Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The noble and learned Lord says that it could be changed. That is why we have brought forward the amendment. I do not believe that it contradicts at all. I shall recapitulate. There could be a local authority election in England that need not be on 5 May. When the Bill was brought to this House, having been passed by the other place, it had been agreed in the other place that the referendum should be on 5 May. That was the date set for the Scottish election, the Welsh Assembly election and the Northern Ireland Assembly election. It therefore makes sense, and I think that this has been widely conceded, that if the elections were to be held on the same day, as was anticipated when the Bill was brought to this House, the polls should be combined for a host of good, sound administrative reasons. Subsequently there has been a change. It was drawn to our attention on Report in another place that there was a potential problem. Because of the inherent powers in the statutes establishing the three devolved institutions, the election might not be on 5 May if they chose, for whatever reason, to exercise those powers. That is why Amendment 39A has been tabled. The noble and learned Lord may wish to debate whether it achieves its purpose. I think I have explained what its purpose is; it is to ensure that there was no dubiety and that the powers given to the Assemblies and the Parliament were not in any way infringed by the provisions. That is it, very simply. I think it is relatively simple. The dates were anticipated, because of the way the Bill stood, to be the same. There could be a local authority election in England that did not necessarily fall on 5 May. The purpose of the government amendment is to provide that, if the Scottish Parliament—for the sake of argument—wished to change the date, it would be allowed to do so. It would not be inhibited from doing so by these provisions. That is why the political arguments around whether the date is right or wrong are not relevant to this clause, which is, in some respects, a technical clause. It links to the various schedules. I pick up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who pointed to all the schedules when my noble friend Lord McNally said that this is a simple Bill. The schedules have been put into primary legislation, making provision for combining polls in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are four separate schedules, covering matters that, in many cases, would be put into secondary legislation. However, for simplicity and given the nature of this matter, it made more sense for them to appear in primary legislation in the Bill. This led to extending the length of the Bill considerably, but that is why the schedules are there: it was thought better to have the combination of provisions in the Bill. I rather hope the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will accept that the consequence of his amendment—this is why I ask him to withdraw it—would not necessarily be to change the date of the poll. He has already lost an amendment specifically on that. It would, however, mean that if the two polls were held on the same date, they could not be formally combined. Therefore, there might be people who would have to go to two separate polling stations. That is not in anyone’s interests. I know that this is perhaps more technical than I anticipated but it is not a political argument about the date of the poll. It is a technical one, which says that if the polls fall on the same date—it is still the Government’s intention that we should achieve that on 5 May—it is in the interests of those who would take part, not least those who are administering it, such as the returning officers, that the situation should be simplified as far as possible. I recall a Question in the House, asked by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, in July, about a letter from the convenor for the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland. He asked formally for the polls to be combined if the election and the referendum took place on the same day. This is our response to the spirit of that request. No doubt we will come back to this if issues are raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, but I hope the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will appreciate that, whatever the political argument—there has been plenty of political debate—the technical argument means that it makes much more sense to combine the polls, as proposed in this clause. His amendment would have the rather unfortunate effect of splitting them, should they take place on the same day.