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My Lords, over the last year Parliament has debated, agreed and decided that the voting system for mayors and police and crime commissioners should be changed to the supplementary voting system, or SV, through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent in April. I remember fondly the debates noble Lords had on the matter during the passage of that legislation. Therefore, I am sure that some of the points I will go on to set out in relation to SV will be familiar to noble Lords in the Chamber today. The SV system was used when the positions of elected mayors and police and crime commissioners were first established decades ago. The Government believe that it is the most appropriate voting system for single executive offices, where it is essential that the individual has a broad mandate from their electorate.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act contains the main measures required to change the voting system used for these types of elections, and these will be commenced in due course. However, there are also a number of other changes that must be made to the election conduct rules via secondary legislation to fully enable the use of SV: for example, updating the images on ballot papers to allow a voter to select multiple preferences, updating guidance to electors, and updating the procedures used at the count should there be a second round of counting.
As stated during passage of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, the Government’s intention was to implement the change to SV for any mayoral or PCC election taking place after the scheduled May elections this year. This order has been drafted to be concise, so it will make only the necessary additional amendments to enable SV to be used for both combined authority and combined county authority mayors, including those who exercise police and crime commissioner powers. The order will therefore not make amendments with regards to local authority mayors, the Mayor of London, or police and crime commissioner elections. Further legislation will be brought forward for those in due course.
Turning to the timings for implementation, this order will make the change to SV for any combined authority or combined county authority mayoral election for which notice is given on or after the date this order comes into force. As this is a reversion to the original voting system used for mayoral elections, the SV process will be familiar to both administrators and electors. Implementing these changes will therefore be straightforward, and we are confident that returning officers will be able to make the necessary changes.
I now turn to the content of the instrument. The conduct rules for elections of combined authority and combined county authority mayors are set out in the Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) Order 2017. This order will make a number of amendments to the 2017 order. As we have discussed already, the SV system was that used when combined authority mayors were first established, so these changes are largely reverting the 2017 order back to its original drafting. The Electoral Commission has been formally consulted on these changes and has raised no objections. Articles 3, 4 and 5 of this instrument will amend Schedules 1, 2 and 3 to the 2017 order respectively. They set out the conduct rules for these mayoral elections, both when the poll is a standalone poll and when the poll at a mayoral election is combined with the poll at another type of election or referendum.
The amendments will update the guidance given to voters in polling stations to reflect that they now have the option to select a second preference. They will also update the various processes involved in counting the votes, to reflect that a second round of counting may be required. They also make a number of consequential amendments throughout the conduct rules, to ensure that references to votes refer to first and/or second preference votes, as appropriate.
Schedules 1 and 2 to this instrument contain updated statutory electoral forms. Schedule 1 sets out the forms in respect of a stand-alone mayoral election, and Schedule 2 sets out the forms where a mayoral election is combined with another type of election or referendum.
There are two types of forms that require updating to enable SV. The first is the ballot paper; a new ballot paper image is provided in this instrument to allow voters to select both a first and second preference of candidates. The instrument also contains the ballot paper to be used where there are only two candidates running, as in that scenario, voters are not given the choice to select a second preference, and the poll reverts to a simple majority voting system. The second is the postal voting statement; this contains guidance to postal voters, so this instrument provides a new postal voting statement form that will inform the voter that they may select both a first and second preference where there are three or more candidates running.
To conclude, these are straightforward changes necessary to implement a change set out in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act. I hope that the House will join me in supporting this instrument, and I look forward to answering any questions that noble Lords might have. I beg to move.
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My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introductory comments, and I shall return to one or two of the points that she made in a moment. It is worth being honest in relation to election changes. In every party, when they make election law changes, they may hide it in one form or another, but, over their shoulder, they are looking at how they are going to benefit from any particular change, and that is worth acknowledging. In this case, the speed with which this order has been brought forward is striking. One has to ask the question: why on earth is it being brought forward at this stage, particularly because, as the Minister said, the legislation has just been passed, having received Royal Assent in April? She also went on to say that:
“Further legislation will be brought forward”
for other matters
“in due course”.
