Mr.
Turner: I do not remember exactly what was said, but why
would it be wrong for the Democratic Unionists to look after Scottish
National party affairs, but right for the Scottish Nationalists to look
after Democratic Unionist party
affairs?
Pete
Wishart: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that
intervention. I will explain clearly why there is a difficulty for the
Scottish National party. No other party in the House of Commons would
be less appropriate to look after the Scottish National party than the
DUP. We are a party of independence. We are a nationalist party. We
want our nation to become a normal, independent nation like any other
in the world. The Democratic Unionist party is probably the most
Unionist party in the House, yet it would sit on the Electoral
Commission looking after the interests of the most nationalist
party.
Several
hon. Members
rose—
The
Chairman: Order. One at a
time.
Mrs.
Laing: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Can he
clarify whether he believes that the democratic process itself, which
is what the Electoral Commission and its commissioners is there to
protect and enhance, is different for a nationalist party, a right-wing
party, a left-wing party or a middle-of-the road, sitting-on-the-fence
party? The democratic process is the democratic process. It really does
not matter which part of the political spectrum someone belongs to.
What matters is that democracy works and it is therefore totally
irrelevant for these purposes which political party a
person belongs to.
Pete
Wishart: Here is my challenge to the hon. Lady. How about
the Conservative party giving up its place on the Electoral Commission
and giving it to the Labour party. Would she be happy with that? I
suggest not, yet she expects the Scottish National party to have no
representation on the commission and to be looked after by a political
party that operates contrary to its political interests. Would the hon.
Lady give up her seat to the Labour party?
Mrs.
Laing: I am certainly not saying that we would wish to do
such a thing in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests. However, if
four very senior and well respected people were nominated as
commissioners, and if none were a member of the Conservative party, the
commission would not work any the worse. We are looking for political
commissioners with experience of the democratic and electoral process,
not particular party views. Political experience matters far more. I
hold some people in the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and even
the Scottish National party in greater respect than I do some people in
the Conservative
party.
Pete
Wishart: I, too, would be very interested to hear
names.
I am grateful
for the hon. Lady’s intervention—or should I say
speech?—and I noted that her colleagues looked with wry interest
when she said that she would be prepared to give up the Conservative
nomination to the Electoral Commission to somebody from another
party. In light of that kind suggestion, we could suggest somebody from
the Scottish National party to fill her party’s
nomination. I am glad,
however, that the hon. Lady has opened up this debate. If the four
commissioners are to be truly non-political and non-partisan, I would
be happy, but given some of the noes that I am hearing from
Conservative colleagues, that might not be the case. I suggest that
nominations for the party political commissioners will be truly and
wholly party
political. My
amendments would deal with that matter fairly and squarely by ensuring
that any registered political party with more than two Members in this
House would have a political commissioner on the commission. In one
blow, that would deal with all the outstanding issues. Every
significant party in all United Kingdom legislatures would be
represented on the commission. The Scottish National party, the SDLP
and the Democratic Unionist party would, therefore, have a say on the
commission about electoral regulation within their own legislatures and
Parliaments. Surely that is fair and
transparent. The
Minister will tell me that that would mean a majority of political
commissioners on the Electoral Commission, which I accept. However, I
would prefer that to excluding certain parties. If that solution is not
accepted by the Committee, I would suggest that we have no political
commissioners at all, which again would be preferable to excluding some
parties, which would mean that some legislatures are demoted and would
lose an interest in the
commission. Two
options are on the table: to ensure that all political parties with a
significant political presence in all United Kingdom legislatures are
properly represented on the Electoral Commission or none at all. The
suggestion in the Bill is the worst of all worlds. Regardless of what
the hon. Lady might say about the nomination process, the three big
parties have their nominated appointee on the commission, and one will
remain for all the minority parties. I have no idea how that will be
decided. It will be left to the Speaker’s Committee, but I do
not even know who is on that Committee and I have no idea how it will
decide who that fourth commissioner will go to. I suspect that it will
automatically select the largest minority party—the
DUP—which would be unacceptable to the SNP, just as an SNP
commissioner would presumably be unacceptable to the DUP.
