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

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

Our country has never had a taste for frequent alterations to the fundamental features of its electoral registration arrangements. Indeed, this is only the second time that they have radically changed since their first appearance in the 1832 reform Act. This Government are putting the finishing touches to a radically improved system which should help to restore the trust and confidence in our democracy that has been badly eroded in recent years.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not support the fatal amendment put forward by the Liberal Democrats last night because I thought that it was constitutionally inappropriate. However, I shall support this one, not least because, arguably, the constitutional issue at stake today is even more important than the ones that your Lordships debated last night. Those constitutional issues concerned the respective legitimacies of your Lordships’ unelected House and the elected House of Commons. The issue today concerns the legitimacy of the elected House of Commons and, as such, is of profound importance to our constitutional arrangements.

Electoral registration is often a highly technical issue but it is always an important one. The struggle for the right to vote defines the history of our democracy and electoral registration makes that right a reality. Individual electoral registration is desirable and, as we have already heard, the previous Labour Government legislated to introduce it. However, it is generally accepted that, for all its merits, the introduction of individual registration carries with it the severe risk that significant numbers of people who are eligible to vote will not register and so will be unable to do so. For all the good work done in recent years by successive Governments, the Electoral Commission and local authorities, we can see these risks being realised as individual registration is introduced across the United Kingdom.

There is already a serious problem with the electoral register. The most recent assessment, last year, by the Electoral Commission estimated that the register was only 85% complete. More than 8 million voters are eligible to vote but cannot do so because they are not on the register. The fact that so many people who should be on the register are not, despite all the measures taken by previous Governments to increase registration, shows how intractable this problem is. The improvements that individual registration is likely to bring to the accuracy of the register are undoubted, but they have to be balanced by the deterioration that it is bringing and is likely to bring to the coverage of the register. I hope that that helps to address the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. This is a difficult issue and we are trying to balance competing priorities.

The Labour Government tried to do that by linking the introduction of individual registration to the achievement of a comprehensive and accurate register. In opposition, that approach was supported by both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. The coalition Government could have continued that approach, but they did not; they rejected it, for reasons that they have never adequately explained. They rushed forward with a timetable for individual registration, removing that key safeguard of the requirement of a comprehensive and accurate register.

This Government are now trying to make this bad situation worse, increasing the risk of disfranchising millions of voters by rejecting a carefully argued and proportionate recommendation from the independent Electoral Commission. Why might the Government be doing that? They have suggested systemic threats to the integrity of the register as a reason for this haste. We have just heard a very well-argued speech by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on precisely that point. There is undoubtedly localised fraud—there is no question about that—but how serious an issue is it? The independent bodies tasked with safeguarding the integrity of our electoral system do not share the assessment suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. They do not share the Government’s assessment of fraud. The analysis carried out by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission into the 2010 election, for example, found,

“no evidence of widespread, systematic attempts to undermine or interfere with the May 2010 elections through electoral fraud”.

The report stated that,

“we are not aware of any case reported to the police that affected the outcome of the election to which it related nor of any election that has had to be re-run as a result of electoral malpractice”.

No analysis is yet available, at least in public, of the 2015 general election but, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, if the Government want to make their case for this statutory instrument on the basis of widespread fraud, that raises fundamental questions about the general election that put them into power. If the Government are so worried about the integrity of the system, why do they not bring in this legislation and agree to rerun the general election so that it can be run on the basis of an electoral register that everyone agrees is complete and accurate? I look forward to the Minister’s response to that suggestion, but I think I can guess what it is.

There is never any justification for any complacency about even a single incident of malpractice, but the evidence does not suggest that the spread of electoral malpractice justifies the risk that the Government are running with the electoral register. An extensive Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust report in 2008—some time ago, admittedly—concluded:

“It is unlikely that there has been a significant increase in electoral malpractice since the introduction of postal voting on demand in 2000”,

and that what malpractice there was,

“related to a tiny proportion of all elections contested”.

What evidence does the Minister have that suggests that that 2008 analysis now needs to be revisited?

Nor will individual registration address all cases of electoral malpractice—it is not a panacea. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission concluded that the nature of recorded electoral malpractice changes as measures to combat it change. As one form of electoral malpractice is tackled, another rises to take its place.

Your Lordships can see just how seriously the Government take the issue of fraud by their response to the recommendation by the Electoral Commission in January 2014 that a key way to tackle fraud would be for voters to be compelled to produce proof of ID. After an extensive analysis, that is what the Electoral Commission suggested in January 2014. I understand that the Government have still not responded to that proposal. That is how seriously they take this issue of fraud.

