Iran: Human Rights
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they have taken to co-ordinate international representations about the execution of Mr Gholamreza Khossravi Savadjani, a political prisoner in Iran’s Evin Prison, and about the use of capital punishment and the human rights situation in Iran.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we are aware of the execution of Gholamreza Khossravi on 1 June this year. The right to life is a fundamental human right and the UK opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances. The UK continues to call on the Iranian Government to implement a moratorium on the death penalty and to guarantee the rights and freedoms of all Iranians.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. It is quite disappointing in so far as what seems to dominate is the relationship that his Government want to have with Mr Rouhani. Will he acknowledge that since President Rouhani was elected there have been more than 550 executions? They are running now at the rate of two a day. The influence of Rouhani across the frontier in Iraq has led to killings running at the rate of about 1,000 a month with 4,000 Iraqis being injured. All in all, since we intervened in Iraq not so many years ago, do we not have a responsibility to Iraq and Iran to make amends by standing up and publicly and internationally exposing the injustice to the people we left behind?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think the noble Lord’s last remark is a reference to the PMOI. I recognise that it is a linked issue. The UN rapporteur’s most recent report on human rights in Iran demonstrates that human rights in Iran continue to be awful and that Iran is the second most frequent executor of prisoners in the world after China and indeed, in terms of size of population, the largest. We have no illusions on the quality of prison life, the use of torture or the absence of an adequate rule of law within Iran. Nevertheless, Iran is a complex political structure. It is not as simple a dictatorship as some of the states with which we have to deal. We think it is worth while pursuing an opening with the new president, and we are cautiously and carefully negotiating to see what is possible. The noble Lord shakes his head, but I think we have learnt from our experience in Iraq that blundering into a country with a large army and overthrowing the regime does not always lead to a much better outcome. Evolution is better than revolution.
Lord Eden of Winton (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend recollect that when the present president was elected, there was widespread expectation that he would introduce a more humane and moderate regime in Iran? In the light of the disappointments—to put it mildly—which have since been evidenced in that country, what recent discussions have Her Majesty’s Government had with the Government of the United States of America who share jointly with us some responsibility for what is going on?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have close and continuing discussions with the United States on Iran, as on other Middle Eastern questions. I am conscious that one of my colleagues was talking to his American opposite number yesterday. We deal with many states across the world whose record on human rights is imperfect, if not awful. Nevertheless, we have to deal with them and try our best to improve their record.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, will my noble friend bring some pressure to bear on the Iranian regime to ensure that the UN special rapporteur, Mr Ahmed Shaheed, is admitted and granted a visa so that he can examine precisely what is going on in some of the penal establishments in Iran?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are doing so and recognise that that is an enormous problem. That issue was flagged in his most recent report.
Baroness Afshar (CB)
My Lords, it is important to emphasise that Islam has accepted all preceding religions and has absolutely denounced killing. Therefore, what they are doing in Iran is un-Islamic and abhorrent, as is the case in Saudi Arabia and many other countries. For a country that is ruling in the name of a religion, it is crucial to point out in the discussions that what they are doing does not adhere to the faith that they claim to support.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely agree with that. We have to remember that there is something of a civil society in Iran, in spite of the current regime. Iran has an ancient civilisation and much pride in that ancient civilisation. The persecution of minorities—both religious minorities such as the Baha’i and ethnic minorities such as the Ahwazi Arabs—is also a stain on the current Iranian regime. We know that there are many people in Tehran and elsewhere who likewise disapprove of that. We continue to make our case.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, has the Minister had a chance to look at the letter sent to him at the Foreign Office by his noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew last weekend? It concerns not just the death of Mr Savadjani, but a number of members of the Iranian resistance who are currently scheduled for execution. In the light of what the Minister has just said about the plight of the Baha’is, would he like to make some further comment about the execution of Baha’i believers in Iran?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have condemned extremely strongly the persecution of the Baha’i. There are still, as the noble Lord knows, a large number in prison. I have not seen my noble friend Lord Carlile’s letter; I will look at it and will write to the noble Lord.
Coalition Government: Constitution Committee Report
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this has been a serious and worthwhile debate. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, both for this report and for her chairmanship of the committee. I have had the nervous privilege of appearing before it on one or two occasions, and I have always been asked extremely sharp questions.
I must apologise to the House that the noble Baroness has not yet received a governmental response. We had hoped that it would be ready before this debate. I will take back to the Cabinet Office the strong views expressed in this debate, and I will do my utmost to ensure that we have it available for the next chance that the House will have to debate constitutional issues, which I think will be the last day of the Queen’s Speech debate. I may not be able to deliver on that—I am conscious that in government at present the number of people who have to agree something of this significance is rather larger than it would be in a single-party Government; that is of course part of the problem of coalition government—but I will do my best.
Since the committee published its report in February, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place and the Institute for Government have both published reports on the final year of a fixed-term Parliament, which I have also read, as no doubt have many others who have contributed to this debate. The reports also provide some very useful information—in the Institute for Government’s case, resting on extensive interviews with civil servants—about what we may need to think about over the next 12 months, and indeed over the next few months, in order to prepare for the final months of this fixed-term Parliament.
There have been some elements of knockabout politics in this debate and certainly some elements of nostalgia for a firm two-party system; I also felt that there was such nostalgia in a great deal of evidence given to the committee. The rose-tinted spectacles that the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, has for that classic golden age of British government of 1974-79 are fascinating. Some of us have seen that interesting play, “This House”, about the experience of the 1974-79 Government, and that is not quite the quality of government that I remember. Some of us will have our doubts on minority government reinforced by that experience and our commitment to stable coalition strengthened.
Much of the evidence to the committee—which I read with fascination on Sunday—suggested that coalition will prove to have been exceptional; that single-party government is purer and clearer than coalition; that voters can give only one Government a mandate; and that if no party gets a majority of seats, it will be cleaner and somehow more democratic for the largest party on its own to form a minority Government. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, got a little close to saying that in describing his attitude to mandate. Perhaps off the Floor of the House he and I might discuss the difference between the Burkean view of parliamentary democracy and the populist view of popular democracy in which a general election is in effect a referendum to choose among the manifestos of the parties. I am for a parliamentary democracy; and in the British constitution as conventionally understood, it is Parliament that chooses the Government, and the Government rest on maintaining a majority in Parliament.
