Clause 4 - Orders implementing changes in the - number of United Kingdom MEPs
European Parliament (Representation) Bill
3:30 pm
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
These amendments do not deal with proposals to renegotiate entirely the
treaties of Amsterdam and Maastricht, and neither will I. Nor will I address the many points of misinformation that the hon. Member for Stone included in his speechwhich I have previously correctedsuch as his reference to the roles of the European Commission and the Council. I will concentrate on the amendments.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome clearly explained the role that the amendments would play and the problems that they would cause. We put into the Bill this extra bit about what would happen under clause 5(4) if the draft order is rejected because the Electoral Commission will have to make a recommendation that will involve some approximations and rounding up and down and, once it has done the maths and made its recommendation, it is possible that at the margins there may be two—or theoretically more—different distributions that achieve the aim that is set out in clause 2(4)(b), which is to ensure that
''the ratio of electors to MEPs is as nearly as possible the same in each electoral region.''
It is theoretically possible that a similar result could be achieved with the final MEP placed in one of two or more regions.
In those circumstances, if the Electoral Commission were to put forward its recommendation and Parliament was unhappy with it and rejected it because it believed that it did not offer the best distribution but that there was an alternative that would also achieve the same end, we would be stuck. We would be unable to take forward that alternative, and there would be a risk either of missing the 2004 election or of having to have hastily prepared primary legislation.
The hon. Member for Stone says that his party would give speedy passage to primary legislation; it is unclear to me how it would do that, given his objections to the principles behind this and the fact that if there was a disagreement—if Parliament were to disagree—there might be an alternative that the Electoral Commission would be happy with, in which case we might as well put that through the same process as before. Therefore, this allows the Lord Chancellor to come forward with an alternative distribution for Parliament to accept, but only if the Electoral Commission is happy with it and believes that it satisfies the requirement of clause 2(4)(b). However, Parliament could continue to reject it indefinitely, which would return us to the original situation, so this does not reduce the powers of Parliament in any way. This allows for an alternative distribution to be put forward in time for the 2004 election, if the Electoral Commission is happy with it.