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Mr. George Howarth: My hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) must be thinking of some other Ministers when he calls on me to show breadth of vision. I am more of a nuts-and-bolts man. Nevertheless, I will bear his strictures in mind.
The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) talked about different electoral arrangements applying in different parts of the same local authority. However, under
clause 11, whole local authority areas could be excluded, but not particular parts of a local authority. I hope that that provides the hon. Gentleman with some reassurance.
The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) referred to supermarkets, a matter we discussed in Committee. No pilot would be approved unless it included arrangements to make sure that the register was networked. If someone votes in a supermarket, that vote will be registered immediately by the electronic equipment and deleted from the register. Hopefully, that would prevent the kind of abuse that the hon. Gentleman fears.
Mr. Hancock:
Would that be an essential condition of any pilot scheme incorporating voting in a supermarket?
Mr. Howarth:
Unless the application for a pilot scheme could demonstrate that it was capable of that-- I do not want to be prescriptive as to how--the Home Secretary would have no choice but to turn it down, simply because it would not meet any practical test in terms of someone voting more than once. It is a fair point, but it is covered.
The hon. Member for Ribble Valley referred to the cost of the roll-out of any pilot schemes. That cost will fall on the local authorities themselves. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South indicated what he takes to be the cost in St. Helens. At this stage, I do not have enough information to say what the typical cost would be. I suspect that the costs will not be unduly prohibitive--indeed, no local authority would submit a pilot application if it felt that the costs involved were prohibitive.
The costs of general and European parliamentary elections are met out of the Consolidated Fund. If there were to be further developments, they would be costed in that way.
I intend to say a word in a moment about publishing the evaluations, but it would be unnecessary and heavy- handed if either the Home Office or the House tried to impose some particular methodology on them. The expectation is that local authorities will carry the evaluations out in as vigorous, objective and professional a manner as we would all expect. I have no reason to believe that that will not be the case.
Amendment No. 26, moved by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), would have the effect of removing clause 11 from the Bill. However, the clause is crucial to the Bill, as it will enable successful innovations to be rolled out. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman has concerns about this measure, and I suspect that those concerns have increased, rather than decreased. There is not a great deal that I can do about that--it is in the nature of debate that some people will remain to be convinced. However, I share his concerns in this respect--the desire to see that the rights of this House and Parliament are upheld. However, his fears are misplaced and I shall explain why. Clause 10 will allow local authorities to apply to run pilot schemes at particular local elections. All those pilot schemes will have to be fully evaluated and a copy of the evaluation report must be sent to the Secretary of State within three months of the election concerned. That is a reasonable length of time for the sort of evaluation that we would all expect to see carried out.
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I am happy to assure the House that all such evaluation reports will be published and that copies of the reports will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses, so that the process will be open and transparent. It will be open to any Member to read the evaluation of any pilot, and I am sure that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst will pore over them with great thoroughness.
Let us consider what would happen if a particular innovation were to prove a great success. Perhaps it had been tried in several local authorities with varying demographic complexions. Turnouts had increased and the evaluations had shown that the electorate welcomed the innovation. In such cases, why would we not wish to apply the innovation more widely and as quickly as possible? If the amendments were to be accepted, the innovation could not be applied until well into the next Parliament, no matter how successful the pilot scheme or how successful the innovation.
I suspect that the electorate would find it hard to understand why some successfully piloted procedures could not apply to them the next time they went to the polling station. Indeed, as a Member of Parliament, let alone as a Minister, I would not like to have to explain to the electorate that, although better procedures had been proved successful in pilots, they had to wait for Parliament to re-examine the issue and to decide whether the innovations should be applied more widely through primary legislation.
Mr. Hancock:
Is the Minister saying that pilots can be tried for one election only? Is there any reason why a scheme successfully piloted by a local authority in May this year could not be repeated in May next year?
Mr. Howarth:
No, but a separate application would have to be made for a separate pilot. If pilots are successful, they may spread. For example, let us suppose a pilot in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South proved to be successful--knowing the local authority, I am sure that it would. If that happened, and given the symbiotic relationship that I know exists between Knowsley and St. Helens--I live close to the border of my hon. Friend's constituency--the people of Knowsley would ask why they could not have the system, too. My hon. Friend is well aware that political events in St. Helens tend to find echoes in Knowsley, and vice versa.
If amendment No. 26 were accepted, we could not roll out any change except by introducing further primary legislation. As the House knows, the demands for legislative slots always exceed the amount of parliamentary time available. Who knows when my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary might be able to secure a slot for the necessary legislation?
Mr. Howarth:
Somehow I knew the right hon. Gentleman would find that an attractive proposition, but the rest of us--including, possibly, the right hon. Gentleman's Front-Bench colleagues--might not. It is our hope that we will have a steady stream of pilots over the next few years and it is quite possible that each year one or more innovations will emerge that are successful.
Mr. William Ross:
The Minister mentioned the need for a slot for primary legislation, but the Bill provides that, if a prayer is signed by the Leader of the Opposition and a considerable proportion of his right hon. and hon. Friends, the Leader of the House would have to find a one and a half hour slot--and there could be a lot of those.
Mr. Howarth:
The hon. Gentleman, as ever, has anticipated me. As I was saying, it would be difficult to justify to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House the need for regular electoral process Bills.
The notion of pilot schemes came from the working party on electoral procedures and, at the risk of incurring the ire of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, I shall quote its final report:
I also hope that the hon. Member for East Londonderry has taken some comfort from my remarks. His amendments were designed to prevent any roll-out of successful innovations from applying to Northern Ireland. I understand the source of his concerns, because we have discussed it many times before, and I know that they are based on experience of the possible difficulties of ensuring the integrity of the ballot. However, even allowing for the difficulties that we know exist in Northern Ireland, that approach is perhaps excessively negative. There may be innovations that we have not even thought of that prove to be a great success and from which the people of Northern Ireland would wish to benefit. I cannot rule out that possibility. I know that the problems of turnout mentioned by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley and others are not of the same magnitude in Northern Ireland, but anything that makes voting easier and more convenient should not be ruled out, even though we do not yet know the precise form that it will take.
"Any legislation should in our view be framed to allow successful pilots to be rolled out widely without the need for further primary legislation."
Although that places no obligation on the right hon. Gentleman, even he will appreciate that it places an obligation on me to ensure that the legislation envisaged by the working party--which included representatives of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives--reaches the statute book. We have followed that recommendation closely in framing the Bill. No member of the working party dissented from it, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will find himself able, in his generous way, to withdraw his amendment.
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