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The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) made an interesting contribution in diverting our attention to his recent experiences in Albania. I am glad that he has been present for at least part of the extended
progress of the Bill and I am grateful for his contribution. I suggest that he takes some reading with him the next time he goes overseas. He might be interested in the Electoral Commission's reports on recent elections in this country; the most recent was produced with the Association of Chief Police Officers. I think that he will be reassured by the commentary on the incidence of fraud in this country; the report says that it is declining. I strongly recommend that report to the hon. Gentleman. He is obviously agitated about the issue, and when he next goes to Albania or anywhere else he can comfort himself by reading it.
More generally, I am concerned that the hon. Gentleman obviously did not listen to what I was saying about the risks of a precipitate rush to individual registration. Furthermore, he did not seem to listen to his party's Front Benchers on that issue. I hope that he will read Hansard tomorrow and see that we are moving as rapidly as we can towards that desirable objective, in a way commensurate with the twin objectives that are immutable in the eyes of Front Benchers of both Opposition parties. They are that the register must be as comprehensive and as accurate as possible. We must achieve those twin ideals.
Mr. Chope: In that case, will the Minister accept the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Cambridge, who said that the best impartial judge of whether those criteria had been satisfied was the Electoral Commission itself?
Mr. Wills: Exactly; that is precisely what the legislation prescribes. The Electoral Commission will make the recommendation, and Parliament in the end will decide. That is right and proper, and consistent with our system of representative democracy. The decision on whether the register is as comprehensive and accurate as possible will indeed be made by the Electoral Commission. I hope that I have done enough to persuade the House to accept the amendments.
Lords amendment 33 agreed to , with Commons privilege waived.
Lords amendments 34 to 47 , 50 , 96 to 98 , 105 and 106 agreed to.
Mr. Wills: I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 2 to 8, 51 to 65 and 99.
Mr. Wills: The Government tabled several amendments to the Bill's provisions on the Electoral Commission's powers and governance at various stages in the other place. These amendments all respond to concerns raised in this House, in the other place, or by the Electoral Commission. I will briefly outline the effect of each amendment.
Lords amendment 1 follows a report by the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which suggested that the clause be amended to ensure that an order made under paragraph 16 of schedule 19C, which prescribes the amount of a fixed monetary penalty, will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. The Government were happy to
agree to that. The amendment adds a reference to paragraph 1(5) of schedule 19C-the paragraph that relates to the definition of fixed monetary penalties-to the list of paragraphs at clause 3(4), which is the list of parts that will be subject to affirmative resolution. The consequence of the amendment will be that any order that sets or alters the level of fixed monetary penalties will be subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses.
Lords amendment 2 requires the leaders of the three largest qualifying parties in Westminster to nominate three candidates each for consideration as nominated commissioner.
Pete Wishart: The Minister knows that I have an interest in this issue. Is there any reason whatsoever why the three main parties exclusively will have the opportunity to nominate three commissioners, and yet the minority parties-the parties of government of all the other legislatures throughout the United Kingdom-will have the opportunity to nominate only one? Is it not the case that the House of Lords, like this place, has looked at these issues solely through the Westminster prism and forgotten about the new multi-legislature UK in which we now live?
Mr. Wills: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his indefatigable persistence in raising this point-that is a great tribute to his party. As he well remembers, we have been round this course several times already, and I do not want to tire the patience of the House by repeating it. We have not forgotten the measures of devolution that we are proud to have introduced, but that is precisely what they are-measures of devolution. This remains the UK Parliament, and we have discussed this at great length already.
We developed the amendment in discussion with the Electoral Commission. It introduces a degree of competition into the process for appointing nominated commissioners by ensuring that there is a pool of candidates from which the Speaker's Committee can select four candidates on merit, one from each of the three largest nominating parties, as well as from a smaller party.
Pete Wishart: One from a smaller party.
Mr. Wills: Yes, precisely because they are smaller.
Lords amendments 3 and 4 are consequential amendments.
Lords amendments 5 and 6 enable the commission's chief executive to increase the one-year restriction on previous political activity for commission staff in clause 7 to a period of between two and five years by designating individual posts in the commission that will be subject to an expanded restriction. The chief executive may designate a post in this way if he or she reasonably believes that such a restriction is necessary to maintain public confidence in the effectiveness of the commission in carrying out its functions. The length of the restriction must be determined by reference to the seniority of the post and the political sensitivity of the matters with which the postholder is likely to have to deal. The amendments are necessary to ensure that the small number of posts for which a one-year restriction may not be suitable owing to their seniority or the likelihood of dealing with politically sensitive matters can be designated as subject to a longer restriction. The amendments also place a requirement on the chief executive to consult the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission
on the posts that he intends to designate, which will help to ensure that designations are justified and not unduly restrictive.
