Electoral Registration

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Wills for initiating this debate about a very important aspect of our democracy. We take voting for granted in modern Britain and it is fundamental to our basic freedoms. We have, however, become rather sanguine about the downturn in voter turnout and casual about the ways in which the voting system is corrupted.

Vote-rigging is, in fact, much more widespread than some of our speakers have indicated, and there has perhaps been just too much complacency about the things that have gone wrong. It has been proven to have occurred in Birmingham, Slough, Peterborough, Reading, Bristol, Burnley, Blackburn, Halton, Guildford, Havant, Bradford and other towns and cities. The judge who presides over the Election Court, Mr Justice Mawrey, has much to say about the reasons why this has been taking place. In fact, he concluded in the 2004 Birmingham City Council case that the elections would have been a disgrace to a banana republic. I recommend to this House a booklet by Sam Buckley about the many cases that have taken place during the past decade and a bit.

I chaired the Power inquiry, and we looked at the reasons for the downturn in electoral turnout. One thing that we found was that the habit of voting was not being established in the young. When this was not established—certainly before people were 30—it was very unlikely, as used to be the case, that they would start voting once they had a family, a household and so on. Many people do not ever turn to it.

The recommendation before this House is that we introduce individual voter registration. I support this, but not as a sole response to problems. It should exist alongside the current system. It should be possible for somebody who somehow or other has failed to get their name on to the register to be prompted to do so—and to do so individually with much greater ease than is currently possible.

I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, when he says that he does not know households with a head. I think that now we would talk about heads of households where families take very different forms and where people may consider themselves, in marriages and partnerships, much more equal. What we want, however, is for one of the heads of a household to take responsibility for trying to get people’s names on to the register. I, like the noble Lord, believe that there should be a legal sanction, because if there is not, the seriousness of being on the register will not be accepted.

The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, raised the question of why there is some kind of discrepancy between here and Northern Ireland. It is, of course, because the long history of gerrymandering in Northern Ireland has made it a sensitive issue. However, it should be becoming more of a sensitive issue here, given the history of hearings before the Election Court that have taken place in the past decade.

The Representation of the People Act 2000 was introduced because of falling voter turnout. In the 1997 election, only 71 per cent of those who could vote turned out, and it was the lowest since the Second World War. That led to an inquiry and, in turn, to the legislation. We would now be thrilled if we could go back to those figures. In fact, over the past 14 years we have seen participation hovering at around 60 per cent, so we have seen a serious reduction. Therefore, despite the remedies that have been sought, we have not managed to improve things considerably.

We have expanded postal voting, but I am afraid that I still see it as the wrong solution to the wrong problem. It was a misidentified problem because politicians always want to believe that the reason people do not vote is because they are too busy, it is too complicated, they are too preoccupied or some other such reason, when in fact most of the time it is because people do not see the point in doing it. In conducting the Power inquiry, we found that people did not vote usually because they felt that it did not affect the outcome. They believed that lobbyists and vested interests had more power than they had, along with many other different reasons, but it was rarely because it was too difficult to go across the road or to find the voting station. Postal voting has operated successfully in some areas—certainly for those with infirmities, those who are living abroad or are going abroad for a period, and for other good reasons. However, removing a rationale for using a postal vote and making it available on demand has, I am afraid, expanded fraud.

We have to call it fraud and not just the word that was being used by my learned friend—malpractice. We have seen serious fraud taking place. The change to postal voting on demand was followed almost immediately by instances of fraud. Within a year, in local elections held in 2002, we had an instance of fraud where postal votes were being abused in local elections held in Birmingham. John Hemming, who is now an MP, showed that four fraudulent postal votes were cast in the Billesley ward, where the majority achieved by the candidate was three votes. We started seeing this happening with much greater frequency. I urge noble Lords to read the judgments of the Election Court. Of course, Birmingham in 2004 was the worst example. Some 70,000 postal votes were registered within days of the election, because you only have to register within five working days of an election and you do not have to give a reason. Suddenly, there was an inundation of applications for postal votes, 40,000 of which arrived within the marginal days of the deadline. In one ward, 8,241 people applied in the final days before the election. This is not about malpractice, mistakes or whatever; it is about crime and the stealing of elections, and it is a problem that we have to address if we take our democracy seriously.

