Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

House of Lords, 13 December 2010.

Committee (4th Day)

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 35 standing in my name on the fourth Marshalled List of amendments.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, perhaps there could be speed from the many people wanting to leave before the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, speaks.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McNally, whom I have known for many years and from whom I have learnt to expect nothing better. I am always grateful to him for his acknowledgement of the reality of the situation. I am glad that it is not unique on this occasion.

This amendment raises the issue of the voting rights of prisoners in relation to the referendum. We have a clear ruling from the European Court of Human Rights and an imminent announcement of a decision in relation to that from the Government. Following the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on 6 October 2005, more than five years ago, many Members will know that United Kingdom's current ban on all serving prisoners from voting in elections contravenes Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The previous Labour Government decided to carry out a two-stage consultation process on options for a change in policy. The second consultation period ended on 29 September 2009, which is now more than a year ago. In its fourth report of 2008-09, the House of Commons and House of Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights said that it was unacceptable for the Government to continue to delay on this issue. On 21 July 2009, the chair of the Joint Committee wrote to the then Lord Chancellor seeking further information about how the Government were going to respond to the court's judgment. Nothing was done to change the law before the general election on 6 May 2010, although there was an attempt in your Lordships' House to amend the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill of 2009-10 by inserting a new clause that would have removed the statutory bar by repealing Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. However, this amendment was withdrawn.

In June 2010, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe expressed "profound regret" that the ban had not been lifted in time for the 2010 general election. The Committee of Ministers said that it would draw up a resolution for action if the United Kingdom Government failed to give prisoners the right to vote in time for the elections to the Scottish Parliament, which will be on 5 May 2011 and are planned to coincide with this referendum, and to the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will be on the same day.

On 2 November 2010, in response to an Urgent Question in the other place, Mark Harper, the Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office, said that the coalition Government accepted that there was a need to change the law and that Ministers were considering how to implement the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. As I said, I understand that a decision on this is imminent. It is expected that later this month the coalition Government will make an announcement on how they are going to respond to that judgment with regard to implementation. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord McNally, could confirm that this is the case when he responds.

When I originally tabled the amendment, I specified a term of six months, which seemed at the time the appropriate period to enable us to start this discussion. However, I heard on the grapevine-I am not sure that I should always believe what I hear on it, but on this occasion it seemed fairly plausible-that the Government are going to suggest four years. If that is the case, it is sensible for this amendment to specify the same so that there will not be any confusion between voting in the referendum and voting in the elections that are to take place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland next May. If the amendment is accepted, the Bill will anticipate what the Government are going to do in relation to elections.

This is a very liberal amendment and I make no apology for that. I am not seeking unduly the support of the Liberal Democrats but it is the sort of thing that I have heard Liberal Democrat lawyers in this House argue for at length on many an occasion. No doubt we will hear the same today, knowing their enthusiasm for consistency, particularly in higher education and related matters. However, I should express my own view, because I have tabled the amendment and I have just argued that the case should be considered. I know that some of my noble friends have a slightly different point of view, so the opportunity has been provided for what I hope will be an interesting debate. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will not mind my saying that he has written to me stating that he is in favour not of the time limit but of giving powers to the judge considering the case to withdraw voting rights. I understand his argument, although I do not accept it as the best way forward.

My view is that the decision of the European Court of Human Rights is correct. Once an offender is sentenced, he is fined or jailed. The appropriate sentence is decided on by the court and it is the punishment that the offender should receive in relation to their offence. In fact, the offender suffers a great deal more than that, especially by being jailed. Almost inevitably the person in jail will lose their job and will not go back to it afterwards. Prison has a huge effect on children and families and there is a loss of status and position within society. All those factors are part of the punishment that the offender faces. Is the decision of the court therefore not punishment enough? Why, on top of that, should offenders lose the right to vote? Voting is a fundamental human right and I cannot see any logical argument for withdrawing it other than wishing to punish someone over and above the sentence decided on by the court.

I do not want to speak at great length, so I shall quote in aid of my argument only one published article, not from the Guardian but from the Daily Telegraph. Mary Riddell wrote the following:

"Two cheers for David Cameron, who has done the right thing by giving prisoners the vote, albeit with deep reluctance".

The Prime Minister was, she continued,

"said to be 'exasperated' and 'furious' about a decision reportedly forced by the threat of litigation. In legal terms, the turnround is long overdue. Six years have passed since the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the blanket ban imposed by Britain was discriminatory. Since then, Labour and the Tories have dragged their feet disgracefully. Today's news fits ... with Ken Clarke's hope for a rehabilitation revolution. Prisoners lose their liberty, not their citizenship. If the object is to punish them, protect the public and equip offenders to rejoin the community, then they should work, pay taxes-and vote. Creating a disenfranchised and idle sub-class merely encourages re-offending. There's no question of all prisoners getting the franchise. Very serious offenders will certainly remain barred. But the rest will get a basic right accorded in countries across Europe. Mr Cameron has taken the only decision he could. It is the right one".

If Mr Cameron is right, I hope that his colleague in the coalition, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will take note of that and accept the amendment.

Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for raising this issue, which has been raised on the Floor of this House many times. I am also grateful to him for the way in which he explained the inordinate delay that there has been over the years, which frankly could have been avoided if the nettle had been firmly grasped. The noble Lord mentioned a letter that I wrote to him, which was consistent with what I have contributed to both consultations and, indeed, on many occasions-that one reason for removing the vote as part of a sentence is that that would enable the judge to add that penalty for a particular crime. It is interesting that most of the comments that we see in the press on this issue refer to certain types of prisoner who have committed certain types of crime being given that penalty of having the vote removed. Personally, I would have no objection to that, provided that the measure is adopted as quickly as possible, because too many elections have passed without this happening. Everything possible ought to be done to enable those prisoners who are qualified to take part-whether that is according to the crime or whether, as appears likely, the Government will put a time limit on it-in the referendum and the other elections likely to take place next year.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

My Lords, I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It is difficult to see what would happen if a judge were to be given discretion to impose the loss of the civic right of voting depending on the particular type of crime. One simply asks this question: if, for example, a prisoner were guilty of shoplifting, which would normally have a very short sentence at most, is that crime one that would make him forfeit those civic rights? If there is a form of assault, is that to be one? There would be infinite argument about how the judge should exercise that discretion. Surely it is better to have a blanket bar if there is to be a bar at all.

I have enormous admiration for my noble friend Lord Foulkes. We served for over a decade in the same team in opposition and I had great admiration for his assiduity-fertile in invention was perhaps the way that we always thought of him. However, I thought, with respect to him, that he appeared to be arguing against himself. Having suggested four years in his amendment, for the reason that he gave, he then appeared to be arguing in favour of no bar at all. I will reread what he said but for the life of me I could not see any consistency.

I confess that my predisposition is, in principle, to be in favour of a bar, but I reluctantly accept that those who have committed crimes and therefore forfeit a number of their civic rights should not also forfeit the civic right to have a vote. That puts me not in the liberal club, although perhaps my noble friend Lord Foulkes was trying to follow our party's new line of trying to attract dissident Liberal Democrats into our fold. I will not follow that line. In spite of my predisposition, I accept the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. Indeed, it has to be accepted-the sooner the better. The only question that remains is the length of sentence that there should be. There has been far too long a delay, as the noble Lord said.

I, too, have heard, perhaps on the same grapevine, that the Government will shortly make an announcement and that they favour four years, without any discretion for the judge. If that be their response, though, there is surely a case for consistency. If it be the case in respect of a general election, surely the Government should now act in the spirit of what we are told they will be announcing shortly and say that the same principle should apply to those who are currently serving sentences. If they will, and I suspect that there is the will for this in the House and in Parliament as a whole, they can ensure that whatever length of time they choose is in operation by the time of the referendum, whenever that may be held, be that 5 May or some other date.

If only for the reason of consistency-even though, like the great mass of public opinion, I suspect, I am not personally convinced of the case-I accept that we must follow the European Court of Human Rights. Pace the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, we cannot pick and choose the judgments that we follow. In following them, we should endeavour to attain consistency in the various elections that our people will be involved in.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I support the amendment. It is a timid one but it is the only one we have, and I will wholeheartedly support it. There is a paradox, is there not, about one aspect of the punishment of someone who has put themselves outside society being to keep them outside society? Surely the very heart of rehabilitation is to get a prisoner thinking once again that they relate to the society that they have offended against-to bring them back inside the "big society tent", if you like. It seems to be a self-injury to have the rule at all, although I can perhaps understand how the law is as it is out of respect for public sentiment, however wrong that sentiment may be. With that, I will simply say that I endorse and support what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has said.

Lord Grocott (Labour)

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene on this. I have two brief points. First, I know that I shall be told that this is a ferociously anti-European thing to say, but it is emphatically not intended to be that. Am I the only person in this House, or indeed in the other House, who always feels slightly uncomfortable when a Government, of whichever party, stand up and say, "This is something we've absolutely got to do, whether we like it or not"? There comes a point where you question the extent to which that is compatible with a sovereign Parliament. It is a always a bad argument, and I have seen this on a number of other occasions, if an elected Member of the other House has to go back to their constituents and say, "This is something we have no choice whatsoever about; this is a matter that's been decided somewhere else". That is a weak argument and I know that my noble friend did not deploy it; he addressed the actual merits of the case. That is just an observation.

Secondly, I am sure that there is an answer to this, but I am simply not versed enough to know it. Given that there are many other countries where I understand there is an unfettered right to vote in general elections, the practicalities of exercising that right in a meaningful way seem very difficult. A normal constituency campaign involves access to constituents and potential constituents if you are a candidate. It involves meetings, if necessary, and canvassing. I am sure that these practical questions have been asked long before I raised them in this debate, but I would like to know what the practical answers are.

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Grocott, I had not intended to speak in this debate but he encouraged me to do so with his introductory remarks. I rise to do two things. First, I remind your Lordships that, far from the European Convention on Human Rights being some foreign, European imposition on our culture, it was in many ways our post-war gift to the rest of Europe. The convention was largely drafted by British jurists. The structure that was put in place to enforce those conventional rights was part of that gift, which we encouraged upon the rest of Europe. This is a very British thing to do in many ways. It has taken decades for this issue to come before the court and for the court to give its opinion and impose back upon us, as it were, an interpretation of those rules that allows prisoners the legal right to vote. It has it roots in our own jurisprudence and legal thought. We should not in any sense blame this on others or suggest that it is being imposed on us.

Secondly, I support and commend my noble friend Lord Foulkes for raising this issue here, although it will not result in amendment of the Bill or in the opportunity, at last, for us to live up to the consequences of the judgment, do what will inevitably need to be done and deal with the issue-to grasp the nettle, as another noble Lord suggested. However, it gives the coalition Government's Front Bench an opportunity to reassure your Lordships' House that we will not find ourselves in a situation where they give either a subset or all of this group of people a vote by decisions made through legislation in this House, and then immediately deny those persons their say in a referendum. That would be an entirely inconsistent position. I look for assurances from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that the Government will do everything they can to ensure that, if they intend to give prisoners or any class of prisoners the vote, the legislation will allow prisoners to express their preference in a referendum.

There are several practical considerations. For example, in the other place I represented a constituency that had a large prison in it. Working out whether those people were best served by maintaining their relationship with the Member of Parliament who represented them in their home patch or whether they were my constituents for the issues that they raised with me, exercised my mind on many an occasion. These issues have to be resolved and worked through and they are by no means straightforward.

I remember being told many decades ago by a governor of Barlinnie prison that part of the problem was that we had not appreciated that we send people to prison as punishment, not for punishment. This was at a time when the Scottish prison system was in complete turmoil; we were caging people within cells in Porterfield prison in Inverness to control their behaviour. Many people are punished further than the courts intend by being denied that right and that responsibility when they are in prison. For the bulk of our prison population, whether they lose their vote is entirely a matter of luck. Most of them are in and out in such a short period that, if there is a coincidence of an election, it is entirely a matter of luck-to do with how their case is dealt with, the time involved and the proceedings-whether they are denied a vote. It is not as if everybody who is convicted of a crime between elections is denied a vote in the next election; it is entirely a matter of random luck. The sooner we resolve the issue, the better. The opportunity that my noble friend has given us to air some of these issues has benefited this House and the debate. I commend him once again for introducing this matter.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick (Crossbench)

My Lords, I can be very brief, mainly because I have not so far taken any part in the issue which has been urged for so long and so very effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. However, I have listened to the debate this afternoon, and it seems to me that by supporting the amendment we will be taking at least a step in complying with the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights which has been outstanding for so long. It may not be the best solution-I do not know whether it is or not-but, on the principle of half a loaf being better than no bread, I lend my support to the amendment.

Lord Bach (Labour)

My Lords, for many years the law in this country has decreed that if you lose your liberty, you lose your right to vote. However, as we have heard, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that this blanket ban on prisoners voting must be ended. My noble friend Lord Anderson is right: a large number of people in the United Kingdom do not agree with that ruling, which makes the issue a difficult one for politicians of all shapes and sizes. Nevertheless, when Labour were in government-I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in his place as he and I used to agree on this subject just a few months ago-we accepted that we had a legal obligation to comply with the European Court ruling, and that compliance would ultimately mean giving some prisoners the vote. Mindful of the need to take account of public opinion-that is a real issue here-in responding to the European Court judgment, we undertook a consultation process aimed at identifying an acceptable solution to a difficult problem.

I praise the Liberal Democrats who were always keen, when in opposition, that the Labour Government should act more speedily on this issue than was the case. However, I recall that throughout our discussion on this issue-we debated it for some time in the previous Parliament-the Conservative Party urged us to stay as we were and not to get on with it. Indeed, the right honourable and learned gentleman who is now the Attorney-General said, when in opposition, that it would be "ludicrous" if prisoners got the vote. When I used to sit where the noble Lord, Lord McNally, does today, I was always relieved to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, when he was on the opposition Front Bench, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, among others, against the proposal that prisoners should have the vote. Therefore, let us not have any criticism of us, as I am afraid the Lord Chancellor has been prone to do in the past week or so, saying that we should have legislated on this some time ago. I do not believe that the Conservative Party manifesto stated that prisoners should vote in the previous general election, but I am, of course, conscious that the other half or third, or whatever it is, of the coalition will respond today, and no doubt he will speak, as always, on behalf of the Government.

However, more seriously, it must be acknowledged on all sides of the House that there is a strong sense among the public-I think this is what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was getting at-that a decision may be being forced on the country against the will of the people. Indeed, reading what the Prime Minister has said about this issue, one feels that he thinks that, too. Clearly, this issue has some potential to undermine yet again public faith and participation in the political process. For that reason the Government have to respond to the European Court ruling in a way that is mindful of the views of the public and reassures them that their representatives are not simply rubber-stamping decisions made elsewhere. I hope that all noble Lords agree that it must be done in a way that is sensitive to British values and respects the position of this sovereign Parliament.

To be fair, the European Court itself recognises that fact, which is why it agreed to give the Government a degree of flexibility in how they respond to the ruling that a blanket ban on prisoners' voting is unlawful. I believe that the concept is called a "margin of appreciation", which has also been known to apply in other fields, but is particularly important here. In short, therefore, we would argue that the Government are not compelled by the margin of appreciation to give all prisoners the vote, but are required to enfranchise some. It is clearly up to the Government to decide who they believe should have the right to vote and to put that decision to Parliament.

It is rumoured on the grapevine that there will be an announcement before Christmas; I think that that grapevine is called the Lord Chancellor. In reply to the debate last week on the sentencing Green Paper, I think he made an announcement that there would be a parliamentary Statement around this subject before the Christmas Recess, and we look forward to hearing what it has to say.

The amendment of my noble friend proposes to give the vote to all prisoners sentenced for up to four years in jail. That seems to be going too far. While it may be possible to persuade people to accept a change, whereby prisoners convicted of comparatively low-level crimes are allowed to vote, we do not believe that the law-abiding public would easily accept a solution that ends up with people guilty of really serious offences-including violence, sexual assault or crimes against children-having a say in who represents them while they are in custody. That could be the consequence of the amendment, which would set the threshold to as high as four years.

We find deeply unattractive the idea that that a judge should have a say as to whether an individual whom he is sentencing should have the vote. The first reason why it is unattractive is because, frankly, I do not think that there is any judge in existence who would want that power. Secondly, the idea's unattractiveness is demonstrated, for example, by the prospect of a prisoner not being allowed to vote because a judge has used his discretion in a particular way, and whether that prisoner should have a right of appeal about that aspect of the sentence.

Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench)

My Lords, does the noble Lord remember that when we debated this issue on the Floor of the House when he was a Minister, he mentioned that the decision would actually come from the Sentencing Guidelines Council, which would guide the judges in this matter, and would remove the unlikelihood of inconsistencies between judges on different types of sentence?

Lord Bach (Labour)

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am not likely to forget our frequent discussions about this subject. However, can the noble Lord help me? Would he, under his proposal, give the defendant, who the judge has told, "No, you cannot vote", a right of appeal in the normal way against a decision such as that?

Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench)

My Lords, yes, I believe so.

Lord Bach (Labour)

I have to say that the possibility of that kind of appeal clogging up an already busy system is not one that we would support, particularly at this stage.

