Contribution
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introductory comments, and I shall return to one or two of the points that she made in a moment. It is worth being honest in relation to election changes. In every party, when they make election law changes, they may hide it in one form or another, but, over their shoulder, they are looking at how they are going to benefit from any particular change, and that is worth acknowledging. In this case, the speed with which this order has been brought forward is striking. One has to ask the question: why on earth is it being brought forward at this stage, particularly because, as the Minister said, the legislation has just been passed, having received Royal Assent in April? She also went on to say that:
“Further legislation will be brought forward”
for other matters
“in due course”.
Every single debate in which I have participated on election law in the last decade has included a request to simplify the whole process of elections law, and to not make it more complicated. There has been persistent reference to the Law Commission, its original report, and further changes thereafter. What do we have here? It is an admission by the Minister that we are debating one thing this evening, but at some unspecified stage, further legislation will be brought forward. Why? The answer is quite simple: it is because the Labour Party has got itself into an almighty mess in the north-west. There is a by-election in Makerfield on Thursday, and there is the possibility of a by-election for the Greater Manchester mayoralty thereafter, at a cost—although the Government refuse to identify the actual figure—probably of around £5 million, to solve their problems. That is the first issue.
Let us be honest about this order. It is not normal to identify who would be affected by a particular change of law, but this order is an attempt to prevent Reform winning the possible Greater Manchester mayoralty by-election. It would be better titled “Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Stop Reform Winning the Greater Manchester Mayoralty) Order 2026”, because that is what it comes down to. There is no other justification for the haste with which this order has been introduced, other than that it solves the Labour Party’s problems and prevents Reform winning a mayoralty. It does not do British democracy well when the position is as blatant as that—nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise, the order could have waited until all the different changes necessary could be introduced in one go, at one time, in the near future.
I want to comment on one other element of this order, and that is the impact assessment. All changes in legislation have an impact; some are smaller than others. The Minister is right that we are reverting to a system that operated previously. Therefore, there should be relatively small changes, but they are changes none the less. It has been quite a few years since this system was introduced, and there will be many polling station officers, returning officers and people asked to administer the whole process who are new to this. A necessary set of changes will result in training courses. As the Minister identified, notices will be different and understanding will be different.
I cannot believe that when this is introduced, the Electoral Commission will not expect to provide guidance to the voters of Greater Manchester on how they will now vote, as against how they did last time. Although the costs in the impact assessment are relatively small, it is not correct to say that there will be no or virtually no cost. It is appropriate that we should be told what the cost is and what the total cost of a Greater Manchester by-election would be, as the Labour Party tries to get itself out of a mess of its own making.