Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, during his opening remarks, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, said that perhaps those of us in Northern Ireland who had experienced this system, or a variation of it, for the past 10 years might be in the position to give some indication to the House as to how it had gone. By my calculations, something in the region of nine elections have now taken place under the individual registration system. That includes local, Assembly, European and national elections. I think that the noble and learned Lord would agree that, by any standard, it is a reasonable test bed for what is likely to happen.

Along with the noble Lord, Lord Wills, I do not believe that the circumstances in Northern Ireland are so unique or different that lessons cannot be drawn as to the likely outcome. I broadly support the principle of individual registration, although, as many noble Lords have said, there are a wide variety of detailed points that will be crucial when determining how effective the new legislation will be. As the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, said, initially there was a substantial drop in the number of people registered to vote. By agreeing to the rollover provision initially, the Government should avoid the substantial precipice that we encountered and therefore the reduction, if there is one, should be much less than that we experienced in 2002 to 2003.

I will give just one example. Registration in the Botanic ward in the city of Belfast, the ward immediately surrounding the university, dropped from something in the region of 3,800 to 2,200. That was the most notorious example where a substantial drop took place but, as noble Lords can imagine, that was because there were houses in multiple occupation and students who came up from the country and preferred to be registered at home rather than at the university—there was some reason to believe that some were registered at both, although that is not an offence unless people vote at two locations in the one election. That was an extreme example but there was systematic evidence to suggest that the process reduced the number of people on the register. To what extent that reduced the accuracy of the register, which is of course a different thing, is another matter. However, having the rollover should avoid the worst excesses of a reduction.

There are other ways in which a reduction can be offset, particularly among those groups less likely to vote, who, by and large, are the same wherever you are throughout the country—we all accept that. I received, as I am sure a number of other noble Lords did, representation from Callcredit and other organisations, which made the point that their services were providing a positive national contribution and a resource. However, such organisations are one of the principal reasons why people do not want to be registered. People do not want to be chased for credit; they perhaps owe money and feel they will be pestered for information, cold-calling, sales and other purposes. That can have a negative effect on people’s wish to be registered to vote.

The other issues that I have grave concerns about have been mentioned already, including the postal voting system in Great Britain. I feel that the way it is set up here verges on the reckless. We tried that system once, I believe in the 1970s, where you had a purely on-demand requirement for postal votes. It is not hard to imagine that people would knock on the door and say, “Missus, I wouldn’t mind to have your wee form please”. This sort of thing happened and we disposed of that process, so that now you have to have a specific reason for not voting in person and for using a postal vote. It is not terribly restrictive—you can have it for illness, for being on holiday and for work purposes. Nevertheless, it has to be witnessed and signed, and it is pursued, I can assure noble Lords, by the electoral authorities. A completely open-ended thing—which I think had the right motivation at the time, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said—is today highly open to abuse, following some of the examples we have heard. I strongly support changes to that proposal.

I also do not understand the reticence about having identification for individuals. We introduced a thing called the electoral identity card, which any individual elector can have access to if they do not possess a passport, driving licence, Senior Smartpass or some other photographic form of identification. You can get it in the electoral office, but the Electoral Commission at home took out a mobile unit and brought it to schools and housing estates, because many people discovered they were not able to vote because they did not have another form of photographic identification. If you push at it and pursue it, there are ways in which you can actually improve the registration. The commission has gone into schools, spoken to sixth forms, and brought the mobile unit to the school. It is perfectly possible, with a bit of effort and work, to achieve the two objectives of having the confidence that the electoral register is genuine and, at the same time, do a lot of work to ensure that as many people as possible can participate.

The other thing in the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, read out to us was that in recent years there has been a massive amount of immigration into this country. As a consequence, European Union citizens—non-UK citizens—have rights to vote at certain elections. Taking all that into account, I wonder about the accuracy of the figures that we have been given in terms of the validity of the electoral roll. Is it 82% or is it more than that? I suspect it is probably a lot less because the register decays with time and from year to year. The further away you get, the less the likelihood that it is accurate. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, made the point that anybody who has run elections or been a candidate for election runs into dozens of people who say, “Well, I’m sorry, mister, I’m not on the register this time”. We all meet so many people in the course of our politics who have that message to say and, indeed, do so accurately.

