Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I had expected that some other Members might have spoken against clause stand part, which is why I was not immediately ready. On page 2, line 39, it is stated: "““The polls for the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary general election in 2011 are to be taken together””." I am proposing that the subsection be deleted. I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that this is his solution, because we have just been discussing the confusion that will take place in a Scottish parliamentary election. I have spoken on this matter, but there are a number of areas of confusion; I will not go on at length about them, but will make a brief reprise of what I said previously. Two areas of confusion are likely to arise. The first is confusion in campaigning and the other, which relates to one of the solutions that I have just put forward—extending the franchise to European citizens—is confusion at polling. On the confusion in campaigning, I do not think that the Liberal Democrat Members in particular understood the import of what was said in the previous debate. As to running a cross-party campaign, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and others, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, have been involved. He and I were hand in hand together on the campaign for Britain to remain a member of the European Union—he was in the Labour Party then. However, we worked together with Conservatives such as Malcolm Rifkind, members of the SNP, and other parties—particularly the Liberals. I remember campaigning for our membership on an all-party and cross-party basis. We were able to do that without any problems or difficulties, because there was no election taking place on the same day. We appeared on the same platform. John P Mackintosh was on the same platform as Malcolm Rifkind. That did not create any problems, because people understood that all that was being discussed was whether Britain should remain part of the European Union. They did not say, ““It’s strange having a Tory and a Labour person on the same platform””, because they were not standing against each other in an election on the same day. Imagine what will happen on 5 May next year if we have the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the referendum on the same day. As I have said on previous occasions, imagine campaigning with people of other parties. I chose the example of David McLetchie—a friend of mine who is a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament. Imagine if I said that I agreed with him that we should have first past the post and should not move to this awful system of alternative votes, but while we were going around Wester Hailes, in the Edinburgh Pentlands, people asked, ““Are you supporting David McLetchie to be re-elected as the MSP?””. Of course the answer is, ““No, I am campaigning for Ricky Henderson, the Labour candidate””. They would then say, ““But why are you here with McLetchie?””. If I said, ““Because we are campaigning in the referendum””, they would say, ““But there is an election taking place””. That is how confusion arises. As to expenditure, when you are campaigning, how can you easily differentiate between expenditure on the election and on the referendum? For example, I may use a loudspeaker system in campaigning for the Labour Party and then borrow it for a day to use in the no campaign for the referendum. How do you allocate the finances? In a later amendment there is a reference to party election broadcasts. At the moment it would be possible for the Liberal Democrats to have a party election broadcast not to say, ““Vote Liberal Democrat in the election”” but, ““Vote yes in the referendum””. Unless we change it later, that is quite possible. Most Members here have taken part in an election of one kind or another, or one kind of cross-party referendum campaign or another, and know of the problems of having the two on the same day. So there will be confusion in campaigning. I turn now to confusion within the polling booth. As I said, I tried to provide the noble Lord, Lord McNally, with a lifebelt to resolve this problem by bringing together the franchises and trying to introduce a single register, which would have made things easier. However, he chose not to take advantage of that lifebelt. Instead, he agreed with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who summed up the debate on European citizens voting. The noble and learned Lord said specifically in his reply that he disagreed with the solution in my amendment about allowing European citizens to vote and thought that there was an easier and better way of doing it—and that was not to have the referendum on the same day as the local elections. That is now quite possible because of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which was passed by the House. It allows the Government to hold the referendum on any day between 5 May and 31 October and gives them the necessary flexibility. I shall not give away a confidence by saying who it was, but a Liberal Democrat Peer said to me, ““George, I see the strength of your argument now as far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned””. In fact, he agreed that it would be better for the Liberal Democrats not to have the referendum on the same day as the elections because he believed that they would not get the same degree of support for AV. I could see his argument. When the elections in Scotland and Wales and the local government elections in England are taking place, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party will be pushing to get out their electorate to vote in the elections. They will turn out primarily for the elections and be predominantly in favour of first past the post. Therefore the AV support is likely to be at a minimum and the first past the post support at a maximum. However, if the referendum is held on a separate day it will be the real activists, the ones who want change, who will come out and vote for AV. The first past the post people will sit at home and think, ““It will never change anyway”” and wake up the next day to find that the activists in favour of AV have turned out. Without a threshold, there could be just a small 10 per cent turnout and the constitution would be changed.