Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, it is good to have an opportunity to join in this debate. I am very grateful to the movers of the amendments. We have certainly started off with a most interesting debate on this group of amendments. The debate became slightly whimsical, but that is not the first time that that has happened in this Committee. I was glad to hear from my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, for whom the House knows I have a great deal of affection. He was the last great Chief Whip in opposition who achieved so much with so little when the Labour Party was a relatively small part of this House. It is now the largest group in the House of Lords. The noble Lord said that there should be time for reflection—I assure him that we have done nothing but reflect for the past three months or so—and that we should consider some of these issues on Report, and we will, of course, do so. It will come as no surprise to anybody who has been listening to these debates that the Government very much hope that the referendum will take place on 5 May and have planned for that. I have said that many times and the Government announced their intentions in July. I know that some noble Lords opposite would rather that it were not held on that date and that the Labour Party manifesto stated that it wanted a referendum on AV in October, as it considered that that was a better date, but that is not the view that the coalition Government have taken. In order to get the Bill back to another place so that the Electoral Commission can complete its work in time for a referendum on 5 May, the Bill will have to go back to another place on Monday 14 February. I do not suppose that that is a surprise to noble Lords opposite either as they have known about that date for a very long time. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who said that we were making heavy weather of the debate—he was right about that—and tried to knock a few heads together. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Newton for what he said about some of the common-sense aspects that came out of these amendments. It has been a full debate and I shall try to give it a full answer. Paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 ensures that the Electoral Commission has a role in presenting voters with relevant information about the referendum, how to vote in it and factual information about the two voting systems. The Electoral Commission’s public testing of the referendum question found that the intelligibility of the question was increased when people had access to information on the different voting systems. Therefore, the commission has decided to issue factual information before the referendum. As it said in a recent briefing: "““We intend to send an information booklet about the referendum to each household in the UK which will include information not only about the voting systems but also about how to take part in the referendum, including how to register and how to vote””." The Government take very seriously the recommendations of the Electoral Commission and we support the commission’s decision to provide a booklet to every household if it decides that this is necessary to ensure that the public are able to make a fully informed choice in the referendum. The Government welcome and support the commission’s approach to publishing the information booklet—in particular its public assurance that the final booklets will be available in alternative formats such as large print, easy read and Braille and the fact that the commission’s advertising and media campaigns will encourage people to look out for the booklet and point them to the website, which I urge all noble Lords to look at.