Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Tyler

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

That is for a later part of the Committee stage, but I have sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord. Indeed, I pointed out at Second Reading that the London Borough of Hounslow has done incredibly well over recent years, despite the difficulties that most local authorities have been facing. Hounslow has used a whole number of positive and negative ways to encourage people to register. It is not just where these things happen; it is the degree of attention that the local authority is able and willing to give to these matters.

As my noble friend Lord Rennard has indicated, we have a later amendment which we think would bring back to Parliament the last word in pressing the go button, particularly for 2016. I think that that is more appropriate than asking the Electoral Commission to be, as it were, judge and jury in its own case.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, as always it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and particularly so on his birthday. I should like to take this opportunity to wish him many happy returns. I am surprised, though, that in his interesting history of the previous Government’s legislation in this area he omitted to mention that the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer referred, was agreed as being the best way forward by the Conservative Front Bench in opposition and by the Liberal Democrat Benches in opposition. We have still not had any explanation of why that agreement has been ditched and we have to spend the time of this House and the other place on this new legislation. Perhaps he will return to that in due course and explain to those of us who are still mystified by it exactly why that was the case.

I support these amendments, which have been so ably spoken to by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. They all go to mitigate what many of us think are the risks of a decline in levels of registration as a result of this legislation. There is no certainty that the levels will decline, but we feel that there is a risk of that. We do not know whether the Government agree because so far they have studiously avoided saying whether they think there is any risk, but what we do know is that they are commendably committed to a comprehensive register. They have said that many times and I think we all agree on that. We also know that, again commendably, they are bringing forward a number of measures to that end, and they have the support of almost everyone in the House for those measures. But what we have also learnt is that they seem to feel that a level of registration of 85% to 87%—in other words where there would be 6 million people who would be eligible to vote but who would not be on the register—is a level of completeness that, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in an email to me, is, “as complete as is reasonably possible”. That at least indicates that they think there is some considerable difficulty in achieving a truly comprehensive register. We do not know exactly why the Government will not say whether they think there is any risk of a decline in levels of registration as a result of this legislation. It may be because they actually think that there is no such risk but that it would be imprudent for a Government to commit themselves in that way. It may be that they have done some work which shows that there are considerable risks inherent in the legislation, but again they do not want to tell us.

Governments are not infallible. Amendment 36, which I particularly support, offers Parliament the opportunity to assess the Government’s record in this area. This amendment would commit not only this Government but subsequent Governments. This Government may not be in power after 2015 so this amendment would commit a future Labour Government to bring before Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise levels of registration and, if necessary, to produce remedial measures. I think Parliament should have that opportunity.

This is not a minor technical matter, although some of the details are technical; it is about the very wiring of our democracy. The outcome of general elections depends on electoral registration. There are worries on this side of the House that this legislation, coupled with the PVSC Act, will lead to partisan outcomes in levels of electoral registration. These are important issues and Parliament ought to have the opportunity to scrutinise them regularly.

The Minister may say that the Electoral Commission will do its usual good job in bringing forward annual reports on the state of electoral registration and then it may be for Parliament to discuss the matter if it so wishes, but I hope that the Minister will not rely on such an argument. That would be to downplay the importance of this issue and the risks inherent in this legislation. I hope that the Government can agree with what is actually a modest amendment and allow Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise levels of registration on an annual basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I want to contribute briefly to the discussion of this amendment on the appeals process but, before I do so, perhaps I should put the record straight in relation to the 2009 Act. There was not unanimity, despite what was said earlier, about the previous Government’s timetable for the introduction of IER. Both my noble friend Lord Rennard and I, during the Second Reading of the Bill on 18 March 2009, made it clear that we hoped there would be an acceleration of the programme, which is of course what the present Government are doing. Since then we have found that the previous register was so incomplete that there was a greater case for accelerating the process.

[Lord Wills]

I am sure that the noble Lord would not want to distort the historical record on his birthday. I do not know whether he and his noble friend were speaking on behalf of the Front Benches in that case but, certainly in the House of Commons, what actually happened was that the Front Benches agreed on the Political Parties and Elections Act and the timetable for that legislation. That is a matter of record in Hansard.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, as may often be the case, your Lordships’ House was wiser than the other place on this issue, and I invite the noble Lord to look at Hansard for 18 March 2009, cols. 257 and 284.

