AUDIT OF PAYMENTS TO RETURNING OFFICERS (No. 2) (Hansard, 21 February 1991)

§ Dr. John Marek (Wrexham)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
As a result of the preceding vote, I fear that if hon. Members speak at length on Government business, the Whips will have to do some telephoning around to make sure that they get to bed at a reasonable hour. However, the Bill is not very contentious. I hope that the Government will see some sense in the new clauses and amendments which we have tabled and which we shall debate. If the Government are willing to help, I have no intention of keeping the House a moment longer than is necessary.
New clause 2 is a scrutiny clause to ensure that the House can be satisfied that any expenses and charges paid to returning officers are properly audited. The Bill removes the maximum that can be paid under certain headings to acting returning officers and returning officers for parliamentary elections. Where the maximum is not available, the House must have some form of scrutiny to check that money which has been spent has been spent reasonably. We made some progress on that in Committee. I congratulate the Government because it is clear that if any hon. Member wishes to put down a question relating to his or a nearby constituency about what was spent at a parliamentary election, the Treasury is happy to give the answer under the precise headings given in the regulations detailing expenses.
However, we need to know more—scrutiny is only the first part. The House will want to know that the sums have been audited and are reasonable expenses or charges. There is a general duty on the National Audit Office to examine anything spent from the Consolidated Fund. I do not know in how much detail the National Audit Office examines the accounts of acting returning officers and returning officers. It may examine them closely, but I doubt it. I think it plucks out one account and examines it. That is a well-known strategem which may work. But there is no harm in spending time examining in detail accounts rendered by acting returning officers as general elections do not happen very frequently. In the past 10 years we have had elections about every four years.
531 I shall give some reasons why the accounts should be rendered. The Government supplied every Committee member with examples of the highest and lowest expenditure for each sub-head at the 1987 general election. The list is not exhaustive and I shall list the details provided. Under heading B5, returning officers' travelling overnight subsistence expenses can be claimed. The highest claim of £264.58 was made by the acting returning officer at Cirencester and Tewkesbury. No claims were made from Harlow.
10.15 pm
I imagine that, in some constituencies, acting returning officers would need to have overnight subsistence and travelling expenses but not, surely, in Cirencester and Tewkesbury. That does not mean that I think the claim was improper—I do not know. I might have expected it from a large constituency such as Ceredigion and Pembroke, North, but where the constituency is compact, I raise my eyebrows at such a figure. Why should the claim for Cirencester and Tewkesbury be £264.58 when no money is spent in Harlow?
Section B6 provides for presiding officers' and poll clerks' subsistence expenses. The highest figure in the 1987 election was in the constituency of Tatton, where the Consolidated Fund was debited £2,756.25. But in Preston constituency, which is not far away, no claim was made against the Consolidated Fund. Does that mean that the acting returning officer was not looking after his staff and not providing them with subsistence expenses so that they had to bring their own sandwiches, whereas in Tatton Harrods hampers and bottles of champagne were delivered? I do not know. I am merely asking the question, which is not one into which I or any hon. Member would specifically want to inquire. However, it should be considered by the National Audit Office, and the new clause seeks to provide for that.
For clerical assistants' subsistence expenses, the highest claim came from Tottenham—£707.15. No claim was made in Gelding. For printing and providing ballot papers, the claim in Berkshire, East was £2,780.70. In Copeland it was only £609.50. That difference might be explained by different methods of printing, or perhaps Copeland has its own printing press whereas Berkshire, East has not. An explanation should be given, or at least we should be satisfied that the National Audit Office has gone into the matter accurately and that, in its view, the figures for Berkshire, East and Copeland are acceptable. I do not know whether the NAO looks into the figures or simply picks a few at random from the 650 constituencies.
Printing and providing poll cards in Stroud cost £3,803 whereas in Fylde it cost only £101.1. While the constituencies are not greatly different in size, that was a huge differential in costs and claims made against the Consolidated Fund.
For printing notices about the election, in Staffordshire, South-East it cost £2,744.34, whereas in Canterbury one might think that the returning officer did not want his constituents to know about the elections because he claimed only £56. For renting rooms for electoral purposes, the cost in Hornsey and Wood Green was £6,709.15 whereas in Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale the claim was only £536.61.
The cost of adapting and fitting rooms in Hornsey and Wood Green was £27,067.94, whereas Banbury claimed only £50. One might have thought that Hornsey and 532 Wood Green would have built some new classrooms on the strength of the Consolidated Fund or at least redone the local committee chambers. I would hope that that figure was spotted by the NAO and certified as being reasonable.
I repeat that I am not casting doubts on the reasonableness of any of the figures. I hope that the Economic Secretary can assure us that, when the figures appear high, questions are asked to ensure that they are reasonable.
For repairing and providing ballot boxes, the claim was £1,984.30 in Falmouth and Camborne and nil in Gelding.

§ Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham)
Will the hon. Gentleman please explain the relevance of Gelding as opposed to Gedling?

§ Dr. Marek
I am referring to Gelding, not Gedling.

§ Mr. Arnold
If the hon. Gentleman feels that Gelding is so important, will he say where it is?

