Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

One would think that rather than heckling in a snide and partisan manner, Ministers would be expressing concern about the millions of invisible citizens who are missing from the register.

The next general election is nearer than the last. We want the public to have more certainty about the constituencies in which they live and about who will be the candidates in the election, but if the amendment is rejected, they will know neither of those things until 2014. If we are to reinforce the connections between MPs, candidates and their constituents, we need to know the facts sooner rather than later. We need an end to the impasse, and that is what voting for the amendment would provide. Ending the impasse would bring clarity and certainty. It would also halt the work of the Boundary Commission, which would save significant amounts of money that might otherwise be wasted on a review that will not be implemented.

Agreeing with the amendment would allow us to monitor, check and rectify any deficiencies that emerge from the transition to individual voter registration. In the event of a dramatic slump in the number of eligible voters on the register, it would allow time for that to be corrected without a severe undermining of the legitimacy of parliamentary boundaries redrawn on the basis of a depleted electoral register. It would allow the next general election to be fought on the current boundaries, and would allow us to engage and register the missing millions in the meantime. It would prevent the wasting of any further money by the Boundary Commission, and it would bring certainty. That is why we will not be supporting the motion to disagree with the Lords amendment, and I hope that Members in all parts of the House will join us.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I rise to ask the House to agree with their lordships in the amendment, and to disagree with the motion to disagree. Let me, however, begin on a note of agreement with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. It is important for us to deal with this matter, and to deal with it today. It is before us now, so let us deal with it.

I want to touch briefly on what I consider to be the three main questions that confront us: the admissibility of the amendment, the substantive issues surrounding it, and what I might euphemistically refer to as the wider issues for the coalition.

Let me start with the question of admissibility. The other place is self-regulating; it is completely different from this House in that regard. Because it is self-regulating, all matters of order reside with the House collectively, not with any individual. The Clerks give advice, and it is given on the understanding, and in the belief, that it will be accepted. That is the convention, but it is a convention, not a rule. The rule is that anything their lordships decide collectively is in order. As they have so decided, that settles the matter as far as order is concerned. If anyone wants to revisit the debate, however, may I suggest they look in particular at the remarks of two Cross Benchers, both of whom served this House well as Speaker? They made very plain their reasons for voting for this amendment.

[Mr Bone]

Can my hon. Friend tell us the last time the Lords did not take the advice of the Clerks?

[John Thurso]

I am sorry, but, as a matter of fact, I cannot. All sorts of things have happened in their lordships’ House, however, and I can tell Members the last time that the asperity of speech motion was moved. I was there when the late great Lord Conrad Russell moved it, and I do not think it had been moved for 300 years before that.

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[John Thurso]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his helpful intervention, and I will address that point later. I reiterate that I stand by the words he quotes about my having no problem with the general principle. I have put on record on many occasions how that general principle should be dealt with, however, and I will cover that point later.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

I do not think any Member disagrees with the principle of having more equal seats, but several amendments were not accepted that would have made the rules governing this proposal sensible, many of them tabled by Government Members. If they had been accepted, we might not find ourselves in this position now.

[John Thurso]

My hon. Friend makes a good point.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

In the 1950s Jo Grimond said in my hearing that one of the roles of the House of Lords was to stop the House of Commons abusing the electoral process. I think that to carry on having boundaries that are old and constituencies with unequal numbers of voters is just such an abuse. What would Jo Grimond say about what is happening now?

[John Thurso]

I had the great privilege of listening to Jo Grimond on many occasions. He met his wife in my grandparents’ house and proposed to her there—and, indeed, Laura was godmother to my sister. I regularly listened to him, therefore, and I feel certain that if he was in the circumstances we are in, he would without doubt support his Liberal colleagues. [Interruption.] One has some small advantages in life.

Their lordships’ amendment 5 delays the implementation of the boundary changes until the next Parliament. There are three good reasons why this should happen, two of which have been touched on and featured in the debate in their lordships’ House, and the third I shall add. The first point is in regard to the quality of the register. Since the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill was enacted, much work has been done on that register. At the time, the best evidence was that it contained the details of about 92% of those who should be on it. As a result of work carried out by the Electoral Commission, we now know the figure is much lower, however; it is, in fact, 82%. To my mind, that is a material difference that should be addressed. We should be asked to look at that again.

[Paul Uppal]

In a genuine effort to be non-partisan, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to give his opinion on the fact that the Cross Benchers in the House of Lords overwhelmingly voted against these amendments?