As the noble Lords, Lord Lang and Lord Norton, said in the evidence, ours is an adversarial constitution based on the assumption that politics has to be based on the alternation in power of two mass parties contesting for power. As a number of noble Lords have also said, our constitution now has to adjust to the disappearance of mass parties and the splintering of popular loyalties. The latest public opinion polls, which your Lordships have all read in the past two or three days, show that the largest party is at 33.6% of the electorate. The second largest is at 31%, with two other parties at over 10%. There are some eight to nine different parties now represented in the House of Commons, depending on how one counts the Northern Ireland MPs. I note that the Prime Minister had a reception last week for the unionist MPs for Northern Ireland, which suggests that the potential for future government is being thought about in all sorts of ways. It is more likely that the diversity of parties will increase in the next Parliament, rather than decrease.
I note, from a discussion within the Labour Party and in the Guardian, the 35% strategy, and that Labour might perhaps hope to win a majority of seats on a third of the vote, or possibly even to form a minority Government on its own on the basis of 32% or 33% of the vote. There is a question of legitimacy here. I noted with great amusement in the 9 April evidence that the Deputy Prime Minister gave to the Constitution Committee that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, asked him what he thought was wrong with an appointed second Chamber. He said that there was a question of legitimacy, to which the noble and learned Lord said, “Only legitimacy?”. Legitimacy is a problem for government.
With this coalition Government we have had four years of remarkably stable government. I recall all the predictions from the Labour Benches in this House and the other place, to start with, that it would not last a year. It is highly likely at the next election that the people will fail or refuse to elect a majoritarian House of Commons for a single party. That will face us with the choice of changing the people, as the Leninists would like to say, or agreeing to adapt the constitution. I think that it is quite clear that we will have to adapt the constitution, and this report helpfully suggests a number of ways in which we should adapt.
From my experience of coalition Government, however, there are a number of coalition practices that ought to be practices of good government for any Government. We have returned to collective responsibility. We have had more formal meetings. Sometimes I feel that one of the problems with coalition Government is that it takes infinitely more time. There have to be more meetings—of our side and their side as well as of the two of us together. However, it means that government decisions are in most cases rather better considered. As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said, coalition strengthens the careful consideration of policies and limits unconsidered ministerial initiatives.
I also read in some of the evidence given to the committee a suggestion that coalition weakens the Prime Minister and that what we want is a really strong, effective, executive Prime Minister. After the experience of Tony Blair as Prime Minister, I think that there is quite a strong case for saying that having an Executive who are more effectively constrained by Parliament and collective discussion among different parties are good things for good government.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton, made some odd remarks about inexperienced Ministers. My recollection is that after 13 years of a Labour Government, virtually no incoming Ministers in the current Government—Conservative or Liberal Democrat—had prior ministerial experience. The question of whether there should have been more training—the sort of work the Institute for Government is now offering—is one that we will all have to consider further.
The rose-tinted spectacles also touched on what the final years of single-party government were like. I remember the Major Government in 1996-97, with all the remarks about the “bastards” doing their best to stab the Prime Minister in the back. We all have memories of the last year of the Brown Government in 2009-10 and of the last year of the minority Labour Government in 1978-79. All demonstrated that each of our established major parties is itself a coalition—and sometimes an unstable and ill-tempered coalition at that.
A range of issues was raised in this excellent report. First, on the formation of a Government, I think we can all strongly agree that it may well need more than five days, that we would not wish to follow continental practice by allowing it to extend too far and that an agreement that it would be 12 days before Parliament meets probably sends the right signal for government formation. I think we also agree that we have moved some way towards the concept of a caretaker Government. That is also a good thing in the circumstances. The question was raised of how much information and advice would be given by civil servants. I can assure noble Lords that Civil Service support for government formation negotiations will again be offered.
I strongly agree—and I trust that my colleagues in government in the response will also strongly agree—that the Queen’s Speech offers the occasion for a vote to accept a coalition agreement, although the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, was quite correct to say that it is a good thing if both parties are seen to accept it. My party had a special conference, and I have heard a number of Conservatives quietly say that they wish they had done something like that to tie their party into what they were doing. That would also perhaps be good practice.
A lot of time in this debate and in the report was spent on the issue of collective responsibility. I have to say that I was surprised to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, refer to “frequent” breaches of the doctrine of collective responsibility in this Government. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell—if I heard him correctly—referred to the “abandonment” of collective responsibility. The Cabinet Manual says that collective responsibility should rest upon collective decision-making:
“Before a decision is made, ministers are given the opportunity to debate the issue, with a view to reaching an agreed position”.
That is quite clear: collective responsibility comes from collective decision-making.
There have been occasions in previous Governments when Prime Ministers have taken decisions without consulting their colleagues—occasionally even the Chancellor of the Exchequer—and I would argue that, with a limited number of exceptions, collective responsibility in this Government works extremely well. The write-round has become much more the ritual procedure, partly because one has to make sure that Liberal Democrat and Conservative Ministers agree on things. It even reaches down to my lowly level. My stress level rose considerably last week when I received four 100-page reports with requests for my views on them by the close of play the following day because they had to go up to separate Secretaries of State. However, that is collective decision-making which ties us all in.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and others remarked that a lot of this is to do with trust and a willingness to compromise, and we all know that in any Government there will be some with whom it is easy to work on a trustful basis and others with whom it will be difficult. I remember being told by officials that in the 1974 to 1979 Government there were papers marked, “Do not show to Tony Benn”. There was a lack of trust within the coalition that was the Labour Party. On the whole, in any Government one can write down the rules but one needs to have a degree of give and take and a willingness to make it work that keeps the Government together. From my own limited experience within this Government, I have to say that it works pretty well. There are, of course, exceptions from time to time—trust does break down—but we are still here, and we will be here until May next year.