Returning to the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, I too have some concerns. It is important to make sure that there is some form of transparent judicial appeal process in which everyone has confidence, not least because removals can be serious, not just to the individual concerns but more generally. I draw attention to the fact that the implications, not least in terms of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, could mean that a donor is found to be illegitimate because he or she has been removed from the register. There could be considerable consequences from any form of removal. Therefore, although I do not have a strong view about whether the tribunal process would be the right one—doubtless, the Minister’s officials may already be providing reams of advice on the cumbersome problems that could be caused by a new tribunal—will my noble friend consider extending the existing tribunal process that relates to the civil liability issue under the Bill?

I do not have a magic answer to this but surely if there is already a tribunal process under the Bill, perhaps it might be extended to deal with appeals of this sort. That would seem to be a neat way to deal with this issue, and I look forward to hearing whether my noble friend would find that a helpful way forward.

Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[Lord Wills]

I thought that someone would challenge me on this and I am delighted to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler.

[Lord Tyler]

I do not wish to challenge that. I want to draw the noble Lord’s attention to the fact—he is a very fair man—that what he has just said about individual registration and what he said previously about the fact that his Administration failed to bring forward these instruments after the PPE Act in 2009 are in direct contradiction. If it is so vital to improve data sharing so that the register can be more effective and more accurate and so that its integrity can be improved to enable us to move further and faster on individual registration, why did his Administration not bring forward these instruments immediately after the PPE Act?

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. He is fully aware that we are talking about a matter of months. We considered all the advice that we received and we consulted widely. As the noble Lord has raised this point, it is worth reminding the Committee that, under the previous Government, the Front Benches of both the party of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, including the Minister, and the Conservative Party agreed that the timeframe that was necessary to bring in individual registration could not be rushed. Therefore, we set a date of 2015. Everyone agreed with all the expert analysis that that time was needed to achieve a comprehensive and accurate register. That is the reason for the timeframe. There is no good reason for bringing this forward in the way that the Government propose—none.

We will return to these issues in due course, but I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who is also a fair man, did not in his remarks pay credit to the Electoral Commission for the work that it did in improving registration rates in the run-up to the election. He may well be right that it was an interesting general election and that that motivated more people to register and, in some cases, even to vote. However, it was also the case that the Electoral Commission did first-rate work in targeting particularly hard-to-reach groups—groups that are traditionally under-registered—and achieved considerable success. This will give us all hope and the commission deserves credit for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, should have given the previous Government some credit for the measures that they put in place and implemented to drive up rates of registration. The encouraging figures that we have seen recently owe at least something to the work that we did in government. I hope that he is nodding in agreement with this. I am happy to give way to him so that he can put it on the record.

[Lord Tyler]

I give credit to all who can improve registration, but the noble Lord is again undermining his own case. If registration has improved over the past 12 or 24 months, the circumstances that he described of moving towards individual registration could also be accelerated.

[Lord Wills]

I am delighted that the noble Lord has made that point. We set up a process under which there would be an independent assessment of whether the register was comprehensive and accurate—not a guess by Ministers or politicians but an accurate independent assessment. As the noble Lord is aware, under the legislation the Electoral Commission has to report annually to Parliament on progress. Let us see what it says and not rush ahead before we have received such assessments, which are unlikely to show that. I do not say that they will not show it and, if they do, obviously this can be revisited. We put in the requirement for those annual reports to Parliament so that it could make that judgment on the basis of independent evidence and not on the basis of a ministerial whim. When the noble Lord’s party was in opposition, it was very much against that kind of executive whim. I hope that we will see that antagonism to arbitrary action by the state exemplified in its opposition to this legislation.

[Lord Tyler]

I am sorry, but we did not support the timescale that the noble Lord is now describing. In this very Room in Committee, my noble friend Lord Rennard and I argued that we surely could be in a position to accelerate the process in time for an expected election at some point in 2014-15.

[Lord Wills]

With all due respect to the noble Lord, we have to make that judgment on the basis of evidence, but the evidence is not there at the moment. I tried hard in government to put in further measures to improve registration, but for various reasons I was not able to get them all through. I want to know what this Government are doing to bring in new measures over and above what we brought in. That was my first question to the Minister. I have not seen any evidence that this Government are doing any more than the previous Government did, although I am happy to be proved wrong. The improvement of registration rates is vital for the health of our democracy.

The point that I was making, which the noble Lord overlooked, was that Parliament will have an opportunity annually to assess progress towards a comprehensive and accurate register. My concern is not about the speed of individual registration but that it should happen only when the register is comprehensive and accurate. The noble Lord seems to be saying that it should just be done whenever Ministers feel like it. That is the point of disagreement between us. If a comprehensive and accurate register, assessed independently by the Electoral Commission, can be achieved earlier than 2015, that is fine, but all the evidence is that it will not be. If it can be done, then I agree with the noble Lord that we can bring in individual registration sooner, but to rush ahead before the register is comprehensive and accurate will be very damaging. It will be damaging to the register and to the health of our democracy, because it is so transparently partisan to so many of us.

