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Lord Rennard rose to move Amendment No. 1K, as an amendment to the Motion that the House do not insist on its Amendment No. 1F and do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1J in lieu thereof, leave out from "House" to end and insert "do insist on its Amendment No. 1F but do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1J".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, as ever, the Minister has been most reasonable in making his case. It is my sincere belief that if all Ministers in this Government were as reasonable, we would not be where we are today. Gerrymandering is a serious charge to make against a government and one that should not be made lightly, but it is one to which the Government have opened themselves up by rejecting the opinion of the independent Electoral Commission that there should be only three all-postal pilot schemes in the elections on 10 June, and its opinion that there should not be one in the north-west on that day.
Those of us who have attended the debates on this issue will know that the Government sought the advice of the Electoral Commission on which three regions were most suitable for experimentation with all-postal voting. The amendment I have tabled today will give the Government what they said they wanted: all-postal pilots in the three regions deemed most suitable by the Electoral Commission. So why is there such controversy over my amendment, which gives the Government what they said they were asking for when they introduced this Bill?
The problem arises from the strange sequence of events surrounding the sudden and publicly inexplicable change of mind by the Government over the number of all-postal pilots that there should be for the European and local elections and, in particular, their disregard for the advice of the independent Electoral Commission, established by Parliament to be the referee in such issues.
Those who have followed these debates will know that the commission first found only two regions suitable for all-postal pilot experiments. The position of this House, therefore, was that only two pilots should take place. Sadly for some in the Government, those were not the two regions they most wanted.
Throughout most of the time that we have debated this issue, the government position has been simply that the Electoral Commission left it open to see whether a third region might prove suitable. When the Government went back to the Electoral Commission for advice, it said in a letter dated 23 March that,
- "if a third region were to be chosen on the basis of the criteria that we used it should be Yorkshire and the Humber".
In this House, we have stuck by the position of the independent Electoral Commission: that the Government are trying to have more pilots than are necessary for testing and that the risks of fraud, particularly in the council elections, where a handful of votes in a handful of wards may well sway the outcome of those elections—
Lord Hoyle: My Lords, I was not intending to interrupt because nearly every argument has been used. However, as one who has always believed that the Liberals believe in democracy, surely the noble Lord must agree that the higher the poll, the more representative it is. It is unprecedented for an unelected House to refuse not once, not twice, but six times on this issue. Why do the Liberals want to have a low turn-out? Is it because they see that they might lose councils such as Liverpool?
Lord Rennard: My Lords, there are many ways of improving turn-out. Perhaps we should have had weekend voting—I think that would have been a better experiment. Perhaps in the local elections we should have proportional representation so that councils would be more representative of the people who vote in those elections and are more enthusiastic about taking part. I am in favour of experimentation. We are supportive of the pilots, but the principle at stake is who should decide this issue. Should it be one party using its majority or should there be an attempt to reach consensus? If there is failure to achieve consensus, should the independent Electoral Commission arbitrate? I believe that it should.
The commission says that the risks of fraud outweigh the benefits if there are four experiments. It says that the north-west is not suitable. It says in its most recent letter that the position has not changed since December.
Lord Davies of Coity: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise what he has just said? He asked who should decide. Surely the decision is made by the elected government of the day. They represent the British people. The Liberals should acknowledge that the governments of 1911 and 1949 were not Tory. This House had at that time a built-in vast majority of Conservatives yet they opposed both the Liberal and Labour governments elected in the other place. But their strategic retreat on both occasions enabled legislation to be passed. This must happen now otherwise the validity of this House is even more disrespectful.
11.45 a.m.
Lord Rennard: My Lords, I ask the noble Lord to consider what I have to say on the constitutional issues. I understand the precedents of previous practice and the 1911 and 1949 Acts. I believe that what I am arguing is entirely consistent with what Parliament decided in 1949 in relation to the power of this House, but I urge the noble Lord to hear me out.
Our debate is not about the principle of all-postal voting in elections or elections in which people have a choice whether to vote by post or at a polling station.
No doubt in future we will have debates about which systems are appropriate for which elections. But the constitutional issue now is whether a government should be able to hand-pick which regions they want for different voting systems.If the amendment is carried, not a single person will be denied the right to vote by post. Every voter in the north-west will have the right to choose to vote by post or at their usual local polling station. But we will at least know that they want to vote in that way and that they really exist. We will know where they want their ballot paper delivered to and we will be much more certain that the individual who is entitled to receive that ballot paper will be returning it.
If the amendment is carried, voters in the north-west will be in exactly the same position as the Government want voters to be in the West Midlands, the south-west, the south-east, Scotland and Wales. If the Government genuinely wanted more experimentation in defiance of the Electoral Commission, surely they would not simply have picked places in the north of England and none in the south. Surely a better experiment would have been one east of the Pennines and one west. So this amendment is not about denying anyone the right to vote by post. It is about denying a government the potential to abuse their large majority in one House in order to pick and choose which regions have which voting system according to the interests of their party. That cannot be right.
It is an established constitutional principle that governments should not interfere with the findings of the boundary committees, whose work has now been overtaken by the Electoral Commission—important work in relation to the redrawing of Westminster constituencies. I referred on Tuesday to the role of the House in defeating attempts by the then Labour government to do so in 1969. That is an important constitutional precedent. It highlights the importance of having two Houses of Parliament—one may have primacy in almost every area but the other one must prevent an elected House abusing our democratic mechanisms, whether by blocking the introduction of new constituency boundaries or by changing the mechanisms of voting in only the places that suit the party in power at the time.
It is a principle accepted in many countries that there should be a bipartisan approach on electoral issues and independent advice to give guidance where there is deadlock. Some noble Lords may recall the dispute in Texas last year, when Democratic members of the Texas legislature left to stay in a hotel in a neighbouring state so they could not be present to permit the Republican members redrawing all the boundaries in Texas in favour of the Republican Party. If I could suggest that we on these Benches could adjourn to France for a few days and block this measure, I would most readily do so—but I cannot.
A number of noble Lords opposite told me after the vote on Tuesday that they knew that my amendment and the principle were entirely right. I know that many Members in another place who might also have spent
their time working on and debating other issues have told me that their view is that the Government should have compromised on three regions.So I appeal now to all parts of the House to continue acting against an over-mighty Minister in charge of local elections who should, in my view, be supporting the Electoral Commission in this matter and making a compromise that safeguards the integrity of our democratic system and the electoral processes instead of acting, as if in a football match, as though it is all right to over-rule the referee while acting as manager for one of the teams. I beg to move.
Moved, as an amendment to the Motion that the House do not insist on its Amendment No. 1F and do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1J in lieu thereof, leave out from "House" to end and insert "do insist on its Amendment No. 1F but do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1J".—(Lord Rennard.)
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