EU Council
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Chancellor will be going into more detail on this issue. We need to ensure that the regulators and the SFO have all the powers they need. People will not understand why crimes on the high street are punished in one way but crimes in the banks and elsewhere are punished in another way. That absolutely needs to be cleared up, and I am sure that this Government will do so.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Given the Prime Minister’s support—in theory, at least—for a referendum on Europe, what is his position now with regard to a referendum on Lords reform?
The Prime Minister
We have set out in the House of Lords Reform Bill a very clear pathway for the House of Lords. House of Lords reform was in the hon. Gentleman’s party’s manifesto, it was in our manifesto, and it was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, so I do not think a referendum is really necessary.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 2, page 2, line 8, at end add
‘if the Electoral Commission believes that the new electoral system is operating effectively’.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 30, in clause 25, page 14, line 17, at end insert—
‘(1A) Before making an order under subsection 1, the Secretary of State must seek the views of the Electoral Commission as to whether the establishment of an electoral register made up solely of electors who have registered individually would help or hinder the achievement of the registration objectives.
(1B) For these purposes the registration objectives are to secure, so far as is reasonably practicable—
(a) that persons who are entitled to be registered in a register are registered in it,
(b) that persons who are not entitled to be registered in a register are not registered in it, and
(c) that none of the information relating to a registered person that appears in a register or other record kept by a registration officer is false.
(1C) The Commission must submit its assessment, with a recommendation, in a report to the Secretary of State, which must be laid before Parliament as soon as possible by the Secretary of State.
(1D) If—
(a) the recommendation in the Electoral Commission’s report is that the establishment of an electoral register made up solely of electors who have registered individually would help the achievement of the registration objectives, and
(b) the recommendation is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament,
the Secretary of State may make an order bringing Parts 1 and 2 of this Act into force.
(1E) The Secretary of State may not make such an order if those conditions are not met.
(1F) If—
(a) the Electoral Commission’s report does not contain a recommendation to proceed to establish an electoral register made up solely of electors who have registered individually, or
(b) the report does contain such a recommendation, but it is not approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament,
within 12 months after the day on which the report is submitted by the Electoral Commission (in the case mentioned in paragraph (a)) or disapproved in Parliament (in the case mentioned in paragraph (b)), the Secretary of State must require the Commission to submit, by a specified date, a further report under this section containing the terms mentioned in subsection (1A).
(1G) For the purposes of subsection (1F)—
(a) a report is disapproved in Parliament when either House decided against resolving to approve the report (or, if both Houses so decide on different days, when the first of them so decides);
(b) the date specified by the Secretary of State must be at least one year, but no more than two years, after the day on which the requirement under that subsection is imposed.’.
Amendment 31, page 14, line 17, at end insert
‘with the exception of Schedule 5, Part 2, which shall come into force by order only once—
(a) the data matching pilots for pre-verification purposes established by the Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2012 have been completed,
(b) the Electoral Commission has reported on these schemes as under the terms of that Order, and
(c) the Electoral Commission believes that the completeness of the register will not be negatively affected.’.
Mr David
Labour Members support the principle of individual electoral registration, as we indicated on Second Reading; indeed, we legislated for it in the last Parliament. We believe that it is desirable to have a complete and accurate electoral register. We also believe that IER is a system that is compatible with modern society, and we recognise that it is outdated to rely on the head of the household. However, we have genuine concerns, and the amendments we have tabled reflect them.
Clause 1 will amend the Representation of the People Act 1983 to enable local registration officers to add individuals to the electoral register under the new system. Let me make it clear that we accept the need for clear guidance to be given during the early stages of the new system’s implementation, but we are extremely concerned about the huge power that the Bill will give to Ministers. It would be better for the Secretary of State to issue guidance, under section 52 of that Act, and for action to be taken following a recommendation from the Electoral Commission to follow certain guidance. We fully accept that that would not involve parliamentary scrutiny, but it would take us beyond the five years stipulated in the clause.
The mention of five years brings me to my next point. The Bill’s explanatory notes state in relation to clause 1(5):
“Subsection (5) provides that the requirement for registration officers to have regard to guidance about determining applications to register will cease 5 years after coming into force. This provision is included because after five years the new registration system, and the process for determining applications, is likely to have reached a steady state and guidance will no longer be necessary.”
I want to emphasise the word “likely” in that second sentence; there is no certainty about this. It involves a possibility, or perhaps a probability. This is “likely” to happen. Furthermore, the explanatory notes use the term “steady state”. I recall the captain of the Costa Concordia suggesting that his ship was in a steady state as it lurched on to its side before being beached. Is that similar to the state of this legislation? In view of the lack of clarity in the explanatory notes, we feel that it would be far better if the Electoral Commission were to determine whether the system was working effectively.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
Has my hon. Friend had any indication from the Government that they would be willing to consider a system in which the Electoral Commission could step in, and perhaps use a traffic light system to determine whether each area could proceed effectively under the terms of the Bill? Surely that would be better than having a five-year cut-off, which is likely to leave some authorities’ registration processes behind?
Mr David
My hon. Friend makes a good point. One of our general concerns about the Government’s approach to this legislation involves the way in which the Electoral Commission’s role has been undermined. The commission is an apolitical statutory body, operating outside the political system, with responsibility for electoral matters, and, as our amendments suggest, we believe that it would be far better if the commission were allowed to reach objective decisions on many of these issues.
Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)
There seems to be quite a lot of concern about the role of the Electoral Commission, in relation to the Westminster Government and the Holyrood Government. Does my hon. Friend know of any reason why those Governments should not encourage the involvement of the commission in discussions and debates on these matters, as such involvement would only strengthen the legislation introduced in either place and make it better?
Mr David
I can think of no good reason for the Governments here and in Holyrood not to set much greater store by the use of the expert advice and guidance provided by the Electoral Commission. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) will answer that question later.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
For the sake of clarity, how, under amendment 30, could the Electoral Commission make a report about whether the new registration system had achieved its objectives or not before the Act came into force? I do not understand the timing. The hon. Gentleman seems to suggest in the amendment that before the Act comes into force, the Electoral Commission has to make a report about whether the effects of the Act have achieved the goals or not. How could that happen when the Act, and therefore the new system, has not come into force?
Mr David
We are, of course, talking about a transition period, which is catered for in the Bill. As the Government have correctly argued, the new system is not going to be introduced on a big bang basis, but on an incremental one. As our deliberations on the Bill continue, the hon. Lady will see that we have tabled a number of other amendments that intervene progressively on the transition arrangements. This amendment essentially reinforces, as I said, the role of the Electoral Commission, the relationship between it and the Secretary of State, and the involvement of Parliament as we move as quickly as possible towards a complete electoral register. The amendment goes on to say that the recommendation should be approved
“by a resolution of each House of Parliament”.
That is very important because at the end of the day we are talking about a fundamental change in our democratic process—arguably the most important change since the achievement of the universal franchise. We believe therefore that it is essential that Parliament is fully involved at every step of the way as we move towards the new and path-breaking system.
Amendment 31 relates to the important issue of data matching. Let me provide a little background. In 2011, the Government introduced 22 pilot projects in a range of local authorities in England and Scotland. These pilots were based on a range of national datasets and the Electoral Commission carried out a statutory evaluation of the pilots to assess the extent to which such schemes could help electoral registration officers improve the completeness and accuracy of their registers.
The Government, and particularly the Minister, have said on a number of occasions that these projects went very well indeed, and that the pilot schemes showed that 60% of the current electors should be carried forward. However, in contradistinction, the Electoral Commission is quite scathing in its assessment of the schemes. According to the key findings and conclusions of the Electoral Commission’s evaluation report,
“Our main conclusion is that these pilot schemes do not provide sufficient evidence to judge the effectiveness of data matching as a method for improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers.”
That is a pretty damning indictment of pilot schemes which were intended to point the way to a fundamentally important revision of our electoral process, and it contrasts sharply with what the Government have said—rather complacently, in my view.
Because of that criticism, the Government agreed to conduct further data- matching exercises, and a delegated legislation Committee will meet tomorrow morning to discuss a statutory instrument to introduce the second tranche of data-matching pilots. Obviously we do not know what those further pilots will show, but they may reveal the likelihood of a problem with the new electoral register in the short term. The Government’s own assessments indicate, or at least hint at, that distinct possibility. According to the impact assessment which the Minister himself signed on 8 May this year,
“It is not yet certain what the short term impact on the accuracy of the electoral register will be because there is no clear evidence on the accuracy of electors that are placed on the 2014/15 electoral roll through data-matching. The government is running a second round of pilots to understand the precise impact on completeness”.
That is certainly delicately worded, but even our fantastic civil servants are unable to help the Government much. What they are basically saying is “No evidence is available. The pilot projects that we have organised so far have not shown that the evidence is there. We will organise more pilot projects, but we do not know exactly what they will show. We will proceed on a wing and a prayer.”
Gordon Banks
Would my hon. Friend be concerned about any register that was compiled with the use of this data transfer information, especially if this was used in a decision on whether Scotland should become an independent nation?
Mr David
My hon. Friend is encouraging me to go way beyond my brief, as you probably agree, Mr Evans, so with all due deference to his incisive comment, I had better return to my original text.
Given the uncertainty that exists, it would surely be sensible to wait for the results of the second pilots, but, for reasons best known to themselves, the Government are intent on introducing a new individual electoral-registration-based register by December 2015. That date may be of significance to some Members. Coincidentally, some would say, it is when the next boundary review will take place. It could be a coincidence, of course: who am I to say otherwise? I am sure that the Minister will give a clear explanation, and that he will give it without smiling. No doubt he will tell us that there is a specific reason, which everyone except him has missed, for the fact that the pilot projects must be assessed after the legislation has reached the statute book.
I want the legislation to succeed—as I have said, we are in favour of individual electoral registration in principle—so it would be common sense and far better if we waited a few months for the certainty provided by the evidence from the second set of pilot schemes. That would also give the Government an opportunity to propose new measures if the schemes raise questions. At the end of the day, what all of us, as democrats, want is as many people who are entitled to be on the register to be on it. That is our objective, and we must ensure that everything possible is done to make that happen. It disturbs me slightly that the suggestion—made not just by Opposition Members, but by the Electoral Commission and many others—that the sensible thing to do would be to wait a few more months to ensure that as many people as possible are on our electoral register has not been taken up.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is right to set out an aspiration on behalf of us all that everyone who is entitled to be on the register should be on it. Does he also agree that those who are not entitled to be on the register should not be on it?
Mr David
Yes, absolutely, and we will discuss that in more detail later. I am happy to say that people who are not entitled to be on the electoral register should not be on it, but I am very concerned that many people who are entitled to be on the electoral register might not be on it.
I am glad that the Government have moved away from their original, outrageous position of saying that the decision about whether to be on the electoral register will be a lifestyle choice, and that they have recognised that that is, after all, a civic duty and civic responsibility. The crucial point, however, is that being on the register is not an end in itself; it gives people in a democracy the chance to exercise, whether they want to or not, their right to vote. That is why it is so important that everybody has the opportunity to be on the register so that they can make the choice, when the time is right, whether or not to exercise their vote.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I recently met the chair of the Electoral Commission to discuss the under-representation of black and Asian people on the electoral register. Does my hon. Friend believe that the proposed measure would enable that very important issue to be looked at? My fear is that, unless we get this right, there will be gross under-representation on the register.