We cannot support the amendment, although we are grateful to my noble friend for raising this subject-as, I am sure, the Committee is-because the issue has exercised this House a great deal over the past few years. We very much look forward to the Government coming up with their proposals in the next few weeks.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick (Crossbench)

The noble Lord says that he cannot support four years as being just too long from the point of view of public opinion. What period would he support?

Lord Bach (Labour)

I find that question more difficult, but the period would be less than four years, rather than more.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson; I have known the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, even longer than he has. Where I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is that the noble Lord is a master of fertile invention-particularly when he is on the opposition Benches. What we have had today is a good debate about a matter that has yet to come before Parliament.

The amendment seeks to amend Clause 2, which sets out the franchise for voting in the referendum on the parliamentary voting system. Under Clause 2, anyone who is entitled to vote in Westminster parliamentary elections would be entitled to vote in the referendum. Members of this House entitled to vote in local and European elections will also be able to vote in the referendum, a matter we debated last Thursday.

Sentenced prisoners are currently barred from voting by Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. This bar, which has been supported by successive British Governments, has its origins in the Forfeiture Act 1870. However, as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, in 2005 the European Court of Human Rights found that the United Kingdom's prohibition on all sentenced prisoners voting breached Article 3 of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights-the right to free and fair elections. I was pleased by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, because it is important to remind people when we are debating our responses to decisions of the European court what its origins were.

I was recently at a meeting where the daughter of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe was present. It was worthwhile for the noble Lord, Lord Browne, to remind us of the major contribution that Sir David and other British lawyers made to a convention that was seen as a response to the horrors and excesses of the untrammelled tyranny that Europe had just experienced. Of course it is important that we look at the decisions of the court in the light of our own experiences and customs, but I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his reminder.

As Mr Mark Harper, the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, made clear in the other place on 2 November, the Government accept that there is a need to change the law. Ministers are currently considering how to implement the judgment and, when the Government have made a decision, their proposals will be announced to Parliament in the usual way. There will then no doubt be a full debate on the issues, giving Parliament the opportunity to discuss the issues reflected in this debate.

Lord Bach (Labour)

As I understand it-I may be wrong-the Lord Chancellor, the right honourable Secretary of State for Justice, said last week in answer to questions on the sentencing Green Paper, when this topic came up, that a decision would be made by the Government and announced publicly by the Christmas Recess. Can the Minister confirm that?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

I cannot confirm it because I do not know. If the Lord Chancellor said that he must know about the timetable. However, I am not in a position today to confirm or otherwise whether such a decision is imminent. When it is, it will be announced to Parliament and I am sure that the usual channels in both Houses will find time for a debate, which will be, I suspect, very much along the lines of today's debate.

Lord McAvoy (Labour)

As well as Parliament having a say, can the Minister indicate what measures, if any, are being taken to engage public opinion on the length of the term recommended?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

That is a very good example of why it will be necessary to have a full debate in both Houses of Parliament. I am sure that Members in the other place want to go back to their constituencies and consult their constituents before taking part in such a debate. When they do, I hope that both they and Members of this House will bear in mind the message of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that what we are discussing is not a heinous directive from Europe, but respect for the European Court of Human Rights, of which we were key architects when it was set up.

Lord Wills (Labour)

What consideration has the Minister given to deliberative mechanisms such as citizen jurors for engaging public opinion in the way that my noble friend Lord McAvoy has just suggested should be done?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, that is not a question for today. We should wait to hear the Government's decision and then go through the normal parliamentary processes and consultations. That will take place all in good time. It would not be appropriate for me to make commitments at this Dispatch Box about either the timing of, or consultation around, another Bill altogether. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that his best support has come from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, who thinks that this is half a loaf, and from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who thinks that it is going too far. I suggest that this is not the basis for pressing an amendment. The Government accept that they are legally obliged to lift the blanket ban on prisoner voting in UK parliamentary elections. However, accepting this amendment and allowing a category of prisoners to vote in the referendum would pre-empt Parliament and prevent it following the proper course of debating prisoner voting in both Houses when the Government have come forward when their proposal. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Pannick (Crossbench)

Will the Minister at least give the Committee an assurance that when the Government come forward with their proposals for reform in this area, they will bring forward an amendment to the Bill that is consistent with the general approach that they propose, so that we do not find, when this referendum takes place-next May or whenever-that prisoners whom the Government accept should have the right to vote are denied it?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

No, my Lords, I cannot make that commitment. The legislation is specific to this referendum. When the Government have a Statement to make on prisoner voting, there will be time to discuss this and many other matters.

Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister whether the Electoral Commission has been able to confirm that such an amendment would be practical if it were approved. It seems that it would involve a change to the franchise and a change to the electoral register process, as well as consideration about how campaigning could take place and how voting mechanisms could be established. I am in favour of such changes being made in future, where appropriate, but it seems that it would be very difficult to do this in time for a vote on 5 May next year.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

I suspect that my noble friend is right.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Conservative)

My Lords, is it correct that the Bill proceeds on the basis that those that have a franchise in general elections would have a franchise under the referendum Bill, and that if the legislation covering general elections is altered in the mean time, this would apply automatically to the referendum if it comes after that amendment has taken place?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

I suspect that there is indisputable logic in what my noble and learned friend says.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

My Lords, the House is entitled to be puzzled by the inability of the Minister to say whether an announcement will be made before Christmas. Either the Lord Chancellor said that it would be made or he did not: which is the case?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

If the Lord Chancellor said it, he must have been speculating.

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

Taking into account the very wise advice from the Minister's noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, I think that the Committee is entitled to ask the noble Lord for an assurance that the Government will promote legislation according to a timetable that does not leave this country in the ridiculous position of agreeing to allow prisoners the vote when the referendum is imminent but denying them the vote in the referendum.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, if there were a general election next January, prisoners would not get the vote even if the Government had announced their intentions in December. The two things are separate. The Government will announce their intentions on prisoner voting and it will be handled in the proper way with a Statement in both Houses. As I said, the usual channels will find an opportunity for a full debate and in due course legislation will probably be brought forward. However, that legislation is separate from the legislation currently before the House, which is why-

Lord Harris of Haringey (Labour)

My Lords, perhaps by the time the noble Lord reaches the end of his sentence, he can clarify one point for me, because what he is saying is becoming increasingly complex. As I understand it, the Government are rescuing this issue from the long grass, into which it was put for many years while people considered the implications of the European Court of Human Rights judgment. The noble Lord seems to be suggesting that, now that it has been rescued from the long grass, the intention is to embark on a process of Statements, consultation, debates and legislation, which will mean that it goes back into the long grass for very many years. Is that the case?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

Not at all, my Lords; it is called parliamentary democracy. There are enough experts on those Benches, including the noble Lord, to know that the process that I described is exactly what happens when there is a major change such as this-it will require legislation and parliamentary time. However, I really do not think that there should be any talk on those Benches about long grass and delays, given the five years that they spent on two consultation processes, which, as my noble friend said from a sedentary position, is another way of saying "prevarication". We will come forward with specific proposals-not in this Bill but at the proper time. In the mean time, I again urge the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Harris of Haringey (Labour)

Is it intended that there will be a Bill in this Session of Parliament or are we talking about putting this off until 2012 and beyond?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

I have absolutely no idea. I cannot, in the Committee stage of one Bill, start committing the Government to parliamentary time for another Bill. One would almost think that the Benches opposite were trying desperately to get past four o'clock, whereas I know that they are probing me and they continue to do so.

Lord Bach (Labour)

My Lords-

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

I withdraw that remark as I can see how upset the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is about my aspersion.

Lord Bach (Labour)

My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer is never upset. We have agreed that, whatever time the debate on this amendment ends, the Statement will follow straightaway, so I promise the noble Lord that there really is no attempt to go on beyond four o'clock.

Lord Rooker (Labour)

Does the noble Lord, Lord McNally, agree that the answer to the question, "How long is the grass?", is, "Can you see the giraffe"?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

I had not noticed the noble Lord come in. I was so relieved that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was not here that I had forgotten about the noble Lord.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

My Lords, at the risk of sounding immodest, I think that this has turned out to be a very worthwhile debate, if only for the last exchanges. I do not mean the fact that my noble friend Lord Rooker crept in through the long grass and was not seen by the noble Lord, Lord McNally; I am referring to the question whether, when the Lord Chancellor said that there would be an announcement by the end of the year, this referred to a government Statement or to the product of what was earlier described as fertile imagination. However, this has been an interesting debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, there has been an inordinate delay. From these latest exchanges, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will realise that, if there is a huge further delay, there will be deep concern. My noble friend Lord Anderson said that I was arguing against my own amendment, but he, having argued against lifting the ban, went on to accept it. At least I managed to persuade him.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

I hope that my noble friend will allow me to clarify my position. I said that my predisposition is to be against lifting the ban but that, because I realise that a change has to be made under our obligations to the European Court of Human Rights, with some reluctance I accept that the ban must be lifted in one way or another.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Exactly. I rest my case.

That brings me to my noble friend Lord Browne, who not only represented a prison in his constituency but who as an advocate represented many prisoners-all of whom were innocent. He gave an erudite explanation and reminded us that the European Court of Human Rights is not part of the European Union but a product of the Council of Europe-a much wider grouping, and with United Kingdom involvement. He hit on an argument that I wished I had thought of, which is that the blanket ban is exceptionally random. It depends on when the prisoner is in prison. If they are not in prison when there is an election, they do not lose the right, but they lose it if they are in prison when there is an election. That is probably the strongest argument of all, which my noble friend Lord Browne put in a gentle and impressive way.

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, said that my amendment was timid, while my noble friend Lord Bach said that it went too far, so it seems to me to be just about right. There were some questions about its practicality. I do not think that there would be difficulty in giving prisoners the vote; the postal vote provision would enable them to vote.

Lord McAvoy (Labour)

On the question of practicality and following what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, said, will my noble friend say what kind of canvassing technique he would use?

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Of course we can ensure that those in prison get all the available literature. Somebody said to me-I give them the credit-that we would be more likely to get the votes of people who were in there for assault; the Tories would get the tax dodgers; and the Liberal Democrats would get those in for perjury. That is absolutely the last thing that I would suggest. Heaven forbid.

There were some strong arguments in favour of the amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, did not say that he was only half in favour; he said that he was wholly in favour. A number of people have come round, even reluctantly, to say that they are in favour of it. However, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pleaded with me. He got on his knees and asked whether, for the benefit of the House, and to enable the Government to introduce legislation-I hope soon-to cover the referendum and/or elections, I would withdraw the amendment. Because of the eloquence of his plea, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 35 withdrawn.

House resumed.

Committee (4th Day) (Continued)

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Labour)

My Lords, this amendment would allow 16 and 17 year-olds to vote in the referendum due to take place in 2011. Only a minority of 18 year-olds voted in 2010 and it must be a major aim of us all to increase their turnout so that they have a real input into decisions that will affect the whole of their lives. Indeed, although he is not in his place, I was just talking to my noble and learned friend Lord Archer of Sandwell, who mentioned that, during the referendum held in 1975 to ask whether we should stay in Europe, his wife had asked their 11 year-old son how she should vote on the ground that it was his future that she was voting on rather than her own. As it happens, she is still very much with us, but she took her son's guidance, since it was about his future. That, I think, was a wise move.

For the Labour Party, I fear that our manifesto promised only to put the issue of voting at 16 to a free vote rather than giving it the full commitment that I think it deserves. However, Liberal Democrat manifestos not just this year but also in 2001 and 2005 have been clearly in favour of giving 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote, so I look forward to support from those Benches today. The Electoral Reform Society has long argued for this-the society is, needless to say, following the Bill's progress with interest. Perhaps less surprisingly, the UK Youth Parliament also supports the Votes at 16 campaign, as does the 2006 Joseph Rowntree Power inquiry, which recommended that not only the age of voting but the age for candidacy should be brought down to 16. They cannot all be wrong. Our citizens can leave school, get married, join the Armed Forces and, indeed, have the great luxury of paying tax at the age of 16, so they do indeed have taxation without representation.

Because of the coalition's decision to go the full five years before the next election, there will be many more new voters at that general election than when elections are held closer together. The question of the system to be used will therefore play a key part in the preparation for the 2015 general election. It will be the first general election for thousands of our fellow citizens-those young people born between 1992 and 1997. This is a generation of vastly different expectations and experience, with different hopes and aspirations from our own. Indeed, I am three and a half times the age of an 18 year-old and as far away from a 16 year-old as the period from the start of the 20th century to the end of Second World War hostilities. It is no good looking back to our own, long-distant youth to think what might have motivated us to vote in the first election after we had turned 18, although probably for most Members of this House the age was 21. For me, it was somewhere between the two. Alas, I missed out on getting the key of the door, or the first ballot paper, when I turned 18 because at that point the voting age was 21; by the time I had turned 21, the voting age had dropped to 18, so the great day had passed me by. Nevertheless, I remember clearly the significance of my first vote. I was 20 years and three months when I got the right to vote and twenty and a half when I cast that first vote, so I did not wait too long.

For today's young generation there has been a growth of interest in public policy, if not, I fear, in party activity. Young people were fully involved in the Make Poverty History campaign. They have taken up the green agenda faster than many of us. Last week, school students told us to preserve their sports facilities and classes. Today, they are telling us to continue with the education maintenance allowance. This week, we also see youngsters thinking of the following generations of students by involving themselves in the tuition fee debate. We have a choice over such activity and interest. We can encourage young people to channel their concern about public policy into voting and democratic behaviour or we can leave them frustrated on the streets. My choice is to involve them. Building on their current interest could be a turning point in their future role in the big society, of which elections are an important part.

The great opportunity of the referendum is that it is not about the usual issues on which young people's parents vote. It is not for the existing MP or for a change of MP. It is not for one of the traditional parties, which may not resonate much with them. It is a new question for a new generation and very possibly the beginning of a new politics. The referendum will decide how those who are aged 18 in 2015 will cast their vote, so why not let them, as 16 and 17 year-olds in 2011, cast their vote in the referendum on how the vote for the general election will be conducted in 2015? I beg tomove.

Lord Soley (Labour)

My Lords, I rise in support of my noble friend Lady Hayter. Let me begin by perhaps anticipating the Minister's response. Despite his commitment to his party as part of the coalition, he will say that it is not possible to do this in the Bill, that the Electoral Commission would not approve and that these young people would not be able to vote in the referendum anyway because the Bill will not allow time for that. He said much the same about the right to vote for prisoners. My reason for rising to speak is to say that this argument is based on a fallacy and that this Bill ought to be something much wider. It ought to be about constituency and voting reform generally, but it is not. It was put together in order to preserve the coalition. That is what it is about. It is concerned with enhancing the coalition's chances of staying in government for a bit longer. I have to say that that is not good enough.

If the Minister thinks that I am the only person who is saying that the coalition Government are not allowing time for the Bill-they ought to allow time, so that we could consider the wider issue of votes at 16, which is his party's policy, or indeed votes for prisoners, which is also his party's policy-let me quote from a letter sent to me and to others by one of his honourable friends in the House of Commons, Andrew Turner, the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight. He says the following in relation to a different part of the Bill:

"Debate in the Commons was so curtailed that I was unable to speak on this subject during Committee Stage and only for five minutes during Report Stage".

In a sense, that sums up the problem. There is a case for votes at 16, although I will touch on that only briefly, since my noble friend summed up my position in her remarks, just as there is a case for votes for prisoners following the European Court of Human Rights ruling. However, there is no room in this Bill for doing things easily unless-this is the point-the Government accept that the legislation ought to be about reform and not just about preserving the coalition's position.

Perhaps I may deal briefly with why votes at the age of 16 are important. For many years I have felt that, if you can serve in the Armed Forces, you ought to be able to vote. Also, as my noble friend pointed out, if you pay taxes, you ought to be able to vote. However, the important point concerns the Armed Forces. Secondly, it should be understood that many young people start to get interested in politics at this age. However, if they are not allowed to express that interest, if anything they are put off later. It is no accident that in this Chamber either last Friday or in a previous Youth Parliament, I cannot remember which, the young people voted in favour of votes at 16. I might add something that will encourage Members on both sides: they also voted by a majority of between 60 and 64 for a largely appointed House as opposed to an elected House. There are all those wise young people out there, wanting to vote and to keep an appointed House because they recognise some of the strengths of that. The arguments in favour were interesting because the young people were wise enough to support the concept of, at least, a largely appointed House.

I suppose that we all think of our own backgrounds. My noble friend was remembering where she was for her first election, albeit with some uncertainty. I remember mine clearly. It was in 1955. When I had campaigned in the previous election, I was belted round the ear by someone with a rolled-up poster who told me that I was too young to be thinking about such things. All that did was to reinforce my view that I ought to think about it a bit harder, if only to deal with people who belted you round the ear with a rolled-up poster. There is a genuine interest. Certainly, I was very interested in what was happening internationally. We had come out of the Second World War, which had influenced me very much, as it had so many of us were who were born, as I was, just before it. If you grow up under the shadow of dictatorship, you know the importance of democracy. That argument was profoundly important to me. It always has been and still is.