One other thing I am glad to see us moving away from is this idea of the head of a household. It is an outmoded idea in this day and age. Taking a mythical example, let us assume we had the Wallace household—any Wallace household, not necessarily the Minister’s. Who is actually the head of that household? There might be some dispute as to that, and perhaps rightly so, but there may be somebody there who fills out forms. Within a household, it has been known for people to have political disagreements. Indeed, I have known households where people are in different political parties. Would noble Lords really be satisfied that the return from that household is accurate? I would not be so sure about that. I certainly think that the head of the mythical Wallace household will be glad to be relieved of the responsibility of filling out those forms.

We have to get more research done as to why people stay off the register. I think that credit issues are one reason. I conclude by making one final point about the risks to certain groups of individuals of being on the register. It is not unknown for thieves to look at a register to identify places where, say, women are in single occupation of a dwelling and might be seen to be vulnerable. People look at issues like that, and I have been told that some people are concerned. Obviously we have specific security concerns at home—while they are not gone, thank God they are significantly reduced—but certain groups of people find it uncomfortable to have their names known to different groups of people. We should do some research to establish who these people are and why the register is deficient.

I hope that in Committee and further down the process we can address many of these matters in detail. I understand the Government are bringing forward secondary legislation which will deal with a lot of the detail. In those circumstances, I hope we can refine what is in the Bill with the objective of making it sound and so that we have confidence in it, but at the same time having measures in it to ensure as much participation as is possible.

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[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, I hope to be brief, not least because I hope to pop along to say farewell to Peggy Byatt, who has been one of the longest serving members of staff of this House.

Last May, when this Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, Mark Harper, the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, stated that the aim of the Bill was to,

“tackle electoral fraud, increase the number of people registered to vote and improve the integrity of the electoral register”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/5/12; col. 1172.]

No one would disagree with that. As my noble friend Lord Wills has stated, it was for these precise reasons that the previous Labour Government, with cross-party support, put through the Political Parties and Elections Act. Those reasons also paved the way for individual registration.

However, in committing to this, we also provided for a phased timetable and independent testing of any new system, backed up with strong and effective monitoring by the Electoral Commission. Why did we do it in that way? We wanted to make sure that the systems to stop fraud, which we are all committed to stopping, did not also exacerbate an already growing problem of underregistration. As we have heard today, there are millions of unregistered—mainly young and low-income—voters missing from the electoral roll. The Electoral Commission’s briefing, which has also been quoted today, states that the December 2010 register was between 85% and 87% complete, with at least 6 million eligible people missing from it. It is the biggest scandal for our democracy that so many people are denied the opportunity to vote. The other issue that is combined with underregistration is the prospect that the growing number of people who do not vote in elections will not see the point of registering to vote. That concern is also shared by the Electoral Commission.

Without a concerted and prolonged campaign, it is possible that the register may go from the near 90% completeness that we hope we currently have to something like 65%. As my noble friend Lady Gould said, 65% will result in as many as 10 million voters losing the opportunity to vote. What sort of democracy is that? I shall repeat the question of my noble friend Lady Gould. Will the Minister give us the details of the implementation plan now? Will they set out the timetable in more detail and will they give us better figures on a budget to ensure that we have an effective campaign? This is not scaremongering when you consider the experience of Northern Ireland, on which we have had some very interesting perspectives. When the system was changed there in 2002 it resulted in a huge drop in the size of the register. It was such a drop that we had to address it in subsequent legislation, so we know that there is a problem that we need to address.

Although I believe very strongly that the timetable proposed in the Bill is too rushed, I welcome the concession that there will be a carryover for those who are currently on but fail to register individually. However, this will not happen in my household or in the many, many other households where everyone is registered to vote by post. As many noble Lords have pointed out, for many elderly people and people with disabilities, voting by post is their only real opportunity to vote. I do not accept the assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that the fundamental problem with our electoral system is the extension of postal voting. With the right measures—we have talked about how those measures can be improved—postal voting undoubtedly increases turnover. What we want is more people participating in our democracy. The fundamental problems are more to do with false entries on the register. All parties and all individuals can take responsibility to highlight where they think there are problems and address them. When I had that responsibility in the Labour Party we were very rigorous in pursuing any example where we found multiple registrations.

Why, therefore, will postal voters and proxy voters be excluded from this carryover which, as we have heard, is going to affect a lot of elderly people and people with disabilities? For the record, in my own household, neither my husband nor I will be eligible to vote when it comes to the general election; me because of my membership of this House and he because he is a Spanish national. We have talked about the errors that can occur and about checking each signature. Unfortunately, on one occasion—I am not going to say which election because I have proudly voted in every one—when we were completing our postal votes on the dinner table, I mistakenly signed his declaration and he mistakenly signed mine. Despite efforts to contact the appropriate authorities, I fear that my vote was not counted on that occasion.

