Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Welsh Forms) Order 2021

As I have explained, we are not removing the signature requirements completely. It is important that there should remain a democratic check and balance for candidates to demonstrate a degree of local support from electors in their area. These provisions will remain in force until 28 February 2022 to support candidates in any by-elections that may occur in the coming months as we emerge from the pandemic. The elections in May 2022 will automatically revert to the standard rules.

I am grateful to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for drawing this to the attention of the House. The committee considered that there are some points where the drafting of the instrument and its Explanatory Note could have been clearer in certain respects. We welcome the views of the committee and are particularly interested to note its thoughts on how best to assist readers in understanding which provisions in an instrument will apply to different parts of the UK. We consider that the instrument takes a proportionate approach to a temporary rule change which has been introduced to reduce the number of face-to-face contacts required in the pandemic. I am gratified to see that the committee has agreed with the response of the Cabinet Office to its request for a memorandum has provided additional clarity.

We consider that it is clear from the context of the order itself when and to which elections it applies. However, in order to further aid clarity and certainty, we have published a note on GOV.UK on the order and its effect, particularly on the numbers of signatures required, and to assist candidates, their supporters and those administering elections. This includes tables that set out the number of subscribers needed for candidates standing at combined authority and London mayoral elections in England, and elections of police and crime commissioners in England and Wales. As I have explained, these are polls where the election is for an area covering a number of local authority areas and the tables set out the total number of subscribers that candidates will need in these areas, and whether a specific number is required from each constituent authority or not.

I now turn to the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Welsh Forms) Order 2021, which I hope will be welcomed by your Lordships. It introduces a set of prescribed forms and forms of words translated into Welsh in respect of the range of other forms already in use, in English, at PCC elections. These are in addition to the Welsh versions of the ballot paper and nomination form for candidates that are already provided.

The form and forms of words prescribed by this instrument are for use in any police and crime commissioner election that takes place in Wales. The Welsh forms in the instrument cover various stages in the electoral process and include poll cards issued to electors, the postal voting statement completed by postal voters, the declaration to be made by the companion of a voter with disabilities, guidance for voters and forms completed by candidates and their agents.

Some forms are in Welsh only and others are bilingual, in Welsh and English. The forms that are prescribed in Welsh and English—for example, poll cards and postal voting statements—are to be used in the bilingual form in place of the English versions. Forms that are prescribed in Welsh only—for example, the candidate’s consent to nomination form and the candidate’s declaration as to election expenses—are to be made available in Welsh where the person completing the form, such as the candidate, prefers to communicate in Welsh rather than English. The order also provides a Welsh version of the forms of words setting out guidance for voters that appears in polling station voting compartments. The effect of the order is that the form of words appropriate to the number of candidates will be displayed.

We have consulted the Electoral Commission on the orders, and it is supportive of both. We have also had support for the changes to the nominations process from the Association of Electoral Administrators and in discussions with political party representatives via the Parliamentary Parties Panel. We also shared a draft of the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Welsh Forms) Order 2021 with the Welsh Language Advisory Group, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and officials in the Welsh Government. There is broad support among these stakeholders for the proposed changes set out in these two instruments.

Although relations between the Welsh and UK Governments on the running of elections are generally constructive, the fact that the PCC elections are happening on the same day as the Senedd election is problematic. The Welsh Government would have preferred to consider all-postal voting or to have early voting centres for the Senedd elections, but these were effectively ruled out because the Cabinet Office would not agree to them for the PCC elections. Can the Minister please say why? Was it because, like Donald Trump, who also opposed such measures for early postal voting to encourage turnout during the pandemic, they actually do not want to make it easy for people to vote? Is that the reason? I hope not, because it was clearly Trump’s reason.

Welsh Ministers are also pretty staggered that the UK Government have decided to permit not just leafleting but canvassing in England at a time when the advice is still to stay at home. Is it not extraordinary that we are saying to people, “You can’t see your loved ones but if someone pops up on your doorstep from the Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties, or Plaid Cymru, please have a chinwag with them”?

To be fair, the Cabinet Office Minister, Chloe Smith, has made it clear that this change to the guidance is for England only and does not apply to PCC elections in Wales in respect of canvassing and so forth, since campaigning rules are part of the devolved responsibility for public health. But, surely, it remains perverse that in England you cannot see your loved ones but you can see a political party representative on your doorstep. Perhaps the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord True, could enlighten us all about that in his reply. In the meantime, I am happy to support this order.