I should not need to exercise these arguments with the Minister, because his party supports this policy and I believe that I am right in saying that he does. The only thing standing in the way is this attempt to get through a Bill that is about the survival of the coalition, not the reform of the parliamentary system. The Government really need to do better on this. It is just not good enough to duck this issue in the way that he ducked the issue of votes for prisoners.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Labour)

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lady Hayter. I came to this issue rather sceptically but changed my mind when I was chairing the Power inquiry, as we took evidence from around the country and heard from young people and their teachers. One thing that this House should have in mind is the alarming way in which we in this country are losing the habit of voting. What we are finding is that young people, if they do not establish a habit of voting, do not turn to it. People would say to us, "Well, they soon start voting once they start having children of their own or a mortgage, or when they start paying tax"-often, they were Members of Parliament. Yet the reality is that, if the habit is not established before, very often people do not end up voting at all.

Teachers were telling us that already, in schools, there is talk before age 16 about why the vote is so important and about the history of the vote. Then there is a gap, where a substantial number of our young are still not staying on at school to 18, so when they leave school there is a period of non-participation in the public arena. They do not vote, so they never establish the habit of voting. We should move from knowing about voting at school-understanding its history and its importance in our firmament and why it is at the heart of our democracy that people should vote-to harnessing that while people are still young and interested. That is vital.

Hearing from young people who were clearly interested in how their country worked and in the issues of the day, yet then hearing from teachers about the terrible loss of interest between the ages of 16 and 18-sometimes, it is as long as four years before these young people get the chance to vote-was a lesson that convinced me that people lose the habit of voting. We should take this opportunity to reform the system as soon as we can. I know that many people, certainly among the Liberal Democrats, share this view. We should be harnessing that interest in politics before it is lost. Now is a good time to do it, when we are in the process of engaging in some reform of our electoral system.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Kennedy referred to instilling the habit of voting. My fear is that the subject of this referendum will instil the habit of not voting. I certainly do not detect any overwhelming interest from the younger generation in the alternative vote or in any other technical form of voting in this country. If they do not vote on the first occasion when they are given the opportunity to do so, the danger is that they will form a habit of not voting. That is the real problem.

The genesis of this whole thing is the Faustian pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Liberals have this magnificent obsession with structures. It is not an obsession that a great number of people in this country share but they consider it the unfinished business of Lloyd George. They were prepared to do anything to change the voting system, while allowing the Conservative Party to have free rein in all its attacks on our welfare system.

I cannot imagine young people for a moment being interested in going to this vote. From over 30 years as a Member of Parliament in the other place, trying desperately to get people to vote in difficult parts of the constituency-we sometimes had, alas, a very sad turnout-I cannot imagine even a tiny proportion of those individuals bothering to vote and, if they do not, I certainly see no serious interest or enthusiasm among younger people. That is my starting point.

However, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayter. She led me along a silken path with her felicitous words until I was almost persuaded; alas, not quite. I have form in this, because many years ago I promoted a Private Member's Bill in the other place to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18. I was before my time, as it were, because it was before that view became a consensus. Sadly, the Bill was talked out, but there was a very logical case to move from 21 to 18 at that point because, about then, the legal age of majority had been changed-I believe that it was by a royal commission-and it was wholly consistent with that that the voting age should also be reduced from 21 to 18.

Lord Rooker (Labour)

I should like to bring my noble friend Lord Anderson around to supporting my noble friend Lady Hayter because, while I am sceptical as well, this is not about votes at 16. It is about allowing the people who will be 18 at the end of a fixed-term Parliament to vote for the voting system that will be used then. If it were not for the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, which gives this some intellectual credence-and it is the same gang bringing in that Bill-we would not be asking the people who we know will be 18 at the end of this Parliament to choose the voting system. This is not about votes at 16, so my noble friend can support my other noble friend if this matter is pushed.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

I look on my noble friend's intervention with considerable respect, as I do all the matters that he raises. Clearly, he raises an important point. The essence of what I was saying is that, whereas from 21 to 18 there was a logical stopping point, I see no such point in going from 18 to 16. Indeed, I ask rhetorically where it will stop. The real reformers-the people trying desperately to be radical-will ask, "Why stop at 16?". It may not perhaps go down to babes and sucklings but next they will suggest, incrementally, "Well, having had 16, why not 15 because we want to encourage people to take part in politics?". They will ask, "After all, this is a newly politicised generation; did we not see schoolchildren on the streets last week?". Yes, but I am not sure whether those schoolchildren-we are now, I think, meant to call them school students-were or are likely to be worried about alternative votes, or a voting system of STV, or whatever it is.

Lord Soley (Labour)

Would my noble friend bear in mind that at age 16 you can serve in the Armed Forces and you pay taxes? That is a good dividing line.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

That is one factor. One could say, for example, why not 17? That is the age at which one can be on the front line in our armed services. One can make a plausible, or semi-plausible, case for reducing the age from 18 to 17, then to 16, but although there are pointers at each little watering place and stopping point along the way, in my judgment there is no sufficient reason to say that one should stop at 16.

I have heard the argument in favour. Of course there are some points to be made for it, but in my judgment it would be wrong in general and, in response to my noble friend Lady Kennedy, certainly wrong to have the change on a matter that is, frankly, of little or no interest to the younger generation-the nature of the voting system. It would be a bad precedent and, if it is to be justified at all, a bad starting point for the younger generation.

Earl of Clancarty (Crossbench)

My Lords, I support the amendment. I want to say two things. The thrust of my main argument is that, without doubt, 16 year-olds have a sufficient knowledge and understanding of the world to have a valid opinion on this referendum and to be able to make a valid decision about it. Moreover, a 16 year-old today has a level of sophistication significantly greater than 18 year-olds of even 20, but certainly 30, years ago. You have only to see the parliamentary youth debates on TV to witness a standard of debate unthinkable in teenagers of a previous era. If 16 year-old students and younger can demonstrate on the streets and know what they are demonstrating about, which they do, then they are certainly able to participate in this referendum.

My second point concerns public indifference to politics, and specifically to Parliament. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. While the voting age remains at 18, it is all too easy for schools to slide out of providing a education about Parliament. However, if 16 year-olds were able to vote in this referendum then not only would the teachers become enthusiastic about a reality that took place while their pupils were still at school, but the students themselves would feel they had a real stake in their Parliament and would demand the education on voting systems and on Parliament to go with it.

The referendum is a highly appropriate moment to test out voting at 16. It is a specific issue, though one of paramount importance, and, crucially, it is about Parliament. The voting age was correctly lowered in 1969 from 21 to 18. Now it is time to put our trust in 16 and 17 year-olds as well.

Lord Tyler (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, in contrast to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, I have found that young people are very interested in the way in which we elect our Members of Parliament and feel as cheated as many other members of the electorate about the way that the system works. I was with 120 sixth-formers on behalf of the Lord Speaker's outreach programme on Friday, and I assure the noble Lord that they are extremely interested in this issue and indeed many others. I agree with the noble Earl that many of them would like to express an opinion.

The issue today is the one addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws: what is the appropriate time to make this change? How can we do it? How soon can we do it? Can we do it before May? There are two major problems about the otherwise very persuasive case that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has put before us. The first, I am afraid, involves the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He is my good friend in these matters; he so often provides me with ammunition. Those who might be voting in a referendum on 5 May 2011 will not just be the 16 and 17 year-olds who will become 18 before 2015-they will also include the 14 and 15 year-olds. The logic of the case that is being put from the other side is that if we are trying to identify those who will have a vote by 2015, we have to include those who are 14 and 15. That is the case that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made just a few minutes ago.

Lord Grocott (Labour)

I must caution the noble Lord, if that does not sound too presumptuous, against assuming that the Bill, which has not even arrived here, to extend the parliamentary period to five years-I think that that would be about one and a quarter years longer than the average Parliament since the war, in an attempt to increase substantially the length of this coalition-is as good as an Act of Parliament. We simply cannot have this debate on the total assumption that a Bill that has not yet arrived has become law.

Lord Tyler (Liberal Democrat)

It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, to change the whole basis on which others on his side of the House have been arguing. The case was made a few minutes ago that those who are going to vote in May 2015 will be 15 or 16 next year. They could also be 14. That is the simple point that I am making-no more than that.

There is another practical problem. It is almost inevitable, I believe, that the referendum will take place on the same day as some other elections-others may take a different view on which other elections. It would be ridiculous to have a completely different electorate for two different purposes, with the referendum in one ballot box-

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

What an opportunity I have been given. Is the noble Lord not aware that there are already two completely different franchises for this election, as some people on this side have been arguing? How hard is he going to struggle to find ways of explaining why he is not prepared to stand up for something that he spoke about from this side of the House again and again? Is that duplicity?

Lord Tyler (Liberal Democrat)

No, it is not. That is an absurd point. I am simply talking about putting in place a major change in the electorate, changing the whole qualification for voting in parliamentary elections between now and 5 May. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that that is a reform that I supported and that I hope that the Government will get around to. Incidentally, her own Government, I am sad to say, did nothing to move in this direction. I hope that our Government will make progress on it before the general election in 2015 but it would be totally irrational to attempt to do it before 5 May, and that is my last word on the subject.

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

Before the noble Lord sits down, the deftness of his footwork in response to my noble friend was good enough to ensure that those who are putting together the next "Strictly Come Dancing" competition should approach him. Not only did he change horses between the point that he was making, the intervention and his response to it, he moved to a different racecourse altogether. The point that he was making, as I am sure that the record of this debate will show, was that it is entirely inconsistent and confusing to have two separate electorates approaching the same polling station for both a referendum and the contemporary election. That is exactly what he was defending, time and again, from those Benches, if not from that exact spot, as we were making that very point to him.

The amendment does not propose to fundamentally change the electorate for future elections. It proposes to change the electorate for the referendum. That is exactly what the noble Lord has been supporting up until now in relation to Peers, with a distinction between those who can vote, perhaps in local government elections, and those who are citizens of the EU or whatever and cannot vote. We will have an opportunity to address that issue. Will he address why he has now been persuaded by our argument and is now parroting it back to us? What will the consequences of that be for his future voting intentions towards the Bill in Committee?

Lord Tyler (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I am just making a simple point. I want to change the qualification for voting in parliamentary elections. If it is possible to do that between now and 5 May, and I very much doubt it, then there is of course a case for it to be part of the qualification of voting on the referendum that, as is in the Bill, you are already qualified to vote in the parliamentary election. That is my simple point. I was taking up the very proper challenge form the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that for those who want to vote in general parliamentary elections we should make this change and reduce the age to 16. I accept that. I do not believe that we can do that in practical terms before 5 May, and I was making a simple point about the confusion that could arise if we were to attempt to do it just for the referendum and not for any other purpose. That is all.

Lord Monson (Crossbench)

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, made her argument extremely well but are she and her supporters aware that, 50-odd years ago, only two groups of people in the world could vote at the age of 18? The first comprised citizens of the Soviet Union, where you could vote at 18 provided you voted for the Communist Party. The second group consisted of white South Africans, who made up about 20 per cent of the population of that country. In most other parts of the world the voting age was 21 but there were at least four exceptions. These four exceptions were countries that are generally regarded by progressive opinion as highly praiseworthy, with superb welfare states and high standards of literacy, healthcare, education and so on. They were the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where the minimum voting ages ranged from 23 to 25. That is not a preclusive argument against lowering the voting age but it is certainly something to reflect on.

Baroness Kingsmill (Labour)

I support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter. My reason for this is that 16 year-olds today are a very mature bunch of people. They have been well educated, on the whole, and many of them have studied current affairs to a far greater degree than I did when I was at school. We encourage our 16 year-olds to take responsibility; we wish them to behave well and to pursue active citizenship. I can think of no better way of doing so than exercising the vote responsibly. It is patronising in the extreme to think that 16 year-olds are not interested in how our Government are run. Most 16 year-olds I know are extremely interested in this area, as were most of my children's friends when they were 16. Some of the frustrations that we see on the streets today may well have arisen from the fact that people have not had the opportunity to be active citizens or to exercise the vote. This is, therefore, a wholly worthy amendment and one that I support.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

In opening the debate on active citizenship from these Benches two weeks ago, I made clear my view that votes at 16 would be timely. I do not resile from that one little bit. I served in the mid-1960s on the Latey committee on the age of majority, which reduced the age of majority for certain civil purposes to 18. A year later I also served on the Speaker's Conference on electoral law, which recommended that the age of voting should be not 18 but 20. None the less, Parliament rejected that advice and the following year voted for votes at 18. So, I have a track record of involvement in this debate.

However, it appears that what we are talking about in this amendment is not giving people votes at 16 but giving them the right to participate in a one-off referendum. That raises somewhat different issues. It is also clear that, throughout the debate in Committee, there has been lengthy opposition to and debates on amendments, which-if the process goes on in this manner-will have the effect, whether it is desired or not, of postponing the referendum. As many people as possible should take part in the referendum, so that we have a clear indication of what the public view is. Whatever side of the argument we may be on, to have the maximum turnout for the referendum is highly desirable. If we are to achieve that maximum turnout, it makes sense to hold the referendum on a day when people are turning out for other polls. That is why I favour the proposal of the coalition Government to hold the referendum on the day of the Scottish election and the local elections, when roughly 85 per cent of the electorate will at least be able to turn out. That seems a very strong argument for not holding up this process. Consequently, we should view somewhat askance an amendment that could result in denying people that opportunity, or at least the likelihood of there being a substantial turnout.

The second issue that causes me to hesitate about having 16 year-olds voting in the late spring-as is implicit in the Government's attitude-is that it seems improbable that many of them would be on the register in time for that. Even if the decision were taken by this House to change the provisions and allow them to vote, it would have to go back for approval to another place. Consequently, we could expect substantial delays. Practically, their being on the register-which they would need to be if their votes were to be validated-is very improbable.

Lord Rooker (Labour)

There is an easy solution to that. I think it is the case-I do not have children but I was at the DSS-that when you are 16 you are issued with your national insurance number. You are known about on the system. It would be easy for the DWP to know where all 16 year-olds are because it would be about to issue their national insurance numbers. That argument, with respect, is not a valid one.

Could the noble Lord also address the London issue? He skated over that when talking about the second election. The greatest density of voters in this country is in the 100-odd constituencies in London-the capital of the country, where there is no other election next May. The damage to possible turnout because there is not another election could be catastrophic. The 15 per cent who will not be voting are not evenly spread over the country. Has the noble Lord thought about that?

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

I take the noble Member's point. However, the concentration of the media-the London-centred media-makes it highly likely that London is the least likely part of the country to be unaware of what is happening, or not to have been stimulated by the press, including television and radio, into recognising the importance of the issue. I envisage that being the proper possibility in other parts of the country, where other elections are happening. It is conceivable in Scotland, for example, that the voting system for Westminster will not be regarded as the first priority; rather, the structure of the Scottish Parliament and which Government will take their place in Scotland will. So, I do not altogether go along with the noble Lord.

The suggestion that national insurance numbers could be used would be unlikely to lead to an outcome that carried much conviction.

Lord Rooker (Labour)

Forgive me but that was not my point. The noble Lord was saying that we could not get 16 year-olds on to the register in time. The fact is that they are on a register now. It would be very easy to transfer them to the electoral register. It is known in government, electronically, where they are because they are about to be issued with an NI number. I am not suggesting that the NI number is used for voting but it would be very easy to put them on to the electoral register.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

I would be interested to hear the views of the Electoral Commission on that. I do not regard myself as an expert on these matters but I doubt it is quite as easy as that, given that the timing for the Bill becoming law is decreasingly clear.

My final point may not carry so much weight but I believe that our 16 year-olds are increasingly very interested in politics, which is why I want to see a change in the voting age. However, I do not believe that in a few months' time they are likely to be able to discriminate between different electoral systems when they have not been thinking about voting. It is highly improbable that even their teachers would be in a position to give them guidance on the virtues and merits of different electoral systems. We have heard arguments being put forward on the Benches opposite and conflicts between the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others about the merits of the supplementary vote as opposed to the alternative vote, or various kinds of alternative vote. Without prior discussion or only the most minimal educational input on this issue, it is extremely improbable that 16 year-olds would add greatly to the authority of the decision to be taken next May, if that is the date decided upon. Therefore, for the three reasons that I have given, I would prefer to see the system of voting change and for subsequent referenda to follow the electoral register.

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

I would like to ask the noble Lord a very simple question. Can he tell your Lordships' House which members of the public he thinks have been thinking about these issues with the necessary intensity to make the decision he has just proposed needs to be made?

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

A large number of people who have voted in previous elections feel that their vote did not count and that the relevant constituency remained dominated, come hell or high water, by the party which had been there for over a generation. I am bound to say that those people are likely to look at alternatives with a passion and concern not shared by a new voter, who may simply be mystified by what could appear to be a very academic debate. Consequently, I do not think that the noble Lord's intervention has much substance.