Mr David
I agree that there is concern that many groups in our society—so-called hard-to-reach groups, for example—might be excluded from the electoral register. A more reasonable time scale for the completion of the new electoral register would certainly give opportunities to many of the people mentioned by my right hon. Friend to be included on the register. One of the noticeable aspects during the long, pre-legislative consultation—I pay tribute to the Government for that—is that a high proportion of those who have participated and made concrete suggestions and proposals are from the groups mentioned by my right hon. Friend. It is vital that their voices are listened to carefully during this crucial stage of the Bill’s passage.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Is not the real concern that, while we used to think that 2 million people were missing from the register, recent research by the Electoral Commission shows that the figure is almost certainly double that? Moreover, if we consider the Northern Ireland example, it would appear that a further 15% of people may fall off the register. How far will we allow registration to drop before action is taken?
Mr David
My hon. Friend is correct. It is vital that various steps are taken to ensure that as many people as possible are on the register. I would not belabour the comparison with Northern Ireland, which is very different. However, individual electoral registration was introduced there and the evidence shows, as has been confirmed again by the Government, that when the new register was introduced a lamentably low number of the potential electors—the entitled electors—were actually on it. That reinforces our concern about what the situation will be in December 2015 if we proceed according to the time scale indicated in the Bill. That is why we have tabled the amendments. We hope that the Minister will feel able to respond positively to our concerns.
Mr David
I am more than happy to provide an explanation. Resources are extremely limited for Opposition Members and the Minister will have noticed how many amendments we have tabled. That shows our concern about the fine detail of the Bill. However, we thought it was far better to follow the time-honoured practice of tabling amendments and using the facility of being at the Dispatch Box to explain our points and that is precisely what we are doing.
Mr Harper
I am sure that the Committee will thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I simply observe that my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest and for The Cotswolds do not have the benefit of £6 million or so of Short money to provide resources, but they seem to have been able to draft very good explanatory statements for the benefit of the House.
I said on Second Reading that I intended to publish secondary legislation in draft for the House to consider. I was criticised by Opposition Members—indeed, I think that it was in their reasoned amendment—for the fact that we had not done so by Second Reading. I said that we would do so while the Bill was in Committee and I drew the House’s attention to the fact that the Opposition were responsible in government for two similar Bills, but they published no draft secondary legislation before those Bills received Royal Assent. I can confirm that I have placed in the Library of the House the first tranche of draft secondary legislation, which will be available on the Cabinet Office website tomorrow morning, for Members to consider while the Bill is in Committee. We have published the first tranche of documentation and will publish it all while the Bill is still going through Parliament and by the time the House returns in the autumn. I hope that that is helpful and it is a useful example of something that the Opposition did not do at any point when they were in government.
Mr David
I hope that the Minister will explain—after all, that is the Government’s job. If there is to be full and proper scrutiny, there is no point in publishing some of the draft legislation—we do not know which pieces—in the middle of our consideration in Committee. I raised this matter as long ago as last November and surely it would have been better for secondary legislation to have been prepared so that we could have proper parliamentary scrutiny in Committee; the Electoral Commission made the same point. It is no good producing part of the secondary legislation halfway through when we do not even know which legislation it is.
Mr Harper
The first tranche was published before we started our consideration this afternoon—on day one, not halfway through. As I said, with two similar pieces of legislation, both of which delegated significant powers to Ministers, the Labour party published no draft secondary legislation at any point during the passage of either Bill through either House of Parliament. It was all published after the Bill had received Royal Assent. I accept that this Government might not be perfect, but on this issue we have made enormous progress compared with the Labour party.
Mr David
I have listened with great care to what the Minister has said, and I have to say that I am not reassured. Much of the discussion that we have had during the past 10 minutes concerned the past; I am concerned about the future. We can all argue about what the previous Labour Government did or did not do and who said or did not say certain things, but what is important is that the Minister has totally failed to come forward with any justification or explanation or reason why the Government have adopted the timetable that they have.
Our starting point is that we support individual elector registration because we want as many people legitimately on the electoral register as possible and to see a modern, streamlined system. We believe that all the evidence from the experience of Northern Ireland and from what may happen with the pilot schemes indicates that there may well be a difficulty when the new system starts properly in December 2015. We therefore respectfully suggest that, in all common sense, we should have a more effective timetable that would ensure the probability of more people being on the electoral register than is the case at the moment.
I am therefore unable to withdraw the amendment. I understand that there will be votes later on amendments 30 and 31, but we would like to press amendment 2 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend has anticipated my closing remark. As he knows, we have been considering the matter. Along with my officials, I am continuing to think about ways in which we could replace the attestation process with a process involving appropriate levels of security—my hon. Friend’s thoughtful proposals touched on that—and also making it much easier for people to register. I will add my hon. Friend’s well thought through model to my current thinking. I have listened carefully to the thoughts that have been expressed in the House. If we decide to make changes, which I hope to be able to do, the House will have to vote on them in the usual way. I hope that that reassures him.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1
Register of electors: alterations and removal
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 20, page 27, line 44, schedule 5, leave out ‘second’ and insert ‘third’.
Amendment 18, page 31, line 6, leave out ‘first’ and insert ‘second’.
Amendment 19, page 31, line 19, leave out ‘first’ and insert ‘second’.
Mr David
Schedule 1 deals with the number of electors on the register, and amendment 3 relates to an appeals process. I should like some clarification from the Minister. Section 10A(3) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and regulations made in 2001 set out a clear appeals process for those who are not included in the register and think that they should be. We believe that people who are excluded under the new system should have a legitimate right to appeal against the decision made by the electoral registration officer.
We are also concerned about the implications for human rights. The ability to cast a vote is a fundamental human right: it is important not just in the context of domestic legislation, but in the context of the European convention on human rights. We are not convinced that the Bill in its current form will provide adequate recourse for those who feel aggrieved. I should like to hear what appeals process exists—if, indeed, there is any such process—for individuals who feel that they have not been dealt with properly.
Frank Dobson
Will that not be particularly important if the House opts for individual rather than household registration? Is it not likely that, at least at the outset, a disproportionate number of applications will be turned down?
Mr David
Yes. It is important to put this amendment and the point that I am making in that context. As things stand, there is a clear appeals process. It is possible that a significant number of people—not too many, we hope—will be excluded from the electoral register and that some of them will feel aggrieved by the process to which they have been subjected. It is right, therefore, to consider the issue, because there are bound at least to be teething problems with such complex proposed legislation, especially when its introduction is based on pilot projects that have not been fully evaluated. There are bound to be problems and difficulties, and individuals must be reassured that the Government will be able to consider and address their concerns.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
On a point of clarification, is it my hon. Friend’s intention to maintain the current protections and ensure that they are not lost as a result of the change, or does he want to enhance protections?
Mr David
We are asking for a formal appeals process. The relevant legislative base is sufficient for the current system, but we are looking to the future and would like things to be spelled out crystal clearly so that the Bill explains the Government’s desired process.
Amendment 20 highlights our concern about the carry-over arrangements, to which we have already referred. The amendment would maintain the carry-over arrangements that the Government proposed initially and would delay the introduction of the fully fledged new register beyond December 2015. That is important because, as has been mentioned, we are concerned about the impact that a depleted register would have on the parliamentary boundary review. We are all aware of the legislation that resulted in the current boundary review, that a boundary review will take place every five years, and that the 2015 review will be conducted on the basis of the new electoral register.
The Opposition and many others, including a number of academics, have expressed concerns. Moreover, the Electoral Reform Society recently circulated a briefing expressing concern to all Members. It is very important from a democratic point of view that the parliamentary boundaries have the greatest possible support among all sections of the electorate. That can happen only if those boundaries are based on the largest possible number of electors being on the register so that the process is entirely legitimate. It would be nothing short of a negation of democracy if boundary reviews were conducted and boundaries redrawn when significant numbers of individuals who thought that they were entitled to vote were kept off the electoral register. Various estimates have been made of how that might affect the political geography of the country. On the basis of all the evidence provided, we could well see a shift towards more parliamentary representation for rural areas at the expense of inner-city areas. It is important that a simple principle is maintained.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that certain sections of the community, such as the student community, are relevant in this regard? I think we will discuss them in relation to later amendments. I represent a constituency with up to 12,000 students and it is essential that we get the arrangements right.
Mr David
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is right that we will come on to discuss provisions for students in detail. It is important to follow the principle with which both he and I agree, namely that everyone who is entitled to be on the electoral register should be on it. We should have in place means to make sure that that principle is upheld. Legitimacy and accuracy are important, but so is completeness. One of my overarching concerns about the Bill as drafted is that it does not make it easy for people to be on the electoral register. In fact, all too often it provides hurdle after hurdle, which I am sure will have a detrimental effect on those who are on the electoral register, particularly those who will be on it at the end of 2015 under the new system of individual electoral registration. Amendment 20 would, therefore, ensure carry-over arrangements and a greater chance for a complete register under the new system, which would be introduced at a slighter later date.
Amendments 18 and 19 relate to postal and proxy votes, on which the Bill is far from clear. We have concerns—again, they are shared by many—that the justification for what is essentially a byzantine arrangement is very shallow indeed. Judging by the Minister’s remarks on Second Reading, and certainly judging by the remarks of many a Government Back Bencher, the primary reason for having this different system for postal and proxy votes relates to concern about fraud. Let me be clear: we stand full-square on the need to take the greatest possible measures to ensure that no individual is on the electoral register if they should not be, and, most definitely, that no individual should cast a vote in a parliamentary or other election if they are not entitled to do so. It is also important, however, to keep the issue of fraud in perspective.
Following the contributions made by several Members on Second Reading, I asked the House of Commons Library to prepare some information for me, outlining objectively how big a problem fraudulent action is. The Library provided, in its usual efficient way, a comprehensive summary of recent electoral offences in this country. The paper refers in particular to the report by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers, published in March 2012. I have to say that even I, who originally thought that some Members had somewhat exaggerated the situation, was surprised to see in black and white just how small scale is the issue of electoral fraud.
The 2012 report notes that, in the majority of reported cases in 2011, the allegation of fraud had not been substantiated. Moreover, although there was an increase in the number of cases involving offences during electoral campaigns in 2011, they related, by and large, to the conduct of elections, not to how votes had been cast. Indeed, the report mentions specifically that there has been
“a decrease in the proportion of alleged voting offences”,
and that such alleged offences accounted for 16%— 35 cases—of all reported cases in 2011, compared with 38% in 2010 and 40% in 2009. It is important that we see the facts for what they are. Although electoral fraud is, of course, absolutely wrong and should be rooted out, we should not blow the situation out of all proportion and use it as a spurious justification for taking other measures when a far stronger case for them should be put forward—if, indeed, there is a case. The chair of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, put it well:
“The evidence suggests that proven cases of electoral fraud are rare. But this is a serious issue and nobody should be complacent: more can and should be done to prevent electoral malpractice.
