United Kingdom: Election Law

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the law governing elections in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, in opening this debate on what plans the Government have to review the law governing elections in the United Kingdom I should first say that for many years of my working life I have been involved in elections at all levels, and until 2014 I was a member of the Electoral Commission.

The law governing elections is spread across 25 major statutes. It is complex, fragmented, and not easy to understand. For a mature democracy such as ours to find itself in such a position is not good enough. Today we can be asked to vote for a variety of positions at the same election, including local councillors, mayors and police and crime commissioners, along with voting for an MP—although not your Lordships—and if you live in Scotland an MSP, in Wales an AM, in Northern Ireland an MLA, in London an AM, and on top of that we can all vote for MEPs. In addition, there are different methods of electing people to these positions, often with their own set of rules governing each election. This is not a good place for us to be, and the law needs urgent review and reform to bring it up to date and to make it fit for purpose to regulate elections in 2015 and beyond. All this legislation and regulation needs to be simplified, clear, easy to understand, modernised and easier to enforce; and, where infringements take place, it needs to be easier for action to be taken.

I am fully aware that the Law Commission issued a consultation paper, which could be seen as a precursor to legislation coming forward at some point in this Parliament. I very much hope that that will happen, but that legislation must deal with the points I outlined previously, it must also come forward embedded in the principle of seeking robust and fair laws governing elections, and no attempt must be made to seek party advantage out of that process. I hope that the noble Baroness can confirm that this is the only way in which the Government would consider bringing legislation forward to update this area of law in this Parliament.

I move on to outlining what I would like to see in a number of areas in any future legislation. I would like the see the laws governing elections placed into a single Act of Parliament to give us consistent and clear rules about how to conduct elections with a minimum amount of differentiation. Any such differentiation would then be due only to the voting system used or some other very important point of principle or policy that needed to be taken account of. We need clear powers for returning officers, and clear powers for the Electoral Commission to give directions to returning officers, in specific areas with no ambiguity.

The procedures in areas such as the review of boundaries in local authority wards need to be looked at carefully. I invite the noble Baroness to look at the actions of Northampton Borough Council in the recent review. I am not convinced that the action taken was necessarily in the best interests of all voters in all parts of the borough.

On registering voters, we need clear and consistent rules, and we need the franchises for all elections to be set out in primary legislation, along with placing a clear and unambiguous duty on returning officers to maintain an accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date register of electors. Nothing in the legislation that brought in individual electoral registration was intended, or should be used or be hidden behind, to allow the number of people registered to vote in the UK to decline even further. We always have had and continue to have a serious under-registration problem here in the UK.

Clear duties should also be set out for a number of organisations and individuals, such as university vice-chancellors, head teachers in secondary schools and other institutions where young people attend, to assist the ERO in maintaining an accurate and up-to-date register of electors. The same can be said for other organisations where data-matching has been, or could be, undertaken. We must also make it clear that nothing in the Data Protection Act prevents this sort of co-operation taking place. By working together in a co-operative manner, we can enable the ERO to identify more people who could possibly be registered to vote. There are other groups of voters, such as the elderly, who may need specific help in getting registered to vote. Academic research has suggested that anything between 6 million and 9 million people who are eligible are not registered to vote in the UK.

I think it is time for the Government to review the whole operation and set out clearly what can and cannot be done in the days running up to polling day and the day itself. In my opinion, too much seems to be left to local returning officers, and different practices which appear to be acceptable in one place but not in another have sprung up. One example of this is the attaching of posters to lamp-posts. That is perfectively acceptable in Birmingham but outlawed in Coventry. Personally, I think that it is a complete waste of time and money but I can see that if one party puts posters on lamp-posts, all the other parties will do the same. A poster in a resident’s window or on a stake in a garden demonstrates support from voters and is much more important and effective for the campaigners.

There also needs to be a proper review around the whole question of absentee voting and the effectiveness of the code of conduct that has been in operation in recent years. The nomination process could be made much simpler for candidates and agents alike. Getting everything you need in order to be nominated on to one form that the candidates, agents and nominators could sign could be a way of making progress.

Nor am I convinced that the legislation surrounding emblems and party descriptions has been as effective as it should be, although it has created quite a bureaucracy. Why cannot one form be used, to be submitted to the returning officer in a local government area saying that all the people listed are authorised to use the party logo and description as detailed below?

I hope that we can have a proper debate on issues such as which is the best day on which to vote, whether we should move to a weekend or whether we should have early voting in a couple of places in a local area so that people can vote in person before the Thursday or whichever is the normal polling day.

I have no fixed views on those points, other than to say that we need to improve the way in which we conduct our democracy at present. Nothing in the conduct of elections in any part takes account of the transformation in communications in recent years through things such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. That is a major omission and, frankly, it is ridiculous in 2015.

I am also clear that in any review of electoral law we should include the Electoral Commission—its workings, its areas of responsibility and its governance. The legislation that brought the commission into being has been on the statute book for 15 years, and I contend that not to review it when conducting a major review of electoral law would be a major error. The creation of the commission has been a good thing but, from my time as a member of the Parliamentary Parties Panel and then as an Electoral Commissioner, I am clear that a review needs to take place so that we are agreed that it is focused on the right areas and in the correct proportions, and that the governance arrangements are commensurate with the important work we ask it to do.

I would like the Electoral Commission to have a much more hands-on role in the electoral registration process and in respect of EROs and returning officers, to ensure consistency of approach at a local level. The performance standards compiled by the commission are not effective enough. There is no independent audit of the return that an ERO submits, so we cannot be confident that everything is as good as it is said to be.

I also think that the Electoral Commission reporting to Parliament should be reviewed. I am not convinced that the Speaker’s Committee gives the organisation the required level of challenge. I would like consideration to be given to the Electoral Commission reporting to the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee in respect of its annual budget and how it spends public money, and to the Constitutional Affairs Committee in respect of more policy-based and general activities.

I could go into many other areas, and I am delighted that a number of experts on elections have decided to speak in this debate at such short notice. There is much we can be proud of in how we conduct elections in the UK. My purpose in putting the Question for Short Debate was to ensure that, at the start of this Parliament, the Government can hear from Members across the House just how important it is that we always strive to have the best possible electoral systems, best methods and best regulations to ensure that elections in the United Kingdom are always conducted to the highest standards. This is an area where, on a cross-party basis, we can work together to constantly improve the conduct of elections in the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Before the Minister sits down, I am conscious that she said that she could not respond to all the points in the debate today and that we could speak to her later. Could she go a bit further and agree to write to the five noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, as some very important issues have been raised here today?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Indeed, the noble Lord is right, and I shall certainly be doing that. I have made a note of several of the points that I would like to go back to, to make sure that I have a fuller answer, rather than just giving a short answer now. I shall certainly go back to noble Lords with written replies.