Elections Bill (Fourth sitting)

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. Jerome Mayhew.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Q May I ask a question of clarification on the evidence that we have just heard? First, thank you very much for coming to give evidence, Mr Millar. It is a great pleasure to have someone of your expertise and experience assisting the Committee.

You expressed a concern a moment ago that the Minister, under clause 25, would have the ability to add to the list of categories. There is a rationale for that, which I hope we can agree on: as the sector develops, there will potentially be a need for the legislation to respond to growth in the sector, and it would be beneficial were the legislation able to satisfy that need. In those circumstances, is it not reasonable for the legislation to allow for an affirmative procedure in both Houses to give Parliament’s consent to the decision of the Minister? I am really challenging the rather bold assertion that it is the Minister who decides. It is not, is it? It is Parliament that will decide, and not just by the negative procedure; it is by the affirmative procedure in both Houses. Is that correct?

Gavin Millar: I concede that point. There is a form of parliamentary procedure that will enable scrutiny of how the power is being exercised. Members of the Committee and parliamentarians will know better than I do as a lawyer how effective that is likely to be. The main thing is to avoid unconstrained powers. The premise of your question was that there would be a legitimate concern that needed to be addressed through subordinate legislation and the Minister’s decision. That is fine, but the question is what sort of things we are talking about, and in what circumstances such a power will be exercised. I get very anxious about provisions—perhaps I am too old, or too old-fashioned, because they are a rather more contemporary thing—that are in very broad terms. When the primary legislation is enacted, it is difficult to anticipate for what purposes they will be used and what would be regarded as a justifiable change in the law, but I take the point that if it is the affirmative procedure there is parliamentary scrutiny.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am very grateful. That is the only thing I wanted to clarify.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Q On the provision for the Minister to set a statement for the Electoral Commission, the Government argue, I think, that it is not uncommon for the Government to set a policy framework approved by Parliament for independent regulators. However, I wonder whether you agree that the Electoral Commission is strictly comparable to Ofgem, Ofsted or some other independent regulators, given that it regulates the candidates and the people who are elected to make these laws in the first place. Do you have any reflections on that?

Could you also say a little more on the value or otherwise of a more comprehensive effort to consolidate electoral law? We have a lot of Representation of the People Acts. This is not a representation of the people Bill; it has been called the Elections Bill. I do not know whether there is any legislative or theological difference between the titling of these different Bills and Acts, or the things that they have done over the years. Where do you see the merit in perhaps a stronger effort to consolidate the different pieces of legislation that govern the electoral framework?

Gavin Millar: In relation to the Electoral Commission, we need to start at the beginning, as it were. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, known in the trade as PPERA, created the Electoral Commission for the first time—it was the first time we had had one in this country—but [Inaudible] an Electoral Commission that does not actually have a role in administering, overseeing and running elections in real time, and that does not have powers to investigate conduct and outcomes, and still less overturn those outcomes. It is important to understand that other countries have equivalent entities with much stronger roles in each of those areas. We are starting from a pretty low base in terms of what the Electoral Commission has been created to do.

As far as I can see, there is no case here for any of the three main changes proposed in the legislation in relation to the Electoral Commission. First, there is the strategy and policy statement, which, as I understand it, is going to tell the regulator what it should and should not be doing. Secondly, the Electoral Commission’s willingness to do what it is told, and its success or otherwise in doing what it is told, will be overseen—one might cynically say “marked”—by the Speaker’s Committee. Thirdly, clause 15 takes away from the Electoral Commission the power to prosecute. I can see no case or justification for any of those measures.

An Electoral Commission should be independent of Government; it should be free from Government influence as a matter of principle, because of its role in a democracy. It should be rather akin to the police or the Crown Prosecution Service in that respect. Its decision making, and indeed its powers to investigate and act, should be framed and guided solely by the public interest and the merits of the evidence before it. Does this need to be investigated? To what extent does it need to be investigated? What has gone wrong? What needs to be done? It should be answerable to Parliament as a whole rather than to a single Committee or a small group of politicians. That seems to me a key and obvious point of principle.

