made at UK parliamentary elections, where the rules for absent voting appear in secondary legislation.
Therefore, the Bill itself does not set a deadline by which postal signature sheet applications must be received. At an election this is usually the 11th working day before the poll, which allows applications received in the days just before and up to the deadline to be processed and postal ballot packs issued to electors for them to complete and return in time for the close of poll.
As I previously stated, for a petition it is possible to set a deadline during the petition signing period itself. The last day of the period is, in effect, analogous to polling day at an election, so there needs to be a cut-off point. I therefore have some sympathy with the policy suggestion made by this amendment, and can confirm our intention that the regulations will set a deadline. However, the amendment is not necessary, as the regulation powers in the Bill are sufficient to enable a deadline for applications to be set.
It would be prudent to ensure that the rules about postal and proxy signing are set out clearly in a single place for the benefit of practitioners and campaigners, and in this sense it is not helpful to specify the deadline for only postal signature sheet applications in the Bill. So the regulations will set out regulations for both postal and proxy voting.
Amendments 19 and 20 would modify the nature of the offence in the Bill for signing the petition twice, making it a corrupt rather than an illegal practice. It does this by amending provisions in the Representation of the People Act 1983 that apply to the offence of double voting. These amendments were originally tabled in Committee.
Clause 12 makes it an offence for two or more signatures to be added to the petition by or on behalf of any individual elector, just as in elections it is an offence for two or more votes to be cast by or on behalf of an individual elector. As was noted in Committee, Clause 12 mirrors the offence of double voting in electoral law in terms of the maximum penalties that apply upon conviction. First, a person guilty of the offence is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, which is up to £5,000—a not inconsiderable sum. Secondly, a person convicted of the offence is incapable for a period of three years of being registered as an elector or voting in parliamentary elections and local government elections in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, being an MP or holding a local government elective office in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. The sentencing court has the option partially or wholly to waive these incapacities.
The amendments proposed would modify the first of these two aspects, with the result that a person convicted of double signing would be liable on conviction to a prison sentence of up to two years. In this respect, the amendments treat the offence like an even more seriously corrupt practice in electoral law such as personation, either by impersonation or via an absent vote.
I read through all this with great fascination. My wife votes twice, and has voted twice for some time, holding a proxy as she does for our son, who has been working in the United States for some time. One of the greatest delights in the past week is that he has just accepted a post at Edinburgh University—so her second proxy vote will be removed as he returns to this country.
The amendments do not amend the second aspect: the duration of the incapacity to vote or stand in an election. The three-year bar is retained, and replaced by a five-year bar for corrupt practices such as personation.
The Government’s view is that the penalties for illegal practices are adequate for the offence of double signing, and that the penalties for corrupt practice are more appropriate for these even more severe offences. Our consideration is—again given the existing law covering electoral offences—that it would be inappropriate to arrange for a different set of standards for petition elections than holds for other forms of election. I hope that that is clear. We are attempting to be consistent here and I hope that on that basis I have again reassured the noble Lord. His knowledge of electoral law is—I am well aware—deeper than mine, but I hope that he will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
I suppose the point I was making was that there are only two possible things that you can do in relation to someone asking you whether you will sign a petition.
I hope this is not really arguable from the Government, but if you have two sides in a democratic contest and one side has got colossally more money than the other, then you simply cannot have a fair contest. You see a lot of discussions where, much as we spell out our arguments, in private we might acknowledge that the other side has a bit of a case. I frankly admit that a lot of decisions in the Bill have been grey rather than black and white: for example, whether you have eight weeks or two weeks to sign the petition and whether there are 10 petition-signing locations or two or three. These are all gradations and grey areas. However, I cannot see a grey area that enables us to have a different opinion as to whether two sides in a two-sided contest should have anything other than broadly similar amounts of money that they can spend, with a clear limit on how much. That is all that needs to be said. I just hope that anyone who cares about democracy and democratic choice—which includes all noble Lords I can see, scanning round this House—should be able to acknowledge that that is something that the Government really must concede on, because it is a matter of simple justice.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, again, this debate has ranged fairly widely. I am happy to discuss further with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside, the level at which abortion law should be dealt with. I remember that some years ago the most obscure protocol to the treaty of Rome was added to a revision negotiation by the Irish Government, which said, “Nothing in this treaty shall countermand Article 39”—I think it was—“of the Irish Constitution”, which meant “Keep off”. About six months later, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow asked that this should be devolved. As soon as we are into multi-level government, the question of what level you do things at—at which level you decide that prisoners should have the vote, to take a hypothetical example—begins to be contested among the different levels. We now have several levels, and I am happy to talk about that further.
