European Council

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Whether we like it or not—frankly, I do not particularly like it—the treaty on European Union sets out the way in which a country leaves. It is called article 50 and I think people should read it. If you want to leave, leave. If you want to stay, stay. What I find slightly odd is the idea of voting to leave to try and half stay. I do not think the British public would understand it, I do not think our European partners would understand it and I am at a loss to understand it as well. I thought that we wanted to have a referendum and to make a choice.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister think President Putin would rather see a strong Britain staying in a strong Europe or Britain breaking away from the European Union and, potentially, Europe breaking apart?

[The Prime Minister]

It is certainly true that Vladimir Putin likes to see disunity in the west, whether it is over sanctions, Syria or Russian conduct in other issues. There is no doubt in my mind, having sat at the European Council table, that the alliance between the Baltic states and Poland—which see at first hand the problems being created by Putin—countries such as Britain, which should always stand up to aggression, and the French and Germans has made Europe’s position stronger. If we were not there, I do not think we could guarantee that that would be the case. I do not believe that that is an overstatement of the position.

ISIL in Syria

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I think that I speak for the whole House, Mr Speaker, in expressing my admiration for you today.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friends the Members for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). I agree with what they said. We come to this House to choose. Yes, we come here to criticise and, at times, to express our anger, but we do not come here to commentate. The purpose of our debate is not entertainment, but education: the education that we need in order to choose. The choice that we must make today is not, as some have implied, on a grand new strategy. It is a relatively narrow choice between a motion that extends our involvement in our existing battle and a vote for the status quo.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Does not this choice involve risk? The risk involved in doing something has to be balanced against the risk involved in doing nothing, which equally carries great risk for this country and for the world.

[Alison McGovern]

I could not have put that better myself.

I have to confess that, not for the first time, I am angry with the Government. I am angry because I believe that they have turned their backs on vulnerable refugees from the conflict in Syria, to whom we should have held out our hands. The process that will take in 20,000 refugees by 2020 is too slow. The Government could have demonstrated to the world what it means to be British, but they have not done enough. I know we must put party politics to one side, but that is hard when the Prime Minister tells us we must do our bit and then does his part too late.

What relevance does this have to the choice in front of us today? The answer is trust and commitment. If I vote for airstrikes today, I need to be able to believe that the Prime Minister will stand beside those in the world who will need him tomorrow. Part of the justification for the strikes is to show our commitment to the coalition against Daesh and show that we are truly part of the fight, but if the Prime Minister wants my support, he will have to show his commitment to the bigger fight ahead of us.

The biggest recruiting sergeant for vile extremism is want. It is the dissatisfaction with the chances that the world is offering, whether in the back streets of Britain or the cities of Africa and the middle east, where young people find that the powerful in our world forget them far too quickly. It is this pervasive want that creates fertile ground for the blame and resentment that extremists cultivate.

We are right to be sceptical of our own capacities, but we should not be sceptical about the Syrian people. Rather, we should offer them refuge now, and our backing tomorrow. Whatever choice we make tonight, we will have to live with it. I will have to face my constituents and explain my decision to them, but that is absolutely nothing compared with what the Syrian people have faced. Too often in the past five years, we have we seen people in need and we have turned away. We must not do that now.

I might not trust the Prime Minister that much, but in the end the solution to that mistrust is in my hands. I want him to know that, if I vote for his motion today, I will be here every week holding him to account. We have Back-Bench motions now, and if I do not believe that he has lived up to the trust of the British people, I will waste not a moment before using them. Any support I give to him is conditional, and we will return to this question again and again. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said so well, if our job is to work for peace, we will do it with scrutiny. We will scrutinise the Vienna process to make sure that it happens.

We are voting today on just one tactic in this greater struggle, and I see the limits in the choice in front of us. My party, the Labour party, has a bigger task, and it is one that I will never just leave to the Prime Minister. The end to the extremism that we face today will come with a decent and fair society, and we must not waste a moment in fighting for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

There is no more solemn or important duty of this House than the decision to authorise military action, and it has weighed heavily on me in recent days. To risk putting our servicemen and women in harm’s way is a great and heavy burden, as indeed it should be.

In recent months, we have seen the horror of the attacks in Paris, Tunisia, Lebanon and Turkey committed by Daesh. Even those acts of terror fail to tell the story of the full scale of the threat that faces us and the fact that it is growing. In 2014, there were 15 global attacks perpetuated by Daesh. This year, we have seen 150 so far.

[Angela Smith]

May I add to my hon. Friend’s list by pointing out that seven potential attacks in the UK over the past year have been prevented by our counter-terrorism services? Will she take this opportunity to put on the record our appreciation of our intelligence services and the role they have played in preventing terrorism here in the UK?