Every single debate in which I have participated on election law in the last decade has included a request to simplify the whole process of elections law, and to not make it more complicated. There has been persistent reference to the Law Commission, its original report, and further changes thereafter. What do we have here? It is an admission by the Minister that we are debating one thing this evening, but at some unspecified stage, further legislation will be brought forward. Why? The answer is quite simple: it is because the Labour Party has got itself into an almighty mess in the north-west. There is a by-election in Makerfield on Thursday, and there is the possibility of a by-election for the Greater Manchester mayoralty thereafter, at a cost—although the Government refuse to identify the actual figure—probably of around £5 million, to solve their problems. That is the first issue.
Let us be honest about this order. It is not normal to identify who would be affected by a particular change of law, but this order is an attempt to prevent Reform winning the possible Greater Manchester mayoralty by-election. It would be better titled “Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Stop Reform Winning the Greater Manchester Mayoralty) Order 2026”, because that is what it comes down to. There is no other justification for the haste with which this order has been introduced, other than that it solves the Labour Party’s problems and prevents Reform winning a mayoralty. It does not do British democracy well when the position is as blatant as that—nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise, the order could have waited until all the different changes necessary could be introduced in one go, at one time, in the near future.
I want to comment on one other element of this order, and that is the impact assessment. All changes in legislation have an impact; some are smaller than others. The Minister is right that we are reverting to a system that operated previously. Therefore, there should be relatively small changes, but they are changes none the less. It has been quite a few years since this system was introduced, and there will be many polling station officers, returning officers and people asked to administer the whole process who are new to this. A necessary set of changes will result in training courses. As the Minister identified, notices will be different and understanding will be different.
I cannot believe that when this is introduced, the Electoral Commission will not expect to provide guidance to the voters of Greater Manchester on how they will now vote, as against how they did last time. Although the costs in the impact assessment are relatively small, it is not correct to say that there will be no or virtually no cost. It is appropriate that we should be told what the cost is and what the total cost of a Greater Manchester by-election would be, as the Labour Party tries to get itself out of a mess of its own making.
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My Lords, I concur 100% with the comments from my noble friend Lord Hayward. I am going to take this statutory instrument at face value and discuss the issues that it raises on the alternative vote and first past the post. As noble Lords will know, when proportional representation was tested with the electorate in 2011—in this case, the alternative vote referendum—it was lost by a margin of 68% to 32%.
Noteworthy in the statutory instrument is the paucity of intellectual rationale for why the changes are happening. I agree with my noble friend: it looks like a cynical stitch-up to avoid embarrassment in the combined boroughs of Greater Manchester. But it also potentially looks like a strategy for a progressive alliance being rolled out in the run-up to a general election—for instance, with the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats—with the stated or probably unstated aim of locking out the Conservatives and Reform UK from power.
First past the post is simple and fair, and Conservatives have always supported it. It ensures proper representation and broad campaigning by parties, rather than policies targeted on a subset of voters. It is simple and transparent. Even in a disaggregated, fragmented political landscape, it is still stable and effective at delivering governance. One person secures the plurality of votes and that is transparent. As it happens, almost 100 Labour MPs have been elected in the other place with less than 35% of the votes. So if it is good enough for this Government’s majority in the other place, it is good enough for our elections generally.
In 2016, the Home Affairs Select Committee recommended that first past the post was best to replace the supplementary vote in police and crime commissioner elections. SV causes confusion and leads to a lot of spoiled and rejected ballots. The Electoral Commission, in its September 2021 report on the 2021 elections, noted:
“A quarter of people who had difficulties filling in their ballot paper in areas holding both local government and PCC elections said it was confusing that the elections used different voting systems. A third of people voting in London said that they found the two voting systems confusing”.
In fact, the rejection rate in the London mayoralty election in 2021 was 114,201 ballots, of which 87,000 were because voters cast a vote for more than one candidate in the first-preference column; 265,353 votes were invalidated because the second preference was cast for the same candidate as the first; and 319,978 second preferences were unmarked. These void rates exceeded the votes validly transferred to the two leading candidates: Mr Khan got 192,000 votes, and Mr Shaun Bailey—now the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington—got 85,000 transfers.