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

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Dobbs

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.