The weakness of the Government’s case for their approach is matched by the damage it risks doing. It risks excluding millions from their democratic right to vote. It junks the principle followed for very good reasons by successive Conservative and Labour Governments that fundamental constitutional change such as this should proceed, wherever possible, only on a bipartisan basis.

We now look at why the Government are doing this. What they are doing matters for specific electoral reasons as well as on grounds of general democratic principle. Most agree that eligible voters who are not registered to vote are most likely to vote Labour when they do vote. The Liberal vote in the inner cities, such as it still is, is also likely to be affected. The Electoral Commission found over and over again that underregistration is notably higher than average among the young, private sector tenants and black and minority British residents, and that:

“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas”.

The evidence suggests that the party that will suffer least, if at all, from such a flawed electoral register is the Conservative Party. Electoral registration has been significantly lower in Labour areas than in Conservative areas. It is significant that, despite the fact that the register is still only 85% complete, the only action that the Government proposed to take in their 2015 manifesto to increase that figure was to increase registration among British citizens living overseas. There was not a word about British citizens living in British inner cities, which we know are likely to be significantly underregistered. I am sure that I do not need to remind your Lordships that British citizens living in British inner cities do not tend to vote Conservative in large numbers.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has also pointed out, as I did at length in another debate, that conducting the boundary reviews on the basis of this sort of flawed register is likely to benefit the Conservative Party. Sadly, the reason that the Government have rejected the Electoral Commission’s recommendations about individual registration seems all too clear.

Parliament and politicians have been falling into disrepute in recent years. I ask your Lordships, therefore, to consider the impact on the health of our democracy if it turns out that the outcome of a future general election has been determined by the fact that millions of eligible voters could not vote because they were not registered to do so, and that this was the result of a government policy deliberately pursued, despite all the evidence that it would have precisely this consequence. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. We keep hearing about these extraordinary numbers who will be denied the vote. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that 1.9 million people will be wiped off the face of our democracy. Surely that is a fantasy. Yesterday we listened to a very fine speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis—almost too effective a speech, from my point of view—in which she was able to quote time and again the individuals who believed that they would suffer from the tax change that we were discussing yesterday. Today, I have listened to all these speeches and so far not a single individual has come forward to say that they believe they will suffer, despite the fact that apparently 1.9 million are going to be wiped off the face of our democracy. Surely this is fantasy. Where are these mythical hordes that the noble Lord keeps talking about?

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that characteristically energetic and vivacious intervention, but we have to make policy on the basis of the evidence available to us. Of course the noble Lord is right that we cannot look into the future, and maybe magically, in the next few months, the electoral register will go from 85% up to, say, 95%, which is probably as close to being comprehensive as one can reasonably hope. Maybe it will but, on the basis of all the evidence that we have, it is unlikely to happen.

I quote to the noble Lord the experience of Northern Ireland. When it introduced individual registration, the independent Electoral Commission of Northern Ireland found that:

“The new registration process disproportionately impacted on young people and students, people with learning disabilities, people with disabilities generally and those living in areas of high social deprivation”.

It concluded—this is the sort of evidence on which we have to make policy—

“While these findings relate directly to Northern Ireland, they are not unique and reflect the wider picture across the UK. They present a major challenge to all those concerned with widening participation in electoral and democratic processes”.

There is the evidence that something has happened, and we have to learn from that.

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[Lord Dobbs]

I will try to be brief on this. The noble Lord is talking about individuals who are not on the register. This whole order is about names that are on the register but should not be. That is a completely different argument from the one that he is putting forward.

[Lord Wills]

No, my Lords. As I have already said, this is a difficult issue because we are trying to balance competing priorities. Of course the accuracy of the register is important, which is why all sides support the introduction of individual registration and why as a Minister I legislated to bring it into play. There is no question about the importance attached to accuracy. However, it has to be balanced by a comprehensive register, for all the reasons I have endeavoured to set out today. The Government could have done a very simple thing: they could have accepted the Electoral Commission’s recommendations. It would not have solved all the problems—they are too intractable for that—but it would have helped. The Government have decided to reject that. The risks are clear but, for no good reason, the Government have ignored them. Despite the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and what I am sure will be the eloquence of the Minister in due course, no good reasons have been given for doing this.

The last time I spoke in a debate with the Minister at the Dispatch Box, I recommended that he read Aristotle. I am sure that, with his very heavy workload, he has not managed to pull down that well-thumbed volume from his bookshelves, so perhaps I may remind him of the words of that great Greek philosopher. He said that,

“constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct and just without qualification, whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers”—

or, in this case, only at the advantage of the Conservative Party—

“are deviant and unjust because they involve despotic rule which is inappropriate for a community of free persons”.

