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

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Dobbs

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, two very different arguments are being advanced today about the purpose of this statutory instrument. The government position, if I may paraphrase it, is that it is simply a tidying-up of the voting registers. However, the position of most of the parties and of the independent Electoral Commission is that it is wrong in principle to remove people from those registers prior to elections in much of the country next May, and in particular in advance of the start of the Boundary Commission’s work on drawing up new constituency boundaries. All the measures just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, are welcome but could not be done within the next five weeks, before the Boundary Commissions start work on the new boundaries based on the electoral registers as of 1 December 2015. That date cannot be changed.

The Government’s position must be called into question because of the suddenness with which they laid this order before Parliament, at almost the last possible moment specified in the legislation, only a few days before the Summer Recess, without consulting any of the bodies with elections next May, and in the face of unequivocal opposition from the Electoral Commission, which advises us independently on such matters.

Three years ago, work by the Cabinet Office showed that our electoral registers were far less complete than we had been led to believe. We now know that today’s registers are no more complete than they were then. Perhaps 8 million people who should be on them are missing. The evidence for this—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs—is that we know from the census figures how many people there are aged over 18 in the United Kingdom, and we know that there are far fewer people on the voting registers. The advice of the independent Electoral Commission is that, even with these 1.9 million people included, there may be another 8 million who exist but are not yet included. The Government are seeking to make that problem worse by removing from the register up to 1.9 million people who are currently on the register before the end of this year.

In our debates in the House about electoral registration and administration almost three years ago, it was generally recognised that there is a small but not very significant problem with a few people who are on the register but should not be. There is a much bigger problem, however, with people who should be on the registers but are missing from them. This House decided, after much debate and on the basis of the government amendment, that the appropriate date for finally removing people from the electoral register if they had not completed the individual registration process was 1 December 2016. Much is made in our debates in this place about the need for compromise and consensus, and the date of 1 December 2016 was agreed as a compromise to allow the process of individual registration to proceed. At the same time, the compromise amendment, which came from the Government, gave specific power to either House of Parliament to say no if a future Government sought to speed up the process in the way that is being proposed, which would exclude a significant number of people from the voting registers, unless it was convinced that the process of individual electoral registration was so successful that it could be brought forward.

We know that the electoral register is no more complete now than three years ago. It is suggested that none of these 1.9 million people are real people and that they should not be included on the electoral rolls, but that is not the case, as is evidenced by the fact that the other 8 million people, who we know exist, should be on the registers but are missing from them. Many of these 1.9 million people will have voted in the general election in May, and it is possible to check from the marked registers who actually voted in that election. The Government have acted with suspicious and unseemly haste in suddenly proposing that these people be excluded from next year’s elections and, perhaps most importantly, from consideration when new constituency boundaries are proposed.

Part of the problem is that many of these 1.9 million people do not understand that they need to return the forms that are sent to them. The forms do not properly explain the obligation to co-operate with the process or the benefits in doing so. Independent research by the Electoral Commission shows that most people believe that the electoral registration process is automatic and does not require any action at all on their part. Most people not on the register do not know that they are not on the register and will not receive polling cards telling them how to vote in a future election.

Those of us with experience of canvassing in elections—and there are many of us across the House—know that more than one or two calls at the door are required in order to speak to every individual within a household, especially if those calls are being made to properties in multiple occupation and when people are unlikely to be at home. It may be cheaper and easier for some returning officers to have to deal with fewer people on the voting lists, but that would be the wrong priority because it would mean effectively excluding many people from the democratic process. The Electoral Commission advises us from its independent viewpoint that it is not safe in democratic terms to remove these people from the electoral rolls prematurely. If the Government were, as they say, simply seeking to improve the accuracy of the electoral registers, they might have consulted the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the London Assembly or local government in advance of proposing changes to the registers that will be used for elections next year, but they did not, and they have subsequently not received backing from any of those bodies.

Many of the people who will be removed from the registers are in urban areas and in London in particular. The London Assembly debated this very issue, overwhelmingly rejected these plans and asked us to do so as well. It may be argued that making changes to our democratic processes and the rules for the conduct of elections are not our business, but it was our business that insisted three years ago on the date of 1 December 2016 for full implementation of the new voter registration system, not the date that is now proposed. We agreed then with a government amendment that the date could not be brought forward if either House objected. What is now proposed follows from the fact that we have a Government who were elected with the support of less than 25% of the electorate. Instead of trying to increase that level of support, the Government now seek to remove people less likely to support them from the voting registers. Most importantly, in the long run, they seek to ensure that in future there will be fewer constituencies that can be won by their opponents. They seek to make the system less fair, not the other way round.

It is clear that many, if not most, of the people to be removed from the electoral registers are young or living in the private rented sector or may not have English as their first language or are simply the least literate. Those people who would be omitted from the register are concentrated in urban areas and they are known to be less likely to vote Conservative. I suggest that the biggest reason for the proposed change is to ensure that more Conservative parliamentary seats are created in future while people who do not vote Conservative are represented by fewer MPs.

[Lord Dobbs]

I promise not to interrupt again, but this is a very important point which goes to the heart of this matter. The noble Lord has talked at great length about all of these people who will be disenfranchised. Can he please identify a single real person? Otherwise, we have to dismiss this as simple hyperbole. It is a little rich for us to have a lecture from the noble Lord’s mouth about electoral advantage as he is well known for his love of electoral advantage. Can he please nominate a single, real, living, flesh-and-blood individual? If he could identify one, I would welcome changing my mind.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, as I was saying only a few moments ago, it would be technically simple and easy to prove the existence of these people. As the noble Lord will know from his vast experience of elections, the marked register of exactly who goes to a polling station and marks their X on a ballot paper is publicly available afterwards. Returning officers know these people—there are 20,000 of them in the London Borough of Lambeth alone—and it would not be difficult to look and see how many of them actually voted. We know that there are very few people on the register who should not be there compared to the millions whom we know, from independent advice, are missing. They do exist.

The primary purpose of the Government’s proposal is to change the way in which the Boundary Commissions would propose new constituencies. This is happening now because the four UK Boundary Commissions all have to work on the basis of the electoral register as it is on 1 December 2015. If up to 1.9 million people are removed from the registers, there will be fewer constituencies in future which are unlikely to return Conservative MPs. It is as simple as that. The proposal is grossly unfair. We know that millions of people in these categories are missing from the electoral rolls, and their existence should be taken into account if we really want to have fairness in terms of constituencies of equal size, which is a Conservative manifesto commitment from the last election.

The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 specifically gave either House of Parliament the power to say no if a future Government sought to bring forward the agreed date for full implementation of electoral registration. The electoral register is not any more complete, in terms of including all those who should be on it, than it was then. It would be much less complete if this proposal, which undermines democratic principles, goes ahead. We should not let it.