I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said that breaches of collective responsibility demonstrate the unsuitability of coalitions to the British system of government—although perhaps I misheard her on that. It seems to me that collective responsibility has had to adapt to coalition, and has adapted fairly well.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
What I said was that it lent some credibility to those who argue that the system of coalition Government was not as suited as others to our system of government.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
As it happens, I visited Hughenden two weeks ago and bought and have since read the biography of Disraeli by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd. I have now discovered the very odd conditions under which he made the great statement that coalitions are not suitable to the British constitution. I think that we all now agree that the British constitution can adapt to a stable coalition Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and others raised the question of the Lords. Much of the question of what we do with the Salisbury/Addison convention was discussed in the Joint Committee on Conventions in 2007. I agree strongly with what the noble Lord said in his evidence, and has said again tonight, that the conventions have adapted since then. The Lords conventionally does not vote against the Second Reading of any Bill, but we are willing to amend it. The idea of the mandate and the manifesto Bill was much easier in the 1940s and 1950s, when parties got 48% or 50% of the vote. When giving evidence to that Joint Committee, I went back to that 1945 Labour manifesto, which has a page that lists a series of Bills that the Labour Party wished to take through. I compared that with the 1997 Labour manifesto, in which I could find no single firm commitment of that sort. We have all changed our manifestos in that way.
I have some sympathy with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on the numbers of Ministers in the Lords and their degree of seniority—and I have, of course, intense sympathy with his remarks on those who are not paid, but perhaps we will save that for another time.
The question of fixed-term Parliaments has also been raised. The question of how we handle the final year of such a Parliament is clearly one that we all need to address fairly rapidly. Some interesting comments have been made about the opportunity that the final year provides to think longer term and to prepare. One area in which I have some responsibility is the national security strategy, which should be prepared in the fifth year of a Government for publication early in the new term of the new Government. That is something that we should think actively about for some other areas as well. For example, we could all consider long-term spending trends within government and how far we cope with the inexorable rise in health costs and pensions, which we all know are coming down to us. There is a great deal there to discuss further.
On access to civil servants, I confirm that there will be no change in the long-standing principles set out in the Cabinet Manual and that guidance on pre-election contacts will be issued to civil servants nearer the time when contacts are due to commence, at the beginning of October.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, raised the question of whether we have to have a wash-up. As we have just discovered at the end of this Session, one can never predict until the end of the Session whether we will have agreed all Bills by the time the Session comes to an end. We may hope that we will agree everything by then, but we will have to see what happens when it comes to it.
Lastly, we have not talked very much about the role of the Civil Service. The role of the Civil Service in holding a coalition together is vital. I hope that the Constitution Committee will return to the role of the Civil Service in further inquiries. From my own experience of the high quality of officials and their remarkable tact and patience in managing the coalition Government, I have to say that we have been extremely well served. I have found the work of the special advisers for both parties absolutely invaluable. The distinction between their role and that of officials is also something to which the Constitution Committee might return.
I again apologise to noble Lords that they have not yet had the Government’s response to the report. I thank the committee very much for this invaluable report. It is a subject which we all need to think about as we approach the next election. The opinion polls will no doubt go up and down in various directions, but after the election we will have to face the question of how we form the next Government, whatever shape that may be.
Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 24 March be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
In many ways I deeply regret that we are coming to this very late in an empty House. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I agree that this is a very important transition. It is in the interests of all parties that we get this transition to individual registration right. Perhaps—I raise this as a question for the new Session—it might be appropriate before the summer to have, if the Opposition care to suggest it, another debate on where we are and how confident we are that the transition is going ahead.
The Electoral Commission reported in its readiness report published at the end of March that significant progress had been made in preparing for the transition, and that there was no reason to delay the implementation of IER. Since the commission made its assessment, further progress has been made, particularly in the testing of the IT arrangements that will support the new system. Thus, all is going well. From my perspective all is going much better than I thought when I was originally briefed some 18 months ago. IER is set to start in June in England and Wales and in September in Scotland.
The draft instrument for England and Wales before the House today will enable a significant change to help the electoral registration officers—EROs—in two-tier local government areas to make their registers as accurate and complete as possible. The two instruments also make further refinements designed to get IER off to the best possible start. The significant change is that the draft regulations for England and Wales will provide for local data matching in two-tier areas. They will authorise EROs in two-tier local government areas, which are appointed by district councils, to inspect records kept by the county council and to make copies of information contained in them. This will remove the current anomaly that allows EROs in unitary authorities to inspect a wider range of locally held data such as—this is highly relevant to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—lists of school students who are approaching voting age, than their counterparts in two-tier areas.
In addition, the regulations will authorise but not require the authority by which the ERO was appointed, and in two-tier areas the relevant county council, to disclose to the ERO information contained in records held by that authority. This can happen only if an agreement is in place between the authority and the ERO as to the processing of the information. This will put all EROs on an equal footing as regards the right to inspect information. It will also permit, subject to conditions, the disclosure of data by local authorities to EROs in a form suitable for electronic matching against the electoral register. The Cabinet Office ran pilot data-matching schemes in 2013 which indicated that as many as 100,000 eligible voters might be identified through two-tier data matching. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this measure will be very helpful to EROs in getting as many of these additional eligible people as possible on to the electoral register.
I know that there has been some disappointment that this instrument does not do more. I am familiar with the initiative in Northern Ireland to raise registration levels among attainers—that is, 16 and 17 year-olds—in schools. Bite the Ballot has been active in promoting a similar scheme in Great Britain, and I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate its members most sincerely on their efforts. The Northern Ireland initiative has worked well in the Northern Ireland context. That is why we have learnt from the work of Northern Ireland colleagues when considering what to do in Great Britain—but life moves on, and what works well in one place may well not necessarily work so well in another.
There are good reasons why we cannot simply replicate exactly the same approach for Great Britain. For example, the delivery structure in Great Britain is different. There is one single registration service in Northern Ireland as against 363 in Great Britain. Regulations in Northern Ireland enable the chief electoral officer to request post-primary schools to provide him with lists of the names, addresses and dates of birth of pupils. This would be almost impossible to replicate in a place such as London, where pupils at an individual school might come from any or all of London’s 32 boroughs, each with its own ERO, or indeed from local authorities outside the London area. Further, some students may not be British or Commonwealth citizens.
