I did not know that noble Lords wanted to hear me again this evening, but there we are. This is an interesting amendment. Its impact is that once one of the recall conditions has been met, the Speaker has to give the relevant petition officer notice, whereby a petition can be opened,
“as soon as reasonably practicable”.
In an earlier debate, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that we often passed legislation without consideration for the people who had to interpret and deliver its results. This is one of the situations in which we are not taking account of it. There would clearly have to be some time for the Speaker to get all the information together, contact the petition officer—the local returning officer—and get the information to them in order that a petition could be opened as soon as “reasonably practicable”.
We shall come later to amendments on how many polling stations there should be, and how long they should be open for. At the moment the proposal is for there to be four polling stations. In my old constituency, as I shall say in more detail in a later debate, four polling stations would have been entirely inadequate. I used to hold surgeries in 25 different villages in Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley because the constituency covered 800 square miles. To expect people to come from Cumnock and go down to Girvan, or to go from Girvan to Dalmellington to sign the petition is entirely unreasonable. There are no buses between some of the towns in my old constituency. Deciding where the four polling stations should be set up would be difficult, as would be the case in keeping those polling stations open for eight weeks and providing personnel to look after them. At one time it was suggested that they would be open from 7 am to 10 pm; that would be terrible. Now they are talking about 9 am until 5 pm. That again would be very difficult, not to say expensive—another matter we will discuss later.
Again, if the excellent amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is discussed and accepted later, we would have not just the petitions but the counter-petitions to deal with. I do not know whether his amendment had been thought of previously but it has certainly been well devised by him. I would certainly support it.
The whole process would be quite a job. My suggestion in the amendment is that the timing of when this ought to take place should be changed. I am afraid that in drafting this amendment I have not been as acute and sensible as I should have been. I was trying to get over the fact that it will take a long time and that it is a long process, and that there should be more time rather than less to deal with it.
10 pm