Lord Desai (Labour)

My Lords, it never fails to surprise me that when people want to resist an advance in the franchise all the same objections are made. They say, "These people do not know how to vote. They are not interested in politics; they are just not good enough". That happened in 1832 and it has been happening steadily ever since, every time a reform is suggested, especially when people believe sincerely in the reform but do not want to implement it, as is the case with noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches. They say, "Ah, but there are administrative difficulties. We are entirely for it in principle, but it is so difficult to transfer a number from one computer to another that we cannot do this". It is almost a universal law that every time any advance in the franchise is proposed, the establishment is against it on the ground that people who are about to get the franchise are too ignorant and too stupid to deserve it.

In proposing this amendment, my noble friend has done a very nice thing. Given that we are talking about a referendum, we are not so worried about which constituency people are registered to on the electoral register. The constituency does not matter; this is a nationwide election. Therefore, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said in his imaginative intervention, once you have your national insurance number, people know that you are 16 and then you are eligible to vote. One could even experiment with e-voting given that we are not electing Members to represent constituencies but asking the nation a question: "Are you for AV, or not?". We should not be so conceited as to presume that students, or their teachers, do not understand the issues surrounding AV. They can all read and write and people have been reading about this stuff for ages.

I remember that in the 1960s the only party which publicly supported voting at 18 was the Monster Raving Loony Party, and it was far ahead of the electorate in that respect. These really radical reforms always come from the outside, as it were. For some strange reason the Government want to hold the referendum on 5 May 2011; perhaps it should be held in 2012, but they want it on 5 May. However, they should not let that one little thing be an obstacle to achieving a good reform. If we can achieve this reform, it will make a tremendous difference. As regards the point about today's 14 year-olds being eligible to vote by 2015, that is a great idea. We could easily amend the noble Baroness's amendment to say that anybody who is likely to be 18 by 2015 should be eligible to vote in the referendum.

Lord Howarth of Newport (Labour)

My Lords, this amendment concerns the age at which one should be eligible to vote in the referendum. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, convincingly to separate out the arguments for allowing people to vote at 16 on the referendum and lowering the voting age for other elections. Indeed, in the speech in which she so ably moved this amendment, my noble friend Lady Hayter engaged with those wider considerations, as did my noble friends Lord Soley and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.

My observation of young people's views on what the voting age should be is a little at odds with the experience of my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. Like many Members of Parliament, I used regularly to have meetings with sixth formers in my two former constituencies. They were very different constituencies situated in different parts of the country with very different socioeconomic make-ups. I expected my youthful constituents to be enthusiastic about lowering the voting age but I found that that was not commonly the case. I used to go to their schools to talk to them about the role of a Member of Parliament, the way Parliament works and broader constitutional issues, and very often the question of whether the voting age should be lowered came up. While my young constituents were well informed, sophisticated in their interest and in no sense apathetic about politics, Parliament and their future role as citizens, I was struck that commonly they did not think it was appropriate to lower the voting age. Many points of view and a range of arguments were put forward, but commonly they felt that it was not right to lower the voting age and that they were not ready for that. You can take a horse to water but you cannot necessarily make it drink.

We have noted at a series of elections that the lowest turnouts are among those entitled to vote for the first time, which worries us all. That should not necessarily be interpreted as disaffection from politics, but it is a matter of concern that those in the youngest age group eligible to vote are not conspicuously prone to exercise that right. If we lowered the voting age, I worry that that trend might intensify and become extended. Therefore, there is a case for caution. I would be interested to know whether my noble friend Lady Hayter thinks that my observation is correct and that there is not a great demand among young people for the right to vote at a younger age than 18, whether on a referendum or in other elections.

Lord Newton of Braintree (Conservative)

My Lords, since there has so far been silence from these Benches, I want to offer my noble friend on the Front Bench a modest bit of encouragement before he replies. I might frighten him by saying that I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in that I did not get my first vote until I was 22. I am not going to tell noble Lords how I cast it, except to say that it was consistent with my being a supporter of the coalition. I am more or less agnostic on whether the voting age should be reduced further, although I am bound to say that the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Howarth, have made some powerful points on the sceptical side.

The key point I want to make to my noble friend is that, whatever my view might turn out to be were we to have a properly considered and consulted-on proposal brought before us, I do not think that an amendment in your Lordships' House to this Bill at this time would not be an appropriate way to bring about a reduction in the voting age. So if my noble friend wishes to resist the amendment, whether in the terms forecast by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, or in any other, he will have my support.

Baroness McDonagh (Labour)

I see the issue in a rather different way. It is part and parcel of our long march to democracy. I take as a starting point the situation 537 years ago, with the enfranchisement of some men on a property basis. We talk of the Great Reform Act 1832, where we enfranchised only some 14 per cent of men. The great reforming Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, represented a rotten borough that was bought for him on his birthday at the age of 21. It was only in 1918 that we allowed all men over 21 to vote, due to our embarrassment from the First World War, when people fought and died but were not allowed to vote.

The first voices on the enfranchisement of women were heard in the mid-1800s. Disraeli wrote the novel Sybil and began to talk about votes for women. It was not until 1885 that the women's suffragette movement started. However, it was not until 1928 that all women were able to vote on the same basis as men. I suppose that my sisters in this House have to think ourselves lucky that we were not French, because it was not until 1945 that women in France could vote.

We set ourselves up as a paragon of democracy that the rest of the world can look to. When we look back, we have actually taken quite a long time to come here. It was only in the last century that we started to look at age. It was only some 40 years ago, in 1969, that all 18 year-olds were allowed to vote. I look around the Chamber and I do not wish to be disparaging to anyone, but that happened probably within all our lifetimes.

Various noble Lords have talked about why 16 year- olds should be brought into the franchise because they can, for example, leave school, work full-time, pay tax, serve in the Armed Forces, and so on. However, we are at a unique point in our history dealing with serious issues that affect only this age group, including, for example, tuition fees. This issue is a huge departure and is not about a contribution to student fees, which were brought in by the previous Labour Government, but is about a Government who are wholly standing back from contributing to teaching in universities. We are in a wholly different situation which relates to an issue that will be faced uniquely by this age group. That has never happened before.

Look at today's announcement on the education maintenance allowance. We hear a lot from the Government about how everything they do is progressive. Even though outside bodies always fail to agree, the Government say they want to be fair and to help those who find it hardest. Getting rid of the education maintenance allowance will hit the poorest members of our society. Issues such as these are unique to that age group. We have a choice as to whether we bring people into democracy and let them have a say about the big issues of the day.

The Electoral Commission has carried out much research in this area. It shows how 15 to 17 year-olds are much more interested and likely to vote than their older contemporaries. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, said he was 22 before he voted. If the voting age remains at 18, someone's first vote is likely to be cast when they are between the ages of 18 and 24, rather than near their 18th birthday, depending on when there is an election. It looks like members of that age group are more likely to vote. I personally feel-and research bears this out-that if you vote in your first election when you are young, you gain a habit of voting and vote throughout your life. I think that the whole House would want to join me in agreeing with that.

Another social impact is that when young people are 18, they are now much more likely to move away from home to university than they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago. They are not given the same parental guidance that perhaps we were at that age when we were taken to the polling station to vote. Something struck me for the first time on polling day in the 1997 general election-and I have been active in politics since 1978. It came home to me that that was the first election, after the previous four general elections, when more than 50 per cent of first-time voters voted. I was very pleased to be out of Millbank Tower for the first day in many months. When I was knocking on doors and talking to young voters in the streets, I discovered that it was not older people who needed help getting to polling stations, but first-time voters, who asked, "Where do I go? How do I vote?". I was struck by the number of people who were not sure of the practicalities, whether they had to pass a test, or whether they should vote electronically. A younger person will be given more parental guidance and be told that voting is a right of passage as they grow older.

For those reasons, allowing 16 to 18 year-olds to vote for the first time in this referendum will be a positive good.

Lord Grocott (Labour)

My Lords, I have been persuaded to make only two brief points, encouraged by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Newton. I am always slightly nervous about suggesting that I am an agnostic on a subject, but as he has given me courage, I shall begin by saying that my instinct on this is one of agnosticism. I am not sure whether I have been helped or hindered by listening to the debate and hearing what I thought were two weak arguments-one on each side of the debate.

For those who favour votes at 16, I found the argument that there was an intense interest in different forms of electoral systems among 16 and 17 year-olds very unconvincing. I acknowledge that there is tremendous interest in issues such as those to which my noble friend referred-student fees and the like, and, over the years, in bigger issues such as war and peace-but, please, not in different electoral systems. If such interest exists, it is in a parallel universe to the one that I have inhabited. I have found hardly any adults who are interested in different electoral systems, let alone people aged 16 and 17. I used to think that I understood electoral systems but, having listened to nearly all of the debates so far in the Committee stage of the Bill, I have become more confused as the debates have gone on. I did not realise that there were three types of alternative vote systems and I certainly could not answer in two sentences how the d'Hondt system operates. I find it an unconvincing argument that there is a clamour for votes at 16 and 17 on electoral systems.

However, I find it equally unconvincing to challenge the right of people to vote at 16 and 17 on the basis that they are not yet well enough informed. I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lord Desai that it is a dangerous path to tread to say that there should be a test of someone's knowledge, ability and awareness before giving them the right to vote; it should be a universal right. We all acknowledge that there has to be a dividing line somewhere on the grounds of age-at least I assume we all acknowledge that-but excluding someone simply on the ground that they do not understand the issues is a weak argument. I have been frank with the House and explained that I do not fully understand the d'Hondt system and yet and I shall be voting with enthusiasm when the referendum takes place. So, faced with two weak arguments, one on each side of the debate, what does an agnostic do?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

My Lords, the effect of the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter would be that the voting age for the referendum would be lowered to 16. Two bases are put forward to support the amendment: first, that those who vote at between 16 and 18 in the referendum will be voting on the voting system that they will be using in a general election and therefore they should be allowed to contribute to choosing it; and, secondly and separately, that 16 is the right age for people to be able to vote in a general election and therefore they should be able to vote in the referendum. I do not regard the first basis as a strong argument. If we as a nation conclude that 18 is the right age to vote in a general election, 18 is also the right age to participate in the referendum.

In those circumstances, two issues are raised by the amendment: first, should the voting age be 18, which should be addressed as a matter of principle; and, secondly, if the House were to conclude that 18 is the right voting age, are there practical reasons why people should not be entitled to vote in the referendum because, for example, it is too late, too complicated or too confusing?

Let me address those two critical issues. First, should the voting age be 18 or 16? The Labour Party position is that there should be a free vote in relation to this. In my view-this is a personal view; I am not expressing the view of the Labour Party-the voting age should be 16 for the following four reasons. First, we allow people of 16 to do things that are only consistent with being an adult-joining the Army, marriage, paying taxes. In those circumstances it is quite difficult to see a basis on which not to allow them to vote. A possible basis could be that we think 16 year-olds are not mature enough to vote whereas 18 year-olds are. However, I do not think there is much evidence in relation to that. Secondly, as a matter of history, we have always taken a time to recognise that younger people than previously are capable of doing things. My noble friend Lady McDonagh made the point that in 1918, when we allowed women the vote for the first time, we said that they had to be 30 before they could vote. That was not a view about how mature or otherwise women were; it was society's attitude to people. I suggest that the position now-just as it was in 1969, when Parliament rejected the view of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, who is no longer in his place, that the age should be 20-is that society is much more trusting of people than it was before.

I think that 16 is an age at which people can vote. I speak as an expert in that I have a 17 year-old son and a 20 year-old daughter, one of whom is completely uninterested in politics and the other of whom is very interested. I do not put this forward on the ground that there is a clamour from 16 year-olds-I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and I have always been rather despondent about the lack of clamour and interest in politics-but that is not the issue: a judgment about maturity can be made by each Member of the House individually. One hears people say all the time, "Of course they are mature enough" or, "Of course they are not mature enough". I was struck-and this is my third point-by what my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws said. She had done some work on the Power commission and received evidence that people between 16 and 18 and their teachers were in favour of it.

My fourth point is that this matter was debated in the other place; there was a vote and 200 Members of Parliament voted in favour of reducing the age from 18 to 16. So I, like the Liberal Democrat Party, am in favour of reducing the voting age from 18 to 16. I suspect it will happen at some stage and we should grasp the nettle as soon as possible.

On the second issue-are their practical reasons which indicate that it should not be done at the referendum stage?-three points have been raised. First, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that there would be confusion. There is scope for confusion in relation to this but the people who are likely to be as little confused as anyone are those between 16 and 18 who know that all that he or she can do is vote in the referendum. So I find the confusion argument unpersuasive.

The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, asked how you will get 16 year-olds on the register by 5 May 2010. That point needs an answer. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said in relation to that. He believes that it could be easily done because the Department for Work and Pensions has a list of all 16 year-olds because it is sending out national insurance numbers to them. I do not know whether that is the answer and I shall be interested to hear what the Minister says in relation to that.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Newton, delivered a magisterial statement along the lines of, "Don't be ridiculous. Don't put it into this Bill". In my view, if the practical difficulties can be overcome-I shall listen to what the Minister says in relation to this-then, because I favour votes at 16, as do the Liberal Democrats, I will support the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. However, I make it clear that I do that in a personal capacity, not on behalf of my party which has indicated that there should be a free vote in relation to it.

Let me make one final point. I regard this as a wholly appropriate issue to be debated in relation to the Bill. I find the suggestion that there is something wrong about debating this issue both offensive and wrong. I regard the debate that has taken place as good and worthwhile; I do not regard it as a worthless debate because no Tories took part, except for the noble Lord, Lord Newton. This is the kind of thing we should debate in relation to a Bill whose self-stated purpose is to reform the way in which we elect MPs.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, as ever it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, not least because his speeches never fail to give the feel of how he tries to persuade the House. To give an example, he said in his summing up that 200 Members of Parliament voted in favour of votes at 16. That is an impressive statistic, but actually 196 voted in favour, on 18 October, while 346 voted against. Occasionally, in his wonderful summings up, the noble and learned Lord leaves out the odd fact that the House might like to have and I think that knowing that 346 Members voted against might help this side of the House.

I do not object to the debate, as I found it absolutely fascinating. The span of it, on the Benches opposite, illustrated why the amendment should not be pressed. The noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Howarth, were against, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, were for, while the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was agnostic. That is the kind of spread and I can see why the Labour Party wants a free vote. It is a very interesting issue to debate.

Lord Desai (Labour)

In being so divided, we are just like the Liberal Democrats.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

These shafts of wit will throw me one of these days. In the mean time, I address the problem with this proposal. I am surrounded by parliamentarians of great expertise, who know that there are two kinds of Bill. There are the Christmas trees, which people hang things on-I have hung many a thing on a Christmas tree Bill and had great pleasure doing so-but then there are the clear, simple Bills, whose beauty and simplicity are their major strengths. As has been said on this side of the House since this debate began-it seems like years ago, but apparently it was only four parliamentary days ago, as we gallop into Clause 2-this Bill is about fair votes on fair boundaries. All the other things are interesting and will undoubtedly continue to be debated as this Government carry forward their constitutional reform agenda.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is constantly asking to see the big picture. Tomorrow I am speaking to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Legal and Constitutional Affairs, when I will give the constitutional big picture, or big vision, from this Government. I hope that the noble Lord will come along. In the mean time, what we are trying to do is to keep this Bill clear and simple in its objectives.

Lord Soley (Labour)

I invite the noble Lord to remember his Christmas tree. There are only two things hanging on it-one is the Liberal Party and the other is the Conservative Party. It would be better if he just admitted it and then we would all know where we were coming from.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

That Christmas tree lifts the spirits and lights these gloomy days.

The amendment seeks to amend Clause 2 to enable 16 and 17 year-olds to participate in the referendum. As I have said before, the amendment is similar in intent to one tabled in the Commons, which was lost by 196 votes to 346. Then as now, the Government's position on the franchise and in all other aspects relating to how the referendum is run is that we should follow the arrangements for parliamentary elections unless a particular circumstance is presented by the referendum that would require us to adapt a different approach. There is no requirement here to depart from the standard approach to the voting age of 18 that applies in those elections. The Government have no current plans to lower the voting age. I recognise that there are different views on whether the voting age in this country should be lowered to 16, but if we are to have a debate about reducing the voting age it needs to be had in relation to elections more generally. The passage of this Bill is not the right platform on which to discuss that issue.

There is a wider debate to be had about the voting age more generally and we need to consider the arguments for and against. I recommend that, when there is a Bill to bring the voting age down to 16, tonight's Hansard should be required reading for anybody persuaded in that Bill. My noble friend Lord Newton, to whom I can almost say "Welcome home", is right-this Bill is not the right forum for that debate. I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

If this is not the right Bill, could the Minister deal with the practical issues to which I referred, as that would influence me in relation to whether it was the right Bill? He has not dealt with any of the arguments; he has just said, "Wrong place, close it down". But it would be of interest to the House to hear the practical objections to putting this measure in.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

On the practical objections, I could almost refer to the opening three or four lines of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, when he summed up my arguments perfectly. We are determined that this Bill will not be a Christmas tree. It is a simple Bill in its objectives of fair votes on fair boundaries. That is what we are aiming to achieve.