Crucially, we are introducing online registration for the first time. This was not available at the time of the introduction of IER in Northern Ireland, which was therefore required to be based on paper forms that EROs took into schools. We expect online registration to be by far the easiest way for young people to register, and the paper-based approach practised in Northern Ireland would therefore be a step backwards.
I understand, too, that EROs across Great Britain already take proactive measures to encourage young people to register to vote and to promote democratic participation generally. Local authority staff have made visits to schools and colleges to give talks on voter registration and to get young people to fill in registration forms. EROs have facilitated organisations such as the UK Youth Parliament by providing advice and equipment for running youth elections and have organised events such as “political speed dating” and young mayor competitions to encourage interest in democracy and put young people in contact with their elected representatives. Much is being done already on the mainland to encourage young people on to the register.
None the less, the Northern Ireland schools initiative has played an important part in providing the evidence and the business case for developing the Rock Enrol! exercise. Rock Enrol! is a learning resource that is freely available from the Cabinet Office. It gives young people the opportunity to register to vote and allows them to discuss the importance of doing so. The Government have announced that all local authorities in Great Britain, alongside five national organisations, will share £4.2 million in funding to maximise registration. EROs have been encouraged to use this funding to support the delivery of Rock Enrol! in their area in order to ensure that we target attainers effectively as part of our maximising registration work.
Your Lordships will have observed that these regulations do not include any provision for local data sharing in Scotland. This is because the different local government structure in Scotland renders unnecessary a provision for two-tier areas data sharing as drafted for England and Wales. However, the Cabinet Office is consulting EROs and local government bodies in Scotland to establish whether there is any need to make provision for disclosure of information to an ERO by the council which appointed him or her. If there is such a need, it will be included in a suitable future instrument.
I turn now to the provisions for the further refinements that we are making to the IER arrangements. Both sets of regulations will disapply the usual requirements for follow-up actions by the ERO where the ERO has invited a person to register to vote who he or she has reason to believe would, if registered, be registered as a special category elector such as an overseas elector, a person with a service declaration or an elector with an anonymous entry. These are small but important categories. The effect of the current regulations is that EROs are required to take specified steps to encourage applications to register in certain cases. They must send an invitation to register and, where necessary, two reminder letters and a canvasser to the elector’s residence.
There is, of course, some enthusiasm among EROs to be sent to canvass overseas electors in places such as the United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand and Florida, but noble Lords will understand the issue of the costs involved. They will appreciate that these steps can be impractical and/or expensive, and the need for greater sensitivity in the case of anonymously registered voters will often make letters or visits undesirable. I can assure your Lordships that the legislation will not prevent EROs sending invitations to register to special category electors. It will merely change the subsequent actions from a mandatory process to one that will be at the discretion of the ERO.
The Government are working with the Electoral Commission to provide guidance to be issued to EROs in the summer of this year specifically encouraging them to be proactive in carrying out their duty of inviting those whose registration has expired to register. It will reinforce the need to send follow-up reminders to special category electors where the ERO believes that this will be effective.
The Government will introduce further secondary legislation that will require EROs to encourage special category electors to reregister before their registration expires. Under existing regulations, EROs are required to send a reminder to reregister to special category electors, excluding anonymous electors, between two and three months before their registration expires. The Government will amend these regulations to compel EROs to send an additional reminder. This has two advantages over the reminders sent following an invitation to register. First, it will reduce the burden on electors by preventing the need for a completely new application. Secondly, it will reduce both the cost and time burden on EROs by allowing electronic communication of the reminder notice.
The second instrument—the draft regulations for Scotland—also confirms that the date for the introduction of IER in Scotland will be 19 September 2014. The House will have observed that in this respect the regulations amend legislation that was passed quite recently. I ought to explain why that is. We are aware that the combined effect of previous instruments could result in a lack of clarity as to whether the start date for IER in Scotland is 10 June 2014 or 19 September 2014. The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Commencement No. 5 and Transitory Provisions) Order 2014 clearly sets out that the start date in Scotland is 19 September 2014. The draft regulations for Scotland are intended to minimise any potential for confusion on this important point.
I reassure the House again that we are continuing to work to maximise electoral registration. We are considering running further data-matching pilot schemes, building on the work done in previous years to match electoral registers against data held by public authorities. This will help us see what additional data sets might be able to add to the processes for verifying electors’ details and helping find potentially eligible electors who are not yet registered.
The draft Representation of the People (Supply of Information) Regulations 2014 were laid on 6 May 2014. Should Parliament approve them, the regulations will allow political parties the information they will need to promote IER among electors who are not yet individually registered. This is in response to a request from the political parties that at the end of the 2014 canvass they should be given a specific new list of those electors on the register who have been carried forward but not confirmed or registered under IER. The parties have recently told the Cabinet Office that they remain in favour of such a list and are expecting it to be made available to them. I trust that the House will have the opportunity to consider that instrument in the near future.
I return to the two statutory instruments before your Lordships. Each will, in its own way, play a part in the successful implementation of individual electoral registration in Great Britain. I commend them to the House.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I am not a Methodist minister and shall be very brief. I support very strongly the comments made by noble Lords about the importance of action in schools. Like them, I have been greatly impressed by the results of the initiative in Northern Ireland. Speaking as a strong unionist, particularly where Northern Ireland is concerned, I would regard it as an absolute tragedy if lessons that could be usefully drawn from that part of our country went by the wayside and here in Great Britain we failed to profit as we might. I hope that my noble friend will consider very carefully that which Northern Ireland might have to teach us in this matter. He is noted for his open-mindedness and there is perhaps merit in a little further consideration of what has happened in Northern Ireland.
