Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, this is my second offer of a lifeboat to the coalition. Last week, I offered one on the indicative aspect, and today I offer ““before 31 October””. It does not alter the Bill in any way or force any change. The coalition can still meet their intention to have the referendum on 5 May, even if they accept my amendment. It is now 6 December. We are five months away from that date, or 20-odd weeks. Royal Assent is some time away. The Bill has to go back to the Commons in any event because there are government amendments to the Bill in your Lordships' House. They were in addition to the 286 government amendments put in the Bill in the other place, which doubled its length from 150 pages to 300 pages. Even then, they could not get it right, because they have come to this House and have already tabled amendments. It is all rush, rush, rush. They must ask themselves, ““Can we do it?””. I have to say that it shows a level of faith in local government, the Electoral Commission, the weather and the parliamentary process which, in the words of ““Yes Minister”” is ““brave””. There are 20 weeks to go, and we are on only the second day in Committee in your Lordships' House. Do the Government have a risk analysis of this process? If not, they are not conducting public administration in the same way that most of the public bodies they are trying to abolish already do. On that assumption, I assume they have a risk analysis, and I ask them to share it with the House, perhaps in the speech that answers this amendment. My amendment is a contingency measure. I will not argue about the referendum question; that is not the issue and we will come to that later. However, I want to make it clear, as I did last week, that this amendment does not stop the referendum taking place on 5 May. If all the things are in place, fine. The question we must ask is: what happens if they are not? What a disaster it will be if we get a bit close to the date and the Electoral Commission says: ““Ten weeks to go and we have not quite got this ready””. We also have to ask ourselves about the administrative procedures that have to be gone through as issues are raised about some of the other processes of local government and the Electoral Commission. Let us leave all those aside for the minute: they are mechanical and administrative. What about the voters? How are the voters going to be dealt with at the last minute in this rush, rush, rush? There is never time to educate the public until such time as they are forced to make a decision. People want to get on with their lives—their work and their families—and they are not interested until the deadline comes. Then it will be: ““Oh, I have not heard about this. What does all this mean? Does this mean that Parliament is going to change? What effect will it have? What about the misconceptions about the voting system?””. Time might well be needed by the Government to have a decent information campaign. It is already known, following a series of YouGov polls commissioned by the Constitution Society a few months ago, that there are considerable problems about this idea. Most respondents do not understand AV. Its summary says that the yes and no votes are evenly balanced, but that exposure to information about AV increases the no votes. Perhaps that is the reason for the rush, rush, rush—because polling evidence indicates that the more people know about it, the more they are inclined to vote no. However, it has to be their choice and they must choose in a free way. The polls also found that there are a number of widespread misconceptions about AV. Well, there are, and I think a few of those will be deployed in the coming days. The polls also indicated that the same arguments are commonly used to justify votes both for and against AV. In other words, I have only gone through half of the findings in summary form and it is clear that there is a hell of a job to do to explain to the public what all this is about. If it can not be done well before 5 May, that would be an absolute disgrace, because the Government could have plenty of opportunity to avoid having that problem if they accept my amendment. Before 1997, some of us junior shadow Ministers were sent off to Templeton College, Oxford, for a bit of training. Needless to say, the generals did not go. Two things have always stuck in my mind from those sessions we had with ex-Ministers and ex-permanent secretaries. One was: ““Always pilot a change””. That is something that would be well taken by everybody. The other one—and I cannot remember who said this without going back to my notes—was: ““It is never too late to avoid making a bad decision””. I once said that to one of our Prime Ministers, by the way. The response I got across the table was: ““This is not a bad decision””. The fact of the matter is that I was reminded about that. I am not saying that having a referendum is a bad decision, because if we are going to change the voting system, we have to have a referendum. I am not arguing about that. I am arguing here about the timing of it; 5 May is entrenched in the Bill. There is no get-out from that and we do not want a shambles. The Electoral Commission has already warned the other place and the Deputy Prime Minister has told a Select Committee there, though he did not give any details, about the factors that might cause a problem. However, it would be quite useful to have those teased out because we need to show the public, in case things do start to go wrong or even if it is a success, that these things were thought about beforehand. Come the referendum, whatever the take of each side on this, that would not be any good. With the public’s misconceptions, there is evidence that we will need a decent education campaign because of what will be thrown on both sides of the argument. We cannot do that until the Bill has Royal Assent. After Second Reading, I realised that certain amounts of public expenditure can be used. Once the Government have secured a Second Reading, certain changes are triggered. But it is only after Royal Assent that the treasurers and accounting officers in local government and other institutions can say, ““Hang on, this is really on””. There is quite a bit of preparation for this in terms of the mechanics of even the private sector and industry. Notwithstanding that the Minister will say, ““It is all in place for 5 May””, probably not every difficulty has been foreseen and it is too early for that now. I submit that with 20 weeks to go, a lot could go wrong. I do not want it to go wrong and to be a shambles. I am just giving the Government a get-out, so that the referendum could take place any time before 31 October. I freely admit that anything that causes a problem for 5 May could be dealt with well before 31 October. All the procedures, including administrative and mechanical, could be overcome. Therefore, why do we have to tie ourselves down to an entrenched date, bearing in mind the rush and the shortness of time available for this momentous operation that will take place? All I am saying is that this is a lifeboat. You could jump into it. It would not affect the Bill or the planning for 5 May in any way. It could mean that we would need less debate on some of the other amendments. I would not bother. Provided that the referendum was before 31 October, I would not be interested in the date. The target is 5 May. If it were not on 5 May, it would be before 31 October. The public and Parliament would know that. I do not see a serious problem in accepting an amendment which is a contingency and a lifeboat. I beg to move.