Elections: Registration

Baroness McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness McDonagh]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the implications for the accuracy of the electoral register of the provisions of the White Paper on individual electoral registration.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, our intention in bringing in individual electoral registration is that the implications will be entirely beneficial. The Government are funding research to understand the current level of accuracy of the electoral register that will help us to understand better the way in which to move to individual electoral registration and what impact it will have. The Government remain absolutely committed to ensuring that the maximum number of people remain on the electoral register during the transition to individual registration and that the accuracy of the register is improved.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. I am slightly concerned when I read all the academics and psephologists on the subject, who believe that we are going to fall from best in class, from 92 per cent accuracy to the low 60s. Would the Minister be even slightly concerned if that were the outcome? Would our society be becoming bigger or smaller?

[Lord McNally]

I would be extremely concerned if that was the outcome. Let us remember that the party opposite, when it was in government, started to raise the issue of individual registration—and even passed legislation—because, for the first time certainly in my lifetime, the integrity of the voting system was starting to be called into question. That is the origin of the exercise that we are undertaking, on which I hope we will have all-party support.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McDonagh]

I see the issue in a rather different way. It is part and parcel of our long march to democracy. I take as a starting point the situation 537 years ago, with the enfranchisement of some men on a property basis. We talk of the Great Reform Act 1832, where we enfranchised only some 14 per cent of men. The great reforming Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, represented a rotten borough that was bought for him on his birthday at the age of 21. It was only in 1918 that we allowed all men over 21 to vote, due to our embarrassment from the First World War, when people fought and died but were not allowed to vote.

The first voices on the enfranchisement of women were heard in the mid-1800s. Disraeli wrote the novel Sybil and began to talk about votes for women. It was not until 1885 that the women’s suffragette movement started. However, it was not until 1928 that all women were able to vote on the same basis as men. I suppose that my sisters in this House have to think ourselves lucky that we were not French, because it was not until 1945 that women in France could vote.

We set ourselves up as a paragon of democracy that the rest of the world can look to. When we look back, we have actually taken quite a long time to come here. It was only in the last century that we started to look at age. It was only some 40 years ago, in 1969, that all 18 year-olds were allowed to vote. I look around the Chamber and I do not wish to be disparaging to anyone, but that happened probably within all our lifetimes.

Various noble Lords have talked about why 16 year- olds should be brought into the franchise because they can, for example, leave school, work full-time, pay tax, serve in the Armed Forces, and so on. However, we are at a unique point in our history dealing with serious issues that affect only this age group, including, for example, tuition fees. This issue is a huge departure and is not about a contribution to student fees, which were brought in by the previous Labour Government, but is about a Government who are wholly standing back from contributing to teaching in universities. We are in a wholly different situation which relates to an issue that will be faced uniquely by this age group. That has never happened before.

Look at today’s announcement on the education maintenance allowance. We hear a lot from the Government about how everything they do is progressive. Even though outside bodies always fail to agree, the Government say they want to be fair and to help those who find it hardest. Getting rid of the education maintenance allowance will hit the poorest members of our society. Issues such as these are unique to that age group. We have a choice as to whether we bring people into democracy and let them have a say about the big issues of the day.

The Electoral Commission has carried out much research in this area. It shows how 15 to 17 year-olds are much more interested and likely to vote than their older contemporaries. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, said he was 22 before he voted. If the voting age remains at 18, someone’s first vote is likely to be cast when they are between the ages of 18 and 24, rather than near their 18th birthday, depending on when there is an election. It looks like members of that age group are more likely to vote. I personally feel—and research bears this out—that if you vote in your first election when you are young, you gain a habit of voting and vote throughout your life. I think that the whole House would want to join me in agreeing with that.

Another social impact is that when young people are 18, they are now much more likely to move away from home to university than they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago. They are not given the same parental guidance that perhaps we were at that age when we were taken to the polling station to vote. Something struck me for the first time on polling day in the 1997 general election—and I have been active in politics since 1978. It came home to me that that was the first election, after the previous four general elections, when more than 50 per cent of first-time voters voted. I was very pleased to be out of Millbank Tower for the first day in many months. When I was knocking on doors and talking to young voters in the streets, I discovered that it was not older people who needed help getting to polling stations, but first-time voters, who asked, “Where do I go? How do I vote?”. I was struck by the number of people who were not sure of the practicalities, whether they had to pass a test, or whether they should vote electronically. A younger person will be given more parental guidance and be told that voting is a right of passage as they grow older.

For those reasons, allowing 16 to 18 year-olds to vote for the first time in this referendum will be a positive good.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I have been persuaded to make only two brief points, encouraged by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Newton. I am always slightly nervous about suggesting that I am an agnostic on a subject, but as he has given me courage, I shall begin by saying that my instinct on this is one of agnosticism. I am not sure whether I have been helped or hindered by listening to the debate and hearing what I thought were two weak arguments—one on each side of the debate.