He will be unsurprised that I listened with great interest to the comments he made on the implications of these regulations for British subjects living overseas who are eligible to vote here. I gained the strong impression from what he said that the effect of the changes will be to assist the efforts that some of us, including my noble friend Lord Tyler, are encouraging to seek greater registration among British citizens living abroad who are currently eligible to vote. I know my noble friend supports those efforts, too.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their various contributions. I will take all the thoughts back with me. Let me start by saying that we are all concerned about the problems of low registration. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, really talked about two different problems: we are mostly concerned here about problems in getting young people on to the register. There is another problem, which is people who actually do not want to be on it. We have all been through some of the estates where a large number of people are not on the register and quite strongly tell you—as they put their bull terrier on to you—that they do not want to be on it. That is of course another part of the problem.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I must say that though I may have had various dogs set on me for all sorts of things, it was never so that people would not go on the register.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
We recognise that we have a number of problems. My noble friend Lord Tyler referred to the recent audit of political engagement, which showed the level of political disengagement in the United Kingdom. I happened to be having my hair cut when Sky News ran its European poll on levels of trust in political elites. I regret to say that the United Kingdom comes alongside France and only just behind Belgium in the high levels of distrust in all our political elites. We share a common interest in reversing that and political parties have to work on it. The media have to make their own contribution and bear some responsibility for the rising levels of mistrust we have seen in recent years.
The majority of comments have been about how we get young people on to the register and, in the case of Lord Lexden, about overseas voters. I remind noble Lords that the Northern Ireland Schools Initiative does not automatically register pupils. The registration rate for attainers in Northern Ireland currently stands at 66%, not 100%. Students must still remember to bring in their national insurance number on the day the registration officers visit the school and then choose to register by signing the form.
As electoral registration officers and others go round secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland, they will encourage pupils to register online in the borough in which they live. The two schools closest to Saltaire, Titus Salt and Guiseley, have a mixture of pupils from Leeds and Bradford. That is duplicated across West Yorkshire and, even more so, in London. This is part of the problem, but it will become easier with online registration.
I stress to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that we are not in the business of permitting electoral registration officers to go into schools. A lot of registration officers have already been going into schools for a long time and we encourage them to do so. The Government are a little more reluctant to make this compulsory. The Rock Enrol! initiative was founded on the basis of the experience of Northern Ireland. The business case for its development and ensuring that we were targeting attainers effectively came out of that as part of our work to maximise registration. EROs have been encouraged to use the funding provided by government for maximising registration to support the delivery of Rock Enrol! in their area.
We all understand that there is a great deal more to do to reverse the level of disengagement among young people and older people. We have failed over many years to produce effective citizenship education in our schools; that is another area to which we need to return. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked whether votes at 16 would help in this regard. Perhaps we need to have that debate. I feel that it would also help if local government were stronger and more local so that people actually knew some of their elected representatives.
At the moment I do not have the recommendations of the Electoral Commission on this; I will write to the noble Lord as soon as I discover what they are. However, we are encouraging EROs to work on this and we are providing funding. Two of the five organisations to which we have provided specific funding—UK Youth and the Scottish Youth Parliament—specifically focus on this area. That will help us as we go forward. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, suggested, making sure that young people know something about the political process is part of a wider problem on which successive Governments have not done enough over the past 25 years.
I turn to the issue, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, of overseas voters and how to encourage them. I have learnt, over the past few months, that the number of overseas voters follows a cyclical pattern. It rises in the run-up to a general election and falls off again immediately afterwards. This is completely understandable. Perhaps we may hope that the fixed date of next year’s general election will encourage a larger rise. It was more than 32,000 at the 2010 election. We are working on this by putting advertisements on a number of websites to encourage those living abroad to think about registering. We have made it easier for them to register by reducing the number of documents they have to provide, and we support the efforts that others are making in this respect.
The Government do not think that we can do this on our own. We are working with Bite the Ballot and other voluntary organisations. We are encouraging political parties to do their bit. The other regulation I mentioned takes us further down the road. I assure noble Lords that although we have not entirely duplicated the Northern Ireland Schools Initiative, the Rock Enrol! initiative draws on it. Electoral registration officers on the mainland are already doing the work that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, would like them to do. The Government will follow that, and we hope that the outcome will be registration at least as high as in Northern Ireland. I repeat that there, sadly, it is only two-thirds. We will do our best to hit that target.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Tyler, Lord Roberts and Lord Lexden, who made excellent points. I agree almost entirely with what they said. I found some of the Minister’s response a bit unconvincing, and I think we will be returning to this many more times.
The point I found most unconvincing was about the one electoral registration officer in Northern Ireland, where, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it works fine. The idea that the more than 300 EROs in England and Wales and the Electoral Management Board in Scotland will not know their local college and school and so could not possibly do it right is just nonsense. We hear lots from the Government about localism and all sorts of things.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is not the point. Of course, we all know our local college and school. The problem is that you cannot go into a school with a set of forms and encourage young people to fill them in because they do not all live in the same authority. Particularly in London boroughs, you are very often dealing with pupils from a number of different authorities, so if one were to do it on paper, that would be extremely complicated. That is why I stressed that the move to online registration gives us a much easier way of coping with this diversity of electoral authorities.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am still not very convinced. Luckily the Electoral Commission now produces standard forms. I think the Minister may need to go back and reflect on that a bit more in government. That is not a credible argument.
I am very tempted to test the opinion of the House on this, but at this time it is probably not worth me doing so. I assure the Minister that I will come back and test it on a future date. I hope he will come back with a few more convincing arguments than those tonight. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 24 March be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Motion agreed.
Voting: Young People
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Tomlinson, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government have announced that five national organisations and every local authority in Great Britain are sharing £4.2 million in funding to promote voter registration, including among young people. The Cabinet Office has written to electoral registration officers encouraging them to use this funding to support the delivery of Rock Enrol, a learning resource which provides an opportunity for young people to register to vote and enables them to discuss the importance of doing so in schools or colleges.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, only 44% of young people aged 18 to 24 actually voted in the 2010 general election, citizen training is virtually non-existent in our schools and we have the threat of IER, which risks wiping thousands of young people off the register. When are the Government finally going to do something to engage young people and get them on to the register?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are conscious that this is a long-term problem. The number of young people voting in elections has been going down for the past 25 years. When I was drafting my party’s manifesto for the 1997 election, I remember being told by a number of people in my party that we had to recognise that fewer young people voted than older people. That problem has been growing and it is still growing. With schools, students forums, funding a number of organisations, and working with Bite the Ballot and others, we are doing our utmost to mitigate that. From June this year we are also introducing online registration, which we hope will help young people find it easier to register.