[John Thurso]

I disagree with that. I went through the Lords Hansard and underlined the names of all the Cross Benchers I could see in each of the voting lists. There were slightly more of them in one list than the other, but there were quite a number in support of this amendment. I remember that one of the great dictums of their lordships’ House is that all peers are equal, so I would look to the result, which was 300 on one side and 69 or so fewer—231—on the other side.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian, so he will know that it has hitherto been the practice of the other place not to amend secondary legislation substantially—or, indeed, at all—even on some very contentious subjects and Bills over the past few Parliaments. Why, therefore, has this happened on this particular occasion?

[John Thurso]

I recall very well that, when I and others were given their P45s and left that place, one of the discussions that we had was about why on earth we in the other place should not register dissent on secondary legislation. Indeed, that has occasionally happened, which serves to demonstrate that there is a changing dynamic. Because of that changing dynamic, we need to look at the constitutional arrangements in the round, and that topic will form the substantive element of the last part of my argument.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

In the other place, by convention their lordships defer to what the Clerks say. Over the past 20 years, on the five occasions when amendments have been deemed inadmissible by the Clerks, they have deferred to the Clerks’ superior knowledge. In this House, such an amendment would be deemed to be outside the rules and we rightly follow the rules set out in “Erskine May”. Does my hon. Friend think we in this place should continue to follow those rules, or should we throw “Erskine May” in the bin?

[John Thurso]

My hon. Friend is asking me to ponder questions that go slightly above my pay grade, because one person alone can make those decisions in this House: Mr Speaker. It is entirely up to Mr Speaker to accept or reject the advice given. I therefore refer my hon. Friend to the remarks made by Baroness Boothroyd, a former Speaker of this House. She said there were occasions when she had gone against the advice given to her by the Clerks. We do not know when that happens, however, for the simple reason that that is the prerogative of the Speaker, and we accept it without question.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my noble Friend for giving way. At the Committee stage of any Bill, it is up to this House to give an instruction to consider any amendments, whether or not they have been deemed by the Clerks to be in the scope of the Bill, so this House has much the same powers as the House of Lords in this respect.

[John Thurso]

I am always deeply grateful to my hon. Friend for helping me out on these occasions.

My first point is about the electoral register. The second point is about what has happened in regard to boundaries. We now have the benefit of the proposals that have been made. At the time of our original discussion, we did not; we were looking at the question in theory. A fascinating point arose from a discussion I had with a senior member of the Government on the other side of the coalition. I will not name the Member as it would be invidious to do so. [Hon. Members: “Go on.”] Absolutely not; my lips are sealed. He said that in a given area the proposal their experts had come up with was the one thing that had never been thought of. That is precisely what has happened in respect of my own seat. The proposed size of it gives me concern, as it would become the largest. However, in electoral terms—notionally, on the basis of the historical numbers—the change would increase my majority, although one would never boast about that in any highland seat. My constituency would go from being made up of two and a quarter counties to comprising two counties, 90% of another county and a little chunk of a fourth, none of which are linked together in any way, shape or form; none of this has any rationale of community. These areas have different local election arrangements; the seat goes through wards. The proposed seat goes all over the place, simply to squeeze in enough in respect of both the area and the numbers.

The general principle, I always agreed, has to be tailored to the other principles we have always used when setting out boundaries: the big regional variances. So I feel it is a good idea to look again at what has been proposed, now that we have seen that the actual proposals are quite different from those envisaged, in theory, at the time.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

But my hon. Friend must have thought about this when his own leader made a statement on political and constitutional reform in this House and said that the changes we are proposing will

“bring our oversized House of Commons into line with legislatures across the world.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 24.]

In other words, the changes will make the House of Commons smaller. Have legislatures around the world become bigger or has the Deputy Prime Minister, whom we both regard with affection, become a little smaller?

[John Thurso]

Let me deal with that precise point at the moment I arrive at it. First, I wish to deal with my third point of substance, which is the one that was not made in the debate. It is brief but it is important. A reduction in the size of this House increases the percentage of the payroll vote and thereby strengthens the grip of the Executive on Parliament, without there being an acceptable counterweight.

That leads me to my final point, which relates to the wider coalition issues. Let me make it absolutely clear that I supported the formation of this Government and I remain committed to them. As a Liberal Democrat, I entered this coalition because I believed in 2010 that the country needed a stable Government to deal with the financial crisis that was before us. As a member of the Treasury Committee in the previous Parliament, I had looked at many of the matters on the sovereign debt markets and was concerned, and I believe that the right decision was made.