One interesting thing was that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, raised the issue of using the national insurance database to register all 16 year-olds. Almost as an example of how this Government are thinking about the broader issues involved, we are running data-matching pilots next year and we will be looking at how we can use the wider government database to get more people on the register. As the Minister responsible for data protection, I would like to see some of the implications of that. That is why some of these things cannot be rushed.

Baroness McDonagh (Labour)

I thank the Minister for giving way. I wanted to give one point of information. To date, all voters in the UK are registered from the point when they are 16 years and three months. Would the Minister agree that that is why it is important to retain household registration and not move to individual registration? As I am on my feet, I shall ask a second question. Given that the noble Lord thinks that it is not right for this Bill to reduce the voting age to 16, does he have any intention to bring forward another Bill?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

As Lord Peart used to say, "Not next week". I am not looking forward as far as that. On the question of the 16 year-olds, according to this amendment we would also need to identify all those who are now 15 but who will be 16 on 5 May. Registration officers have no power to do that and it would be a real practical burden to do it in such a short timescale. I could not quite work out whether the noble Baroness was backing off individual registration. This Government are certainly not doing that.

Lord Soley (Labour)

The noble Lord misquoted me. I certainly did not say that this was the wrong sort of Bill for the proposal; I said that he would say that the Electoral Commission would have difficulties with it. I would like to know-as, I suspect, my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer would like to know-whether that is true or not. Secondly, I said that it would be difficult to deliver this proposal in such a way that the votes could be put into effect. Those were the two things that I said and that was what my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer was asking about.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

It would be difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, indicated, the implications of the amendment go far beyond normal electoral registration and far beyond what it would be proper to debate in a House of Lords amendment. My noble friend Lord Newton wisely guided me on that. I will keep bobbing up and down as long as other noble Lords do, but I emphasise our determination to keep the Bill simple and clean. I feel a tingle between my shoulder blades and will sit down.

Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour)

The noble Lord referred a few minutes ago to data protection issues arising over the transfer of information from departments for the purposes of registration. Is he suggesting that the Department for Work and Pensions has reservations about the transfer? The issue was raised during the passage of the Bill when the matter of electoral registration was discussed. Is there a problem looming with data transfer?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

As I said, the issues are not simple, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who served in that department, knows. We are running pilot projects; there is no great mystery.

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Labour)

My Lords, I thank noble Lords, including the noble Earl, for their support for this amendment. As a new Member, I was amused by the description of this as a simple Bill-I am dreading the next ones-and by the idea of a Christmas tree. My noble friend Lord Soley said that there were two things on the Christmas tree. I now picture the Minister as the fairy on top. The image will remain with me.

The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, is not in his place, but I think that at one point he suggested that this was an attempt to delay the referendum. It is absolutely not that. I am particularly interested in a high turnout for the referendum and in catching the interest of our young people. The more that they are involved in the arguments, the higher the turnout will be. I have tabled another amendment to set a threshold. I hope that those noble Lords who also want a high turnout will support it.

The noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, said that he had already voted for two parties. If in the local elections he would like to go for a third, I can suggest one that would be very attractive. He said that this was not the right vehicle. I had not thought about that argument, but my noble friend Lord Soley was right: the Bill is about reform of the parliamentary voting system and there is almost nothing more important than who has the vote in that system. Whether the voting age should be 16 is a key issue, even for those whom I may not have persuaded. I was asked whether there was a demand for this. I cite the Youth Parliament and the research of the Power inquiry, which suggest that there is. I was horrified by my noble friend Lady McDonagh saying that it was 40 years since the voting age was lowered to 18. I would have guessed that it was about 20; that says something about one's age. It is time to look at this issue again.

Basically, those of us who put our names to the amendment won the argument. There is general support for voting at 16. The objections that were thrown up were practical ones rather than issues of principle. The practical objections could be overcome if there was a desire to do so. As my noble friend Lord Desai said, this is not a constituency-based vote but a national one-although I may challenge that in future. The real issue is that nearly everyone supports the idea of voting at 16. I would hate to embarrass my former friends on this side, the Liberal Democrats, by forcing a vote, because it would be difficult for them to vote against what I know they believe in. Therefore, I will not test the opinion of the Committee. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 36 withdrawn.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.36 pm.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

My Lords, I was going to say that it is a good job that the Government Whips Office is not in charge of snow clearing, but I thought it might not go down well with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, so I will certainly not say anything.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

Someone from Edinburgh is starting to make jokes about snow clearing.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

The noble Lord is absolutely right because the Minister who had to resign did not come from Edinburgh; he was from the north-east. He used to drive Alex Salmond because he was his chauffeur, which is how he got the job as a Minister. If noble Lords want a hint, that is not the best way to choose a transport Minister, by the way. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with Amendment 36A.

I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, in his place. In the previous debate the noble Lord was deeply concerned about confusion. He did not want those 16 and 17 year-olds to turn up at polling stations and be confused or cause confusion because they would not be able to vote in anything other than the referendum. I could see his deep and intense worry about confusion. That is why this amendment is very helpful to the coalition Government.

As I said on a previous amendment, one of the problems with the Bill is that it is going to result in confusion not only in campaigning, but in this context also in confusion at the polling station because we will have two separate franchises. One will be the local government franchise which, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, knows only too well, is used for the Scottish Parliament, and the parliamentary franchise, with one alteration at the moment, which will be used for the referendum. How do we deal with the confusion at polling stations? I suggested in an earlier amendment that we should not have the elections on the same day. We discussed that at length, but it was not accepted by the Government. I went on to examine the variations in the franchises to see whether something could be done to bring them together so that we would have one franchise. That would be much simpler for polling officers.

Noble Lords will recall from previous debates and by looking at the Bill in detail that in some cases polling officers can opt for two registers, in which case as the different franchises come in they will have to be checked and then ticked off on one or the other of the registers, or they can opt for a single register for the two franchises, in which case they would have to mark on the register which ballot papers the elector receives. They will be given one ballot paper for the referendum, or two ballot papers for the election, or three ballot papers for the election and the referendum. I can already see the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, realising how confusing it is going to be and imagining himself sitting as a polling officer and carrying that out. It would be much easier if we conflated the franchises so that they were just one. Although there are other arguments in favour of it, that was the basis for this amendment.

If we look at the variations, first, overseas voters are able to vote in the parliamentary elections-in other words, they would be able to vote in the referendum-but not in the local government election. However, I do not imagine that there will be many people coming from overseas seeking to vote and if there are, they are more likely to have postal votes. I would not have thought that they would actually turn up at the polling stations. The overseas voters, who are not able to vote in the Scottish Parliament elections, should be of no great concern to us as far as the conduct at the polling station is concerned.

The second category, with which noble Lords will find they have a complete understanding, is Peers. Peers are not able to vote in the parliamentary elections so they would not be able to vote in the referendum. Yet the Government, in their wisdom, have included a special arrangement for us Peers to vote, exceptionally, in this referendum. That is included in another amendment, so Peers are dealt with.

Those who remain are citizens of European Union countries,

"resident in the United Kingdom".

They all vote in the Scottish Parliament elections, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, will also know. We get Poles, French and Germans who are living and working in Scotland-and paying UK taxes-and who will turn up and vote in the Scottish Parliament elections. Yet they would not be able to vote in the referendum unless my amendment is agreed today. If we do that, it will deal with the third category which means that we will then have a combined register, by conflating the two franchises, and that things will be much easier for the polling officers.

There is another logical part to it. We were talking about the 16 year-olds and how they were paying taxes at 16. These European citizens who are living in Scotland, Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom and who are resident and working here will also be paying taxes in the United Kingdom. They will be paying income tax if they are working, council tax for the house that they live in, corporation tax if they have set up a company and value added tax in the shops when they buy things. In a previous debate it was said that there should be no taxation without representation, and yet all these European citizens are all paying tax and are able to vote in the local government elections, in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections and in the European elections but not in the Westminster elections, and now not in the referendum.

Lord McAvoy (Labour)

My noble friend is advocating that European Union citizens who are resident here should vote in referendums in the United Kingdom. Can he tell me of any reciprocal arrangements where UK citizens can vote in any referendum being held in another EU country?

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Yes, I can. Ireland is a good example of a country in the European Union.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

But we always have reciprocal arrangements with Ireland.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Indeed, but that is just one example; I was asked for only one example and I gave it to my noble friend. I knew what he was getting at but I was not going to fall into that trap. Maybe he would like to come back.

Lord McAvoy (Labour)

Can my noble friend name two EU countries that allow UK citizens to vote in their referendums?

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

I would need notice of that question.

I understand the import of what my noble friend says, but this has to start somewhere. We are a pioneering country-why should we not start with this? Okay, it is a pro-European kind of amendment, and I know that not all my noble friends are as enthusiastic about the European Union as I am, but it is a good way to start.

The mother of two of my grandchildren is French; I must declare an interest in relation to that. She has now moved to Scotland. To all intents and purposes she is a citizen of Scotland and the UK, although she retains her French citizenship. There must be so many people like that. Think of the Poles who came over. Some of them fought for us in the Second World War-there are not many of them left-but some are still not British citizens. There are other Poles who have come over and, while some have gone back, some of them have now made their homes in the United Kingdom. Some came over to work in the mines in Ayrshire and in other parts of the United Kingdom. Some have retained their citizenship of other European countries but, to all intents and purposes, they are now as much United Kingdom citizens as the rest of us. They are paying all their taxes, so should they not vote? There is a strong argument there, as well as the practical arguments about conflating the franchise.

My noble friend Lord Rooker described his earlier amendment as a "lifeboat". We provided that lifeboat for the coalition. The coalition has not jumped on to that lifeboat yet but it is waiting, bobbing alongside the coalition liner, ready to provide some help if 5 May proves difficult. This amendment is not so much a lifeboat as a lifebelt for my noble friend-he is still my noble friend-Lord McNally. If he wishes to take it, he can make life a lot easier for the polling officers. He can go back to his colleagues in the other place and say, "We've improved the Bill in this way. We've made it easier for people to vote. We've made it less cumbersome and less confusing. That's one argument that that fellow Foulkes can no longer keep on pursing". I hope that the Minister will see this as a lifebelt and grasp it with both hands.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

The amendment of my noble friend Lord Foulkes identifies a problem that arises from the Government's plan to combine the date of the referendum with already scheduled polls in the devolved regions and local authority areas across the United Kingdom. Citizens of other European Union member states who are resident in the Untied Kingdom can vote in local government elections. A French citizen living in Leicester will be able to cast their vote in the unitary authority elections on 5 May. An Italian citizen who lives in Newcastle upon Tyne will be able to do the same, as will a Spaniard in west Somerset.

Those who are resident in Scotland and Wales, by virtue of their residency and not their citizenship, may vote in either the Scottish Parliament or the National Assembly for Wales elections. Consequently, a German citizen who lives in Cardiff will be able to vote for his local AM in May, as a Belgian in Edinburgh will be able to vote for her local MSP. However, when any of these people go to the polls next May, they will not be eligible to cast a vote in the Government's proposed referendum. The consequence, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, so emphatically and eye-poppingly enthusiastically said before supper, of having different electorates for different votes would be a terrible idea. This is what my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock has indicated is the position.

Clause 2(1)(a) of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill states:

"Those who are entitled to vote in the referendum are ... the persons who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote as electors at a parliamentary election in any constituency".

This explicitly does not include citizens of other EU member states who are resident in the UK. As my noble friend has argued, there is potential here for administrative confusion. The polling stations in the 80 per cent of the country that will be combining polls on 5 May will be administering multiple franchises. There will need to be two separate lists of eligible voters: one for the referendum and one for the local and devolved elections. This is the argument behind my noble friend's amendment. I see that the confusion argument has force but I would deal with it differently. I would deal with it on the basis that the answer is not to combine, but to move the referendum to a date other than 5 November.

Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat)

5 May.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

What did I say?

Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat)

5 November.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

Sorry, it felt like blowing up Parliament. I apologise for the confusion. My noble friend Lord Rooker's amendment, which was agreed to in this House, provides the coalition with the opportunity to move the date, which it can still take.

My conclusion on behalf of the Front Bench is that we should move the referendum date, not change the franchise for the referendum. If citizens of other EU member states who are resident in the UK cannot vote in UK parliamentary elections, which is the current position, why should they be given a say in which electoral system is to be used in such elections? There is even an argument that, on a question that goes to the heart of the British constitution, citizens of other EU member states should not be able to express a view.

Furthermore, on the basis of reciprocity, we should not allow citizens of other EU states to vote to influence our parliamentary elections, since British citizens are not-as far as I am aware-permitted to take part in elections in any other European Union country apart from Ireland. The reason why Ireland and the UK have reciprocal arrangements has absolutely nothing to do with the European Union; it is to do with history that stretches way back before the EU.

There is an anomaly here but it can be dealt with in the way that has been suggested. It really pains me to disagree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. We support the same football team. My son was here earlier, wearing the Heart of Midlothian colours. That is why I feel bad about not supporting my noble friend, but I feel unable to do so in relation to this amendment.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I cannot do better than that eloquent and absolutely lacerating summing up by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will withdraw this amendment.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Does that endorsement of what my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said include an acceptance to move the date of the referendum, which my noble and learned friend advocated?

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

A kindly thought, but no. As noble Lords know, when Ministers receive research it comes with a back paper. Much as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said, the document states:

"There is no reason why EU citizens should be allowed to express their views in the referendum on the preferred voting system for an election in which they are not entitled to participate".

The document shows you what a warm-hearted lot our civil servants are as it goes on to say:

"It is possible that the amendment is a probing one seeking to provoke a debate on the voting rights of EU citizens resident in the UK for the purpose of parliamentary elections".

That shows how kindly they think of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and his intentions in putting down the amendment.

Lord Rooker (Labour)

I say to the noble Lord that that was not the reason at all; it was to give the Electoral Commission the supreme opportunity to prepare all the explanatory materials on the alternative vote system in the Bill to explain it to all the other people who use modern, democratic PR systems in Europe as they would never understand the AV system being proposed.

Lord McNally (Liberal Democrat)

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, goes too far. The Government's resistance to this amendment shows that they are not willing to steal a march or twist the electorate as undoubtedly the people who would be enfranchised are perfectly used to AV and would see its merits and are perfectly used to coalitions and see their merits. Therefore, we resist the amendment as a great act of altruism as we are refusing what would undoubtedly be a massive yes vote on the part of those who would be enfranchised by the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. We do not want that. As I have said before, we want the Bill to be purely and simply about fair votes and fair constituencies. Having heard his noble and learned friend's absolutely marvellous explanation of why this is a lousy amendment, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw it.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

I am particularly grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer-my fellow Hearts supporter-for his comments. When my noble friend Lord Sewel came into the Chamber I was reminded of last Saturday afternoon when Heart of Midlothian scored five goals against Aberdeen. But, seriously, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, did not accept the consequences of the summing-up of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. As I understand it, the noble and learned Lord made it absolutely clear that the alternative to allowing European citizens to vote was to move the referendum to another date. That is my preference and the preference of most people that I have heard contribute to this debate so far. If the noble Lord, Lord McNally, accepted that-that was the lifebelt that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, offered on a previous occasion-we would welcome it.

However, some of my proposals tend to be a bit ahead of the times. In 1982, I introduced a Private Member's Bill in the House of Commons to outlaw smoking in public places. I think that it got about six votes. Now, all these years later, smoking in public places is prohibited. In 1983, I introduced a measure against age discrimination. Again, I got nowhere, but all these decades later we have such a measure on the statute book. Therefore, I have hope for the future. However, on the basis that this amendment may be a little ahead of the times, I accept the advice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, to withdraw it and come back to it on another occasion.

Amendment 36A withdrawn.

Amendment 37 not moved.

Clause 2 agreed.

Clause 3 : Conduct of the referendum

Amendment 37A

Tabled by Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

37A: Clause 3, page 2, line 30, at end insert-

"( ) The Electoral Commission shall appoint a sub-committee including representatives from the 3 main UK parties and one chosen by the other parties collectively, who shall have experience of referenda and have previously held elected office, to exercise all its powers and functions in relation to the referendum."

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

On the basis of representations that I have received from the Electoral Commission and the changes that have recently taken place in relation to the constitution of the Electoral Commission, I now do not wish to move the amendment.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

I had expected that some other Members might have spoken against clause stand part, which is why I was not immediately ready. On page 2, line 39, it is stated:

"The polls for the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary general election in 2011 are to be taken together".

I am proposing that the subsection be deleted. I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that this is his solution, because we have just been discussing the confusion that will take place in a Scottish parliamentary election. I have spoken on this matter, but there are a number of areas of confusion; I will not go on at length about them, but will make a brief reprise of what I said previously. Two areas of confusion are likely to arise. The first is confusion in campaigning and the other, which relates to one of the solutions that I have just put forward-extending the franchise to European citizens-is confusion at polling.

On the confusion in campaigning, I do not think that the Liberal Democrat Members in particular understood the import of what was said in the previous debate. As to running a cross-party campaign, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and others, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, have been involved. He and I were hand in hand together on the campaign for Britain to remain a member of the European Union-he was in the Labour Party then. However, we worked together with Conservatives such as Malcolm Rifkind, members of the SNP, and other parties-particularly the Liberals. I remember campaigning for our membership on an all-party and cross-party basis. We were able to do that without any problems or difficulties, because there was no election taking place on the same day. We appeared on the same platform. John P Mackintosh was on the same platform as Malcolm Rifkind. That did not create any problems, because people understood that all that was being discussed was whether Britain should remain part of the European Union. They did not say, "It's strange having a Tory and a Labour person on the same platform", because they were not standing against each other in an election on the same day.

