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Mr. O'Brien: I note the right hon. Gentleman's clarification of his view, and that he does not seek unanimity but wants to ensure that the Committee's view is sought. I am not opposed to that in principle. I shall not give an undertaking to include such a provision in the Bill, but I agree to consider his point.
Sir George Young: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. Grieve:
I beg to move amendment No. 21, in page 3, line 11, at end add--
We are now considering the heart of the Electoral Commission: its composition. There is a complete lack of information on that subject in the Bill. Clause 1 simply provides for the number of people who will serve on the commission and clause 3 merely provides for the way in which they will be appointed. It also identifies people--Members of Parliament--who cannot be involved in the appointment process. That does not do justice to Lord Neill's intentions.
Paragraphs 11.7 and 11.8 of the Neill report go into some detail about the composition of the Electoral Commission:
It is noteworthy that the current vice-chairman of the boundary commissioners is, and has been as a matter of course, a High Court judge, but no such suggestion is reproduced in the Bill. The commission will be powerful and the point has been made--I think that it appears in
Lord Neill's report--that it is not intended to turn it into a judicial body; but one has only to consider what business it will transact to realise that although it may not be judicial it will certainly come jolly close to being a prosecuting authority, even if it ultimately hands over responsibility for that to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service. The Bill creates 68 criminal offences, some of which mirror previous legislation, but many of which are entirely new. They will require evaluation, and I am certain that no prosecution will be brought without the Electoral Commission having first at least pronounced on what it believes to be irregular practice by individuals or political parties.
My concern is that, as matters stand, we could end up with a quango of the great and the good. They may not be people who have held political office in the recent past, but having listened to the debate with great interest, it is apparent to me that the Government seem to have it in mind that certain commissioners might have held office or participated in party politics. That may be a possibility, but it raises the threat that the great and the good represent, which is best avoided. The commission will have substantial powers that will have to be exercised with great care and precise understanding of what is possible and just, in relation to the operation of the legislation. Our view is that it is in the interests of all concerned that it should be seen to be an impartial body with expertise in its field of operation.
Amendment No. 21, which sets out to achieve that, identifies categories of persons, principally High Court judges and above, but also persons likely to be versed in financial and accounting matters and those who have already been involved in parliamentary standards and standards in public life. If they filled three of the nine places--four will go to the boundary commissioners, effectively as of right--two would be left for suitably qualified persons. That would be a step in the right direction.
Other similar electoral commissions have judicial input and it is extraordinary that we are going down that road without providing for it. The Minister may say, "There will be nothing to prevent those sorts of people from coming on board." I would doubtless welcome that, but it is not good enough. It is perfectly easy in this context to identify the sorts of people who would be of use as Electoral Commissioners and those who would be treated as impartial. That touches on the question of who will chair the Electoral Commission, and I would like to hear the Minister's comments on it. It was suggested earlier that the Government want appointments to the commission to be part time, except for the chairman, but that is not how the Neill committee views the matter. It wants all electoral commissioners to be part time, but says that the day-to-day management of the commission could be left in the hands of a chief executive.
There is clearly a big difference between what Lord Neill suggests and what the Government propose, so may I put some possibilities to the Minister? If there is to be a chief executive, there seems no reason why the chairman need be full time, but if a judicial figure were to be appointed full time--a judge may become chairman of the Law Commission for a period of years, for example--there might be no problem in envisaging a similar appointment. Those matters require clarification.
The background to the Bill has always been that the Government want a measure of consensus--and, more than that, that the structures should run like clockwork and there should not be continual questioning of the manner or type of appointment made. I cannot think of anything more calculated to cause discord than the appointment of people previously involved in public life, probably in politics. In the United Kingdom today, people in public life, even if they have not been active in politics, have usually expressed political views at one time or another, unless they have operated under a self-denying ordinance. I accept that people previously involved in political life may sometimes be appointed, but they should be kept in a minority on the commission.
The commission will operate a judicial system. It may be the Crown Prosecution Service that prosecutes, but ultimately the commission will call the shots, and will make recommendations that may be critical of individuals and political parties. There will be a system of civil penalties, which I assume the commission will enforce: it will not be through any prosecuting authority. If that is not the intention, it would be nice to hear from the Minister what is intended, because our discussions in the Standing Committee strongly suggested that it will be for the Electoral Commission to bring proceedings, with civil penalties, against political parties. It would be difficult to imagine anything worse, in those circumstances, than former political figures being actively involved. It is therefore the duty and responsibility of this Committee to narrow the options.
I hope that the Minister will view the amendment in the spirit in which it is presented. The Minister may have other ideas. Perhaps other categories should be considered and added to the list. It would be prudent to define who we intend to be on the commission, and to identify--as they can be identified--those who would be suitable to carry out the onerous task of managing our electoral system.