However, when two very different parties come together to get agreement on an essential issue there has to be agreement on other areas. The red line issues—the ones we will not have at any cost or the ones we must have at any cost—are relatively straightforward to address, because we either agree them or we do not, and we are either there or we are not. All the other matters that are subject to negotiation, both individually, as policies, and, most importantly, collectively, as a slate, are much more difficult to deal with. The coalition agreement is not a pick-and-mix menu; it is an agreement. I agreed to the boundary changes—in many respects with a heavy heart—but I did so in the knowledge that the rest of that agreement acted as a counterweight. To my mind, that would occur mainly through Lords reform, which I judged would increase the check on the Executive and strengthen Parliament. For me, that was a fundamental point and I believe it is a fundamental point for all my colleagues.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does the hon. Gentleman not feel that there are many other ways in which we could reduce the size of the payroll vote in this House? That would have been perfectly possible to do by, for example, reducing the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries or Ministers. His argument is therefore surely not an acceptable one.

[John Thurso]

Many things are possible, but I have to deal with what is in the agreement and that is the key point.

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Gentleman said that this vote was linked to Lords reform. His leader does not think that, as he has said:

“There is no link; of course, there is no link.”

What has changed?

[John Thurso]

I am speaking for myself.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

On this point about coalition well-being, does my hon. Friend agree that—and is he sad about the fact that—my Lib Dem colleagues in Cornwall are misrepresenting their vote this evening by saying that a vote against the Bill is a vote against a “Devonwall” seat? He knows, as I do, that the Boundary Commission decides the boundaries and it is not due to bring them back to us until October. So this is hardly good coalition politics, is it?

[John Thurso]

I think I grasped the point being made, but I think we should deal with what is before us today and that we should think again. We should accept what the Lords have said to us.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my noble and hon. Friend for his comments. First, is he aware that there is a Bill at the moment that would reduce the size of the House of Lords without making it into an elected Chamber, which his own party is opposing? Secondly, on the question of whether the Lords are able to put up a decent fight against the Executive, is he aware that during the Labour Governments of Mr Blair and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and the other—[Interruption.] I have forgotten his name, as he appears so rarely in this House. Is my hon. Friend aware that during that time the Lords defeated the Government 450-odd times and the Commons defeated them fewer than 10 times?

[John Thurso]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that, as it is a perfect argument in favour of supporting their lordships on this occasion.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

May I, through my hon. Friend, seek to clarify something? In places such as Cornwall, cross-party agreement has been established on opposing a cross-border constituency. We therefore have an opportunity today to vote in such a way as to defer that until after the next general election and therefore put off the time when such an unacceptable boundary change would affect the people of Cornwall.

[John Thurso]

My hon. Friend is right. I just want to make it clear that when I entered this coalition, I made it clear to the leadership, when my party discussed whether we would accept this arrangement, that for me the agreement in toto was what counted and that Lords reform, as part of the constitutional arrangements, was vital. After the vote on Lords reform, I made it abundantly clear to my leadership that my position had changed and I could not, in all conscience, continue to support what we had done before. That is a fundamental point for myself and my colleagues.

I gently point out to my friends on the Government Benches, in the mildest manner possible, that they have got what they wanted: the great, the good, the wise, the academic, the apolitical, the ex-public servants and the generals, whom they strove so hard to protect, have come together in their wisdom and given us amendment 5. I beg the House to support it.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

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[Penny Mordaunt]

Even if we set aside the vital matter of the absence of an obligation on Lords reform, to make the allegation that Conservatives broke a coalition promise requires considerable front. Thirty-six per cent. of the Liberal Democrats rebelled over tuition fees, by comparison with less than 30% of the Conservatives on Lords reform. It is only because the Liberals have fewer MPs than we do—that is, they received a smaller mandate from the people—that their rebellion did not matter.

[John Thurso]

May I put the record straight? The coalition agreement on tuition fees was that all Liberal Democrats had the right to abstain. What happened was that a certain number of colleagues chose to go against the measure. In order, therefore, to give the Government what they needed, the remainder of my colleagues voted in favour of it. That is what really happened.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am trying to give the Liberal Democrats a chance to justify their behaviour. Even if we accept the Liberal code of conduct of an eye for a coalition eye, after their flawed portrayal of the Lords Bill the score is, at best, even.