Electoral System (Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 Committee Report)

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, first, as other noble Lords have done, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, and her committee for the work they have done to produce the report for debate here. I also pay tribute to Lord Shutt. I knew him well; I used to enjoy our conversations in the House; he was liked and respected by everybody in the House and we all miss him. We are all poorer for him not being with us and the tributes we have heard today from across the House, and the tributes to the work he did on this report, just show the affection in which he was held by all of us and the good work he did. I want to record that tribute to him.

There are many excellent points raised in the report that I think the Government should reflect upon, not only in their response to the report in 2020 but on the back of this debate. It is ironic that we are putting the economic crime Bill through the House at this very moment—it will be law next week—in which we are seeking to deal with all sorts of issues, including dirty money coming into the UK and so forth, and then we have what was formerly called the electoral integrity Bill, now the Elections Bill, which makes it legal for people to donate money to political parties even when they departed our shores 20, 25 or 30 or even 35 years ago. I think there is some irony in that.

In my previous roles as a full-time official for the Labour Party and as an Electoral Commissioner, I have dealt with government departments, Ministers in the coalition and Ministers in the Labour Government and commission officials. My overarching intent always has been that we have clean and fair elections in this country—I want to win elections, but I am happy to lose an election if it is clean and it is fair. The electoral register has to be as complete and as accurate as possible, so that the people of the United Kingdom can go out and vote for the party that they want to form the next Government. When changes are made to electoral processes and procedures, there must be as much buy-in from all the political parties as possible. The state should be doing everything that it can to facilitate well-run elections and complete and accurate registers.

I like the noble Lord, Lord True, very much and he is a very good man—a man of integrity and a man of principle—and I always enjoy our conversations outside of the House. But today, I make a plea to the Minister, with the opportunities that the Elections Bill offers and the issues there, to get around the table to discuss the serious concerns that I and people in other parties have about aspects of that Bill and to work with us. It is totally wrong that we end up passing legislation that whole sections of this House think is totally wrong. We must, where we can, have changes to electoral law with as much buy-in as possible from everybody. So I hope the Minister will do that when we get on to the Bill again next week—I am sure he will.

As others have mentioned, the Government introduced the Electoral Registration and Administration Act to reduce opportunities to commit electoral fraud through the registration system. In June 2020, the committee published the report that we are debating today: An Electoral System Fit for Today? More to be Done. The committee’s view is that the new electoral system introduced by the 2013 Act has worked well, but it has also brought challenges: particularly the administrative burdens of managing the system at election times and maintaining accurate and complete registers. The committee also set out further steps that should be taken to prevent electoral fraud as a matter of urgency and made some key recommendations.

The government response in September 2020 welcomed the report and outlined other steps that the Government have since taken to improve the registration system, as well as their future priorities such as the introduction of voter ID. The Government responded to each recommendation of the paper except for those that fall within the responsibility of the Electoral Commission or devolved Governments. Despite the recommendation of the committee, the Government refused to bring forward targets to increase the number of people who are registered to vote—which I think is very disappointing.

We know that the Elections Bill is bringing forward voter ID and other measures, but I fear that, as other noble Lords have said, we are seeking to solve a problem that is very limited in its scope. There is not widespread evidence of electoral fraud—there has been one or two; I accept that entirely—but, as I mentioned, there was only one prosecution from the 2019 election. Regarding these plans, I worry about the risk of denying people their right to vote. I accept the point that the Government are going to make available cards for voter ID, but I worry that people—particularly elderly people, those on low incomes, ethnic minority voters and others—are at risk of losing their vote. I look forward to the Minister setting out what the Government are going to do to ensure that I am wrong and that is not the case. Voter impersonation, as I have said, is not the issue that some people have suggested it is in our country: there was one person in 2019. You are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be a victim of electoral fraud.

I cannot think of a single election that we can point to that has been undermined due to mass fraud. So why are the Government spending millions of pounds to fix this problem? Can we also see what the Government are doing to ensure that we have the most complete and accurate electoral register as possible? I look forward to the Minister setting that out for us.

