Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We should look carefully at what the hon. Gentleman and others have said. We are looking across the piece at all the issues, including whether we should follow the Australians with the ban on packaging and what more we can to do to restrict smoking in public places. There has been a real health advance from some of the measures that have been taken. We must consider each one and work out whether there is a real public health benefit, but he makes a good point.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is 22 years since the landmark Medical Research Council report made a direct link between folic acid use by childbearing women and the prevention of neural tube defects such as spina bifida. Scores of countries have fortified their basic food stuffs, but the policy in this country is mired in bureaucracy between the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health and others. Will the Prime Minister reassure the House that he will do everything he can to unblock the logjam to prevent the entirely preventable conditions of hydrocephalus and spina bifida?

[The Prime Minister]

I will look very carefully at what my hon. Friend has said. It is certainly true that the levels of conditions such as spina bifida have come down and that folic acid has an important role to play. I shall look at the specific points he makes and the bureaucratic problem he identifies and perhaps get the Department of Health to write to him about it.

Charitable Registration

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

I agree.

With reference to openness, the Plymouth Brethren are sometimes subject to caricature, partly because often we do not know them personally, but they are far more open than people might realise. For example, they have a modern website—Plymouthbrethrenchristianchurch.org —which has a “Contact us” page, enabling any member of the public to find their nearest local Plymouth Brethren church and service times. Hon. Members may be interested to know that I recently attended one of their services in Liverpool and I found nothing out of the ordinary in their Christian teaching at that service.

Some of the Brethren’s practices and the way in which they seek to live out their Christian lives are not necessarily what we would want to adhere to—I would not—but all denominations have their differences. The Brethren’s women wear headscarves in services, but so do women in other Christian denominations, such as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and men in other religions, such as Sikhism. They do not vote. I do not agree with them on that and we have discussed it. I can certainly say that not one hon. Member here has a vested interest in standing up for them today. They say that scripture says that God sets up and deposes authorities, and that is their principle for not voting. At least they do not vote on principle, rather than because of laziness, but they do engage with and respect the democratic process in many other ways.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I am glad that there are no no-go areas in Congleton for my hon. Friend when canvassing. I congratulate her on her lucid, diligent contribution to this debate. There is asymmetry in the apparatus of the state being used against the Plymouth Brethren. Does she agree that, given that there have been 20 public benefit assessments between 2009 and 2011, until the law is properly clarified to the satisfaction of legislators there should be a moratorium on any further assessments?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who made a typically robust and passionate defence, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce).

As has been said, the debate is about more than just an arcane analysis of section 17 of the Charities Act 2006. This is about a battle, about the secularisation of society and about calling a spade a shovel, which is quango activism. The Charity Commission has previous on this, in its class-based and politicised campaign to attack independent schools. The crucial question that we must ask is whether the present situation is what Parliament intended in 2006. Did it intend to undermine, attack and traduce the very salt of the earth, who reach out inclusively to help some of the most marginalised groups in society and get them to change their lives? I would never have voted for a Bill that I thought would do that. At the least, we are right to draw attention to the significant concerns expressed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, that what is happening is the beginning of a process of pushing Christians out of the public square and delegitimising Christian religion in the name of bureaucracy and process. I cannot be part of that.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the danger of part of that process might be the calling into question of denominational education—Catholic education and Church of England education—if the Charity Commission is going to stick by the point about the purpose not being simply for the benefit of the followers of the religion or teaching? The large Christian Churches will end up having to explain themselves to those faceless people.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes an intelligent point, as did the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), who is not in his place. Are we really going to inflict a massive audit process on people who have better things to do: helping the most vulnerable people, in a practical, pragmatic way? There is an issue of fairness as well. Are we to sit by and let an unfashionable minority—a minority that in general people do not understand—be picked off by the apparatus of the state, with such asymmetry? If we are talking about public benefit, is it really a public benefit that my constituents’ taxes are effectively being used to hound people who do good in society? That is not a good use of those taxpayers’ money.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow made it clear that the Charity Commission has some serious questions to answer. As I said earlier, it undertook 20 public benefit assessments between 2009 and 2011, and we need at the very least to re-examine what those achieved and what the ultimate agenda is. It is wrong and inappropriate for the state apparatus to be used against the people whose great work in our communities we have all seen.

I will say just two more things, because others want to speak: we must have a moratorium on any more assessments, until we have properly clarified the law with Ministers, if necessary by way of primary legislation, so that we do not have a grey area between Parliament and the pernicious actions of the super-quango that decides it will cast people out and cause them not to be viable in their communities. That is imperative for the House. Also, it is time that the Attorney-General was invited to invoke his powers to sort out the situation in the interim. The issue is not just defending Christianity: it is defending all faith communities, and it is about fairness and equity. If parliamentarians are here for nothing else, we must defend those things.

