Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I am very grateful to my noble friend. As he said, the previous Government—I was the Minister responsible for this—did a lot of work on how we could more fairly ensure that everyone entitled to be on the electoral register was on it. We brought forward legislation putting a duty on the Electoral Commission to bring forward such measures. That is another reason why I am in such despair that the Government are rushing ahead on the basis of such a flawed electoral register. If only they had had a little patience and had waited just a few months longer. There was every chance that the Electoral Commission’s work would produce a significantly improved register, which might even have been comprehensive and accurate, as it should be. These issues now need to be debated. They are issues not just for this House or for the other place; they are issues for the British people, who have had no say in this fundamental building block of their democracy. This amendment offers the opportunity to the Government to give the British people that say in these arrangements. I very much hope that they will take it. I have also included provision—I think that everyone will agree with this—for boundary reviews to be timely. I do not think that there should be any dispute about that. Finally—I know that this will be of concern to the Government—there is the question of a timetable. I had some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, when he said at Second Reading that the time had almost come for constitutional reformers just to get on with it. I hope that I am not quoting him inaccurately. Of course, anyone who wants to see constitutional reform must beware delay, which is always the enemy of truly radical reform. I recognise that cynical members of the Government—I am sure that noble Lords on the Front Bench are not so cynical—may regard this proposal for a committee as nothing more than a device to push all these issues into the long grass. That is not my intention. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I support the objectives of this Bill. My amendment does not leave this process open-ended, but specifies a timescale. In my judgment—I did considerable work on these issues when I was the Minister responsible in the previous Government—three years is an appropriate timescale in which to explore all these issues with appropriate rigour, to hear evidence from all concerned parties, including members of the public, and to produce recommendations that can command popular support. More generally, this is a typical timeframe for a royal commission. The average time to report for the past 10 royal commissions has been slightly less than three years. This is a reasonable amount of time to give the committee to report. But I have added further comfort in this amendment to those who might be concerned about undue delay. The amendment includes provision for the commission to report annually to Parliament on its progress, so that Parliament may have regular opportunities to contribute to the continuing deliberations of the commission. The Government will always have the option to take steps to ensure a speedier dispatch of this work should they think that that is necessary, which I very much hope that they will not. This amendment is detailed and complex because the issues covered are detailed and complex. They are also vital to the health of our democracy. I hope that the Government may feel able to accept the amendment, if not in this exact formulation then at least in one perhaps better drafted to achieve the same objectives. Whatever view is taken of the merits of the objectives of Part 1 of the Bill, no independent observer could consider Part 2 to be anything other than at best botched legislation and at worst a partisan attack on fundamental constitutional proprieties. Such profoundly flawed legislation is unlikely to endure and I just say to Ministers opposite that history is not likely to look fondly on its perpetrators. The amendment offers the Government a chance to find a way out of the swamp into which they have waded with little care or consideration. It gets them to the place that they say that they want to be with a delay of only a few months to allow for independent examination and the engagement of the public in issues of great importance to our democracy, which, after all, is meant to serve the public, not the interests of the Government of the day. It would enable this legislation to proceed on the basis of constitutional principle not on that of arbitrary and partisan calculation. I beg to move.