Once again, I recommend those words to the Minister; and to your Lordships’ House, I also recommend the conclusion of the royal commission, in 2000, that your Lordships’ House should act as a “constitutional long-stop” to ensure that,

“changes are not made to the constitution without full and open debate and an awareness of the consequences”.

That is why I will support this Motion.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, used the word haste, but this process has been going at a snail’s pace for years. We introduced individual electoral registration in 2002. As my noble friend Lord Lexden pointed out, the solution in dealing with the inevitable groups who tend to be underrepresented on every electoral register is not just to sit back and leave on the register loads of people who may or may not exist; as my noble friend Lord Lexden said, you target those groups. You form a schools initiative and go round the universities and the schools. We had a mobile unit that went round housing estates knocking on doors and to community centres to give people photographic ID cards so that they could use them at the electoral office if they did not have passports or driving licences. You target the people who you know are traditionally not on the registers.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, the Electoral Commission is a body that the whole House respects. However, it is not a body that we take instructions from; it is a body that we listen to and consider. Take the Scottish referendum: I do not think that that was a particularly great example of good advice.

Nevertheless, we are talking about a balance of risk: the risk that people who are currently on the register will be denied a vote in the future versus the risk that people will be on the register and constituency boundaries drawn up on the basis of people who are not there at all.

There is another category of person that has not been identified. We talked about a figure of 1.9 million people. But even on the figures that we are getting more recently, that number will have reduced substantially, one way or the other, by the time that we come to December. However, that does not mean that those 1.1 million or 1.2 million people, as it will be by that stage, will not be on the electoral register; it just means that they will not be on the register at the address that they were knocked off it from.

In Belfast, there was a transition period when the process came in, and the register was printed including the names of those who were not individually registered. That is perfectly sensible and reasonable. However, a point came at which we decided to draw the line. At that point, people had to be individually registered or else they were taken off the register. In the Botanic ward in Belfast, near the university—my noble friend Lord Lexden will be very familiar with it—the number of people on the electoral register dropped by 27%. The reason was that the students, nurses, junior doctors and others in the area who occupied many of the dwellings were not there. However, they were registered at their home address in various other parts of the country. Just because a number of people are taken off the register, that does not mean that they are not voting somewhere. That is an issue that has to be taken into account, but which has not been in this debate so far.

The Act that the Minister has used to bring this provision forward provided him with the opportunity to do so. It could have said “2016”, but it included the provision that it could be brought in earlier. Presumably, therefore, at that stage, the Minister and the House saw circumstances in which there could be a variation in the timing of this process.

As I said to someone rather light-heartedly, even with these measures being introduced, it was lily-livered legislation. For example, it does not deal with the barking mad idea of postal votes on demand. Also, people still need to have photographic ID—there are huge gaps. However, I do not believe in the blood-curdling prognosis that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has brought forward as the risk factor here. In a transition from one system to another, there is always risk. It is a question of finding out what the balance is. There is substantial time and still opportunity to do that.

A big push should be made between now and the end of the year for publicity and action at local level. I also believe that the opportunity will still exist after 1 December for people to register. They should do what we did and target groups—it works. We have the proof, in that we got young people on to the register at a very high level. Target the schools, universities and community centres, particularly those in urban areas, because we all accept that the same profile of individual tends to be off the register in most places.

There is also another category of person: those who do not wish to be on the register. That can be for a variety of reasons: they could be “doing the double”, avoiding moneylenders or all sorts of things. People deliberately take themselves off the register. In my view, there is no way that we are going to deal with that, unless we change the law dramatically.

On balance, the risk here is that there are grossly inaccurate registers in certain places. There is no point in persisting and saying, “Well, we’ll keep it going for longer and longer”, because that will not fix anything. If you identify a problem in a particular area, you go and target the area. The local councils know where these areas are. We know where the schools are and where the universities are. Target those places instead of this blunderbuss approach where you just carry on and hope that, over time, it will get it more accurate. It will not.

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[Lord Cormack]

Of course, that is entirely true and it is a point I have made in both this House and in another place. I would like to see us get tougher on that. But the fact of the matter is—

[Lord Wills]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

They are coming at me right, left and centre.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord who, with all the authority of his experience and wisdom, raises a very important point about the importance of belief in the integrity of the electoral system. I think everyone agrees with him on that. But does he accept that the integrity of the electoral system involves both the accuracy of the system and its comprehensive coverage? The system cannot be thought to be replete with integrity when so many voters who are eligible to vote are simply not on the register.