[Jim Dobbin (in the Chair)]

I must reduce the speaking time to three minutes now.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

I am not clear whether my hon. Friend is suggesting that this is inherent in the law, that we should take away the provision stating that there should not be any automatic presumption and that people should have to demonstrate public benefit. Mission creep is possible in any charitable organisation. There could be a suggestion that by defining oneself as a religion or any other kind of group, one does not have to demonstrate public benefit. What I am struggling with—after listening to what Members have said today and after being lobbied on the issue—is precisely how the Charity Commission came to its decision. Having said that, it is not for us to second-guess the tribunal. I was taken with the proposal made by the hon. Member for Congleton that in order to get the matter dealt with, perhaps it should be taken to the upper-tier tribunal as swiftly as possible, rather than meandering much more slowly through the process. It was held up by the Charity Commission while waiting for decisions in other cases.

The commission says that it does not see this a test case for all religions, and that it has not embarked on a process of trying to use this as a step towards something else, as people fear. I hope that that is correct. The 2006 Act stated that there was provision for a review of the Act’s workings, and in relation to the question of public benefit. That review has taken place and Lord Hodgson’s report, which was delivered to the Government some five months ago, was inconclusive. It said that there was no need for the definition of public benefit to be reviewed. Perhaps there is now an opportunity for a full debate on that review, and I will be interested to hear what the Minister says on the matter. I do not think that Parliament has had chance to debate that yet, so perhaps we could reopen why the question of why the review decided that the matter did not have to be reconsidered.

It is important that we have good, strong charity law and that the system ensures, as I think Members would agree, that what constitutes public benefit is clear. There are a number of opportunities to consider that, including in response to Lord Hodgson’s review, which is an issue that I hope the Minister will address.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The key issue is that the Charity Commission does not appear to have an evidential basis for saying that the Plymouth Brethren is sui generis—in other words, that it is unique and different from every other organisation doing something similar. That is why there is significant concern in that organisation, as well as worry among other people that they will be next.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Perhaps it will come out more fully in the appeal and in further work that is being done. I have some sympathy with those who say that many other religious organisations, at certain points in their operations, do not allow others to take part. On the face of it, the decision does not seem to quite fit with what people have said the organisation is doing.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I find it almost touching that the right hon. Gentleman thinks that his party has any credibility whatsoever left on political reform. Labour did not introduce democracy in the House of Lords during 13 years. An opportunity was delivered to the Labour party on a silver platter—[Interruption.] I am perfectly calm, but I am seeking to make myself heard, because I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman is listening. Given that the Labour party did not reform the bastion of privilege and patronage at the other end of the corridor—that it did nothing in 13 years to introduce democracy into the House of Lords—why on earth does he think that anyone believes that it will do so in the future?

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I find the Deputy Prime Minister’s apologia at best confusing and possibly disingenuous in that he will know that the coalition agreement did not specifically call for primary legislation on House of Lords reform but for a settled cross-party consensus to be reached. We tried to do that and could not, but that consensus could have been formed around the Bill put forward by Lord Steel of Aikwood. On that basis, why has the Deputy Prime Minister chosen to resile from a solemn agreement to support fair and democratic boundaries?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As far as I can remember, I have not sought to make any apology over the past 45 minutes. I feel that the Government have acted in good faith to try to generate cross-party support for a reasonable set of proposals drawing on a lot of work from other members of other parties over several years. It is a great pity that the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues felt that it was not possible to get behind that reasonable package of proposals with a timetable motion. The coalition agreement said that this Government were going to come forward with proposals to reform the House of Lords. We are not a think-tank. The Government do not talk about proposals just to float them idly in a newspaper article and then do nothing about them. If one is going to propose something as a Government, one proposes it with a view to actually doing something.

EU Council

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I worked very closely with John Major and admire him very much. People now make a reassessment and see that he left this country an excellent economic record, which the Labour party completely squandered with a whole decade of debt.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Irrespective of our personal views, why is it right that the people of Scotland will be given a potentially irreversible in/out referendum by 2014, yet the people of the United Kingdom will not be given a similar plebiscite on a matter of great import—this country’s relationship with the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect for my hon. Friend, who takes a very clear view about which he feels very deeply. I think that there is a significant difference, which is that in Scotland, like it or not, the Scottish National party is committed to leaving the United Kingdom and was elected with a mandate for a referendum to do just that, whereas in the case of the United Kingdom and the European Union, most people in our country want a fresh settlement with fresh consent, rather than the binary choice of leaving right now or, indeed as I said in my statement, voting to stay in right now and thereby almost confirming that status quo, which I am not satisfied with—and I do not think many people are.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Harper]

I will finish my point about the civil penalty, then I will take an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson).

The Bill provides that after a registration officer has followed any specified steps and an individual has not made an application, he can require them to do so. If at that stage they fail to do so, he can impose a civil penalty. The intention is that only those who refuse repeatedly can be fined. We do not think it would be particularly helpful to democracy if we fined hundreds of thousands of people, so we expect the number of fines levied to be similar to the number of prosecutions at present. Nor do we want to create a financial incentive for local authorities to use fines as a revenue-raising measure, so any moneys collected—[Interruption.] I hear one of my hon. Friends chuckling, but one or two local authorities have been known to do such things, so any moneys collected will be paid back to the Exchequer through the Consolidated Fund.

