Peter Lamb

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) on bringing forward the Bill. Devolution has been an interest of mine for a very long time. It was the topic of my master’s dissertation and my first job outside politics, so I am thrilled to be back dealing with it all again as a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. The Bill reminds me that one of the main arguments in favour of introducing devolution was to free up parliamentary time. It was considered bizarre that there we were, in the late 20th century, when devolution was being debated, with feudalism still in Scotland because no Government could possibly find the parliamentary time in the UK Parliament to try to resolve those issues and other issues of concern to residents in Scotland. That highlighted the importance of producing bodies that could grant that time to consider those issues, and many other issues, on a local basis of what could be the best for residents in those areas. The fact that these measures are coming via a private Member’s Bill continues to highlight the importance of trying to secure better parliamentary time for different parts of the UK for the issues that matter to them, and the importance of devolution to ensuring that matters of relevance for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—and hopefully for England in due course—are addressed. I note that the amendment continues with that approach, empowering devolved Governments’ ability to implement changes in their own way. It highlights how it remains entirely possible for the nations to have the right powers to deliver for their citizens in the right way without having to engage with all the problems that would come with any approach to independence, so long may that approach continue. I am glad to see the consultation that has taken place with devolved Administrations, as I believe consent is an incredibly important part of the process of ensuring that our devolution settlement operates well. I believe that that is critical. Technically, as a unitary system we have parliamentary sovereignty in this place and the UK Parliament can still legislate unilaterally in these areas, but if the devolved settlement is to survive, every part of the United Kingdom must be prepared to play their role in that partnership. I cannot claim to be a fan of the Elections Act 2022, which brought many of the provisions into place. During my time in local government, I was the chair of the working group that the Local Government Association set up to go through the provisions in the Bill, which was assisted by representatives of returning officers and representatives of electoral services administrators. It would be fair to say that their views of most of the provisions were wholly negative in the context of what the Bill sought to do, and many of the arguments did not seem to make a huge amount of sense at the time. None the less, we did produce a number of cross-party conclusions. Regrettably, they were not adopted by the LGA until far too late in the process to have had any viable impact. The aspects in the Bill are, I believe, positive. They should help to enable greater access to absent voting for residents in Scotland and Wales, and hopefully avoid some of the confusion that arises. As a country, we have an increasingly confusing set of election arrangements. Many different types of electoral systems are employed, there are different age arrangements in different places and there are different rules around this, that and the other. When people think that one set of rules is in play and in fact, given a particular context, there is another, that creates growing problems with confidence in our electoral system. Although it is a challenge, it is important to our democracy that, as far as possible, the general public understand how the systems operate, how they select their governors and how they express their voice. That is a critical part of the UK retaining genuine democratic accountability. The more that can be done to harmonise arrangements across the entire United Kingdom, and to ensure that there is a much simpler approach to people expressing their views to us, the greater the level of confidence in the system. Having two different sets of arrangements around casting votes cannot do much to encourage people to engage in the process. The very low levels of turnout at the last general election, which was a year ago today, suggest that there are issues that need to be addressed in how we try to engage people in the process and encourage them to participate. One big problem is that if we do not have a viable system to enable people to cast their votes, taking into account people’s differing capacities to attend polling stations, we risk having a bias in the system in favour of one set of groups and against another. Younger able-bodied people and those who are less busy will be in a better position to participate and submit their votes, meaning the electoral system will gradually move in favour of only part of the population. That will deliver outcomes in those elections that may result in the system no longer acting as a voice for the whole of society, only a part of that society. We are all aware of some areas where that already happens, where there is higher turnout by some groups relative to other groups, resulting in them having preferential status in our electioneering. The more that can be done to make it as easy as possible for people to cast their vote, the greater the likelihood that we will have a more representative sample of electors participating in the system, and that all our different institutions will genuinely represent the views of constituents within the country, and consequentially within policy. I conclude by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith on introducing the Bill. It is an important step towards addressing many of the issues, and I hope further steps will be forthcoming to increase greater accountability and democratic participation in our democracy.