Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. No? I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the case for extending voting to 16 year-olds is getting stronger year by year. We already have the problem that our generation—the elderly Members of the House of Lords and others who can vote only in local elections—now have a rather disproportionate impact on the way Governments operate and choose financial priorities, because the old vote in larger numbers. There is a case, therefore, for increasing the weight of the young, and a very strong case for combating the disillusion and disengagement from British politics that younger generations now have by encouraging them while still at school to see themselves as citizens taking part in the electoral process.

The issue we have is how far we think it possible or even likely that, within the next eight to 10 years, this may be carried into law. There may well be a change of Government at the 2024 election. If we have already reconstructed the boundaries, we need at least to have a look at what such a change would do.

I add in passing that, if we still have a Conservative Government, and if the Conservatives hold to their previous commitment to expand the allowance for overseas voters to vote beyond a 15-year period after they have left the UK, that would also distort the figures considerably. Do the Government have any plans to extend voting for overseas voters, or have they conducted on that issue yet another of Boris Johnson’s U-turns, having discovered that Britons who live abroad are often rather internationally minded and therefore are not certain to vote for this rather narrowly nationalist-minded Government?

The Government want to draw the net very tightly about the balance between voters in different constituencies. Here are two matters—the extension of the vote to 16 year-olds and, potentially, the extension of the allowance for voting to overseas voters—which could blow that balance out of the water. It makes a great deal of sense to at least assess what the impact would be as a result of that change. I hope that the Minister will either answer my question on whether the Government have any plans to extend overseas voting rights or at least write to me on that matter.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town [V]]

I thank all noble Lords who have supported the amendment. I will simply make two points. First, as my noble friend Lady Gale said, Scottish and Welsh 16 and 17 year-olds have, or will have, the vote, but do not appear in the numbers on which their constituency boundary is drawn. That does not make sense. We just want it examined. Secondly, I give a gentle warning to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and, indeed, her Government. After the summer we have just had, with the disruption to the education and futures of 16 and 17 year-olds, her staunch refusal to consider or even discuss the issue, indeed, not even to allow the Boundary Commission to look at any impact, will not go down well with the exact voters who will be 18 at the next election. They will have heard her words today, but I do not think they will be impressed.

I personally regret her response—it feels short-sighted and over dismissive of the ask. It would not undermine the independence of the Boundary Commission. It would enable it to report on an important issue of franchise. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire [V]]

My Lords, the Minister quoted the manifesto commitment not to lower the voting age. I have just checked the Conservative manifesto and it has the parallel commitment:

“We will make it easier for British expats to vote in Parliamentary elections, and get rid of the arbitrary 15-year limit on their voting rights.”


I want to press the Minister on whether the Government actually plan to implement that manifesto promise within the lifetime of the coming review. If they propose to carry this manifesto commitment through, they should at least allow for this, given that they do not actually know how many of the 5 million British expats might now register. It could blow the entire exercise well out of the water.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

I thank the noble Lord. I am sorry if I did not answer his question. I did not believe it was in the scope of this amendment. I do not have the answer, but I will make sure that he has a written response.

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All in all, while I want to see improving levels of registration—and I recognise the achievements in places such as Australia and Canada—we must acknowledge the challenges associated with that. As far as I am concerned, elections are voluntary and registration should therefore be voluntary.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the Lords Minister in the coalition who had to carry through the change in patterns of electoral registration. I still carry some of the scars from the speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Campbell-Savours, and others during those debates. That was when I became well aware of our antiquated system of electoral registration, which we inherited from the days when only heads of households voted. I was also conscious that changing to individual registration was like the 1999 House of Lords report: a halfway house that was not going to take us all the way.

During our discussions within the Cabinet Office I also became interested, for the first time, in digital transformation in government. It was clear that if we were to make much fuller electoral registration our aim, we would have to employ data sharing and data transfer. I remember my shock when we approached the Ministry of Transport on whether we could share at least the outlines of addresses and names in the driving licence scheme. The DVLA and Ministry of Transport’s first response was to say no. I understand that we now compare the names and addresses of people with national insurance numbers on the DWP database with electoral registrations. That is a step forward. We all know that moving toward data sharing within government is a complicated and sensitive area where we must take great care.

I remark to the noble Lord, Lord True, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that responsibility for this matter has just moved back from DCMS to the Cabinet Office. They will therefore answer to us when the Government, if they hold to their promises, publish the digital strategy White Paper which they have promised before the end of this year.

I remind the Minister that the Conservative manifesto refers to voting as an expression of someone’s “full citizenship rights”. If it is a mark of one’s full citizenship rights, we should do our utmost to ensure that all citizens are on the register. We have this problem in Britain that many people do not want the state to know who and where they are. Thus, the concept of citizenship is itself in some ways contested. We need to move towards automaticity, if I may use that term. We will move slowly towards it, rather than relying on underfunded and overworked electoral registration officers at the local level to fill this 6 million to 9 million gap.

The noble Lord, Lord True, was unhappy that I hinted at Second Reading that some Conservatives are as concerned to exclude some people from the register as to include everyone in voting. If that is the case, let us do whatever we can to include everybody. That means moving towards use of comparative databases to ensure that everyone is on the register. Rightly, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, raised the question that some people do not want everyone to know where they live. That raises large issues of transparency versus privacy, which we will again want to debate.

We also understand the questions of publicly-owned digital identity. That is another sensitive area, on which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, takes a strongly held view. I take a middle view, and there are others who believe that privacy overrides the right of the state to know who and where we are, or the right of the citizen to have access to all the public data the state holds on them. This is an area that we should look to move further forward on. That means we have to move towards automatic voter registration, including for retainers. I therefore support the amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has withdrawn his name from the speakers’ list, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Tyler.