For those who favour votes at 16, I found the argument that there was an intense interest in different forms of electoral systems among 16 and 17 year-olds very unconvincing. I acknowledge that there is tremendous interest in issues such as those to which my noble friend referred—student fees and the like, and, over the years, in bigger issues such as war and peace—but, please, not in different electoral systems. If such interest exists, it is in a parallel universe to the one that I have inhabited. I have found hardly any adults who are interested in different electoral systems, let alone people aged 16 and 17. I used to think that I understood electoral systems but, having listened to nearly all of the debates so far in the Committee stage of the Bill, I have become more confused as the debates have gone on. I did not realise that there were three types of alternative vote systems and I certainly could not answer in two sentences how the d’Hondt system operates. I find it an unconvincing argument that there is a clamour for votes at 16 and 17 on electoral systems.

However, I find it equally unconvincing to challenge the right of people to vote at 16 and 17 on the basis that they are not yet well enough informed. I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lord Desai that it is a dangerous path to tread to say that there should be a test of someone’s knowledge, ability and awareness before giving them the right to vote; it should be a universal right. We all acknowledge that there has to be a dividing line somewhere on the grounds of age—at least I assume we all acknowledge that—but excluding someone simply on the ground that they do not understand the issues is a weak argument. I have been frank with the House and explained that I do not fully understand the d’Hondt system and yet I shall be voting with enthusiasm when the referendum takes place. So, faced with two weak arguments, one on each side of the debate, what does an agnostic do?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

On the practical objections, I could almost refer to the opening three or four lines of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, when he summed up my arguments perfectly. We are determined that this Bill will not be a Christmas tree. It is a simple Bill in its objectives of fair votes on fair boundaries. That is what we are aiming to achieve.

One interesting thing was that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, raised the issue of using the national insurance database to register all 16 year-olds. Almost as an example of how this Government are thinking about the broader issues involved, we are running data-matching pilots next year and we will be looking at how we can use the wider government database to get more people on the register. As the Minister responsible for data protection, I would like to see some of the implications of that. That is why some of these things cannot be rushed.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I wanted to give one point of information. To date, all voters in the UK are registered from the point when they are 16 years and three months. Would the Minister agree that that is why it is important to retain household registration and not move to individual registration? As I am on my feet, I shall ask a second question. Given that the noble Lord thinks that it is not right for this Bill to reduce the voting age to 16, does he have any intention to bring forward another Bill?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McDonagh]

I start by declaring an interest; I have been a professional election organiser since my teens, I was general secretary of the Labour Party and I am still proud to be a grass-roots activist, so I am really passionate about what I do. I also know that many Members of this House, from all political parties, are passionate about working in the community and on elections, so I was excited to see this Bill coming through and to see whether it would meet the new challenges that I feel we face in this century: those of apathy, exclusion and isolation. I not only read the Bill but looked at everyone’s speeches on why they were introducing it. I can only come to a few conclusions.

First, this Bill is actually built on a complete and utter falsehood. We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Maples, articulating it this evening. It is that the Conservatives need more votes to win elections than Labour, because Labour has small seats and the Conservatives have big seats. That is completely untrue. It is true that Labour needs fewer votes than the Conservatives to win an election, but for this reason only: Conservative voters tend to be—not exclusively, but tend to be—older and wealthier and more likely to be managerial, to be homeowners, to be a stable population, to be well educated and to have gone to university. Labour voters are likely to be poorer, to have more problems with literacy or language, to be younger, to be in insecure accommodation, to have to move and to be on minimum-waged jobs. That mobility and all those reasons lead to Labour voters being less likely to vote than Conservative voters, so what happens is that you win Labour seats not proportionately but on fewer votes than in Conservative seats. That is a geodemographic fact.

I will let the House into a secret. It is not a fact just in the UK; it is a fact all around the world that those who are poorer, more mobile and less well educated are less likely to vote than people who are better educated, wealthier, older and more established. This can easily be sorted out. We heard it tonight and we heard the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, agree with it yesterday. I call upon the noble Lord to write to the House and show statistically that the case is that Labour gets elected because it has smaller seats than the Conservatives.

If the whole of the legislation is based on a false premise, another problem with it is that it impacts the whole basis of democracy in the United Kingdom. The basis of our democracy has always been one small and simple rule: that Members of Parliament represent a community of interest. They have always done that. This Bill says, “There is no such thing as community”. This is a very dangerous path to follow. I say to your Lordships: I have always believed in society and I am glad that all parties now believe in it, but I also believe in community and I think that nearly everyone in this House believes in it.

There is one little thing to think about. When walking around this—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Is the noble Baroness aware that, of the factors which the Bill prescribes must be taken into account by a Boundary Commission, the third are,

“local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies”.

What are local ties if not community?

[Baroness McDonagh]

Exactly—but to create those local ties you have to be able to build from a local government ward and to recognise natural boundaries, county boundaries and other boundaries. That cannot just be put into the Bill without allowing those people whose responsibility it is to be able to draw communities; you are going to break wards.