Lords amendment 7 excludes all commission staff dealing with electoral boundary work from the reduced one-year restriction in clause 7, as it is envisaged that they will eventually transfer to the independent boundary committee established in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. It is envisaged that under that Bill, a 10-year restriction will be retained along the lines of the one that is currently in place in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The amendment will ensure that the level of political restriction on the appointment of boundary staff remains consistent in the intervening period between the commencement of clause 7 and the creation of the new boundary committee.
Lords amendment 8 restricts the Electoral Commission's public awareness role in section 13 of the 2000 Act to educating people about current electoral systems in the United Kingdom. It does so by removing existing obligations placed upon the commission to provide information about current and pending systems of government in the UK and about EU institutions. It takes forward the substance of another amendment along the same lines in the other place that was widely supported.
In practice, the commission's function will be, as it is now, to provide information on the mechanics of the electoral process, including electoral registration procedures-those are important in the light of our preceding discussion-how to vote and any changes to the electoral system and connected matters. Lords amendment 99 makes consequential amendments to section 13 of the Act that are required as a result.
Lords amendments 51 and 52 provide for a five-year time limit on the commission's ability to issue a disclosure notice requesting information or documents from former treasurers or other party officials for its supervisory purposes. That is necessary to ensure that an unduly onerous burden is not placed on former treasurers or officers of parties to retain information relating to income and expenditure indefinitely. I hope that the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) will welcome that. I recall that he raised the matter in Committee.
Lords amendment 53 narrows the commission's powers of entry under the Bill by removing the Bill's original extension of the powers to those categories formerly supervised by the commission-in other words, any entity that would have fallen within paragraph 2(1)(a) to (d) of schedule 19B to the 2000 Act. That is necessary to support our intention that the Bill will extend the commission's powers so that it is a more effective regulator, but it will not do so unduly, particularly on the delicate issue of entry powers.
Lords amendment 54 takes forward the substance of another amendment in the other place by requiring a magistrate to issue a warrant to the commission to enter premises to inspect documents. In addition, it ensures that the amendments will be workable in practice by setting out the criteria that a magistrate will have to be satisfied of before issuing a warrant. The effect is that the commission will not be able to enter the premises of those to whom the power applies without an inspection warrant. Importantly, the amendment makes it clear that entry may take place only for non-investigatory
purposes and for the purpose of inspecting documents relating to income and expenditure. Lords amendments 55, 61, 62, and 64 are consequential.
Lords amendment 56 will require the commission's applications for court orders, to enforce earlier notices requiring documents, to be approved by the High Court, or the Court of Session in Scotland. That is in recognition of concerns about vesting such a power in a magistrates court, not least given the potential sensitivity of such applications.
Finally, Lords amendment 60 extends the court order powers that enable the commission to enforce its requests for documents, so that they may be used also to compel information or an explanation if an earlier notice under paragraph 3(2) of schedule 19B to the 2000 Act requesting one of those things has not been complied with. That is necessary to ensure that the commission has full, effective investigatory capacity. Lords amendments 57 to 59, 63 and 65 are consequential.
Mrs. Laing: The Minister will be delighted to know that I do not intend to oppose any of these amendments. He has made a good case for the Government's changing their mind yet again on how the electoral commissioners with political experience should be appointed or elected. It is extraordinary that we started with one position in the Bill, then the Government tabled an amendment to which we agreed, and then suddenly last week in the House of Lords the Government tabled another amendment and the Bill was amended again. In the interests of openness, democracy and time, I will agree with the Minister.
Mr. Wills: Perhaps the hon. Lady will recast her formulation that we have changed our mind. She knows that we have approached everything in the Bill with an open mind and that we are flexible and ever eager for consensus on it.
9.45 pm
Mrs. Laing: I agree that the Minister has attempted to achieve consensus. I thought that we had achieved it on the matter until, suddenly, he wanted to achieve a different consensus at the 11th hour in the House of Lords. However, in the spirit of consensus and out of respect for the Electoral Commission, which, for good reasons, set out a new position on the matter, I completely support what he says.
Again, I take the point that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) made so eloquently. I understand his position and have some sympathy with it, but I am afraid that I agree with the Minister's comments, which I will not reiterate because of time.