We welcome Government plans to introduce individual electoral registration in Great Britain. This will strengthen our electoral system and reduce the risk of fraud. We also want the Government to make progress in reviewing whether voters should provide identification at polling stations.”
That is another issue, but I will not deal with it now.
Mr David
My hon. Friend puts it very well. This is not a question of right or wrong; this is not black and white, because it is a question of balance. I said that Jenny Watson rightly has a balanced approach towards the issue. My concern is that this legislation does not recognise the reality; the Government construct Aunt Sallies and then knock them down, without coming forward with a legitimate basis on which to make their proposals. So I think that postal votes and proxy votes are important issues.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman makes a specific point about knocking down arguments and Aunt Sallies. I have found from my experience as a constituency MP that many black and minority ethnic communities, particularly migrant communities, came to this country because they wanted to live in an environment in which there was a belief in a robust democracy. Although this issue of highlighted cases of electoral fraud is important, the impression is being given that there is a laxity on this issue and that there is a question about how robust the system is. By putting forward this argument, the hon. Gentleman is undermining a lot of the faith and belief that we have in the robustness of the current electoral system.
Mr David
With respect, I do not believe I am doing that. I am trying to present a case that is, above all else, accurate. I am not denying that electoral fraud takes place and that it is a problem; all I am saying is that the problem is not on the scale that many Conservative Members and elements in the Government seem to believe it is. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, we have to take a balanced approach to this issue. If public perceptions are that widespread fraud is occurring in certain areas, we have a duty to tell things as they are, to spell out the truth and to respond accordingly. In a modest way, that is what I am trying to do.
Frank Dobson
Does my hon. Friend agree that what really undermines confidence is when people make smeary remarks and no prosecutions follow because the remarks turn out to have no facts behind them?
Mr David
Indeed, and that is one of the things to which I alluded earlier, as have ACPO and the Electoral Commission. Many people make complaints, be it in the heat of the moment or otherwise, but are then unable to substantiate their allegations, which often fall by the wayside, completely unproven.
Paul Uppal
I remember being in a radio studio for “Beyond Westminster”, where I heard a young lady of Pakistani descent talking about the amount of courage she needed to go live on radio to discuss this issue. She said that many dozens of her relatives would like to speak about this issue and how they had been pressured on voting, but did not wish to raise it because they felt it was too controversial and doing so would cause their communities harm. I heard her give that interview on radio.
Mr David
I do not doubt what the hon. Gentleman says for a moment; all I am saying is that it is unwise to take a particular incident and extrapolate way beyond it, as hon. Members have done all too often, including on Second Reading. Speaker after speaker attempted to justify individual electoral registration and the particular procedure with regard to postal vote and proxy vote carry-overs on the basis that there was widespread electoral fraud. I simply do not think that that is a legitimate argument that can be substantiated.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Is it not also true that the Electoral Commission can deal only with the issues brought before it? The hon. Gentleman says that there is no proof, but in Northern Ireland when postal votes were being carried by post office individuals to homes, certain parties followed the postman and people never received them. Why was there no proof? Those people were too afraid to provide it.
Mr David
I have been careful to keep my remarks particular to Great Britain and not refer to Northern Ireland. [Interruption.] With all due respect, it is not covered by this Bill. I think that the situation in Northern Ireland is different. I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but, again, it would be wrong to extrapolate from what is happening or what has happened in Northern Ireland to what is happening in other parts of the United Kingdom.
Paul Uppal
If what the hon. Gentleman is saying is correct, will he not concur that he has absolutely nothing to fear from the Bill, as drafted?
Mr David
I have concerns, because my objective is simple: to ensure that as many people as are entitled to be on the electoral register are on the electoral register. All hon. Members will uphold that simple democratic principle. My concern about the detail of this Bill—and we have not seen the secondary legislation yet—is that it provides all kinds of unreasonable hurdles to individuals to prevent them from exercising their legitimate decision when the time comes to vote or not to vote. That is worrying, and it is part of the motivation behind our amendments.
Let me develop my argument about postal votes. One welcome thing that we have seen in the past few years is that more people are finding it convenient to be on the register and have a postal vote. However, many people, particularly those who are elderly or disabled, are concerned about the Bill. That is why all hon. Members have received representations from a range of different organisations spelling out in detail their concern; for example, a circular has been distributed by organisations that have come together to speak with a collective voice. These organisations include disability charities, Scope, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Mencap and Sense. They all expressed concerns about the transitional arrangements for postal and proxy votes because they believe that the effect will be to disfranchise many disabled people who are entitled to be on the register.
Mr Mark Williams
I raised concerns about that point on Second Reading, as did the hon. Gentleman. Does he take some comfort from the fact that the same organisations he mentions—Mencap, the RNIB, Scope and Sense—have also welcomed the Government’s constructive approach to engagement on these proposals? They have recognised that the Government are talking and are listening to the concerns that I think he is about to raise.
Mr David
Earlier, I made a point of saying that I congratulated the Government and commended them, as the Minister acknowledged, on their pre-legislative consultation and on their rethink on a number of key issues. However, with all due respect to the Government, that is not enough. There are still real concerns and I hope that the Government have listened not so much to the Opposition but to the legitimate concerns expressed by people outside this place, with whom they have been engaged for some weeks and months. Those people still have concerns, which I have expressed. Let me quote specifically what they said in one of their circulars:
“The need to ensure that the requirement for absent voters to be registered under the new system does not inadvertently disenfranchise disabled voters who rely on postal voting to mitigate the inaccessibility of polling stations”.
That is from the response from Mencap, the RNIB, Scope and Sense to the publication of the draft Bill in May 2012.
Objective comments on the proposals have been made by such organisations and by outside academics, but a Select Committee of this House also gave a trenchant criticism of the Government’s proposals. The Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform’s report on IER states:
“We recommend that the Government look closely at applying the same carry-forward arrangements for the 2015 General Election to postal and proxy registrations as to other registrations, to avoid inadvertently disenfranchising vulnerable electors.”
That is a succinct and apt way of putting that very important point.
The Government made legitimate changes to their position—I do not like to use the word “concessions”—before the final draft Bill was published and I hope that they will listen to the cacophony of reasonable opinion expressed beyond the confines of the Palace of Westminster and change the Bill.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is that many people will be on the register as it carries forward and they will have become accustomed in recent years to postal votes being sent to them every time, which they might not have been in the past? They will therefore assume that the same will happen the first time this provision comes into effect, which will presumably be at the next general election, only to discover that they are unable to vote.
Mr David
Yes, that is the concern, in essence. The Minister has confidently predicted that the carry-over will be 66%, but I have yet to hear on what he bases that figure. The Electoral Commission is bemused, too. I mentioned that earlier and I will be interested to hear whether he reiterates the totally unsubstantiated figure of 66% for postal and proxy votes.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am sure that my hon. Friend has had many conversations with Government Members about the Bill. Will he enlighten us about what will happen if the figure in areas such as mine falls drastically below 66%, as I expect it will? Are the Government proposing any safety net?
Mr David
It is for the Government to speak for themselves about their proposals. The Electoral Commission has said that it is concerned about that potential problem and believes it should be tackled through the allocation of resources. We will consider the matter when we discuss the provisions that fall much later in the Bill, but I do not think that the Government are taking the question of addressing the problem at all seriously. If they were, the simplest thing would be to do what the Select Committee recommended and ensure that the same carry-over arrangements apply to proxy and postal voters as to everybody else. The case has not been made for treating postal and proxy votes differently.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
How will this impact on local government? We might see a significant fall in registration in certain wards, so would that lead to boundary changes? What will happen to the boundary changes at local government level that are implemented before we see individual voter registration?
Mr David
That is a big issue. One of the concerns I expressed earlier was about the impact a depleted register could have on the next boundary review in December 2015. From a democratic point of view, if many people who are entitled to be on the register are not, that will have a knock-on effect on how the new boundaries are drawn up. That will have an impact on other boundaries, too, as it will be taken into account in one way or another.
Graham Jones
So, what would the impact be when the number of people registered in a ward dropped below 66%? Does anything in the Bill or in my hon. Friend’s conversations with the Government suggest that that would have an impact?
Mr David
The objective analysis of likely voter depletion shows that there is unlikely to be uniformity throughout the county. We are likely to see a marked contrast between the rural and urban areas, as I said earlier. If my hon. Friend wants to break it down to regions, I think that there will be a great contrast between the number of electors who will be able to vote in the north-east of England and the number in the south-east of England. That reflects the differences in movement, in demographic trends and in the social and class structure. A particular concern has been expressed about London. Greater London has the greatest amount of movement of individuals and is thus likely to be the area where the greatest number of people who are entitled to vote are not on the electoral register. I would contend that the greatest contrast is likely to be between Greater London and more affluent parts of the south-east of England; let us be blunt about that.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
One thing that concerns many of us regards the fact that it is already perfectly possible for electors who wish to register for postal votes to do so for just one election. Is there not therefore a presumption that people who want the long-term postal vote for reasons of sickness, old age or working away will want it more permanently? Surely the presumption is already there, so it is bizarre that the Government are even thinking of changing it.
Mr David
That is an excellent point. The presumption among many people—indeed, dare I say it, among most people—is that once a person is on the electoral register, they are there not for one or two elections but permanently. Most people in this country will not have a clue about this profound change in the nature of the electoral registration system. We need only to consider the lack of press interest and coverage on the subject for months to see that. Given that the Bill was one of the key pieces of legislation in the Queen’s Speech, there has been virtually no press coverage of it, and it is from the press that most people get their information. There is indeed a potential problem here.
We will discuss financing in greater detail later, but when the responsibility is placed very much on the shoulders of local authorities and electoral registration officers, and the resources that are likely to be allocated will not be ring-fenced and will be pretty small anyhow, the concern is that local authorities will not have the capacity to make the superhuman effort needed to chase up those people who they manage to detect have not re-registered under the new system, even though they are entitled to be on the register. There is a host of interconnected problems before us and I thank Members for their interventions. In their different ways, they have highlighted the complexities and the potential problems that lie ahead. The way forward for postal vote carry-overs was clearly set out by the all-party Select Committee, and I very much hope the Government will have second thoughts.
Jonathan Edwards
I shall speak briefly to amendment 20, which would increase the length of time that those on the current electoral register remained on the revised register after the introduction of individual electoral registration. The current proposal from the UK Government is that existing registrations will be removed at the end of the second new canvass if people have not provided the required data for individual electoral registration. The effect will be that concerns about a cliff-edge drop in the completeness of the registers, as we saw when they dropped by 11% in Northern Ireland, will be postponed until after the 2015 Westminster general election. This means that the first elections to be held without the roll-on from the pre-IER electoral roll will be the National Assembly for Wales elections in May 2016.
Although I recognise that one election must, at some point, be the first election to be held wholly under IER, I am concerned that the elections to the National Assembly for Wales will be the guinea pig, particularly because if the proposals in the Green Paper on electoral arrangements for the National Assembly for Wales are implemented, the electoral roll arrangements will be used as the basis for determining constituencies. I shall give my opinion on that very interesting Green Paper on another occasion.