[Mr Jackson]

I agree with the compromises that my hon. Friend has made on the opt-out and the civil penalty. I am sure he agrees that people’s propensity to register for elections is a function of societal change as much as anything else. The Electoral Commission has stated:

“Recent social, economic and political changes appear to have resulted in a declining motivation to register to vote among specific social groups.”

That is associated with

“changes in the approach to the annual canvass…as well as matters of individual choice and circumstances (such as a decline in interest in politics).”

Surely we need to concede that some people do not want to register because they are not interested in the process.

[Mr Harper]

We do. The main impact on an individual who does not register to vote is the rather obvious one that they lose their opportunity to vote and have their say in how their country is governed, but there are also some public policy reasons why we want people to register to vote. One reason is to ensure that there is a complete register for the purpose of boundary changes, and another is that the electoral register is used as the pool for jury service. We therefore want to ensure that it is as accurate as possible.

My hon. Friend is right that is up to Members and to people involved in politics of all descriptions to motivate people to register to vote and then use their vote. The use of the vote will, of course, remain sanction-free. It will be entirely up to people whether they use their vote.

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[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I like the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), but I fear that spending too many evenings in parliamentary Labour party meetings has made him quite paranoid, given that the previous Government advanced the same substantive proposals for individual electoral registration in Northern Ireland and that the consultation document that was published in 2005 was followed by the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006, which gave rise to individual electoral registration in Northern Ireland. Neither we nor anyone else accused those measures of being rushed through. The hon. Gentleman must be the first Front Bencher to argue against the substantive proposals of the previous Government. The bigger question is why the integrity, autonomy and authority of the electoral register should be more important in Northern Ireland than in England, Wales and Scotland.

[Mr Harper]

I would have made this point to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), had he shown the generosity of spirit that I did. Given his complaints about the diminishing register and the risks involved, would my hon. Friend like to consider why the Electoral Commission’s research showed that in 2000, under the previous Government, 3 million people were missing from the electoral register and that by 2010, just after they had left office, the figure had risen to 6 million? If there is a party in the House that has shown itself to be a past master at driving people off the electoral register, it is not the party on the Government Benches; it is the party opposite.

[Mr Jackson]

The Minister makes an astute point. In 2001, the year in which the hon. Member for Caerphilly entered the House, the English electorate numbered 37.3 million. By the end of Labour’s second term, in 2005, the figure was 37.1 million. So Labour did not push up registration rates in an increasing population either.

I take with a pinch of salt Labour’s protestations and faux outrage. We have argued for many years that overseas voters should also have the right to be registered, and that active steps should be taken to achieve that. That point has also been made by the hon. Member for Caerphilly’s erstwhile right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane). However, that did not happen during the 13 years of the previous Government. Indeed, they more or less ignored services voters, despite many people from military constituencies saying that that was an outrageous and egregious oversight.

[Mr Evennett]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. Does he agree that the modernisation of our system is essential, and that it should be brought in as soon as possible?

[Mr Jackson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who has great experience in the House.

The Bill is absolutely right, in that its central aims are to tackle electoral fraud, improve the integrity of our electoral system, particularly the electoral register, and modernise the electoral registration system, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) says, is most important. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) was gracious in paying tribute to the Minister and the Department for engaging in an open and wide-ranging debate during the pre-legislative scrutiny and public consultation, and for producing the White Paper and a detailed, comprehensive Government response in February 2012. It is far from the truth that this is some kind of rushed, gerrymandering Bill. It has attracted a lot of support, including from organisations such as the Electoral Commission. There is consensus around the Bill.

The proposals in the Bill featured not only in the Conservative manifesto of May 2010 but in the coalition agreement, so we certainly have a mandate for carrying out this policy. If the hon. Member for Caerphilly were more generous of spirit, he would perhaps admit that the previous Government wanted to proceed in a similar way when they were in power. Reference has been made to the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 in that regard.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman answer a question that has so far remained unanswered? The 2009 Act was passed as a result of consensus across the Chamber, and its provisions were to start in 2015. Why is it so important to bring them back by one year? Why could we not have retained all-party consensus by keeping the date at 2015?

[Mr Jackson]

Because we see this as in the best interest of the body politic generally. There is a plethora of evidence to show that cumulative cases of electoral fraud—I will come on to discuss this issue later both for my own constituency and across the country—have grievously damaged the faith and trust people have in the electoral process. The Minister is quite right that we have all been complacent in assuming that we live in a society where transparency, openness and fairness exist above all in the electoral process. I did not think I would ever encounter a case in which a judge would describe a British electoral result—in this case, for Birmingham city council—as comparable to one of a banana republic, yet that happened in 2004 under the watch of the Government whom the hon. Member for Caerphilly supported.

Important parts of the Bill are uncontentious, but I will bring some concerns to the House’s attention later. Of course individual electoral registration has been broadly supported across the House over a number of years. Some elements, such as the review of polling places, are innocuous and will not be contentious, as I said.