I want to consider Lords amendment 54, which, as the Minister said, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) covered in Committee and in other proceedings. Before the Bill was amended in Committee and on Report, the amendment would have extended the Electoral Commission's powers of entry under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 to other bodies and individuals such as donors and, indeed, Members of Parliament. That would not be right, so we fully support the amendments that the Minister has introduced because they mean that due process will be followed and that consent has to be
obtained from a magistrate before the Electoral Commission can enter and inspect premises. The Electoral Commission has acted perfectly reasonably since it has had such powers under the 2000 Act. There is no reason to think that it would do anything other than that in future, but the amendments, with which we all agree, mean that it and the system will be better protected in future.
In the spirit of consensus, with which we are concluding our consideration, I do not wish to take up the House's time on the other points that the Minister made, all of which are now non-contentious.
David Howarth: None of the matters that we are considering is now enormously contentious, but I want to make one or two comments, especially about clause 5 and Lords amendment 54.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) is right that we have gone back and forth on clause 5 about political commissioners. It is a difficult and delicate subject, because introducing an expressly political element into the Electoral Commission will always be difficult when its tradition has been non-political and deliberately distanced from politics, for obvious reasons. However, we all agree that the commission could do with a more experienced, perhaps more down-to-earth element in its membership. That requires overcoming some difficulty in appointing the political commissioners.
I remain slightly nervous of the party leader route for appointing political commissioners. It is obviously better for party leaders to propose three nominees rather than one because that means that we are not dealing with direct patronage, with which I have some difficulty. I am still unclear about exactly how the process will work from there. What will the precise procedure be for deciding which of the three is to be appointed? I would prefer a much more open procedure, similar to that for other public appointments, whereby something like open competition is introduced. In an ideal world, I would prefer more open competition for the posts. That is my first worry. Why have the Government rejected a rather more normal process of appointment in such cases?
The second point is the one that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is quite right to raise over and over. We now live in a multi-legislature, multi-political system polity-we have the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the London assembly. Our political system is far more complex than it was 20 years ago. It seems odd, to say no more than that, that the ruling party in a very important part of this country-Scotland-will not be represented on the commission.
I made the following point in Committee and I repeat it now-indeed, this fundamental problem would have been dealt with by a perfectly sensible amendment that the hon. Gentleman tabled on Report, but it was not voted on, even though other amendments that were not debated were voted on. Why should we not transfer responsibility for Scottish elections to Scotland? Should that not be part of the devolution settlement? Why is a UK body responsible for specifically Scottish elections? I do not understand why that should be the case, and I urge the Government to think about it further.
On Lords amendment 54 and the warrant procedure, I can see what the Government are doing and what Members of the House of Lords were doing, but I am a
bit confused about how the system will work in practice. In particular, it is a condition of obtaining a warrant that
"permission to inspect...has been requested by the Commission and has been unreasonably refused"
by the person against whom the inspection request was made. However, how is it to be decided whether the refusal was unreasonable? The application appears to be for a warrant, which is issued ex parte, with only one of the parties present. Warrants are granted by magistrates in living rooms. My wife is a magistrate and she has granted warrants in our living room. Granting a warrant is not a formal court procedure, with both parties present. Without both parties present, how is it to be fairly decided that the refusal was unreasonable? I fear that the provisions have not been fully thought through. Nevertheless, I accept the need for safeguards-indeed, safeguards in this area are important-and I welcome all the other amendments.
Pete Wishart: It will not surprise the Minister that I wish to return to the question of political commissioners, although I can assure him that this will be the last time that he and I debate it across the Chamber.
The Minister's answer to my intervention was totally inadequate. It is just not good enough to say that because we are a smaller party in this House we should not get a proper look-in when it comes to the arrangements for the Electoral Commission. The commission has responsibilities and obligations not just to this House, but to every devolved legislature across the United Kingdom, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) noted. We are in great danger of allowing the Electoral Commission to become the plaything of this House. However, it must properly reflect the new United Kingdom, with all its devolved institutions, and the reality of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies.
My question for the Minister, which I hope he will spend some time answering-that is, if he is prepared to listen to it-is this: why is it right that the three main London-based parties have the opportunity to nominate three commissioners and the smaller parties, as he calls them, have the opportunity to nominate only one? He may refer to the smaller parties in this place, but let me remind him that we are the Government in Scotland, in one of the major legislatures in the United Kingdom. The Democratic Unionist party has a share in a coalition in Northern Ireland and Plaid Cymru, our colleagues on these Benches, has a share in power in a coalition in Wales. We are the Governments of the rest of the United Kingdom.
Mrs. Laing: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because he knows what I am going to say. Even though this is not the position of his party, on whose behalf he speaks so eloquently, does he accept that this is the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which still exists for the rest of us?
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