Throughout my time in Brussels, I saw my animating principle as being the diffusion, the decentralisation and the democratisation of power, which brings me to the debate before your Lordships today. I was given some advice before speaking. Somebody said that for your maiden speech you should pick an uncontroversial topic. He looked at me significantly, “You particularly, Hannan, should pick something uncontroversial.” I toyed with the idea of the Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill, which we are due to debate next week. However, I felt that, in the current mood, that was too much of a hot-button issue and I did not want tempers to run high, so I have confined myself to the debate on today’s statutory instrument, which, as my noble friend the Minister ably set out, is about varying the number of signatures needed for police and crime commissioner candidates and about the use of the ancient, exquisite and euphonic Welsh language, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, reminds us, is part of the glory of all of us in these islands.

Pericles, treated so often as a guru by the Prime Minister, said that great issues can arise from small questions. The issue of maintaining and strengthening local democratic control of police strikes me as a very great issue indeed. It is perfectly true, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, pointed out, that turnout for police and crime commissioner elections has been disappointing. I feel the loss perhaps more than some in this Chamber, having been a very early advocate of the idea. In 2005, I wrote a book calling for what I then wanted to call sheriffs. I thought it great to revive the shrievalty as an institution. Eventually, in a very watered-down form, that idea took shape as policy.

I always quarrelled with the name “police and crime commissioner”. First, it is very boring. Secondly, it is technically inaccurate, making it sound as if you are the person in charge of the crime as well as in charge of the police. Thirdly, the commissioner is the opposite of an elected person, being someone who is given a commission. I took this question up with the then Police Minister, now my noble friend Lord Herbert. He said: “The trouble is, we focus-group tested it, and nobody liked ‘sheriff’. It sounded too American, too John Wayne—posses and stars and so on.” If that is true, what a sad comment it is on the ahistoricism of our country. Where on earth do people think that their cousins got the idea, the name and the institution from, if not from here?

I hope that with time we can strengthen the office, giving it not only more control over the police, but, ideally, the right to set local sentencing guidelines, while not interfering in particular cases. The answer to low turnout is to give more power and more meaning to the act of casting a vote in that election. As a general principle, we should strengthen and not weaken local democracy and local accountability. Perhaps this country’s proudest boast, the greatest gift that we have given to the happiness of mankind, is the idea that laws should not be passed, nor taxes raised, except by people who are answerable and that the people who pass and enforce the laws are in some way accountable to the people who are expected to obey them. That principle applies at local as well as national level. How to strengthen the police and crime commissioners—how to strengthen the shrievalty—is beyond the matter of this debate and well above my pay grade, but I hope that noble Lords will see an advantage nationally to us in trying to move towards greater local democracy and towards more purpose, meaning and honour in the act of casting a vote locally.

In many ways, your Lordships are the nation’s institutional memory. This Chamber is a repository for the accumulated constitutional wisdom of centuries. That imposes a commensurate obligation on us to keep intact and to improve where possible the freedoms that we were privileged to inherit and to pass them on securely to our children.

It is fair to say that the institution of elected commissioners has been slow to gather active public participation, though it is growing, but it is salutary to remember how remote and unaccountable police authorities—and watch committees before them—were to the public prior to these commissioners. The police authority typically consisted of nine councillors. They had been elected, but not for the specific task of representing the public in supervising the police force. There were also eight lay independent members, chosen by the authority itself from a list vetted by the Home Office. In my experience, the result was a committee which was almost entirely captured by the police force that it was intended to supervise, so the force set its own priorities rather than having the public’s priorities indicated to it. I recall the contemptuous way in which police authorities—in an echo of the police themselves—rejected public calls for more bobbies on the beat. They were unaware of the evidence from other Anglo-Saxon countries—or, when they were made aware, they rejected it—that bobbies on the beat, particularly if they patrol as individuals rather than in pairs and therefore have to talk to members of the public rather than to their colleagues, can be extremely effective both in garnering information and in deterring crime. As a result of the contempt with which that idea was held in professional areas and upheld by police authorities, police on the beat became as rare as cats’ teeth.

This was always brought home to be when reading PG Wodehouse—which I do several times a year. In almost every novel, the hero will go out into the street and hail the nearest bobby. Now he would have to wait for months or weeks to do so in this country. I hope that the result of police commissioners will be to bring to police forces an awareness that the public value their services so much that they would like to see more of them.

It is confusing. I realise how it has come about: one decision is down to the Welsh Government and the other is down to the Westminster Parliament. I hope that the Government will publicise this issue sufficiently to ensure that there is complete clarification on young people’s rights well in advance so that they know they have only one vote. That will avoid any difficulty or embarrassment, particularly for polling officers.

Overall, I welcome the change and this statutory instrument. It has come about as a result of efforts from this House. I hope that, as a result of this and other changes in practice taking place between now and 6 May, the maximum number of people will feel able to participate in the elections, whether by post or in person.