I remind the House that some of the reluctance of people to register started with the poll tax. Noble Lords will remember that it was instilled in the minds of many people that being on a register to vote would affect other aspects of their lives and would have a financial impact on families. Lots of people did not want to register to vote. Until we have a secure and separate electoral register which people do not feel is going to impact on other aspects of their lives, we are going to see, particularly among the poorest in our society, people being unwilling to register.

However, what I really want us to consider is the business of postal voting because I think that it should be revisited. If we are going to look at ways of making our electoral system better, we have to revisit it. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires Governments to hold free elections that will,

“ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature”.

That is important whether it be for local elections, European elections or our general elections. In 2006, a motion was placed before the Council of Europe that there was enough fraud involved in the system of postal voting in the UK to make us fall foul of our duties under Article 3. I am afraid that we were criticised by the Council of Europe for the system that we have in operation, so it should be revisited.

I believe strongly in the democratic moment. I believe that going into the polling booth and putting your cross on the paper matters, and we have to instil the importance of that in new generations. As others have said, it is our birthright, and I do not think it should be treated like filling in a questionnaire or a consumer survey. If we want to look at registration, we have to look at it in the round of all the ways in which people come to vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wills, very much for giving us the opportunity to have this debate, which, as one or two noble Lords have remarked, was intended to take place in the other place some months ago. It is very good that we are now focusing on this important matter.

We are one of the very few countries left in the world that has a household basis for registration. I think it dates from the Reform Act 1867 and is possibly a little outdated by now. The case for moving from household to individual registration was in every party manifesto and is generally accepted. The question is how we do so while ensuring that we end up with as complete, accurate and trusted a register as possible. I wish to stress those three aspects as being very important. The register has to have integrity—it has to be trusted by everyone and must not be subject to too much fraud; it has to be as accurate as possible; and it has to be as complete as possible. Those three things are difficult to achieve together and the question of balance is always a very different one.

The system of registration also has to have the support and confidence—that is part of the question of integrity—of all those concerned. We now have the Electoral Commission as a non-partisan, trusted umpire for us all to listen to. The research paper that it has just produced has been a very valuable contribution to the debate. One of the things that it shows us is that we are not half as good in the current system as we thought we were. The current system does not itself provide full registration. It was not at 90 per cent, as the study in 2000 suggested. Last year’s study suggested that we are now down to between 82 and 85 per cent. We are right to ensure that when we move to the individual system we are at least as good as that.

Let us recognise that we are not necessarily losing vast numbers of people as we move from one system to another: we have already suffered to some extent from a range of social and other trends. We all need to recognise that one reason why electoral registration has fallen is that popular commitment to the electoral process has also fallen. Popular alienation or disengagement from politics is part of the problem, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said. All parties share a duty to respond to that disillusion rather than to concentrate on Westminster games.

I can assure everyone that the Government will listen to and read this debate. I will take back and discuss with others the question of a working party. I will certainly also include in that the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that, if we are to have a working party, it must include not just the beneficiaries of the current system—the two parties to which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, referred so frequently in his references to bipartisan agreement—but the wider group of those who do not support either of the two main parties. I remind noble Lords that in the last two elections the number of people voting for the two major parties slipped well below three-quarters and down towards two-thirds of those voting. In his rather uncharacteristically sour speech, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, was obviously hoping that we would go back to a two-party system. I think that that is one of the things least likely to happen in the future.

We all have partisan interests in this. We recognise that the Labour Party is deeply concerned about the boundary review. I heard—again, from the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—the argument that Labour represents the unrepresented and the unregistered. It is an interesting but untestable conclusion. The Conservatives are a little partisan in the assertion that the voting rights of overseas citizens are very important. This is another very large issue, and I simply remind the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, that the American system is that citizens abroad should all vote but should all also pay full tax on their global income—no representation without taxation. We will perhaps need to consider that issue in parallel with any extension of the rights of overseas voters. The Liberal Democrats, as noble Lords will know, are very concerned about the fairness of the current voting system—something about which the Labour Party has very mixed views.

