Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England) Order 2016
Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I come to this order with a slightly different approach and a different range of concerns from those on which I expect my noble friend will concentrate. We are now in a situation where, whatever happens to the process as outlined by the noble Baroness, the constituency boundaries at the next general election will—contrary to the recommendation of the Electoral Commission—be based on the register as it stood in December 2015. Of course, that does not mean that anyone registering since that date will not have a vote, but it means that the constituency boundaries will not necessarily reflect the, I hope, improved system of registration. Let me give an illustration of the potential differences. In my own city of Newcastle, the number on the electoral register as of last December was 183,961, and it is now 190,770, which is an increase of 6,809 or, by my calculation, an increase of 3.7% on the figure that will be the basis on which the new constituency boundaries are drawn.
The Government have introduced other significant changes, using their majority in another place, to change the whole system. I say that because local authority boundaries will become irrelevant under the new dispensation. I am wondering whether the Minister has—I do not blame her if she has not—seen the report by Lewis Baston, who is an expert in these matters. He recently produced a report for the Constitution Society in which, among other things, he states:
“As it currently stands under IER, the electoral register is too incomplete and unstable to provide a suitable basis for allocating parliamentary representation”.
He says:
“There have been noticeable levels of under-representation, which has varied with social and demographic characteristics”.
He also says:
“The use of the December 2015 purged register has also had a regional effect. London has three seats fewer than it should. Nationally, it has mainly affected urban areas, with the big core cities in particular had poor net completeness in electorate registration”.
However much that is corrected, partly as a result of the order we are discussing, it will not affect the boundaries that will apply in the next Parliament.
Lewis Baston also says:
“If the register numbers in December 2015 are inaccurate”—
they clearly were—
“the boundary review will contaminate the entire basis of the electoral system”.
He points out in relation to the discussions and debates before the boundary review was implemented that the,
“warnings made in 2014, of damage to the representation of London and the metropolitan areas, have come true and the map drawn in the 2016-18 boundary review will under-represent these areas”.
It is of course entirely coincidental that those are the areas in which the Labour Party is currently most strongly represented.
Lewis Baston goes on:
“The dramatic variations in total electorate that have taken place … between December 2012 and December 2015 undermine the idea that at any stage the electoral register is a reasonable estimate of the total local population entitled to vote”.
He cites examples demonstrating that in some places, such as Liverpool, the estimated net completeness of the register as at December 2015 is as low as 81%. By definition, it is therefore about 20% short of what the figure should really be. I repeat that that does not stop voters being registered, but it means the boundary situation has in effect been corrupted. One of the problems, as he concludes, is that there is,
“simply nothing that can be done under the current rules to rectify the problem that student constituencies are likely to be oversized (in terms of registered electors) when the election takes place”.
That is one facet of an issue which is generally of much wider application.
I am not sure whether the Minister will be able to respond to this today, but in my submission there is a very strong case for the Government to review and, indeed, to alter their decision to require the next general election, or at least any general election taking place after 2017, to be held on the basis of the boundaries as currently drawn. There is a need for a proper review of constituency boundaries to reflect the increase in the electoral register and other changes, which, I repeat, the order will help to facilitate. If the Government do not do so, they will have taken such a decision because they perceive a political advantage for the Conservative Party. That is no way in which a democratic process should be regulated, and I hope that the Government will reconsider their position. I repeat that they will return to the recommendations made by the Electoral Commission, who should be consulted in the light of the developing circumstances as we now see them.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, before I come to the specifics of the order before us, I want to refer to two extremely important issues about the context in which we are discussing it. In the first place, both the Law Commission and the Electoral Commission have given recent advice to government and Parliament that the time is long since past when it was necessary to bring together a lot of the electoral legislation. We have an extraordinary situation now, and it is repeated again this afternoon, where we are referring right back to the 1983 Act. The good ship “RPA” has been covered with so many barnacles over the years that it is hardly recognisable as being a ship at all. The Law Commission has made it clear that it is urgently necessary, in this Parliament, to bring together the legislation that refers to electoral matters. This is for clarity for the parties, for individual electors and, frankly, for us parliamentarians.
For over 11 years, I have been in this Room when we have been amending and referring back to the 1983 Act; on one occasion, I think we even referred back to the 1883 Act. It is not acceptable for the Government to keep putting off this issue. Paragraph 4.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies the order—and just that one paragraph, about how all these things fit together, is so complex—makes a very cogent case for a degree of co-ordination and consolidation. In paragraph 8.3, there is the added dimension of ensuring that all parts of the UK march in step. The register is something of such basic importance to our representative democracy that we cannot accept differences taking place on such a scale as has been happening in recent years between the devolved nations of the UK.
