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Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, I qualified what I said. If the noble Lord reads Hansard, he will see that I made a change and mentioned the right to an election by postal vote, which means that everyone would vote with a postal vote.

I have sat through previous proceedings on the Bill and heard the noble Lord's contributions, which have been very interesting. He obviously feels quite strongly that there is a problem of fraud in his part of the country; he referred to it on a number of occasions. The Electoral Commission set out in its report another explanation of why it has taken the view that it has, although it makes reference to fraud in parts of that report. I have difficulty understanding why people in Cumbria should be punished for the actions of a small minority of people somewhere else in the north-west of England. That is really what is happening. The case that the noble Lord has always put has essentially been about fraud. He has probably been the motivating

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force behind much of the debate for the exclusion of the north-west of England. I presume that he gave evidence to the Electoral Commission. Do I presume correctly that he protested to it about problems going on in his part of the country?

Lord Greaves: My Lords, if the noble Lord is inviting an intervention, I cannot resist. I did as he said in the past, when the fraud took place. My concerns are not about one small part of the north-west, but about a very large part of it.

Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, all I suggest is that the noble Lord's statements of evidence to the commission will certainly have influenced it in the judgment that it made, despite the fact that the report in December states that that is not necessarily the case. Should other people in the north-west of England be punished? If there is a problem in small localities in the country, sort out those localities. Do not let everyone suffer because of a problem in a small number of localities. That is at the heart of my objections today, in terms of the recommendation before the House.

I am sorry to speak to the House in such a way this afternoon, but I believe that there is a developing crisis in the relationship between the two Houses. It stems from the fact that we are moving from a revisory role into something much more sinister, and we are going to pay the price for it.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I have not been in this House very long but, in the time that I have and the time that I have spent on the Front Bench, I have not heard such a threatening speech from a Labour Member, nor one that was probably so misjudged.

We have spent a long time on the Bill. I remind the House that the Bill is about promoting all-postal piloting in two or three European areas. It is designed precisely to extend all-postal piloting to European elections. It is not about denying people votes or an all-postal vote, but asking whether all-postal balloting in a less limited pilot than has yet been tried—they have been in local elections—is sustainable on a larger basis.

The Government have had the benefit of the advice of their own commission. The Opposition did not set up the Electoral Commission—the Government did. They had a long report from it, part of which said that it thought that it would be suitable for two European electoral regions to be part of the electoral pilot, and that four others might be able to take part. For each of those, however, there was a problem. That is the situation. We have discussed the processes and the anxieties that we have all had about all-postal balloting. We discussed the really practical issues; the noble Lord may have sat in on those debates but certainly did not take part in Committee, on Report or at Third Reading.

We now have a situation in which we have to decide whether Parliament agrees with the Government that there should be four regions. Initially the Government never asked for four regions. They initially asked the Electoral Commission to promote three regions and then, quite suddenly, announced that there would be

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four. I chided the Minister in our previous debate because he suddenly let the cat out of the bag on why there should be four regions. We had a small contretemps on whether he had said something or not. However, it has been confirmed today that, of those four regions, three would be those involved in referendums for the regional assemblies in October. We now have a bigger canvas than we had before. We are talking about not simply European pilots, but the referendums in October.

I do not really want to get stuck on constitutional issues, but my understanding when I came to this place—I was extremely proud of it—was that I was a Member of Parliament. I believe that this House has a right to ask our Parliament to consider further matters as and when it believes, in the majority, that that is correct. We have now reached a stage where the amendment would enable the Government not only to have their Bill, but to have three electoral regions. That was where they first started. The argument has not really been about three; we discussed two and have now moved to see that there could be three.

Let us think on the matter a bit further. When we discussed it last week, we said that the Government should seek the views of the Electoral Commission about a third pilot area, and that those views should be brought forward after it had consulted all those whom it had previously consulted in the electoral regions—it could go and talk to both the Yorkshire and Humber and north-west regions.

I do not know whether noble Lords opposite have seen the letter from the chairman, who now accepts that the electoral administrators in Yorkshire and Humberside are more positive about the process. The Deputy Prime Minister's letter to the commission, which generated that response, was apparently written on 22 March—although we have not seen a copy of it. The chairman of the Electoral Commission's response was on 23 March. That was not long enough for him to have consulted more widely than the electoral officers, if that, and certainly not to have looked again at the previous consultations.

Lord Hoyle: But, My Lords, the noble Baroness keeps referring to electoral returning officers in the north west.

A noble Lord: Yorkshire and Humberside.

Lord Hoyle: My Lords, Yorkshire and Humberside. Instead of that I understand that the noble Baroness said that they were more definite about such matters in Yorkshire and Humberside compared with the north west.

Noble Lords: No!

Lord Hoyle: My Lords, if the noble Baroness did not say that, I withdraw.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, when last we debated this issue we suggested that the commission's views

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would be helpful, but that there should be no question of the chairman being "duffed up"—my words—by the Deputy Prime Minister in order to form those views.

An additional interesting facet in the interchange between the Deputy Prime Minister and the commission is a Written Answer given today in the other place to my honourable friend Philip Hammond. It says that at a meeting between the Deputy Prime Minister and the commission both parties agreed that all four of the regions announced by the Deputy Prime Minister were capable of running a successful pilot. In the light of what we know, and in the light of what has been said by the chairman of the commission in his most recent letter, dated 23 March, we know that that is, if not disingenuous, certainly not quite as accurate as has been put forward in this reply.

I must accept that the commission, despite the fact that I do not believe that it has had time to undertake further consultation, has given its view that Yorkshire and Humberside would be capable of conducting a pilot. But the Government ought to recognise that in that letter the chairman, who has been very robust and consistent about the matter, has stood firm on his original decision that the north west was not a suitable area for an all-postal vote and said that there were no merits in piloting in four regions. I have the letter with me and if noble Lords wish to see it they may do so.

The Government will recall that if all four regions were involved, it would mean, on the commission's assessment, that over a third of the electorate would be taking part in a pilot. That is a situation that is clearly untenable—my words not theirs. The Government should now give up their absurd determination to proceed to four regions. Today they will have the opportunity to take forward the proposals in three regions because, however reluctant I am, we will support the Liberal Democrats in their amendment. There is, and should be, no connection between the European pilots and the referendum in October. What is important is that there is a limited pilot of a scale of a region, so that any lessons that need to be learned about all-postal voting on a slightly larger canvass can be learned.

The pilots do not need to be in the same regions as the referendums, but they do need to be held and assessed before there is any question of them being translated forward. While we all rant on about the constitution, it would be fair to remind the House that what we are doing in the pilots is disconnecting the voter from the ballot box and, by and large, disconnecting the voters from the candidates. This is not a matter to be taken lightly. It is an extremely serious decision for the House and Parliament to be making. I have given the reasons why we will support the Liberal Democrat amendment, but I reject any suggestion that my party has in any way been behaving improperly in trying to ensure that the pilots take place in a rational way, as supported by the Government's own advisers.

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