Clause 21 - Electoral commission exercise of functions
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
6:00 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 75 in
clause 21, page 12, line 9, leave out paragraph (c).
The amendment would remove paragraph (c) from the clause. Clause 21 is good and useful. It constrains the approach taken by the Electoral Commission in preparing the advice given to the Secretary of State under clause 20. I support that constraint, and I thought it so good that I tabled an earlier amendment that sought to duplicate it.
However, the clause has one significant flaw. Having set out something with which we all agree—that the Electoral Commission must have regard
''to the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities''—
it adds that the commission must also have regard, perhaps incompatibly but equally importantly, to
''the need to secure that the numbers of electors for an electoral area for an assembly is as near as is reasonably practicable to the number of electors for the other electoral areas''.
All of that is good news, but we then come to paragraph (c), which says that the commission must have regard to
''guidance given by the Secretary of State.''
Oh dear. All that wonderful objectivity imposed on an external body, washed away in a single stroke of the pen by the Secretary of State.
If I have understood it, clause 21 (c) gives the Secretary of State scope to override what precedes it. As so often in this Bill, and others, at the end of the clause we find an absolute power of discretion for the Secretary of State, which means that what precedes it is not so much legislation detailing what will happen, as a PR release from the Government spin machine telling us what it wants us to understand that the Government will do. I do not hold that against the Minister or the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister because other Departments—the Department of Health is a particular culprit in this regard—have set out lengthy lists of things that must or must not be considered, and then undermined the whole principle of the clause by adding, ''and such other matters as the Secretary of State shall direct.''
I want paragraph (c) to be removed. I do not understand why the Secretary of State needs that guidance power. Wise as he may be, the Electoral Commission is also a wise body. It is made up of experts and advised by civil servants devoted to working in the area. I am suspicious of the Government's need for a guidance power that would require the commission to regard on an equal footing the two already potentially incompatible matters listed
and a third incompatible matter. That will further dilute the extent to which regard can effectively be had to the two important criteria already set down in the provision.