House of Commons
Wednesday 25 June 1997
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Conduct of Elections
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Jane Kennedy.]
9.34 am
Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East): I imagine that on 1 May this year all parliamentary candidates were united in similar feelings. Labour candidates went to the count that evening in the hope that the opinion polls were correct and the expectation that the Labour party would at long last be forming the Government. Candidates from what are now the main Opposition parties had the opposite feelings.
It was not always thus, of course. In 1983, you in your previous role, Madam Speaker, and I went to our respective counts in the town of West Bromwich hoping that the opinion polls were wrong. I hoped that I would be able to hang on against the trend and you hoped that your majority would endure in the way that it had in previous years. So all of us as candidates have similar emotions. If my arithmetic is correct, 3,591 of us shared those emotions on election night on 1 May this year.
The vast majority of those 3,500 candidates stood under their respective party label. Some stood proudly as independents. Some might be regarded as eccentric, although I suppose that the House could argue that one or two of us who stood under party labels could be regarded in the same light. Some candidates had particular axes to grind. The grinding of axes is not unheard of during parliamentary elections, although axe grinders are not conspicuously successful when the votes are added up.
I want to set aside the hopes and ambitions of most of the candidates on 1 May and draw the attention of the House to the conduct of elections. I wish to put some serious matters before you and the House, Madam Speaker. I recognise that electoral fraud was raised in this Parliament, on 21 May, by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore). In that debate he dealt exclusively with events in his constituency.
A man called Terry Betts referred to himself in the general election as the "New Labour" candidate. That person had no connection with the Labour party and the description on the ballot paper was, in the opinion of my hon. Friend, deliberately designed to mislead. Similar misleading descriptions were used in many other constituencies by a variety of candidates, in an attempt to pretend that they represented something different from what they did in reality.
Not only candidates from my party were the victims of deception on 1 May. On 18 April--the day after nominations for the general election closed--
representatives of all three major political parties appeared at the High Court of Justice before the honourable Justice Longmore, pleading that there was a threatened breach of section 115(2)(b) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, in that there was an intent or threat to impede the free exercise of the franchise by means of a fraudulent device or contrivance. The alleged contrivance was that the defendant in each of the cases was telling an untruth about himself in the description in his nomination paper.
The first case that morning involved the then Solicitor-General, the Conservative candidate in Brighton, Pavilion constituency, who was opposed by a man named Huggett, who styled himself on his nomination paper as the "Official Conservative candidate". The second case also involved a Conservative, a former Member of Parliament and a Minister in the previous Government. He faced in the Clwyd, West constituency an opponent who called himself Rod Richard. The Conservative candidate's name was Rod Richards. His opponent described himself as "The Conservatory party candidate".
The third case involved the prospective candidatesfor Winchester, who were challenged by the sameMr. Huggett who was standing for election to the Brighton, Pavilion seat. In Winchester he described himself as "Top Liberal Democrat for Parliament"--whatever that may be--"a Liberal Democrat Challenge".
The Labour party was also represented beforeMr. Justice Longmore.
Mr. Mark Oaten (Winchester):
You have mentioned my constituency and the case of Mr. Huggett. Are you aware that he stood as the "Liberal Democrat Top choice for Parliament"? Are you also aware that we sought out five of the 10 people who had signed his nomination paper and that three of them were prepared to meet the returning officer to claim that they were misled and tricked into signing it? Perhaps you could pick up on that in your speech, because powers must be introduced to overcome that problem.
Madam Speaker:
Order. I should just like to remind hon. Members to speak through the Chair.
Mr. Snape:
I understand why the hon. Gentleman sought to intervene now; he had the courtesy to let me know that he is involved in a separate court action this morning about the Winchester constituency and will have to leave the Chamber before the debate is concluded.
I was unaware of all the circumstances surrounding Mr. Huggett, but the hon. Gentleman's remarks underline the concern that we should all feel at the fact that the democratic process is being subverted by characters who have no intention to stand for Parliament, which is everyone's right, but want to mislead the electorate deliberately.