I also want to look carefully at a number of points that other noble Lords have made. I agree with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, made about the pressure burden on electoral registration officers. I think that he is absolutely right: there are huge pressures, as the report mentions, particularly at the time of elections. Maybe it is time for us to have a conversation about how we organise that service—there should be a different way of doing it. It has obviously grown up as something delivered by local authorities, so maybe we should ask if that is right for the future. Should something different be done? We should have a conversation about that.

The noble Lord, Lord Desai, quite rightly drew the attention of the House to how, in many respects, our processes are still quite Victorian and that, with all these fantastic changes we have in technology, very few of them are actually applied to electoral registration. That is something that maybe we need to look at as well. I certainly think we should look at the question of technology.

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours again made a point about fraud, and I agree with him.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, who talked about the citizen’s civic duty, which is absolutely right—it is your duty to go out and vote. It is the duty of the state to facilitate you getting on to the register to enable you to do that, so I feel that is a very good point.

The point about the use of data is really important as well. Are we sure that we are doing everything that we possibly can, within legal confines, to make use of the data that local authorities and government agencies hold to get people on the register? Let us be clear: we all accept, I think, that there is an underregistration problem in this country, not an overregistration problem—no one has ever suggested that. There are millions of people who should, and could, be entitled to vote but who are not on the register, so we need to make sure that we get that right.

My noble friend Lord Mann gave the House important ideas on how to get people who want to vote and how they could vote—what about disabled people? Again, I am sure that the Minister will take those points back.

Again, that goes back to the point that I made earlier about resources. How are we going to ensure that the electoral registration service is properly resourced and does not get itself into difficulties with all the other pressure that local government is under?

I said earlier that I was a member of the Electoral Commission—I was for four years—but I am going to be a bit critical of the Electoral Commission now, because I do not think the commission has done enough to stand up for the registration process. It could have done more, and it should do more. I was always a bit frustrated that the commission would often send out these forms to the EROs, which was a tick-box thing. It should do more, and I hope it will do more to add its voice to the defence of the electoral registration system and ensure that we get more people to vote—it has not done that, but I hope that it will do more in the future. I think that is the right thing to do.

I have made this plea from the Dispatch Box before—and I know other noble Lords have as well—but reform of electoral law is long overdue. We are going to pass another Bill in the next few weeks that will bolt another piece of legislation on, but the whole system is desperately in need of reform, review and consolidation. I live in hope that we will see that in the next Queen’s Speech. Certainly, the Government need to get a grip on this because bolting other bits on all the time is not the way to do it. We are desperately in need of a review there, as we are for the simplification of the electoral process—the committee talked about options such as an online checking tool—and the inefficiencies we have heard about in the debate today. I certainly read the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and others about what we need to do there.

Reference was also made in the debate to good international examples, and I think we should always be prepared to look at what goes on abroad and learn from there. Canada was mentioned as a place where good practice is taking place. We should look at the good practices there and be able to take that on board.

I thought my noble friend Lady Blower made a really important point about young people. She is absolutely right: young people, at an early age, should understand the voting system, your duty as a citizen to participate in the electoral system and how to get on to the electoral register, so that when they reach the age to vote, they know exactly what their rights and responsibilities are. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lady Blower, I regret the fact that Bite the Ballot lost its funding. I have sat in this Chamber and heard government Ministers rightly praise Bite the Ballot, but the Government then took its funding away. That is a ridiculous situation to be in, so I hope that that will be looked at and that, in future, we will get to a situation where either it is brought back or another organisation like it is funded to work specifically with young people so that they understand their rights and responsibilities.

I will leave my remarks there. I think this is a very good report. My plea to the noble Lord is sincerely meant; I really am worried about the Elections Bill. I hope we can get around the table and look at those issues, because whenever we make changes to our electoral system or processes, getting the most buy-in from the parties is paramount. Our democracy is precious, and we should insure and protect it.