Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Lord Maxton

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, first, I take the opportunity, if I may, to say to my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench that I was not suggesting that we should vote in the same way as on “Strictly Come Dancing”. I was suggesting that we are still voting in a very conservative and old-fashioned way, whereas in other forms of national life, we do it differently.

I am a little concerned that there has been great opposition to my idea of a national register of some sort, but we are now talking about national insurance numbers. Who holds them? Where are they registered? Who keeps them? Who says, “That is your national insurance number”? Is that not a form of national register?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, this is an interesting and important debate. The original draft of the Bill in effect allowed the Minister to determine, without parliamentary scrutiny, what the identifier should be. The amendment advanced now by the Government in effect says that Parliament has to approve the Minister’s choice, as it must be approved by the affirmative procedure. Our Amendment 7 would provide that Parliament has to decide in primary legislation what the individual identifiers must be.

Everybody agrees, including the Government, that the first proposal is not acceptable and that it would be wrong for the Minister to be able to determine it. People would be worried about the extent to which it might be used for political advantage. The second option has the problem that statutory instruments are rarely rejected by Parliament, so it gives pretty big power to the Minister. The third option has precisely the problem identified by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—it is very inflexible. I recognise completely that the identifiers chosen might turn out not to be sensible at the end of the day, depending on how the system operates.

This is such an important issue that we on this side are loath to give the Minister the power that comes from being able to determine it him or herself or by statutory instrument. Subject to the Minister’s no doubt persuasive arguments, I currently favour our amendment, but I wait to hear what the noble Lord has to say.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Lord Maxton

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My noble friend, inevitably, gets there before me. I will come to that in a minute.

Is it the Government’s intention to draw up the register based on these databases, which local authorities will be able to go into, and therefore add large numbers of people who have not registered to vote? If the Government are not going to do that, what is the point of going into the databases? There is no point at all.

The Minister has implied that the Government are drawing up a register from the databases and then basically saying to people, “You’re on the register. If you wish, you can prove to us that you do not live there any more and come off the register”. However, as my noble friend has quite rightly said, all this would have been solved—and considerable sums of money saved in the longer run—if we had introduced compulsory national identity cards and a national identity register. Each local authority could have used that and drawn up its own register without any bother whatever.

That would not have been the only use. You could then use the card itself to vote electronically wherever you wished. That would have increased the number of people taking part in our democratic process, which would have been to the major benefit of our whole electoral system.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

This is an important issue. The debate has been greatly assisted, first, by the very forceful and well researched way in which my noble friend Lord Boateng introduced it; secondly, by the exceptional speech of my noble friend Lady Liddell of Coatdyke; and thirdly, by the speech just made by my noble friend Lord Maxton. He asked the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, quite a number of pertinent questions about what he has been saying in response to this collection of amendments—namely, “We are doing a bit of data matching and we want to see how the pilots go”. We need to know the legal basis of data matching and the consequences of data being matched.

This issue raises important points of principle. Those outside this Chamber may think that this debate is about political parties’ different views on the methods of selecting boundaries for constituencies and voting systems. If we are genuinely about to introduce a new system for identifying constituencies, there must be a real sense that that connects with the people who currently do not connect with our democracy.

The statistics that my noble friend Lord Boateng referred to make it clear—I do not believe that this is seriously an issue in this Chamber—that members of the BME communities in this country are underrepresented on the electoral register by comparison with white British electors. The figures produced by the Electoral Commission find that overall registration levels among the BME communities stand at 69 per cent compared to white British electors at 86 per cent. I do not think there is any dispute that that is a bad figure and that efforts should be made to increase the levels of electoral registration by BME communities—though I wait to hear from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness.

The much missed Robin Cook said that democracy is not just a method by which we select those who govern us but also a system of government that expresses our values. Diversity is one of the critical values of our country, as is that there should be genuine equality. In producing an electoral reform described by the Deputy Prime Minister as the most significant since 1832, the least that could be done is for the legislation to have some explicit recognition of the problem relating to registration of BME groups. Surely it is at least as important to reach the hard-to-reach groups as it is to go through a technical change in the way that we define the constituency boundaries in this country.

The response of the noble and learned Lord has been twofold: he does not want it to be fixed on information that is out of date—I hope I dealt with that before dinner—or on an indeterminate date. I indicated that there was a determinate date, which seemed to cut the ground from under him. His second answer was that it must be done before the next election. Why? Does he regard it as more important to do it before the general election than to ensure that people are reached who are not now being reached by our electoral system? If he has the time, can he explain why the next general election is so critical? Is that to do with party politics or with crafting a good system? Ultimately, we will be judged—not just this House but Parliament generally—by whether people believe that we are producing a system that is trying to reach the whole of our community rather than simply serving the electoral interests of one or other party. That is why it is important that the noble and learned Lord at least makes some effort to explain why he thinks the next election is more important than reaching the hard-to-reach groups.

My noble friend Lord Boateng proposes that Parliament express a view that this is important. He suggests that the Secretary of State should approve a process by which hard-to-reach groups, especially BME communities, are reached before we move to the next phase, the boundary review. The noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, says the responsibility for that lies on political parties. I accept that but registration should be separate from political parties. Yes, all political parties should make their contribution but nobody doubts that those responsible for registering people on the electoral register—the electoral registration officers and local authorities—also have a responsibility for it. That is why, without disputing the responsibility of political parties, it is important that the state undertakes its responsibilities as well. I know from my experience as a Minister that you really get the state to change its view of things by making the things that the Government want conditional on some improvement in the delivery of public service or public policy. The effect of the amendment would be that the boundary changes would be introduced only if there was an improvement in the registration of BME groups.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Lord Maxton

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, this is the first time that I have spoken in these debates. On the day on which we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the launch of YouTube, I think it is right that we raise the whole question of the internet and particularly that “channel”, although that is not the right word. Anyone could place a video on YouTube expressing their views in the hope that many people would watch it, and that could change the nature of the way in which we voted if there were not some way of controlling it. To be honest, it is extremely difficult to control what goes on YouTube but there certainly has to be something in the legislation that at least tries to do so.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, I indicated in my remarks on the first group of amendments that I proposed to Clause 5 that the clause was introduced to deal with the problems identified by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place. In principle, we think that it is a good thing, although other issues need to be dealt with, including the point about the internet made by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont.

I have one question for the noble Lord in relation to that. On the face of it, any expenses incurred in making a broadcast for a referendum—for example, if you got Steven Spielberg to produce it and my noble friend Lord Puttnam to direct it, or the other way round—would not count as expenses. Is that really the Government’s intention?

On a general point, can the Minister say what principles underlie Clause 5 and, in the light of those principles, what is the answer not just to the questions that I have raised but to those raised by other noble Lords?