Lord Naseby (Con)
Bearing in mind the Electoral Commission’s recent report on voter registration fraud, what safeguards are there to ensure that only those students at university who are eligible to vote in our national elections are the ones who register? In particular, what care is being taken to ensure that postgraduates on a one-year course, who may be eligible to register, do so but are taken off the register when they leave?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I suspect that a number of us in this Chamber are registered in two different places and have been for many years. Many students are registered in two different places, at their home and at their university. In all matters of electoral registration we have a balance to consider between keeping fraud to a minimum and doing everything that we can to encourage all British citizens to register.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, while I welcome everything that the Government are doing to encourage increases in registration among young people, does the Minister accept that these efforts are very limited and that there is a lot more that they could be doing at relatively little cost? This could include, for example, sending out registration forms to young people when they get their national insurance numbers, when they get their driving licences or when they are applying for student loans. What consideration are the Government giving to those sorts of measures?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, in the most recent visit by representatives of Bite the Ballot to the Cabinet Office they presented it with a draft voter mobilisation Bill that would indeed mean that when young people interacted with the state they would be reminded on each occasion to register. There are a number of quite tricky questions about government and the citizen, and how many things that you pull together in each interaction between government and the citizen, and we may be producing a Green Paper on this next year. We are conscious that the ICT revolution makes all this much easier, but the privacy lobby is not entirely keen on us making it as easy as we would like.
Lord Storey (LD)
My noble friend will be aware that the schools initiative in Northern Ireland saw a 50% increase of the entire young people’s population. Why are we not running such a scheme in the rest of the UK?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are looking at the Northern Ireland Schools initiative that took electoral registration officers and others into schools, with forms, and that is one of the things that we will need to consider. We are also talking with teachers from the Association for Citizenship Teaching and others about how to energise students in schools and in further education colleges, to make sure that they are reminded that they have the opportunity and the duty to register to vote.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, is not underregistration among young people only a symptom of the disconnect between the politicians and the people? Does not the sight of a Cabinet Minister hanging on when she should go only aggravate that condition and that disconnect?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. We all know that there is a broader and long-term problem, which did not arise simply with this Government, of popular alienation from politics, and a sense that national politics and Westminster have little to do with the lives of young people in particular. All of us here and in the other place have a shared interest in combating that, rebuilding trust in politics, and regaining a sense of shared citizenship and political values. The Government cannot do that on their own.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, bearing in mind that these are all citizens and subjects of this country, have the Government considered compulsory registration?
Lord Grocott (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that one of the factors that may lead to young people not registering—or, if they do register, not voting—would be if, prior to an election, a major political party were to promise to fight to reduce tuition fees but immediately after the election join with others to treble them?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The noble Lord thinks he makes a very fair point. I might also point out that one of the reasons for people not being interested in elections is that so many seats are safe seats and they know who is going to be elected anyway so there is no point in voting. The noble Lord will remember that he actively opposed the alternative vote.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, have we applauded the work of Bite the Ballot on its National Voter Registration Day—5 February—when it enrolled 40,000 new voters at a cost of 15p a head, which is far less than the government cost? Will we give our support next year to a countrywide National Voter Registration Day?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are actively interested in working with as many voluntary organisations as we can in maximising registration. We congratulate Bite the Ballot on its success this year and we very much hope that it has greater success next year.
European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft Order and Regulations laid before the House on 24 February and 5 March be approved.
Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 31 March.
Electoral Fraud
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Naseby
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recommendations of the recent Electoral Commission report Electoral Fraud in the UK, what action they propose to take to tackle electoral fraud.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we are carefully considering the Electoral Commission’s report and recommendations and will respond in due course. We are clear that any changes to the electoral system should be proportionate and not impose unnecessary barriers to participation by legitimate voters.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I welcome that Answer, as far as it goes, and pay tribute to the work of the Electoral Commission. However, are there not three key dimensions to its report: first, the integrity of the registration; secondly, ensuring that the person voting is the person who is on the register; and, thirdly and lastly, the accuracy of the count? I have had the privilege to win elections by 179 and 141 votes. Against that sort of background, can my noble friend give a commitment that there will, in the next Session of Parliament, be legislation on at least all these three dimensions of electoral law?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not sure how one would legislate on the accuracy of the count. We have a whole system of poll watching, which noble Lords are all well aware of and which most of us, I am sure, have taken part in many times, to check the accuracy of the count. On the question of moving towards individual registration, the introduction of the national insurance number as a verifier is intended as a check on who is being registered. On the question of personation and checking on those who turn up, we are watching that very carefully and are now checking with police officers on reports. All the evidence we have is that the level of personation is extremely low.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, in contrast to my noble friend Lord Naseby, I was once elected with a majority of nine, so I take a considerable personal interest in this matter. On 6 February, we had some exchanges on this issue when my noble friend the Minister emphasised that the risk in this area is of course with postal votes. Can my noble friend now confirm whether every single postal vote cast in next month’s local and European Parliament elections will be checked against a personal identifier?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that was the original intention of the 2006 Act. However, representations from electoral registration officers that that would be difficult led to the Act stating that a minimum of 20% should be checked. In recent elections, we have achieved virtually 100% of postal votes being checked, and we are now confident that with the co-operation of electoral registration officers, it will be 100% in the forthcoming general election.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, there must be zero tolerance for those found breaking the law, but any attempt to prevent millions of law-abiding citizens from being able to cast their vote by post would be hugely disproportionate. Why have the Government done absolutely nothing to get the more than 6 million of our fellow citizens who are presently not registered on to the electoral register? IER, when it is introduced, is not going to solve the problem; it is going to make it worse.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as I have said before at this rostrum, the Government are doing a great deal to maximise the level of registration. We all recognise that we will never reach 100%. The proportion registered had been going down over the previous 15 years and we recognise that there are particular problems, especially with young people. A range of government schemes is currently under way, in co-operation with a range of non-governmental organisations, to raise in particular the number of disadvantaged groups and young people who register to vote. Online registration is but one of the things that we are doing.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, the basis of any fair electoral system must surely be one voter, one vote. Yet the constituency of the Isle of Wight has more than 111,000 voters while the outer islands constituency has barely 22,000. Is my noble friend able to offer any sensible explanation as to why a vote in the Isle of Wight—or in East Ham, Manchester Central or North West Cambridgeshire—is worth only one-quarter or even one-fifth of a vote elsewhere? Does he believe that this is in any way liberal or even vaguely democratic?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, understands that the process of politics is not entirely rational. In the most recent discussions of electoral redistribution, there was an active campaign to prevent the Isle of Wight being split and there was an active campaign to exempt the various Scottish island constituencies. That is the reason for these exceptions to the general rule.
Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)
Will the Minister tell the House whether either the Government or the Electoral Commission have given any thought to following the example of Australia, Luxembourg and a few other countries of making voting compulsory?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The Government have considered everything, but that is not an idea that has led to enormous enthusiasm within government or, I suspect, within this House.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, is it not true that had the Government not taken an irrational decision, an ID card would now be being introduced? We would have been solving problems with registration because everybody would have been entitled to registration. They could have been checked for validity and they could have been voting. We would not have the problem to the same degree that we have with border control, immigration, the NHS, landlords and a whole range of different databases that have now had to be created by this Government. Will they not think again on that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have been through that debate over an extended period. The Government are not persuaded that the original ID card scheme was necessary. It would be extremely costly. As far as voting is concerned, the level of allegations of voting fraud and impersonation is remarkably low. There were in the order of 179 allegations of different sorts of electoral fraud last year, for example, which is within a range of confidence as to the problems we face.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Many believe that postal voting fraud is widespread. Is my noble friend confident that it is not?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, postal vote fraud has always been there. I am old enough to remember constituencies in which representatives of at least one party would go round old people’s homes and fill in the ballot papers with the matron. I will not name which parties might have been engaged in that. That is not new. Postal vote fraud is a problem with which we are all concerned. That is why postal vote identifiers have now been tightened up.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, having correctly pointed out the appallingly low turnout for elections and, on top of that, the appalling low registration figures, does my noble friend accept that a major contributor to that parlous state of affairs is that so many young people feel outside the tent, so to speak, vis-à-vis politics, which is complex, and that people need some sort of education before they leave their schools? Will the Government do something about that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, has a Question on exactly that to be debated next week, which I look forward to answering. I must say that during the transition to individual electoral registration, the level of registration that we have so far achieved has been much higher than some of us originally worried might be the case.
European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the first five instruments before us today are for debate together. The two sets of referendums regulations and the police and crime commissioner elections order update respectively the rules for the conduct and administration of local authority council tax referendums, referendums concerning a local authority’s governance arrangements in England, and elections of police and crime commissioners in England and Wales. In the main, they do so by applying or copying provisions in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 and associated secondary legislation, which made a number of changes to the rules for UK parliamentary elections. Noble Lords will be familiar—possibly by now very familiar—with many of these measures, which we have considered in earlier debates on instruments which apply the measures for the conduct of other elections and referendums.
The combination of polls regulations make a small number of changes to the conduct rules and forms used by voters that apply when the poll at a parliamentary election is combined with a poll at another election or referendum. The European parliamentary elections regulations clarify certain issues, mainly arising from the changes made for the conduct of European parliamentary elections by amending regulations made in 2013.
In the main, the changes introduced by all five instruments are intended to come into effect for polls held on or after 22 May 2014, which is the date of the European parliamentary elections and scheduled local elections in parts of England. The changes are designed to improve the accessibility and security of the voting process, and implement a number of recommendations which have been made by, among others, the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators.
The two sets of regulations concerning local authority council tax and governance referendums contain an additional provision on calculating the campaign expenditure limit for campaigners at these referendums. We intend that this should come into force on the day after the two instruments are made. I will set out this change in more detail shortly.
The instruments are part of a comprehensive package of statutory instruments which make various changes to the rules for conducting elections and referendums in the UK. The Government have consulted on the changes with the Electoral Commission and with others such as the Association of Electoral Administrators.
I turn to the provisions in the two sets of regulations concerning local authority council tax and governance referendums, and the PCC elections order. The two sets of referendums regulations change the basis on which the campaign expenditure limit is calculated for local authority council tax and governance referendums. It is currently calculated by reference to the number of electors on the register published after the annual canvass in the year preceding the referendum. However, under the transition to individual electoral registration, a post-canvass register was not produced in 2013. We are therefore providing that in future the limit will be calculated by reference to the register as it exists at the beginning of the referendum period. This period begins at least 28 working days before a council tax referendum, and at least 56 working days before a local authority governance referendum.
All three instruments, including the PCC elections order, update the forms used by voters, such as poll cards and postal voting statements, which are intended to make the voting process more accessible. The instruments also provide for police community support officers to enter polling stations and counting venues under the same conditions as police constables. This will allow police forces additional flexibility in deploying their resources on polling day, and allow them to provide greater visible reassurance to the public. The instruments provide that voters waiting in the queue at the close of poll at 10 pm on polling day, for the purpose of voting, may be issued with ballot papers to enable them to vote or may return postal voting statements or postal ballot papers despite the close of poll.
Members of the Committee may wish to note that relevant revisions in the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 apply to the local authority council tax and governance referendums instruments, so amendments recently made to those regulations will apply also to these referendums, without the need for further changes to the referendums instruments. Further, the provisions have been copied into the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order so that they will apply to those polls. These recent amendments include a requirement for 100% of postal vote indicators to be checked rather than the current minimum of 20%; extension of emergency proxy provisions to those absent on grounds of business or military service; and removal of the restriction on postal votes being dispatched earlier than the 11th working day before the day of the poll.
The Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order also makes changes to the timing of certain proceedings at PCC elections which will ensure greater consistency with the position at other elections and will facilitate the earlier dispatch of postal votes. In particular, the deadline for candidates to withdraw their nomination is moved from noon on the 16th working day before the poll to 4 pm on the 19th working day before the poll. This will allow postal ballot papers to be printed and therefore issued earlier than at previous elections.
