Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for presenting this statutory instrument and declare an interest as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House.

Elections are undoubtedly fundamental to our democracy, no more so than in Northern Ireland, where I have participated in district council, Assembly and Westminster parliamentary elections. They are fundamental to strengthening our democracy and, as the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, referred to, they have also been subject to abuse. Some of our political parties in Northern Ireland, along with their candidates, have been subjected to that abuse through voter fraud. That area requires further investigation.

I support this SI because it provides an opportunity for the retained voters—some 87,000 people—to remain on the register for a further three years. However, I exhort those people, after all the hard work that political parties do, to ensure that they have contacted the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland headquarters in Belfast to verify their presence and say whether it is actual or not. What level of consultation has taken place with political parties regarding the retained electors and the welcome extension? What is the breakdown among the 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland?

In further legislation, statutory photographic voter identification needs to be made tougher and, maybe, more transparent, as some of us who were candidates found to our cost. People who wanted to vote at a parliamentary election in June 2017 told me that they had turned up at 7 am with their proper identification, but their votes had already been taken by others. How did that happen when there was photographic ID? There needs to be greater protection against electoral fraud.

While I welcome and participated in online registration, I would like to find out what percentage of the electorate take up online registration and how successful it has been in the make-up of the register. Bear in mind that some people are transient and move from one house to another; they are entitled to vote, but there is a need for an exhortation to them to clarify their position directly with the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland to prevent electoral officers having to do this type of work.

I would also support any attempt in forthcoming legislation to lower the age of voting from 18 to 16, because I believe that that would build a democratic base among young people in understanding the role of politics in our society.

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, every vote counts. That is one of the things that we hear regularly coming up to an election, particularly in Northern Ireland. I am well aware of that because, in my former constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, at one stage an election was won by four votes. When it went to court, three votes were excluded, so it was won by one vote. I have been in contests with very narrow margins.

Quite a lot of illegal activity goes on at election time in Northern Ireland, believe it or not. One case concerned a polling station in Garrison, County Fermanagh, which was kept open for an extra 20 minutes by a group of supporters of a political party to allow their people to get in and provide extra votes for their candidate.

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[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this statutory instrument. It is very important that we try to ensure that as many as people as possible vote in Northern Ireland, and indeed the rest of the United Kingdom—

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

Legally?

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

Legally—I will come to that in a moment. Therefore, these regulations are absolutely right. We need to ensure that turnout is up, and that people vote and are encouraged to vote. I am quite attracted by the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, about the increased use of registering online, which is very sensible in this digital age. However, I agree with noble Lords who have spoken about the difficulties one encounters in Northern Ireland because of fraud and intimidation.

One of the first shocks I had when I became a Minister in Northern Ireland was to meet with the—very famous—chief electoral officer, who announced the referendum result in 1998. He came to my office in Millbank with a suitcase, which he plonked on my desk. He opened it up, and there were between 200 and 300 votes, every one of which was illegal. Obviously, we knew that this was going on, but to have it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, concentrated the mind.

The noble Lord, Lord Elliott, was right about the closeness of results in Northern Ireland, not just for the general election but for local government elections and elections to the Assembly. Often, the complicated PR system over there, STV, means that in many cases it literally comes down to single figures. Clearly, there are people elected to public bodies in Northern Ireland who should not be because of the system that I have just described.

I agree with what has been recommended to us, but I ask my noble friend the Minister to keep an eye on developments in Northern Ireland and to work with the chief electoral officer to ensure that we are increasingly aware of fraud and intimidation and that we have a healthy system of democracy in Northern Ireland—one which, as I said earlier, we can improve so that people are voting, the turnout goes up and we get a true representation of what people feel.