Wales Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord German]

13: Clause 2, page 2, line 1, at beginning insert—
“( ) for subsection (4) substitute—“(4) The list must not include more than six persons (but may include only one).
(4A) The list of those persons so nominated shall be printed on the regional list ballot paper.””

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I hope that this amendment will be quite straightforward. I hope to make the case that this Bill is the right Bill at the right time for dealing with this matter, as I will explain.

The amendment is straightforward because it seeks to put the names of the candidates back on the regional ballot paper. This situation existed for all National Assembly elections until the last one. I want to go back to the days when I remember the ballot paper saying—noble Lords who were around at the time will remember it, too—Welsh Labour Party: number 1, Rhodri Morgan; number 2, Sue Essex; number 3, Jane Hutt. That seemed to send quite a clear message to send to people who wanted to vote Labour. If they put their mark alongside, they were voting for those people in that order. This would also return us to what goes on in European elections, where the names of the candidates for whom you are voting appear on the ballot paper.

To understand why this amendment is the right amendment at the right time, now, we must try to find out why the names were removed in 2011. I have before me the reply to a letter that I wrote to the Electoral Commission prior to the 2011 National Assembly for Wales elections, and which I received before those elections took place. It outlines the reason why it recommended the names be taken off.

It states:

“After the Assembly elections in 2007, our published election report identified that a number of complaints had been raised by voters about the size of the regional list ballot paper. Voters found it difficult to complete in polling booths and to fold and put into ballot boxes. The ballot paper size was also problematic for printing and counting”.

The commission’s recommendation to resolve this issue was to reduce the number of candidates eligible to stand on the regional list. The letter stated that each party was still able to nominate up to 12 candidates, even though since 2007 candidates had been prohibited from standing for both the regional list and the constituency election.

As we all know, four candidates are elected in each region. The Electoral Commission stated:

“In our view, it would be sufficient that each party could nominate up to six candidates for the regional list. Three of the main political parties in Wales supported our recommendation to reduce the number of candidates nominated, but the other main party did not. The change would also require”—

this is the crucial part—

“amendment to the Government of Wales Act 2006, for which there was no apparent legislative opportunity at the time”.

I do not know whether it was my party that did not say yes to reducing the number to six. Certainly, nobody asked me about this issue at the time. However, the important consequence was that, as it did not have the time to change the primary legislation and did not have the agreement of the parties, the Electoral Commission decided to follow the alternative route of simply taking off the names of people standing on the regional list for each party.

As many Members of your Lordships’ House will know, on the regional list ballot paper there are not just parties but independent candidates, so part of the reason for the growth of the ballot paper was not just the number of names against parties but the independent candidates—usually only one name. The restriction on ballot papers by the Electoral Commission and by regulations on the size of the fonts and of the ballot papers passed by your Lordships’ House made it impossible for any other change to take place because the Electoral Commission had run out of time.

The letter also states:

“We shall assess the outcome of the change in our statutory report on the election, based on feedback we receive from parties and returning officers”.

There was feedback post the election. I have described the situation that led the Electoral Commission to recommend that change. In its report on what happened afterwards it stated:

“Early on polling day”—

it is almost like the story of the man with the bricks and the ladder—

“there were complaints that regional candidates’ names were not displayed or were displayed inadequately by some Returning Officers”.

There was a rule that you had to put them up somewhere in the polling station. As noble Lords know, many polling stations are in schools, where children’s work is often on the walls and the space where you can put up a list of names may not be apparent. It was certainly not alongside the polling booth or in the polling booth itself but could be anywhere. I went to a polling station where the list was on a steel box. They could not put drawing pins in it, so they had to use tape. The only tape they could find obliterated half the words. They put the list on the outside wall of the property, so people went in and it was then too late to see the names. The Electoral Commission goes on:

“There were also a small number of complaints from postal voters that they did not have access to the names of regional list candidates other than by consulting notices in public places or local authority websites”.

So people who voted by post had no knowledge of the names of the candidates and people in polling stations had no idea where to find the names. You had to be pretty good at hunting around in the polling station to find the names.

