Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, may be jumping the gun. We should give this House a chance to consider this Bill in an intelligent, fair-minded way. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Members of this place will do just that. While I support the Bill generally, I want to hear more debate about the 5 per cent variation either side. I also want to hear more debate about the reduction in the number of MPs, because it strikes me that, in the modern age of communication, the intensity of work that MPs have to undertake is utterly different from what it was even 10 years ago. There is a lot of water to go under the bridge before we finalise the shape of the Bill. I was nearly provoked by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, into debating the merits of electoral systems, but that is not what this debate is about. This debate is about the Bill and the referendum. We are going to put this issue to the people of this country, and quite rightly. All of us will say our pieces hither and yon, and the people of this country will decide what they think are the merits of this complex argument. I shall concentrate on just one aspect of the Bill: the way in which the public are to be prepared for their referendum choice. I plead a special interest in this as founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation. I hope that my remarks are entirely without partisanship. Noble Lords may be forgiven for having missed, in a 301-page Bill, two lowly paragraphs—paragraphs 9 and 10 of Schedule 1—that prescribe just how the British public is to have a good chance of understanding what all this is about and being fired up to get out and vote. I am sure that one thing on which we all agree is that, if we are going to have a referendum, we must make the best of it. We must get the best possible turnout, regardless of which side it takes. Paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 states that the role of the Electoral Commission will be, first, "““to promote public awareness about the referendum””." That is an excellent requirement. The commission tells me that it has already decided to put a leaflet through every door in the four countries. Secondly, the Electoral Commission is to have discretion—I wonder whether that should be a requirement—to, "““take whatever steps they think appropriate to provide … information about each of the two voting systems referred to in the referendum question””." Paragraph 10 of Schedule 1 is headed ““Encouraging participation””. I give credit to the Government for including a provision that will require steps on the part of various people to encourage participation. What I question—it is a very open-minded question—is the way in which the obligation to encourage participation is split among four groups: first, the chief counting officer, who is, under the 2000 Act, the chair of the Electoral Commission; secondly, the regional counting officer, who is given an obligation under the Bill to encourage participation; thirdly, all counting officers; and, finally, all registration officers. Does that not make matters more complex than they need to be? Should not there at least be very early collaboration among those four groups to ensure that they do not each reinvent the wheel and to ensure that certain key matters do not fall between two stools and are not left unexplained and unencouraged? Paragraph 10(5) states: "““The Minister may reimburse any expenditure incurred by an officer for the purposes of””" the encouragement provisions. Can the Minister give the House some indication of just what the Government propose in this regard? Unless an early, solid assurance can be given by him that the expenses incurred for the purposes of encouraging participation will be at least partly met by the Government, that will be a serious inhibition of what should be a highly effective propaganda campaign—if one wants to use that loaded phrase—to get people fired up to go out and express their view with knowledge enough to enable them to reach, each according to his own, a right conclusion. I refer back to Section 108 of the 2000 Act, which states that the Electoral Commission shall decide which organisation on each side of the divide shall be designated for the purpose of the Act. Only one organisation can be designated. Section 110 of that Act states that each of the designated organisations shall have up to £600,000 to enable them to undertake their roles as organisers of the referendum campaign. There are provisions about free postage, free meeting halls and so on. That figure of £600,000 was established in 2000. Can the Minister assure the House that that figure will be increased, so that the task of the organising designated bodies can be fully and well undertaken? I repeat: to have a referendum with a poor turnout would be the worst of all worlds.