Clause 7 - Encouraging voting
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
6:30 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I think that we would all generally support encouraging voting. However, I am afraid that we are to be taken to some familiar ground on which we have already touched. Mindful of the time and the commitments that we made during the Programming Sub-Committee to keep things moving, I do not want to spend too much time on the matter.
Amendment No. 32 changes the word ''voting'' to ''participating''. It is a consequential amendment that would be needed if the Committee or indeed the House were to agree to insert the principle of thresholds into the process.
Amendment No. 33 requires abstention to be treated as an action rather than an inaction, and
amendment No. 28 does something similar in relation to clause 8. I hope, although it may be a forlorn hope, that it will not be necessary for us to debate the benefits of thresholds in order to debate the logical necessity for these provisions if a threshold is introduced. They are two separate things.
If a threshold test is introduced—of course, Parliament may not agree to it—it will be important to make certain changes. It will be necessary to require the Electoral Commission to encourage participation in the referendum, because if a threshold is introduced, abstention will be an act rather than the lack of an act. Abstention will be an effective way of influencing the outcome of the ballot, as hon. Members emphasised earlier. If Parliament had introduced a requirement for a threshold, it would be iniquitous to oblige the Electoral Commission to encourage voting without acknowledging that abstention can also be active. As has already been said, electors may enter a polling booth and consciously not cast a vote. That is an act of abstention, although it is just as carefully thought through as voting for one or other of the candidates on the ballot paper. If a threshold is introduced, it will be necessary, in all the provisions relating to encouraging voting and allowing the Electoral Commission to disseminate information, to recognise the significance of abstention in determining the outcome of a ballot.
I am sure that we could engage in a lengthy argument about the benefits of introducing a threshold, but I would prefer to leave that debate for another day and discuss whether the amendments flow, logically and necessarily, from a decision to introduce a threshold. Bearing in mind the guidance given to the Committee by Mr. Butterfill this morning, it would probably be appropriate to withdraw the amendment on the understanding that if Parliament introduced the concept of thresholds during consideration of the Bill in the House, the amendments would be reintroduced at a later stage, hopefully by the Government, technically to perfect a gap in the Bill's architecture.