Impartiality

8. To ask the hon. Member for City of Chester, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, if the Committee will make an assessment of the impartiality of the Electoral Commission.

The Commission is statutorily accountable to the Speaker’s Committee for the economical, efficient and effective discharge of its functions. The Committee scrutinises the Commission’s financial, operational and strategic planning on an ongoing basis. Yesterday, it took evidence from the Commission in public on its annual estimate and five-year corporate plan. As of yesterday, the Committee has no plans to make an assessment, and the Commission has impartiality.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s response. This week the former Speaker of the House of Commons got his comeuppance for being mean and unfair to a number of people, by bullying them and by using his power. The Electoral Commission was also mean and unfair to a number of people, by using its power to bully them. Mr Speaker, you have changed the position of the Speaker, and it is widely regarded across the House that you are fair and impartial. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the new chair of the Electoral Commission can get the same widespread support for the impartiality and fairness of that Commission?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He is a regular attender and participant in these question times. I was part of the panel that appointed the current chair, and his appointment was endorsed unanimously by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. There is confidence that he understands the challenges that the hon. Gentleman, and others, have laid down for the Commission to meet. The Commission will also soon have a new chief executive, and I am little concerned that the hon. Gentleman should not look at the Speaker’s Commission a bit like Trigger looked at his broom in “Only Fools and Horses”. It has a new chair, a new chief executive, and it largely has completely new commissioners. They all understand the challenges that are laid down, and I hope that they will rise to them.