Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Wednesday 14 April 1999
[Mr. Peter Atkinson in the Chair]
Draft European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 1999
4.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): I beg to
move,
That the Committee has considered the draft European
Parliamentary Elections Regulations 1999.
It is a pleasure to be meeting under your wise
chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. Despite the occasionally
difficult history of some of these matters, I am sure that
you will keep us all in order.
The Committee may recall that the European
Parliamentary Elections Act 1999 received Royal Assent
on 14 January. My eyes mist over at the thought of it.
The Act provides that future elections to the European
Parliament in Britain will be conducted using a regional
list voting system. The Act, as I am sure we all recall, had
a somewhat stormy passage through the other place. The
Committee may be relieved to know that I have no
intention of going over the same arguments about the
voting system. I know that my hon. Friend the Member
for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) will be relieved to hear that.
The draft regulations govern the way in which the
election will be conducted. The key text in British
electoral law is the Representation of the People Act 1983,
which is a consolidation of several earlier pieces of
legislation. That Act has a couple of hundred sections and
several schedules, including one containing what are
known as the election rules. The regulations and rules
governing all other elections, such as local elections and
European parliamentary elections, are based on adapting
and applying the 1983 Act to suit the circumstances of the
elections in question. Therefore, although the European
Parliamentary Elections Act 1999 sets out the broad
framework for future European parliamentary elections,
the secondary legislation that we are debating this
afternoon provides the subsidiary detail, applying and
amending the 1983 Act as the new system requires.
We have already consulted political parties, electoral
administrators and interested bodies on the draft
regulations. I am grateful to all those who took the time
to comment, as that process has helped us to refine the
draft and enabled us to lay the regulations before the
Committee.
I cannot in the time available take the Committee
through every instance where the existing rules have been
applied, disapplied or amended to take account of the new
system. Instead, I shall highlight the main features and, in
particular, explain the reasoning behind the changes that
were commented on during the consultation process.
In each region registered political parties will be able
to put forward lists containing as many names as there are
seats to be filled in that region, or fewer names if they
wish. Independent candidates will be able to stand.
Nominations will, not surprisingly, have to be
accompanied by a signature from each candidate
indicating their consent to the nomination. No signatures
will be required from the electorate. Given the size of the
regional electorates, we have decided to do away with the
subscriber requirement, which did not demonstrate
support among the electorate but placed an unwelcome
burden on electoral administrators, who had to check that
signatures were genuine. It would also have been onerous
on political parties and any independent candidates.
A nomination will also have to be accompanied by a
deposit of £5,000, both for party lists, however many
names they contain, and for independent candidates. The
closing date for nominations is 13 May.
Under the expenditure regime that we are proposing, an
individual candidate or a party contesting a single region
the maximum that can be spent on the campaign is
£45,000 multiplied by the number of seats in the region.
For example, in the north-east, which has four seats, the
maximum is £180,000. I should point out that the regional
limit is not affected by how many candidates a registered
party chooses to place on its list. For a party contesting
two or more regions, the maximum that it can spend will
be the sum of the relevant regional limits. This means that
a party contesting every region will be subject to a limit of
£3.78 million, which is the total of all 11 regional limits.
A party's expenditure limit is designed to cover all its
election expenditure. The old distinction between
constituency expenditure, which was subject to a limit,
and national campaigning, which was unlimited, will no
longer apply. As a result of the report of the Committee
on Standards in Public Life, all expenditure has to be
accounted for and be subject to a limit. The national limit
of £3.78 million is in line with the Neill Committee's
recommendations, which I hope that the Committee will
agree are appropriate.
However, parties contesting more than one region are
free to spend their money where they choose. They do not
have to spend particular amounts within particular regions
for two reasons. First, it is not appropriate for the
Government to tell parties how they should run their
campaigns. Some parties may want to campaign
regionally while others may have a national strategy and
surely it should be up to them to decide. Secondly, in a
list based election where the emphasis is on encouraging
the electorate to vote for parties rather than particular
individuals, it would be very hard to distinguish between
regional and national expenditure. I should add that the
Neill Committee has also welcomed the regulations
governing party expenditure.
The regulations provide for the freepost arrangements
to remain pretty much as they are now, except that in the
case of parties it will be one entitlement to the freepost
for the list as a whole rather than for each candidate on
the list. Again, I hope that the Committee will agree that
that is a sensible arrangement.
We have decided not to apply section 93 of the
Representation of the People Act for these elections. The
committee will recall that that is the section that prevents
broadcasters from covering a particular electoral area
unless they have the consent of all the candidates
contesting that area. Clearly, when regions can have over
50 candidates, that would simply not be practicable.
However, I hope that the Committee will be reassured to
know that the broadcasters will still be bound by their
general and statutory duty to provide fair and impartial
coverage. I should also add that the question of party
election broadcasts is one for the broadcasters rather than
for the Government. Polling day will be 10 June and the
polls will be open from 7 am to 10 pm.
As in previous elections, counting cannot begin until
the polls close in the last EU member state on the evening
of Sunday 13 June. Counting will be conducted at
Westminster parliamentary constituency level, although
the regulations allow an acting returning officer who is
responsible for more than one Westminster constituency
to combine them for counting purposes. It has been
suggested that returning officers should be required to
produce individual results for each Westminster
constituency. The Government's aim is for these and
indeed any elections to be conducted in the most
efficient and cost-effective way. We believe that the
decision whether to combine constituencies should be for
the local returning officers to make, since they are the
people best placed to know what would be most efficient
in the particular circumstances of their areas. We
understand, however, that in most places, votes will be
counted on an individual constituency basis.
All the parties and individual independent candidates
will have the right to be represented at all the local counts.
They will also have the right to ask for a recount if they
are unhappy with the way in which the count has been
conducted. Once the local count has been completed to
everyone's satisfaction the returning officer will transmit
the result to the regional returning officer who will in turn
give him or her clearance to declare it locally. When all
the local results have been passed to the regional returning
officer, he or she will perform the seat allocation
calculation using the by now famous, and in some quarter
infamous, d'Hondt divisor. I intend to keep my promise
to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham,
Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and shall not enter into a
discussion about Mr. d'Hondt, who is long dead, other
than to say that the Bill that prompted the regulations is
peppered with responses to d'Hondt and his system and
the various ways of calculating the results.
The political parties and independent candidates will be
allowed to be present at the regional centre where the seat
allocation calculation is to be performed and will be able
to ask the regional returning officer to repeat the
calculation if they suspect an arithmetical error. However,
they will not be able to ask for a full regional recount.
There are two good reasons for that. First, the regional
result is nothing more than an amalgamation of local
results. As I said, parties and individual candidates will
be entitled to be present at all the local counts and to ask
for recounts at that stage. If they signify that they are
happy with the local results, there should be no need for
a full regional recount when those local results are
added together.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed): From
experience of recounts in my early career, one does not
ask for the bother and expense of a recount unless the
result is close. The regional calculations could be close
even if in each individual constituency there had been
such a wide margin that no one had been prompted to
claim a recount. However, the subsequent discovery n a
recount that 20 votes had gone astray in a single
constituency might invalidate the regional calculation.
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