Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Bates Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who has great experience in this whole area, having seen it work successfully in Northern Ireland in nine elections, I think he said. That should give us some confidence that we are on the right lines. We are all taking about how we can reduce the likelihood or the perception of fraud while increasing the level of participation in the democratic process. That is the circle we are trying to square. It may not be possible, but this is an unfolding process.

I was slightly disappointed to hear the tone of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, in his lengthy remarks on this subject because I feel that we are continuing something that was begun under the previous Government in the Political Parties and Elections Act, which they brought forward. With a little bit of encouragement from the opposition parties, they came forward with the idea of having individual electoral registration. That was seen as being absolutely right and proper. We are debating the timeframe over which that is introduced, but the actual idea is beyond dispute. On that point mention was made by Mr Harper in the debate in the other place on the report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe when describing the voting system in the United Kingdom. He said that.

“the weakest link of the electoral process [is] due to the absence of safeguards against fictitious registrations”.—[Official Report, 23/05/12; col. 1177.]

In many ways, that backs up the fact that there is a problem that we need to address. Again I was slightly disappointed by the tone in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, because I felt that the Government have brought this forward in a responsible way. They had evidence-based analysis undertaken by the Electoral Commission on which to draw conclusions. They subjected the Bill to pre-legislative scrutiny, for which we in this House are always arguing. Indeed, there had been an excellent report by the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, chaired by Mr Graham Allen, which came forward with a number of suggestions, but did not entirely endorse the approach.

At Second Reading in the other place, Mr Mark Harper made quite a lengthy speech in his opening remarks. One of the reasons for that was that he announced four or five substantial changes to the Bill to take account of the concerns that were being made. There is much to be welcomed in the Bill as it stands. Some people will be surprised that these things do not happen already. The idea that we are going to do data matching between different government departments to check that the data held are the same—that is, that the data held at the DWP are the same as that held at the DVLA—would be greeted by most people with, “We kind of thought you probably would be doing that already”. The fact that it was not and that it now is has to be welcomed.

I think that the provision could go a lot further. We live in a world where we are used to having to produce utility bills and driving licences as proof of ID for the most menial of purchases in stores. However, having left your electoral registration card at home, you can wander into a polling booth to cast a vote in a general election and just point to your name on the electoral register, be given a ballot paper and be able to go into a booth to fill it in and cast a vote. People might find that rather strange, but perhaps that debate is for another time. We certainly want to reduce fraud.

Again I refer to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wills. It is not easy, but you cannot argue that not taking action over suspected fraud is justified because you believe that action might result in a decrease in the number of people registering. A decrease in the number would not necessarily be a bad thing if the wrong people were on the list in the first place. In 2001, the Electoral Commission estimated that the number of eligible people missing from the register was 3 million, and in 2010 that figure had risen to around 6 million. There is therefore a problem to be addressed.

I defer to my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking on virtually all matters, but as regards lengthening the election campaign period, I would be happy to see it increased to 25 days simply because I think that allows a longer period. Fixed-term Parliaments will also strengthen the ability to increase awareness. I think that 25 days is the same length of time that was given to local elections. We are simply coming into line and into the 21st century, so I am quite comfortable about that.

It would be good if in the wind-up speech the Minister could comment briefly on civil penalties and say whether there will be nationally set rates or whether there will be some local discretion along the lines of parking fines. If it is to be a national thing, the idea that there will be some locally set rate as to what that penalty should be would seem a little odd. The reason we want to do this is because it is relevant not just for voting in the elections, but for jury service. There are substantial penalties for not turning up for jury service and there are substantial penalties if you do not complete your self-assessment tax return, so the fact that there should not be any penalties for not registering to vote seems to me to be an argument which, let us say, is not the strongest.

Postal voting is a very interesting area. I totally support the idea that we should move from a 20% sample testing to a 100% test against verification. But that will result in a sizeable increase. If the figures produced by the Library in a very helpful guide or companion to this debate are correct, they would suggest that of a 20% sample about 150,000 ballot papers were rejected. If one extrapolates that—it could be wrong—and if you go to a 100% test. you might get 750,000 cases where the signatures do not match or where the dates are not connected. If national insurance numbers and identifiers within that are required, the potential for that number to increase goes up significantly. People will be advised after the election that they did not qualify. It will be a useful, if bureaucratic, process, but it would be an awful lot more helpful if somebody could tell them before that happened. The figure for postal ballots at the previous election was 7 million, and there were 150,000 spoilt ballots. The overall total was about 3.8%. It would be helpful if in winding up the Minister would comment on whether that level of spoilt ballot papers in postal votes is higher than normal for votes cast in the polling both. That would be interesting to know.

I have two ideas to increase the number of people on the register. One has already been referred to, so I shall not spend a great deal of time on it, other than to say that the fact that we have only about 25,000 or 30,000 overseas voters on the register is a real weakness of our current system. It would be great to see that figure of 4.5 million increased to 5 million. My son is at university overseas, and I know that registering from overseas is a very bureaucratic process. You have to go back to the place where you lived, track down the electoral register and work from there. I do not see why we do not have an office for overseas voters where people could register online to claim their vote. If people think that that might be a horrific prospect, I find it strange that we are able to fill in our tax returns, which is pretty confidential, online through the Government Gateway and, I think, make some benefits claims. Why should people not be able to make greater use of registering online, particularly as this Bill extends that?

My final comment relates to how we extend participation, particularly among the young. We all recognise that that is a problem. A provision in the Bill talks about the Electoral Commission undertaking a publicity and awareness campaign. Even the idea of a publicity and awareness campaign and the Electoral Commission coming together is causing most people to drift off to sleep. The idea that it is going to excite young people seems pretty unlikely. I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench, who I know is deeply sympathetic on all these matters, to look at innovative ways to increase the number of young people voting and perhaps to look at other countries, for example, the US, to see how they have tried to do that. I viewed a message online that was headed by Tom Cruise and included various major stars and celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Justin Timberlake. All these widely known names were used to get the message across.

We could use social networking sites to promote awareness of voting and the importance of voting. I think the Minister knows where I am going with this because we have had conversations before about “The X Factor”. I think it is an interesting concept, not least because Simon Cowell, with his commercial and artistic genius, managed to generate 15 million votes in the final programme of the last series. That was more than the turnout in the local or European elections. It might just be that, in the process of consulting people about how to increase participation among young people, you could do worse than consult Simon Cowell to see whether he can put a bit of X factor into our voting system.