The Electoral Commission states:

“We conclude that, following the experience at the elections, the question of whether candidates’ names are included on the regional list ballot paper should be reconsidered. However, before certain relevant matters are resolved … it would be premature to make decisions on the regional ballot paper. We will revisit this issue no later than December 2014”.

That is two months from now.

I ask noble Lords to consider whether that needs to be done slightly faster. The commission gave its report after the 2011 elections and we have waited a further three years for an answer to this question. Because there was no legislative time available last time, it meant that that change could not be made to reduce the number.

The obvious answer is to reduce the number of names on the ballot paper to six, which was the Electoral Commission’s recommendation. I am not actually wedded to six, but it seems a reasonable number, because there are only four places available. Even if a party won all four places, there would still be two left in case the first two fell under a bus halfway through the election period. It is unlikely that, during an election campaign, four candidates would die and no people would be left to fill up the names on the list. We have to make that change according to the number of spaces that there would be on a ballot paper, to make it less unwieldy. That is the only argument that I have heard, as explained by the Electoral Commission, for making the change and removing the names.

It is a fundamental right of people, when they place their mark on a ballot paper, to know the names of the people for whom they are voting. These are the people who will represent them on an equal status. The noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, has said to us on many occasions that those who are elected by the regional list system are of equal status to those who are elected from the constituency. Therefore, it is important that people should know the names of those for whom they are voting and the order in which they are elected.

It is not our favourite system; in our party, we would not want to say that. But we are approaching the time when the chance to make this change is fast running out. If there is to be a change to primary legislation and, following that change to primary legislation, secondary legislation has to come to provide the appropriate rules for the election in 2016, it would require a piece of primary legislation to be placed before Parliament in the first four months of a new Government. I know that many noble Lords will think that for this very purpose that is not a very likely procedure. This Bill is the right one in which to make that simple change to the line that appeared in the Government of Wales Act 1998 as well as the 2006 Act:

“The list must not include more than twelve persons (but may include only one)”.

[Lord Wigley]

I am following the noble Lord’s argument with a lot of interest and considerable sympathy, but would he and his party not go one stage further by having an open list and allowing electors to determine the order in which people fill those slots?

[Lord German]

I would indeed. As I say, this is such an urgent matter to change and to change the electoral system to make that happen might be a step too far. I might be told, in exactly the same way as the noble Lord has been told many times this afternoon, that this is not the right time or place or Bill. But because there is only one chance to do this, this Bill is the right place and it is the right time. I hope that my noble friend and the rest of the Government will see the wisdom of this action and give people the right to see who they are voting for on their ballot paper.

--- Later in debate ---

We also undertake to ensure that the issues raised following the Electoral Commission’s report on displaying names on ballot papers will be fully considered. We will ensure that appropriate action is taken. Having said that, I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord German]

I thank my noble friend for the response to Amendment 13. There is one thing that worries me about waiting. In the report that followed the 2011 Assembly elections, the Electoral Commission states:

“We will seek further views and make any necessary recommendations to the Secretary of State”,

which should be,

“no later than December 2014”—

just two months away. It further states that “any necessary recommendations” should be,

“in sufficient time for a decision not later than one year before the Assembly election in 2016. That would allow any change to the ballot paper to be prescribed in legislation at least six months before the 2016 election”,

which means December of next year. Therefore the order of which my noble friend spoke would have to be placed sometime around December or earlier next year. However, if the Electoral Commission were to also propose that there needed to be a change in primary legislation, then that change needs to be made in this Bill. I encourage my noble friend to have a word with the Electoral Commission and ask if it is going to make a recommendation in two months’ time about changes to primary legislation that ought to be done more swiftly than the end of this year, in order that the Government can give effect to those changes, even if they were not quite in the same format I have prescribed here—which is simply going on the Electoral Commission’s previous advice. I hope that the appropriate rocket will be sent in that direction by my noble friend so that we will not be left with a situation next year of perhaps waiting again for a further five years while the Electoral Commission have once again stopped the ball rolling in the right direction. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 13 withdrawn.