Electoral Registration Data Schemes (No. 2) Order 2012

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, perhaps I may surprise the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, by saying that I agree with at least two points that he made. First, it would be useful to know when the Bill, to which the order is relevant to some extent, will return to the House for debate. It is important that we take decisions on this matter, but the Bill seems to have disappeared into the mists somewhere—not even of time. Secondly, why is the DVLA not involved in this? It works with other bodies in matching data. As an elderly person, I have to renew my driving licence every three or four years. I can just put my passport number on my application form. The photograph for my driving licence is taken from the Passport Service. Two different organisations are already using matching techniques. Why can they not be used for electoral purposes as well?

I largely welcome the order because it is the right approach to use other databases to add people to the register. If I had my way, I would have people added to the register and then invited to take their names off it, rather than the other way around. It is more important that people are able to vote than it is to check whether they are committing an act of fraud. Too often, this Government seem to be more concerned about fraudulent elections than about ensuring that people can vote.

Lastly, I make my usual case that none of this would be necessary—I will not mention ID cards because for some reason they are not considered politically correct—if we had smart-card technology with a central register. Everybody with a smart card would have enormous benefits, not just in terms of electoral registration but with a whole range of matters such as social security, old age pensions or whatever. We could also involve the private sector with banking. If we did that, we would not have this problem and would not be going through this process. We would have a central register and every British citizen would be registered to vote. When they voted, they would produce their ID card and that would be that.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the order. It is very difficult to disagree with one word said either by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, or my noble friend Lord Maxton. I have no shame in using the expression “ID card”, and the Minister is no doubt ruing the day when the Government decided that they did not want to continue with that scheme.

We warmly welcome the measure in broad terms; it is necessary, whether or not the ERA finally goes through. We hope that the process will happen in any case, because it is about finding those who have a right to be on the electoral register but are not there at the moment. It may be that it should have started earlier, but we welcome it all the same.

We have just a few questions. First, as I asked on the previous occasion, has there been any discussion with the political parties about the pilots? As I have said before, and as the evidence we have heard today from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, shows, political parties understand these issues really well and it would have been good if they had been involved in discussions on the pilots to make them as good as possible.

Secondly, like the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, we have a slight lack of confidence in whether the methodology is sufficiently robust. It looks slightly hit-and-miss, with various areas choosing which bits they would like to do. I hope that it is a little more scientific than that, which it needs to be if the conclusions are to be robust. Perhaps the Minister could assure us that the methodology is sufficiently robust to enable lessons to be learnt and that a sufficient number of authorities are participating for any general conclusions to be drawn. I had not thought of the issue of computer-matching which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised, but, even without that added dimension, we need to be sure that the range is broad enough for us to be able gain good evidence.

Thirdly—this is again related in part to what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said—to whom will the Electoral Commission report on its evaluation? Is it only to be to Ministers or will it be to the House? What happens if the pilots prove either too expensive per new elector identified or if, as has been suggested, database problems seem insurmountable? What happens if unforeseen data-confidentiality issues arise, or if some other weakness is identified? Is there a plan B to locate unregistered voters?

Fourthly, it is essential, as the Government’s own Explanatory Notes suggest, that the 22 areas have sufficient expertise and staffing to make the pilots meaningful. What assurance can the Minister give us that they will be sufficiently resourced?

Fifthly, what lessons have the Government learnt from the pitiful turnout for the recent police and crime commissioner elections? Can the Minister assure us that these pilots are not displacement therapy for the embarrassment caused by those unnecessary elections? In case he needs reminding, the elections cost £100 million, which would have paid for 3,000 police officers. It would be interesting to hear whether he thinks that at least some good has come out of those elections in terms of lessons for systems of electoral registration.

The Minister might also like to take the opportunity to say a little more about the Electoral Commission’s report on continuous electoral registration in Northern Ireland—to which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred—which was published today. According to the commission, the report,

“provides clear lessons for Great Britain as we move to individual electoral registration”.