The Labour party was also invited to appear before Mr. Justice Longmore on 18 April, the day after nominations closed, because my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman), faced a challenge from, among others, a Mr. William Johnson Smith who described himself as "New Labour". I understand that Mr. Johnson Smith is the son of a distinguished Conservative Member of the House. Afterwards he claimed that he stood under that title for a lark. It is not for me to tell Conservative Members how
they should bring up their children, but I hope that most of them would not approve of their children behaving in that manner.
The examples that I have cited reveal the lengths that some people will go to, to try to mislead the electorate deliberately. I do not believe that any of us would wish to prevent the likes of Screaming Lord Sutch from standing for election on behalf of the Monster Raving Loony party. Over the years, I have acted as minder to various Labour candidates across the midlands and I have had the pleasure of meeting David Sutch on quite a few occasions. He puts up his deposit; organises a few gigs in the constituency in which he is standing; and brings a little joy and happiness to what are normally fairly serious proceedings. Good luck to him.
I would not wish to stop some eccentric characters similar to those who were around in my youth from exercising their right to stand. All of us of a certain age in the House will remember Wing-Commander Bill Boakes, who pedalled his Heath-Robinsonian contraption around various constituencies as he fought by-election after by-election. He described himself as the road safety, public safety, white resident candidate, or something along those lines. He was never successful, but at least he brought a touch of gaiety to the nation.
The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) fought a serious campaign, but I can remember that he made his victory speech with a 6 ft 5 in transvestite standing in the background with a birdcage on his head. Some hon. Members might feel that such characters bring the parliamentary process into disrepute, but that person paid his money and took his choice, as did the electors. I do not object to such characters popping up at election time for reasons best known to themselves.
During the election, there were no fewer than 19 constituencies in which the Labour party name was misused by candidates. In six cases, the misleading description "New Labour" was used--[Interruption.] I realise from the reaction of some of my hon. Friends that that might have been the case in more than six constituencies. I had better be careful--I was referring to such a description being used fraudulently, but that will not satisfy some of the humorists in the Chamber. Most of my hon. Friends will know what I mean, but I had better abandon that potentially embarrassing topic.
Mr. Alan Clark (Kensington and Chelsea):
Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many names were on the ballot paper for the constituency of Hartlepool?
Mr. Snape:
I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman must tear himself away from the pleasures of Kensington and Chelsea and make his way down the Corridor to the Library, where that information will be readily provided.
Mr. Snape:
I am not sure whether that question is relevant to the debate, but given the right hon. Gentleman's distinguished record inside and outside the House, should he feel that it is, I am sure that he will seek to catch your eye later, Madam Speaker.
I should like to refer specifically to the constituency adjacent to mine, West Bromwich, West, which has been represented with such distinction by you, Madam Speaker, for many years. The House will be aware that nominations to stand in the election closed on Thursday 17 April at 5 pm. About 48 hours before that deadline, the west midlands Labour party received information that a candidate would stand in the West Bromwich, West constituency describing himself as "New Labour".
On two occasions before the deadline for nominations, my election agent rang the election office at the council house, Oldbury, in the borough of Sandwell, to ask whether he could have sight of or details on any nominations submitted for the West Bromwich, West constituency and for the four Sandwell boroughs. That request was refused, apparently on the instructions of the acting returning officer and chief executive, Mr. Nigel Summers.
It was only after nominations closed that the information was published--indeed, it was first published in one of the local newspapers. We then learned that one of your opponents at the election, Madam Speaker, was describing himself as "New Labour--Time for Change". That person is not and, as far as I am aware, has never been a member of the Labour party, new or otherwise.
Given that injunctions had already been sought on the following day concerning various other constituencies and we were wrongly denied prior information about that opponent, the regional Labour party was unable to take any form of legal action. As a result of that blatantly misleading description, that candidate received more than 8,000 votes. Without betraying any confidences or transgressing the Official Secrets Act, I can inform the House that there were also literally hundreds of spoilt ballot papers from electors who had erroneously voted twice--both for you, Madam Speaker, and for that "New Labour" candidate, the imposter.
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