§ Baroness Elliot of HarwoodMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider revising the amount required as a deposit for candidates standing for parliamentary elections.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton)My Lords, we have no immediate plans to revise the amount of the deposit, but the Government keep this matter under review.
BaronessElliot of Harwood: My Lords, do the Government appreciate that in recent elections—and particularly in two recent by-elections—a number of candidates have stood who did not have a hope of getting any support of any kind at all, and that this is multiplying all the time? In the Hillhead by-election, in addition to the SDP/Liberal Alliance, Conservative, Labour, and SNP candidates, there was someone calling himself a Protestant Against the Papal Visit, and another calling himself a Social Democrat—who changed his name to cause confusion with the SDP/Alliance candidate—as well as an ecology candidate and a Public Safety candidate. Added to which, at the Mitcham and Morden by-election the other day there was in addition to the Conservative, SDP and Labour candidates a Co-operative candidate, a "White Monarchist", a "Computer Democrat", an Independent Liberal, and a candidate for the National Front. Surely this is making a farce of our electoral system. People will do this if all they have to pay is £150, which is what they had to pay in 1924. Ought we not to do something better than that, so that we do not get these candidates—I was going to say idiotic candidates, but perhaps that is too strong a term—who stand just for the publicity?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, my noble friend has produced a formidable list and I could do better by reading out the list of candidates for the Warrington by-election, where the Citizens' Band candidate scored 111 votes and the Prosperous Britain candidate—perhaps surprisingly—scored only 10 votes. As for a means of reducing the number of candidatures, this is a difficult issue. As I said in reply to a Question earlier this Session, the real value now of the £150 deposit is somewhere around £2,000 to £2,100. There are 635 seats for which major parties can put up candidates. If they contest a reasonable proportion, 522 this runs them into £1 million. Of course, some of them will get most of this money back, but not all.
§ Lord WigoderMy Lords, is it not a fact that in each of the last five by-elections in Great Britain, Her Majesty's Official Opposition has come third, and has it not lost its deposit on two of those five occasions? What is the justification in a democratic society for the state penalising the official Opposition for daring to fight a by-election?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, I think that gloating comes better from the Liberal Party than from the Government Front Bench.
§ Lord UnderhillMy Lords, would the Minister not agree that, while there is an anomaly with the present position, if one made the deposit too high, one could be hitting at democratic representation—and that that would literally upset at least one section of the Alliance, in the light of the number of deposits which they lost at the last election? But is this not far too serious a matter to be discussing in this sort of way, and have the Government any inclination either to call a Speaker's conference to deal with this and many other very important matters, or to recall the Electoral Advisory Committee?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, I would not go so far as the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, has suggested that I should. I have already said that the Government are keeping this issue under review. The noble Lord is quite right when he says that this is a serious matter. My interest was first misleadingly brought to the subject in 1963, with the candidature of someone calling himself "Screaming Lord Sutch" for Stratford upon Avon, and it is difficult not to deal with such matters in a spirit of levity.
§ Lord Mackie of BenshieWould the noble Lord the Minister not agree that this matter could be dealt with in a number of ways—for example, by insisting on a very much larger number of nominations without actually putting up the amount of money to such a degree that major parties might be embarrassed? It is a serious question and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, highlighted the fact that one candidate actually changed his name. I do believe that Government ought to be seriously considering this.
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, may I say again that the Government arc considering it, but they do not regard this as a matter for immediate action. As to increasing the number of subscribers to a candidature, I do not believe there is any difficulty in getting quite a large number of subscriptions to almost any candidature. I know that one person who has attended a great many by-elections merely goes to the top of the tallest tower of flats and works his way down as far as it is necessary to get the eight signatures. Presumably one would just go on to the next tower block if one needed more.
The Earl of HalsburyMy Lords, from the standpoint of party cash flow, which was raised by the noble 523 Lord, is a banker's guarantee acceptable in lieu of cash on deposit for this purpose?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, my recollection is that I had to turn up with the money held in my hand.
§ Lord RobbinsMy Lords, is not the device of indexing, which may be inappropriate in many parts of the economy, the answer to this problem, with a base date shortly after the Second World War?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, that is a useful thought, which I will bring to the attention of my right honourable friend.
§ Baroness Elliot of HarwoodMy Lords, I believe that in the United States of America candidates are not accepted unless they have a considerable number of supporters endorsing their candidature. I do not know how many are required but it is, perhaps, 100, before they are allowed to stand. Might not something of that kind also be considered in addition to raising the subscription? I should like to assure noble Lords, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, that I am in no sense trying to stop serious people from standing for Parliament. All I would like to do is to think that standing for Parliament is a serious matter. If one can do it on a ridiculous fee of £150, with nobody supporting one, it makes democracy farcical.
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, I have already taken on board the possibility of increasing the number of subscriptions, by which I mean signatures. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, raised that point, and I will certainly draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend. I think we should beware of shutting the door in the face of all new growth in the democratic process. Some of the new plants may be frivolous, but not all. We must have a reasonable threshold to allow small groups of people who have a genuine new philosophy with which to tackle our problems to prosper in the electoral field. In a democracy it is for the electors and not for the unelected House of Parliament to decide where the cut-off point should be.
§ Lord BeloffMy Lords, while agreeing with the Minister on that last point, may I ask whether there is not something in the point, made by two previous questioners, about the changing of names? It would be relatively easy to legislate that people should not stand for Parliament except under the name under which they have been known for, say, a year before the election. This is clearly not a serious method of propelling new forces into the political arena.
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, that is a matter which was raised earlier, and I do take it on board. Your Lordships will no doubt be familiar with the candidature of a Mr. Tarquin Biscuit-Barrel at Crosby in a recent by-election. In fact, his full name was registered as Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop-F'TangF'Tang-Ole-Biscuit-Barrel. I do not think that was a serious candidature.
§ Lord FerrierMy Lords, would not one of the remedies be to adopt the double ballot system of election?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, I think this is becoming something of a constitutional debate, and I would not wish to follow my noble friend into that point.
§ Lord LeatherlandMy Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, drew attention to many of the virtues of the presidential system, will the Minister please notify us that there is no intention on the part of the Government to introduce such a system here?
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, in this, at least, I am sure that the White Monarchist candidate would support me in saying that there is no intention of our turning to a presidential system of Government.