Clause 5 - Revision of procedures in light of report
European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill
4:00 pm
Mr David Wilshire (Spelthorne, Conservative)
We started today's considerations with Mr. Benton in the Chair. At the beginning of the sitting, we said that there were some wonderful examples of Sir Humphrey-speak in the Bill. I had a good look at clause 5, and I find it almost impenetrable. A thicket on a moonless night is as nothing compared with it. I therefore turned to the explanatory notes. Over the years of being on Committees, I have many a time had my knuckles rapped for relying on notes to clauses, and have been told that the Bill is all that matters. I sincerely hope that on this occasion the Government will attach the notes to copies of the Act. Otherwise, I do not see how anyone could begin to understand what the clause is about.
If I understand the notes correctly, if a local election on an all-postal ballot in one of the regions is held on the same day as European elections, the report on the European all-postal election shall be considered as though it were a report on the local government election as well. That is the best that I can do on what this gobbledegook means, so perhaps my first question to the Minister is whether I understand the clause correctly. Is it trying to say that the one report can be used for two purposes? If so, my next point becomes highly relevant.
Let us say that another Committee—and another Minister, Government, commission and group of commissioners—is giving thought to whether all-postal ballots for local elections are a good or bad thing and is trying to work out the impact of all-postal ballots on local elections. A degree of work has been done, and quite an amount of argument has been adduced from research to say that, from all the experiments carried out thus far, as far as local elections are concerned, the all-party ballot appears to be about the only way that makes a significant difference—that, essentially, is the message coming out from all the research.
If the report produced as a result of next year's European elections is used in conjunction with the research and the conclusion drawn from all-postal ballots for local elections, there may be those who are so riveted and gripped by the importance of Europe that they rush to the post box, vote and, while doing so, stick in a local government ballot paper, without making any sort of statement in their minds about how important the local election is. There could be others—my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East comes to mind—who, having decided it was a European election day, choose on a matter of principle not to vote using their postal ballot and, in so doing, do not vote at the local election, although they might have done, had it not been a European day.
What concerns me is that we are trying to adduce conclusions and transfer them away from the dominant—that is, the European—election, saying, ''It's a European day but we'll forget the fact that quite a lot of people will have been either motivated or switched off by the fact that it's a European election.'' I am concerned that all we will do is use that information, or even just take the figures from the local ballot papers returned on the same day, transfer them and read them into the research on all-postal votes in local government elections when there has been no other election at all.
I am worried about that, because it could well skew the statistics and introduce matters into the Government research that are not local government issues. People may well be led to say, because the European figures are added, that statistics prove that it is a waste of time having local government postal ballots. Alternatively, adding the European results might so skew things the other way that the European effect is used to justify a local government issue. I worry about that, and I wonder to what extent the Minister has given any thought to whether there
should be an overlap, if he has given thought to that, to how matters can be controlled and to how we can ensure that the two sorts of elections do not get confused.