My own view is that the Electoral Commission should have more powers and resources—hopefully under the codified and modernised statutory regime that I have suggested—rather than less, which is what seems to be the aim at the moment, particularly in relation to the removal of the power to prosecute. Why? Well, because it is the only player in the game. It is the only possible resource for dealing with breaches of election law, in its limited area, other than through criminal prosecution and civil litigation.

As far as the former is concerned, the police and prosecutors frankly do not have the resources or expertise to tackle offending under the RPA or PPERA, and I am absolutely certain that much goes uninvestigated and unprosecuted at the moment. That is extremely undesirable in our system. Civil litigation—by candidates, judicial review, election petitions and so on—is costly, cumbersome, time-consuming and very difficult to undertake. All those factors indicate that we need an empowered and funded Electoral Commission to tackle problems as they come up. They are experts and specialists; that is why they are there and should be there.

On the second point you asked about—I will try not to become boring, because I could wax lyrical about this for hours—as you probably know, essentially we have two strands to our election law. We have the Representation of the People Act 1983, which is the primary statute regulating three things: the exercise of the franchise, the conduct of elections and challenges to elections after the event. There are various problems with it, but the main one is that it is the most recent of a long succession of Acts with the same name in the 20th century, and indeed there were earlier equivalents going back into the 19th century. They have often been a political compromise in Parliament, simply enacted by way of consolidation with only minor amendments. What we have ended up with is really an awful lot of 19th-century provisions that have hardly changed in their wording.

On top of that, in that strand of the law—the actual regulation of the administration of elections—there have been many, many more pieces of primary and secondary legislation relating to those three areas of our law since 1983. They either come in statutory instruments or they go into amendments to the RPA, so you get these long lists of amended sections with ZA numbers after the primary number, and it becomes wholly unwieldy and unmanageable.

The Law Commission’s report, where it recommended this, alluded to a problem that surfaced in the 2010 general election. I am sure you all remember that there were queues at polling stations and people were unable to get in and vote when they closed at 10 pm. That is an unresolved issue in our election law. The Law Commission make the point that when Parliament had to correct that to make sure people queuing at that point could get in, 10 different pieces of legislation had to be amended to achieve that one single result. That is how bad it is.

In addition, the second strand is the PPERA strand, which came into play in 2000 with completely new and different areas of election law. In particular, as we know, it included the regulation of national campaign expenditure by political parties and third-party campaigners, as well as permissible donations. Again, accretions and additions to that legislation over the years have made it incredibly complicated.

So what is election law? Well, it is ill-defined, but essentially it is everything surrounding those two huge pieces of legislation and the case law they have thrown up. One of the advantages of consolidation would be to be clear about what needs to be regulated in elections. As I have said, it seems to me that the whole issue of campaigning between long and short campaign periods is now election law. That is just the reality of it in the modern world, just as we have accepted that what goes on on the internet is election law, which we never did before. Modernising and consolidating would give us a much broader definition of election law.

As you point out, in this Bill we have bits relating to each. We have bits relating to PPERA and bits relating to the RPA regime, and it is now simply called the Elections Bill, which is a sort of combination of two strands of our law, and it is a bit of a rag-bag really. I am not saying that some of the things are not desirable—clearly they are—but they are not urgent and they should not be given priority over this much more fundamental issue that needs to be resolved, which is a consolidated and complete electoral code.

