I thank noble Lords and join in the general confusion about where we are up to. I speak in favour of the two amendments in this group tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. They seem to be a ranging shot on one of the most important issues embedded in this Bill.
I hope that noble Lords will excuse me if I take this opportunity to explore what the amendments do and why it is so important that they and other matters relating to Clauses 14 and 15 are given serious consideration. These provisions are at the heart of the matter which I want to speak about. The question is really: is the United Kingdom to retain, as one of its trusted institutions and symbols of democratic legitimacy, the Electoral Commission, or is it to join an increasingly long list of countries that have, step by step and little by little, eroded their democratic base, undermined trust in their electoral processes and cast doubt on the legitimacy of their elected representatives?
The Electoral Commission was set up as a direct result of recommendations by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, on which I serve. The committee is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, and its first chairman was Lord Nolan. People refer frequently to the Nolan principles but those are in the guardianship of the Committee on Standards in Public Life; so, we believe, is the Electoral Commission. It is a body which emerged from recommendations presented to the Prime Minister by the CSPL. It has since been overhauled and reviewed by the CSPL and there have been changes made in legislation, again based on recommendations made directly by the CSPL. In a report last year, the Committee made further recommendations to the Prime Minister about changes that needed to be made in response to the inquiry and the evidence that it took. All those recommendations were designed to make the Electoral Commission a more effective body, with clear and specific recommendations on how that should be done in each case.
The Electoral Commission was set up on the advice of the CSPL. It was updated on advice from the CSPL, and the Government have before them clear recommendations from the CSPL on how it could be improved further. Our report strongly emphasised what every piece of evidence showed: that to maintain trust in the electoral integrity of our democratic processes, it was essential that the Electoral Commission retains its independence from political interference—interference from any political party or faction, but particularly from the party in power at any one time. Unfortunately, Clauses 14 and 15 take our country in the wrong direction. The two amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, try hard to pull it back from the brink, so yes, they have our support.
At Second Reading, I asked whether the Minister would be ready to hand over to a future radical-left Government the powers that the Bill, in its present form, would give them. He is far too skilled an operator to answer that question, but it is very hard to believe that he would. It could start off with something as innocuous as a requirement for the Electoral Commission to have regard to the Government’s manifesto policies; levelling up, for instance, or maybe levelling down, as will surely be achieved as a completely accidental by-product of other provisions in the Bill.
In many areas, but particularly Clauses 14 and 15, the Bill seems to have been drawn up by people who have never been in opposition, which is startling because the Minister has plenty of experience of that, having lived as an oppressed political minority in the Liberal Democrat-run London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The Minister may protest that there is to be a comprehensive consultation with various bodies before any strategy statements come into force. Of course, the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, very much bear on the question of the terms and conditions on which such a strategy report might be made.
The Minister might refer me to the elaborate wording of proposed new Section 4C, which is in Clause 14. But when I pointed out to him at Second Reading, as many noble Lords did, that practically every outside body that had expressed an opinion on these changes had strongly advised against them, and that the CSPL itself, which created the commission, had said that our electoral processes must be overseen by an independent regulator protected from political pressures and separate from the Government, and that it must demonstrate its impartiality and effectiveness at all times, the Minister’s reply was that the Government take a different view.
Noble Lords should bear in mind that five bodies must be consulted, according to proposed new Section 4C, before any such strategy document moves forward. It would be interesting to know what they will do when they get their first strategy statement. Actually, we do not have to wonder, as they have already commented on the proposals in front of them. Two opted out in disgust, which is why the Scottish and Welsh amendments flow in the next group. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has strenuously protested and recommended that the Government take these provisions out of the Bill. That is three of them. The Speaker’s Committee is packed with Cabinet
Ministers, which is an offence when it is the budget holder for the Electoral Commission—a matter we shall talk about later. It is also worthy of note that all but one of the Electoral Commissioners jointly wrote an open letter of protest, pointing out that this fundamentally undermines their legitimacy and our democratic system. Therefore, of the five consultees in proposed new Section 4C, four have expressed vigorous dissent with the proposal and one is packed with Cabinet Ministers.
Interestingly, neither the CSPL or any local government institution was consulted: the one which created the electoral commission, and the people who will receive the benefit of its administration above anybody else. What we learn from this is that a fig leaf of consultation, even when we have a benign regime such as this, is not a safeguard. Under a less benign regime, as seen from the Minister’s viewpoint, that fig leaf could be gone in the space of a short consultation. I repeat my question: is the Minister completely at ease with the provisions in these two clauses? I and my noble friends are certainly not.
A look at the international stage may help noble Lords to understand our deep unease more clearly and explain why we are so strongly in favour of the Minister giving a fair wind, at the very minimum, to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.
Noon
Any power-hungry regime anywhere in the world, on coming to power and wishing to keep it, looks around to take steps to make that happen without having to take too much account of the vagaries of public opinion, if necessary. Some well-understood steps to take are set out in the autocrat’s playbook. High on the list is undermining the independence of the election regulator. Following that, guidance can be produced that facilitates the selection or deselection of candidates, the application of rules and the prosecution of offences—I will not give away any more trade secrets. But noble Lords can see where that goes by looking at Russia today. Mr Putin’s most dangerous opponent in the last presidential election managed to overcome the requirement to get a million signatures on his nomination form, obviously placed there by the election regulator, but it was deemed that there were a few duds in his list of nominees, and, although he had a million valid ones, he was disqualified for submitting fraudulent names—strictly according to the rules, of course.
Another entirely rules-based democratic disaster is playing out in Hong Kong. Legislation on elections there, largely bequeathed by Britain, has been subtly modified by the applications of government strategies on the election regulator. That should give the Minister nightmares. Candidates there could stand for election only if they had signed up to one of that Government’s key manifesto policies—unification with mainland China. It was hardly a surprise that only unification candidates were elected and that the election had the lowest turnout of voters since British handover.
I ask the Minister to consider a hypothetical UK Government with a majority of 80 and a core policy of rejoining the European Union and the power that these two clauses would give that Administration to
facilitate their desired outcome. I ask the Minister for a third time: is he completely at ease with forcing these disastrous and damaging clauses through Parliament?
When the Berlin Wall came down, the United Kingdom Government, driven on by Mrs Thatcher, set up the Westminster Foundation for Democracy as a vehicle to help the newly emerging civic societies in eastern Europe understand the basic rules of a democratic multiparty system. There were many exchanges between politicians of all parties in the UK with civic and political organisations in those emerging democracies as part of that effort, and one group visited the Liberal Democrats as part of that study tour. Members of that group had never heard of knocking on doors and engaging with electors. They were absolutely at ground zero. After a day of seminars and discussions, we had a feedback session. There was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement coupled with some trepidation about the lessons that they had learned and the work ahead of them. However, the spokesman for three dour Albanians simply said, “We prefer to win our elections by administrative means”, and that sounds a great deal more chilling with an Albanian accent.
There are some faint echoes of that today. Mrs Thatcher knew the importance and value to Britain of our soft power and our reputation for robust multiparty democracy, fought on a level playing field with a referee who did not take instructions from whichever club happened to be top of the league when the match was played. Mrs Thatcher knew the value of and invested in democracy. Perhaps in a small way, the responses of those same eastern European nations to the current Ukraine disaster show that it was money well invested. I ask the Minister not to throw all that away. Give some comfort to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and adopt her amendments as a small first step to undoing the harm proposed in the Bill. He needs to take these two dangerous clauses out of the Bill, and my noble friends and I will energetically make that case in the debates that follow.