Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

All hon. Members appreciate the remarks of the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). We take both the sincerity of his criticism of his Government and his defence of the proposals, but we have not heard any supporter of the Bill answer this question: what is the imperative of 5 May 2011? Why the absolute insistence on that date? I think the Deputy Prime Minister will come to regret that as a serious episode of premature calculation. He somehow decided that it suited him for internal party reasons, and perhaps for the prospects for success in the referendum, to go for that date. I fully recognise that Liberal Democrats did not want a Bill that did not contain a guaranteed date, which is why they will be suspicious of some amendments in the group. They will say no to some proposals because they would allow too much elasticity and too many other conditions to get in the way. There was therefore an imperative to include a date. It was probably also imperative for Liberal Democrats to have a date in 2011, and probably one before next year's Liberal Democrats annual conference, just as Second Reading of the Bill was scheduled conveniently before this year's conference, so that they had a trophy and could say, ““Look what we're getting already! Look what we're putting through!”” I understand those political needs—the Liberal Democrats needed to assure themselves and their activists that the Bill was real—but amendment 1, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and to which I have put my name, addresses and accommodates such imperatives. It would guarantee a date before the Liberal Democrat conference, but it would also ensure that the date was not in conflict with other important elections, such as the long-delayed and overdue local authority elections in Northern Ireland and the Assembly elections, which other right hon. and hon. Members mentioned. We have also heard that argument from Welsh and Scottish Members in respect of elections in their countries. Amendment 1 offers Liberal Democrats the certainty of a date without the complications and conflicts that attach to 5 May. The proposal would also ensure, as others have said, that parties could duly observe the proper six-month referendum period, and that the Electoral Commission could properly monitor it, as per its responsibilities. Members should reflect on the fact that this will be the first test of the Electoral Commission's handling of a full-blown, cross-UK referendum. It will be the first test of how it discharges its responsibility for overseeing the proprieties imposed on it by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. To ask the commission to discharge that role in the context of so many other campaign atmospherics, with various leaflets and materials being sent out in at least three areas of the UK, is too much. Politicians will end up crossing the line and answering referendum-related questions in a context that is meant to be election-related. National networks will find it difficult to deal only with the AV referendum and not with the elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the regional networks will be in serious trouble in covering the campaigns properly. For instance, how will they cover the election campaign in Northern Ireland? Will they have to tell people that they are not allowed to ask a panel of candidates about the referendum? If candidates in the election talk about the referendum, they might influence matters. Regional networks will have to try to run separate coverage, so that those of us who wish to campaign in both the election and the referendum can do so separately and can show that we did one thing in relation to one campaign and another in relation to the other campaign. That will create an impossible position, and the difficulties will include trying to rein in the excesses of the big networks and dealing with the dilemmas for regional broadcasters in covering the parliamentary and Assembly elections.