Extracts from Parliamentary Proceedings - Oct 30
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Extract from Lords statement on Deaths in Police Custody The
Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford)
(Con):...The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, also asked why the Government
dropped plans to bring NHS commissioning into police
custody. Police and Crime Commissioners are well placed
to commission the most appropriate healthcare and forensic services
to meet the needs of their custody populations. The Government are
determined that PCCs should retain full...Request free trial
Extract from Lords
statement on Deaths in Police Custody
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con):...The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, also asked why the Government dropped plans to bring NHS commissioning into police custody. Police and Crime Commissioners are well placed to commission the most appropriate healthcare and forensic services to meet the needs of their custody populations. The Government are determined that PCCs should retain full flexibility to prioritise their resources according to those needs... To read all the exchanges, CLICK HERE Extract from Westminster Hall debate on Proportional Representation Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con):...In the referendum that has already been mentioned, the British people voted two to one to retain the status quo. Further, the Government who were elected only three months ago by almost 14 million voters stated clearly in their manifesto a policy to: “retain the first past the post system of voting for parliamentary elections and extend this system to police and crime commissioner and mayoral elections. ...It is also important to look at the domestic situation. In the police and crime commissioner elections in England, we have seen that those with less support still win. Lord Prescott, not someone I would usually champion, was a candidate in the 2012 elections for police and crime commissioner. He won the first round, but he was beaten in the second. It has been suggested that this is a partisan argument in support of the Conservative party and that is why we might be in favour of first past the post, but, although I was delighted that a Conservative candidate was elected, I must argue that that was a day on which John Prescott should have been elected, and a day when democracy was thwarted.The only purpose of other systems is to give candidates who were not popular enough to win a second chance to steal votes from those who did not want them to win. In all, eight Police and Crime Commissioners were elected without the popular support of the people in the first round in 2012, including in my county of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Only where two candidates stood, such as in Staffordshire and North Yorkshire, did voters have confidence that, through first past the post by default, the candidate who won would definitely hold the elected office... Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con):...On the question of decisiveness, we generally have decisive outcomes from first-past-the-post systems. In my South Thanet constituency I was very fortunate to receive 50.8% of the vote, so under first past the post, AV or supplementary vote I would still have won. That is true of many Members. AV, the system that was wholly rejected, has a “one, two, three” system, as hon. Members will be aware. Supplementary vote is seen in police and crime commissioner and mayoral elections. I stood for police and crime commissioner in 2012. Even after educating the public about what the two columns meant—“Vote for one, vote for two, or don’t use the second column and just use the first”—the number of spoilt ballot papers was truly exceptional. That is still true today in London elections. I do not know hon. Members’ experiences in their own constituencies, but the number of spoilt ballot papers in first past the post is vanishingly small, and I was alarmed to see the number of spoilt papers in mayoral elections. Dr Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): Why was there no attempt in the last Conservative manifesto, or the manifesto before that, to remove that form of election for Police and Crime Commissioners? Why has the Conservative party never tried to remove the list system for European elections?
Craig Mackinlay: As the hon.
Gentleman will be absolutely clear, the list system for European
parliamentary elections has been foisted on us, and is not one
that we would have chosen for ourselves... The first-past-the-post system is well established in the United Kingdom and easy for the electorate to understand. Consequently, elections using first past the post produce fewer rejected ballot papers than other systems, including proportional representation systems such as STV. According to the Electoral Commission, the use of the single transferable vote in the Scottish council elections led to 37,492 ballots being rejected, or 1.95%, a proportion of total ballots cast nearly six times higher than under first past the post in the 2015 general election, in which only 0.33% of ballots were rejected. In the 2016 election of the police and crime commissioner for England and Wales, a remarkable 311,000 ballots were rejected, out of a turnout of 8.8 million. That is 3.4%. In the same year, there were just 25,000 spoiled ballot papers in the EU referendum.... Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab): The Minister makes the point that the elections for the Police and Crime Commissioners had a higher proportion of spoilt ballot papers than a general election. If that is the case, perhaps the public are sending a message that they do not want to elect Police and Crime Commissioners in the first place? Chris Skidmore: That may be the hon. Lady’s view, but the Government’s view is that 311,000 spoilt ballot papers are a problem—we are looking at how the transfer of votes took place and a misnumbering in that system. The Electoral Commission also recognises that problem... To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE |