Observations of the Speaker's Committee
on the Eleventh Report of the Committee on Standards in Public
Life on the Electoral Commission (Cm. 7006)
1. The Speaker's Committee welcomes the report by
the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL), published in
January 2007, on its review of the Electoral Commission. CSPL
has carried out a comprehensive and thorough review of the mandate,
governance and accountability of the Electoral Commission. It
has also commented on aspects of the integrity of the electoral
system. In all, CSPL has made 47 recommendations.
2. CSPL's recommendations, if implemented in full,
would have a substantial effect on the character and functions
of the Electoral Commission. They would enhance its regulatory
role, and public awareness, which has hitherto represented a substantial
part of its overall activity, would assume a lesser part of the
Commission's overall activity. There are also other pressures
for change. The Constitutional Affairs Committee, in its report
in December 2006 on party funding, recommended a number of changes
relating to the Commission, and Sir Hayden Phillips' review of
party funding arrangements may well result in changes to the Commission's
oversight role in this area if the parties agree on reforms.
3. The Electoral Commission is an independent public
body established by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums
Act 2000 (PPERA). It has a wide range of functions directly relating
to the democratic process, including advice to electoral administrators,
regulation of political party finance, reporting on principal
elections, and oversight of referendums. That same legislation
also created the Speaker's Committee to discharge a range of specific
functions conferred on it by that legislation. These are set out
in Annex 1.
4. The Electoral Commission was specifically created
as an independent body, and there are a number of safeguards built
into PPERA designed to buttress its independence. Its operational
decisions are not subject to direct political oversight. It is
nonetheless accountable to Parliament for its use of public resources,
and one of the principal roles of the Speaker's Committee is to
ensure that the Electoral Commission is adequately resourced,
on the basis of Estimates and five-year plans which it submits
to the Committee, to discharge its functions economically, efficiently
and effectively. Advice from the Treasury, and also from the Comptroller
and Auditor General in the form of annual "value for money"
reports on aspects of the Commission's work, as provided for in
PPERA, have an important part to play in this.
5. It follows that not all the forty seven recommendations
made by the CSPL are directly relevant to the work of the Speaker's
Committee. Clearly, any recommendation addressed to the Electoral
Commission which has resource implications impacts on its overall
resource requirement. However, the Committee is principally concerned
to ensure that the Commission is adequately resourced to perform
properly whatever functions it is given by Parliament. The Committee
has therefore restricted its comments to recommendations directly
relating to itself, or in relation to which it has a specific
policy interest.
6. The recommendations which have a direct bearing
on the work of the Speaker's Committee are R17-18; R20-24; and
R27-39. The Committee's specific comments on these are set out
in Annex 2. Where recommendations supported by the Committee require
primary legislation to implement them, the Committee shares the
view of CSPL that the Government should aim to enact this in the
next Parliamentary Session, so that the period of uncertainty
is minimised.