[Lord Cormack]

For a start, we do not know exactly how many are not on it. The figure of 1.9 million has been quoted. It is inevitable that by the time we reach 1 December, that figure will shrink considerably and between then and the crucial elections that will take place in Scotland and elsewhere next year, I believe that the figure will be much smaller still, and I very much hope that it is. But we also have this balance between completeness and total accuracy. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, made this point in his very fair speech. We know from experience in Tower Hamlets and elsewhere that there have been occasions when the electoral register has been manipulated and democracy has been brought into disrepute. We know that for a fact. What we want is a register of total integrity. That is why I agree with the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Empey that proof of identity should be a requirement. I also believe that postal votes should not be supplied on demand because that lends itself to abuse.

It has been said that this is a very different debate from yesterday’s. Of course, it is. Given the opportunity to speak yesterday, I would have argued that the constitutional priorities should be the most important ones for this House. But the House spoke as it spoke and, even though I may regret that, I had sympathy with the arguments advanced so brilliantly by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and others. We are where we are, as they say, and we must see what happens. However, I use this opportunity to say to the House that we must be very careful about using the power that we have. Today, we quite rightly have it, and that was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, when he quoted from the Act. Of course, we have the right to reject this order today if we choose to do so. However, as one who believes passionately in this House and its integrity, and who believes equally passionately—nay, perhaps more so—in the supremacy of the other place, where I had the honour to serve for 40 years, I say to the House that we must be very careful how we use our power.

Although I have very considerable respect for the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and many of his colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches, I say this to them: they believe in a number of things very firmly and, I accept, with complete honesty. They believe in the supremacy of the House of Commons, as they tell us repeatedly. They believe in proportionality and many of them do not believe in your Lordships’ House, but some do—

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I rise having listened to the full debate and, like many in this place, having fought many elections. In fact, my noble friend Lord Cormack referred to having canvassed in every election since 1959. I have fought a fair number of elections and the House of Lords Information Office has been good enough to produce biographical details on me. According to its information, I first fought Kingswood in January 1900 and in the same month it says I fought Christchurch, so, according to the Information Office, I somewhat outdo most Peers in this House. That will be corrected at some point.

I start on an aspect of harmony. A number of noble Lords on both sides, but originally the noble Lord, Lord Wills, identified that we should produce ID in voting. I wholeheartedly agree with all those who made those points.

On elections, a number of those who know me know that I have been interested in this subject for many years. In fact, and this is to some extent an admission of guilt but I hope of impartiality as well, I was the second new entry in the 1983 intake into the other House to vote against a government three-line whip. I did so on the paving Bill in relation to the abolition of the GLC because I thought it inappropriate. My comments today in support of what the Government propose are against the background that I have taken and still take a very dispassionate view on these matters.

I will pick up a number of points covered by other Members of this House. First, the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, commented on registration fraud. Unfortunately, it would appear that she has not read the verdict, statements and analysis of the recent case in Tower Hamlets where there is clear identification of that position. Also, the Electoral Commission in 2012 made the point that there should be improvements in electoral registration in Tower Hamlets. It identified that Tower Hamlets had a policy and administration that were above the practice of many of the London boroughs.

I turn to the question of “ghost” voters. I choose to call them that because having tried to contact these people nine times, they must be pretty close to being ghosts. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to the fact that there may well be people among that 1.9 million—dropping to 1.4 million or 1.2 million—who voted in May. I could understand it if the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, had made particular reference to that and said that this order should not be introduced until there had been that sort of matching process. Instead, we have a catch-all that we will do away with it completely or delay it until 2016.

However, these people have been called on nine times. I now speak from personal experience. I currently live some 200 yards from where the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, went to primary school. When I attempted to be a candidate in the last London elections, I visited my neighbours. They were not on the electoral roll. I visited the neighbours four doors down, and they were not on the electoral roll either. When I first moved into my current address, I had eight years of having somebody on the electoral roll who had never lived there. That is the essence of this debate. We are talking about removing people who we have attempted to contact nine times as against those people who a number of noble Lords have said we need to get on the electoral roll. Those are two different groups of people, and that should be recognised in this debate.

I also listened to a number of contributions in which there have been criticisms of what happened in Northern Ireland. They said, “It happened like this”, or “It happened like that”. That seems to be a justification not for delaying but for not having IER in the first place. You cannot have both. If you are to have IER, then you will face some of those problems. They have to be tackled through better collecting of registration.

