Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015

Debate between Lord Greaves and Lord Bridges of Headley

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I have been trying to get in for some time—

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. A lot has been said this afternoon. It has been an excellent debate, and there have been very good contributions from all sides, although I profoundly disagree with some of what has been said, as I will come on to. It is always nice to be reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that I have not read my Aristotle. He firmly puts me in my place.

I shall start by taking a step back to make two fundamental points, on which I hope we can all agree. First, we all agree that we want more people to engage in the democratic process and register to vote, but those who are not on the register today will clearly not be affected by the measure we are discussing, which is the removal of ghost entries. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Lexden said in his excellent speech, nobody will lose their right to vote as a result of the government proposals that we are debating today.

Instead, the core of what we are debating comes down to the accuracy of the new electoral register. Do we keep on the new register ghost entries—entries of people who may have moved house or died or may never have existed in the first place? Are these ghost entries living, breathing voters, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, calls them, or hundreds of thousands of database errors which need to be removed ahead of the important elections next year? As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly pointed out—let us not disguise this fact—for the sake of completeness, the Electoral Commission wants to keep those entries on the register, even if this means that the accuracy of the register is undermined. It judges the risk of fraud to be acceptable, and the Government disagree.

First, we believe that after 18 months of transition and more than a decade of waiting, as we enter a year of elections and possibly a referendum on Europe—possibly—the time has come to move fully to the new system. Secondly, we see the risk of fraud as unacceptable. Thirdly, we believe that people have been given ample opportunity to register on the new system. That said, fourthly, we entirely agree with those who want more people to register to vote and participate in the elections, but we do not make the register more complete by stuffing it with inaccurate registrations.

I shall take those points in turn. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, we have been waiting for the full transition to individual electoral registration for more than a decade. As the current chair of the Electoral Commission said:

“This change is something we’ve been calling for since 2003 and is an important step towards a more modern and secure electoral system”.

To give the former Labour Government their due, they legislated to introduce individual electoral registration in 2009. The coalition Government further legislated in 2013 and, finally, in the summer of 2014, the new system was introduced. I remind your Lordships that at the general election, in its manifesto, the Conservative Party committed that:

“Building on our introduction of individual voter registration, we will continue to make our arrangements fair and effective by ensuring the Electoral Commission puts greater priority on tackling fraud”.

This Government believe that it is time to finish the process, and finish it now. This decision is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, rash.

Let us consider the progress that has been made. Back in May, 96% of the electorate was successfully registered under the new system. It is the remaining 4%—the so-called “carry forwards”—that the Government believe should be removed from the register at the end of December. It is not the entire register that we are questioning, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seems to suggest; it is the 4%. Then we have to ask ourselves: what do these entries represent; who are they; do they exist? The reality is that neither we nor the Electoral Commission know who they are. They may be people who have moved or have died, or they may never have existed in the first place. However, we have gone the extra mile to find out whether these entries actually are people living at the registered address. Electoral registration officers have been working tirelessly to confirm whether the remaining entries are real people or whether they are merely ghosts.

These people will have first been sent three invitations to register. If they had not done so by last autumn, an electoral registration officer would have visited the address linked to the entry. If this failed to elicit a response, a further letter would have gone to the address earlier this year. Where carry-forward still exists, these addresses will receive three further letters and another visit from an electoral registration officer this autumn. That is the second fact that I would ask noble Lords to remember. These people, if they are people, will have been contacted at least nine times by December. I ask noble Lords to compare that with the number of times people are contacted about renewing their TV licence—four times. These people, if these entries do indeed represent people, have been contacted nine times. On top of this, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, the Government made available to councils up to £3 million of additional funding to support extra efforts targeted specifically at carry-forward entries, and £1.2 million of that was drawn down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I completely agree that we need to get more people on the register. However, let us not confuse apples and oranges—these are two separate things. If people are not on the register, there is absolutely no way they can be taken off the register, which is what we are saying today. I do not understand—maybe I am not explaining it clearly enough. However, I will go on, if I may.

When people move, we should not leave their entries on the register. That increases the risk of not only electoral fraud but benefit and financial fraud. In advance of Northern Ireland moving to a system of individual electoral registration in 2002, the police said that it would,

“go a long way to eliminating the opportunities for fraudsters to commit the offence of personation”.

The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, asked about fraud. Let us just remind ourselves that since 2002-03, courts have imposed jail sentences for electoral fraud in Ashford, Blackburn, Bradford, Bristol, Burnley, Coventry, Derby, Guildford, Oldham, Peterborough, Slough and Walsall.

[Lord Greaves]

Will the Minister agree that in I think all those cases, but certainly in almost all of them, the fraud was linked to postal vote and proxy vote fraud, not registration fraud?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, it is electoral fraud; we are trying to make sure here that—