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Political Parties and Elections Bill

The amendment, which unites all the minority parties in this House, stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and other colleagues across the House, and it should also include signatures from the Democratic Unionist party. We, the minority parties of this House, are in effect and in fact the Governments of the different legislatures across the United Kingdom. The amendment is self-explanatory. We want the Electoral Commission, in regulating across the United Kingdom, to recognise the new reality of the UK in 2009: the multi-party, multi-legislature UK that we currently experience. It is no good for it simply to reflect this House—the old tired Westminster solution of the two main parties, with the Liberals acting as a sop for all the other minority parties. The amendments try to define that new system. Let us take a cursory look around the United Kingdom. In this House, we have a majority Labour Government; in Scotland, we have a minority SNP Government and in Wales and Northern Ireland, we have coalitions of different parties. Different parties are in power throughout the United Kingdom. In fact, the only two parties involved in this debate who are not in power anywhere in the UK are the Conservative and Liberal parties, yet they will have a political commissioner nominee for the new commission. That is totally unacceptable to us. If the Bill were just about this House, I would accept that what it proposed was the right way to proceed, given that we in the SNP are seven Members out of 646 Members of this House and all the minority parties combined amount to little more than 28 Members. If it were just about this House, having one political commissioner between the four parties would seem to be fair and reasonable, but the Electoral Commission has a remit beyond these green Benches. It serves all the legislatures, Parliaments and Assemblies throughout the United Kingdom, and the appointment of those political commissioners should adequately reflect and represent that. Let us look at the situation in Scotland a little more carefully. We are described as a minority party in this House, and I accept that with seven Members out of 646, that is the case. However, it is not the case in Scotland. We are the largest party in Scotland by seats and by votes. We are the Government of Scotland. If we look at the last two by-elections in Scotland, we find that Labour party won one—I see that the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) is in his place—and the SNP won one. The Conservatives narrowly held on to their deposit in one seat but lost it in the other. The Liberals lost both their deposits. Those parties are quickly becoming minority parties in Scotland, yet they will have a nominated political commissioner, who will be involved in regulating electoral law for the Scottish Parliament, while the party of Government in Scotland will not have such an appointee. That is clearly absurd, unfair and bizarre, and it is totally unacceptable to us. It is as if we were to say to the Labour party, ““Let's have politically nominated commissioners, but you can't have one.”” That would be totally unacceptable to the Minister and his colleagues. I would wager that it would be unacceptable to the Conservatives were they to be told, ““We're going to have politically nominated commissioners. The Labour party can have one, but sorry, Conservative party, you can't have one.”” I am sure that had the Labour and the Conservative parties been allowed to have politically nominated commissioners and the Liberal party had not, that would be totally unacceptable to the Liberals. They would be standing with me, full of indignation about what had been suggested. This debate is about fairness and what is right. I want to dispel the notion—we debated this in Committee at some length; I remember discussing it with the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), who I am sure is paying attention to everything that I am saying—that these politically nominated commissioners have nothing to do with the parties that are nominating them. What a lot of nonsense to suggest that they are somehow above politics and will be nominated by political parties only to give us the benefit of their experience and of their years in this House—““Aye, right””, as we say in Scotland. They are there as political nominees from those political parties, and they will have a role to play for those parties.