We do not see this as a benign oversight by the Government; we see it as another example of a Government trying to fix the system in their own electoral interest. I know that many people will just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, that’s what politicians always do. What do you expect?”, but we and this Government really should not behave like that. That is why this matter is so important. It may sound like a technical issue to many people out there but it is not; it is about the integrity of the whole system. I hope that when we get to debate these measures we will hear the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, engage with these issues with his customary rigour, fairness and belief in the integrity of the system. He may come to the point where he is persuaded to vote against his Government on this measure because, in my view, that is what he should do.

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Lord is eloquent, but perhaps I may ask him to confirm one thing before he completely rewrites the history of the previous Administration. Am I right in thinking that the Electoral Commission recommended a staged move towards individual registration in 2003? Why did it take so long for him and his colleagues to get round to doing anything about it if it is as important as he says that it is?

[Lord Wills]

I agree. This was a particularly intractable problem, which Governments have looked at and tried to solve over a very long period. We were not in power for the whole of the past 50 years. Other Governments were in power and they, too, did nothing about moving towards individual registration. We tried to move towards it. The problem was that, every time we looked at achieving the desirable good of individual registration, we saw the problems with the register. We took necessary and important steps to improve the register, but I admit that they were not sufficient. I accept that and the noble Lord is right to criticise us for it. However, you cannot try to achieve one desirable good at the risk of creating what I would see as a greater ill, which is damaging a flawed register even more than it is already damaged.

It was not an easy process, but we found a way to do that. It took a huge amount of effort and negotiation with all sides, including the Electoral Commission, which had to be satisfied that it was proper. We found a balance by coupling the two processes. We coupled the improvement of the register so that it became comprehensive and accurate with individual registration. That, we hoped, would put pressure on everyone to drive up registration rates and move within a reasonable timeframe—and 2015 really is a reasonable timeframe; this is not long-grass territory. Therefore, we moved towards individual registration within a reasonable timeframe and, at the same time, tried to ensure that the register was not damaged, or, to be precise, damaged more than it was already.

I hope that the noble Lord will accept that that is a reasonable point of view. We have to be careful with this. I know that the Minister has not tried to do so, but it is wrong to claim—I am hearing this among the background noises—that these desirable and worthwhile measures that he has brought before us today, for which we are all grateful, on their own justify the partisan rush to individual registration. For all their merits, they do not.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Tyler

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

I was interested in the noble Lord’s quote from the Deputy Prime Minister. This is what the Bill says—no matter what the Deputy Prime Minister says—in relation to the factors that the noble Lord just outlined:

“This rule”—

in other words, the effect of community and so on—

“has effect subject to rules 2 and 4”.

It says “subject to”, not “alongside”. The rules about the equalisation of numbers take precedence over all those other considerations. That is what we are so worried about on this side of the House.

[Lord Tyler]

That is precisely the role of your Lordships’ House. When we reach Committee stage, I am sure there will be general agreement on both sides of the House that we need to look carefully at the order of priority of those criteria. That is precisely what I said. I am delighted to have the support of the Minister who was previously responsible for these matters and sadly had so little effect on other, more senior members of the Administration. We would have made more progress on these issues if he had had his way.

As I have already said, I have a special connection to Cornwall. My ancestry is there and my constituency was there. There is strong evidence from the people I have spoken to and heard from—whom I knew over 40 years in public life there—that keeping Cornwall whole, as the campaign is called, is a priority. It may be that it is a higher priority even than the equality of representation. I hope we can do something in this House to meet that demand, as perhaps we might for others with a particularly compelling case, such as the Isle of Wight. However, we should recognise that it is a dilemma. In both cases it may be that the communities concerned are prepared to accept a lower level of representation in exchange for maintaining their identity. That dilemma is one that should be put fairly and squarely to the people concerned.

The Bill is not a panacea. It is not some holy grail in the scripture of political re-engagement, but it is a good start. Again, I say to noble Members opposite: it is a great pity that they did not start this process when they were given such a long opportunity to do so. The Bill says that people, not politicians, should have the final word over the architecture of their voting system. It says that whichever system we use, everyone’s votes should be of roughly equal value. These are good principles from a good Government, and principles that the latter day Chartists on the other side of your Lordships’ House should endorse as well. In short, it is a good Bill and, with some work along the way to improve Part 2, it is a Bill we should all be able to support.