A government loss of real significance

By Chris Bryant MP / @ChrisBryantMP

With all the talk of Russian spies and blue language invading Westminster yesterday, you could be forgiven for missing what might just prove to be an event of major constitutional significance. Since the government have set about rigging a majority for themselves in the house of Lords by appointing a host of golden cronies, defeats on their legislation may soon be a thing of the past but last night, with the help of 42 crossbenchers and 3 Tories, good policy and process arguments triumphed over the government’s heavy-handed whips.

Their Lordships were discussing the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill yesterday evening – more precisely, the proposals to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote system. The government wants the referendum to take place on 5th May 2011, so that it coincides with local government, mayoral and devolved assembly polls that are taking place across the nations that day. This is the only way they the Tories could persuade their own backbenchers to support it; by drowning the Yes to AV campaign in a sea of party leaflets and election messages that will flood through letterboxes throughout April. The educational message would be lost, and so too would the cause of electoral reform for a generation.

Throughout the debates on the Bill in the commons, Labour’s arguments about the proper way to go about constitutional reform fell on deaf ears. The government defeated amendment after amendment despite constitutional experts telling them that a referendum on the same day as other elections would lose the attention of the voters, the devolved governments saying that they had not been consulted about the 5th May and oppose the date, and the chair of the Electoral Commission pleading for at least six months to prepare for the vote. We are now less than 6 months away from May and the Bill is just over half the way through parliament. Still the devolved assemblies have not been consulted.

But last night, the crossbenchers listened to our arguments, recognised the government’s proposals as a political fix, and supported an amendment to allow the referendum to take place on any day up to 31st October. Unfortunately we were unable to go one step further and set out in the Bill that the referendum cannot take place on the same day as another election, though these debates will carry on into Report Stage. We will need the crossbenchers to continue in such an open mindset as we approach other major issues in the Bill, not least boundary changes and the public inquiry process.

The truth is that this Bill, together with the Fixed term parliaments, which the government haven’t dared to send to the Lords yet, is part of a nakedly partisan attempt to rig the constitution in the interests of this particular coalition. It would be better described as the Parliamentary Cement (Coalition) Bill. It’s not ad hominem legislation, but it certainly is ad administrationem.

I hope the Lords also overturn the abolition of public inquiries, the partisan slashing of the numbers of MPs and the slavishly mathematical drawing up of boundaries without any consideration of geography or of political or cultural bonds.

It’s clear there is no love lost for these measures in the commons. If there had been a free vote none of it would have gone through, so I hope the government heard the message from the Lords last night and decides not to force major constitutional reform through ping-pong without consensus.