Electors in Northern Ireland are now only registered once and only have to re-register if their personal details change.

This new report assesses the effectiveness of such continuous registration in Northern Ireland. It shows that the electoral register is now only 71% complete and 78% accurate, whereas the previous assessment in 2008 estimated the register to be 83% complete and 94% accurate. It appears that this significant and worrying decline is because the processes used to manage the register are unable to keep pace with people moving home or people becoming newly eligible to join the register.

We will obviously return to this in due course, with suitable amendments to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. Again, as has already been mentioned, the Minister will recall that we spoke of our deep concern about the provision in the ERA Bill for the annual canvass to be abolished. We trust the Government will reassess this provision in the light of the Northern Ireland example. Hitherto, the Minister has called Northern Ireland in aid as a defence for the Bill, but I think today’s findings are a little worrying—particularly about people moving, because within certain parts of Great Britain, our population mobility is even higher than in Northern Ireland. Therefore, this continuous updating would be particularly important. However, none of this undermines the general support for these plans to take place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As I have discovered, the world of electoral registration officers and their staff is a wonderful subculture of its own. They interrelate across the board, and they know which are the good local authorities and which are not. I am less worried than I was when I started in this process after having discovered this wonderful population of people, for whom I have a great deal of respect, having been briefed by a number of them.

My noble friend Lord Rennard asked me for an assurance that the databases chosen are properly representative of the UK population. We are pursuing the greatest diversity possible in databases, which is why I take on board what has been said about the DVLA; the wider the collection of databases that we use, the more likely it is that we will catch students, attainers, rapid house-movers and others. That is precisely what we are trying to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, made an interesting comment that he might perhaps wish to pursue further: he would like an opt-out electoral registration system rather than an opt-in one. That is a point of some significance that would bear some consideration and further thinking. There are some large issues there on voluntary registration and the balance between voluntary and compulsory, which are not currently within our remit in the Bill.

[Lord Maxton]

It is right that registration should be compulsory, but voting should not.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

These sorts of interesting questions are considered by the behavioural insight team at the Cabinet Office, which plays around with tipping people’s balance in favour of doing one thing rather than another, and the noble Lord is certainly beginning to touch on them.

No, we do not rue the day when ID cards were dropped, but we are persuaded that developments in the computing and electronic world, and the way in which it is possible to use digital databases and compare among them, is opening up the possibility of providing identity assurance and a simpler relationship between the citizen and state, which would not only be more efficient but astonishingly cheaper than the original ID scheme. Again, this is something that needs further exploration, and I will do my best to provide one or more briefings for interested Peers.

On the question of whether we have discussed this with political parties, the answer is yes, of course, on a number of occasions. I particularly enjoyed the meeting which Chloe Smith, myself and a number of others had with the HS Chapman Society—a body of electoral agents chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould—at which we had some fairly sharp questions, including some to registration officers about the particular details in the Bill. We fully understand that political parties have a great deal of expertise. I am told that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has a little expertise in this area himself.

I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about the lessons that the Government have learnt from the low turnout in the PCC elections: I would want to add from the low turnout in by-elections as well. The lesson that we all need to learn from the declining turnout—this is a matter which all political parties need to talk about—is that people are less and less engaged in politics, and that we have to fight very hard, which necessarily means on an all-party basis, to re-engage our disillusioned electorate and persuade them that it is worthwhile to support candidates for election and to take part in the political process. We should also recognise that we have to overcome the barriers which an increasingly cynical media place in front of us as we attempt to do that.

I was asked to comment on the Northern Ireland report out today. I recognise that it is a sobering report, which raises a number of questions. I take the point made by several Peers about the relevance of the annual canvass for this. We will, of course, as well as the Electoral Commission, take that into account. I think it shows just how difficult the task is to maintain a complete and accurate electoral register. As we go through this transition, we have to make sure that we make every effort possible to arrive at as complete a register as we can. Having made those points I hope that the Committee will accept this order.