On civil penalties, I mentioned earlier that we must be cognisant of the fact that some people are not interested in the political process. We cannot force people to register on the basis of a criminal sanction—it is not right to do so—if they genuinely do not feel part of the process. That is a function not of a political process, but of societal change over many years. International comparisons are important for understanding how to get people to register. Australia is an interesting example. The level of civic engagement in schools and colleges there and the amount of publicity given to financial education, for example, has led to school children and young people understanding the importance of being involved in the system. I think that is a much better way of proceeding than having criminal sanctions and a penalty. Our society is much changed.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I am certainly no expert on the Australian system and I am sure that school education there is good. Nevertheless, Australia has compulsory voting and has far more frequent and stronger fining than we do.

[Mr Jackson]

We will not meander down the path of compulsory voting, which is a completely separate issue, and even the benign Deputy Speaker might rule me out of order if I did that. I think it is better to persuade than to threaten and cajole people. That is why I am not particularly concerned one way or the other about the opt-out proposals. Had they remained in the Bill and not been amended, I would still have been happy to support it. We can argue about civil penalties, but I think amounts of £60, £80 or £100 send out a powerful enough message. After all, no one wants to get a parking ticket and be fined £60. We are talking about civic engagement with something that is important for the future of our country, and people understand that they should be part of it.

An important corollary of the changes is the reduction in the potential for financial fraud. Essentially, the capacity to commit fraud is often given via a place on the electoral register. Figures produced over the last year or so in the Cabinet Office impact assessment by the Metropolitan Police Service and the National Fraud Initiative under the auspices of Operation Amberhill showed that of 29,000 information strands collated, 13,214—almost 46%—showed data matches with the electoral register that were fraudulent or counterfeit. In other words, the documents were often generated as a result of someone’s being on the electoral register, but were nevertheless fraudulent or counterfeit.

The Minister made the simple point that ours is one of the few countries in the world that still operates a household registration system. The system is backward-looking, and it disfranchises people, particularly women, in communities in which the heads of households take full responsibility for women’s registration and postal vote. We should do something about that. We have a duty to ensure that those women’s votes are not being stolen by people who should not have access to them, because we have a universal franchise based on free and fair access to democracy for every man and every woman, which is what has put us here today.

At present, only a person’s name, address and nationality need to be supplied for that person to appear on the electoral register. As the Minister made clear, this is one of the least robust systems in the world. Let me share with the House our experience in Peterborough. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who I know has been in the House for a long time, was very relaxed and insouciant, perhaps even complacent, about postal votes and the transfer to the individual electoral registration system. However, on 27 April the Peterborough Evening Telegraph reported that 16% of postal votes applied for in the central ward of Peterborough had been thrown out because they were fraudulent or forged.

That is happening now, and it can be extrapolated to different communities and different wards in urban areas throughout the country, including Greater London. However, Members need not rely on me for speculation, because there have already been serious cases of electoral fraud involving postal votes in Slough, Pendle, Birmingham, West Yorkshire and, in particular, Peterborough. I shall say more about that later.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I certainly would not tolerate the fraudulent registration of even one postal vote, but how can it be right to reduce access to postal votes for the many because of a few examples of fraud? No investigation, including those by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers, has discovered extensive fraud. We know that it happens, and we know that it happens in particular places, but surely the job of the police is to find out where it happens and make specific proposals to deal with it, not to disfranchise the many.

[Mr Jackson]

We are making specific proposals. I think that the hon. Lady is tarrying with the wrong person. I saw the huge resources that were devoted to investigation of postal vote fraud by the Cambridgeshire constabulary—who, as far as I know, received little if any help from the Government of whom the hon. Lady was a member—between 2004 and 2008. It took four years for Operation Hooper to complete its investigation, which resulted in the imprisonment of, I believe, five individuals—two of them Conservative and three Labour, as it happens—following the European and city council elections in the central ward of Peterborough in June 2004.

We cannot say that we should not bother about this because we have no proof that it happens. It does happen, it is costly, it undermines the very basis of democracy in this country, and we should ensure—as I believe the Bill does—that the correct procedures operate to ensure that it does not happen in the future. The hon. Lady may wish to reconsider her rather lackadaisical approach to the integrity of our electoral system.

One proposal with which I strongly agree, although I do not think that the Government have gone far enough, is the proposal in clause 19 to allow police community support officers into polling stations. I think that if there is a missed opportunity in the Bill, it is our failure to consider the serious problem of personation and intimidation at polling stations. We saw that in Tower Hamlets earlier this month, and we have seen it too often in Peterborough. I must not major on Peterborough’s central ward, but it is the one that I know best. In that ward we have four polling stations. About half a dozen members of the Cambridgeshire constabulary and mobile CCTV are required at each of them because of the issue of personation, of which there have been cases in Peterborough.