I was about to explain that when I see noble Lords taking people around the House, or when I hear them at a dinner, it does not take visitors very long to ask them about their title. Every time, somebody has a story about when they went along to Garter and how they got their title. The reason for that is that it is about a community that they believed in. Having listened and looked—and I have seen a few people this evening—I do not believe that this House shares the Bill’s view of community. By the time it comes back for its next stage, I would hope that your Lordships will have been able to talk to your counterparts in the other place and will bring back amendments that recognise clear county boundaries, local government wards and natural boundaries.

We can all see that there are a few anomalies, but they are not there because somebody in the past has had a narrow, sectional interest. Let us take Wales for an example; by the way, Scotland is not a good example because Labour-held Scottish seats are large. In legislation, it says that you cannot reduce the number of seats in Wales to under 35. A previous Government did that because one of the constituencies would have ended up being a quarter of the size of Wales. They thought that was ridiculous; now, who was that Government? Was it Labour? No—it was in a parliamentary Act of 1986 and it was the then Conservative Government who recognised that there were proper boundaries and communities of interest. If a 1980s Conservative Government recognise that, it seems strange that this Government cannot.

It is not only the coalition that gets some of these things wrong. My own party, for example, got the issue of individual registration wrong. The Bill would be a fantastic place to bring it back and ensure that there was household registration. Some 3.5 million people are already under-registered, and now there are cuts of 28 per cent to local government. I hope that the Government will come back and explain—this was not answered properly yesterday—what advice is being given to registration officers about this, when it is now so important.

I was out knocking on doors last week, doing registration. I went to a small home, a lady came to the door and I showed her the names on the register. There were three adults. It looked like a busy household so I said to her, “Is everyone in your household registered? Everyone needs to be registered from the age of 16 and three months upwards”. She looked at the floor. I said, “Look, if they’re not, I’ve got a form here and I’m happy to help register the people who aren’t registered”. She started to give me the names of all the other adults who were not registered. I got up to six additional people. I was getting on with her, so I said, “Why didn’t you put these people’s names down when you sent in the original form?”. She said, “I was ashamed that so many of us had to live in one home”.

That is a problem for many people in our community. There is a need for registration. I do not think that the coalition Government really appreciate how much they are going to alienate people with this legislation. Having said that my own party got this wrong, I ask that the coalition Government to look at this issue again.

I also do not understand—this keeps getting asked, but I do not understand what the answer is—why this has to be done so quickly. No one seems to have answered that although it is such an important issue. I cannot understand why the Government would not want to consult; there are so many people who could bring improvements to the Bill. Apart from anything else, this legislation is actually very badly written. It has to be interpreted by many other people. The Government will have to table a serious number of amendments to the Bill just to make it understandable.

We are so privileged to be here in the home of democracy, when so many people before us fought the fight to get the vote and were able to establish Parliament in such a way that we could be a role model for the rest of the world. I do not know what any of them would think if they were looking at our legislation now. While our ancestors fought for the vote, our fight is against apathy, isolation and exclusion. Does anyone here think the current legislation meets any of those tests? Does anyone think that a young person starting out would feel included by this legislation and that it would speak to them? The legislation seeks to exclude. It divides our nation and damages our society.

I have one other thing to say to the Conservative Party. I have heard many of its statements, and it must be a great disappointment for it not to have been able to get an overall majority at the general election, but the Conservative Party was not robbed. It was not tricked out of its majority. What happened is that the public were fearful to give the Conservative Party a majority because they were worried that it would introduce sectional-interest legislation and that it would seek to divide. This legislation shows them that they were right to be worried.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend was just addressing her remarks to the Conservative Party, but has she noticed that there is not a single Member of that party present in the Chamber?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

I would be quite happy with that. It is Liberal Democrat policy to lower the voting age. I think I have said enough for tonight.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I do not know why the noble Lord is shouting at us. Holding a referendum on the alternative vote was in the Labour manifesto.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

It was, so I will continue shouting until the Labour Party admits that it was in its manifesto and that it will vote for the Bill and, when the time comes, vote positively in the AV referendum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McDonagh]

With respect to the noble Lord, his argument does not hold together intellectually. He is chastising us for a first past the post system when this party had in its manifesto a referendum on the alternative vote. He is repeating a falsehood: that the current make-up of constituencies leads to Labour getting elected on fewer votes than the Conservatives. It is not true. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is back because I asked earlier if he would send around to the House the psephological evidence that that is the case, because it is not. Yet the noble Lords keep repeating this falsehood.

[Lord McNally]

All that I am repeating is the cold fact that 36 per cent of the vote delivered Labour an overall majority of 66. That is the only point I am making. As for the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, we have had this debate before. First, 93 per cent on a register is not a bad outcome. Anybody—and by God, I can see so many ex-party apparatchiks around this place and I am one as well, so—