Imagine what will happen on 5 May next year if we have the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the referendum on the same day. As I have said on previous occasions, imagine campaigning with people of other parties. I chose the example of David McLetchie-a friend of mine who is a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament. Imagine if I said that I agreed with him that we should have first past the post and should not move to this awful system of alternative votes, but while we were going around Wester Hailes, in the Edinburgh Pentlands, people asked, "Are you supporting David McLetchie to be re-elected as the MSP?". Of course the answer is, "No, I am campaigning for Ricky Henderson, the Labour candidate". They would then say, "But why are you here with McLetchie?". If I said, "Because we are campaigning in the referendum", they would say, "But there is an election taking place". That is how confusion arises.

As to expenditure, when you are campaigning, how can you easily differentiate between expenditure on the election and on the referendum? For example, I may use a loudspeaker system in campaigning for the Labour Party and then borrow it for a day to use in the no campaign for the referendum. How do you allocate the finances? In a later amendment there is a reference to party election broadcasts. At the moment it would be possible for the Liberal Democrats to have a party election broadcast not to say, "Vote Liberal Democrat in the election" but, "Vote yes in the referendum". Unless we change it later, that is quite possible. Most Members here have taken part in an election of one kind or another, or one kind of cross-party referendum campaign or another, and know of the problems of having the two on the same day. So there will be confusion in campaigning.

I turn now to confusion within the polling booth. As I said, I tried to provide the noble Lord, Lord McNally, with a lifebelt to resolve this problem by bringing together the franchises and trying to introduce a single register, which would have made things easier. However, he chose not to take advantage of that lifebelt. Instead, he agreed with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who summed up the debate on European citizens voting. The noble and learned Lord said specifically in his reply that he disagreed with the solution in my amendment about allowing European citizens to vote and thought that there was an easier and better way of doing it-and that was not to have the referendum on the same day as the local elections.

That is now quite possible because of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which was passed by the House. It allows the Government to hold the referendum on any day between 5 May and 31 October and gives them the necessary flexibility. I shall not give away a confidence by saying who it was, but a Liberal Democrat Peer said to me, "George, I see the strength of your argument now as far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned". In fact, he agreed that it would be better for the Liberal Democrats not to have the referendum on the same day as the elections because he believed that they would not get the same degree of support for AV. I could see his argument. When the elections in Scotland and Wales and the local government elections in England are taking place, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party will be pushing to get out their electorate to vote in the elections. They will turn out primarily for the elections and be predominantly in favour of first past the post. Therefore the AV support is likely to be at a minimum and the first past the post support at a maximum. However, if the referendum is held on a separate day it will be the real activists, the ones who want change, who will come out and vote for AV. The first past the post people will sit at home and think, "It will never change anyway" and wake up the next day to find that the activists in favour of AV have turned out. Without a threshold, there could be just a small 10 per cent turnout and the constitution would be changed.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

It rather sounds as if the noble Lord is making a speech of no confidence in his own party leader. Surely that will remove all problems of dubiety about who is for and who is against, because he will get lots of publicity. Mr Ed Miliband has made it clear that he supports AV, which will surely overcome quite a lot of the problems put forward by the noble Lord.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Of course, the support of Ed Miliband-and I have a great respect for him-will help the AV campaign. However, I do not think that it will help it as much as the wide range of support for the first-past-the-post campaign in the Labour Party, which has a whole galaxy of supporters. That still does not argue the case about the differential in the turnout. The Liberal Democrat that I mentioned was arguing from his point of view the fact that it would be for Liberal Democrats to have the referendum on its own so that they could concentrate on the change that was necessary and get the enthusiasts and activists to turn out.

I urge noble Lords to support the deletion of this clause. It is the first in a group of amendments that would have a similar effect in different areas and in different ways. The amendment would eliminate the probability, or certainty, of confusion of the electorate in the campaign and at the polling booths. If we do that, we will have produced a far better Bill than we received from the other place.

Baroness Fookes (Conservative)

I point out to noble Lords that if this amendment were agreed, I could not call Amendment 39A by reason of pre-emption.

Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Conservative)

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on this amendment. I have always taken the view that we should be working overtime to ensure that the referendum vote on the alternate vote system is not held on the same day as the local elections. I have never really understood that anybody can argue that the two issues, as the noble Lord has pointed out, would be completely confused.

One thing that we have established on the debate that we have had on the alternate vote is that it is not just a simple change in how we carry out voting. It is incredibly complicated, and we need an extensive debate to clarify these issues. I am not saying that the British electorate are made up of people who are so extraordinarily thick that they do not understand. Let us face it-many of us in this House have been on a seriously steep learning curve as to what the alternate vote is about. When I came here, I thought that there was only one alternate vote; I find that in fact there are four different variations of the alternate vote. It is extremely complicated and a very major change in our constitution. It is a serious change in how we carry out our elections, and not something that should just be thrown in as a referendum at the same time as local elections. It is something that the country should debate and consider very seriously, because it will in perpetuity change how we hold elections in this country and change, also, the outcome of these elections.

I had great discussion with my noble friend Lord Tyler, who claimed rather interestingly that if we had the alternate vote, it would make what he described as a balanced Parliament-which I have always more pejoratively described as a hung Parliament-less likely. That is a very profound statement for my noble friend to have made, because he is actually saying that the Liberal Democrats are advocating an electoral system that will disadvantage them in general elections. That shows an altruism that I did not think existed in the Liberal Democrats. It has really opened my eyes. It has also changed where I come from, because the reason why I am trying to delay the alternate vote referendum is because I want to see the alternate vote soundly defeated. On the other hand, if the alternative vote system will make it less likely that we will end up with coalition Governments, I should be supporting it.

I have a problem with this. I saw some statistics that I am now having checked. They show that if we re-ran the last election on the alternative vote system, the Conservatives, instead of getting 305 seats in the House of Commons, would get 280-something, and Labour and the Liberal Democrats would get more. We have been talking about a hung parliament; it would have been more hung under the alternative vote than it turned out. These issues are profound. We must have a debate in the country about whether we want to system that produces more coalition Governments. We see today exactly what the problems of coalition Governments are. The country votes on the manifestos of two different parties and ends up with a manifesto that nobody has voted for, which has been cobbled together, albeit not in a smoke-filled room, because you do not get Liberal Democrats in smoke-filled rooms any more. We do not know quite what the negotiations were. I do not know what the red lines of each party were: what were the things they stuck on and what they were prepared happily to give away. Perhaps historians will be able to find this out. In the mean time, have ended up with a coalition agreement-effectively a government manifesto-for which absolutely nobody has voted.

We must have the debate in the country. I do not know how we will have it if at the same time we are trying to fight local elections. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out, we will be battling for our candidates to defeat the candidates of the other parties. How then will we say, "Hold on, there is another very important-perhaps even more important-issue on which you have to vote on 5 May"? I argue that this issue is more important and much more complicated; it will change permanently the constitution of the country if we go for an alternative vote. However, at the same time we are mixing it up with the local authority elections. I do not see how this can be done. If anybody is interested in seeing this issue properly debated in the country, they should be talking about having the referendum on a separate day. I am not saying that it should be delayed interminably; I would be quite happy for it to be held in June, a month after the local elections. However, it should be held on a separate day so that we will have the opportunity to debate the issues and for everybody in the country to clarify in their minds what is at stake, which is fundamental.

Having talked to many noble friends on the Conservative Benches, I know that they share many of my concerns about this. I hope that they will think about what they are voting for, because this is a fundamental change that is not to the advantage of our party-it is only to the advantage of people who believe that, de facto, coalition Governments are a good idea. The fact that we are in a coalition Government is all to do with necessity. We should not change the constitution of this country to make coalition Governments more likely for the indefinite future. That is my concern, and I am very pleased to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

Lord Lipsey (Labour)

My Lords, perhaps I might intervene as a supporter of AV. I agree with nearly every word that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said. There is a slight Alice in Wonderland feel about today. I have popped in and out of the Chamber and on many occasions when I came in, I heard the noble Lord, Lord McNally, saying that this was a simple Bill. Every time I hear him say it, I look again at Clause 4-Clause 4 stand part is part of this grouping-and find so much legalistic rigmarole that, despite having many years of experience of parliamentary draftsmen, I find it extremely hard to comprehend. Given the compelling case that has just been made both by my noble friend and by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, it is very hard to understand why on earth the Government continue to want to hold the referendum on 5 May. I find that particularly hard to understand of my noble friend Lord McNally-I call him my noble friend because we have been friends for many years. Like me, he is in favour of a yes vote in the AV referendum. The Liberal Democrats, who seem to want this vote to be held on 5 May, are in favour of a yes vote in the referendum, but the one thing that will make it very difficult for proponents of AV to win that vote is to hold it on 5 May.

I have heard only one argument with any force that it could be to the advantage of AV campaigners to hold the referendum on 5 May and it is that turnout in Scotland and Wales will be higher on that date because there will be regional elections on the same day and that will help. However, that is conceptually ridiculous. Let us suppose that the Scots would be 10 per cent more likely to vote AV than people in the rest of the country, and let us suppose that, as a result of having the two elections on the same day, the turnout would be 10 per cent higher. If those two extraordinary assumptions were true, it would make a difference to the national vote of something like 0.1 per cent. Any advantage that might be gained from a higher turnover would be absolutely negligible in terms of the outcome of the referendum. However, why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book? We have YouGov polls, so we know what the level of support is in each part of the United Kingdom. Support in Scotland is precisely the same as that in England and more or less the same as that in Wales. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for a differential turnout to favour those in support of the alternative vote system.

However, there is a major reason to suppose that it would be bad news for AV if we had the referendum on 5 May, and it is this. When it comes to the battle over the referendum, supporters of AV have one enormous advantage. Unlike in this House, where most active Members-I freely concede this-are opposed to AV, there is a network of supporters, most of them in the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrat party, who are prepared to work their socks off for a victory for AV on whichever day the referendum is held. They are networking and phone banking and so on. I doubt whether there is a similar organisation of people opposed to AV, although I am sure that a very sophisticated campaign will be run by the nice Mr Elliott who runs the TaxPayers' Alliance, and I am sure that they have done very well to get him on their side. However, we will cast this huge potential advantage to the wind if we hold the referendum on 5 May. If you think that Liberal Democrats campaigning in a local election are going to be able to turn their attention from supporting their candidates, who are whipping them on, to manning the phone banks for AV, you are mistaken.

More powerfully-and I can say this with a great deal more authority-the idea that Labour supporters fighting Liberal Democrats up and down the country, condemning Nick Clegg for the disgraceful abandonment of his election pledge on tuition fees, and trying to eliminate the Liberal Democrats as a party in this country will at the same time on the side go out and hit the phones, saying "Would you mind voting for AV? It might help our little Lib Dem friends", is a complete absurdity. The result is that, if the referendum is held on 5 May, we who are in favour of AV-and I do not claim, and never have claimed, that our task is an easy one-will have cast aside our greatest advantage and will have handed a greater chance of victory to those who would block what we are trying to do.

I can understand the Conservatives supporting that way forward and I can understand those on my own side who do not share my view about AV supporting that point of view. However, I was greatly cheered to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes-whom I hugely admire and whose performance throughout our debates on this Bill has been so remarkable-cheering and nodding at some of the analytic remarks that I made, even if he would not necessarily support the conclusion to which they were directed. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, too, could share the preference for 5 May. But I have to ask: what is the noble Lord, Lord McNally, up to? Does he not want to see the result for which he-like me-has worked for so many years? I am mystified by the coalition's stance, purely because of the realpolitik involved; that leaves aside the whole argument that I have developed on other occasions about what I almost call the "immorality" of combining different sets of issues, including sub-national Parliaments, Assemblies, local government, a change in the voting system for national elections all on the one day, which is a cruelty to inflict on the willing but sometimes confused electorate, who although willing may be confused by such shenanigans.

I beg the noble Lord, Lord McNally to think again and to look at the analytic case both in terms of the result he wants and its merits. I know that as he is a good and clear thinking man, he will conclude, whatever he may say tonight, that the right thing is to abandon 5 May and to have an early but separate referendum so that the British people can concentrate on resolving this issue for the good of the nation.

Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour)

My Lords, I do not want to detain the Committee but, until I read the Marshalled List, I was unaware of the issue that my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock was going to raise.

The more I think about it, the proposition in the Bill is utterly ludicrous. The Liberal Democrats must understand that the idea that we will have joint platforms either for or against the question being answered positively does not arise. The Liberal Democrats more than any other party should know of the bitterness that often exists at local level during campaigning. How is it possible to have a full, honest, open and participatory debate if the people at the heart of it are factionalised and arguing among themselves about the greater issue of who will be in Parliament and who will be on the local authority? I cannot understand the logic.

Who is driving this on? Where is all the pressure coming from? After four days of listening to these debates, have not Liberal Democrats and the coalition realised that there might be something wrong with the way in which we are proceeding, particularly when some of us are passionately in favour of electoral reform? We are worried that it will all go wrong. The only way forward, it seems to me, is for the parties in the coalition to sit down privately, without telling anyone, and to think through again whether there is a need to further amend the proposed legislation, perhaps even against the new timetable.

What is the pressure for the timetable? Why in the first year are we faced with a Bill for a five-year fixed-term Parliament? Why are we so preoccupied in this year one in getting through the legislation in this form? Can we not afford another 12 or 18 months? What will be lost by delaying and getting the question and the process right? We would then have a chance of a successful resolution. We are being stampeded into a decision. It is like a panic-based decision, which will result in it all coming apart. If it does not come apart, we will end up with the wrong system. The Conservative element of the coalition will be faced with an electoral system for which it will be held responsible historically. Why cannot the coalition just sit down for perhaps a matter of months to reconsider this part of the legislation with a view to coming back following the inquiry that a number of us have asked for, having decided on a proper system and process?

I cannot imagine what is going to happen. The idea that somehow in Glasgow you will get the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and whoever all on the same platform arguing one way or the other is ludicrous. Unless you have unity of purpose among the politicians, how are you going to win? As I have heard said at some meetings, it might be that the people who support electoral reform do not really want the politicians to be involved. They say that they want a people's campaign. Ultimately, it will not be a people's campaign because it is going to be dominated by politicians. However, the politicians will be warring among themselves on wider issues over and above the referendum.

I appeal to the Government. This is really the Liberal Democrat end of the Bill, which is why I direct my remarks on all this to them. They are driving this agenda. They must sit down and think what is in their best interests. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, says that he has been told that the Liberal Democrats believe that they will not be beneficiaries under the system. They will be beneficiaries-we all know that-and I do not object to that at all. However, they do not realise that they will lose under the boundaries part of the Bill. Perhaps when we get to that part and I produce data that will be of interest to them, they will realise that they will lose under that part more than they do under this one. But that is another debate for another day.

I say to the coalition, "Please sit down again and take stock". Are we on the right path? Could we make amendments that would produce a better Bill, better legislation, better procedure, a better question, a better campaign overall and more chance of seeing something come out of Parliament that will satisfy the demands of the electorate?

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

My Lords, despite the lateness of the hour, I rise with some enthusiasm to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. I thought that he made a powerful case for why it is a mistake to have this referendum poll on the same date as the Scottish parliamentary elections. In doing so, he did not draw on nearly all the arguments that exist, as has been apparent from other contributions.

I am struck by the contribution of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours allied to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. From the different perspectives of reform, I thought that they made complementary cases on why the Government should be persuaded to take more time over this process and to get it right. If we are to get a decision about the way in which we elect the House of Commons for a generation or more-or, indeed, for ever-it does not seem unreasonable to ask for time to think about the full implications of the decision that we are making and to test that even by discussion among parties or, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, suggests, among those who broadly favour reform. Furthermore, I thought that the analysis of my noble friend Lord Lipsey of the effect of the coalition's proposal was deadly accurate.

I have been listening to debates in Committee on this issue and have been struck by the number of contributions supporting contemporaneous polls from people who, I have the sense, have not done much campaigning to encourage activists and electors to engage in polling. They may well have organised campaigns from the centre, but not out there in the streets as I have done time and again. It is challenging to try to encourage activists to go out with you often in quite inclement weather in Scotland, even at that time of the year, to knock on hundreds of doors, to spend hours and hours on doorsteps engaging with people and persuading them that they should come out during a particular window of opportunity. To ask people to do that and, at the same time, to support a campaign that involves them working with those whom they are campaigning against will be almost impossible. I know from the activists whom I have tried to engage and have worked with successfully on numerous occasions that that is a difficult thing to do. This should not be complicated any more than it needs to be.

