Fire and Rescue Services

Debate between Lord Beamish and John Hemming

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Bayley. I will try to do my speech in about six minutes, depending on interventions of course. I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) on securing this debate, but particular congratulations should go to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) for his excellent work in what is a cross-party campaign. Although there may not be many Government Members here, that is merely because the metropolitan areas are primarily represented by Opposition Members, so one therefore presumes that the proportion of people here is much the same on both sides of the Chamber.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Possibly the reason why many Conservatives are not here is that they have actually looked after their authorities through the formula funding.

[John Hemming]

My point was in relation to the proportion of people in metropolitan areas, not in proportion to the number of Members.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and John Hemming

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I would rather he had not made it, because I had intended to say that and now he has mentioned it first. I think that technology has facilitated recording in polling stations. Making that recording available would be the best sort of change, because it would not record which way people vote.

I had started to talk about the Greek situation, where transparent ballot boxes are used, which, in terms of transparency, are better than black boxes. In Cheetham Hill ward in Manchester in 2003 a ballot box went astray for about an hour and a half after the end of polling. Obviously that is a good opportunity for ballot box-stuffing, as people can put a few extra votes in the ballot box as they drive around Manchester. There are a number of advantages with the filming process. If someone is personating, we would see who it is, which in a sense is the better challenge.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s example, but surely if someone stuffs extra ballots into a ballot box the number of ballots in it would not tally with the number issued at the polling station.

[John Hemming]

What happens is that basically they mark off extra votes on the marked register, so it is not difficult.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but that is not what they do; they mark off the marked register, but there is also the counter stub with the number on, which is then tallied with the number of votes issued. I think that what the hon. Gentleman suggests would be very difficult for someone to do unless they also had control of the book of ballot forms.

[John Hemming]

We have experience in Birmingham of identified presiding officers campaigning for the Labour party in the polling station. In Hodge Hill ward, for instance, the presiding officer was handing out poll cards to the Labour agent, which is a criminal offence, and I reported it to the chief executive at the time. In one polling station the poll cards were given to the Labour party. It cannot be assumed that just because people are presiding officers—I accept that there are two people there—they suddenly become perfect people who behave exactly as we would wish them to. If we had enough activists and we could put polling agents in each polling station for all the hours of the poll and monitor what was going on, that would not be such a problem.

[Mr Jones]

I find it remarkable that the hon. Gentleman opened his speech by saying that electoral fraud, of which I think there are a tiny number of cases, affects all parties, because he seems to be very partisan in using examples only from the Labour party. Is he really suggesting that polling agents and people who work in polling stations are involved in fraud, because in my opinion that is not the case? There is a danger in what he is suggesting, because if we put in agents from some parties they could intimidate the polling clerks.

[John Hemming]

Under election law, putting in polling agents is already allowed; that is not a change to the law.

[Mr Jones]

Well, that can be done, but what is being suggested is that they would somehow have a role in interfering with the polling agents. I am sorry, but I think that would be a dangerous move.

[John Hemming]

I have two little points to make on that. First, I said that all parties have people who are responsible for election fraud but in Birmingham we have tended to find problems with the Labour party, so I am tending to talk about the Labour party. Secondly, with regard to polling agents, that is the current law. If the hon. Gentleman does not know the current law, that is life. The current law allows people to appoint both counting agents and polling agents. Most people do not appoint polling agents but in Birmingham, because of the large amount of personation that tends to go on, we appoint polling agents in some wards when we can manage it. I have sent to the presiding officer, with evidence, examples of presiding agents who attempted to persuade people to vote for the Labour party in the Soho ward in Birmingham. There would have been other election petitions in 2004 on the basis of those particular issues had it not been for the fact that running one election petition is a major challenge and running two would be a bigger challenge, so much so that we had legal assistance on the second one.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming]

Paragraph 717 of the Mawrey judgment, which I quoted earlier, deals with the hon. Gentleman’s point. These are probing amendments. However, we do need systems to detect and prevent personation, and according to Mr Justice Mawrey, we do not have them.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

This has been a fascinating debate. In my view, one of the weaknesses of the new clause is that it calls for action but does not outline what should happen.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that the number of cases of fraud in this country is small. Overall, we have a very good electoral system. In the Electoral Commission’s report after its voting pilots of the early 2000s, it found that the incidence of fraud was quite small, but, as we know, concentrated in certain communities, whether Asian communities in big cities such as Birmingham, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) represents, or those in other areas such as Bradford and Tower Hamlets, where the Liberal Democrats do not have a fantastic record. We must therefore be careful not to get this out of proportion.