In paragraph 7.6, ironically, there is the wonderful statement:
“Consolidation does not apply to this Order”.
You can say that again; there is absolutely no consolidation in this, and it is time that there was. I know that in this particular context that is a technical term, but it makes the point very strongly. We cannot go on with these piecemeal additions, subtractions and amendments to electoral legislation. That is not acceptable, and the Law Commission and the Electoral Commission have been unanimous in making that recommendation to us in Parliament as well as to the Government.
I turn to the issue of the accuracy and completeness of the register, and its integrity. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has quite rightly said, this is a matter of wide concern. The Minister herself said in her introduction that the integrity of the register was the solid basis for our confidence in the way in which our elections happen. As was so clear from the brief exchanges that she and I had last Thursday, the Government simply have not taken on board the fact that we lost some 2 million people off the register last December, and some 2 million people—not necessarily the same people, of course—reappeared to vote on 23 June. In the closing months of last year, we were constantly told by Ministers—I absolve the Minister herself from this; it was not her line of argument—that those who were coming off the register were “ghost voters”. The fact that many of them had voted in the general election some months before was ignored. We now know that there are 2 million-plus more people who voted on 23 June, who were accepted at the polling stations as being eligible to vote and did so, than there were in December. The people who turned up in those many polling stations throughout the country 10 days ago were not ghosts; I hope that the Government will now accept that they were perfectly valid people who were undertaking their democratic right. It is completely ridiculous that we should now be going back to the 1 December 2015 basis for any acceptance of the register as a complete and accurate reflection of those who are eligible to vote in elections in this country.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
Would the noble Lord like to comment on the situation in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, where most of the councils—Manchester, Wigan, whose leader is no longer in the Chamber but is a Member of this House, and indeed Trafford—have been of a particular political colour for very many years, and yet they are the origin of the Bill that is before us?
Lord Tyler
Whether or not they are the origin of the Bill that is before us, I think the noble Lord will recognise that there are authorities in the country—he and I could both name them—where the fact that one party has controlled it for ever and a day without effective scrutiny or opposition has not been conducive to good governance. Again, as Robin Cook said—and I worked very closely with him—good governance requires effective scrutiny and good opposition.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Beecham
Lord Tyler
The noble Lord of course makes a very important point. One of our difficulties at the moment is that we have not yet reached the role and responsibility of the scrutiny committees. In addition to the point that he is making, consultation with the combined authority on these matters of delegated powers, which is absolutely valid, may well be something that we think in due course the scrutiny committee should have some sort of role in. At the moment, though, we have no idea what that role might be. I entirely endorse the point the noble Lord is making but reinforce it with my own point. As often happens in your Lordships’ House, we are trying to take carts and horses in the right order but they tend to get muddled up together.
Lord Beecham
I am grateful to the noble Lord. He will be less grateful to me when I say that I am afraid I do not agree with the amendment that his noble friend Lord Shipley moved in relation to the role of the overview and scrutiny committee in the appointment process; I do not think that that is a proper function for such a committee. We will come later, as the noble Lord has just said, to the functions of the overview and scrutiny committee, and it seems to me that its job should be to look at how the mayor and the combined authority are working, in terms of both looking at policy as it is made and looking forward to future policy. I do not think it appropriate for those committees to play a role in making the appointments, and we will not be supporting the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in that respect.
Between us, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I led Newcastle City Council for something like 20 years—with varying degrees of success over time, no doubt. There have been many distinguished local authority leaders. Right now I am looking at a distinguished local authority leader taking his place on the Benches behind the Minister, who was herself a distinguished council leader. My noble friend Lord Woolmer was a distinguished council leader, although I detect a slight difference of opinion between us on some of these matters today—but then nobody is perfect.
It seems to me that those who see in the mayoral system something infinitely better than anything we have had before are making a great mistake. What worries many of us—certainly on the Labour Benches, I think on the Liberal Democrat Benches and perhaps in other parts of the House—is the enormous concentration of power which will be granted or withheld by the Secretary of State in a manner which diminishes accountability locally. For those reasons, we shall certainly wish to return to these matters.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, Amendment 14A is a manuscript amendment arising from the recently published report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Although it is a manuscript amendment, I did not write it myself; if I had, the Public Bill Office would not have been able to read it. It is, however, as noble Lords will see, in printed form. It embodies the position taken by the Delegated Powers Committee on the organisation of elections. The amendment derives from paragraph 6 of the report, which I quote:
“Given the importance of the functions which a mayor is able to exercise, and the emphasis placed by the Government on the democratic accountability offered by an elected mayor, we do not consider it appropriate for the Bill to delegate to subordinate legislation the ordinary length of a mayor’s term of office or the ordinary election dates”.