The change-over from the current system to IER is fraught with difficulties, and the length of time for the change-over should be as long as necessary to ensure that there are no adverse effects, and certainly should not be rushed. As I say, I am particularly concerned about the possible effects on the National Assembly elections in 2016, and I hope the Government will take this opportunity to push back the final date for the removal of all pre-IER registrations to ensure that the handover is as smooth as possible, without the cliff-edge drop in registration that we fear.
Mr Harper
I can tell the hon. Gentleman, although I am not pleased to, that the figure was 6 million. I can confirm, therefore, that under the previous Government 3 million people disappeared from the register, so I will take no lectures from the Opposition on that. I am confident that, under the proposals we have set out, we will not see the problems that they have suggested there will be. The brutal truth is that when they were in government they commissioned no research to help them understand the position post-2000 and so they did not know what was going on. Having commissioned that work and had the Electoral Commission carry it out, we now know that the problem actually got worse and the previous Government did nothing about it. We are confident that our proposals are robust, and I will set some of them out and respond to the amendments in a moment. We know that the system works well because it works perfectly well in Northern Ireland and we have learnt from the problems that occurred during the transitional process.
Mr David
The Minister says that he is confident about his proposals, but the sure way to test whether his confidence is well placed would be to delay the introduction of the process until the second tranche of pilot schemes have been assessed. Why does he not allow that assessment to take place before deciding, because then he would see whether or not his confidence is well placed?
Mr Harper
We have hardly rushed in the way we have conducted this legislation. I announced our decision in September 2010 and we then published the legislation with the pre-legislative scrutiny. We have been doing this in a very deliberate and careful way, as I think most people would accept.
Mr Harper
The provision for appeal against the decisions of registration officers are against the decisions of registration officers. If those decisions are made because a rule laid in statute is being followed, the appeal will not get very far. As I said, we will make sure that EROs contact people who are registered with an absent vote a number of times to encourage them to register individually. If they do not register individually, EROs will explain to them on a number of occasions the consequence for their absent vote, so that people are given the opportunity.
One would have to be trying hard to avoid knowing what was going on and avoid registering individually. Part of the reason for the confirmation process is to get the on average two thirds of voters moved to a new system, to enable electoral registration officers to focus on those who do not, to target resources better, to use public money more efficiently and to have a more efficient, complete and accurate register.
I hope that the Opposition will withdraw their amendment and let the schedule stand part.
Mr David
I hear what the Minister said about amendment 3 and I am pleased that his reassurances are clear. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said, we are talking about a new system and it might not be possible simply to use the current system for a new system. I urge the Government to keep the issue under review, bearing in mind that, as has been said, more people might want to appeal against an ERO’s decision than have until now.
I am minded not to press amendment 3 to a vote, but we shall press amendments 20 and 18 at the appropriate time. We will leave amendment 19 to one side. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 2
Applications for registration and verification of entitlement etc
Dan Rogerson
The amendment may well make a difference to the size of the electorate in places such as Ceredigion. It would also make a difference in Cornwall, which is being told that it must have five and a half seats, instead of the five that it used to have or the six that it currently enjoys. There will be a seat across the border between Cornwall and north-west Devon. The large number of second homes in north-west Devon and north Cornwall may have a bearing on the size of that constituency, so the hon. Gentleman makes a very good point.
As I said, this is a probing amendment, so I will draw my remarks to a close. I hope that the Government act on this issue, if not in this primary legislation, then in secondary legislation or the guidance for local authorities when they are designing the forms that people will fill in, to make people aware of its importance. Although it is more acute in areas such as mine than in other parts of the country, only through a joined-up approach can we get the information that is needed to resolve the situation. If the Government cannot respond positively today, I hope that they will indicate that they will look at it in the future.
Mr David
I will say a few words about the process of verification, because clause 2 gives significant powers to the Secretary of State to make secondary legislation; to determine what evidence should be on an application form for registration; to determine the form of those application forms; over the role and functions of electoral registration officers; and over local authorities and the Electoral Commission.
One of the most significant issues is the evidence of identity that individuals will have to provide. Paragraph 19 of the explanatory notes says of subsection (3):
“The required evidence may be specified in regulations or be determined by the Secretary of State, and such evidence may for example include a person’s date of birth and national insurance number.”
My concern is about the lack of specificity in the words “may for example include”. My understanding was that the Government had all but decided that a person’s date of birth and NI number would be the two specific pieces of information that would be required. I am therefore worried that the Bill will give the Secretary of State the power to make broader decisions on other information.
Mr Mark Williams
I endorse what the hon. Gentleman said about national insurance numbers. As he will be aware, at the briefing that he attended in which we talked about online registration, we advanced the debate beyond that matter because we were concerned about the access issue over people obtaining their national insurance numbers.
Mr David
I recall that briefing. That is an interesting point. I am sure that there will be an opportunity later in the Committee to talk about how online technology may be effective in some areas and problematic in others.
Returning to our reservations, the amendment proposes that there be specific references to the date of birth and the national insurance number, and that the extensive power for the Secretary of State to come forward with secondary legislation be removed.
My concerns about verification increased a little while ago when I read the Cabinet Office publication, “Individual Electoral Registration: Privacy Impact Assessment Report”, which indicated what information a potential elector will be asked to provide by the local electoral registration officer. If Members will bear with me, I will go through what it says. An individual will be asked to provide:
“Full name (first name, middle name or initial(s), Family name)”,
“Full residential address including postcode”,
their nationality, and a
“Declaration of truth—declaration that all information provided is true and correct.”
That is the same as at the moment. They will then be required to provide their date of birth and their national insurance number “where possible”, which are new requirements. There would also be new requirements to provide their
“Immigration status—if non-British or non-EU citizen”,
and a
“Declaration as to whether they are/have been registered elsewhere in the last 12 months”,
as well as any
“Previous address where registered in the last 12 months (new requirement – currently requested but not mandatory on annual canvass forms)”.
What is envisaged goes far beyond the bold headline, which states that there should be a requirement for the date of birth and the national insurance number.
Nick de Bois
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reading out that list, because I am magnificently reassured about the lengths to which we are going to secure the integrity of our electoral register. Is he suggesting that he does not welcome the proposals because of that? It is surely a good thing.
Mr David
I am certainly not saying that those stipulations are inappropriate and should not be asked for. I simply think that it is worth pointing out that more information will be required than was suggested earlier. Already, we are talking not simply about a date of birth and a national insurance number, but about other items of information. If the Secretary of State were given powers to circumvent the democratic process in Parliament to request other information, it would be worrying. The word “balance” was used in an earlier debate, and a balance has to be struck between asking for information that ensures that a person’s request to be on the register is legitimate and asking for information that makes the whole process too burdensome and onerous for a person to bother with.
Nick de Bois
I intervene not to cause mischief but simply to say that I find the idea of asking people to submit their immigration status quite attractive for a number of reasons. One is that many forms come through people’s doors, and I have seen evidence that some people who come from other countries see a form and understandably feel that it must be filled out and returned, because of the heavy hand of the state in wherever they came from. It is not unreasonable to check their immigration status to ensure that no inadvertent mistakes are made.
Mr David
I am not making a case against that. I am saying that it would enhance our democratic process if all the details that will be requested were itemised in the Bill. Parliament itself should decide on that, not the Secretary of State. We are talking primarily about elections to the most exalted democratic place in the country, namely this House of Commons, and the House should have the say on what information is required from potential electors.
Bob Blackman
We are talking about registration for a multiplicity of types of elections, be they European, local government or general elections. Different statuses entitle people to vote in those different elections. My constituency experience is that a large number of people from eastern Europe get on the electoral register even though they are not British citizens and are not qualified to vote in our general elections. Because they do not understand that, they inadvertently get on the full register, and then there has to be a process for challenging them. Requesting someone’s date of birth is also extremely helpful, because it identifies when someone reaches voting age and also enables people to be removed from the list of those who can serve on juries.
Mr David
The hon. Gentleman makes a couple of valid points. One reason I am in favour of individual electoral registration in principle is that it allows us to identify which elections individuals are allowed to vote in. He is absolutely right that simply being on the electoral register does not give an individual carte blanche to vote in every election. It depends on which elections they are. However, at the risk of boring the Committee, I repeat that these matters are so central to the IER process that they should be specified in the Bill. That is why we have tabled amendment 4.
I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to my points, and whether there is any concern in Government circles about the burden on the individual becoming too onerous for us to get a reasonable level of response. Are we making a reasonable ask of potential electors?
Mr Harper
I listened to my hon. Friend very carefully. I obviously do not know the circumstances of the case that he mentioned, but I can give an example of why the police may not have pursued the case beyond simply giving advice. The constituent in question may have voted more than once inadvertently, not understanding the rules. I do not know what the circumstances were, but that is entirely possible. For example, after the last election I received several letters from colleagues writing on behalf of constituents who were not British nationals or Commonwealth citizens, so were not legitimately able to participate in our general election but who had been erroneously registered as such. They had found that the electoral registration officer had been a bit more diligent and had suddenly told them that they could not vote in our general elections. They were writing because they were outraged, and one did not like to put it to them that they had actually been breaking the law for the past few years in casting a vote. If those cases were raised with the police, they might consider that the law had been broken, but they might also consider that the appropriate mechanism would be to explain matters to the person rather than pursue them.
If my hon. Friend has in mind a specific case, I suggest that he speak to the Crown Prosecution Service and ask why it did not pursue the case. There are two tests of course, one being an evidential one and the other whether a prosecution is in the public interest. I suggest that in this specific case it may be worth his doing that. If he does not get anywhere with the police or the CPS, I would be obliged if he would get back to me and I would be happy to take it up for him.
Amendment 4 would require details of the information that we would require to be put in the Bill. That would not be helpful for two reasons. First, the draft legislation that I published earlier today sets out the requirements and the information that individuals will need to provide. It is worth saying that although regulations are made by Ministers, all the regulations under this Bill are affirmative and will have to be debated and voted for by both Houses of Parliament. It is not a power only for Ministers—there is parliamentary control over it. We will ask for that information as set out in the draft legislation.
Secondly, as well as being unnecessary, the amendment would be unhelpful. Putting the details on the face of the legislation would make it difficult to change if it became preferable to use different evidence in the future. Although we expect the national insurance number and date of birth to be the standard information for the vast majority of the population, we have said that if there are people—it will be only a small number—who do not have an NI number, it should be possible for them to provide alternative evidence so that they may register to vote. Given that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) wants to be assured that no eligible elector would be disfranchised, putting the specific details in the Bill and not allowing any exceptions would be unhelpful.
Mr Harper
An example might be if someone did not have an NI number but had other evidence of identity. A citizen from another Commonwealth country who had never worked or claimed benefits in the UK, and did not have an NI number, might be able to use their passport. It is about providing a range of evidence that fulfils the accuracy test so that we can be confident about someone’s identity in that small number of cases in which people are not able to provide NI numbers. When the hon. Gentleman looks at the draft secondary legislation, he will see that it sets out that information in detail.