Income Tax (Charge)

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yesterday’s Budget had to support people and businesses through this moment of crisis, begin to fix the public finances and build our future economy. The Government’s support for employees and businesses has been nothing short of monumental—we all know that. It has saved millions of people from losing their jobs and prevented hundreds of thousands of businesses from going bust—businesses that are now up and running and able to repay that support as they drive our economic recovery.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions described just some of the myriad support that her Department continues to provide to people in need of additional support. In my constituency, I have seen the kickstart scheme being adopted by local employers, who are keen to take advantage of the support for new employment for young people. I have to refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because my former business has also joined the kickstart programme. It has done so because kickstart is a great programme that works for business and for young people at risk of long-term unemployment alike. I have visited my local jobcentre in Fakenham and seen the plans to double the number of job coaches across the country, in order to get people who have lost their job back to work as soon as possible. I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to continue his massive support for employment, the self-employed and business right through to September, some months after we should be fully out of lockdown and all our businesses should be back up and running. This Chancellor is focused on jobs above all else and he is absolutely right to take that approach.

However, the immediate recovery is only the first challenge. The Chancellor also needs to lay the ground for our fiscal recovery and the structure of our future prosperity. The British people understand and accept that the massive payments from the Treasury over the last year have to be paid back. The Chancellor acknowledged that that will be a long task, for many Budgets, but it is right that he should be frank with us about the scale of the challenge and where we have to start. Nobody normal likes tax rises, but we get it. Our incomes have been supported by tax money over the last year, so a gradual clawback via the freezing of income tax thresholds is a fair way to start the job; it is a sensible, gradual approach, where the better-off pay more. Likewise, businesses accept that it is fair to start to repay the huge support they have received. The increase in corporation tax on profits of larger companies starts in two years’ time, after a huge boost to investment through the £25 billion super deduction tax cut. It makes sense.

This is a Budget for recovery and growth. The former Labour Member for Birkenhead, now Lord Field, said yesterday

“To be successful in politics, you have to ride two political horses simultaneously. Rishi has done a budget for the hour and made the possibility of long-term prosperity...Best budget in my 42 years in politics.”

He was not wrong.

Universal Credit: Court of Appeal Judgment

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I stress that we received the judgment only on Monday and it is a hugely complex issue. That is recognised by the court—it is not a simple fix, as the hon. Gentleman points out. He knows that we are facing unprecedented demand, because he has raised this question with me before. I said that I will keep the House and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, updated as we progress.

On the hon. Gentleman’s points relating to assessment periods, there are some aspects of the universal credit system that are fundamental to its design and are deliberately designed to achieve its original objectives—to mirror the world of work. This includes the mechanism of a monthly assessment period and, of course, the initial assessment period at the beginning of a claim. It is important to stress that over 75% of people in this country are paid monthly and the majority of countries in the European Union also have systems that operate on a monthly basis.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

In March alone, about 1.24 million new applicants relied on the universal credit system to be able to process their claims and pay them within days vitally important sums of money to help them live. While the case has properly highlighted about 1,500 outlier cases, does my hon. Friend agree that it was the Government’s decision to invest in an automated digital system that does not require manual intervention by DWP officers to carry out individual calculations of the amount of an award that has allowed this to happen?

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was this Conservative Government who introduced our modern, dynamic, agile new benefits system, tailored for the claimant’s personal circumstances. The fact it is online means we have been able to process the claims of more than 3 million people, getting them the support they desperately need as quickly as possible. Just imagine for a moment, Mr Speaker, the chaos that would have ensued had we been relying on Labour’s broken legacy benefits system alone. Thank heavens for universal credit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

1. What steps she is taking to work with pension funds to encourage them to make investment decisions that help tackle climate change.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking to work with pension funds to encourage them to make investment decisions that help tackle climate change.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

With over £1.6 trillion in assets, UK occupational pension schemes have a significant role to play in supporting the Government’s commitment to net zero by 2050. Our environmental, social and governance regulations, introduced by this Conservative Government in October 2019, mean that schemes are now required to disclose their policy on climate change. In March, we intend to publish game-changing guidance on climate-related financial disclosure. I have written to the 50 largest schemes in the country to urge them to act on their investment duties and to tackle climate risk.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I welcome the progress that has been made on pension funds addressing climate change and ask the Minister to meet me concerning a constituent who is unable to access her pension fund without paying in excess of £2,000 in fees for independent financial advice —money she does not have until she accesses her fund.