Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has said, with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and with the very eloquent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. The Minister said that the House of Commons had given a view on this, but it is perfectly reasonable and normal for us to ask it to think a second time on issues where we believe that there is a very strong public interest, particularly constitutional issues, since we are a constitutional safeguard. There are not many others in our system. One is the courts, and we have heard from a former Lord Chief Justice, who also spoke extremely eloquently about the composition of the Boundary Commissions. When a former Lord Chief Justice raises concerns about possible gerrymandering of the Boundary Commissions, we should take note.

For all the reasons that have been given so far, the issue of engagement of young people in our democratic system is fundamental. It is not a peripheral issue for the future of this country, and it is all the more fundamental because of the current evidence of massive underregistration of young people. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, spoke with great passion about how ethnic minority groups are even more underrepresented than young people at large. The evidence is that in the 2017 election, only 64%—not even two-thirds—of 18 to 24 year-olds were even on the electoral register, so the rest were not even able to participate unless they went through the laborious process of registering themselves during the election. Many would then have missed the deadline, and I had not even thought about the very powerful point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that if they are not on the electoral register, they are not available for jury service either. All these attributes of citizenship, which are fundamental to the future of our democracy, they are not engaged in.

Only 64% being registered is a huge condemnation of the status quo. The Minister cannot say that the system works and therefore, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The system is fundamentally broken, and not because of changes that go back a long time and which are hard to tackle but because of the introduction of individual registration, a reform introduced only six years ago, and which was itself, in respect of young people, unnecessary because, as the second aspect of this amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, referred to, makes clear, we know who all the 16 year- olds in the country are. It is not a mystery. They all get a national insurance card. The state thinks that it is important for them to be registered for taxation, but not to be registered to vote. These are fundamental issues, and if we have any role in our constitutional development as a country, we should be drawing them further to the attention of the House of Commons, and we should certainly be putting on the record, as emphatically as we can, that the status quo does not work satisfactorily at the moment.

In the previous two elections, since we have had individual registration playing through, there has been a fundamental underrepresentation of young people, particularly in minority and poorer groups. Also, young people are becoming increasingly politicised because of the scale of the issues affecting them—Brexit, Covid-19 and so on—and as soon as elections come, they suddenly and frantically seek to register. The figures from the Electoral Commission are that in the general election in 2019, 1.4 million young people registered after the calling of the election, and apparently most of the new registrations on 10 of the 15 days with the highest number of new registrations were of young people at that general election.

The Minister might say that this shows that the system is, to some extent, working, but I do not think that it shows that at all. It shows a massive crisis in registration. When young people realise that they are not registered, some, but only a proportion, take the active steps necessary to correct that in that very short window between the calling of the election and the final date for being able to register. This is not a system that is working, it is one that is fundamentally broken, and one where the remedies are very straight- forward. Automatic registration is very straightforward to implement. It could be done immediately and should have been done under this Bill, but the Government rejected it. The further amendment on the paper today, which I absolutely believe that we should carry, would simply draw to the attention of young people that they should be registered.

When there is a fundamental problem of this kind, one does not need to look for the motivation behind it because, in the time that I have been in this House, this is the fourth occasion on which we have addressed the issue of individual registration. It looks very straight- forward and clear to me. Not all members of the Conservative Party, but the electoral advisers of the Conservative Party think they have a direct political interest in voter suppression in general and in the underregistration of young people in particular. Looking at the tactics in this populist movement that has been sweeping the United States and Britain, unfortunately the Prime Minister, who is a representative of it—not as bad as Donald Trump but still pretty bad—is perfectly content to resort to such methods so that fewer young people are registered and vote. On all the evidence, that appears to be the case. This makes me, and, I hope, other noble Lords who take these issues to heart, all the more determined that these issues should be aired, not suppressed, and that we should send this issue back to the House of Commons a second time.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I just popped in today to see this Bill put safety to bed, having participated extensively in Committee and on Report—speaking on it for far too long, noble Lords may wish to shout. I was therefore surprised to see the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and to hear his speech. I congratulate him on a passionate and thorough speech, but one which should have been made at Second Reading. It was a perfect example of a Second Reading speech, and it would also have gone down perfectly well in Committee.

The noble Lord has apologised to the House for coming to the matter late in the day, as he put it, for which he blamed the pandemic. We have all had to change our modus operandi because of the pandemic, but I cannot imagine why, over the past four months, he was unable to participate in any stage of this Bill, online or in the Chamber. While I participated upstairs in Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, participated from somewhere in the south-west—Devon, I presume—and many other noble Lords participated online. As a new Member, I made mistakes on the procedures, etiquette and courtesies of this House and had to apologise. I know he has apologised today, but the procedure that he has adopted, coming in with this amendment out of the blue at this late stage, is not the right thing to do in this House. I hope that he has not been used as a Trojan horse by the Liberal Democrats, because this has all the smell of a Liberal Democrat ploy. Someone else moves an amendment, the noble Lord has said that he will not vote on it, but it looks as though the Liberal Democrats will force a vote on ping-pong at this stage.

Irrespective of the merits of the arguments and the passionate speech by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, we should follow the usual customs and courtesies of this House at ping-pong.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blencathra makes a very important point, one that was acknowledged in his speech by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, when he said that he would not be pressing his amendment to a Division. That is right. Reversing that famous quote from TS Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral”, he was doing the wrong thing for the right reason, rather than the right thing for the wrong reason. I have great sympathy with him. We should move on with this Bill now, but we cannot escape facing up to the realities of compulsory registration.

Some of your Lordships may recall the phrase, “no taxation without representation”. If you are obliged to have your national insurance number and to pay tax, you should be obliged to be on the electoral register. I would go one step further: I believe in compulsory voting. That does not mean you cannot destroy your ballot paper or write, “A plague on both your houses” on it. I believe it is a civic duty to take part in the electoral process whether by casting or spoiling your vote.