My Lords, in considering the Government’s plans to take more direct control of the Electoral Commission, we should go back to considering the consensus that existed when it was established. In 1998, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, then chaired by the late Lord Neill of Bladen, proposed the creation of an
“independent … Election Commission with widespread executive and investigative powers”.
Introducing the resulting legislation, the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, explained how the commission would
“undertake its key role at the heart of our electoral arrangements”.
He emphasised that
“the commission must be as independent of the Government of the day as our constitutional arrangements allow, and it must be answerable directly to Parliament and not to Ministers”.
On behalf of the Conservative Opposition in the other place, Mr Robert Walter, then said:
“The Opposition have always made it clear that we support the recommendations of the Neill committee and that we shall support the legislation that implements the report”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/2000; cols. 42-109.]
In this House, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, introduced the legislation. He said that
“the commission will need to be seen to be scrupulously independent both of the government of the day and of the political parties”.
The consensus about the essential independence of the Electoral Commission was backed on that occasion by the late Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, a greatly respected Member on the Conservative Benches at the time. He said that
“there should be an electoral commission”,
but:
“There must be no possibility of the commissioners being \ As currently drafted the provisions in Part 3 of the Bill are not consistent with the Electoral Commission; cols. 1088-95.]
This principle of the Electoral Commission’s independence from the Government of the day survived five general elections. No previous Government before this one sought to change that principle. So I ask why, if we could not have “Tony’s cronies” overseeing the work of the Electoral Commission, we should then have Michael Gove overseeing it? To have any government Minister of any political party setting the overall strategy and policy for the Electoral Commission effectively ends its independence.
Since the last general election, the Conservative Party has been subjecting the Electoral Commission to undue pressure. In August 2000, the then Conservative Party co-chair Amanda Milling wrote in the Daily Telegraph that, if the Electoral Commission failed to make changes,
“then the only option would be to abolish it.”
That sounds pretty much like a threat to me. An independent election watchdog should not operate under such threats—not in a democracy.
4.45 pm
The problem with Bills such as this is that the Government cannot distinguish between the business of government and the business of the Conservative Party. Louis XIV is said to have proclaimed, “L’Etat, c’est moi”—“The state? I am the state.” In his youth, Boris Johnson is supposed to have wanted to be “king of the world”. However, the United Kingdom is a democracy, not the property of the party in power, and changing election rules in its favour is a serious abuse of power.
The hostility of the Conservative Party to the Electoral Commission followed from investigations as to how the party had targeted its very considerable resources in marginal seats at the 2015 general election. In that election it gained a majority in the House of Commons for the first time in 23 years. Only one court case followed all those investigations, and only one conviction. However, it was a serious one for a party official, and the jail sentence that resulted was suspended only due to very extenuating personal circumstances.
Instead of accepting that the law had been broken, the party subjected the Electoral Commission to attack for having sought to uphold the basic principles of election law that have applied since the 1880s to prevent the corrupt buying of seats in Parliament. Some months after the threat to abolish the Electoral Commission, its very effective and respected chair, Sir John Holmes, was told that his term of office would not be renewed.
Now we have the Bill. Clause 14 introduces a requirement for the Electoral Commission to follow a strategy and policy statement written by the Secretary of State. Section 15 gives extraordinary powers of control over the commission to a committee which now has a majority of Conservative MPs. The Speaker’s Committee controls the financing of the Electoral Commission and it will police the way in which it works. It will examine the way in which the Commission must have regard to the statement of strategy and policy when carrying out its functions. As the Best for Britain organisation says,
“The requirement for the Electoral Commission to act according to guidance made in the Secretary of State’s statement (and to also produce a report detailing how the Electoral Commission has aligned its activities with that statement), is a direct challenge to the Electoral Commission’s neutrality and independence.”
There will be consultation, but ultimate power will lie with the Secretary of State.
The Electoral Commission itself says that, as currently drafted, the provisions in Part 3 of the Bill are not consistent with the Electoral Commission operating as an independent regulator. As we heard, the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional
Affairs Select Committee, which also has a majority of Conservative MPs and a Conservative chair, concluded in its recent report on the Bill that
“the Government has not provided sufficient evidence to justify why the proposed measures are both necessary and proportionate”
and recommended that these clauses should be removed
“pending a formal … consultation on the proposed measures.”
That is why they should not stand part of the Bill.