Mr. Maclean:
I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend, and I cannot see how the Minister could possibly disagree with the arguments that he has advanced. The Bill contains a large number of penalties, and the Electoral Commission's considerable power in exercising its functions will impinge on political parties and individuals. It will take over the functions of the boundary commissions, and it will have considerable authority in imposing those penalties.
In those circumstances, it is appropriate that, in accordance with natural justice, senior members of the judiciary should be on the commission. We are working on the assumption that there will be a maximum of nine people appointed to the commission. Amendment No. 21 proposes that at least three of them should be drawn from a list including senior members of the judiciary, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
We want the commission to have a reputation and be respected as an impartial body. Let us face it, it will be ruling on referendums, making reports on the conduct of elections and being responsible for boundary redistribution, all of which will make it susceptible to allegations by politicians of all persuasions that judgments have been made that were partial. Although all of us collectively respect the work of the boundary
commissions, and none of us suggests that it is partial in any way, when there is a suggestion that a parish should be moved in or out of our constituency, every hon. Member of every party tries to find the most impeccable reasons to argue for or against it, depending on whether they see electoral advantage.
One of the arguments that we cannot advance is that the decisions made by the boundary commissions'are biased or partial. If we thought that the commissions' membership could in any way be sullied, some hon. Members would certainly argue that, when their seats were redistributed or carved up, the boundary commissions' made erroneous judgments because of political bias or partiality somewhere in the system. Currently, that does not happen.
I am merely suggesting to the Minister that, if he does not accept the concept of including some of the people suggested in amendment No. 21--such as retired judges, Lords Justices of Appeal-in-Ordinary and the Comptroller and Auditor General--but goes down the route, as suggested earlier, of including retired politicians, however respectable, some people might argue that they are not as impartial as retired judges, or as serving judges performing a tour of duty on the commission before moving on to other things.
The Opposition are being helpful to the Minister in making the proposal. One wishes senior colleagues who have gone out to grass but who wish to do other things well. Previously, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for example, would undoubtedly have been regarded as one of those perfectly suitable appointments to the commission. However, now that he has tried to do some of the Government's initial dirty work in his own report, by arguing for proportional representation, no one could possibly suggest that that member of the great and the good is impartial.
Undoubtedly, Ministers would say that they could produce other retired political figures, possibly in another place, or possibly outside Parliament, who may be regarded as impartial and who could serve on the commission. Inevitably, however, there will be claims of bias or partiality if retired politicians or other members of the great and the good--regardless of whether they are writers, senior doctors or veterinarians--are appointed. People will have had opinions on politics that they may have expressed in a particular way; or at one time, they may have been a member of a political party.
Much as I dislike handing over a lot of the regulation of this place and of Parliament to outside members of the judiciary, when we should be operating our own internal controls ourselves--it is water under the bridge, and it is not an argument for today's debate--there is nevertheless a perception outside this place that, if we stick a judge on to a body, it is bound to be neutral and impartial. That is one reason why we have people such as Neill, Nolan and others telling us how to run our affairs. It is also why have we have made the House subservient to them. The perception is that they are impartial, cannot be tainted and will reach properly impartial judgments.
If hon. Members have decided that it is good enough to have the affairs of the House regulated and controlled by judges and retired judges, surely to goodness the Electoral Commission--which is responsible for ensuring
the validity of the rules that get us here in the first place--should have serving on it some of the Neills, the Nolans and the other judges of this world.
'(7) At least three members of the Commission (one of whom shall be the Chairman of the Commission appointed under section 1(5)) shall be drawn from the following categories:
(1) judges or retired judges of the High Court of England and Wales
(2) judges or retired judges of the Court of Session of Scotland
(3) judges or retired judges of the High Court of Northern Ireland
(4) Lords Justices of Appeal of England and Wales
(5) Lords of Appeals in Ordinary
(6) the Comptroller and Auditor General
(7) the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
(8) the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.'.
"Those who have advocated the establishment of an Election Commission have been emphatic that it should be independent both of the government of the day and of the political parties. We agree. An Election Commission in a democracy like ours could not function properly, or indeed at all, unless it were scrupulously impartial and believed to be so by everyone seriously involved and by the public at large.
That requires Parliament to consider carefully the commission's composition, especially because the Government intend that, a short time after the Bill reaches the statute book, the boundary commissioners will be absorbed in the Electoral Commission. Four of the boundary commissioners will eventually be four of the commission's members.
In our view, a number of important consequences follow. The first is that the members of the Commission should not, in the normal course of events, be people who have previously been involved in any substantial way in party politics. The second is that the UK Election Commission, unlike the US Federal Election Commission, should consist of independent persons and not of party representatives. The third is that the method adopted for choosing the members of the Commission should itself be independent of the parties. The fourth is that, nevertheless, the individual members of the Commission should be acceptable to the leaders of the main parties, who should be consulted in the course of their appointment. The fifth is that, once appointed, the members of the Commission should hold office for a considerable period of years and should enjoy a substantial security of tenure."
8.30 pm
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