Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, that is an immensely good suggestion and of course that will be a decision for the Electoral Commission. It is not clear from the current legislative framework under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—specifically Section 13—whether the commission has the power to publish information about the voting systems for public awareness purposes in this particular referendum. Therefore the Government considered it best to make the position absolutely clear and accordingly, we tabled an amendment to insert paragraph 9(2) into Schedule 1 in Committee in the other place, which was passed and is now reflected in the Bill. We do not see that it is necessary, or desirable, to mandate that the commission must issue information, as amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Low, aim to do. Rather, it is the commission’s prerogative. The commission has indicated that it would like this power and that it clearly intends to exercise it but we do not think that the Bill should go further than that and oblige it to do so. Moreover, it is simply unnecessary to legally obligate the commission in this respect. The commission has already publicly indicated its intention to produce this information, and has published the draft text that will form the basis of public information leaflets on its website. I am glad that some noble Lords have seen it. It is important that those who take a real interest in these matters should look at it and send their comments to the Electoral Commission regarding this information before the leaflets are published. The same point, concerning the appropriateness of imposing a legal mandate on the commission in this area, also applies to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. These would obligate the commission to provide a leaflet summarising the meaning of the question, together with the main arguments for and against first past the post and alternative vote. The amendments also specify that the leaflet must be impartial and unbiased, and distributed to every household in the UK, so far as possible. The commission is clear that the leaflets will contain factual information; that this information will be impartial and unbiased—it would go against the commission's regulations to promote one particular outcome or be anything other than unbiased—and that it will go to every household in the UK. For this reason we do not think it appropriate that the information includes arguments for and against each voting system. The information will be factual, whereas the pros and cons are subjective. These arguments will naturally be for the campaigns. It is hard to see how the commission could be expected reasonably to summarise all of the arguments for and against in a way that is commonly accepted to be impartial and unbiased. This is an inherently partial subject, and the more the commission is drawn in to trying to describe the pros and cons, the more open it would become to allegations of partiality. It is important that the commission is neutral. Therefore, the arguments for and against should be left to the campaigns.