We are not going far enough in looking again at the Representation of the People Act 1983, because the power of the presiding officer inside the polling station remains extremely limited. If the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden were to go into a polling station in Mitcham and Morden and say she was Elvis Presley and that name was on the electoral register, the polling clerk would have very little power to say, “Actually, you’re not Elvis Presley. You’re our esteemed local Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden.” That is not satisfactory. The legal test for proving that the hon. Lady is her good self, rather than Elvis Presley, is very difficult. We have missed an opportunity to look again at that issue.

In closing—which is what the Whips are imploring me to do—may I make two quick points? I have concerns about the removal of the co-ordinated online record of electors—CORE—database. I have no interest in promoting national ID databases—I voted against identity cards—but the Minister must tell us how successful he has been in removing the difficulties of duplication, which have frequently arisen. CORE ameliorated that, but it is no longer in place.

On a slightly mischievous note, this morning on the ConservativeHome website my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) made a point about clause 18 and allowing a parliamentary candidate standing on behalf of two or more parties to use a registered emblem of one or more parties. Can the Minister assure me that there is no hidden agenda in that, and that it is just a helpful way to assist Labour and Co-operative party representatives to get elected in their seats?

[Mr Harper]

I am happy to be able to give my hon. Friend that assurance. There will not be coalition candidates at the next election; there will be separate Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates. I must say, too, that the attitude of Labour Members is a bit depressing. The only reason why we are making this change is that when the Labour party was in office it could not draft legislation properly and inadvertently “cocked it up”, to quote the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). Because of that, and because we are fixing what is largely a problem for Labour and Co-operative Members, one would think they could be slightly less churlish.

[Mr Jackson]

Finally, let me say that the data-matching projects are very useful, but in Peterborough’s case they resulted in merely a 54.7% matching rate. More work needs to be done in the second tranche, and sufficient resources must be allocated, as this will be the bedrock of individual electoral registration.

I thank the Minister for his detailed and comprehensive remarks. The Bill is excellent. It restores integrity, honesty and transparency to the electoral system. That is long overdue. The previous Government should have done this, but it has been our new Government who have taken this courageous step, in order to make sure we can all have faith and trust in the system that puts us here and puts councillors in their seats. That adds to British democracy.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Andrew Stephenson]

Certainly not. I am suggesting that certain parties can abuse the system of on-demand postal voting, and all parties have a vested interest in signing up their voters for postal votes in order to increase the turnout of their voters. I believe that that can skew election results. A return to the old system, where voters had to have a reason to have a postal vote, is the way that we should go.

I accept that in the Reedley ward it is theoretically possible that local support for Labour did sky-rocket. However, I have no doubt that the 45% increase in the Labour vote in 2011, against the backdrop of an 18% drop in turnout, was down to the huge increase in postal votes that year, as well as individual reports of party activists walking into polling stations with piles of up to 50 postal votes at a time. It is not so much that the numbers do not add up; rather, that they do. As the new council leader of Pendle, Councillor Joe Cooney, recently said:

“If we lose an election we want to lose it fairly, we don’t want to see councillors losing seats where it is not a level playing field.”

I accept, as I said, that while the rules remain as they are, all political parties will compete to sign up as many people as possible on to postal votes. Everyone in the Chamber knows that electors with postal votes are more likely to use their vote, so all political parties have a vested interest in doing that. However, as we all know, the temptation for some political activists to create fictitious voters and sign them up for postal votes has proved irresistible in places such as Slough, Birmingham and east London.

It is also clear, yes, that there is a cultural element. That has been endorsed by independent organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust. Even if the electoral roll is accurate, as the Bill hopes to ensure, the current on-demand postal voting regime actively disfranchises women and young people by allowing family voting to occur. By family voting, I mean the head of a household pledging the entire family’s votes to a particular political party. He can then ensure that all those votes go to that political party by watching family members complete their postal ballots, completing the ballots himself, or indeed completing them with an activist from the said political party.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I entirely concur with my hon. Friend’s comments. What we have found in Peterborough from time to time is that the head of the household will fill in both the signature and the date of birth of predominantly women members of the family. It is time-consuming and resource-intensive for the local authority and the electoral registration officer to cross-reference and match those. It is only in that way that the practice is found out, but often it is not. That is uncomfortable and unpalatable, but nevertheless true.

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[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

If I may issue a challenge or wager to the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), it is that there will be proportionately fewer young people on the electoral register in December 2015 than there are today. I support household registration because I believe that the most effective electoral registration officer in my constituency is mum. It is mum who fills in the form and includes her young sons—it is principally young sons, but also young daughters. It is not about people being excluded because of a bullying dad or other figures in the household. The young men I saw queuing up at the polling station at the last general election were there and able to vote because their mums assisted them in that. My concern about individual registration is not about party preference or who wins and loses, but about the disfranchisement of those groups who, for the good of us all and the protection of our society, must be included in the system.

