Electoral Administration Bill

The last time the House debated the Bill, I waited patiently to discuss my 20 amendments to clause 33. The House did not get anywhere near clause 33, and when I realised that I would not have an opportunity to speak, I confess that I walked out in anger and missed my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs saying, ““Don’t worry. Although we have not discussed your 20 amendments, we will pay close attention to them.”” It was a matter of great delight, therefore, when I found that the Department, through the House of Lords, had almost completely rewritten clause 33, all six and a half pages of it. I could never understand how the Department dared draft the clause in its original form. I thought that I had made representations, and I assumed that my complaints and those of others would have been taken into account by a rational Government responding rationally. What passed for allowing in observers would have besmirched the names of Kazakhstan and Belarus—not just democratic countries, but countries that suffer from what might be called a significant democratic deficit. Such countries may not pay any attention to the election observers’ reports, but they allow election observers in to wander round, to talk to people and to interfere politely in the way in which the count is conducted.