I have already contributed to this debate and I do not propose to rehearse all the arguments that I made when the Committee considered this issue before, but I must say today that I have been reassured that not only did we win that argument-although we were unable to persuade the coalition Government to accept the consequences-but it seems that, subconsciously, we have persuaded more members of the coalition than we thought. For example, I heard the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, adopt exactly the argument that he opposed days ago and earlier today in his opposition to 16 and 17 year-olds having the vote. If he is not consciously aware that he has absorbed the argument, subconsciously his political acumen is telling him that there is something in it, because he repeated the argument.

Earlier, I suggested to the Committee that one reason why we should not have the Scottish Parliament elections and the referendum on the same day is that the London-centric media will dominate the debate and drown out the voices of Scottish politicians as they try to persuade people to engage with the issues that are important to them concerning who forms the Scottish Government for the next four years. I remember that argument being pooh-poohed, but I heard it repeated back to me today by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, as a justification for why we can be sanguine about the effect that having these elections on the same day will have on the 15 or 20 per cent of the vote, concentrated in London, who will not be part of a contemporaneous process. We are told that the London-centric media will be strong enough to counteract the differential turnout. Because I have done it myself, I admire the ability to use an argument that one opposes in a different set of circumstances for a different purpose. I do not admire the ability to use an argument that one opposes on a different occasion in the same set of circumstances. We seem to be persuading people much more than we thought on these Benches, from the results that we are having with the coalition.

However, I want to major on another point, which concerns respect. Having the referendum poll on the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament shows a distinct lack of respect for the Scottish Parliament. The proposal has created in Scotland a unique coalition of opposition. That coalition of opposition was reflected in the views expressed and the vote cast in the Scottish Parliament itself. The Scottish Parliament, the electoral body that will have an election on the same day, has said to this Parliament, "Do not do this to us. Do not impose this dichotomy on our electorate on the same day and please do not do it against the background of the experience that we had in 2007, when a similar set of circumstances were created".

I read that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Scotland Office dealt with this argument in the House of Commons by saying that he had no response to that debate or that decision because not one argument was rehearsed in the Scottish Parliament debate that had not been rehearsed in the other place or in this Parliament and that therefore he did not need to take cognisance of it. That is disrespectful in the extreme and we in this place should be above that sort of argument.

I believe that the coalition is required to give Scottish parliamentarians, who have expressed their view in that way, an explanation as to why they are not listening to them. They particularly require to do that because this same coalition Government have just published a Bill that accepts a recommendation of the Calman commission that will give that Parliament the responsibility for organising its elections once that Bill becomes an Act. The Government have said, "In principle, we accept the argument that the Scottish Parliament should be a sovereign body in relation to the conduct of its own elections". That is now printed in a Bill that they hope to persuade this House and the other place to support. At the same time, they are saying, "We will ride roughshod over your recent exercise-potentially-of that right by imposing on you a coincidence of polls that you say you do not want". What is the coalition Government's position?

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

I do not see any contradiction between giving the Scottish Parliament sovereignty over its own electoral matters and the right of this Parliament, which is sovereign over United Kingdom matters, to decide how referenda that apply throughout the United Kingdom should be decided. To abdicate that principle is not a matter of disrespect but a recognition of the principle of subsidiarity. That is deeply rooted in our constitutional understanding of devolution and membership of the European Union. We are entitled to take decisions in this Parliament that govern how this Parliament's membership will be arrived at. We do not defer to Europe on that issue or to any regional or other body in this country on these matters.

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention because he sets the context for the argument that I am making. I am not making a legalistic argument. As he knows, I am well versed in the legal relationship between the devolved Parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament and was close to the process that delivered that settlement for the people of Scotland. I agree entirely with him in a legalistic sense but, if I understand his argument, he is now saying from the Liberal Democrat Benches that the Liberal Democrats' attitude, or at least his attitude, to the Scottish Parliament is: "We have known the date of your election for four years, but we want that date. You can move". If the implication of the noble Lord's argument is accepted, that will at a stroke in Scotland undermine the only reason that we have heard articulated in this Chamber for why the coalition Government want to have the referendum on the same day as the Scottish Parliament election.

If I understand the noble Lord, he is saying, "We want to do these two votes on the same day to maximise the turnout, but if you are right"-and we have to accept that they are closer to this than we are-"that this will do a disservice to your election, feel free to move your election. Of course, we have known about the date of that election for four years, but the lack of respect that we have for you is such that you can move over and we will take your date, even if we don't get your turnout". That is not the argument that this House, this Parliament or, indeed, the coalition Government should be putting before the people of Scotland. The people of Scotland have spoken through their Parliament and said, "Please do not do this to us. Our electoral system and Parliament are important to us. Do not do this to us". It seems to me, for all the reasons that have been rehearsed, that they create an argument that is in favour of the objective that the noble Lord wants to achieve. It does not seem to be unreasonable to ask the coalition Government to accede to that request.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

My Lords, in this group there are two amendments and the clause stand part debate. The first, Amendment 39, is in the name of my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, and seeks to delete Clause 4(3) on taking,

"The polls for the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary general election",

together. The second amendment, Amendment 39A, is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I have also given notice of my intention to oppose the Question that Clause 4 stand part of the Bill. I will come back on anything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, says about Amendment 39A. That might be the fairest way to deal with it, unless the noble and learned Lord wants to speak before me on Amendment 39A. I am entirely in his hands.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

If the noble and learned Lord thinks it would be helpful for me to speak to Amendment 39A, I will also deal with the other points that have been made and perhaps come back to him after he has had an opportunity to speak.

This has been an interesting debate. Some of the arguments have been well rehearsed before. In a debate a week ago tonight in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, sought in a very similar amendment not to have the referendum on 5 May. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House, responded, and the House took the view quite clearly that the amendment should not pass. I am always slightly wary of this position. I can understand the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Campbell-Savours, who I think are basically in favour of some form of electoral reform, counselling against the date, but when the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who I know wants a no vote, tries to tell Liberal Democrats what is in their best interests, Greeks bearing gifts tend to come to mind. It is also interesting that the two sides of the argument-the one side that wants no and the other side that wants yes-think that there are equally good reasons for not having the referendum on 5 May. In some respects, they cancel each other out.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

The noble and learned Lord will recall that when I said that, I was talking about a conversation that I had had with a Liberal Democrat Peer, whom I wanted to remain anonymous, who argued with me that the date should be separate and that he should support my amendment. I was saying that this was the advice that I was being given from one anonymous Liberal Democrat.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

I know that the noble Lord is always willing to give advice to Liberal Democrats. It is for Liberal Democrats to judge when and when not to accept his advice.

We rehearsed some of these arguments with the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, during the debate in the House last Thursday on the order relating to the Scottish elections in 2011. The point about this debate on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, which indeed relates to Scotland, in combination with the clause stand part debate on local elections and perhaps some mayoralty elections in England, elections to the Welsh National Assembly, and a series of elections and other local referendums in Northern Ireland on the same day, is that the effect of the noble Lord's amendment-

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

What the Government are doing in the Bill is saying that the polls to be taken together are local authority elections in England, local referendums in England not Northern Ireland, and mayoral elections in England, as well as the Welsh Assembly general election, the Scottish parliamentary general election, the general election of Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Northern Ireland local elections.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

That is correct. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for setting that out ad longam. However, the point about the amendment, or indeed the clause failing to pass, is not that the poll for the referendum on the electoral system for the alternative vote could not take place on 5 May; it is, rather, that two polls could take place but would not be combined. It is important that we recognise just what the impact would be either of not letting this clause stand part or of passing the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

That is an interesting point. Clause 4(1) states:

"Where the date of the poll for one or more of the following is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together".

That refers to,

"a local authority election in England ... a local referendum in England ... a mayoral election in England".

What the noble and learned Lord has said in relation to that is right; that is, if they are on the same day, they can all take place in the same polling station. However, Clause 4(2) to (4) appear to be different. They state that it is compulsory for the polls to be taken together, so they have to be on the same day.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

That point was raised on Report in another place. In fact, it does not need necessarily to be the referendum. I think that I am right in saying that the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly have the powers themselves to move the date. Therefore, if they were to use those powers, it would not make sense that they should be stuck together. Amendment 39A seeks to address that point.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

Will the noble and learned Lord confirm what I am saying? Under Clause 4(1), it is permissive, if they are on the same day, for the three named elections to be dealt with together-for example, in the same polling station. Subsections (2) to (4) refer to the Welsh Assembly elections, the Scottish parliamentary elections and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. As a result of this wording, they have to take place on the same day.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

If that is taken along with Amendment 39A, which provides:

"If any of the elections referred to in subsections (2) to (4) are not held on the same day as the referendum, this Part has effect with any necessary adaptations and in particular ... if the Welsh Assembly general election in 2011 is not held on that day, subsection (2) and Schedule 6 do not apply".

There is a similar provision for the Scottish parliamentary election. Paragraph (c) to be inserted under Amendment 39A states that,

"if any of the elections referred to in subsection (4) are not held on that day, that subsection and Schedule 8 either do not apply or apply only in relation to the elections that are held on that day".

So there is provision for a separation.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

To come back on that, I found the drafting of Amendment 39A extraordinary. Under Clause 4(2) to (4), there is a requirement, as the noble and learned Lord has just confirmed, to have the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections on the same day. But if they are not held on the same day-for a hurricane or something like that-then provision is made. Surely, subsections (2) to (4) would need to be amended as well in order to give meaning to Amendment 39A.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

The purpose of the combination is that if the elections take place on the same day and are not, for some other reason, separated, they should be combined. If they are not combined, the amendment would have the polls being conducted on the same day, but separately. For example, there would be no effective provision for administrators to use the same ballot boxes. There would have to be separate polling stations, which, technically could be within the same building, but they would have to be separate, or they might not necessarily be in the same building. As I am sure that the noble and learned Lord realises, that is the purpose of the combination.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

I am sorry, but if the noble and learned Lord looks at the wording, there is a distinction. Clause 4(1) refers to the fact that where they are on the same day they can be held together, which is plainly the point about not having to be in separate polling stations. Subsections (2), (3) and (4), as I thought the noble and learned Lord had confirmed, are drafted in different terms and are put on the basis that:

"The polls for the referendum and the Welsh Assembly general election ... are to be taken together".

So there is a requirement that they must be taken together, which means that they must be on the same day.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

The noble and learned Lord will recall-he is stating the obvious-that when this Bill was brought to this House from the other place the referendum, prior to the successful amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, would have been on the same day. Therefore, as they were going to be on the same day, it made good sense, as I hope the House would agree, that the polls should be combined. I do not think that the Government should stand accused because there has been an amendment-the consequential amendment was not necessarily made here. In the debate last Wednesday, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was encouraging the Government to bring forward an order which would make it 5 May but could be subject to change as long as it was before 31 October.

So, when the Bill came to this House it stated that the referendum would be held on 5 May. That is the date for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Therefore it makes sense, if the referendum is still to be held on 5 May, and indeed it is still the Government's position that they can achieve a referendum on that date. The Bill that was passed by the other place, published and brought to this House provided that the referendum would take place on the same day. I hope the noble and learned Lord and other Members of the Committee would agree that if they are held on the same day, it makes eminent common sense to combine the polls, and that is what is sought in Clause 4.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

What the noble and learned Lord says is correct. If they are to be held on the same day, it is wholly sensible to combine them. Why are subsections (2), (3) and (4) set out in different terms from subsection (1)? If the reason for Amendment 39A is the result of my noble friend Lord Rooker's amendment, why not just amend it and say that if the polls for the referendum and the Welsh Assembly take place on the same day, which is the effect of subsection (1), then they are to be taken together?

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I think that I have explained this. It has been a matter of some debate, but nevertheless it was expected that the elections to the Scottish Parliament would be held on 5 May 2011. It was expected that the elections to the Welsh Assembly would also be held on that day. Therefore, given that that was the date originally set out in the Bill as it came to the House prior to amendment, it makes sense to combine them. But before I sit down I will try to set out why the terms are somewhat different for the polls that will be taking place in England on that date. It could be that a particular date has not yet been set for a particular local referendum. That could be a possible explanation, but before I conclude, I hope there may be some explanation as to why the terminology is somewhat different.

Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Conservative)

Could my noble friend address the whole issue of confusion? On 5 May, two important issues are going to be debated with the voters. One is who gets elected to all these local bodies, the Scottish Parliament and so forth, and the other is the question of the referendum on the alternative vote. But as we have discovered already, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, may campaign in favour of the alternative vote and in favour of a Labour candidate. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will campaign in favour of a Labour candidate and against the alternative vote. Is this not going to create confusion among the electors? Even on the Conservative Benches, if we look hard enough we may find someone here who is in favour of the alternative vote. I do not know who it is, but if we look hard enough, perhaps we will find somebody. They would ask voters to be in favour of the alternative vote in the referendum while at the same time supporting a Conservative candidate, while the overwhelming number of Conservatives would probably ask voters to vote against the alternative vote and in favour of the Conservative candidate.

These are two important issues. Is there not a very strong argument to consider them on separate days so that they can be debated properly and separately? They will not then be mixed up in the way that they are due to be at the moment.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

In reply to my noble friend, these issues were rehearsed when considering a specific amendment not to have the referendum on 5 May next year. The amendment was defeated by 210 votes to 166. I do not doubt for a moment that there will be a campaign on the yes and the no sides for change to the alternative vote and that people will also be campaigning on the local elections. I do not believe that that will confuse the voters. There will be a clear question on what system of elections they want for the other place in the future and there will be clear questions on who they want to elect to the local council, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales or the Northern Ireland Assembly. While I suspect that the co-operation between parties may not be as cordial as it might otherwise be, as we have already seen embryonically, various people across the parties are coming together to mount joint campaigns for the yes or the no vote. It is rather a sad reflection on our politics that people who want to come together to argue a particular case for a future voting system cannot do that and campaign for a local candidate of their own party at the same time.

Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour)

May I remind the noble Lord that he is speaking to his amendment, and that the contribution he has just made should follow on the next contribution, which comes from my noble friend who will wind up the debate prior to the Minister's reply?

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

With respect, my noble friend asked a question and I thought it only courteous to give him an immediate reply.

Lord Rooker (Labour)

I had not really studied this amendment, and it did not cross my mind that it was a reaction to last week's amendment. However, Amendment 39A says:

"If any of the elections referred to in subsections (2) to (4)"-

that is, the elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland-

"are not held on the same day".

What are the circumstances envisaged in which they will not take place on the same day? I did not think that they controlled their own dates at present, so which circumstances have brought about Amendment 39A whereby those elections would not take place on the same day as the referendum? I am not clear about that.

I have another point. The accounting officers of those Parliaments will be driven by subsections (2), (3) and (4), which order those elections to be taken together at the same time as the clause envisages that they will not be. The lawyers in those areas will be spending money on planning, but it looks as though there are two different and contradictory instructions on what will be in the same clause. But my main point is the first one-what are the circumstances envisaged?

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

I am hugely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for allowing me the opportunity to explain the origin of this. I do not want to disappoint him; it was not as a direct response to his amendment which was carried. As I indicated, the Bill provides in this clause for a combination of the poll on a referendum with the polls for the elections to the devolved legislatures. During the Bill's Report stage in another place concerns were raised that the current drafting of the clauses restricts the ability set out in existing legislation for the date of the elections to the devolved Assemblies to be moved to a day which would be different from that on which the referendum is scheduled to take place. In order to avoid confusion, we have tabled this amendment to make it clear that the existing legislative powers to change the date of the polls for the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish parliamentary election and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections are not affected by the combination provisions in the Bill.

I think I am right in saying that the Scottish Parliament can bring forward the election. I am getting reassurance on that from a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Lothians region, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. It can bring it forward by six months on a two-thirds vote or resolution of the Parliament. Concern was expressed-I do not think that it was specific to Scotland-that it might be felt that the statutory provisions in the Scotland Act, and in the parallel provisions of the legislation establishing the Welsh National Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, were being impeded or restricted in some way by this provision. It was to avoid any confusion of that nature that this amendment was tabled, to make it clear that the existing powers are not affected.

I hope it is accepted that that is a perfectly valid position to take. If any of these Parliaments or Assemblies wish to change it within their own statutory powers, for whatever reason, that should not be inhibited by the provision in the Bill. This is for clarification. I defer to one of the noble Lords who saw through the Scotland Bill all of 12 years ago.

Lord Sewel (Labour)

Not only that, my Lords, but I have form in that I put a referendum Bill through this House at one stage. Does the noble Lord accept that the empirical evidence, both from this country and from one which has used referenda many times in a quasi-political role, France, is overwhelmingly that when it comes to referenda the electorate votes not on the question before them but on the popularity of the Government of the time? On this issue, does not conflating the issue of the merits of the electoral system with the popularity of a Government fill him with horror, particularly in Scotland?

