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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I draw attention to amendment (a) to amendment No. 48 that was tabled by me and my hon. Friends. I again recognise the work that has been done by the Government and those in the other place to seek the concessions that the Minister has mentioned for extending the time for changes to council elections. It is also appreciated that changes have been made that will make it less likely that we have ““Kellyshire”” or—dare I say it—““Healeyshire”” produced as an administrative change by Secretaries of State should local authority areas change their name. The provision should prevent something like that from happening. We appreciate the fact that the arguments have been listened to. We spent a long time on the first group of amendments so I shall save time by returning to the issues relating to moving the date of the local elections and tying them in with European parliamentary elections. The Minister has already considered that point, but he is entitled to an explanation as to why we have brought forward our proposal now when it was not considered in the other place a little while ago. Circumstances change and it cannot have escaped the notice of the House that choosing the date of an election is a stressful experience. In recent times, we have seen stress attached to a number of issues relating to elections. First, the Prime Minister seemed to suffer a great deal of angst about the date of a proposed general election. He spent much time briefing journalists and talking about it. Secondly, within the past 24 hours, we have considered the problems associated with the former Secretary of State for Scotland and his involvement in the electoral process in Scotland and the technical issues associated with that. The combination of those two things has given rise to concern in the minds of commentators and objective observers of the parliamentary and electoral scene, and it has been proposed that a Government should distance themselves as far as possible from the suggestion that the moving of election dates and the adjustment of election arrangements has anything to do with any potential party political advantage. That issue has become of much greater importance. Into that very new situation come the concerns of the Electoral Commission that have been communicated to us within the past 24 hours. It says:"““Although the Commission is generally content with clause 60, it believes that provision should be made on the face on the Bill that the Order moving the date of the elections must be made at least a year before it is due to take effect. Whilst the Commission welcomes Government's acceptance that a notice period is required,””—" that is a movement—"““as introduced through a Government amendment, we still believe that a full year is necessary.””" The Commission makes another point that is particularly significant in the current context and I offer it to the Minister as a branch to be grasped so that a Government can show distance between themselves and any potential hint of suspicion of party political advantage that I know that he would do his best to avoid. The commission says that it"““is concerned that even with a provision for a six month notice period, present or future Governments may be able to gain a perceived advantage by moving the date of the elections at a late stage. A change to the date of the elections at short notice may raise concerns from the public as well as political parties and candidates that such a decision was politically motivated. In turn, this could damage confidence in the democratic system.””" If those were my words and that was my argument, I grant that the Minister would do well to stand up and reject them and say that it was scaremongering on a grand scale. However, I put to him the context of the past 24 hours and of the past two to three weeks when decisions about elections have been so much in the public mind and it has even been suggested that opinion polls can sway a Prime Minister in making a decision about an election date. I know that that has been denied and rejected, so I cannot possibly make that argument from the Dispatch Box with any great conviction. However, the public perception could have been affected by the sense that party political motives could have come into consideration, so here is a cast-iron opportunity for the Minister and the Government to show how much has been learned. As a result of the Electoral Commission expressing doubt and concern about the six-month date, we quickly learned to revise the view that we put forward in the other place, which was that six months was about right. We have learned to take note of those concerns. If the time comes when we are in government and we need to use the provision that we are talking about, we would want to make sure that we stood well apart from the process, and that we were not contributing in any way to potential public suspicion that election dates might—forgive me for saying so—be chosen with party considerations in mind. We therefore accept the Electoral Commission's view that the Bill is an opportunity for us to create that distance. We have no doubt that the decision to bring two dates together may have practical advantages, and we do not reject that as a solution, but the amendment is a belt-and-braces job to make sure that the decision is not clouded by party political considerations.