Those listening to the debate would be forgiven for thinking that all sorts of fraud goes on all the time and that there is plenty of evidence for it, but actually the contrary is true. The report produced by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission in March 2012 identified remarkably low levels of offences relating to voter registration, stating that the offences usually concern financial benefit or identity fraud, which can be investigated separately, rather than electoral fraud. Surely we have all met mums in our constituency advice surgeries whose single person discount has been removed from their council tax bill because the council found that the electoral register recorded adult sons or daughters as living with them, even though they had moved out. That is the problem. It is not about people wanting to go on to the electoral register.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Is the hon. Lady really telling the intelligent and articulate Pakistani women in my constituency that they are not intelligent enough or cannot be trusted to fill in their own individual electoral registration forms and that they have to trust their mums, aunties, dads or uncles to do so, because I do not think that that is about women’s empowerment? It is patronising, backward-looking and potentially extremely fraudulent.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I think that that intervention is the result of the hon. Gentleman’s embarrassment at some of his earlier contributions on people who should not be on the electoral register—that gets to the nub of it.

I accept that I am out of step and that individual registration is going to happen. Given that it is, what can we do to make sure that as many people as possible are on the register?

Our democracy depends on the fullest electoral register, and that is why I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) referred, and which suggests that anybody who receives a service from the state, gets a library ticket and a driving licence or claims a benefit should have to be on the register. It would be a social contract, whereby the state—the Government—had a connection with people, who were able to vote if they chose to do so. In that way, we would also bring about a connection that people understood—that there was not something called Government money, but an individual’s money, which they gave to the Government or the state to spend.

The police are not against a comprehensive electoral register, because it is one of the country’s most effective crime databases, so their job will be made much harder if the register becomes less complete. Banks and credit companies will find it harder to tackle fraud, and councils will also find it harder to investigate benefit fraud.

If millions drop off the register because individual registration is introduced too rapidly and with too few safeguards, there will be trouble ahead. The Government have made some concessions, but, as the Bill stands, the number of people on the electoral roll and electoral participation will decline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Laing]

Not in my constituency, it is not, where a large majority of them vote Tory. I want them on the register. This is simply not a reasonable argument. If someone is responsible enough to exercise their right to vote to decide the Government of this country, or at any level of local government, they should be responsible enough to register to vote.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour party should have learnt its lesson from the Bradford West by-election result? It relied on community voting and this kind of backward-looking, pernicious and frankly slightly sleazy and corrupt approach to registration and campaigning. It bit Labour on the backside and it lost by 10,000 votes. It is over.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think there was a question in there somewhere.

Debate on the Address

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about foster care and the need to support the many people across this country who give up their homes and time and offer love to the many children who pass through their homes.

May I also say, as chair of the all-party group on fatherhood, that it is important that in this House, on a cross-party basis, we make a renewed commitment to the importance of fatherhood? I also welcome the changes to care proceedings. If it is right and in the interests of a child, we must make it easier for fathers to have contact with their children. It is now well understood that the outcomes for young people without fathers are not good enough. In parts of this country and in parts of constituencies such as mine there is the phenomenon of the “baby-father”, whereby it is acceptable to have children but not be a father to them, and I welcome any moves in legislation to deal with that issue.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s courageous stance on many of those issues over the years. Does he echo my view that we should also pay tribute to the love, care and courage of grandparents and extended kin, and that we should remove the impediments that they have to caring for their flesh and blood, owing to various difficult circumstances involving their own children, including drug and alcohol abuse?

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman has taken up those issues in his constituency, and I too underline my support for grandparents, particularly given the complexities within families of drug and alcohol addiction.

But in the end the critical issues for most people, in relation to this Queen’s Speech and over the coming years, will be the reality that we are in a double-dip recession, will be what we are doing to get to grips with growth in this country, to provide jobs and to support small businesses, and will be how we are supporting young people. I am afraid that there has just not been enough in this Queen’s Speech to address those issues.

I do not have to tell the Prime Minister what happened in my constituency, as we have spoken on many occasions, but I say to him that currently in Tottenham 6,500 people are unemployed and 28,000 are on out-of-work benefits. The figures have actually got worse since the riots, and, although I have heard him at the Dispatch Box speaking about the Work programme, the youth contract and apprenticeships, I find that in all three policies there are weaknesses and flaws.

The Work programme is straining at the edges, particularly with the third sector attempting without funds to provide placements, and in Tottenham 90% of those who are unemployed are not eligible for it. How can it be the biggest programme since the 1930s, when most people who are unemployed in Britain are not eligible to participate in it? While the right hon. Gentleman lauds the youth contract, I warn him of a previous era, when we saw the failed youth training scheme and, as a consequence, many young people who graduated with certificates but no jobs. People in my constituency have a long memory, and what they want are genuine jobs.

As a former skills Minister, I am pleased to see the growth in apprenticeships, but the right hon. Gentleman will know that the scheme, to reach the figure of 450,000, includes many that people would not recognise as an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship should surely be a programme that lasts for at least one year. Currently, apprenticeships last for a maximum of 16 weeks, and many young people do not want something that is, in fact, a very short opportunity in customer services dressed up as a genuine apprenticeship, so I ask the Prime Minister to look at what is behind such apprenticeships if we are genuinely to retain the trust of young people.

