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The Chairman: I have ruled the hon. Gentleman out of order and he must stay out of order.
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Mr. Wilshire: I am eternally grateful to you, Mr. Cook, because, if you had ruled that my hon. Friend's intervention was in order, I would have had to confess that I have not the slightest idea of the answer. I am sure that the Minister will be happy to write to my hon. Friend.
Clause 4(7) also concerns me. It states:
''The assessment must include a statement by the Electoral Commission as to whether in their opinion—
(a) the turnout of voters was higher than it would otherwise have been''.
It calls for a factual statement on whether the turnout rose, but it should go beyond that. It may be self-evident that the turnout is higher than last time, but a subjective judgment must be made on whether it was going up anyway, or whether it went up only because it was a postal vote. It is worth asking for the question to be answered as a matter of fact and for the reasons to be given. It would be helpful if the Electoral Commission were encouraged to go beyond saying simply ''Yes, it has'' to ''Yes, it has because'' and then to say whether, in the circumstances and given the additional costs and administrative burden, that was justifiable. We must be careful about saying that everything that produces an increased turnout is, by definition, good. There are other ways of increasing turnout—compulsory voting is one, but I do not want to go into that now—and we do not want to fall into the trap of saying that postal voting per se is brilliant. We need to think about the cost and the benefit.
As for subsection (7)(a), as well as asking the commission to make a factual statement, the Government ought to invite it to go beyond that and give some reasoning and comparative thought on whether this is really worth the candle. I am not arguing that it is not but, having got that far, we should go the rest of the way and probe the reasoning behind it.
4 pm
Mr. Leslie: The hon. Gentleman has slightly misread the difference between subsections (3) and (4), which are about local authorities' assistance to the Electoral Commission and the subsequent investigation of voter views and so forth, and subsection (6), which relates to a separate assessment of the impact of the conduct of pilots on counting and other matters listed in paragraphs (a) to (e), which are not necessarily interrelated with voter views. To ask voters for their opinion on the efficacy of a counting procedure would not make sense, which is why subsection (6) and subsections (3) and (4) are set out separately. I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is logic in the way the clause is set out.
The hon. Gentleman raised a couple of other points. In particular, he looked at clause 4(7)(a), under which the Electoral Commission is to give a statement on its assessment of whether, under the pilot, the turnout of voters was higher than it would otherwise have been. That is fairly self-explanatory. Most people understand that we are expecting not just a yes or a no from the Electoral Commission. The fact that subsection (7) talks about an assessment conveys that we expect a qualitative statement.
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I turn to the hon. Gentleman's questions about subsection (10), which relate to the extent to which there is a duty under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 to report on the administration of elections. It is important not to neglect basic facets of the way in which an election is conducted. An overall report by the Electoral Commission on the European parliamentary elections will be required. The commission has a duty not just to look at the pilot regions but to ensure that it does not neglect any other part of the country involved in European elections. That is what is meant by subsection (10). We do not want to focus on pilots at the expense of other parts of the country not involved in piloting. I hope that that is clear.
Mr. Wilshire: It is clear thus far. The fact that the clause suggests that all the regions should be examined is fine. I am pleased about that. However, the Minister has not addressed the inclusion of the word ''administration''. I would be much more comfortable if the Minister said that the purpose of subsection (10) was to ensure that the Electoral Commission considered all aspects of the election in all the regions, rather than just the administration aspect, which is only one part of it.
Mr. Leslie: So far, the operation of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 has produced reports by the Electoral Commission that have been comprehensive. Although subsection (10) paraphrases the duty to report, the duty is sufficiently well defined in section 5 of the 2000 Act, and it is clear that it covers a wide variety of matters. At this time, it is not appropriate to debate the provisions under section 5 of that Act.