The hon. Gentleman read out the information in the privacy impact assessment, and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) also picked up that point. The first piece of information will obviously have been provided already. It is worth saying that none of the extra information requested will be published or added to the electoral register. It will be used to confirm someone’s eligibility to vote—for example, the reason for asking for immigration status if someone is not a British or EU citizen is that Commonwealth citizens are eligible to vote in our elections only if they do not need, or have, leave to remain. At the moment, it is not clear in many of the forms that people have to fill in that that information is required, which may be one reason why people vote genuinely not understanding that they are not entitled to do so.
Nor is immigration status checked on any systematic basis. It is checked in Northern Ireland, where it is one of the checks that the electoral officer does. In answer to my hon. Friend, we are working with the Border Agency to se whether—in a scalable way, given that Northern Ireland has a much smaller population—that information can be checked systematically so that only those people eligible to vote can go on the electoral register. I know that will reassure him and others.
For the sake of completeness, the reason for asking people about their previous address—some electoral registration officers already ask for this—is so that we can ensure that we clean up duplicate registrations. If someone moves, the new electoral registration officer will ask where they previously lived and can then inform the previous electoral registration officer so that the person can be deleted from the old register. That sometimes happens now, but it is not done systematically. We received feedback during pre-legislative scrutiny that it would be good to ensure that we no longer had lots of duplicate registrations. It was one of the arguments made for a national register. We did not like that idea because we did not want to create a national database, but this is a way to deal with the problem without creating such a database.
Mr Harper
Yes. This is about people who have moved. People who legitimately reside in more than one place, which may well include students, are entitled to be registered in either or both of those places. It is up to them to choose. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall, we will also ask people if there are other locations where they reside and where they are registered or intend to be registered. That will not drive anyone away, but will help electoral registration officers to make sure that the register is more accurate.
I hope that with those assurances my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Dan Rogerson
I am delighted to hear what the Minister has to say and it was remiss of me not to have checked in the Library before I spoke. I am grateful to him for his remarks and for how he has listened over the past couple of years to me and my constituent Mr Angus Lamond, with whom he has corresponded on several occasions. My constituent was an independent council candidate in the elections and was incensed because he felt that second-home voters were being targeted and mobilised in some way. I am delighted that the Government are taking this issue seriously and dealing with it proportionately. I look forward to seeing the proposals that the Minister has put in the Library today come into effect, and I beg to seek leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr David
I just have a query on my amendment. The Minister was slightly cavalier in comparing primary legislation, and matters on the face of the Bill, with secondary legislation. Yes, both have to go through the House as part of the parliamentary process, but there is a world of difference. I would not like to think that the Minister was undervaluing primary legislation.
Mr Harper
I do not undervalue primary legislation. Indeed, it is because I recognise that the Bill contains significant secondary legislative powers that we have published the first tranche in draft today, and I have committed to doing so while the Bill is still in this House. It is important that colleagues on both sides are able to look at what we are intending to use those powers for and what we are intending to bring forward for approval. It is not sensible, however, to put all that detail in the Bill, because it would mean that every time we wanted to change something we would have to produce a Bill and take it through all its processes. On these important issues, it is right to have affirmative legislation so that it has to be debated and voted on in both Houses of Parliament. That gets the balance right between proper parliamentary control and the flexibility to change with changing times.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2
Sharing and checking information etc
Oral Answers to Questions
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hurd
I have been to Northern Ireland myself to make the point that Big Society Capital is available to charities and social enterprises there. The honest answer to the hon. Lady’s question is that any outcome depends on the quality of the investment proposition that intermediaries take to Big Society Capital, but we are very keen to engage with charities and social enterprises in Northern Ireland in order to make sure that the measure is as accessible to Northern Ireland as we say we want it to be.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
3. What steps he is taking to support civil servants facing redundancy.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
All Departments are rightly required to maximise opportunities for redeployment within the Government and to make all reasonable efforts to avoid compulsory redundancies. All Departments also have in place appropriate support for those employees affected, including retraining, career coaching and advice, and help with CV writing.
Mr Maude
As I said a little earlier, the size of the civil service has already fallen to its smallest since the second world war, and there will be further downsizing, as we have made clear. The resignation rate of senior civil servants is stable: there is no higher turnover than before.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Harper
Local authorities will have legal obligations to deliver those measures, and I will consult them over the summer about the precise details of the timing of and approach to grant allocations so that they get the money to pay for transition when they need it, and ensure that there is clear accountability, showing that they are taking the steps required by law to prepare for the transition to the new system.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary makes an important point, but will he give a commitment to the House now that the money will be ring-fenced?
Mr Harper
Section 31 grants are specific grants, and the hon. Gentleman needs to be aware of an interesting point: local authorities already fund about one third of the cost of electoral reform, so if we insisted on a specific amount being spent on electoral registration, it would be easy for local authorities that wanted to do so to evade that. They could use the money that we gave them to pay for their business-as-usual electoral registration and not do any of the things that we want them to do. We will give them money directly; we will consult about the mechanism so that we have some accountability; we will recognise that some local authorities have bigger challenges than others so that all the money is not dished out in the first place—we want local authorities that face the biggest challenges to be able to bid for extra funding—and we will try to ensure that we have a workable system that is not too bureaucratic. I am confident that local authorities and electoral registration officers will welcome our announcement about not allowing the money to be swallowed up in the overall revenue support grant by paying direct grants under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003. They will have the confidence that they have the money to deliver the programme.
We consulted widely on our proposals for individual registration, which have undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. We have worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and groups of front-line staff on our plans. We will begin publishing draft secondary legislation for IER in June, and we will continue to add to the package as the summer progresses, aiming to conclude publication before Parliament returns in the autumn. We will talk to those key groups about the detail of the proposals as we go along.
There will be some matters for which we do not intend to publish draft legislation—for example, those for which we have no current plans to use the powers. There will be other matters on which we want to seek stakeholders’ views about the approach. In the amendment, Labour Members deplore our not publishing secondary legislation and it is therefore worth saying that, for two similar measures—the Electoral Administration Act 2006 and the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, both of which contain significant powers to be made by regulation—no secondary legislation of any description was published at any stage during their passage. It was all made and published after the Bills had received Royal Assent. On that issue, therefore, the Labour party is very much in the mode of “Do as we say, not as we do.”
The Government’s approach is to treat the House much more seriously, to publish Bills in draft, to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny, and to publish draft legislation while the measure is still going through the House. May I pick up the point that the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee made? Members can see what is proposed while the Bill is undergoing its parliamentary passage. I will take no lectures on that from anyone on the Labour Benches.
So far, I have discussed the measures that we are taking to mitigate the risk of the transition to the new system. There are also several opportunities to do better. The Bill will facilitate online registration, whereby an individual will complete the end-to-end process without having to fill in a paper form. That will make it more convenient for individuals to register to vote, more accessible for, for example, people with visual impairments, and more accessible for young people. It is our intention that the online system will be fully operational when the transition to individual registration begins. As I said yesterday during Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, that is a genuine opportunity, certainly for disabled people.
For example, Scope said that it
“supports the change to a system of IER, and warmly welcomes the Government’s commitment to ensure that disabled people’s needs are taken into account”.
It agrees with our assessment that
“the introduction of IER should improve access for voters with disabilities. The current arrangements do not adequately allow for disabled people’s access needs to be taken into account”,
and that the introduction of IER offers an ideal opportunity to put in place a more accessible system. We intend to do that.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:
“this House, whilst affirming its support for a complete and accurate electoral register and a move to a system of individual electoral registration (IER), declines to give a Second Reading to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill because whilst the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 received cross-party support, establishing an orderly move to IER with a strong independent role for the Electoral Commission in guarding against a sharp fall in registration numbers, the Bill speeds up the introduction of IER, and downgrades the Electoral Commission’s role, with the result that there will be no independent arbitrator with the power to halt the process if it is deemed to have resulted in a sharp drop in registration levels; notes that the 2015 parliamentary boundary changes will be based on the new electoral register which will potentially be inaccurate, risking illegitimate new constituency boundaries; believes the proposals would mean the young, the poor, ethnic minorities and disabled people would face an increased risk of being unregistered and thus excluded from a range of social and civic functions; further regards the proposals as flawed as they risk making the list from which juries are drawn less representative; concludes that because the evaluation of the second round of data-matching pilots will not be published until early 2013 an assessment of the likely completeness of the register is in effect prevented; and deplores the fact that the Government has not published secondary legislation and an implementation plan for the introduction of IER.”
As the Minister has said, the Bill is essentially in two parts, the second of which concerns the minutiae of the administration and conduct of elections. Much of it contains relatively uncontentious proposals, but other matters ought to be addressed, particularly the need to ensure that there are no more queues at polling stations. One proposal might well raise a few eyebrows—to allow a candidate who is supported by two or more political parties to use the emblem of one of them. The Minister has said previously that the measure addresses an anomaly and permits Labour and Co-operative candidates to use those emblems. It is kind of him to be helpful to the Labour party, but I must tell Conservative Back Benchers to be afraid—be very afraid. It could well be the thin end of the wedge. Who knows what it could lead to?
The first part of the Bill demands far greater attention because it focuses on electoral registration. The Opposition’s view is that individual electoral registration is a sound principle. It places an appropriate responsibility on individuals to register to vote and is in tune with modern society. It can no longer be sensible for voter registration to be in the hands of the head of household. Individual elector registration is also an effective way in which to ensure the completeness and accuracy of voter registration. That is why the Labour Government secured legislation for individual elector registration in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Last autumn, the Government introduced their draft Bill and White Paper on IER. Understandably, their proposals at the time created consternation among a wide range of opinion. Much attention focused on their suggestion that there should be a virtual opt-out for individuals who do not wish to be reminded about registration by an electoral registration officer. The second proposal that understandably left many aghast was the suggestion in the White Paper that voter registration ought to be a lifestyle choice, and that no fines should be imposed for non-registration. I welcome the fact that the Government have reconsidered both those proposals and others, but we should be clear that a draft Bill and prior consultation are relatively innovative for this Government—there was no draft Bill or prior consultation on two previous pieces of important constitutional legislation, namely the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. I am glad that they are changing their ways. The opt-out has been dropped and civil penalties will be introduced, as suggested by the Opposition. I am also pleased that the Government have listened and that many electors on the old registers will be carried over. Similarly, the annual canvass planned in 2013 will now occur in 2014. As far as that is concerned, so far, so good.
Ms Buck
Does my hon. Friend recognise that the population and electoral registration turnover in parts of the country, particularly London and the inner cities, is 30%? Having a canvass a full year before an election means that we risk going into the election with a third of the population unregistered. The Minister said that there will be a national expectation that the total number of people not on the register will fall, which is fine, but if we do not recognise the variance between communities and the pressures on cities, that national expectation will not be much comfort to people such as me.
Mr David
That is a good point, and I shall refer to it later in my speech.
As I was saying, the Government have made positive concessions, but they have not listened on other matters—indeed, they have refused to listen to those who have expressed legitimate concerns about the Bill. Foremost among the Opposition’s concerns and those of many outside the House is the Government’s intention to press ahead with individual elector registration at a breakneck speed. The concern that there will be no carry-over for many postal and proxy votes in the move to a new register has been expressed by a range of disability charities, including Mencap, Sense, the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Scope.