I and other Opposition Members will of course scrutinise the enterprise Bill in its entirety, but, when I think of those shopkeepers on Tottenham high road who saw their businesses destroyed, I recall, as will the Prime Minister, that they faced hardships even before the riots. There were hardships with business rates and with footfall on the high road, and they were concerned about issues such as regulation—2,900 of them in the Tottenham constituency, paying their VAT and employing 30,000 people.

The number of self-employed people in my constituency has fallen from 14% to 7% in the past year. It is going in the wrong direction. I warn him that his absolute dedication to slashing public services is having a major effect in adding to the dole queues in constituencies such as mine.

We are not seeing more businesses flourishing or coming in and taking up the slack from the public sector; we are seeing something much worse. Look underneath the figures. The whole House should have serious concerns about anyone—young people, particularly—who faces unemployment. However, when the unemployment rate is three times higher among young black men, we should be gravely concerned.

We should also be particularly concerned that many women—older women, often black—are now joining their sons on the unemployment queues, having been employed in the health service, local government or other areas. I say to the Prime Minister that some communities depend on those mothers being employed and I am worried about the emergence of a picture worse than some of the scenes that hon. Members will recognise from the United States of America.

That is why we needed a Queen’s Speech that would seriously address those issues—stimulate the economy in the way required; wrestle with the issue of growth; and move our economy from over-dependence on financial services and retail. When I heard the Business Secretary arguing the case for the Sunday trading Bill, it was again apparent that the Government would rely once more on retail, consumerism, shopping and spending to get us out of this mess. We will need far more than that in this economy if we are to respond to the problems in constituencies such as mine.

What about the gaps in the Queen’s Speech? Given the importance of higher education to the UK economy and all we have invested to support young people making their way to university, why have the Government decided that a higher education Bill is not appropriate? The issue has been kicked into the long grass. Vice-chancellors and young people face uncertainty because we have not seen any Bill in that area of policy at all. Why are we going to spend hours, in this House and the other place, debating House of Lords reform when every Member knows that no one raised that issue with any political party on the doorstep during the campaign of the past few weeks? Is House of Lords reform really where our priorities should be?

Trade Union Funding

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I would not say that my hon. Friends are on a different planet from me; their arguments just have a different emphasis. Many Government Members believe in trade unions, and find it demeaning to be compared to the Third Reich. It demeans the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who said that we were going the same way as Hitler by trying to remove the trade unions. That devalues the debate today, which is about where the funding comes from.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the Warwick I and Warwick II agreements? To get the policies that they wanted from a Labour Government, the trade unions dictated the policies to be enacted by a Labour Government in return for union funding.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

There are indeed many stories, but I want to return to the specific—

Individual Voter Registration

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of electoral fraud, which we must all do our best to fight. I think there were five or six prosecutions in the recent period, which is not at the same level as Northern Ireland, for example, before the changes made there.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

In view of the moderate and measured tone of the right hon. Gentleman’s comments thus far, does he regret telling The Guardian on 13 October 2010 that

“10 million people could lose the right to vote”,

an assertion that has been specifically rejected by the Electoral Commission’s chair, Jenny Watson?

[Sadiq Khan]

I am grateful for the tenor of that intervention. I stand by that figure, not because it is mine, but because it is the figure given by independent experts. I will come to that estimate and who gives it shortly, if the hon. Gentleman will indulge me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes her point far better than I would have made it. She will be aware of the representations made by Scope and others. There could be confusion at an early stage when somebody completing the household form assumes, as in the past, that they are automatically on the register, without realising that the individual form they receive also needs to be completed. If we take into account the fact that many people have learning difficulties, that for others English is not their first language and that that these changes are being contemplated at a time when the register arguably needs to be at its most accurate, the position becomes very worrying—even more so if we reflect on the diminution of resources to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) referred.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, let me make the point that 19 hon. Members are seeking to speak in the debate. If I am to have any chance of accommodating that level of interest, self-restraint—in respect of Front-Bench speeches and the length of interventions—will be essential.

[Mr Jackson]

I am mindful of your admonition, Mr Speaker.

I am puzzled by the right hon. Gentleman’s views on household registration, given that the Electoral Commission has said that

“The ‘household’ registration system means there is no personal ownership by citizens of a fundamental aspect of their participation in our democracy—their right to vote”.

Is he saying that he is in favour of household registration, whose removal is at the centre of these reforms, or not?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

This is probably the first Opposition day debate that I have attended in which the Opposition substantially agree with the Government. That is quite strange, but I am not responsible for the Opposition’s debate selection.

The Minister is a talented, urbane and civilised chap, if I may say so, and he is far too polite to point out the confusion on the Labour Benches. Members will remember that not long ago we heard the comments of the deputy leader of the Labour party at the party conference. With her customary exaggeration and hyperbole, she said that the Government’s proposals would

“push people off the electoral register—deny them their vote, deny them their voice. The numbers are going to be huge”.

That was palpably nonsense, because that was never the point of the change.