I hope that the purpose of the clause is self-evident. It is necessary that the Electoral Commission have a duty to report on the running of the pilot schemes. We have struck the right balance in framing what it should and should not focus on, and have given it latitude and flexibility on the reports. I hope that the clause stands part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Revision of procedures in light of report
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Wilshire: We started today's considerations with Mr. Benton in the Chair. At the beginning of the sitting, we said that there were some wonderful examples of Sir Humphrey-speak in the Bill. I had a good look at clause 5, and I find it almost impenetrable. A thicket on a moonless night is as nothing compared with it. I therefore turned to the explanatory notes. Over the years of being on Committees, I have many a time had my knuckles rapped for relying on notes to clauses, and have been told that the Bill is all that matters. I sincerely hope that on this occasion the Government will attach the notes to copies of the Act. Otherwise, I do not see how anyone could begin to understand what the clause is about.
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If I understand the notes correctly, if a local election on an all-postal ballot in one of the regions is held on the same day as European elections, the report on the European all-postal election shall be considered as though it were a report on the local government election as well. That is the best that I can do on what this gobbledegook means, so perhaps my first question to the Minister is whether I understand the clause correctly. Is it trying to say that the one report can be used for two purposes? If so, my next point becomes highly relevant.
Let us say that another Committee—and another Minister, Government, commission and group of commissioners—is giving thought to whether all-postal ballots for local elections are a good or bad thing and is trying to work out the impact of all-postal ballots on local elections. A degree of work has been done, and quite an amount of argument has been adduced from research to say that, from all the experiments carried out thus far, as far as local elections are concerned, the all-party ballot appears to be about the only way that makes a significant difference—that, essentially, is the message coming out from all the research.
If the report produced as a result of next year's European elections is used in conjunction with the research and the conclusion drawn from all-postal ballots for local elections, there may be those who are so riveted and gripped by the importance of Europe that they rush to the post box, vote and, while doing so, stick in a local government ballot paper, without making any sort of statement in their minds about how important the local election is. There could be others—my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East comes to mind—who, having decided it was a European election day, choose on a matter of principle not to vote using their postal ballot and, in so doing, do not vote at the local election, although they might have done, had it not been a European day.
What concerns me is that we are trying to adduce conclusions and transfer them away from the dominant—that is, the European—election, saying, ''It's a European day but we'll forget the fact that quite a lot of people will have been either motivated or switched off by the fact that it's a European election.'' I am concerned that all we will do is use that information, or even just take the figures from the local ballot papers returned on the same day, transfer them and read them into the research on all-postal votes in local government elections when there has been no other election at all.
I am worried about that, because it could well skew the statistics and introduce matters into the Government research that are not local government issues. People may well be led to say, because the European figures are added, that statistics prove that it is a waste of time having local government postal ballots. Alternatively, adding the European results might so skew things the other way that the European effect is used to justify a local government issue. I worry about that, and I wonder to what extent the Minister has given any thought to whether there
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should be an overlap, if he has given thought to that, to how matters can be controlled and to how we can ensure that the two sorts of elections do not get confused.
Mr. Leslie: The clause is concerned with the rolling out of innovations that have been successfully piloted. It is similar to section 11 of the Representation of the People Act 2000, which enables the Secretary of State to make an order providing for an innovation that has been piloted to apply generally and permanently to local elections in England and Wales. The point of having pilots is to learn lessons. If lessons are learned, it is perfectly reasonable and logical to apply them to elections on a long-term, permanent basis. That is effectively the purpose of the clause.
I accept that the drafting reflects the extent of the interrelationship with the 2000 Act, and that that does not make the clause easily readable at first glance, but I assure the hon. Member for Spelthorne that it makes sense. The clause simply means that the lessons that we learn from this round of piloting in local elections can be used legitimately in any future roll-out of permanent and long-term changes that we seek to make nationwide. We have made provisions on this matter in other legislation—when we have local pilots, as we have had already for local elections, the lessons that have been learned can be rolled out on a permanent basis elsewhere. That is the rationale behind the way in which the Government have approached piloting so far. Applying a new set of criteria to a local area to see how they work administratively and to see their effect on turnout and other things, and then applying elsewhere the lessons that have been learned is sensible.
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