Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2025
Debate between Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard and Lord Murphy of Torfaen
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 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.