No process is
in place for sorting that out. It is a total mess. I ask the Minister
to consider sincerely my genuine plea to resolve this problem. I want
him to recognise that we are in a multi-legislature United Kingdom. How
will he address this problem? Is it acceptable that the Governments of
Scotland, Northern Ireland, and perhaps a coalition in Wales, do not
have a place at the top table of the Electoral Commission? I look
forward to the Minister’s
remarks.
Mrs.
Laing: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has tabled the
amendments because it allows us to discuss this important issue. There
are three reasons why we on the Conservative Benches oppose his
amendments. First, it is totally impractical to have the number of
commissioners that would be required if his
amendment became part of the Bill. An important principle about the
commissioners with political experience is that they should be in a
minority on the Commission.
In an
interesting evidence session we had last week, Sir Hayden Phillips
responded to the hon. Gentleman by describing the characteristics of a
successful regulator. He also said:
“I
think that this will help the Electoral Commission, and will help
political parties to feel more comfortable with the Electoral
Commission. Those four people will be in a minority, and will never be
a majority.”——[Official Report,
Political Parties and Elections Public Bill Committee, 4 November
2008; c. 34,
Q83.] The
Committee accepted that it is an important principle that the four
politically appointed commissioners are in a minority on the
Commission. If that number is changed to accommodate all parties with
some representation in the House, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, the
number of political commissioners would rise to perhaps eight or,
sometimes, nine. If there were to be a minority on the Commission,
there would have to be 20 or more commissioners, which we all know
would not work. A committee that is too large becomes unwieldy and
cannot do the work that it sets out to do. Therefore, on practical
grounds, the number four is right and we support the Government on that
point. It is simply impractical to say that that number should be
increased. The
hon. Gentleman forgets two important points. The first is that
commissioners with direct political experience are to be appointed in
order to bring their wisdom and experience of democracy, elections and
the political process to the Commission. The commissioners are not
there to represent the views of particular political parties and it is
therefore quite wrong to say that, in being appointed, their political
allegiance would be their most important characteristic. I challenge
the vocabulary used by the hon. Gentleman when he says that a certain
person might be appointed who would be
“looking after
the interests of the Scottish National
party”. A
commissioner should not be there to look after the interests of a
particular party or group; the role of the commissioner is to oversee
the democratic process itself. The idea behind having four
commissioners from different areas of the political spectrum is simply
to balance that out and it is quite right to do so. To suggest that a
particular person, who would have been appointed for his or her
seniority, wisdom or experience, would represent the interests of any
political party is quite
wrong. There
should, of course, be someone who has experience of government, someone
who has experience of opposition and someone who has had experience of
neither for over a century. There should also be someone who has
experience of a minority party. The experience of a minority party is
as a minority party, rather than of a particular party with a
particular political ethos or principle. That is really important, so I
vehemently oppose what the hon. Gentleman is proposing in the
amendments. Finally,
and almost more important than anything else, the hon. Gentleman
forgets that the devolved legislatures in the United Kingdom derive
their power and authority from Parliament—the Westminster
Parliament. Therefore, his argument that the provisions are
Westminster-centric is wrong and not at all well founded. The fact that
the devolved legislatures derive their power from Parliament means that
it is Parliament that should make decisions such as today’s. It
is absolutely
correct for this Parliament and this Committee, representing Parliament,
to decide on four, well balanced electoral commissioners with political
experience. 11.45
am
David
Howarth: The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire
has brought up a serious difficulty in the Bill. We need to take it
seriously and think what the solutions might be. His solution is not
the right one, and his list of possible solutions is not exhaustive,
but the problem is a real one. This country now has multiple
legislatures. Parliament is still sovereign and supreme, but in reality
we are seeing the development of different political systems in
Scotland and Wales, and there has always—for a long
time—been a different political system in Northern Ireland. We
need to take into account those developments in deciding what to do
about electoral law. Not only is the party system in Scotland
different, but the electoral systems are different as well, not just
for the Scottish Parliament, but also for Scottish local
government—the same system as is generally used in Northern
Ireland, but not in England, although it should
be. The
problem with what the hon. Gentleman put forward as his solution to
this new situation is that it is too United Kingdom-centric. He is
trying to solve the problem within the scope of United Kingdom
institutions. I do not think that that can be done, at least in the way
that he has proposed. The hon. Member for Epping Forest is quite right
that what the hon. Gentleman is putting forward is a system—he
pointed this out himself, in his speech—that would lead to a
majority of political commissioners. For all the reasons that the hon.