I say in parenthesis that that is precisely what paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 to the Bill, about the timing of elections, in fact sets out. The report continues:
“It seems to us that any power to provide for those things in subordinate legislation should be limited so that it can only be exercised to the extent necessary to allow synchronisation with other elections, when the office of a mayor is first established”.
Hence the provisions of Amendment 14A: that a mayor’s term of office should be four years; that elections should be held on the ordinary day of election in the election year for the relevant local authorities—I contrast that with the disastrous turnout in the elections for police commissioners, which took place in a cold dark day in November; no doubt that contributed to the minuscule turnout, though perhaps that was not the only reason—and, finally, that when the office of mayor is first established, the Secretary of State should by order make provision for the alternative arrangements for the mayor’s term of office and the date of the election to the extent necessary to allow synchronisation with other elections. That tidies up that particular area.
The other amendments are of a rather different character. Amendment 15 would allow 16 and 17 year-olds to vote in a mayoral election. For many of us, I think the only satisfying part of the referendum process in Scotland, apart from the outcome, was the very high participation rate, particularly among 16 and 17 year-olds, who were allowed to vote. In our view, it is highly desirable that young people should be encouraged to take an interest in politics from an early age. We also argue that citizenship should play a more prominent part in the education agenda—the Lord Speaker’s efforts to encourage Members of this House to address schools and young people generally are a small but important part of that process. Giving those young people the vote at an early age—after all, they are able to pay taxes, be employed and so on—seems to me to be absolutely right. We have to acknowledge that young people are not the quickest to register in any event, so the earlier we can get them into the process, the better. Their future will be very much affected by the work of combined authorities and other aspects of local services.
The final amendment, Amendment 16, would simply require any new legislation to be in force six months before it is due to be implemented, so that there will not be a great last-minute rush to sort out the physical arrangements of elections and they can be planned well in advance and with efficiency. That applies both to the electorate itself and to returning officers and the like engaged in that process. In my submission, these are sensible, tidying-up arrangements to facilitate the smooth operation of whatever process will be involved if we get to holding elections under the terms of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, on all these amendments. As he said, Amendment 14A reflects the concerns of the DPRRC, to which I referred earlier. I am sure he is right in saying that this should be in the Bill, and I hope the Minister will be prepared to accept that. It would be consistent with what has already been recommended, and I understand from what the Minister has said that she has effectively welcomed the committee’s recommendations.
So far as Amendment 15 is concerned, as your Lordships’ House will know, I have brought forward, twice now, a Bill to comprehensively reduce the age of the franchise to 16 for all elections. As the noble Lord said, it was a triumphant success in Scotland. It is now also in legislation ready for any comparable referendum in Wales, and I understand that the Prime Minister himself has said that he expects a vote in due course on a general extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds.
My only concern about Amendment 15 is that it is specific only to this one form of election. I think that is a great mistake. We on these Benches will be bringing forward a later amendment to extend this throughout local government. There has been far too much ad hocery and too many piecemeal attempts to deal with the franchise. Imagine if the extension of the franchise to women had been done on this piecemeal basis, with parts of the United Kingdom doing it in different ways to other parts. Imagine if it had been said, “Only in mayoral authority elections are we going to allow women to have the vote immediately. Others will have it at another time”.
One objection to Amendment 15 is sorted out by our Amendment 48, through which we would extend the franchise to all 16 and 17 year-olds for all local government elections.
I do not want this to sound smug, but we have been consistently in favour of this policy and very much welcome the arrival of the Labour Party in support of it. I think I am right in saying that some other party north of the border has also joined the bandwagon. Nothing should be read into that: it is simply that we take pride in the fact that the sheer advocacy of this logical extension of the franchise is now getting new recruits. In the meantime, I hope the Minister will respond positively to Amendment 14A. Perhaps she would like to keep her firepower for dealing with the wider issue of 16 and 17 year-olds for when, at the very end of consideration in Committee, we get to Amendment 48. In view of the time of night, I leave it there.
Lord Beecham
As the Minister implied, jumping on the bandwagon with the Liberal Democrats is not generally a fruitful proposition. Indeed, the concept might be an oxymoron. We are certainly adopting a somewhat Fabian approach to the extension of the franchise. I am a little surprised that the noble Lord’s broader amendment has been regarded as within the scope of the Bill, but if it has then so be it. We would certainly look to an extension of the franchise but for the purposes of what we are discussing here the amendment we have drafted is correct.