As many of my noble friends have pointed out, the Bill rushes through a process that actually needs a lot of careful consideration and planning. Why the rush for the next general election? My sentiments about the Bill are accurately reflected in the following quote:

“I also agree with the Minister that it would be difficult to introduce a new system shortly before a general election. There should be other ways of testing the system along the way to ensure that the accuracy, integrity and comprehensiveness of the register and the system are always utterly watertight. I hope that that reassures the Minister on that point”.—[Official Report, Commons,13/7/09; col. 109.]

That was Eleanor Laing MP, Shadow Conservative Minister, speaking in 2009.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, in his excellent contribution, mentioned those dreaded words “ID cards”. This is why I have always supported the principle of national ID cards—a national ID system. I have always been committed to it because it carries with it clear rights and responsibilities. I am sorry that many of my noble friends—I mean to say many of the noble Lords opposite—are not committed to that principle despite the fact that they want to ensure that the electoral register has as many constraints on it as possible. Yet they are not in favour of the one thing that would deliver a system of integrity in our democracy.

[Lord Empey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for giving way. I referred to our system of electoral identity cards which are very specific and can be used only for voting purposes. They are slightly different from the national identity cards which were proposed here some time ago. Nevertheless, I am sure the noble Lord accepts that I agree with the point, which I suspect he is trying to make, that it gives an opportunity to know that the person standing in front of the polling station clerk is the person who is entitled to vote.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

I thank the noble Lord for that contribution. I agree with him completely but I have to confess that I was using the opportunity of his reference to ID cards to have a little go. When we are talking about secure systems, we have to understand that that issue cuts across all civic society.

We need to ensure that any scheme of individual registration passes the test of accuracy and completeness. Here I agree 100% with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. He and I have a lot in common in terms of our previous experiences of elections. He may have won a lot more elections, but the fact is that we spent our livelihoods and lifetimes trying to tell politicians to follow the rules and regulations. I agree with him 100% when he asks whether by focusing on accuracy we are missing the fundamental importance of completeness. That is what this debate is about, and it is what the Bill needs to focus on. I am sure that that is what the discussions in Committee will be about.

Despite some welcome concessions from the Government that we heard articulated today, I am afraid that they do not represent sufficient safeguards to ensure that the Bill will not result in millions of people being unregistered and therefore unable to vote. What we have is a speeded-up timetable for the introduction of individual registration purely—I put this at its best—to save money. Combine that with another important issue, the downgrading of the role of the Electoral Commission, and we are left with the potential for long-term deterioration in the accuracy of the electoral register.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I regret to say that that might be of declining utility. One of the things I have learnt while looking at data sets is that the number of young people who are registering as drivers is declining. It is a good thing for those of us who think that public transport is much more important in the cities, but fewer young people are learning to drive and getting driving licences, which is why that data set is not quite as useful as we thought.

My noble friend Lord Norton asked why the Government were taking in Clause 21 a power to repeal the establishment of a co-ordinated online record of elections. As we have said before, the costs of building and running the record seem to us to be disproportionate when weighed against its potential benefits. He also asked about the edited register, to which we will clearly return in Committee. The edited register is much beloved of charities and voluntary organisations. Now that I have to speak for the Cabinet Office, I have learnt that the lobbies in the charities sector are as determined and uncompromising as the lobbies in any other sector. They are very strong on maintaining the edited register, but the Government are committed to maximising registration rates, although we recognise that there are a number of issues about the names that appear. Perhaps that is another question for discussion in Committee.

[Lord Empey]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. Could he address the issue of whether any research has been or will be undertaken to establish why people are not registering to vote? Do we have any detailed research or is any being planned?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very good question to which I do not have the answer, so I will write to the noble Lord about it. I suspect that there is a multitude of reasons. Of course, some people have good reasons for not being on the register, including people in witness protection programmes and some celebrities. A range of issues can be cited, and there are others who are simply moving around too quickly, are not interested or who do not want to have contact with the state.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, queried the phrase,

“as far as is reasonably practicable”.

It is intended to refer to the completeness of the register, which comes back to the point that we do not expect electoral registers to be able to be 100% complete, but we want them to do their utmost to get as far as they can.