Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Amendment 247 is in my name and of several colleagues, including the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell). I do not think that that represents any slight on the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); it is just that I asked the hon. Member for Middlesbrough to table it with me. The hon. Member for Rhondda has made the reason behind his amendment clear, and the principal purpose of our amendment is the same. The Electoral Commission has invited us to give it the enormous responsibility of sending out information, during a referendum, about the contentious matter on which voters will be asked to give an opinion. As the hon. Gentleman said, these are difficult issues to understand. Even the current voting system, to be called first past the post in the ballot question, is difficult for some voters to understand. That underlines the no campaign's view that it should have been called the current system. As a more neutral description, that might have been better and more intelligible. These are subjective judgments, but the commission decided not to accept that suggestion. It also declined to accept our suggestion that the new system should be called the optional preferential voting system with instant run-off, which explains in more detail what it actually is. We are therefore left with some difficulty in explaining the systems. Amendment 247 would provide that unless both the yes and the no campaigns are satisfied that the information being sent out is completely neutral, they should have the right of veto over it. That would be completely fair and equal, and would provide a safety valve, because there would be no possibility of information going out about which one campaign could cry foul. Having said that, however, I am prepared to support amendment 136—the official Opposition amendment on this matter—because it is in the same spirit as ours. It is most unlikely that any information would be sent out unless there was unanimous approval on the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission. If one or other of the campaigns was making strong representations about the unfairness of the information in question, that approval would be extremely unlikely to be forthcoming. Broadly, therefore, I am satisfied with the Opposition amendment, so I direct my remarks to the Treasury Bench. What possible objection could there be to the Opposition amendment? It is a safeguard. I would like briefly to point out one additional point. Earlier in these proceedings, the credentials of the chair of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, were raised, and it was pointed out that she was, in the past, campaigns officer for Charter 88, which, as we know, has a strident view on the voting system for the House of Commons. I retorted that I had no doubt about her intention to be absolutely fair and unprejudiced, and that we should have complete confidence in the conduct of her office. I am not pleased with how the Electoral Commission handled the date issue, but that was not a matter of her being anything less than impartial; it was the result of a lack of competence and appreciation of the issues involved within that organisation. We live in a democracy in which things not only have to be fair, but have to be seen to be fair and have to be conducted impartially. Those who are have responsibility for sending out to voters information on the contentious issue of this referendum should be held to account, and if there is not proper oversight, we will invite unnecessary controversy and mistrust—however misplaced—of the process. I therefore invite my hon. Friend the Minister, who will be responding to this probably rather short debate, to consider accepting the amendment, or at least to indicate that the Government will introduce a safeguard of their own at a later stage. I note that the Government have tabled an amendment containing an explicit power giving responsibility to the Electoral Commission to"““take whatever steps they think appropriate to provide, for persons entitled to vote in the referendum, information about each of the two voting systems referred to in the referendum question””." I am bound to say that that is better worded than the current provision in the Bill, which states that the Electoral Commission must"““promote public awareness about the referendum and how to vote in it.””" I do not think that the possible misinterpretation of"““how to vote in it””" should not be taken too seriously, because any court will know what it means. However, if we are explicitly to give this responsibility to the Electoral Commission, which I have no doubt it has asked for—given the advice it gave to the Government—we should provide some mechanism for accountability. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to give that serious consideration, so that we can, I hope, save dividing the Committee and move on to the next group of amendments as quickly as possible.