The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) got to the nub of the issue by showing the Labour party’s proprietorial approach towards certain groups of voters—“We know what’s best for you. You’re our voters, and we think the proposals will unnecessarily affect your exercise of the franchise.” That is simply not the case. Today, from some speakers we are hearing politics over principle. It ill behoves them to take that approach, given that when their party was in government it absolutely refused to do anything about the under-registration of military personnel or overseas voters, for example, despite months and years of protestations from Conservative Members. Those are both groups of people who are legitimately entitled to vote in elections. Let us not, in our rush to a consensus, ignore the reality of the 13 years of the Labour Government and their record of under-registration. Hon. Members will know that in 2008 one national newspaper managed to register the name Gus Troobev, an anagram of “bogus voter”, on 31 different electoral rolls in one day.

In Peterborough, for reasons that Members may know, we have had a close acquaintance with electoral fraud, and I draw the Minister’s attention to the issue of personation. In one ward in Peterborough, we now have four separate CCTV cameras in four polling districts because of the threat of personation. In particular, I draw his attention to the Representation of the People Act 1983 and subsequent legislation, which prescribe the actions that presiding officers can take in polling stations if they fear a case of personation. That does not touch directly on the current change, but it is nevertheless a very important issue, and we have had serious problems with it.

The Minister will know that Operation Hooper, the investigation that took place into postal vote fraud at the June 2004 local elections, took four years to be resolved and resulted in the imprisonment of six individuals, three Labour and three Conservative. It cost Cambridgeshire constabulary a huge amount of money, and the cost to an ordinary voter of electoral fraud is another issue to consider.

If the proposals are some sort of wicked Tory plot, which they are to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, who is rather excitable but passionate, it is a strange plot, because it involves substantial consensus among the academic community, including Dr Toby James of Swansea university, Stuart Wilks-Heeg of Liverpool university, who has been mentioned, and others. The proposals have involved much consultation; flexibility and pragmatism; the data-matching pilots, of which Peterborough city council is one example; transitional arrangements; an exhaustive and detailed Select Committee investigation; and the promise of funding. In addition, the Government have admitted that certain proposals needed to be nuanced, such as the opt-in, opt-out proposals.

Let us remember that in 2008 the Council of Europe stated:

“It does not take an experienced election observer, or election fraudster, to see that the combination of the household registration system without personal identifiers and the postal vote on demand arrangements make the election system in Great Britain very vulnerable to electoral fraud.”

At the time of the 2009 legislation, even Peter Facey, of Unlock Democracy, said:

“We still have 19th-century regulations for a 21st-century situation.”

It is vital that we have eventually reached a consensus, despite references in the debate to the boundary changes. Those references were erroneous because effectively all that matters in respect of the boundary changes is the electorate on the enumeration date of 1 December 2010. Those changes are irrelevant to the substance of this debate.

There is a consensus on voter registration. It should have been brought about many months if not years ago, but I am glad that Labour Front Benchers have had a damascene conversion and understand that the Government’s proposals are about clarity and integrity and, to be fair, the fact that people can choose not to vote, which we must respect. The Government have listened and are going in the right direction, and I look forward to the details of the legislation.

G20

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On the current plan for the recapitalisation of European banks, British banks would not require any additional capital because they are quite well capitalised already. There is a concern that needs to be expressed that as the Europeans move to recapitalise their banks, it is quite important that they do not do that purely by shrinking bank balance sheets, and that they encourage banks to find fresh sources of capital so that lending does not decrease in the European Union.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Are we not in danger of ignoring the political reality of the current situation, which is that saving the euro at almost any cost is in the long-term interests of Germany, but not necessarily that of the taxpayers of the United Kingdom? That being so, surely the ECB and not the IMF must be the lender of last resort.

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend’s last point. The point about the future of the euro is that we should take a very hard-headed, national-interest view. All the evidence is that a disorderly break-up of the euro would have very bad effects on all the economies within Europe, and bad effects on Britain. One can make longer-term arguments about what it might mean and how things might change but, in the short-term, there is no doubt that when we are trying to secure growth and jobs in this country a disorderly break-up of the eurozone would not be good for Britain.

Public Disorder

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is an hour and 20 minutes before I have said it, but I have to say it: there is a reason why we are having to reduce these budgets, and that is because we inherited a complete fiscal car crash. There is a connection between this statement and the statement that we are about to have, which is that if countries do not get control of their fiscal situations, we can see what happens, with even the largest countries in the world getting their debt downgraded.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Prime Minister is quite right to look at the events of this week in the context of social malaise and family breakdown. May I press him on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)? The policy to which he referred—support for marriage in the tax system—was in the coalition agreement and the Conservative party manifesto on which we were both elected. Surely, this week of all weeks, it is time to look at the holistic context, support marriage and the family, review the policy, and bring forward proposals to support marriage and the family in our country?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that was in the manifesto, and it is indeed in the coalition agreement. The coalition agreement, where the two parties take a different view, makes allowance for that, and I remain a strong supporter of that proposal.