Anders Hanson

As a member of The National Trust, I recently received my magazine and with it the voting papers for its internal elections and Annual General Meeting. I suspect the majority of members simply throw these away. I used to, until I realised how many issues on which they were voting were areas where I had an opinion.

What is intriguing though is the way they encourage people to vote the ‘right way’. For the election to the National Trust Council (the organisation’s governing body) they helpfully put in bold the names of the people they want you to vote for. If this was proposed for public elections it would be considered highly corrupt and the election would be heavily criticised as neither free nor fair.

I suppose we should be grateful for some progress. They used to have a system that allowed the chairman of the National Trust to have a block vote by being proxy for all those National Trust members who couldn’t be bothered to choose between the candidates. Indeed, in the past the National Trust actually ensured that some of those people elected by the popular vote, were then unelected by making sure they used the block vote to vote for their preferred candidates.

I have noticed today that Chris Patten also raised concerns about it in the House of Lords back in 2001! He said:

The complaint, in brief, is that the National Trust council turns out a list of those standing for election, putting an asterisk next to the names of those whom it favours. If those people do not get enough votes directly cast…the block vote is used by the National Trust to get them home and dry even though they do not have a majority of the popular vote as expressed by those present in the hall and those exercising their undoubted and proper right to vote by post…At the 2000 annual general meeting, a motion against the block voting system was proposed and seconded by two QCs…and supported by 10 silks in all. The motion was supported by a majority of the direct votes of those present and those who had filled in their postal ballots, but then—yes, you have guessed it, my Lords—that vote against the block vote was promptly overturned by the use of the block vote.

However, although this bit of corruption has now been scrapped in favour of more gentle persuasion, (thanks to criticism by the Charity Commission rather than some sudden democratic conversion), it still exists in elections for choosing what they call the ‘Council’s Appointing Bodies’. In effect, those organisations like conservation charities and countryside lobby groups, that are deemed to be interested in the work of the Trust and so deserve to be represented in their decision-making.

As much as I am a supporter of what The National Trust does, and was a volunteer with the Trust for five years, they seem to have a decision-making process that foreign dictators would be proud of. If you consider that The National Trust is both a charity with 3 million members and is also one of the biggest landowners in the country, this should really be a bigger scandal. Alas, arcane voting systems are not something that excites either journalists or the public. So instead I have had my own mini-protest by only voting for candidates who are not recommended by the council. It will probably make no difference, but at least I have expressed my view.

Just a quick chance for some smugness. Having read this from Iain Dale at the Tory party conference:

The security vetting has stretched to day three. Over 2,000 people have had the conference ruined by a security procedure that amounts to little more than window dressing - no terrorist applies for a pass

and this from Labour:

TONY Blair’s last Labour Party conference as Prime Minister was marred at the start by chaos as hundreds of journalists and delegates queued for up to three hours waiting to get their official passes to the Manchester city centre gathering.

Did you get similar stories from the Liberal Democrat conference? No. So that is the entire reason for my smugness. I worked on registration at the party’s Brighton conference, and for the first time ever we never had a queue that was in more than double figures.

I accept that the security procedures for Liberal Democrat conference may be somewhat less than those for the other two parties, although even the Lib Dems have stepped up what they do. But the major improvement has been in getting badges to people well before they arrive at conference, which is what seems to have gone wrong for the other two. Mind you, as Iain Dale points out, a conference pass is not going to stop a terrorist. Although it could stop other troublemakers, which the Lib Dems could attract just as much as the others.

IAIN DALE’S DIARY: A Message from the queue

MANCHESTER ONLINE: Hacks hacked off by conference queue