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Mr. Hawkins: No, it does not. I heard Lord Greaves giving an interview on national radio after our debates last week, as I was driving back to my constituency. He has not changed his mind at all, and he was debating the issues with the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle). The Electoral Commission is saying that it has not changed its reasons, which were given on 23 March. It has not changed its view on the north-west; the views of the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) are undermined by the Electoral Commission, which his Government set up.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): My hon. Friend may already be aware as a result of the revelation from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) that a statutory instrument has recently been discussed Upstairs that would reduce the number of MEPs in this country. The Government accepted in its entirety the Electoral Commission's recommendation on that. When we asked the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), who is currently on the Treasury Bench, why the Government accepted its recommendation in that respect but not in this one, he said that the two were different. Would my hon. Friend like to speculate on what the difference is?
5.45 pm
Mr. Hawkins: My hon. Friend is right, and I suspect that the difference is accounted for by the obsessions of the Deputy Prime Minister and the party political advantage of the Government party.
Chris Bryant: The whole tenor of the hon. Gentleman's argument seems to be that the Deputy Prime Minister is trying to make sure that there is a postal ballot in Labour heartlands, because that will give party advantage to the Labour party. The strongest Labour heartland is Wales, which has not a single Tory representative in this House. If the hon. Gentleman's argument were true, surely Wales would be included in the pilot.
Mr. Hawkins: The hon. Gentleman has not played much of a part in our many earlier deliberations on the Bill. Had he done so, he would have known that we debated extensively Wales and Scotland, and many of his hon. Friends from Scotland were and, I imagine, still are outraged that Scotland has not been included. They were not included because the Electoral Commission specifically recommended against them, in even stronger terms than it did against the north-west.
Labour Members have this problem: they set up the Electoral Commission, and they are now picking and choosing only those recommendations that suit them. The biggest weakness in the Government's case is that the Government said originally not once, not twice, but many times, through this Minister that they intended only three electoral pilots. They were put out because the Electoral Commission originally recommended only two. They said that they would go ahead with a third. Only recently have they started to become obsessed with a fourth.
The Minister has also been trying to rewrite the history of the battles between the two Chambers of this bicameral legislature. He sought to suggest that there is something unusual about ping-pong, as it is called, between the two Houses. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and I are well aware, that has happened towards the end of a legislative period pretty well every year since this Government came to power. Only last year, we were debating the Criminal Justice Bill, which was going backwards and forwards between the two Houses until the Government were forced to give way at the last minute, with ill grace, on the last day of the Session. I suspect that that will happen in this case. Just as we come to the Easter recess, the Government will be forced to go back to what the Electoral Commission recommends, and accept that the other place and the Electoral Commission are right. That is why we will stick to our guns, and the other place should stick to its guns.
Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab): It is a few weeks since I spoke in any debate in relation to this Bill, although I listened to the last such debate. The last time that I spoke was on 8 March. The Opposition's arguments against including the north-west are those that they used against Yorkshire and Humber. We also found out, of course, that Yorkshire and Humber was included in the Opposition amendment in the other place last week. There is a lot of hypocritical talk in this Chamber about what the intentions of the other place are.
I told the House on 8 March why I support the Bill and why all-postal ballots are good for democracy. They increase participation and I doubt whether they affect the result. They did not affect the result in my constituency last year, but 53 per cent. of people turning out is a lot better than 23 per cent. That example came from my constituency.
Looking at the debate in the other place last week, there can be no doubt that the whole issue relates to party politics. My hon. Friend the Minister passed some comment about the official Opposition. Reading the debate, I do not put a lot of the problem down to the major Opposition party, because it does not seem to know what is taking place most of the time. All that it knows is when to support the amendments tabled by a minor Opposition party, the Liberal Democrats. That is when they all pile into the Division Lobbies, and that is why we have ended up in this position on I think three occasions.
No one reading reports of debates on the Bill, especially debates in the other place, could doubt that this is about Liberal Democrat party politics relating not to Yorkshire and Humberside, the east midlands or the north-east, but to the north-west. I said that on 8 March, and it has been reaffirmed at least twice since then, when Members of the other place have sought to table amendments opposing the Bill.
Mr. Russell Brown (Dumfries) (Lab): I have looked at some of the figures and tried to draw conclusions from them. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) spoke of parliamentary ping-pong, and that is what we have seen since the Government came to power in 1997 on, to the best of my knowledge, 13 occasions, involving 13 Bills that this Labour Government have tried to pass. Between 1979 and 1997, the other place tried to frustrate this House on three occasions. That tells its own story. Nor should my hon. Friend forget the role of the Cross Benchers, who have supported the Tories in 80 per cent. of cases.
Mr. Barron: Perhaps my hon. Friend feels that Cross Benchers in the other place are not so independent of party politics in that respect. I shall keep my view of the other place out of the debate.
This is all about Liberal Democrats and the north-west. I shall now address myself to the only two Liberal Democrats in the Chamber, the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith). I have said this repeatedly. I said it on 8 March, and it has been said before. Last week Lord Rennard said that the issue was,
- “I think, a very principled one that no one party should choose different voting mechanisms for different places according to its own interest, based in this case on fears that the electorate will not turn out to support it.” [Official Report, House of Lords, 25 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 851.]
Mr. Redwood: It is true that postal ballots increase turnout, so why have the Government not proposed universal postal ballots for this election?
Mr. Barron: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we are talking about a pilot. We have had this debate time and again. On 8 March he intervened on me to say that he was not so sure about postal ballots. He said:
- “such a widespread experiment cannot proceed until the real issues of impersonation, pressure and fraud are dealt with.” [Official Report, 8 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 1308.]
I have seen this in action in a small way. I think that participation is good and healthy, and I do not think that one political party will be affected more than another. In our last debate, I said that if the tide was against a political party, it would drown more quickly. That is especially true if the tide is stronger than usual.
All the ping-pong is wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) said that the other place had challenged this House three times between 1979 and 1997. When I was elected in 1983, it was felt that a big majority was unhealthy and bad for democracy. I cannot remember the other place challenging that Government. It was all about party politics then, and we heard about not frustrating the will of the people. It seems to me that in considering this Bill, we could frustrate the will of the people.
I do not know whether Ministers agree with my analysis, but my answer to the questions “Why today?” and “Why the north-west?” would be this. It is simple and logical to involve the north-west in June, because we all know that in October the north-west will vote in an all-postal ballot on whether to have a regional assembly. One thing that can be said of the logic is that it is consistent with what the Electoral Commission has said many times. Playing the hokey-cokey by having all-postal votes and then returning to the old system will denigrate electoral politics in this country, and be bad for turnouts. That is what Opposition Members and those in the other place propose, and they are wrong.
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