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8.30 pm
Mr. Edward Davey: Did the right hon. Gentleman find the Minister's answer as unsatisfactory as I did? To increase turnout in the referendum, we could easily extend the hours for local elections to bring them into line with the period of 7 am to 10 pm, which the amendment
seeks to introduce, thus getting around all the practical difficulties that the Minister outlined. She has therefore made no case for keeping the hours at 8 am to 9 pm.
Mr. Forth: I tend to agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is an interesting point. It is relevant, for the purposes of this debate, to consider how far extending the hours would increase turnout. Sadly, we speak in the context of a voting environment in which turnout in local elections, where candidates are supposed to be closest to the people and where the issues are supposed to affect people more, tends to be lowest of all. That is a regrettable long-standing historical fact of British elections.
Let me focus on the point about Scotland and Wales, and London. It is simply not good enough for our arguments to be brushed aside by the Minister's glib and unsatisfactory--I shall not even dignify it by calling it an analysis--assertion that, because Scotland is quite big with not many people in it--
Mr. Pickles:
Is not the substantive point that, even in Scotland and Wales the bulk of the population live in urban areas? Even within the confines of the old borough system, there are plenty of rural areas in London. As many people in rural areas of London will want to come to the polls as in Scotland and Wales.
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friend is right. Let us leave aside for the moment the great stretches of Scotland, which are thinly populated. The hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) will concede that, although distances may be greater, the time taken to travel them is much less because of the lack of congestion. When I spent some time in Glasgow recently, I was amused to find that the Glaswegian definition of "traffic gridlock" was quite alien to me. I found driving in Glasgow to be a joyous experience because one could make progress easily and move around readily. [Interruption.] I do not know when the hon. Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy) was last in Glasgow or what his recent experiences of driving in Glasgow were. He may like to enlighten us on that. He seems strangely reluctant to do so. It is the Committee's loss.
I see your Chairman's eyes narrowing at me, Sir Alan. I shall not dwell on this point for much longer. I simply wish to say that that kind of response from Ministers in reply to serious points made by Opposition Members is not good enough. I hope that, before we decide whether we wish to push the amendment to a vote, the Minister will seek to catch your eye again, Sir Alan, to attempt seriously to respond to our arguments, rather than merely ask us to accept them on the basis of assertion.
Ms Glenda Jackson:
Given that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) walked into the Chamber some 20 minutes ago, his assessment of today's debate hardly warrants close analysis.
Mr. Pickles:
Will the Minister give way?
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said that people in Scotland and Wales find it easier to get to their polling stations because they live closer
to their place of work. If I recall correctly, during most of his Government's tenure, the people of Scotland and Wales had no work to which to go.
The right hon. Gentleman argued that we had failed to give due consideration to the points that Opposition Members had presented. I stand by my previous statement. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) said that a strong case had been made for the amendments. If that is so, neither he nor the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, or indeed the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), has made it.
Mr. Ottaway:
I must confess that, having listened to this interesting debate, I find the Minister's arguments totally unpersuasive.
Ms Glenda Jackson:
The hon. Gentleman is trying to persuade me.
Mr. Ottaway:
The Minister is trying to persuade us why we are wrong in putting forward the amendment. We put forward some perfectly valid arguments to which she failed to come up with a reasonable response. She described Scotland and Wales as some sort of outer land where people come down from the mountains, taking several hours trekking through the snow, to get to the polling stations. [Interruption.] We have Scottish Members present and we shall be pleased to hear from them.
Mr. Raynsford:
Has the hon. Gentleman been to Scotland lately?
Mr. Ottaway:
I most certainly have and I have spent much of my life in Scotland.
The Minister's description of those countries is false and I should be surprised if people in Scotland and Wales would have to spend as long getting to polling stations as some people in London spend getting from one side of the city to another.
I tabled the amendment primarily as a probing amendment, but the more I listened to the debate, the more I wished that I had been determined to divide the Committee. However, we are still only on clause 4--about a third of the way through--and we shall obviously be here until late tonight. In the circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 4 and 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Simon Hughes:
The clause is unusual in relation to elections, although I concede that a similar one was included in the legislation for referendums in Scotland and Wales. Bizarrely, because of the guillotine that clause was not debated. The clause that we are debating states:
Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport):
"Must try harder."
Mr. Hughes:
We did, and I am glad to say that history tells the tale. Nobody would have denied the right of the former Member for Winchester to challenge the result on the ground of the number of votes that were certified as being duly cast for each of the candidates. I am not sure that those who lose by two votes in future will do the same.
Mr. Hughes:
If a Conservative loses by two votes and decides to take us on again on the basis of 55 unfranked ballot papers, I warn the hon. Gentleman he might be as embarrassed on the morning after the night before as I hope Conservative Members were this time.
Mr. Ottaway:
The hon. Gentleman has missed the point, as I will explain later when I make my speech.
Mr. Hughes:
The hon. Gentleman wants to make a separate point.
No one denies that something went wrong at Winchester. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester accepted that and so did Gerry Malone. It was agreed by both parties that the matter should go to court. As a result of the challenge, there was an extraordinary reversal of fortune when the re-elected Member had a majority of 21,556. That is 68 per cent. of the vote and a majority of 39.6 per cent.
Mr. Forth:
I think we know that.
Mr. Hughes:
I think that the right hon. Gentleman does know it, but he may not know that we have such an efficient Library that it has already produced a statistical analysis of by-elections in this Parliament. I was not expecting to be presented with the updated figures which show that the share of the vote that my hon. Friend won in Winchester was higher than the share of the vote for any party, except for some Labour Members. At the top is the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Benton) who got 74.4 per cent. of the vote. The Member with the highest percentage of the vote in Northern Ireland was the hon. Member for South Antrim (Mr. Forsythe) who got 41.3 per cent.
As a result of the Winchester challenge, my hon. Friend has converted the smallest Liberal Democrat majority to the largest Liberal Democrat majority and the largest share of the vote, leaving my hon. Friends the Members
for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) far behind. He has a majority larger than that of any Tory Member.
Mr. Forth:
That is not difficult.
Mr. Hughes:
It is always the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), who tops that poll. He has a majority of 18,340 and 31.8 per cent. of the vote, but he has been overwhelmed by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester who sped past him. The important issue is that there was a court challenge relating to the number of votes that had been counted. Whether it is an election or a referendum, Parliament should not state that nobody can challenge the result.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
"No court shall entertain any proceedings for questioning the number of ballot papers counted or votes cast as certified by the Chief Counting Officer, or a counting officer, appointed in accordance with section 3."
24 Nov 1997 : Column 712
It would be unusual, even if there had not been a by-election in Winchester, for someone not to raise constitutional points about the clause's impropriety and unsuitability. My hon. Friends and I shall ask the Committee to reject the clause. If it is accepted, no matter what goes wrong in the election there can be no challenge to the number of ballot papers counted or votes cast.
Some six months ago, at the general election, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) was elected with a majority of two.
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