I am worried about some of the hon. Gentleman’s suggested measures to detect fraud, which would be completely out of proportion to the problem that is being addressed. Having seen his performances in this House over the past few years, I am not surprised that the police chose the name Operation Gripe. Making scattergun accusations such as those he made today is not very helpful, either to the police or to the real debate about electoral fraud.

The hon. Gentleman proposes to extend these measures to candidates and polling agents. In Durham, political parties do appoint polling agents, but their role is very clearly defined. They cannot interfere with the issuing of ballot papers. They can ask people for their numbers, but many, rightly, do not give them. They may be asked for the number of people who have voted, and will be happy to give that. If polling agents were able to sit over the polling clerks, as he suggests, that would be wrong because it might intimidate them. The polling clerks I have dealt with in the many elections in which I have been either an agent or a candidate are very professional individuals. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence of a polling clerk issuing ballot papers incorrectly, then he must provide it. He should not throw it out in such a casual manner as he has today. I would be very uncomfortable with polling agents taking on the role that he suggests in sitting over the clerks when they are doing their job.

I accept that the hon. Gentleman’s community is very different from the one that I represent, but I find it strange that voters take other people into the polling station to vote. In my experience of the elections in which I have been an agent or a candidate, if someone arrives who is infirm or needs assistance, the polling clerk will take them into the voting booth to assist in pointing out the names of the candidates. I have never known polling clerks allow a relative, or a candidate or representative of a political party, to go with somebody into the voting booth. The message is the quality and rigour of the polling clerks, who, in my experience, are professional individuals who know what the rules are.

In Durham, when polling clerks take numbers at polling stations, it is made clear that they must sit way outside the balloting area—if it is a school, usually in a corridor; if it is a community hall, usually outside—so that they cannot in any way interfere with the process. I have sometimes taken infirm people to vote. The usual procedure is to take them to the door and indicate to the clerk, who will take over from there so that we do not get involved in the process.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, the hon. Gentleman is doing us a disservice in perpetuating the myth that electoral fraud is a huge problem in general, because it is not. I accept that it is a huge problem in certain areas, and the people involved should be dealt with properly.

I find it strange that a Liberal Democrat has such a schizophrenic attitude towards CCTV given that the Liberal Democrats pride themselves on saying that CCTV is against civil liberties. I would not want any recording device in polling stations, because the ballot is private. No matter how many assurances people were given, they would fear that a CCTV camera was recording or indicating which way they had voted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I am—

[John Hemming]

As I said, I think that it creates an emotional attachment, but I do not think that it is a good solution.

[Mr Jones]

It might have been only a suggestion but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, why not stick the ink on people’s noses? Why not brand people? I am sorry, but that is not the way in which the electoral system operates in this country.

[Mr Jones]

Having known my hon. Friend for many years, I know his sense of humour and will take his comment in that spirit. I certainly would not support electors having to have their fingers, noses or any other part of their anatomy dipped to show that they had voted.

I think that robust training for polling clerks is important. The safeguards are already there. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spoke about police officers at polling stations. That is a good idea where there are problems. If there are problems in certain wards, as hon. Members think there are, the Bill allows for community support officers to take that role. That is a good move because it will free up police resources. The mechanisms are there to ensure that the ballot is run fairly.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made the accusation that somebody was giving out polling cards to the Labour party. His speech was interesting in that he said that the problem affects all parties, but did not name one case that involved his party, when we know that the Liberal Democrats have been at this on an industrial scale in parts of the country. If he has evidence of polling cards being given out, he should report it. The only problem comes if he bombards the police with 50-odd minor complaints. In that case, even I would consider him an irritant.

[John Hemming]

I did report that problem—it was called Operation Gripe.

[Mr Jones]

I am not being funny, but if somebody turns themselves into a serial complainer, I can understand why an authority would start to ignore some of the complaints. The hon. Gentleman would be better off concentrating on specific cases on which he has hard evidence, rather than throwing complaints around like confetti, which is not helpful.

The other thing that will help the process is individual registration, which will ensure that the register is as up-to-date as possible. I reiterate that elections in this country are largely run fairly and correctly. We should keep reinforcing that message. When we had the pilots for all-postal and e-mail voting elections in the early 2000s, the report from the Electoral Commission was very positive. A council by-election in my area achieved a 67% turnout. If the number of votes cast is increased, the effect of minor fraud is diminished, so getting turnout up is important.

I accept that the constituency that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley represents is very different from mine, and that there are communities that engage in electoral fraud. The effort should be made in those places, rather than there being a scatter-gun approach. I therefore see no reason for the new clauses. They are quite weak, because they do not prescribe what the action would be. They are not well thought out.

Finally, we should praise the many local returning officers and council chief executives who work very hard and are scrupulous in running elections.