We discussed some of what we are discussing now, in not dissimilar terms, on the then Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, in which the Government were very much concerned in particular about the possibility of foreign money coming in through various umbrella groups and intervening in and influencing election campaigns. I recognise that there is a potential problem here, but we think it can be contained.
Here as elsewhere, in drafting the Bill, we employed the regulatory regime for campaign spending and donations drawn from existing electoral law. The proposed campaign rules for recall petitions follow those for referendums. In referendums, you have to report your spending at the £500 limit. In recall campaigns, £500 buys you a very small amount of activity. It does not seem to us that the image which the noble Baroness depicted almost, of a gentleman arriving from Switzerland with plastic bags with cash in them to distribute to various local householders, is a likely one; or, if it were to happen, that it would not appear in the Guardian or the Mail very quickly. We therefore think that £500 is the de minimis amount.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Lord mentioned a situation in which a Member of Parliament might have been campaigning against certain practices by Hoffman-LaRoche—or indeed by a subsidiary of HSBC. There might be international interest in disposing of that Member of Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was merely making the de minimis point. Above £500, you have to report. These amounts are then controlled and the question of what is a permissible donor comes into the existing corpus of electoral law. We are proceeding here in the same way as we have been proceeding in other cases. We have not diverged from the principles of regulation that have been proved to work and which are compatible, in our opinion, with the nature of campaigning. The de minimis is £500, and for accredited campaigners, those who are intending to spend over £500, only payments of over £500 are considered donations. These must be verified to confirm that they come from a permissible source and are reported as part of the recall petition return. The £500 limit for registration and reporting logically relates to the £500 limit below which payments do not have to be regarded as donations.
There has been some concern expressed that recall petitions will not be local events. We understand that we all prefer these to be local events. A recall petition is a question about who should be the representative of local issues at Westminster and therefore we wish local residents to have as much influence as possible. Our hesitation over designating one lead campaigner on both sides is partly because in those circumstances the likelihood of a national organisation being the first to come in to the arena and claim to be the accredited campaigner is part of the argument that we would resist. Incidentally, we do not assume, as I think that those who have spoken do, that there will be a huge imbalance on one side, with the poor MP left with only one sort of supporter gathered in his own campaign, and on the other side all the armies of Gideon arrayed around in different orders. An MP who has a justified case is likely to have a range of supporters on his or her side.
Lord Grocott
The Minister may or may not be right about the proportion on either side. The principle is surely that there should not be a massive disparity and that the legislation should provide for that. That is the point.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am merely talking about the difficulty of having one accredited lead campaigner on either side. That takes us too far into the referendum campaign. The question of how one gets towards agreeing one accredited campaigner will need, I suspect, a good deal more than eight weeks to sort out.
Lord Howarth of Newport
If it were accepted that there could be more than one accredited campaigner on each side, would there be any objection on the Minister’s part to aggregating the expenditure of the campaign’s pro and con, for and against the Member of Parliament, so that the totality of the funding available to the range of accredited campaigners was limited to £10,000 or whatever the appropriate limit would be?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will have to take that one away and think about it. The Government have not considered this so far and it is therefore not within my current brief.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I hope—I think—that I understand him as saying that it is something he will be prepared to look at so that we could consider it again at Third Reading.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I cannot give that assurance at the moment. Between now and Third Reading we have some time, as he well knows. Of course we continue to consider all matters, but at the moment I am not persuaded.
We do not see the question on Amendment 23 as entirely justified. The argument for an accredited campaigner in a referendum, as was said before, is that they are then rewarded with a substantial government grant to support the campaign. That will not take place in this area.
Perhaps I may finally stress that permissible donations for accredited campaigns will also follow the same rules as others. They will be reported and controlled. If I may refer to Amendment 24, which we will discuss next, I see value in ensuring that the Electoral Commission in particular has access to the information necessary to assess the appropriateness of the spending and donation rules. We will be debating this in the next amendment. The question of how far in we pull the Electoral Commission is one to which the Government are live and sympathetic.
