Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am very grateful to all those who have spoken. In the light of what has been said, I should begin by explaining what I am not going to cover in my response. I shall not rise to the challenge of talking about STV and its great many defects, nor shall I rise to the challenge of my noble friend Lord Brooke to offer the Committee my anecdotes on Philip Larkin during the time when he was librarian. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, I say that there are four Members of the House of Lords who have links with the politics department at the University of Hull. However, I am grateful for his comments and those of my noble friend Lord Brooke. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked what my motivation was. It is that I took part in the debates on the Bill in 2000 and raised the issue then, because I was not persuaded that this was a core function of the commission. I think the view at the time was, "Let’s test it and see if the commission encompasses it". I am therefore pursuing the line and am not persuaded that there is a case for retaining it—if anything, I think that my argument is now stronger in the light of experience. I am grateful to my own party for the support that it gave me back in 2000 on this issue. I am simply not persuaded by what the Minister said. He has not addressed the point I was making that the requirement in the Bill to raise awareness of the systems of government and the institutions of the EU is freestanding. The way the Bill is drafted, these do not go hand in hand; the commission has to promote awareness independent of electoral systems. However, if it is tied to electoral systems, that is different. The noble Lord is right in explaining why you should vote and that you must relate that to the system to which it relates. You can quite easily produce that as part of the awareness about the electoral process and the reasons why one should vote—the two are clearly linked—but I see no reason why we cannot rework paragraph (a), which I would argue is sufficient for our purposes, to enable us to do that. Leaving the provision as it stands—this relates to the pertinent point that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, expressed so well—muddies the water as to the purpose of the commission. There needs to be greater clarity but the present wording of the Act does not provide for that. If one takes the Minister’s point, it would mean some reworking of paragraph (a) but certainly not retaining paragraphs (b) and (c) as they stand. These paragraphs militate against providing clarity of purpose, muddy the waters and give the commission roles which, although I accept that it is independent, it does not have the breadth to cover. For example, what is its in-depth knowledge of the institutions of the European Union? There is a case for pursuing this issue. I am not persuaded by what the Minister said and I shall come back to it on Report, perhaps with some reworking to make clear that talking about the institutions is very much related to the electoral process. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 27 withdrawn.