Electoral Commission

After the downbeat assessment of the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), I am happy to follow with a sunnier and more optimistic view of the Electoral Commission. I enjoyed the account by the hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers) of his recent visit to the commission’s premises. He does not need telling that one is definitely old when one thinks that even Electoral Commission staff look young. He needs no reassurance from me that, behind chief executive Sam Younger’s boyish good looks lies a shrewd, intelligent and experienced operator. Is it only five years ago that we legislated to set up the Electoral Commission? It is such an obviously sensible thing to do and a constitutional necessity in a democracy such as ours. The public now take the commission for granted, as though it had always existed. I am sure that they found it interesting on the first occasion to learn, after the 2005 general election, the cost of the then Leader of the Opposition’s make-up or of the Prime Minister’s wife’s hairdressing, but, like other hon. Members who spoke, I hope that, after future elections, people will focus more on the serious issues of the source of money and its use. It is fair to make criticisms of the new organisation’s role so far, and some hon. Members have done that. I am sure that the commissioners and members of staff are not too proud to learn from us and other observers where they are going wrong or to try to make reforms to put that right. The debate on the subject and the two reviews that are currently taking place, which have featured so often in other hon. Members’ contributions, are timely. It is a good time to speak about how well some things have gone and how others need attention and change. However, I do not agree that one of the Electoral Commission’s statutory responsibilities should be removed. The Electoral Commission has several statutory responsibilities, which I would hesitate to rank because they are all important. Perhaps, after the most recent controversy about parties using loans instead of donations for funding, openness and transparency in the financial affairs of political parties attracts people’s attention. That is one of the Electoral Commission’s responsibilities and includes registering political parties, monitoring and publishing significant donations to parties and regulating their spending on election campaigns. Beyond that, the Electoral Commission has important responsibilities such as reporting on the conduct of elections. We should pause and think about the reports that we have received in the few years since it was set up. They include reports on elections—not only two general elections but local elections and the pilot schemes for different ways in which to organise voting in local elections, for example, through setting up polling stations in popular places such as shopping centres, organising all-postal ballots or attempting electronic voting and counting. These all make a valuable contribution to our understanding of what works and what does not, and to encouraging more voters to come out and take part in the democratic process. The assessments from the commission have helped us in our understanding of these approaches. The Electoral Commission has done its job in identifying the weaknesses in the postal voting system since the acceleration in the use of postal votes, and it has made recommendations to the Government on the issue. In fact, when we pass the Electoral Administration Bill into law, we shall be enacting some of the commission’s recommendations on making postal voting more secure in this country. We ought to give credit where it is due in that regard. An important role for the Electoral Commission in the next few years will be to oversee the implementation of the new legislation. For the first time, consistent guidance will be given to all electoral returning officers and, also for the first time, the commission will be able to insist that the same information be supplied by all electoral returning officers. In a recent discussion that I had with Sam Younger, he told me about requests for information that he had made to returning officers to enable him to compile his reports. He said that some authorities had not even replied, because they were under no statutory obligation to do so, they were busy with other things, and did not regard it as a priority to give him the information that he needed. That will change under the new legislation, and the commission will be able to get the information that it needs to compile its reports, so that people like us who are interested in these matters will be able to read them afterwards. A good point was made about the slowness of the response in regard to service personnel, but the commission would probably say in its defence that this is an extremely complex issue and that it has made recommendations to the Ministry of Defence. So far as it is able to play its part in promoting greater awareness of the electoral system among service personnel and the importance of their registering to vote, wherever they are in the world, the commission is doing its job. I want to talk about the statutory responsibility to promote public awareness of our electoral systems. I disagree with the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam)—and with the hon. Member for Chichester in so far as he agreed with the hon. Gentleman on this matter—in that I believe that the commission has an important role to play in promoting such awareness. I am not saying that that should be a substitute for our doing our job of making politics interesting, making ourselves trustworthy and attracting lots of people to come out and join the democratic process. However, there is a role for the commission to provide independent expertise, advice and information to those who want it. I shall give the House an example of this working in other areas, where other regulators have more than simply a regulatory role. The Financial Services Authority—another Labour innovation since 1997—has a statutory obligation to promote financial understanding. The Food Standards Agency operates in a completely different area of policy, although, curiously, it has the same initials. It is another Labour innovation since 1997, and has the role, alongside enforcement and regulation, of promoting knowledge and understanding of healthy and safe foods. Those examples show why the Electoral Commission should have a role in promoting public awareness. It can be trusted, it is independent and it can be authoritative in providing information. I commend the work that the commission already does in that area. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) said in an earlier intervention, education in politics and citizenship has not been part of the national curriculum until recently. In fact, such education was established in 2001, and it is now part of the compulsory curriculum for all secondary schools. One strand of citizenship education is political literacy, and the Electoral Commission has contributed to the teaching of that subject through its ““Democracy Cookbook””, a valuable source of teaching aids for teachers and others in a learning environment. I therefore congratulate the commission on its work in that role. Like other Members who have spoken, I think that the Electoral Commission has done its job well as a committee on local government boundaries and is worthy of taking over that role for the boundaries of our constituencies, too. The adage that we should walk before we run is sensible, and if the Minister tells us that there is still a little more walking to be done before the sprint stage is reached, I shall take her advice. The commission is earning its spurs, however, and I am sure that it will in due course be a reliable reviewer of constituency boundaries. With regard to referendums, the commission has the primary responsibility for their conduct. On the small number of occasions on which it has exercised that role, the commission has done extremely well—although perhaps the Government have not enjoyed the result of one of those referendums—in overseeing the conduct of the referendums, setting up the parties for the yes and no camps and ensuring that the question is fair. I foresee quite a call on its services in conducting further referendums in future. Looking to the immediate future, a lot of work will be done on electoral registration and raising the practices of all local authorities to the level of the best, both in the registration of people’s entitlement to vote and their ability to cast their votes in local and national elections. The two reviews being conducted at present will lead to recommendations to us to amend the 2000 Act, and I gather from tonight’s debate that there will be a willingness to consider sensible and well-thought-through recommendations for change to that law, some of which will be welcome. When we come to legislate, I hope that we will consider not just the receipt of money by political parties but the spending of it, especially between formal elections in this country. I would like to see annual limits on spending introduced and perhaps, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House says, an end to the arms race in political spending in this country, with some flexibility in the years of general and European elections. It is easy for Members of the House who disagree with the Electoral Commission’s recommendations to say, ““We are hardened politicians and we know this business; they are all novices,”” because those on the commission are not even allowed to have an experience of politics, as that debars them from being a commissioner or member of the senior staff of the organisation. That is a criticism, and it undermines the authority with which the commission speaks to us, the politicians. I am one of those who supports a change in the rules about who may be a commissioner or senior officer of the commission, and a lifting of the bar on people who have modern, relevant political experience. That could benefit the whole organisation in providing an understanding of what we are about, what is practical and what will not pass through this place. Ultimately, that would benefit the commission and our country’s democracy.