In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made comments about shop stewards which a number of people who have backgrounds as shop stewards would consider a little unfortunate. He suggested that the AEA was the “shop stewards’ fora”—I think that was the phrase he used. He then went on to quote the Electoral Commission’s report. On page 3, under acknowledgements, there is only one acknowledgement and it is to that same group of people for their work.

I turn to the question that he identified about primarily urban or rural communities and their retained electors. Taking the top 20 authorities with the worst record on retained electors, it is not, as has been suggested, filled purely with Scottish or London boroughs, although there are a lot of London boroughs among them. The deprived London borough of Kensington and Chelsea is third on the list. The equally deprived borough of Windsor and Maidenhead comes out 12th. Harrow and Scarborough appear in the same block. None of them is an area that one would identify as being either deprived or necessarily totally urban.

[Lord Wills]

The noble Lord raises the question of statistics. Is he aware of the relative registration rates in Conservative and Labour constituencies? I should be interested to know what his figures are for those national data.

[Lord Hayward]

I am, but I have not got them with me. I am happy to write to the noble Lord with the answer. They are not particularly relevant to the point I am making which is the one cited by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler about the difference in registration from one place to another in relation to those who would suffer if those ghosts were removed. I have just mentioned those areas where the level of retention would appear to be worst, if I may use that word.

On the other hand, there are authorities at the other end of the spectrum which have tackled this issue incredibly well, including the deprived areas of Hartlepool, Halton, Redcar and Cleveland, Barrow-in-Furness, Chesterfield and Bridgend. I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, because one of the authorities with a reasonably good record so far is Liverpool. Knowsley, which nobody can argue is anything other than deprived, has a strikingly good record. So there is no correlation between the two. There is a correlation between some parts of the country and others. I would like to identify some of the other places—

[Lord Wills]

Actually, I know the answer to the question I asked the noble Lord. I was about to tell him. There is roughly a 6% difference between registration levels in Conservative-held seats and Labour-held seats. That might have changed a little in the last general election, but I doubt by very much. There is a significant difference.

[Lord Hayward]

I do not challenge that. The noble Lord has made the point for me. We are talking about people who are registered or not registered and not about the ghost voters whom we are talking about in this debate.

There are other areas of deprivation where they have cleansed the register very effectively. There is a whole series of authorities in Wales—places such as Bridgend, Cardiff, Swansea and Rhondda Cynon Taff. All of them have low figures of problems, if I may use the term, in cleansing their registers. I have not raised this, but if it is right that it was possible in Wales to have cleansed the registers in those sorts of authorities, why is it not the case in London? If it is suggested that this is to do with boundaries, then the places that will suffer are the valleys of Wales because they have cleansed their registers. The boroughs of London which have not cleansed theirs will benefit.

In conclusion, we have been talking about this group of people—these ghosts—as if there is no burden. There is a substantial burden on local authorities. They have to print the electoral rolls with all these people on them, many of whom should not be there. They issue polling cards. They issue ballot papers. There has to be freepost provision for these people for some elections. There is an attendant burden. No wonder the AEA makes its views clear on what it thinks would be the best position. It recognises that there is an unnecessary burden on a large number of local authorities. If one removes retained voters from the register, we will not be sending out all the unnecessary cards, ballot papers, freeposts, et cetera, during the upcoming election.

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[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I completely agree with the noble Lord that the rules of politics must be seen to be fair, which is why we are taking this action today. We believe that it is wrong to have so many inaccurate ghost entries on this register and that the facts have changed, in that by December these four out of 100 voters will have been contacted at least nine times. I will go on.

[Lord Wills]

The Minister keeps referring to this figure of 96%. Can he be absolutely clear that he accepts that 85% of the eligible population has registered to vote? In other words, 15% of those eligible are not registered. Many noble Lords have made the point in this debate that the process now under way, which the Government are hurrying forward in this way, will prejudice attempts to get that other 15% on to the register.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I completely agree that we need to get more people on the register. However, let us not confuse apples and oranges—these are two separate things. If people are not on the register, there is absolutely no way they can be taken off the register, which is what we are saying today. I do not understand—maybe I am not explaining it clearly enough. However, I will go on, if I may.

When people move, we should not leave their entries on the register. That increases the risk of not only electoral fraud but benefit and financial fraud. In advance of Northern Ireland moving to a system of individual electoral registration in 2002, the police said that it would,

“go a long way to eliminating the opportunities for fraudsters to commit the offence of personation”.

The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, asked about fraud. Let us just remind ourselves that since 2002-03, courts have imposed jail sentences for electoral fraud in Ashford, Blackburn, Bradford, Bristol, Burnley, Coventry, Derby, Guildford, Oldham, Peterborough, Slough and Walsall.