Northern Ireland (Elections) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

I am very pleased, as I said at the start, that voters in Northern Ireland are being given an extra year to verify and confirm their details, but it is a matter of much regret that the Government have chosen to do the exact opposite for people living in the rest of the United Kingdom, and that is something that they should be profoundly ashamed of. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for tabling his Motion. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, can answer the questions I have put to him and provide the information that the House needs.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, he mentioned some comments that I made. Actually I would have no difficulty if the proposal were to remove the 82,000, but the difference is that the people on the register in Northern Ireland are not ghosts. They had to have their national insurance numbers and so on verified at the time. So there is a significant difference in that these people clearly did and do exist. We have a continuous process of registration going on and other sources are found to verify their existence.

The noble Lord, Lord Bew, said that the parties wanted the extension to 2015 for the election. Two parties did. My party did not, and neither did others; it was a decision between the DUP, Sinn Fein and the Government. When the people went to the polls in 2011, they thought that they were voting candidates in for four years. Although Scotland and Wales had been told that their Administrations would be there for five years, it did not apply in Northern Ireland. I regret that. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Bew, made is also very valid.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I would say that the inconsistency here is staggering. IER has been in place in Northern Ireland since 2002, while we have had only two years in Great Britain. At the same time as we are giving an extra year to Northern Ireland, we are taking a year away from the rest of the United Kingdom. It is staggering.