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Mr. Mike O'Brien: We will use our best endeavours, but I cannot provide a complete reassurance that everything will be in place by that date. However, we are doing our best to get things moving.
4.30 pm
Mr. Evans: I am grateful for that response. The Minister knows why we are worried about the matter.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire will also refer to the powers of the new chief executive, who will be appointed before the chairman of the Electoral Commission.
We have other anxieties. Several pilots will be up and running throughout the country and, when the new commission is established, it will not only have the power--indeed, the obligation--to consider their efficacy, but it will have to deal with representations from several other local authorities, which want to introduce pilots next year. The Electoral Commission will thus have a lot of work in its initial stages. We want to ensure that it will be an absolute success. Will the Minister therefore explain the way in which he envisages the Electoral Commission working, and comment on the fact that it will begin its work long after the first pilot schemes have been established?
Will the Minister also confirm that the Electoral Commission may also want to investigate the London mayoral elections, or will it have no power to examine them? After the rigged referendum in Wales, the Neill committee presented important recommendations on the publication of literature by the Government. The Electoral Commission may want to consider what happened in that referendum to ensure that future referendums are not rigged. It may also want to present proposals on the London mayoral elections.
As the Minister knows, the list of pilots was made available to bodies outside the House before the House knew about them. We have received written answers about that from him, and he has given explanations at the Dispatch Box. However, in the next roll-out in 2001, the Electoral Commission and local authorities will work together, and we are keen to ensure that the House will be informed of the pilots before the Press Association or any other bodies. We should be told at least at the same time as local authorities.
Let us consider Government amendment No. 7. There has been much controversy about the literature for the Greater London Authority elections. First, we were told that it would be impossible for any free literature to be made available to the electorate. We were then told that the costs of doing that would be prohibitive. However, we are now told that it is not only possible to produce such literature, but that the costs have shrunk dramatically. A hard-fought victory for democracy was won by the unelected House of Lords.
We know why the Government were not keen initially on free mailshots for the London mayoral elections. However, they will now be provided. Even Dafydd Elis-Thomas was heard to remark in the House of Lords that politics was a funny business, and that he never thought that he would vote in the same Lobby as Margaret Thatcher in defence of Ken Livingstone.
Why do the Government wish to retain power over future mailshots? A mailshot is assured only for the first Londonwide elections. Why cannot the commission have the same powers for mailshots as it has for rolling out further reforms for pilot elections? The Secretary of State no longer has the power unilaterally to introduce changes to elections; he has to do that on the commission's recommendation.
There is a suspicion that the Government want to retain at least a reserve power to stop mailshots, and act in cahoots with a more compliant second Chamber in future.
The Minister may call me cynical, but my cynicism is bred from the stench of rigging and control freakery of which the former Soviet Union would be proud.
Will the Minister allay the House's suspicions and agree to reconsider whether the commission should introduce recommendations for future mailshots in London mayoral elections? If so, we will be reassured that the Government are not continuing to try to rig elections.
Mr. Mike O'Brien:
The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) asked me about the composition of the Electoral Commission. We believe that, essentially, members of the commission should be above party politics. Generally, that would mean those who were not recently actively engaged in the party political process. We would want to be sure that those who were appointed to the commission had the broad support of all the political parties in the House. We would not wish it to be thought that an attempt was being made to put in place a group of party political hacks, who might try to manipulate the situation to their own advantage. That is not the way in which the Neill report envisaged the commission operating, and it is not the way in which the Government want it to operate. I trust that we shall have the Opposition's support in ensuring that the process takes place in a way that is seen as above the fray.
Mr. Evans:
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. O'Brien:
I will clarify the matter and then give way.
We have already discussed whether someone who had been involved in politics by standing as a candidate some time ago would be excluded from the commission. I would not necessarily exclude such a person, but it is not our intention to include him or her in the process. We do not have a particular view on who will be on the commission but, in due course, we shall be starting the examination of possible candidates. We hope that they will be of the great and good, but not too political.
Mr. Evans:
I am grateful for that reassurance. Will the Minister therefore confirm that no current Member of the House of Lords will be eligible for membership of the commission? Given the number of hereditary peers who have left the House of Lords, does he envisage some of them being used for the commission? I hear what he says about consultation with leaders of political parties that are represented in this place by two or more Members. Will each political leader have a black ball to put against any names that come forward if he is unhappy about those people?
Mr. O'Brien:
I hope that these things can be done by consensus rather than black balls. We do not want to get into black balls--that approach leads to the situation where one side blackballs, followed by the other. We want there to be a number of individuals who are seen to be above the party political fray, whom broadly everyone can accept.
The hon. Gentleman asked me whether any Member of the House of Lords might be included in the process. Law Lords are able to sit in another place, and I would not
wish to exclude individuals of that calibre from the commission. We need to ensure that we have a commission with which all parties with two or more Members sitting in the House are broadly satisfied. I hope that other political parties will be able to go along with that, to ensure that the members of the commission are of a high calibre and the sort of people who can be relied upon to reach independent and fair judgments.
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove):
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. O'Brien:
I am not getting very far in responding to the debate, but I shall give way.
Mr. Stunell:
Perhaps I might tempt the Minister to go a little further. The debate in Committee on this matter focused not only on where potential members of the commission might come from but on where they might go. The hon. Gentleman will remember that I moved some amendments to prevent members continuing in office if they were going to take up political activity. We should have some poachers becoming gamekeepers, but not gamekeepers becoming poachers.
Mr. O'Brien:
I do not envisage these people subsequently deciding to become involved in politics. I suspect that those who are likely to sit on that body would not be likely to get involved in partisan politics or to put themselves into the fray but, if they did so, questions would have to be asked about whether they would continue in that role. We would want to be very careful about the types of individual who were members of the Electoral Commission and avoid that problem arising in the first place.
Let me answer some of the other points raised by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley. In terms of the pilots, there will be a time lapse before the Electoral Commission is in place. Subject to the Bill receiving Royal Assent by summer, we aim to establish the commission in November 2000, and its priority will be to put in place the arrangements for the reporting of donations and the controls on electoral campaign spending. We will therefore need to discuss with the commission the extent to which it can be involved in pilot schemes at the May 2001 elections. Any roll-out of such schemes to local government elections generally will be on the commission's recommendation.
A number of pilot schemes will be tested this year and we shall evaluate those tests, but I should be surprised if we were able to roll them out before the next election--although that would not be impossible, were there no controversy--and the time scale will probably be slightly longer. We would hope to have the Electoral Commission in place by then. We would also hope that it would be in a position at least to examine some of the possible pilots for next year. If we were to set up the commission in November, evaluation would probably have to take place in December and the time scales for the pilots for May 2001 would become very tight. We could leave the decision late, as we have done for parliamentary reasons this year, but that would not be desirable. We would like to tell the local authorities the pilots to which we had agreed before that.
The Electoral Commission's role would, to some extent, depend on its ability to deliver an evaluation. We would want it to be involved, but in the interim we would
deal with these matters by ensuring that there was proper consultation between the political parties and a way of evaluating each scheme. We would not proceed where there were serious political objections, particularly during the next year. There is lots of speculation about various things that might happen next year and we would be particularly cautious about the way in which we proceeded with pilots then.
We would be able to evaluate those schemes. If we were disposed, without any great controversy, to agree to some extension of the electoral arrangements, that would be done by affirmative order. It would be fully debated in the House. Again, it would be in no one's interests--certainly not the Government's--to put electoral arrangements that are a matter of party political dispute before the people of this country. We are trying to move forward by consensus.
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