Reviews of Electoral and Political Matters

Part of Orders of the Day — Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill – in the House of Commons at 8:45 pm on 14 February 2000.

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Photo of Mike O'Brien Mike O'Brien Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office 8:45, 14 February 2000

There is certainly a distinction, as we saw with the report on the Stephen Lawrence case. The Secretary of State had to publish that report to Parliament in order to get it published, and there was a great deal of public interest in it.

We can, to some extent, leave it to the Electoral Commission to ensure that reports are made available in an appropriate way. If it thinks that a report is extremely important because it has been the subject of public controversy, it will tell the Secretary of State that he can have the report on a certain day and ask him to publish it immediately, in which case it should be available in the Vote Office. Other reports may be so technical in interpreting a particular clause of the electoral procedures that although they would no doubt be of great interest to electoral registration officers they would not be a matter for great debate even by Members of Parliament.

I have no problem, in principle, with the reports being published immediately, if that accords with the view of the Electoral Commission and its advice to the Secretary of State. However, I have more difficulty with the proposal that each and every one of the reports should be the subject of a debate in the House within one month of its being presented to the Secretary of State.

It is possible that, once the commission gets into its stride, it will frequently report on various matters. Some of those reports may concern matters that are absolutely central to the workings of this place and the electoral system, but others may, as I have already said, be so technical that the people who would be seriously interested in debating them may be limited to one or two in the country.

Requiring those reports to be debated by this place—in the Chamber, no less—may be going over the top in seeking accountability for the commission. Some of the reports will be merely administrative and I doubt that many Members, with the exception of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), will want to debate them. I suspect that that right hon. Gentleman can find a great deal to debate about most matters, and is proud of it, too.

The best approach is that the House should decide on a case-by-case basis, through the usual channels, whether the commission's reports merit a debate. I do not anticipate any need for the House to wait long to debate any of the reports.

As to amendment No. 38, clause 5(3) places a number of matters outside the commission's remit. I remind the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border that the matters specified in the subsection are devolved, and as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) indicated, it is for the appropriate devolved bodies to keep those matters and the related law under review. It is possible that, in doing so, those authorities may seek advice or guidance from the commission. Clause 8 provides for the commission to respond to a request for such advice, so it may well then take those matters on board at the request of the devolved authority. It would be contrary to the principles governing devolution to place a duty on the commission to keep those matters under review.

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about section 97 of the Scotland Act 1998, but the spirit of the Act is that this should be a devolved matter. That point would arguably be moot in legal terms, as he suggests, but where the spirit of the legislation shows that this should properly be regarded as a devolved matter, that should be the case.