house of lords official report - United Kingdom Parliament

1111 Political Parties and Elections Bill [LORDS] Political Parties and Elections Bill 1112
[LORD TYLER]
debate, but it will not be in a position to do so unless
we pass our amendment tonight; if we do not do so,
the clause will stand in the Bill undebatable.
The suggestion has been made that somehow this
issue is not appropriate for your Lordships’ House
because it wholly relates to Members of the other
place. That is not so. It relates to all candidates who
wish to stand for the other place. It is therefore perfectly
appropriate for your Lordships’ House to take a view
on this issue. That is the first illusion that I must seek
to dispel.
There are other misunderstandings, too. It has been
suggested that somehow this is an important issue to
deal with because there is some sort of new security
risk. Frankly, as those who have had the experience of
standing as candidates will know, you do not have to
put your name on the ballot paper for your address to
be well known in your area by other means. If there
was a security risk, no doubt the Government would
come forward with some direct evidence from the
police or the security services to that effect.
The Government very properly instituted a consultation
process on this issue back in November, I think. We
now have the response. Only two MPs—on behalf of
other MPs, I should say—responded. The Electoral
Commission supported the idea that there might be a
change in the law. However, electoral administrators,
returning officers, the Newspaper Society and, most
important of all, the public have made it absolutely
clear that they think that any reduction in transparency
on this issue would be totally inappropriate and certainly
out of favour at the present time. The only political
party to make any sort of submission to the consultation
process were the Liberal Democrats and we were
clearly against withholding addresses in this way.
Of course, there was a vote in the other place. The
Lord Chancellor and the Minister responsible for the
Bill both voted against this change, which they felt was
clearly inappropriate, without proper discussion and
debate. The Minister said on a previous occasion that
he intends there to be a free vote, rather than a
whipped vote, on this proposal. I hope that that is still
the case; no doubt he will be able to confirm that.
At the moment, increasing the secrecy that surrounds
the political process will seem even more inappropriate
than it was when we discussed these matters at Second
Reading and in Grand Committee. Frankly, I believe
that the public will think it pretty odd if that is
introduced for the politicians who may stand for election
to the other place—but not, incidentally, in relation to
some of the devolved Administrations. You would
think that, if there were real pressure for this to
happen, it might be in Northern Ireland, where there
is a reasonable case for doing this. However, so far as I
am aware, there is no such pressure and there is
certainly nothing in this clause to cover anyone else at
any other level in the political system. I think that the
public would regard this as another attempt by the
political classes to protect themselves from scrutiny
when that scrutiny was thought to be perfectly appropriate
for everyone else. I hope that the Minister will now be
rather more responsive to that concern than he was
able to be prior to the consultation period. I beg to
move.
6.30 pm
Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, the noble Lord,
Lord Tyler, will know that unfortunately I dissent
from the position that he has taken. I ask him to
forgive me because we work together very well in a
number of areas of the Bill.
I did not move my amendment because I wanted to
concentrate on the essence of the noble Lord’s case.
This is not about risk to Members of Parliament; the
issue in this case is the risk to the families of Members
of Parliament. In Committee, I drew attention to two
occasions: the first was when a Member of Parliament
was in Paris and an incident was about to take place;
and the second was the incident that took place outside
the home of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater,
when the police were brought in and there were subsequent
prosecutions. In the latter case, there was clearly a risk
to the family.
I am worried by the fact that the case put by the
noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seems to be based on the
proposition that, because we are in public life, our
families have to take into account the fact that we may
be placing them at risk. He was not quite as blunt as
that, but that is the implication. I want to give an
example. If a person anywhere in the world were to
Google the names of every single Member of
Parliament—their names and addresses would be available
on the internet following a general election campaign—
that person would have a database that could be used
against each individual Member. They could dispatch
from anywhere in the world envelopes containing
biological material or other dangerous agents and
send them to the homes of those Members of Parliament.
The mail that we receive here is screened but we all
know that that is not the position with mail that goes
to our homes. We are advised at every stage in our
political lives to be more diligent and careful with
regard to our personal arrangements because of the
dangers from terrorism and I cannot believe that a
political party would argue that we should not have
that in mind when taking decisions on this issue. We
cannot place the families of Members of Parliament
in that position.
The noble Lord has said that this material is already
available. Of course it is. You could have gone to my
former constituency in Workington and asked on the
streets, “Where does the Member of Parliament for
Workington live?”, and you would probably have been
told the answer within a road or two. However, when
you are in some obscure country in another part of the
world, you do not have access to that kind of material.
When I oppose the noble Lord’s amendment, I am
referring to a completely different kind of threat.
I am also concerned about the impact of international
terrorism on how Members of Parliament conduct
themselves in a public place—particularly in the Chamber
in Parliament, where their remarks might be heavily
publicised. Even though they are protected by privilege,
if Members of Parliament feel constrained in any way
because of the possible danger to their families that
might arise out of any statements that they make in
Parliament, I believe that we have a responsibility to
try to remove that possibility of constraint. We must