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The Chairman: I do not consider that to be a point of order. Furthermore, it would be a mistake for any Chairman to try to anticipate what might happen in a Committee. Clause 1
Piloting conduct at European and local elections
Mr. Hawkins: I beg to move amendment No. 16, in
clause 1, page 1, line 4, after 'must', insert
', if a two-thirds majority of the local authorities in the area covered by the pilot agree,'.
The Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 18, in
Mr. Hawkins: We have had an extraordinary start to the morning, with the first Government defeat that I have been involved in since the 2001 election. We look forward to many more, not only in this Committee but on future occasions.
As I said on Second Reading last Tuesday, Conservative Members feel strongly that all local authorities should be willing participants in experiments of this kind. There are already huge burdens on local authorities, and many of them have been imposed since May 1997 by the Labour Government. In elections, the returning officer—usually, in my experience, the chief executive of the relevant local authority—has many responsibilities already. However, the burdens on chief executives do not come from elections alone.
Perhaps many other local authorities are making the same complaint that is among those I receive from all the senior officers in the two local authorities in my constituency—I have certainly heard the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) making similar points in other debates. The complaint is that, since 1997, the Government have loaded greater statutory obligations and burdens on to local authorities, but crucially without providing the funding necessary to enable them to carry out those obligations. The pattern is a common one. A Minister—this or another Minister—will stand up in the House and trumpet a great announcement that the Government are doing something. However, they are putting the burden on local authorities to do that something without providing the funding.
Our constituents often protest about the increases in council tax. It is easy for Ministers to try to blame local authorities for that, as they regularly do, and make threatening noises about capping. Indeed, I heard Ministers do that in the Chamber only yesterday. However, the Government are the real culprit; they are putting the burdens on local authorities without providing the necessary funding—and the local authorities have no choice but to obey the statute law imposed on them by the Government.
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Councillors generally, but especially the senior councillors in my constituency, regularly raise this matter—and not only councillors of my party but councillors of all parties. They are concerned at the huge burdens being placed on them.
Mr. Hoyle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hawkins: I shall give way in a moment.
I do not blame Ministers at the Department for Constitutional Affairs alone, but they have to answer for what the Government have done in the past and propose doing again. Amendment No. 18 would take further the precautions that we seek to introduce—that the matter should be debated on the Floor of both Houses before the pilot proposals are pushed through; and, before that, that the local authorities affected should have had the opportunity to debate the matter, and that the local authorities and the Electoral Commission should report to Parliament.
Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, I remember what he said repeatedly on Second Reading. I commented then that he had managed to mention his constituency more often in one speech than any other hon. Member I have ever heard. Either in his intervention or in future contributions, I know that he will say that the local authority in his constituency of Chorley is violently in favour of the Government's proposals. However, all local authorities should be consulted, and some may not share the views that he has passed on from Chorley. It is therefore crucial to build in our suggested safeguards.
Mr. Hoyle: One of the hon. Gentleman's earlier points should be corrected. He said that the present Government were putting more of a burden on local authorities, but he ought to remember that that was also happening before 1997. He should recognise that we have seen a huge increase in rate support grant and he should give some credit to the Government for that.
Mr. Hawkins: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has discovered that his local authority has benefited from a huge increase in what used to be called rate support grant. In my constituency, Government funding went up by less than the cost of the national insurance increase. I have recorded my concerns about that on a number of occasions. Funding for local authorities in the south-east, and perhaps some in the south-west, was cut so that the Government could help their friends in the north—doubtless including those in the constituency of the hon. Member for Chorley. I have no doubt at all that, in the Labour heartlands, the amount of Government support went up hugely. However, it did not go up in the south-east, despite the fact that the cost of living and of providing local authority services is much higher in the south-east. The balance was deliberately skewed.
Mr. Duncan: Surely the key point is one of compulsion. On Second Reading, we listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Chorley telling us of his town's vast experience of pilot schemes.
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However, there was no compulsion. We are now talking about compulsion, and that element justifies seeking the agreement of local authorities before they are forced to participate.
