HC Deb 15 June 1948 vol 452 cc359-64
Mr. Warbey (Luton)

I beg to move, in page 56, line 12, to leave out "that provided by," and to insert: the same throughout England and Wales and shall be fixed for each year by the Secretary of State in accordance with.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

We might take the next six Amendments together.

Mr. Warbey

The purpose of this and the following Amendments is to provide that local elections in England and Wales shall take place on the same day, on a day which, in the nature of the case, in order to ensure uniformity, must be appointed by the Secretary of State, and that that day should be a day related to the 9th day of April. The Clause, as it stands at present, provides that local elections shall be held partly in April and partly in May. County Council elections have been held in the second week in April in the year in which such elections occur and the remaining local elections have been held in the second week in May.

This Clause as drafted presents certain serious difficulties. The first is from the point of view of the electors. As it stands at present, the elector will be required in some years, of which next year will be one, to vote in two, or possibly even three, local elections during the short space of one month. First, he will be required to vote in the county council elections in April. Then, he will be required to vote perhaps in a borough council or a district council election in May. He may even be required to vote on one day of the week in May at a rural district council election and on another day of the week at a parish council election. I submit that to require an elector in the course of one month to present himself at the polling station on three different occasions is asking too much of people who, up to the present, unfortunately have not shown a great deal of interest in local elections. Possibly it will lead to confusion. Most certainly it will lead to laxity and apathy in the conduct of local elections.

Then there are two serious difficulties for the electoral organisation. It will be generally agreed that the party electoral organisations are based on the divisional party as a unit. Whatever elections are taking place, the work of organisation is conducted by the divisional party through its agent, through its paid and voluntary workers who are gathered together in a joint effort to conduct electioneering in any part of the constituency for any purpose. Therefore, the divisional electoral organisations will be required in the short space of one month to conduct an electioneering effort in relation to two, three or possibly even four, different polling days. That will lead to great complexity and will place an excessive burden on the organisation.

A further difficulty for the electoral organisation is that the provision of the Bill for gap of one month between the county council elections and the remaining local elections, is too long for a concentrated effort and too short to allow breathing space for the hard pressed workers, especially the voluntary workers who mainly rally to the cause of the Labour Party on such occasions. It will not allow sufficient breathing space to enable them to re-organise and make as substantial an effort in the second spell of elections as they make in the first. The gap is too short for some purposes and too long for others. One possible solution of that difficulty is to lengthen the time to a period of two or three months.

Then one faces the difficulty that it will involve either putting back the county council elections perhaps to March—and and I am sure that after the experience of the freeze up last year nobody will want that—or putting forward the remaining local elections to June and July and becoming involved, in rural and semi-rural constituencies, in haymaking and other farming activities. That is a time when election workers and electors spend the light evenings on their allotments and smallholdings.

9.15 p.m.

Therefore, the alternative solution which seems to overcome all the difficulties is that of closing the gap and having all the elections on one day. I submit that that has certain positive advantages. The first is that, if they are all held on one day early in Spring, we get the benefit of reasonably good weather. The second is that it will make both for good election organisation, which is a contribution to better elections, and for better polling on the part of the electors. It will mean that the electors who come along to vote in the borough council or district council elections, which they feel are perhaps nearer to them and to their interests, will also vote at the same time for the county council, and that will have the effect of livening up the interest in county council elections which has been one of the most unsatisfactory features of our local democracy in the past.

The Home Secretary, when he put forward the argument for this Clause on Second Reading, used only one argument in support of the proposal, and that was that all the local associations had asked for Spring elections during a time when they could hope for reasonably good weather. That condition is provided for in the Amendment I am now moving, and I therefore see no reason why it should not be accepted by the Home Secretary.

Mr. Goronwy Roberts (Caernarvonshire)

I beg to second the Amendment.

Mr. Ede

The subject-matter of this Amendment engaged my very careful and prolonged attention during the preparation of this Bill. If the choice were left to me without any other influence being brought to bear upon me, I should be in favour of reducing the number of days on which elections take place in any one area. In fact, I approached the parties and the local authorities' associations with that object in view. Both the parties and the associations took the view, however, that this was undesirable. There was a very strong feeling, for instance, that non-county borough councillors did not want their elections to take place at the same time as the county council elections. They had a feeling that on occasions it might involve them as appearing on the same ticket, though in different elections, with somebody with whom they would rather not be so closely associated.

When we came to consider the matter, we were also faced with this difficulty. The local authorities' associations were also very averse to their elections being brought on to the same day. At the present time, the county council and urban and rural council elections take place in every third year at about the interval that is prescribed by this Clause, except that they take place a month earlier. The county council elections, in every third year, take place about the 1st March—within seven days of the 1st March is, I think, actually the date prescribed—and the urban or rural council elections take place on a date which is fixed in relation to 6th April, so that approximately a month intervenes at the present time. Although I think some saving in energy might be made by bringing these two elections on to the same day, I do not think, in areas where there have been county and urban or rural council elections taking place, the difficulties that have been mentioned by my hon. Friend have, in fact, been created.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Warbey) goes further and wants all the elections in the country to take place on one day, to be fixed by the Secretary of State. I am bound to say I think that would be a proposition which would be very inconvenient for various parts of the country. The days selected, after very careful study of local habits in various parts of the country, themselves vary. Some people like to have their elections on a Saturday. I was brought up to believe that a Saturday election was best—that Saturday was the best day for the poll to take place. I understand that nowadays that view has rather altered and that, with the growth of professional football and other interests, people who used to like Saturday elections now fight shy of them.

There may still be some areas where Saturday elections might suit the convenience of most people. There was a peculiar provision in the Local Government Act, 1894 that the elections for urban and rural councils should take place on a Monday unless the county council fixed some other day. I am bound to say that in my experience, when that provision was actually worked so as to have the elections on a Monday, that day generally seemed to be the least convenient day of the week on which to have an election, but there may be some places where a Monday is regarded as the most suitable day. Personally, I think in this matter we must bow to the opinions of those who have to conduct the elections. On this question, those who are responsible for the organisation of the elections from the party point of view and those who are responsible for the organisation of the elections as returning officers, presiding officers and others, do not desire that these elections should be brought on to the same day.

There is one point which my hon. Friend mentioned to which I think I should draw attention. He said that rural district council elections and parish council elections might take place on different days. It is one of the things which I think, shows how common sense occasionally prevails in these matters—whether the creeping common sense we heard of earlier today from the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) or the more ordinary common sense—that rural district councils and parish council elections, although not required by statute to take place on the same day, in fact do take place on the same day. The date is fixed by the county council.

I suggest that in this question, although there are arguments on both sides, we cannot afford to neglect the experience of the people who conduct these elections, whether as promoters of candidates or as persons engaged in conducting the poll, preparing for the poll and declaring the results. I would suggest to my hon. Friends, therefore, that they should not press this Amendment.

Amendment negatived.