Mr Mark Williams
I have read the Scope briefing and share that concern, but is the hon. Gentleman not reassured by what the Minister has said? He said that a very small group of people will not be carried over and that there will be a carry-over of existing absent voters to the new list.
Mr David
I am not entirely reassured by what the Minister has said. In fact, I found his comments contradictory and confusing. It is a straightforward matter, and I hope that he provides in his winding-up speech the clarification that the Opposition and organisations such as the Royal National Institute of Blind People want.
There is also a worry that moneys for EROs to support transition have not been adequately ring-fenced. I listened carefully to the Minister. He provided more clarity, but has specifically not stated that the money will be ring-fenced so that it is spent on the purpose for which it is intended, which was a key Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recommendation; I pay warm tribute to the Committee’s work.
Many other concerns are referred to in the reasoned amendment, one of which is the power that the Bill gives to Ministers to cancel annual canvasses. The Government’s argument is that we might at some point no longer need annual canvasses, when registers are complete. The Opposition argue that an annual canvass is needed even if we eventually have high registration levels, because we must always guard against, and be diligent about, any deterioration of the electoral roll.
The Government have made much of their U-turn on civil penalties. I do not want to belittle their volte face, but before the House can make an assessment of the civil penalty that the Government propose, it needs to know exactly how much the penalty will be. The Minister has said in other exchanges that the penalty will be like a parking fine, but the size of parking fines varies enormously across the country. Here in Westminster, they can be as high as £130, but in Rhondda Cynon Taff in south Wales, they can be as low as £25. Nobody wishes large numbers of fines to be issued, but if fines are to be an incentive for people to register, they need to be fixed at a reasonable level, and yet we do not know what that will be.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
When I was a Conservative party agent way back in the 1980s—[Interruption.]—people were forced to pay a fixed fine of £50 for non-registration, but does the hon. Gentleman know how many people were forced to pay it?
Mr David
That is not much of an argument. We need an indication from the Government, which they have failed to provide, of the level at which the fixed fine will be set. There is no question of varying the fixed fine, of course; it will be a uniform fixed fine. We simply want to know what it should be. The Observer suggested that it might be £100. There have been other suggestions, too. I am simply saying that given that the Government are making a big thing of having listened to the opinions of many people outside the House and are committed to a civil penalty in principle, we need to know what they judge an effective figure to be.
Gavin Shuker
Is not the point that the threat of a fine is proportionate to how much money it would take off people? If it is a small fine, people will be less likely to register, but if it is a larger fine, they will be more likely to do so.
Mr David
My hon. Friend puts it very well.
The Minister told us that details of the civil penalty would be set out in secondary legislation, which brings me to a broader point. With this legislation, perhaps more than any other, the devil is in the detail, but the detail is tucked away in secondary legislation and we cannot see it. Last November, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister, from the Dispatch Box, whether the Government would publish their secondary legislation at the same time as the primary legislation. That was six months ago. Additional information has been forthcoming, including today, but six months later we still cannot properly assess these proposals, simply because we do not know—we have not been told—the detail.
One of the main reasons we have continuing concerns about the Bill relates to the Government’s timetable for implementation. Under the last Labour Government, the Electoral Commission was to play a key role in monitoring and assessing the progress towards a new register. Sadly, that role has been diminished and downgraded. Instead, the Government are rushing pell-mell into a new system of electoral registration that ought to provide the cornerstone of our democratic process. We understand from the Government that they are undertaking a second round of data matching. That is to be welcomed and will show how complete the new register is at the end of 2015. The pilots will indicate whether the new register will be depleted. In all reasonableness, I think that the House should be aware of the conclusion of the pilots before it decides on the Government’s implementation timetable, yet the results of the data-matching pilots will not be available until early next year.
Why are the Government hell-bent on introducing this radical change at breakneck speed? It has been suggested that they are determined to end the carry-over arrangements before 1 December 2015 for reasons of Conservative party self-interest.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
I recall that we first discussed individual electoral registration in the House seven years ago, since when it has been implemented in Northern Ireland—effectively a pilot scheme for the rest of the UK—and it has been looked at over the past two or more years in great detail. How can that possibly be described as breakneck speed?
Mr David
It is breakneck speed. This is the first piece of legislation in the Queen’s Speech to be introduced. The Electoral Commission and many others have said that we must first complete the data-matching exercises. The Government have deliberately introduced this legislation as quickly as possible in their legislative programme to circumvent the evidence coming forward that might highlight weaknesses in the process.
Simon Hughes
The hon. Gentleman has a problem. He is a good guy and, like me, wants a good Bill. The Government came up with proposals, have hugely improved on them having listened to him, me and many others, including people outside, and they now want to implement a system that his Government never implemented, despite saying that they would—and this Government will do it as quickly as possible, and they are building in the safeguards. On this occasion, then, he ought to accept that the Government have done a good job. Why does he not simply thank the Government for having listened?
Mr David
With all due respect, I say to the Liberal Democrats that, yes, concessions have been made, but there is still a long, long way to go. As I hope the Liberal Democrats come to realise before the end of the passage of the Bill, some measures in it might well work against their interests. The advantage will be with the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats might pay a very high price for acquiescing in the policies of their Conservative masters.
What is the significance of 1 December 2015? It is when the next parliamentary boundary review takes place. As we should all be aware, under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, if, for whatever reasons, there is a decline in the number of electors in certain constituencies, the parliamentary boundaries must be redrawn. It would be most unfortunate for the Government to give the impression that they were seeking political advantage by introducing IER at the end of the transitional period, when the size of the electorate could be temporarily diminished. It could be that the new data-matching pilots will indicate that December 2015 is precisely the time when electoral numbers are likely to be at their lowest.
Chris Ruane
What reason have the Tory Government given for bringing forward IER by one year and putting back the next election to the latest possible date, which is May 2015? Is it happenstance or could it be for political advantage?
Mr David
I do not think it is mere coincidence. It is possible to look at the dates and come to certain conclusions. I only wish that the Liberal Democrats would do the same and recognise that there is a lot in what I say.
That concern has been identified by many others. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has raised it, as has the Electoral Reform Society, which pointed out that a depleted register could lead to the reduction of inner-city constituencies, while leaving
“thousands of…citizens who will not be accounted for or considered in many key decisions that affect their lives, yet will still look to MPs to serve them as local constituents.”
I ask the Government, therefore, to dispel any impression that their agenda is partisan. To do that, all they need to do is adopt a more reasonable time scale for the introduction of IER that goes beyond December 2015.
It is because the Government have so far been unable to acknowledge our concerns or act on our proposals that we have tabled our reasoned amendment. If the amendment is unsuccessful, we will oppose the Bill’s Second Reading. That is not a course of action that we want to take, but we feel it absolutely necessary to uphold the integrity of the electoral system while ensuring that our democratic system is built on firm foundations.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott). She approached this subject in a constructive manner, and I hope to do the same while offering some suggestions as to how the process could be improved.
It would be churlish not to celebrate the differences between the current proposals and the Government’s original announcements in the White Paper and the documents that went to the Select Committee for pre-legislative scrutiny. That demonstrates that the Government have taken account of the consultation and have listened to what representatives from a range of organisations have said. They have made a lot of significant changes to the Bill as a result. Among the most welcome are the changes to ensure that we get as full an electoral register as possible. The negativity of Opposition Members astounds me. This should be an opportunity to enhance the electoral list, and build a bigger list. I am shocked by some of the comments I have heard.
Many of the issues raised in Labour’s Opposition day debate have been addressed. The opt-out provision has been removed from the form. There was a great deal of controversy about that, but the Government listened and responded. The Government have also yielded on the civil penalty issue, and there has been action on the question of the canvass in 2014. As the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said, the new individual voter registration scheme enables individuals to register and be responsible for their own vote, rightly taking responsibility away from the head of the household for registering everybody in the household, which was an outdated notion. I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) about the importance and significance of mothers, but we must all reach a point in our lives when we can make a judgment on these matters ourselves.
Registering to vote is a civic duty, and having a penalty for those who fail to do so serves to reflect that. That has been in place for almost 100 years, since 1918, when the last Liberal-Conservative coalition introduced a £20 fine, a sum that is equivalent to about £3,500 in today’s money. Since then, with all-party agreement, the House has agreed to maximum fines of £50 in 1969, £100 in 1983, £400 in 1986 and £1,000 in 2001. I welcome the fact that the Government are moving along those lines in respect of civil penalties for individuals. Having no offence would also have meant there was no incentive for local authorities to follow up on hard-to-reach voters, who have as much right to be enfranchised as anyone else.
The Government have also listened to the concerns about the boundary changes, and concessions have been made. The Government are as keen as anyone that we should have a complete and responsive electoral list.
Mr Williams
The Opposition have been wallowing in conspiracy theories in this regard. The Government have made a huge number of concessions in order to ensure we have a complete electoral list on which to base the new boundaries. The Government have responded to the concerns expressed about the use of the register for the jury service pool, and about credit check companies and mortgage providers using it to check an individual’s background. Again, those considerations have been reflected in the changes made by the Government.
I look forward to hearing more from the Government about the level of the penalties that will be set. I share the impatience of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) in that regard, but the Government have assured us that during the Bill’s passage, we will have the relevant draft secondary legislation. The hon. Gentleman is right: we need to hear what penalties the Government have in mind and what discussions have taken place on this issue. I will welcome the speedy emergence of that draft secondary legislation.
I am also pleased that the Bill states that the money raised will go to the Treasury, so that local authorities cannot be accused of using the failure to register as a money-making venture. I wonder whether the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), can say whether the fine will be on the scale of a parking fine, for example. Will it operate in a similar way—I hesitate to use that example; there are many disreputable car-parking companies in our constituencies—and will the fine increase if payment is not received within two weeks, as happens with some parking fines? If, after one month, the person fined still has not taken any action to register, will the fine be repeated? These are legitimate questions, and we look forward to the speediest possible emergence of that information.
I am very glad that the Government have decided to move the annual canvass from 2013 to 2014, so that the gap between it and mass mailing is shorter. Hopefully, there will therefore be fewer significant changes. I remain a little concerned, however—in the spirit of consensus, this is perhaps another area of agreement between me and the hon. Member for Caerphilly—that clause 6 allows the relevant Minister to abolish the annual canvass. I have heard the rationale behind this provision—that future data matching will be sufficiently developed to ensure that an annual canvass is not necessary—and in that regard the example of Northern Ireland is often cited. I would like clarification of that rationale, but I do note that clause 6 also gives the Minister the power to reinstate the annual canvass.
I am pleased that there will be the opportunity to register online, a positive step that will appeal to a lot of young people. Like the hon. Member for Sunderland Central, I saw the presentation, which was impressive; however, there is a great deal of work to be done. The point has been made—I made it myself in an intervention—about the ease or otherwise with which people can access their own national insurance number. I was surprised to hear the Minister say that only 5% of people could not readily access their NI number. A quick survey of my office in this place revealed that I was the only one out of four people who knew their NI number. I doubt whether most of our constituents study their NI number on their payslips; perhaps they are more inclined to look at the other numbers. We need clarity here, and to develop seamless ways in which people can access their NI number.
