Clause 7
Political Parties and Elections Bill
4:30 pm
Andrew Tyrie (Chichester, Conservative)
I have had a chance to remind myself of the content of clause 7—I did not get enough time to do that during the four minutes of debate on it before lunch—and I have realised that there is some substance to the clause that needs an airing and deserves attention before we move on to further clauses. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cambridge for flagging this up rather than taking the clause on the nod.
The clause is important because it creates two classes of commissioner for the first time, and we need to pause a moment to ensure that we have them right. We need to bear it in mind that the purpose of the clause is to bring some political experience into the commission, which many have argued has not shown enough political experience of the system that it is trying to regulate. This is why, after much careful thought, the Committee on Standards in Public Life decided to argue in favour of a relaxation of the 10-year bar on political involvement. Its recommendation is set out in paragraph 3.29 on page 59 of its report. My question is whether what is in clause 7 is consonant with what is in that recommendation.
I am a little concerned that we may find that nearly one half of the appointed commissioners have recent political experience, as set out in the clause; and that under this clause the other group—in the past, it would have had no ties with a political party for 10 years—might also have been MPs only five years ago, hammering things out in a Committee such as this, for example, or across the Floor of the House. In other words, we may find ourselves with a group of commissioners all of whom have a good deal of very recent political experience.
I am not entirely sure that I am happy with that, so I am not entirely sure that I am happy with the move from 10 to five years for the remaining class—that is, the original class—of commissioners. I would like the Minister to give an explanation for that reduction from 10 to five years. I have a couple more points that I would like to make while he is thinking about that one, unless he wants to intervene on me now; if not, we can wait until I have dealt with the other points.
Another point concerns the staff, whom we have not mentioned at all. Clause 7(2) proposes that the 10-year bar that applies at present be reduced to five years for the chief executive and to one year for all other staff. That is also a substantial change when taken together with the change for commissioners. I wonder whether we ought to consider—I throw this thought to the Minister—extending the five-year minimum to several other important jobs, rather than just limiting it to the chief executive of the Electoral Commission.
I have been a participant in the informal group whose job it was to try to fill the gap that the Electoral Commission realised existed when it wanted more political experience to be made available to it. That group has been functioning for many years. As a member of it, I was initially sceptical about the need for this clause at all, and wondered whether the issue could be better addressed, for example, by putting that group on a formal basis, with the authority to publish views of dissent if it disagreed with actions of the Electoral Commission, which itself would be a constraint. If a group of politicians, all from different parties, said all at once that they disagreed with something and that the commission was going down the wrong route, that might act as a restraint on the commission.
This issue was the subject of the Hayden Phillips process. I participated in that process, as the Minister knows, and I participated in all the talks about this issue. It was largely decided in the margins of the Hayden Phillips discussion to go down this route as it was probably the least bad option, recognising that there are pros and cons for whichever route one takes. I am now a convert to the idea of a reduction, and I will not divide the Committee on this point. However, I would be grateful for the Minister’s response to a number of concerns. First, when we consider the changes that we are making to staff as well as to the commissioners themselves, we are making a substantial change all in one go. Secondly, is the reduction from 10 years to five for commissioners necessarily right for the reduction for the non-political group? Thirdly, is the reduction from five years to one for all staff except for the chief executive the best way forward?