I now turn to the combination of polls regulations. These regulations make a small number of changes to the conduct rules and forms used by voters that apply when the poll at a parliamentary election is combined with a poll at another election or referendum. This includes updating the notice that must be displayed in polling station compartments by making the information clearer for voters. For example, it advises voters to put a cross in the box next to their choice on the ballot paper. The instrument also updates the guidance for voters which is displayed in polling stations when a poll at a parliamentary election is combined with a poll at another election or referendum. The updated guidance gives clearer instructions to voters, including the use of images, to help voters cast their votes.
I turn now to the fifth and final instrument, the European Parliament elections regulations. They, too, make a small number of changes at European parliamentary elections. In particular, they amend the provisions that were inserted by the amending regulations made in 2013 to enable voters waiting in the queue at the close of poll to be issued with a ballot paper and cast their vote at a European parliamentary election. These provisions also enable persons queuing at the polling station at the close of poll in order to return a postal ballot paper or, if they had forgotten to put it in the covering envelope, a postal voting statement to return it.
The instrument before us today ensures that these provisions allowing the return of postal ballot papers apply when a European Parliament election is combined with another poll in England, Wales and Scotland. They also make improvements to the wording on the polling station compartment notice when a European parliamentary election is combined with another poll in England and Wales. The changes reflect the different voting instructions that it may be necessary to display if a European Parliament election is combined with a PCC election or a local referendum because these will, of course, have different voting systems.
In conclusion, these instruments make sensible and relevant changes to the conduct and administration of the polls that they cover in line with those that have been made for UK Parliamentary elections and other polls. They are designed to increase voter participation, further improve the integrity of our electoral system and ensure that the processes underpinning our elections are both more robust and more relevant to the needs of voters. I commend these instruments to the Committee.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I have only a few points to make in this short debate. Generally we support the regulations and the order and have no issues whatever with them. I have a couple of general points to make and one or two questions, but, generally speaking, we are fine with these. I will go through point by point. In terms of consultation, I think the noble Lord mentioned a couple of times consultation with the commission and with the Association of Electoral Administrators and such. Can he tell us about what consultations actually go on with the parties? I do not think much goes on. Maybe it is done through the Electoral Commission now, but I do think there should be more direct contact with the parties than there has been. I know that we have the panel meeting after the Electoral Commission’s political parties panel but I do not know whether there is more than that. There would be a surprising amount of unanimity from the parties on these things, as they have a lot of expertise that the Government could learn from. I know that the Government have some contact, but they could do more on that.
I saw in the note about the regulations on referendums that it refers to the issue about queuing at polling stations. Again, I welcome the fact that people will be issued with a ballot paper if they get there by 10 pm. My only slight worry is that while that all sounds well and good, how will it actually be controlled when it happens? We may not have this situation in the local elections happening next month, and perhaps not in the European elections, but at general election time we certainly need to think about how we will look after that. Yes, someone could arrive at 10 pm, but how is that to be controlled? It is quite hard to control and police it, and so on. The Government can make these regulations, but unless they are very specific about how things actually happen, they will just create another set of problems that cannot be overcome in a draughty church hall somewhere at 9.55 pm. If not now, the Government need to look at that sort of thing and be very specific. Presiding officers certainly need to know exactly how to handle these things; there is an issue there.
The point about police community support officers having the right to enter polling stations is, again, a sensible and welcome move. It certainly lifts a burden from police officers and ensures that there can be a uniformed presence in and around polling stations, which is very welcome. I saw that there is an extension of the proxy emergency provisions on the grounds of doing business or service. I am assuming that they are being extended in the same way as for every other category that can have an extension.
Those are probably the only points that I have. As I said, I do not have a huge issue with anything here; the instruments all seem very sensible. I will make one observation. While we will agree these regulations today, and they will go to the House next week, it is all terribly complicated and I look forward very much to the Law Commission coming forward with its recommendations so that we can get something much more streamlined. This should be a relatively simple process, but we have to have instruments for referendums, police and crime commissioner elections and local authority elections when it is really all the same stuff. The sooner we get this all looked at and repackaged, and put together much more sensibly, the better it will be for everyone concerned.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I share the noble Lord’s feeling on streamlining. There are of course some problems in that, as we have devolved authority to the devolved Assemblies, and as we have introduced a number of different electoral systems—I think there are three or four electoral systems operating now within Scotland, for example—some of this stuff becomes more complicated. We are, as the noble Lord knows, balancing between doing everything we can to make it easier for people to vote and encouraging that, and guarding against fraud. That also requires a delicate balance. However, I agree with him: I hope that it will be possible at some point to simplify the extremely complicated legislation that we now have for these different sets of elections and referendums. Referendums are, after all, still a relatively new dimension of British democracy and perhaps the next Government will take that on, with the assistance of the Law Commission.
On the particular questions that the noble Lord asked, there is no formal process for consultation with the political parties, but I understand that a number of informal conversations are had with them. I will check on that and I promise to write to the noble Lord if there is anything useful that I can say on it, because I take his point about the political parties. Miraculously, I discover that I now have an answer. We meet the Electoral Commission’s political parties panel quarterly and raise the question of new SIs being made. I expect that the noble Lord will be familiar with who attends the political parties electoral panel from the Labour Party. It may indeed have been him—yes, I see that it was.
On the closing of polls, let me say in passing that this was a very small issue last time. It happened in a total of 27 polling stations in 10 constituencies at the 2010 election, with just over 1,200 people being affected. We do not know whether this will turn out to have been a one-off or whether it will become a wider phenomenon in future. We took this decision because we had come up with this problem in 2010, and we expect that the Electoral Commission will provide additional guidance on how we manage this in the future. The noble Lord is entirely right, of course, to say that a situation in which a large number of people attempted to storm a polling station at 10 pm would be very difficult for anyone to handle. We have to hope that that sort of event will not happen. Guidance will certainly be offered to returning officers on the close-of-poll provisions and the Electoral Commission will assist with that. I hope that I have now covered most of the noble Lord’s questions. I am glad that these regulations have received a general welcome and commend them to the Committee.
Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (Council Tax Increases) (England) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (Council Tax Increases) (England) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.