As I have said before in this House, it is all very well talking about accessing Government services on the internet in parts of the country where it is easy to do so: for those in west Wales—Ceredigion, for example—the situation is very different. I am afraid that at the moment, 20% of my constituents cannot access anything on the internet—the Government do have the worthy aspiration to roll out broadband across the country—so there are limitations. That is why the traditional method of the annual canvass is so significant in the registration of voters.
I was pleased to learn from the Government that funding will be set aside for each local authority to implement the changes associated with IVR, and that extra money will be available through bidding. We can all envisage places in our constituencies where that extra money would be put to good use.
Ceredigion may not be characterised in the same way that inner-city constituencies have been, but I represent two universities. Students are traditionally hard-to-get-at voters at election time and before. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) speaks from a sedentary position; I have no difficulty in speaking to my student voters, but registering these people is challenging. I am well used to seeing the piles of electoral registration forms heaped up in student pigeonholes in halls of residence and in houses in multiple occupation, of which there are a huge number in my constituency. Huge numbers of forms sit there untended as the months go by. They will require extra resources but, again, the Government have made those resources available and intimated that they will be available.
I reinforce what the Minister said about the value of education. I used to be a teacher, and I believe there is great merit in using the education system, as we have heard has happened in Northern Ireland, to promote the registration of voters from sixth forms. That is a practical way of engaging people in citizenship and assisting local authorities in registering new voters.
I would also like to hear a little more about the dissemination of best practice and the standardisation of electoral registration forms across the country. As the Minister knows, some very good examples are available. We have heard about Sunderland Central’s good record in these matters. In order to please the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), I wish to mention the example of Denbighshire, which has sent out some extremely effective forms and follow-up forms. We need to disseminate the practice from Denbighshire across other areas of the country. Crucially, such forms need to be bilingual in Wales.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) is concerned about the issue of second homes and the prominence of items on electoral registration forms for people who own two residences. I want the civil penalty and the possible penalties that may be levied to have real prominence on those forms.
I also wish to highlight the concerns voiced by Scope, and I await the response from our Front-Bench team on the issue of the carry-over of voters from 2014 to 2015, and on whether all postal and proxy voters have to re-register. I was heartened by what the Minister said about this applying only to those people who have not yet been dealt with through the data-matching pilots. If that is not the case, the prospect of so many people who have been used to having a postal or proxy vote for so many years, election after election, not being included is very alarming. That needs to be addressed.
I sum up by saying that this Government have made huge progress on this Bill. There are still matters that need to be ironed out and that we need to reflect on in Committee, but compared with where we were at the time of the Labour Opposition motion before, the Bill is vastly improved. That is why Government Members will be supporting it tonight.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
If the Government wish, as they say, to have a complete and accurate electoral register, why are they pressing ahead with their individual electoral registration legislation before the results of the next round of data matching are known? Can it be because they are thinking about the parliamentary boundary review of December 2015?
Mr Harper
That is not the case. The hon. Gentleman knows that, based on the data-matching pilots we have already run, we think that there is good evidence that we will be able to confirm two thirds of voters who are already on the electoral register and move them over to the new one, assured that they are real people registered at those addresses. We will run more pilots later this year, subject to parliamentary approval of the orders, to test that proposition further and see whether there are any other lessons to learn. However, we are confident from the work that we have done so far that the process is robust.
Debate on the Address
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I have to say that this was about the only interesting point in the Leader of the Opposition’s speech. When he is asked very clearly whether he supports a benefit cap and whether he thinks it is right that people can get more than £26,000 a year on benefits, his answer is that it is just fine—carry on claiming. That is Labour’s message to the hard-working people of this country.
As the Leader of the Opposition covered so little of the detail, for the benefit of the House I want to run through some of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech and the steps we are taking. One thing we are doing is helping the most vulnerable of all in our society—children who do not have a family, who are stuck in the care system and who, in too many cases, have been left there for too long. That is why we are legislating on adoption, as set out in this Gracious Speech. We are going to publish detailed information on how councils perform, setting clear time limits for cases to get through the courts and making it illegal to turn down an adoptive family on the basis of race. We say it is time to end the patronising, politically correct prejudice that says that black parents cannot bring up white children and that white parents cannot bring up black children. It is time to make the system colour blind.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Given the recent scandals that have engulfed the Government, why is a lobbying Bill not included in the Queen’s Speech?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman’s party had 13 years to produce a register of lobbyists. We have now published our proposals for a register of lobbyists and we will legislate for a register of lobbyists. [Interruption.] I hate to add to hon. Members’ misery, but we have a Queen’s Speech for the 2012-13 Session that is packed with great Bills and we will have one for the 2013-14 Session that is packed with great Bills. We will also have one for the 2014-15 Session that is packed with great Bills, and when we have beaten the rabble in opposition at the next election, we will have another one all over again.
Police and Crime Commissioners
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
We on this side of the House were not in favour of the introduction of police and crime commissioners, but Parliament agreed that they should be introduced and the first elections will be held on 15 November. It is imperative that, in the run-up to the elections, every effort should be made to familiarise the electorate with the role of PCCs, with the candidates and with the electoral system that will be used—namely, the supplementary vote.
Members will recall that the elections for PCCs were originally planned for May this year, but the Government decided to delay them until November. The Home Secretary explained to the House that more time was needed before the elections to ensure that the general public were aware of the role of commissioners and of who would be standing for election in their local area. All well and good, we might think, but here we are, less than seven months before the elections, and as far as I can tell, the Government are making painfully slow progress towards deciding what measures will be put in place to facilitate them. It is vital that such measures be put in place as soon as is humanly possible, to ensure that the elections are part of the democratic process.
It is a well established principle that all the necessary secondary legislation should be in place at least six months before a poll. We are moving close to 15 May, so will the Government make a firm commitment that the necessary secondary legislation will be in place by that date?
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
My hon. Friend might also wish to ask the Government whether it is indeed the Cabinet Office that—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that it is not customary or desirable for Members to intervene from the Front Bench in these Adjournment debates? I gave an indication in response to a point of order yesterday of the distinction between an intervention and a speech in other people’s Adjournment debates, but that ruling referred to Back Benchers. This is a very unusual practice, and the right hon. Gentleman is not normally given to unusual practices, as far as I am aware.
Mr David
That is absolutely correct, Mr Speaker. My right hon. Friend is not known for unusual practices in any shape or form. I think that he was about to make a fair point, however. It is strange that the Minister who is to respond to the debate is not from the Home Office, when it is the Home Office that has responsibility for the matter under consideration. Instead, we have a Minister from the Cabinet Office. Perhaps he will explain the reason for this when he responds to the debate.
The Minister—although he is from the Cabinet Office—will be aware that genuine concern has been expressed by Members in this House and the other place that the Government do not intend to have a publicly funded mailing or booklet distributed locally, giving details of the candidates standing in the elections for police and crime commissioners. Like the Electoral Commission, I believe that the Government have failed to recognise the importance of such material.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
The Government’s assertion is that there will be a central website on which all our constituents can readily access information about the candidates. Has the hon. Gentleman examined the difficulties that that could pose, certainly for my constituents in Ceredigion and across the Dyfed-Powys area who have no internet provision?
Mr David
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I agree with him completely. In the last Government, I was, among other things, the deputy Minister with responsibility for digital inclusion. I know only too well that some 7 million adults in England—excluding London—and Wales do not have internet access and have not used the internet at all in the past 12 months. Sadly, those people will not have the same access to information as those individuals who have digital computer access. The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that it is people in rural areas and the elderly who will be disadvantaged, as they will not have the same access to the kind of information that I believe they should have.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that having a website is not bad in itself, but that it is a radical departure from how we usually run elections, particularly when the elections are new and are taking place at a different time of year under an unfamiliar voting system?
Mr David
Yes, my hon. Friend makes entirely valid points. Nobody is against having a Home Office website with information about the candidates, but that must be as well as, not instead of, other forms of information. I think that the Government have made a mistake here.
The Government have, albeit wrongly, set their face against this proposal, so in the brief time available, I will not go over old arguments. Instead, I want to focus on a number of areas in respect of which I hope the Government will listen and improve their draft legislation. Before I go on to those points, I would like the Government to assure us that the website will be accessible to all and that the information on it will be provided in minority languages. In particular, as a Welshman, I would hope that a Welsh language version of the website will be available and that Welsh language speakers will be available for the helpline. Perhaps the Minister can provide information about that. I also hope that the information will be provided in alternative formats—in Braille or in large print, for example. I shall now move on to focus on other areas where the Government could improve their draft legislation.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman feel that the election of a police or crime commissioner should be based not on popularity alone, but on experience, ability and years of service? Does he have any thoughts on how that could be brought into the process in such a way that the bright person gets the job because they have the ability to do it well?
Mr David
I think it is important that the electorate know what the position involves and the job entails, as well as the qualities of the individuals being put forward. I am a democrat; I have faith in the electorate to make the appropriate decisions, provided, of course, that they have been given the appropriate information on which to base their decisions. That is why I believe this debate is so important.
To return to the specifics of the draft legislation, under the Government’s plans, police area returning officers—PAROs for short—will accept or reject material from candidates standing for election on 15 November. They will check and approve the material they receive, and then pass it on to the Home Office so that it can publish that material on its website. It is pretty clear to me that this will be a sensitive role for these officers, so I urge the Government to ensure that the criteria by which PAROs have to assess the material are set out clearly and in detail—much more clearly, I would suggest, than in the draft secondary legislation.
Secondly, the Electoral Commission will, to its credit, produce a booklet for every household where PCC elections are taking place. This is particularly important because the elections will take place at an unfamiliar time of year in November, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) has said, and using a voting system—the supplementary vote system—that most people will not have used before. May I have an assurance from the Government that sufficient resources will be provided to the Electoral Commission for this information dissemination work to be carried out properly?
Generally, it is essential that guidance for candidates, agents, campaigners and returning officers is provided well in advance of the elections in November. The Government should note that the Electoral Commission wants most of these guidelines in place very soon so that they can be published and disseminated widely three months before the start of the regulated period. Of particular concern is the need to publish the limits on the amount of money that PCC candidates can spend during the last few weeks of the campaign, and I would hope that the spending limit for each specific police area—not a complicated calculation and a formula—is set out on the face of the secondary legislation. That is the way to ensure clarity.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman makes some good points. What worries me is that there will be no publicly funded mailing, and that individual candidates will be able to issue their own literature. That, surely, creates the possibility that the person who can afford the most literature will win the election, which is profoundly unfair.
Mr David
The hon. Gentleman’s point reinforces the need for clearly defined limits to ensure that there is no confusion or ambiguity, and that every candidate in every police area is aware of the limits that apply to him or her. There should also be stipulations governing third parties to prevent candidates from receiving indirect financial support.
I am acutely aware that, in all probability, mayoral elections will take place on the same day as the PCC elections in some parts of England. Obviously no one can foretell what will happen in the elections that will be held in a number of English cities, but the odds are that they will take place concurrently, and I know that the two sets of elections will be overseen by two separate Departments, the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Indeed, it is possible that a third will be involved. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) mentioned the Cabinet Office earlier. How will it be involved in all this? That is yet another ingredient in the mix.
