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Mr. Hancock: Once again, I find myself agreeing with the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). The amendment makes a lot of sense, and I wonder whether the clause is necessary and what was the motive for including it. Like many Members, I welcome the idea of change and I am sure that we are all delighted that, as we heard from the Minister, 44 local authorities have applied for changes to be made. I hope that there will be a good, countrywide expression of the benefits that can be derived from such changes and that many are agreed to by the Home Office so that they can be implemented fairly quickly.
I must, however, ask Ministers to be cautious. They must not rush to accept the results of one or two pilot schemes. As I am sure most Members on both sides of the House agree, we must see what develops over a period--a minimum of two or three elections--before the Government are able to reflect the success or otherwise of the schemes, and direct the House to decide whether it wishes the nation to be covered by the arrangement involved. Any Secretary of State who rushed into implementation of a scheme--laudable though it might be, and successful in a specific area--and suggested that it would be acceptable in other areas would be making a serious error.
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst is right to put caution to the fore. I see no possibility other than the deletion of clause 11. It is not possible to tinker with the clause; it is all or nothing. I should be sorry if the matter were not forced to a Division, because this is a critical part of the Bill, and one that I oppose vehemently.
Ultimately, primary legislation must be the only way of introducing effective change nationwide. I hope that the Minister will see the sense of what is being proposed, and will accept that deleting clause 11 would be a help rather than a hindrance. It would enable other local authorities to chance their arm with a pilot scheme, or an adaption of one of the 44 that are proposed.
I also hope that the Minister will consult his colleagues with the aim of ensuring that the House is given a full report of the reasons for and against acceptance of the pilot schemes that have been submitted. It is interesting to learn that 44 have been submitted, but I should like to know why only 30 have been accepted, and why the others have been refused. Following a debate on legislation such as this, hon. Members are entitled to know the thinking behind decisions to accept or reject pilot schemes.
Mr. William Ross:
I entirely agree with what was said by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). We are discussing an important part of the Bill, which I think should have been dealt with by means of primary legislation. I have been in the House long enough to know what "made by statutory instrument"--words that appear in clause 11(4)--means. Many statutory instruments appear on Order Papers. As a member of the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments, I know that hundreds, if not thousands, go through on the nod every year, and that, in some instances, no parliamentary procedure is involved. We should think carefully.
I am a signatory to amendment No. 26. I added my name to those of Conservative Members independently of them, as is normal procedure. The amendments that I myself tabled are all intended to discover what the consequences would be in some instances, and also to draw attention to the dangers of permanence--especially in the case of amendment No. 48, which asks for the removal of the words
I object to the sweeping powers given to a Minister who has been enabled to change the system applying to any election, or to all elections, and to change any existing legislation in order to do that. I do not accept what I consider to be a lame excuse about consultation. I know what "consultation" means: it means that the Government will eventually tell the House what they are going to do and, if they have a large enough majority, force it through. That is not acceptable to me at any time, but it is particularly unacceptable to me in the context of electoral law, which is the basis for the presence of each and every one of us in this place. We depend on an electoral system that the people trust--a system that is above reproach--and we should not be giving such sweeping powers to anyone. The matter should be dealt with in the House, where it should be considered in detail and at length.
The Home Secretary put it very well when he said:
I do not think that we should proceed by consensus "wherever possible"; I think that we should always proceed by consensus. I do not think that any party, or any Member, would object to genuine improvements in the electoral system, and I believe that our proceedings last night and earlier today were not the right way in which to deal with electoral law. Consensus should be demonstrated by an overwhelming majority in Parliament, after long and careful consideration of the consequences.
As we know, it is amazing what comes out of the woodwork during the Committee and Report stages of Bills. Often, consequences and dangers are not apparent at first sight. The Bill introduces sweeping changes by the back door.
Amendment No. 49 also expresses my concern about the powers of the Home Secretary, but it proposes the removal of the words
On amendment No. 51, it is not immediately apparent, but I believe that the words "district electoral area" can apply only to Northern Ireland; the single transferable vote system of proportional representation is used there. As written in the Bill, a district electoral area is not a whole council area. It is a part of a council area. It is a number of wards. It could be three, four, five, six, seven or eight wards, but it is not the whole council area.
Therefore, a peculiar and sweeping power will be given to the Secretary of State--I assume that it could be the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland--to ensure that one particular area of a council can elect people by one system and that another area in the same council can elect people by a different system. That cannot be acceptable.
I know that the Minister will stand up in a few minutes and say that that will not happen, but, under the legislation, it could. My experience is that, if something nasty can be done in Northern Ireland, it generally will be. Therefore, I am concerned about the measure.
We need to look at the clause's direct consequences in relation to the STV system. By-elections occasionally take place. Under STV, three, four or five council members could be elected, with votes tumbling from one to the other in order of preference, or allegedly so. It is a fairly mathematical job to work it out. Calculators must be used to get it done.
I remember losing a very good councillor because, at one point, he was two fifths of a vote short of getting to the next stage. It is remarkable. People do not lose by one vote in Northern Ireland; they lose by a fraction of a vote. It was interesting that he lost. Eventually, we got someone whom we did not like because many of the votes did not transfer the next time round. The consequences are unforeseen. We can never know what will happen as the votes tumble down the chute.
Whenever we come to a by-election, that is not what happens. We transfer the votes only until someone has one over the half; it is not even 51 per cent. It is a modified system of first past the post, or first past the 50 per cent. barrier. Therefore, we need to be careful about what will happen if some fancy scheme is introduced for by-elections in Northern Ireland, rather than for PR elections for a council area, for councils in
the whole of Northern Ireland, for the Assembly, or even for Europe. That part of the Bill raises a number of interesting and important questions for Northern Ireland.
Amendment No. 53 aims to leave out parliamentary elections--those to this place--from the list of relevant elections. Again, the measure raises questions. The other elections that I aim to leave out are in whole or in part to do with Northern Ireland. They include elections to the European Parliament, where, again, the STV system is used in Northern Ireland, and elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
We are being told once more that changes can be made to the system of electing European Members in Northern Ireland by passing a simple Order in Council through the House. We can go back to first past the post. We can have some sort of list system. God knows what we might have.
"and on a permanent basis".
Those words would mean that a change made by the Home Secretary would not apply merely to one or two, or even three or four, elections; it would be a permanent change, which could be reversed only by another statutory instrument--and I am not certain that even that would be possible. I suspect that such changes could be reversed only by primary legislation.
"Electoral law is so fundamental to democracy that changes to it should, wherever possible, proceed by consensus."--[Official Report, 30 November 1999; Vol. 340, c. 160.]
The qualification "wherever possible" negates the rest of the sentence. I am familiar with the concept of making what appears to be a very good statement, and then qualifying it out of existence. It is a favourite tactic of Ministers, and we have suffered much from it in Northern Ireland.
"with respect to the whole of the United Kingdom".
The proposal is universal, proving what I said earlier about the Home Secretary's powers covering each and every election. Amendment No. 50 proposes the removal of the next paragraph--
"if such elections are held only in a particular part of the United Kingdom, with respect to the whole of that part."
No one has yet explained why Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, a region thereof or a particular council area can have a system that is different from the rest. I believe that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We should try to have a universal system, applied across the board.
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