Clause 2 - Pilot order
European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill
10:00 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
I disagree. I believe that a fundamental part of democracy is people's responsibility to choose how they should be governed and who should represent them. I do not believe that to abdicate that responsibility and descend into some kind of anarchistic arrangement is a proper reflection of the democracy that we should live within. There is a clear choice: all people are capable of standing for election at any opportunity and will continue to do so whenever elections take place. A vast number of candidates have appeared on ballot papers in recent years representing all sorts of views—some rational and logical, some those of the Natural Law party, and some those of the SNP. People express different views in different ways.