Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Trimble Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble]

My Lords, I shall start with a personal reminiscence. I went into the other place after a by-election in 1990. I managed to persuade my party to make me Home Affairs spokesman shortly afterwards with the result that, after the general election in 2002, I found on my desk an invitation to go to the Home Office’s regular post-election wash-up. I decided that I would go, and when I went I found that I was the only elected representative. The other parties were represented by experts in the subject, which I certainly was not; on that occasion, I was a mere practitioner. During one discussion, there was a comment about a problem—I cannot remember whether it was made by a representative from the Conservative Party or the Labour Party. I could not quite understand the problem because reference to it was curtailed. During the coffee break, I went to the Conservative and Labour representatives and inquired, “What was that that you were referring to?”. They said, “We were mentioning a significant problem that occurs in certain areas and affects all our parties. The problem is that there is widespread fraudulent voting in those areas but no one is prepared to talk about it openly because it gets into areas of ethnic minorities”.

They went on to say that in these areas the register is completely unreliable and that there is great difficulty in checking it because in some cases you are dealing with large numbers of people whose surname is merely based on the fact that they all came from a certain village on another continent. That was in 1992. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, referred to cases that were more than 10 years later. More than 20 years have passed since that comment was made in the margins of a meeting—it certainly was not made formally—but the problem has not passed and it should be addressed.

I also recall that once, at an election in Portadown, I came to a narrow, dilapidated, boarded-up house. Those who were with me with a copy of the electoral register drew my attention to the fact that there were six persons on the register for it. That is completely dwarfed by the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned earlier, but it impressed me at the time that someone thought they could put so many persons into such a small house.

There is clearly a problem. In Northern Ireland, where photo ID is now required for voting, the quality of the register is the main source through which electoral fraud can occur. Mention was made earlier of how individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland and I want to refer a little to that experience. Individual electoral registration was introduced in 2002; individuals registering to vote had to include personal details, including National Insurance and a signature, and registration was done de novo with no carry-forward of names from the existing register, which had a 12-month life.

The immediate effect was a fall of over 10% in the number of voters. The figures are as follows: in 2002 there were a total of 1,198,504 persons on the register in Northern Ireland. That dropped in 2003 to 1,072,425, a drop of just over 124,000. It dropped further in 2004 to 1,069,000, a drop of 3,000, and in 2005 there was a drop of a further 23,000 to 1,047,601. There are a number of reasons for the decline and, in the absence of any detailed research, which I do not think anyone has undertaken, those reasons are speculative. False registrations were responsible for a significant number, though we cannot quantify it. There were also many people who preferred to be off the register for a variety of reasons, such as not wanting to have their name accessible, though it is not necessary to go into these. There would also, of course, have been those who could not be bothered.

Because of the continuing falls after the initial one, there was concern over this situation and, starting in 2005, a number of measures were adopted to curtail the decline. First, carry-forward was reinstated in 2005 for that year and then permanently. Secondly, a system of rolling registration was introduced in place of the requirement to register annually. Thirdly, provision was made for data matching and, as the Minister says, data mining, though I would have thought that was included in data matching. Fourthly, provision was made for a canvass to be held in 2010 and every tenth year thereafter although, significantly, provision was also made for additional canvasses where the chief electoral officer requested it and the Secretary of State was satisfied that it was in the public interest. Fifthly, the chief electoral officer was given access to the identities of 16 and 17 year-olds in schools and further education so that they could have their attention drawn to the desirability of registering.

These measures have resulted in an increase in the register. In 2006 it increased by roughly 10,000 to 1,157,000 but dropped, funnily enough, the next year to 1,075,000. In 2008 it went up to 1,125,000, an increase of over 50,000, and increased by another 16,000 in 2009 to 1,142,000. In 2010 it was 1,170,000 and finally, by 2011, it reached 1,202,000 and got above the 2002 figure. It has increased in the latest register by a further 2,000. As the Minister said in his opening speech, it is indicated that this is roughly 85% complete.

In 2007 the Electoral Commission, commenting on this experience, said that the fall in numbers reflected the removal of the carry-forward, which had the effect of removing inflationary factors from the register. That lovely phrase “inflationary factors from the register” is a way of avoiding the use of the word fraud, but that is what it was. Significantly, the commission said that it had the effect of “restoring integrity” to the registration process. That is hugely important, and I hope that that integrity has been sustained.

I am slightly uncomfortable, though, because one has heard rumours—I can say only “rumours” because they cannot be proved—about a certain political party in a certain constituency, when it has its post-election get-together, awarding a special prize to the election worker responsible for the most votes. I am not sure what the mechanics of that are these days and I am not going to identify the constituency, but I am sure that if this is happening, and given its discipline and organisation, the political party will have ensured that the number of votes claimed by its election workers is accurate.

It will have been noticed that the Bill retains the annual canvass, has provision for data matching and introduces a civil penalty for failing to register when required to do so. The carry-forward will continue until 2015, by which time the register should have been thoroughly checked. One hopes that these measures may work in maintaining on the register persons entitled to be there but, if there is a reduction, we should not jump to the conclusion that it means that people entitled to be on the register have been removed—one has to remember that it is possible that there is significant fraudulent registration. Not all the measures adopted in Northern Ireland have been paralleled here, but most of them have. However, we may want to consider during the passage of the Bill whether further measures similar to those adopted in Northern Ireland should be introduced.

Finally, I wish to mention another matter, although I will not be in complete agreement with party colleagues. A welcome side effect of the extension of the electoral timetable occurred in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in 2011 when the early dispatch of poll cards resulted in more than 17,000 changes to the register, of which some 11,500 were new registrations. The extension to the electoral timetable may produce more new registrations, and they would indeed be welcome.