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

Given that one part of the Government is likely to be supporting the yes campaign and one part, as likely as not, will be supporting the no campaign, I rather think that that might encourage people to look at the merits rather than find the best way to take it out on the Government. If there are two parties in a coalition and they are on either side of the argument, it is difficult for that argument to hold as much water as I accept that perhaps it has in the past. I am sure that the referendum on 1 March 1979 was not helped by coming immediately on the back of the winter of discontent. Nevertheless, that allowed a fair amount of cross-party support to try to get the yes vote out, and indeed the no vote. It is up to those of us who want to campaign to ensure that we are campaigning on the issues and not on some test of the parties in power. The fact that the poll is being held on the same day as other elections may mean that some of the more partisan effects that referendums-or referenda, whichever is your preference-may have on the question could be channelled into the elections being held that day. It may mean that we can have a proper debate on the relative merits of changing to the alternative vote system or of sticking with first past the post.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

The Minister is giving a very helpful explanation of why he has put this amendment forward. In the light of what he has said, I now understand why he has done so, but the amendment does not seem to achieve its end. I understand him to be saying that the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly have the power to change the date of their elections and that, if they did so, the Government would not seek to move the date of the referendum. So the Government's position is that if the polls are on the same day, they should be combined.

Clause 4(1) says precisely that. Why on earth are the Government drafting the Bill in the terms in which it appears to be drafted-that the polls for the referendum, the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly have to be held on the same day? Why are they not drafting it on the basis that, if the polls for the referendum and the Welsh Assembly are on the same day, they are to be taken together?

We do not agree with combination-we will come to that later when we say that Clause 4 should not stand part-but I cannot understand why the Minister is being advised that this is the way to achieve what he so clearly describes. Why are the Government not just saying that if the polls are on the same day, they are to be taken together?

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

As I have already explained, 5 May was the date originally set out in the Bill. I do not think that anyone is disputing that. It was the date set down for the elections for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. I shall speculate, and I hope that I can get confirmation for this, that there could be a local authority election in England that may not necessarily be on 5 May, whereas the Scottish parliamentary election has been set for 5 May.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

But it could be changed.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

The noble and learned Lord says that it could be changed. That is why we have brought forward the amendment. I do not believe that it contradicts at all.

I shall recapitulate. There could be a local authority election in England that need not be on 5 May. When the Bill was brought to this House, having been passed by the other place, it had been agreed in the other place that the referendum should be on 5 May. That was the date set for the Scottish election, the Welsh Assembly election and the Northern Ireland Assembly election. It therefore makes sense, and I think that this has been widely conceded, that if the elections were to be held on the same day, as was anticipated when the Bill was brought to this House, the polls should be combined for a host of good, sound administrative reasons. Subsequently there has been a change.

It was drawn to our attention on Report in another place that there was a potential problem. Because of the inherent powers in the statutes establishing the three devolved institutions, the election might not be on 5 May if they chose, for whatever reason, to exercise those powers. That is why Amendment 39A has been tabled. The noble and learned Lord may wish to debate whether it achieves its purpose. I think I have explained what its purpose is; it is to ensure that there was no dubiety and that the powers given to the Assemblies and the Parliament were not in any way infringed by the provisions.

That is it, very simply. I think it is relatively simple. The dates were anticipated, because of the way the Bill stood, to be the same. There could be a local authority election in England that did not necessarily fall on 5 May. The purpose of the government amendment is to provide that, if the Scottish Parliament-for the sake of argument-wished to change the date, it would be allowed to do so. It would not be inhibited from doing so by these provisions.

That is why the political arguments around whether the date is right or wrong are not relevant to this clause, which is, in some respects, a technical clause. It links to the various schedules. I pick up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who pointed to all the schedules when my noble friend Lord McNally said that this is a simple Bill. The schedules have been put into primary legislation, making provision for combining polls in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are four separate schedules, covering matters that, in many cases, would be put into secondary legislation. However, for simplicity and given the nature of this matter, it made more sense for them to appear in primary legislation in the Bill. This led to extending the length of the Bill considerably, but that is why the schedules are there: it was thought better to have the combination of provisions in the Bill.

I rather hope the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will accept that the consequence of his amendment-this is why I ask him to withdraw it-would not necessarily be to change the date of the poll. He has already lost an amendment specifically on that. It would, however, mean that if the two polls were held on the same date, they could not be formally combined. Therefore, there might be people who would have to go to two separate polling stations. That is not in anyone's interests.

I know that this is perhaps more technical than I anticipated but it is not a political argument about the date of the poll. It is a technical one, which says that if the polls fall on the same date-it is still the Government's intention that we should achieve that on 5 May-it is in the interests of those who would take part, not least those who are administering it, such as the returning officers, that the situation should be simplified as far as possible. I recall a Question in the House, asked by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, in July, about a letter from the convenor for the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland. He asked formally for the polls to be combined if the election and the referendum took place on the same day. This is our response to the spirit of that request.

No doubt we will come back to this if issues are raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, but I hope the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will appreciate that, whatever the political argument-there has been plenty of political debate-the technical argument means that it makes much more sense to combine the polls, as proposed in this clause. His amendment would have the rather unfortunate effect of splitting them, should they take place on the same day.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

It is important to see what Clause 4 says. That is why it is worth taking some time over these things. Clause 4(1) says:

"Where the date of ... a local authority election ... a local referendum",

and,

"a mayoral election in England",

is the same as that of a referendum, the polls can be combined. That does not commit the Government to having them on the same day. It is expressly conditional on their being on the same date.

The drafting of subsections (2), (3) and (4) is in different terms for reasons that are inexplicable, unless their purpose is to make it compulsory to have the polls on the same day. As far as that is concerned, although I completely accept that the Government intend that the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly should be able to exercise their powers to move the date, the fact that you have what appears on the face of it to be compulsion to hold the relevant polls on the same day appears to me, constitutionally, to lead to a situation whereby subsections (2), (3) and (4) would override the power of the Scottish Parliament to do that. The Government do not intend that outcome and therefore they should amend subsections (2), (3) and (4) to make them the same as subsection (1).

Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Conservative)

My Lords, it is important to read Amendment 39A before one gets too deeply involved in this argument. Amendment 39A says that if the relevant polls are to be on different days, "this Part" of the Bill-that includes subsections (2), (3) and (4)-has effect. If the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, had drafted Amendment 39A, it might have been worded differently. Unfortunately, he is not, as yet, a member of parliamentary counsel and therefore he is left to criticise what they have done. However, parliamentary counsel have not left his point out of account, as the amendment states that "this Part" of the Bill, including subsections (2), (3) and (4), will be construed in this way.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

If the noble and learned Lord, lord Mackay of Clashfern, had drafted these amendments, I anticipate that he would have drafted them differently as well. On the face of it, this drafting confronts you with subsections (2), (3) and (4) comprising a compelling combination. Amendment 39A says:

"If any of the elections ... are not held on the same day",

yet subsections (2), (3) and (4) compel them to be on the same day. I completely understand what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, is seeking to achieve and I do not seek to stand in his way. However, his obdurate refusal to consider doing it the obvious way-namely, inserting at the beginning of subsections (2), (3) and (4), "if they are on the same day, they will be have to be combined"-causes me confusion. I earnestly ask the noble and learned Lord to ask his officials politely and respectfully whether it would not be easier to use the same wording as that used in subsection (1) and get rid of the confusion.

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour)

As a mere junior counsel in the face of two of the most eminent senior counsels this country has ever seen, I enter this debate with great trepidation. I am extraordinarily grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer because the penny has dropped for me. The amendment that the Government propose becomes effective only if the polls do not take place on the same day. As long as the Bill stands as it is drafted, they can take place only on the same day.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, is right and I refer him to the comparison between subsections (1) and (2), (3) and (4). However, I have made my point and I earnestly ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to consider taking the government amendment away and coming back with a measure on Report to achieve his aim, should Clause 4 still remain part of the Bill after the Committee stage.

I wish to address what the noble and learned Lord rightly describes as the political aspects of this. Clause 4 is included to allow for the combination of polls. It is intended to ensure that a variety of elections can take place together. As a matter of principle, we think that that is the wrong approach to that issue. There is no dispute in any part of the House regarding the importance of the referendum. I cannot recall a referendum over the past 150 years-it is more a case of reflecting on history than personal recollection-which concerned the voting system. I think most people in this House would agree that we should hold referenda only in relation to very important constitutional issues. The referenda held since the Second World War concerned: the partition of Ireland; staying in the European Union; the 1978 referendum on devolved Assemblies for Wales and Scotland; and the 1998 referendum on devolved Parliaments or Assemblies for Wales and Scotland-all very important issues. As far as I am aware, each of those referendums has taken place alone, without there being any other poll on the same day. That is a sensible course whereby this country's approach to referenda is that you have them only when there is an important constitutional issue. We heard from my noble friend Lord Lipsey and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who both said how important the issue is.

We also have the report from your Lordships' Select Committee on the Constitution, which is a cross-party organisation that spoke unanimously on the issue. The committee cited evidence that the effect of having elections on the same day as a referendum is that the referendum debate gets swamped by the election of individual people. If you look at America, where frequently referenda take place on the same day as elections-such as those in November this year-you find that no one pays much attention to the referenda and everyone pays attention to the election of individual people. If the Select Committee of this House is right, you are in danger of the referendum question being swamped by the election of people in the three-or even four, if there is also a mayoral election-other elections going on at the same time.

Why is this being done if it is such an important issue? Everyone in this House wants the constitution properly to be given effect to. I do not want there to be a sense of illegitimacy about the result. Whatever view one takes about this referendum, one wants it to be decisive-decisively in favour of either first past the post or the alternative vote system. The result could be close, but you would want a good turnout and the sense that the question had properly been addressed.

This is the second national referendum in 120 years. It is the first one to affect our electoral system-the one that will make people have a view about whether they trust their electoral system. This Government, as I understand it, justify bringing the referendum together on the same day as the other elections when there is formidable evidence that it leads to the question being swamped. The Government justify that on the basis that it will save some money. Money is important, but it may be that the legitimacy of our constitution is more important.

This is a fundamental point of principle, and it is not too late for the Government to change their position. I should have thought that everyone on the government side, whether they are for or against a change in the electoral system, would want the result of the referendum to be something that the country has confidence in. What we are doing on this side is, in effect, reflecting the arguments of experts who say that having the referendum on the same day as other elections is not a good idea. It deprives the result of legitimacy.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Liberal Democrat)

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. He gave an American example, because he could not refer to any British example or precedent. However, as recently as November, California-a state close to bankruptcy-decided in one day both to change the party in government there and have a conservative outcome in a referendum on gay marriage. I do not think that it is appropriate to draw any conclusions from the American example, except that people are intelligent enough to understand what they are doing-and they do it even when there appears to be some conflict between their decisions.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

The American experience, which is part of the evidence relied on in these debates, suggests that in the polls in November, either in mid-term or general election years, the tendency of the public is not to focus on the proposition but to focus primarily on the people they are electing. In the coverage in November I did not spot the result of the proposition in California; all I spotted, which is where all the coverage was in America, was who was going to win in California. So the American experience tends to confirm what the Select Committee said-that the referendum question gets swamped in the question, for example, of who you want to be your Government in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Why is it being done like this? Is it only to save money or are there other reasons? The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to which we have all agreed, has given the Government the opportunity to hold the referendum on a different day. In answer to my opposition to Clause 4 standing part, it is necessary for the Government to say why they think it is right that this critical question should be dealt with on a day when there are other polls; when it has never before been done in our history; when experience in other jurisdictions suggests that the referendum question gets swamped; when anyone who has any care for our constitution wants the result to be decisive. I do not want a situation where whichever Government are in power seek to change the electoral system; I want something that is settled as far as the people are concerned. That has always been the purpose of referenda in the past. Furthermore, quite separately from those points of principle, there is inevitably scope for confusion with so many elections going on with different electorates.

I shall listen very carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, justifying why an issue as important as this is being dealt with in a way which seems to make it harder to come to a legitimate result than easier.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, as I indicated when I spoke earlier in dealing with these amendments, the nature of Clause 4 is of a technical combination; it is not one of the political arguments. The political argument was debated in this House quite thoroughly last Monday evening in Committee and, indeed, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde gave the answers to the questions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. He may not have liked the answers, but that is a different matter. The House then came to a view and endorsed the argument put forward by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. The amendment seeking not to have the referendum on 5 May-which I think was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes; he will correct me if I am wrong-was defeated.

The purpose of Clause 4, as I have indicated, is of a technical nature. It ensures that if the polls take place on the same day they are combined. That makes good sense for the voter-who I hope is still the most important person in this-and it makes good sense for those administering the elections. The Opposition have acknowledged and conceded that that is the case and that the technical arguments are very strong.

The London mayoral referendum took place on the same day as London elections, so the idea that having a referendum on the same day as elections is unprecedented does not hold water. As that was brought forward by the party of the noble and learned Lord when it was in government, one assumes it thought that it was quite an important referendum. Given that we have had only one UK-wide referendum in our history, I do not think we can use it to set a precedent. As I said, the arguments on the politics have already been made in a previous debate. This is very much a debate on the technical nature of combination.

The reason why the terms are different in subsection (1) is that the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly are fixed by statute. The particular local elections are not necessarily fixed by statute, hence the different wording. The amendment of my noble friend Lord McNally has the same effect.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

Why does the fact that it is fixed by statute but can be changed make a difference?

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat)

Sorry, I do not follow the noble and learned Lord's point. In the Bill as it originally stood prior to any amendment, the date was to coincide with the statutory dates for the other elections-hence the wording of these proposals. My noble friend's amendment makes provision that, if the referendum was not on the same day as a poll for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly or Northern Ireland Assembly, the relevant schedule will not apply and, therefore, they will not be combination. That is what this clause is about and what this amendment is about. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to withdraw his amendment, as it could have an unfortunate effect, which I am sure is not what he intends. I ask the Committee to support the clause, which is important from a technical point of view, not least in the interests of voters.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

This has been a very interesting and revealing debate. If noble Lords were not confused before they came into the Chamber, I am sure that they are now. My amendment would remove the subsection that says:

"The polls for the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary general election in 2011 are to be taken together".

Nothing could be clearer than that, could it? Then we have the amendment, which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, tabled in a panic, because of something that happened in Report stage elsewhere. It refers to a circumstance "if" they are,

"not held on the same day".

Which takes precedence? Surely saying that they are to be taken together means that they are to be taken together. Nothing could be clearer than that. Even the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the former Lord Chancellor, said that if that said that they were to be taken together, they were to be taken together.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Conservative)

I did not say that. I said that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, affects the whole of that part, including subsections (2), (3) and (4) of Clause 4. It modifies the phrasing that the noble Lord has quoted. I agree that that could have been done differently, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, says. I do not necessarily subscribe to the view that, if I had been doing it, it would have been different; that is a different judgment altogether. However, it makes sense that the clause that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is talking about is affected by the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, if it passed, when it says that the clause is to be modified if this happens.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

I hope that that is now clear. There is a lot of money to be made by lawyers one way or another in challenging this. Certainly, it looks strange to me.

I have a couple of things to say in relation to the debate on the amendment in the few minutes that we have left. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made a powerful point when he said that an extensive debate on the referendum was needed. Someone said in a previous debate that this great debate needed its own space, unsullied by local and Scottish elections. My noble friend Lord Lipsey spoke as usual with eloquence and grace, although I disagreed with much of what he said. One thing that I did agree with was his questioning of the idea that this was a simple Bill. It is not a simple Bill. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, described it as aiming for fair votes and fair boundaries. The noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally, and now the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, have clearly been given a remit from Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron to get this Bill through at all costs. They have been told, "Put your heads down and don't worry about the arguments. If points are made by the other side, don't worry too much about answering them. Just get it through". That is what they are trying to do. As I said in a previous debate, this is the Clegg project and it must be got through.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, asked an important Question at Question Time today about holding the Executive to account. This Chamber of Parliament should have some respect for holding the Executive to account, and the Executive should have some respect for debates and votes that take place in this Chamber. The questions that have been raised have been ignored. They are sincere and important questions, which are not being answered from the Dispatch Box. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, did a much better job of answering the questions today than he has done previously. I understand that the questions concern the technicalities of the poll. However, when I moved my amendment, I, too, dealt with the technicalities of the poll and said that there would be great confusion because of the two franchises taking place. Because of the technical argument of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and because of his plea to me to withdraw the amendment, I will do so, on the basis that it would be much better for all of us if we struck out Clause 4.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Labour)

My Lords, I earnestly ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to think again about the wording of the government amendment. I have made it clear that we would support what he wants to do if Clause 4 stands part, but I believe that the Government have not got it right and I ask them to think again. In relation to Clause 4 stand part, I will seek the opinion of the Committee, because this is the means of allowing the polls to be held together. It is right that the clause has technical aspects, but it is basically the foundation of the polls being held together.

Amendment 39 disagreed.

Amendment 39A

Moved by Lord McNally

39A: Clause 4, page 3, line 19, at end insert-

"( ) If any of the elections referred to in subsections (2) to (4) are not held on the same day as the referendum, this Part has effect with any necessary adaptations and in particular-

(a) if the Welsh Assembly general election in 2011 is not held on that day, subsection (2) and Schedule 6 do not apply (and Part 3 of Schedule 4 applies with the necessary adaptations);

(b) if the Scottish parliamentary general election in 2011 is not held on that day, subsection (3) and Schedule 7 do not apply (and Part 3 of Schedule 4 applies with the necessary adaptations);

(c) if any of the elections referred to in subsection (4) are not held on that day, that subsection and Schedule 8 either do not apply or apply only in relation to the elections that are held on that day."