§ Dr. Marek
I dare say it is somewhere in England. Being a Welsh Member, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not knowing precisely where it is. If it turns out to be Gedling, he will have to address his strictures to the Economic Secretary because I am reading from a Treasury paper. Should it be Gedling—I still do not know where it is, though it must be somewhere in the south-east of England—I compliment it on making a nil claim for the second time.
It was stated in Committee that the claim in Slough for transporting ballot boxes and ballot papers was £4,079.86, while at the other end of the scale, in Alyn and Deeside, it was £1.27. What happened there? Did the returning officer tell the presiding officers at the polling stations, "You must pack up the ballot boxes when you have finished with them?"

§ Sir William Clark (Croydon, South)
Really!

§ Dr. Marek
These are important matters. I should have thought that the right hon. Member for Croydon, South (Sir W. Clark), who has taken part in many Finance Bill debates, would not wish to gloss over significant variations in figures and would want to know why such differences occurred.
Slough spent £4,079.86, whereas Alyn and Deeside spent £1.27. Fylde spent £573.38 on stamping instruments, but Calder Valley spent £2.47. In Halton, no charge for copies of the electoral register was made against the Consolidated Fund, whereas in Harwich £140 was spent. We should not capriciously debit the Consolidated Fund. If it is debited, it should be for a good purpose. Finally. miscellaneous expenses——

§ Mr. Jacques Arnold
Is this final?

§ Dr. Marek
It is the final matter in the list, but it is not the end of my speech.
Slough had miscellaneous expenses of £9,656.83, whereas Halton spent £22.42. It seems that some constituencies carefully husband their resources, but I do not suggest that they should do so at the expense of providing comfortable working conditions for staff and convenience for the electors. I have not been to Slough, but perhaps it is a dangerous place and it may be necessary to engage taxis to take staff home at night. Plainly, Alyn and 533 Deeside is not a dangerous place because the returning officer there feels that there is no risk in transporting ballot boxes.
There are wide variations in the list, and they cannot be explained by saying that constituencies are diverse. There must be another explanation; and if there is, it must be unusual and must relate to circumstances that arise at a particular time. The National Audit Office should look at individual expenses to make sure that they are reasonable. [ Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) has just entered the Chamber, so I now have some support.
The clause is tightly drawn because we do not want to put the National Audit Office under great pressure. It asks that the National Audit Office should look at any payments relating to a service or expense of any specified description for which no maximum recoverable amount has been specified by the Treasury under subsection (3) of section 29 of this Act … "— that is, the Representation of the People Act 1983. The Bill makes changes to the 1983 Act and the new clause is sensible and sober. It does not ask for much, and I look forward to the Government's acceptance of it.

§ The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Maples)
The hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) made an interesting speech. I cannot explain all the differences in the expenses that he outlined. He mentioned transport costs. I think that in Alyn and Deeside the ballot boxes must have been taken on the bus; and, clearly, in urban constituencies some people are not willing to work late at night unless taxis are provided to take them home. The fitting out of election rooms often occurs because local authorities have become increasingly reluctant to disrupt schools for a whole day. That means that other premises have to be found, rented and fitted out.
The present system of checking expenses is that no payment can be made from the Consolidated Fund without the approval of the National Audit Office and the Treasury. That is a statutory requirement. The National Audit Office also audits the Consolidated Fund. We think that that scrutiny is adequate.
If the new clause were incorporated in the Bill, it would cause considerable administrative problems. Fewer than 50 per cent. of the expenditure headings would have maxima attached to them, meaning that about 20 expenditure headings would be subject to the procedure set out in this clause, multiplied by 650 constituencies. We are talking about a lot of specific checks and information.
The Government's view is that it would be expensive to administer, involving a lot of extra work, which would be difficult to justify, and the publishing of much information which, I suspect, eventually, nobody would read. Additionally, there would be a delay of between one and two years. As there is a general election only every four or five years, the work on checking those expenses and details is spread out over a year or two, and the information, if it were published, would necessarily be published somewhat late.
I have made it clear to the hon. Gentleman in Committee that, should any hon. Member wish to know the details of the expenditure in any constituency, this 534 could be achieved by tabling a parliamentary question. The hon. Gentleman did that in respect of his own constituency.
If the functions were transferred under this Bill from the Treasury to the Home Departments, which is a possibility envisaged by clause 1(4) of the Bill, the system would change slightly; payments under these regulations would be administered by the Home Departments, so what would be transferred from the Consolidated Fund would be blocks of money rather than payments of specific headings of expense. Those could be transferred only with the approval of the National Audit Office and the Treasury, but individual payments to constituencies would be made by the Home Departments concerned which would be responsible for checking the individual payments, subject to later audit by the NAO. This is the usual system of public expenditure control.
The National Audit Office is responsible to Parliament for producing accounts for these Departments and for the Consolidated Fund. The Public Accounts Committee could look into these activities if it wanted to.
I hope that I have succeeded in persuading the House that adding this clause to the Bill would cause administrative delays, and would serve no useful purpose and that existing scrutiny is adequate.

§ Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Question on the new clause was put twice. On the first occasion only aye was shouted, so why was the Question put again?

§ Sir Geoffrey Finsberg (Hampstead and Highgate)
Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did not follow the loud example of Opposition Members by shouting. I said no.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)
That dispute had better be resolved by hon. Members.