Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Kilclooney

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, as one-time Minister responsible for electoral registration in Northern Ireland, I have been interested by the references to the introduction of individual registration in Northern Ireland. As several speakers have said, several conclusions could be reached about what the result of that individual registration was. However, it certainly was not, and I strongly refute the suggestion, that it was because elderly people there did not know what they were doing—the word “illiterate” was used. I remind the House that the standard of education in Northern Ireland, and indeed in Scotland, is generally higher than in England.

On a serious point, the average size of the family in Northern Ireland is considerably larger than a family in England. When the head of a household filled in the registration form, he would very often put down all the members of the family whether they were living in Northern Ireland, England, New York or wherever. That was brought to an end when the requirement for individual registration was introduced and people outside Northern Ireland were no longer registered, only those who were actually living there. That is one of the reasons why the electoral register fell in numbers.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this matter. I shall be brief, subject to interventions, which I will take if I possibly can.

I am not a great expert in this area, which is why I do not intend to speak for very long, but we have had the advantage of listening to two very good speeches. One was by the Minister, who demonstrated as usual that he is in command of his brief and was willing to answer questions—that is where he scores over some of his colleagues, who are not so in command of their brief and do not answer in the detail that he has—and I learnt a lot from that.

I have learnt an enormous amount from the other very good speech, which was from my noble friend Lord Wills. We ought to listen to him with great care. He has vividly described what was happening under the previous Labour Government in order to increase registration and how to get local authorities to do that well. Anyone who was aware of that during that period, and I certainly was, will be aware of the efforts that he and others made in order to get this right.

My purpose in intervening now is to say that we need to listen and learn from my noble friend’s experience. I do not want to go into the detail of it, but he is right. I simply want to say that a deal on the Bill is possible if the Government would go the extra mile that they need to go to do it. It is crazy to drive through a constitutional Bill without getting the all-party agreement and involvement that we need. It is possible to reach agreement. This may be a late stage but the Government need to do it. They do not have to bring the House into a position whereby it becomes a carbon copy of the House of Commons, but on constitutional Bills they have to try to reach agreement on key issues. That is not impossible. My noble friend has convinced me on this point. I shall not go into great detail about my former constituency. I took an interest in registration, as every MP does. I was always worried about underrepresentation of certain groups in my constituency and above all about the fluidity of an inner-city area where the population turnover is very high.

I say again that the point my noble friend made about the estimates, and using figures from elsewhere, is profoundly important. It is important to note that underrepresentation in some areas is due not to the ignorance or lack of concern of the local population but stems from its socio-economic make-up and so on. I repeat that it is possible to reach agreement on this matter but you cannot do that with a Government who are not prepared to reach agreement. I say to the Government, please to try a little harder.