Lord Grocott
Before he sits down, I really need to have it from the Government’s mouth that the Minister’s fairly lengthy response is basically saying that the Government are relaxed about the possibility of one side in a two-horse race having vastly more expenditure than the other, and that they are not prepared to make any rules to prevent that happening. I just want to hear it from the Minister because this is a very serious point. If that is the Government’s position, it is his responsibility to the House to say it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand that. It is a one-horse race, of course. The other does not have a horse at all, so to speak. The Government are not prepared to designate a single lead campaigner on either side. We are not persuaded that an overall limit is practical or measurable, but that is one of the things we will come to in Amendment 24. There are several issues in this, as I well understand, including the question of foreign non-permissible donations, which we will come to in Amendment 24.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, it is interesting that it was the Minister himself who mentioned the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Not everyone was here for that, but once charities go into a single campaign they have to take responsibility for the expenditure of others; they have to nominate a lead, and the expenditure of a small charity goes against the upper limit on what a big charity can spend. The Government were very happy to do that but somehow this is different.
This is really a nonsense. It is not about the MP having lots of people on their side. If it was a Labour person who had been kept out of the House for 10 days, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens would all be voting for a by-election. Each could spend £10,000 and the Minister is clearly content with that.
I am even more unhappy about the Minister’s complete acceptance that foreign money up to £500 can come in, not controlled in the way that we control donations —very sensibly and rightly—to the political process from those who have no skin in the game as far as our elections are concerned. We will have non-doms, tax evaders, anyone—all giving up to £500, and the Government are quite content with that. It is for that reason that I ask the Government to go through the Lobbies and vote for the continuation of this Bill, which will allow foreign money up to £500 to be given. I beg to test the opinion of the House so that people outside can see that that is what the Government are content with.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 24, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, would ensure that all returns by campaigners are subject to being checked by the Electoral Commission. Our amendment deletes the phrase “on request” from paragraph 8 of Schedule 5 and thereby requires a petition officer to deliver a copy of all the recall petition returns they have received.
This is a small but significant amendment and will require the Electoral Commission to take a greater role in the process than it currently seems prepared to do. I understand why it appears reluctant to do more. We hope that recall will never have to be used but if it is, it will be infrequent. Therefore, we do not believe there will be an overburdening of the Electoral Commission with vast amounts of additional work. As a former member of the Electoral Commission, I am confident that it has both the staff and financial resources to undertake this work, which will be required extremely infrequently. As I said in Committee, the Commission has recently looked at the returns and produced valuable advice, and I see no reason why it could do not it in this process as well.
At present there is no obligation on anybody to check the returns of campaigners. This is surely a ridiculous situation to be in. The petition officer has to record the receipt of returns but is not responsible for scrutiny of the financial dealings of campaigners. The returns of campaigners need to be checked to ensure confidence in the process for many of the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, mentioned in the previous discussion. I do not think many noble Lords will disagree with that and the Electoral Commission should be the organisation to do it, as it has the financial and staffing capacity and the expertise to do the work. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are keen to encourage participation in recall petitions, but in allowing this freedom of participation it is vital that the rules governing campaigning are appropriate and are complied with. In what will, we hope—as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, suggested—be the very rare event of a recall petition being initiated, spending and donation returns will be subject to high levels of scrutiny. This is made possible by the transparency that the Bill affords. Recall petition returns are to be made publicly available for a period of two years. Any member of the public can review these and report any evidence of wrongdoing to the police, who will investigate the matter. If it is thought that there is substance to the allegations, the police can refer the matter to the CPS, which may launch a prosecution.
A person could also lodge a petition with the electoral court if they thought that the alleged breach of electoral law had affected the outcome of the petition. As the Bill stands, the Electoral Commission is also able to produce a report on a recall petition. This report would look at the administration of the campaign, how the rules on spending and donations actually worked and whether the limits set in the Bill are appropriate. The decision to produce this report lies with the Electoral Commission. The Government consider that providing the Electoral Commission with this reporting power is vital to ensuring confidence in the process and outcome of a recall petition.
To support this, the commission has been given the power to request recall petition returns from the petition officer. This amendment, which would require petition officers automatically to forward recall petition returns to the Electoral Commission, could further add confidence in the approach to regulation taken for recall petitions. So the Government recognise the merits behind this amendment and will consider this issue further before Third Reading. At this point, and with that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Lord for that. I am very pleased with the response of noble Lords and, on that basis, I am very happy to withdraw the amendment. I look forward to having a discussion between now and Third Reading.