Both the mayoral and the PCC elections will use the supplementary vote system, and I hope that voters will be presented with two differently designed ballot papers. That is important, because, as I have said, at least two Departments will be directly involved in running these concurrent elections. Government co-operation and a joint approach will be necessary, so that the electorate are not confused by the process. There will also be room for considerable confusion if PCC candidates are expected to communicate with voters through a website while mayoral candidates rely on locally distributed booklets, given that the elections will take place on the same day. Whether we like it or not—and I consider the position to be very unsatisfactory—there will inevitably be some confusion, because the basic means of communication will be provided through different mediums. I am keen for those difficulties to be minimised.
It is possible that the Home Office will find all this work a little too much. We are all aware of the difficulties that it is experiencing. I respectfully ask the Minister to suggest to his colleagues in the Home Office that they should consider having a word with the Deputy Prime Minister to see whether it would be possible to bring in some Cabinet Office experience. Being entirely objective, the Minister knows a heck of a lot more about these issues than the Home Office—which is supposed to be conducting the elections—and I suspect that that is why he is here tonight.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
One issue that has not yet been clarified is the future of Victim Support, some of whose representatives visited me in my constituency last week. They expressed concern about what the implications for the expertise of the existing 7,000 volunteers, and about possible costs, bureaucracy and fragmentation of the service. Perhaps the Home Office will consider that as well.
Mr David
That is a fair point. Similar representations have been made to me. There is genuine concern among people involved in Victim Support about the fact that the police commissioners will have that responsibility in addition to their other responsibilities. We are, after all, talking about finite resources, and the possibility that moneys allocated for one purpose will be used for another purpose as well is causing concern. However, I am sure that the Minister will be able to allay the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend and, indeed, others outside the House.
It is essential that the PCC elections on 15 November are successful. There must be a good turnout, therefore, and the electorate must be well informed. That is why this debate is important, and I hope the Government will get a move on and get the draft legislation made into final proposals that they then put before the House so everybody is clear where we stand and we can make genuine preparations for successful democratic elections on 15 November.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
First, let me say that unlike in the previous Government, Ministers from different Departments in this Government speak to each other. We work closely. I am here tonight because I work closely with my colleagues in the Home Office. The Cabinet Office has overall responsibility for electoral policy—owned by the Deputy Prime Minister—and I work closely with Home Office Ministers. My officials in the Cabinet Office work very closely with Home Office officials. We are a very joined-up operation. That may be a new notion to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), as he served in the dysfunctional last Labour Government where the Prime Minister and Chancellor could not bring themselves to speak to each other, but things have changed since the last election.
Mr David
I am saddened, and rather surprised, that the Minister should make a factional and crudely political point in a debate that is about democratic involvement and popular participation.
I am also surprised by what the Minister said about the Home Office. Taking his logic to its conclusion, he or one of his departmental colleagues should answer questions on PCC elections at Home Office questions, but that is not the case.
Mr Harper
The Home Office leads on policy on PCCs, but that also involves elections. The situation is just the same as in respect of the Department for Communities and Local Government: I work closely with my colleagues in that Department, and its officials work closely with my officials. We have joined-up policy across the Government. That is sensible.
As the hon. Gentleman raised the issue of departmental responsibility—and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) tried to raise it—I thought it was worth making that initial point in response. I was also going to say that I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his very complimentary words about me; I wish to be suitably gracious about what he said.
The directly elected PCCs represent a radical reform of policing. The hon. Gentleman’s party was not initially in favour of them, but I am glad that now that Parliament has passed the legislation, it is participating in this process. Indeed, many prominent Labour figures will, perhaps, be candidates in these elections, including Lord Prescott, who has now been converted to the merits of PCCs and the importance of giving more power and control to the public—letting the public choose the people who set policing priorities, rather than their being set by the Home Office.
The PCC elections will be very valuable, and the public will be very interested in them. The police.uk website has had 47 million hits. The public are interested in local crime matters and how police officers conduct their work and how they are deployed. I know from conversations with my constituents and chief constable that people are very interested. I therefore think people will get engaged in this process, despite the fact that the elections will be held in November. There will be a decent turnout, I believe.
Mr Harper
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will adopt the same stricture as I did in respect of Labour Members. Let me deal with the points that the hon. Member for Caerphilly raised, as it is his debate, and if we have time, I will be happy to take further interventions.
Polling cards will contain this information, so it will be widely distributed to voters. The Electoral Commission, with which we are working closely, will include that contact and access information in its own literature—indeed, this will be in the booklet that it is distributing to households, which will provide some information about the elections and the supplementary vote system.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly raised the issue of internet access. Although 77% or so of the population can use the internet, we recognise that there are people who cannot; my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) referred to people who live in his constituency in this regard. That is why we have the combination of online and print-on-demand information. I am pleased to tell the hon. Member for Caerphilly, as I anticipated that he would ask about this, that the information will be available in both English and Welsh. Candidates will be able to submit their information to go on the website in either language, and we will make sure that the website content and the printed copies are available in both languages. We will of course make sure that the information is available in a range of accessible formats for those voters who have some form of disability, to make sure that we maximise the opportunities for people to see the information.
Let me deal with why we have chosen that option rather than completely free mailings paid for by the taxpayer. We did consider funding mailings of the type used for UK parliamentary and European elections. We are minded to conclude—this is our preferred option on the website, rather than our final position—that at a time when budgets are tight, it is difficult to justify those mailings for PCC elections. There are also some logistical difficulties involved in producing a candidates booklet, such as those used for mayoral elections. The difficulties are partly to do with the size of the PCC areas and having to produce the 41 booklets simultaneously; this would be very difficult to co-ordinate across the country. We think that the approach we have adopted is a proportionate one that will give people access to the information. We will, of course, look at the experience in practice; we will look very carefully at what happens. I am sure that hon. Members in this House will not be backward in coming forward about any issues, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be sure to tell us of issues in his area in Wales. We will look at this carefully but we are confident that we have adopted a sensible approach; we have worked closely with stakeholders and we think it will be successful.
As I mentioned, the Electoral Commission will be working on some public awareness information. This is in its plan, so it is in the money that it has bid for and had approved by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and by the House. This is something that has been in the Electoral Commission’s programme, so I am confident that it will be effective.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly also asked about the conduct rules. The elections, as he said, will take place in every police force area in England and Wales outside London, although it is worth saying that the first time that people will be able to vote for the directly elected person who will control policing will be in the London mayoral election, now that the Mayor has that responsibility. The detail for the other elections will be in the secondary legislation that we intend to lay before the House shortly. I can confirm that “shortly” means by 15 May, so that legislation will be laid before the House six months before the elections.
We have, of course, worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, returning officers, the Local Government Association, the Welsh Government, the Wales Office and the Association of Police Authorities, among others, to check that the legislation is in good order and that it will work in practice. Preparations have started. The police area returning officers will be administering the elections across the police force areas, a number of meetings have taken place and the preparations are in good order.
The hon. Gentleman asked one or two other questions and I have dealt with his question about the language. He raised some concerns about the website and I can make it very clear that the Government have ensured that they will have no role at all in the content on the website, which will be dealt with by the police area returning officers. The Government’s role is to set up the function and ensure that the information is posted; we will not have any editorial control at all, as is appropriate.
Mr Harper
I can confirm that the legislation will be drafted—I am sure this will be tested when it is debated in the House—to ensure that it is clear that there will be no opportunity for the Government to have any role in deciding the content of the information. That would clearly not be appropriate.
Let me come to the final point about victim support services, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). It has been proposed—the consultation by the Ministry of Justice finished just a few days ago—to move from a national to a local model. The Government’s view, on which we consulted in our consultation document, is that rather than Whitehall attempting to pick those services and fund them across the country, the police and crime commissioners, who will be accountable to local people, will do a better job of making those judgments. I have read through the Ministry of Justice consultation document in full, as a local victim support organisation wrote to me in my capacity as a constituency MP and I wanted to ensure, having worked with Victim Support in the past, that I was confident about what would happen. I have been through the consultation document and I think the proposal is a good one that will mean more money gets spent, rather than less, and that decisions will be taken more locally. That makes sense, rather than trying to have a one-size-fits-all policy. The Ministry of Justice will consider the responses to the consultation very closely to see whether it needs to alter its policy in any way.
I think that I have answered all of the points raised by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, so, as we have one or two moments, do any of my colleagues who jumped up to intervene earlier want to do so before I sit down?
Oral Answers to Questions
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I very much agree with my hon. Friend, who is a prominent member of the Select Committee that looked at this in great detail. I absolutely agree with her. Registering to vote and voting is an act of personal responsibility, but we are also looking to make sure that we reduce the risk of people falling off the register and increase the tools at the disposal of registration officers to ensure that the register is complete.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Does the Minister share my concern that the Electoral Commission said that its main conclusion about the Government’s data-matching pilot schemes is that they
“do not provide sufficient evidence to judge the effectiveness of data matching as a method for improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers”?
If he shares my concern, what action will he take?
Mr Harper
Part of the reason for having the pilots was to learn some information. One thing that we found was that the data-matching pilots were less successful at improving completeness and accuracy, but very good at pre-verification, as I said to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) will know that we plan to have further data-matching pilots, subject of course to parliamentary approval of the appropriate orders. That will build up further evidence, which will show Members that this system will be robust in improving the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wayne David Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Harper
The law makes clear that it is a question of where people reside, not necessarily a question of where they simply own property. It is up to the electoral registration officer to make a judgment about whether people actually reside in an area. If my hon. Friend’s constituent thinks that he has been hard done by, he should go back to the ERO with some evidence about his residence, and take the matter from there. There is an established independent appeals mechanism.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
The Government have said that they accept that registering to vote is a civic duty. They have also indicated that they do not believe that the threat of a criminal conviction is appropriate when an individual fails to complete a registration form. In line with those positions, will they now commit themselves to a system of civil penalties in cases in which a person has been wilfully unco-operative with an electoral registration officer?
Informal European Council
Wayne David Excerpts(13 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s question, and indeed I listened to him carefully when he made the same case on the radio this morning, I do not read the IAEA report in the same way as he does, and I do not altogether trust Iran’s motives in this area, but the easiest way for Iran to settle the issue is to open up and show everyone just what it is doing. If it is only pursuing nuclear power and is not pursuing nuclear weaponry, the world will be able to move on, but until those assurances are given, the world will not be able to move on. That is the reason for the tough action that we are taking, which shows that there are alternatives to military force. We want to ensure that we maximise the use of all those options before considering anything else.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Will the Prime Minister explain the difference between a veto and an opt-out?
The Prime Minister
There is a very important difference. Let us consider what happened with Maastricht, for instance. There was a European Union treaty to which Britain was a full signatory. We opted out of certain parts of it, but we were still subject to a huge amount of additional EU law. That is why there were so many agonised debates in the House about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. The same can be said of all EU treaties. The difference in this case is that there is no EU treaty. We are not going to put something in front of the House, and nothing will be voted on, so it will not affect the UK.