Lady and the Electoral Commission itself mentioned, that is an
unacceptable
solution. If
we look at the detail of what the hon. Gentleman put forward, he is
removing the choice of commissioners from any other body—the
parties would directly nominate one person, and that person would then
become a commissioner. The hon. Lady is right that that is not the view
of a commissioner that the Bill proposes. The Bill’s view is of
the commissioner as a person who, to use the European jargon, knows a
particular political party best but nevertheless acts as a commissioner
in the interests of the commission as a whole, and who is not there as
a representative of a particular party. The hon. Gentleman’s
amendments would change that and make the commissioners the
representatives of
parties.
Pete
Wishart: May I ask the hon. Gentleman the same question
that I put to the hon. Member for Epping Forest? If the political
nominations to the commission are apolitical, would the hon. Gentleman
be happy for the Liberals to waive their right to nominate a political
commissioner and give it to another party in the
House?
David
Howarth: I do not think that it is a matter of being
political or apolitical—by definition, they are political
commissioners—but they are not there to act as delegates of the
party or at the party’s insistence. They are there in a similar
way to European Commissioners, who are selected on the basis that they
know a particularly country best and that their experience reflects
where they come from. They are not there to vote for the interests of a
particular party or country.
The question
that arises is what to do about the problem, given that the solution
that has been put forward is not acceptable. The solution of not having
political commissioners would not be acceptable either, because at the
heart of the clause is the importance of having a good dose of
practical political experience on the commission and ensuring that it
does not act in an ivory-tower way. That seems to exhaust the hon.
Gentleman’s suggestions—either his solution or no
political commissioners, and that is it. I do not think that that is
it. He has raised an issue of greater importance: the degree to which
we devolve electoral
law. Party
funding is a UK-level question, because as we heard in an evidence
session, parties are constantly campaigning and raising money for a
range of different elections, from local elections to devolved
Parliament elections, UK elections and European elections. It is not
really possible to separate the money being raised for those different
campaigns and elections, because the same money is raised for the
entire range of elections. The regulation of donations and party
funding is therefore a UK-level matter, but that is not the case with
electoral administration. It is different in the different parts of the
UK, precisely because the electoral systems are so different. We should
seriously consider further devolution in that
area. There
is already devolution on boundaries. There is a separate Boundary
Commission for the Scottish Parliament and for local government in
Scotland. Although it would be complicated and difficult to introduce
into this part of the Bill properly devolved institutions for electoral
administration, that is where the solution to the problem
lies.
Mrs.
Laing: Is it not the case that the Electoral Commission
conducted a thorough and well respected inquiry into the conduct of the
last Scottish parliamentary elections and that, as it is presently
constituted, it was perfectly competent in doing so and produced an
excellent
report?
David
Howarth: I would not demur from the hon. Lady’s
view of the report’s content, but I am talking about how to
solve the institutional political problem that the hon. Gentleman has
rightly brought to our attention. We have to solve it at the level of
institutions, not by altering the detail of the Electoral Commission
appointments provisions in the
Bill.
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