Contribution
My Lords, it is a great privilege and a real pleasure to be the first to congratulate my noble friend on his powerful, eloquent and witty speech. I should not be surprised, however. I have known him for decades. I kent his faither, as we say in Scotland. His father was a very distinguished rector of the Royal High School, as well as a great Gaelic expert, and his mother, who was here when he was introduced—I had the great privilege of discussing with her politics—is a wonderful lady. She was also a head teacher of one of our schools in Edinburgh. He comes from that great background.
My noble friend’s own experience qualifies him well to be a Member of this House. He was a very distinguished Member of the Scottish Parliament and he was a great Presiding Officer—that is Speaker for those who do not exactly understand our system. He was very good at it. I think, not just from what we have heard today but from what I know of his past, that he will speak again on many occasions and contribute greatly on the Floor of this House. I think he will contribute to this House in many other ways, and we look forward very much to every part of his contribution. I thank him very much.
And now to the Bill. We have been talking a lot about these two crypto billionaires and their donations. I do not want to go into that, but this is not new: we have been worried about the huge amount of money coming into our political system from outside the United Kingdom for some time, in particular from the United States and in particular to people, policies and parties on the far right. We must be very careful. It is not new.
That is why I endorse everything that was said by my noble friend Lady Royall, the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Wills, and others. We need to impose limits, not just on overseas donations but on domestic donations, and not just to political parties but, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, to think tanks, which have a subtle but insidious influence.
I hope that, in the Minister’s reply, she will acknowledge that a lot of views have been expressed by a lot of Members of this House on all sides and say that she will discuss this with her colleagues and see whether we can bring forward legislation faster and more strongly to deal with the way money is being funnelled in and to prosecute vigorously where this is carried out improperly.
That brings me to one or two other provisions of this Bill. I am strongly in favour of automatic voter registration. I listened carefully to the opposition spokesperson and others, and I can find no reasonable arguments for not having automatic voter registration. We want to encourage as many people to vote as possible, and that would certainly help. I am also in favour of votes at 16. As my noble friend Lord Macintosh pointed out, we have had it in Scotland for 10 years now. When we first introduced it, I went to talk to the 16 and 17 year-old pupils at Portobello High School. They understood the political issues better than most of the adults that I have spoken to about them. In fact, as my noble friend said, there was a 75% turnout in the referendum among people of that generation, compared with a much lower percentage of older people.
I am in favour of compulsory voting. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, spoke about Australia. Australia, Belgium and a number of countries in South America have it and the huge increase in participation from compulsory voting is astonishing. For those who do not like any of the candidates, we could put in the option, as they do in Nevada and one or two other places, “None of the above”. If voters do not like any of the candidates, they can choose that.
Finally, I say to the Liberal Democrats in particular, be very wary about changing the voting system. I know they keep going on about proportional representation, but look at some of the examples. Look at what happened in Scotland with the voting system we had there. It is so perverse. I got elected by mistake. I had to serve four years in the Scottish Parliament because I put my name on the list, having been told I would never get elected—and I got elected. I did not have a speech; I did not have any meetings; I did not put out any leaflets—and I got elected. Then a Green MSP got elected on this list, and they have not had any surgeries during the whole four-year period. So, be very careful before you change the voting system, and understand exactly what is going to happen.
I support this Bill, and I would go further. I say this to the Minister: there are a lot of people on this side—and indeed on other sides as well—who would prefer the Government to go even further and faster.