Government of Wales Bill

I do like a man who has learned to say that he is sorry. Obviously, the hon. Gentleman is one of those rare people. This is a serious group of amendments, on which I have a number of points to make. I shall be listening carefully to what the Secretary of State has to say about them, as will many of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members on this side of the House. We deplore the Labour Government’s attempt to rig the electoral system to satisfy Labour Assembly Members, who do not like competition in their own back yard. The Government intend to do this by disqualifying candidates from standing both for a constituency and for the regional party list. Significantly, and reinforcing the Labour bias that I allege in the proposal, the Labour-dominated Welsh Affairs Committee, whose report on the Government’s White Paper, ““Better Governance for Wales””, was published in December. I know the Secretary of State goes to bed reading it; divided on party lines on this issue. It is quite evident that it is the Labour party versus the rest. It is not good enough for the Secretary of State to argue that the proposal was in the Welsh version of the Labour manifesto at the last general election and that he therefore has a mandate. I have a copy of the Welsh Labour manifesto here, and it says Labour will"““end Assembly Members being elected via the backdoor even when they have already been rejected by voters.””" I do not agree that such Members are elected by the back door. They are elected by the front door, because they are very much in evidence in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. The Secretary of State has not bothered even to consult or take the views of some of his colleagues. I want to set the debate in context by referring to the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who gave a speech to the Hansard Society on 16 January. I am sure the Secretary of State is familiar with her words. The speech was entitled ““A New Deal for Democracy””, and the Secretary of State can find it on the speeches section of the Department for Constitutional Affairs website, as it is a published document. Under the heading, ““We need to adopt a non-partisan approach””, the Minister said:"““Whilst the political parties have a vital role in our democracy, we have to approach change in electoral administration and democratic systems on a non-party basis.""And though I’ve stood for election seven times as a Labour candidate, it is not difficult for me to get into non-party mode in carrying out these responsibilities in my new department because there’s no other way to do this job. You simply can’t make progress in addressing electoral issues from a party-political basis.""So I work as closely with parliamentarians from the other parties as I do with those from the Government’s back-benches.””" Nobody from the Wales Office has worked closely with parliamentarians from other parties. From some of the speeches that have been made during scrutiny of the Bill, I am not even sure whether people from the Department have worked closely with Government Back Benchers, although this is a telling phrase:"““You simply can’t make progress in addressing electoral issues from a party-political basis.””" And yet, what we have before us is a proposal on an electoral process that is steeped in party-political aims and ambitions. This change has not been called for by anybody except Labour Members. It has not been called for by the Welsh people, nor was it recommended by the Richard commission. I checked in the Library, because I thought that a flood of papers might have been put there by the Secretary of State, which would amount to the body of evidence of the demands for those changes on which we could draw as a Committee. But after checking again as recently as this morning, I am afraid to say that no body of evidence has been deposited by anyone from the Wales Office. I can only conclude that this is not a measure that has been demanded by the people of Wales, but one designed to suit the interests of the Labour party. Significantly, this is being proposed when Labour has no regional AMs. There was no such proposal made before the 2003 Assembly elections, when Labour had one regional AM and no complaint about the system was heard at all. [Hon. Members: ““Ah!””] Opposition Members are confirming that I am exactly right in my suppositions on that point. I shall turn to comments made by other bodies; why rely on what politicians say? Let us consider some independent commentary on our electoral systems. The Electoral Commission is an independent body established by a Labour Government in 2000 under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It is independent of the Government and of political parties, but it is directly accountable to Parliament through a Committee chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons. It exists to do something very special; to foster public confidence and participation in elections by promoting integrity, involvement and effectiveness in the democratic process. I think we can all be encouraged by that. What does the Electoral Commission say in response to the Government proposals? Its submission to the Welsh Affairs Committee inquiry on the White Paper concluded:"““In light of the need to encourage voter participation at the Assembly election in 2007, we would caution against any change that is perceived to be partisan and could add to a prevailing distrust of politicians.""On the evidence available to the Commission . . . we do not believe that the case for change has been made out.””" In fact, it urged the Government to provide more information regarding the justification underpinning their statement. The Electoral Commission continued:"““In the time available to respond to the White Paper, it was not feasible for us to commission public opinion research on the issue of dual candidacy. Drawing on our quantitative and qualitative research on public attitudes to the National Assembly election in 2003 . . . we note that the ‘Clwyd West problem’ as described in the White Paper did not emerge in any of our attitudinal research about voting in the election. As our research included unprompted questions to the public about their reasons for voting or not voting, this may suggest that there was in fact low public salience of the issue at the time.""In the absence of any research findings on voter attitudes on dual candidacy in the public domain””" the Electoral Commission urged the Government"““to provide more information regarding the justifications underpinning the statement in the White Paper that voters are confused and concerned about the issue””." It went on:"““It is possible that some of those members of the public said to be critical of dual candidacy may””" not be critical of dual candidacy at all. They may"““in fact be criticising an outcome of proportional representation, compared with the majoritarian ‘first past the post’ system to which voters in Britain have been traditionally accustomed.””"