We have to be concerned, above all, with the question of how we re-establish the trust of our voters and our citizens in the system that we have. The register is much less complete than it was, and we therefore need now to look at how we might improve it. There are some philosophical issues underlying this, such as questions of citizens’ responsibilities as well as their rights, how far the act of registration and the act of voting ought to be considered something which every citizen should do, the relationship between the individual citizen and the state, and the concept of civic duty. We all share a broad interest in addressing the extent to which our citizens now talk about rights but not sufficiently about responsibilities and seem to think that they may have contact with the state without having obligations, in return, to the state. One of the issues that we have been talking about in looking at data-matching with regard to the DWP database and others is how you might provide incentives. As people meet with their benefit office or apply for a driving licence, or whatever, you remind them that now is also the time to consider the other part—what you contribute to your public, national community as well as what you get out of your state.

We are looking carefully at the issue of compulsion. As noble Lords will be aware, at the moment it is not an offence not to be registered; it is an offence not to return the household registration form. To extend the compulsion to the act of registration itself would be extending the degree of compulsion. I hear very clearly what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said and I note that this is widely supported around the House. That is something that the Government will consider further.

To my great surprise, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said that this proposal had received very little scrutiny. It has received full pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government will provide a response to that very shortly, which will take us a degree forward. The Deputy Prime Minister has already responded to a number of concerns. This is an area where the Government are still listening. We all know that we have to have a dialogue about a new system which will command the support and trust of all those concerned.

The question of how far registration should be compulsory takes us on to the issue of nudge and whether we can push people without frightening them at the same time. Uncharacteristically for a deep liberal, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, wants to frighten people with large notices on the top of their forms. That may perhaps be necessary, as with cigarette smoking and other examples but, again, it is an area at which we need to look a little more. We do not see that moving to individual registration will necessarily lead to a net reduction in those on the register.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

Although we support individual registration, many of us are concerned about the young—the 18 year-old who is not in school. I very much support the idea of doing some work in schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggested, but what do you do about the poorest who are not in school and who therefore may not be registered? The provision on households helped, whereby it was the single-parent mother—or whoever’s name was on the lease—who put all the names on the registration form. How do we deal with that issue?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Government and the Electoral Commission are both looking at this. Regarding the question of where canvasses are concentrated and how far one looks at suggestions such as the need to supply postal addresses on envelopes, council tax bills and utility bills, other Governments have experimented with, for example, the need to provide utility bills. This is part of the issue of asking what relevant data one might be able to use to help to pick up, as the noble Baroness said, particularly those who are young and unmarried, who move much more often or who live in private rented accommodation—those who, as we all know, are in the vulnerable sector.

One thing that we have done is to publish draft legislative provisions to extend from 17 to 25 working days the timetable for registering to vote in parliamentary general elections. This will take effect in time for the intended 2015 general election. Part of the reason for that is that we have discovered a surge in late registrations once an election has been announced. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, remarked, once polling cards are sent out, people living in multi-occupancy accommodation sometimes think, “Oh dear, I didn’t get a polling card. I am not on the register, and I must register”. On the other hand, that of course opens opportunities for fraud, particularly regarding late applications for postal votes. Therefore, there has to be sufficient time for some checking of late applications in those terms. That is the game we are attempting to negotiate, so to speak.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, says that voting is rather old-fashioned in the electronic age and that we should be using much more modern technology. The Government propose to move towards electronic registration, but we are approaching somewhat more cautiously the issue of moving towards electronic voting. Once I had been briefed on cybercrime, cyberwarfare and the ease with which one can hack, I was a little less enthusiastic than I had been previously about moving immediately to electronic voting.

As to the problems of citizenship engagement, I have some sympathy with the preference of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for the democratic moment in which the majority of people—