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Mr. Evans: Much has been said about consensus on the general thrust of the Bill. Yes, there is much consensus, but there is much concern as well over clause 11 and the sweeping powers that will be transferred to the Home Secretary.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) ably moved amendment No. 26, for which I have enormous sympathy.
Mr. Ross:
Is the hon. Gentleman certain that it is only the Home Secretary? Surely it is only the Home Secretary with regard to Great Britain, although powers may be devolved powers to the Secretary of State for Scotland and to the Secretary of State for Wales. However, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has power over electoral matters there.
Mr. Evans:
The Bill certainly transfers powers to the Home Secretary to take wide-ranging powers once pilots have taken place. The Home Secretary can then extend schemes to a number of other elections. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about other Ministers being able to utilise power. The Minister may say something about that in his winding-up speech.
I have enormous sympathy for the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. We know what happens in relation to statutory instruments in the House. We have talked a lot about scrutiny of the Bill on the Floor of the House but, when a power is transferred
to the Home Secretary and a statutory instrument is introduced, the scrutiny and amount of publicity that are given to the statutory instrument are not the same.
Mr. Bermingham:
Does the hon. Gentleman mean that, if, for example, we have a maverick Home Secretary in 2015 who suddenly decides that he or she wants a particular voting system following an experiment in East Kilbride or somewhere else, the publicity generated against such a maverick scheme will not be mighty enough to ensure that there will be no chance of that silly statutory instrument getting through?
Mr. Evans:
No doubt even in St. Helens there will be publicity along those lines if there is a maverick scheme from a maverick Home Secretary, but who is to say that it will not, on the face of it, be a maverick scheme, but a well-thought-out and calculated scheme? It may come from a Home Secretary not from the hon. Gentleman's party, but from some other party, which the House would reject if it were given the opportunity of a full debate.
The Opposition are still uncertain about when the pilots will be fully evaluated. The Minister said today that 44 pilot schemes have been submitted to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary, his officials--perhaps even the Minister, particularly after the good work that he did on his own working party--will have to examine those schemes before deciding which ones to allow. After the announcement on the successful schemes, we should like to hear the Home Secretary's reasons for refusing the other schemes, so that the Opposition and local authorities may see the reasoning behind the Home Secretary's decisions.
We tabled amendment No. 35 to extend the time available for reflection on the pilots at least beyond the next general election, and specified the date of January 2003. We believe that, if the amendment is accepted, the pilots conducted this year and in 2001 could be properly considered. To date--while the Bill is still being considered by Parliament--44 schemes have been proposed. After the Bill is passed, there will be even more publicity about pilots. Once the pilots are up and running--the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) said that one will be conducted in his area, covering six of his wards--
Mr. Evans:
Nevertheless, six wards will be covered, at a cost of £5,000.
Once we start deviating from traditional Thursday voting, there will be much publicity and interest in how those polls fare. Consequently, I believe that, next year, the Home Secretary will be confronted with proposals on far more than 44 schemes. If people believe that the May 2000 pilot schemes are successful, and that they may be
implemented at reasonable cost without imposing prohibitive costs on local ratepayers, other local authorities will want to participate, following in the footsteps of local authorities that have already conducted trials.
As the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) said, the pilots should be nationwide. The Home Secretary may approve some schemes for trial in only one part the United Kingdom, and--for a variety of reasons, such as the nature and stability of the constituency, and regardless of the new rolling registers--those schemes may be a total success. However, it does not follow that, simply because a scheme is successful in one part of the country, it will be adopted, fully embraced and enjoy equal success in another part of the country.
Many commercial firms conduct trials of products in one part of the country before launching them nationwide, as they want to know how the product might do nationally before incurring the expense of a nationwide launch. Similarly, before the Home Secretary issues his evaluation of the schemes, the Government will be conducting trials. In some parliamentary and European elections, the Home Secretary may wish to adopt schemes for use across the country. Once a statutory instrument to that effect has been passed, it will be the first time that some areas have deviated from traditional Thursday voting in that type of election. We shall have to examine the results of those elections very carefully.
The most recent nationwide trial in the United Kingdom was conducted in the previous European elections--when we adopted d'Hondt and regional lists, and when voter turnout, at just over 23 per cent., was derisory. I assume that the Home Secretary, upon examining those results, will have reached the same conclusion that I have--that the public did not embrace the regional list system, and that they perhaps did not like even the regions themselves. In the north-west, millions of people have 10 Members of the European Parliament, from various political parties, and do not know which one to go to. The constituency link has been broken, and many people may not even know the name of their MEP. People have conducted their own trial of the new voting system, and--as the turnout figures show--they do not like it.
We propose that, for the schemes that the Home Secretary is being asked to approve, before he uses the powers conferred on him by the Bill, in some cases there should be one full year of consideration, and in others there should be at least two years. We are asking for extensive consideration, and not only because of the costs involved. The figure of £5,000 was mentioned to implement a scheme in six wards, but that is only one small example. The costs of weekend voting will be even greater. If voting were done on only one weekend day--the Minister has assured us that that will not happen--people will have to be paid at time and a half. If there is voting on Sundays, people may have to be paid at double time, imposing enormous cost.
If the Home Secretary, after considering the results of a local pilot scheme, decides that general elections should be held on weekends, and if he makes it obligatory in a statutory instrument, enormous costs will be imposed on local authorities across the country. I am not aware of any assistance to local authorities to meet that extra cost. Currently, local authorities volunteer to spend ratepayers' money to conduct trials of new schemes. They will not be
able to volunteer to comply with a statutory instrument, but will have to find the money to do so from within their own budgets. Subsequently, other spending will have to be cut, or council tax will have to rise.
We still do not know how many of the 44 schemes will be accepted, and it will be interesting to see how many are. There may not be many pilots in 2000. Regardless of the number, we shall at least be putting a toe in the water.
It will require at least a full year before we are able to determine whether a pilot has caused the vote in local elections to increase or decrease. Although we know from published figures that there has been a decline in polling numbers, particularly at local elections, we do not know what turnout criteria the Home Secretary will use to judge the success of the pilots conducted this year and next year.
How will the Home Secretary judge whether the decline in turnout has been arrested? Even if the numbers decline is stopped, how will he determine whether it has been stopped by the pilot, or whether the pilot has prevented the decline from being more severe? We do not know how he will make those determinations.
Mr. Bermingham:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another problem is that, next May, only a third of metropolitan areas will be polling, and that shire counties, London and district councils will not be polling? The experiment will be conducted only in certain areas.
Mr. Hancock:
Some districts are polling.
Mr. Bermingham:
Yes; I am grateful for that intervention. The results of the experiment will not be nationwide, and we should perhaps be cautious in considering them.
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