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Mr. Forth: I just want to capture the moment and ask whether my right hon. Friend considers that the sources to which he has referred could, in an ironic sort of way, serve as an invaluable source of cross-checking and verification of the electoral register? Might not the downside of what he has suggested become an advantage? That matter is covered by a later amendment, but I wanted to ask the question as my right hon. Friend was on the topic.
Mr. Maclean: Yes, and one can use the House of Commons address checker facility to check whether a letter comes from a constituent. That facility can determine on which side of a constituency boundary an address may lie. Hon. Members can use the House of Commons system for that, and I am sure that outsiders can tap into it too. A later amendment would make it possible for electoral registration officers to check on commercial systems to verify whether the names supplied to them are legitimate and valid.
Because of the intervention of the hon. Member for St. Helens, South, the Minister may have thought my point about the huge amount of information that there is on compact disc a cause for humour. It is not--it is a cause for concern. It is therefore vital that the Government consult before they draw up the regulations.
I was alerted to Info UK by the police service. The police were legitimately concerned that, having taken vigorous steps to keep the names of certain officers off the electoral register for security purposes, their names were still on a CD that has sold about 1.5 million copies in the United Kingdom. The Government should consult the police service and other organisations with an interest in these matters, such as charities and direct marketing firms. I am absolutely certain that in a minefield such as this, with the best will in the world, no Government and no Minister can get it right in advance.
The Minister may live to regret saying last week that the Government will make the regulations governing access first, and that, once they were in place, they would wait for complaints on where they had got them wrong, and might then be minded to change them. That approach will cause enormous difficulty.
The new clause may be imperfectly drafted, but at least it will give the Government a chance to amend the regulations before they bring them before the House. I challenge the Minister: when, in his two years in the Home Office, has he prepared draft regulations that have not needed amending because someone spotted something wrong and suggested improvements? That is not a
weakness, nor a fault. There is nothing wrong in preparing regulations with the help of the best lawyers that the Home Office can get its hands on, consulting on those regulations and then discovering a flaw or an omission. Pre-legislative scrutiny, consultation and trusting the people are supposed to be new Labour strengths, but the Minister is saying that he will not do that.
If the Government reject the new clause, it will be a sign that they believe they know best. They will keep the provisions to themselves and rush them through quickly, and to blazes with those outside who may suffer. I do not think that that is the Minister's attitude. I am sorry that he is locked into this box; it has no doubt been forced on him by his colleagues and by the agreement that he reached in an alleged committee in Cabinet. We can also blame the working party. I hope that he can wangle out of it tonight by accepting the new clause.
Mr. Bermingham:
I hope to be but brief. I think that there is some sense in the new clause. I know that the Government may not agree with me, but sometimes it pays to stand back, to look and to think.
I hope that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) did not think me facetious when I asked whether he had checked that there were 49 million names. I could not for a moment understand who the heck would want 49 million names on a compact disc. When I hear that 1.5 million have been sold, and that a CD will be issued showing an aerial photograph of everyone's house, I begin to wonder about the words "privacy" and "personal privacy", and it causes me some concern.
I came in here and, as I have done for years, glanced at the new clause. I listened to the comments and, when I heard the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) giving forth--no pun intended--I thought, "Here we go again. What's this load of rubbish?" Then I looked at the new clause again, and I thought very carefully. When in opposition, I said time and again about regulations, "If only people would stand back and think, we might cut down the number of challenges in the courts." That I have said not once but a thousand times in this House.
The regulations on the electoral register may not be perfect. It would be so nice to get them right, which is why I think that the new clause has some merit. It may need redrafting, but the thought behind it is not hostile. The new clause would effectively provide that, when the provisions have been drafted, they should be put out to consultation with a view to reaching agreement. It is better to agree something by consensus than to vote it through against opposition.
Mr. Bercow:
Will the hon. Gentleman take it from me that his support for the new clause is warmly appreciated by Conservative Members, even though it has already earned the obvious wrath and probably the undying enmity of the representative of the Patronage Secretary--the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt). Will the hon. Member for St. Helens,
Mr. Bermingham:
May I correct the hon. Gentleman? My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall)--my Whip--will not exercise his wrath on me. He, like me, is a civilised and dignified man; if we disagree, we will disagree head to head, as I would with my son. I have no fear in saying what I think, and I can now answer the hon. Gentleman's questions.
The Government should consult as widely as possible, and the period of that consultation should be realistic--a matter of months, not weeks or days. Indeed, if I may return to the point that I was making before the hon. Gentleman's intervention--I did not see the purpose of the intervention, but that does not matter--if the publication or the draft is published at the beginning of the summer, for example, there should be a realistic time for consultation. The period allowed for consultation should be parliamentary time, not calendar time. I have in the past railed and ranted against the previous Government for publishing in July draft proposals that had a closing date when Parliament was not sitting. That seems counter-productive. The object of the exercise when consulting is to consult.
If one is to be realistic, one consults in a way that enables those with whom one wishes to consult--or, if it is the public, to invite ideas--to have a realistic and practical opportunity to make their views known. Those views may or may not be of value--one does not know before one asks.
There may be considerable value in the new clause, just as there was in another Opposition amendment that I mentioned the other week--the one originally tabled in December. I am not sure about the wording or the drafting, but it has merit. It should be considered, and I hope that the Government will do so.
Mr. Wilshire:
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham). I hope that all hon. Members listened to the key reason that he gave for supporting new clause 1. I believe that it is of the utmost significance when a barrister tells the House that he supports a proposal because it will mean less work for the courts. A barrister advancing the argument of less work for his profession means that his motives are of the purest. It means that the House is being given advice that, whatever our political party, we would be foolish to reject.
Mr. Greenway:
It is free advice.
Mr. Wilshire:
The advice may be free--time will tell.
It is also a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean). I listened with much interest to his various definitions of junk mail, but I was deeply disappointed to learn that he does not extend his definition to my pet hate in the letter box--the invoice and the bill. On reflection, he might
agree that they were dispensable. Indeed, perhaps we could legislate against sending bills to Members of Parliament.
It is always enjoyable to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). This evening, he treated the House to a speech of great brevity and clarity, with the result that I was completely confused. The point of the new clause is to deal with confusion. My right hon. Friend's clarity made it clear that we cannot allow the Bill to proceed in its current form because it will confuse all those who try to tackle the matter.
I have no difficulty in supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). I shall willingly vote for new clause 1, should he ask me to do so. As I said earlier, I have reservations about the haste with which the Bill has been introduced--that is one of the reasons for my intervention in the debate--but I wonder whether the new clause goes far enough.
However, my colleagues and I are grateful to the Government for accepting the amendment that was tabled in Committee. In opposition, one rapidly learns to be thankful for small mercies, so I am more than willing to thank the Government for that especially small mercy. The amendment makes a bad Bill slightly less bad--I would go no further than that. However, even that is something. We should not be grudging in our thanks to the Minister. Having heard those words of thanks, I hope that he will accept the points made by the hon. Member for St. Helens, South and will thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the new clause.
I am concerned about some of the detail in the new clause. Under subsection (1), it states:
"The Secretary of State shall publish in draft".
I am worried about the words "shall publish". I am all in favour of the Secretary of State publishing draft provisions, but I should have preferred the new clause to specify that the Government should place them before Parliament. If the words are merely "shall publish", the Government will probably give a press briefing, which parliamentarians will not attend. If they do not do that, they will organise a press release and will slip the measure out late at night, when we shall not have an opportunity to discuss it as soon as it appears. Alternatively, to judge by past experience, they will leak it. They will claim that to be publication.
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