Mr. Hawkins: My hon. Friend is right. He reinforces my point about the element of compulsion. My hon. Friend and others, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), said on Second Reading that one of the ironies of what the Government propose is that some of the authorities that have been pleased to volunteer for the pilot schemes—perhaps including Chorley—may find that, if the Bill stays more or less in its present form, and however much they have enjoyed pilots in the past and want to participate in them, they will not be allowed to do so unless they fall within one of the regions that is subsequently chosen.
The point of our amendments is that it is crucial that every affected local authority should have the chance to be consulted and to report its views, so that Parliament can debate the matter. That argument is much the same as those that we had in the Programming Sub-Committee before the Government suffered their catastrophic defeat. We have not had the chance to look at the information from the Electoral Commission, and if Parliament does not have the chance to consider the responses of local authorities, it cannot make proper decisions.
Mr. Lazarowicz: I would also like to express my pleasure at serving under your chairmanship, Mr. Benton.
Would the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a contradiction in what he says? He claims that he is against compulsion, yet amendment No. 16 provides that if two thirds of local authorities in an area agree, there will be compulsion on the other local authorities. That would mean, for example, that the authorities in cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow and other large authorities in Scotland could be outvoted by the tiny authority represented by the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan). Is that the compulsion that the amendment advocates?
10.30 am
Mr. Hawkins: May I first correct the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz)? The constituency and local authority of my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale can hardly be described as tiny. I know the area well and, as well as being one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom, it is large. I anticipated that if we had required all local authorities to approve the proposal, the Minister would have pointed out that it would take only one totally maverick authority to block the whole process. That is why I specified not all local authorities but two thirds. If more than a third of local authorities oppose something, that can hardly be described as a maverick decision.
Mr. Lazarowicz: I accept the hon. Gentleman's censure. My description of the constituency of the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale as small
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was incorrect. I have climbed the Merrick in that constituency and seen the constituency from a height, so I can confirm that it is large. However, the hon. Gentleman has not answered my concern. It would still be possible for two thirds of local authorities—perhaps those representing small populations—to outvote those with much larger populations. Is that not unfair on the more populous authorities?
Mr. Hawkins: No, I do not think that it is. If we are considering a position—[Interruption.]
The Chairman: Order. The level of the background noise is becoming a bit high. It is difficult to hear the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Hawkins: I am grateful, Mr. Benton. I apologise to you and the Committee for the fact that I am suffering from a cold, so I might not be speaking at my normal volume. I shall try to ensure that the Committee can hear me.
At this early stage—it is relevant to amendments Nos. 16 and 18—I should express some of the reservations that we have had ever since we debated what became the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which led to the creation of the Electoral Commission. One of the difficulties about a bureaucracy such as the Electoral Commission—I have no criticism of its individual members—is that it constantly recommends new things and changes. It is in the nature of such bodies to create work—it is a political Parkinson's law. They always generate huge reports. We do not believe, as I have said to the Minister on previous occasions, in their so-called modernisation. We do not believe that it is right to have constant change to, and messing about with, our constitutional settlement, which has been hallowed by time and which has survived so long because it works. As I said on Second Reading, I have always been a believer in the saying, ''If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.'' Indeed, I would go further and say, ''If it is not essential to change, it is essential not to change.''
On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) said that there will not be a lot wrong with the system when it is has been made easier for those who wish to vote by post to do so. We will come back to that at a later stage, so I will not detain the Committee with the details now. One could say that most of the difficulties that voters have experienced in the past have been dealt with. My attitude, and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster, can be summed up by the phrase, ''If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.''
My worry about the Electoral Commission is that it is always recommending change and further change. That is in its nature. One reason why we want to introduce precautions at every stage of the Bill, as we do with amendments Nos. 16 and 18, is so that if local authorities were to say, ''We don't like this, we don't want to have these changes,'' Parliament could take their views into account. Perhaps common sense would then prevail and some of the nonsensical
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changes that we will later debate would be stopped because it would be clear to Parliament that local authorities did not want them.
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