National Security and Defence

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I believe our aid budget is the act not only of a moral nation, but of one that cares about its own security, because broken or conflict states tend to produce huge problems and issues for us at home as well. Not only will focusing that budget make sure that we can reduce those risks, but by having such a substantial budget, we are able to act quickly and decisively, which also gives us influence in how these problems are solved.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has delivered an important and comprehensive statement to the House. Does he not agree that the defence and security of our country is enhanced and indeed strengthened by our membership of the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

I believe that Britain’s membership of a reformed European Union is in our national interest. At a time when we face great dangers and great uncertainty in our world, I think it is worth looking at all the organisations of which we are members, such as the G7, the G20, NATO, the EU, and indeed the Commonwealth —there will be a major summit this week—and recognising that these friendships and partnerships help to keep us safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Last year, employment in our country went up by 425,000—that is 425,000 more families with a breadwinner earning money for that family’s security—and 87% of those jobs went to British nationals. There is much more we need to do. We are aiming for 2 million apprenticeships in this Parliament. We have had excellent announcements this week, with Marston’s creating 3,000 jobs, Siemens creating 1,000 jobs in Hull and Barratt Homes creating 3,000 jobs in housing. We want to ensure that young people are available and trained for those jobs, which means improving our schools and our skills and investing in apprenticeships.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Westminster is awash with the rumour that the Government are considering an amendment to the Hunting Act 2004. Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to quash that rumour by confirming his commitment to the coalition agreement, which allows only for a free vote on the repeal of the legislation?

[The Prime Minister]

There are always lots of rumours going around Westminster, and it is a good moment to talk about them. The hon. Lady will know, as I have said it before at the Dispatch Box, that proposals were made on a cross-party basis to the Environment Secretary about an amendment to the Hunting Act that would help in particular upland farmers deal with the problem of fox predation of their lands. That letter has been received and is being considered, but I regret to say that I do not think there will be Government agreement to go forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not want to break the rule of not commenting on intelligence issues, but to answer my right hon. Friend’s question as directly as I can, I have looked very carefully at the governance that we have in the UK for our intelligence services, the work of the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the oversight, particularly by the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. I think we have a good system in our country, and to answer my right hon. Friend’s question, yes, I am fully involved in these decisions.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Q11. Two years ago, the Prime Minister rightly agreed that extra resources should be made available to assist in the search for Madeleine McCann and yet, only months later, he turned down a similar request from Kerry Needham, my constituent, whose son Ben is still missing after 22 years. Will the Prime Minister please think again and respond positively to my recent letter to him by making extra resources available to help a desperate mother to search for her son?

[The Prime Minister]

This is an absolutely heartbreaking case—the whole country has followed it over the years. I will look carefully at the letter the hon. Lady has written to me. Obviously, it is important that the police make such decisions themselves. Governments should always stand by to help, which is what happened in the Madeleine McCann case, but I will look at what the hon. Lady says and see what I can do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

That is a rather difficult question for me to answer. Ultimately, costs can be a matter for the Court. As I have indicated, at the moment, the costs of the preliminary work that is taking place are borne by my Department. I cannot assess how much those will be. Once the matter is within the court process, the courts have discretion, but I suspect—it is probably inevitable—that the taxpayer will pay a considerable amount of the cost.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I note the Attorney-General’s comments about where the inquest might be held, but is it his view that the inquest should definitely not be held in Sheffield?

[The Attorney-General]

The hon. Lady has made her point, but it is not for me to start giving views or instructions to the Court or coroner about how they should conduct an inquest, if one is held. I have no doubt, however, that representations made by hon. Members and representatives of the families will be noted by those concerned.

Hillsborough

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. There is a lot of merit in what he has said so let me consider it. From everything that I have read so far, the most important next step concerns the role of the Attorney-General and consideration of an inquest. The report has identified a huge number of faults along the road, but in a tragedy such as this, the key determinants of the truth should be the public inquiry and the inquest.

Let me repeat that in the view of the families and of what we subsequently know, Lord Justice Taylor came to the right conclusion about the culpability of the police. The inquest is where major question marks arise, and that is where I think families will rightly focus. If we are thinking about next steps, there are lessons for the Government and a debate in the House, but consideration of an inquest is the most important next step to be taken. As I have said, that is a matter for the Attorney-General, and he has to stand aside from Government. In the end, an inquest can be ordered only by the High Court. That is how the processes work, and it is important that everyone, including the families, understands that.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I join those who have paid tribute to the members of the panel, and to the thorough way they have discharged their duties. I also pay tribute to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for the dignified manner in which they have led the House in its initial response to the findings in the report. The original inquest took place in the city of Sheffield, and the families of those who died will have bitter memories of the process and the conclusions drawn. I therefore ask the Prime Minister to ensure that if and when a new inquest is authorised, it does not take place in Sheffield. It is absolutely imperative that we minimise the distress to the families involved.

[The Prime Minister]

I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady, as, I am sure, did the Attorney-General and Home Secretary. She made a very powerful point.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Today’s debate has been passionate and knowledgeable, and it will stand as a fine example of the House at its best. We have heard numerous excellent contributions from right hon. and hon. Members, and we have heard a range of differing views from all parts of the House—some were in favour of the Bill and some against, but most speakers acknowledged that in the name of parliamentary democracy the proposals in it needed to feel the heat of Members’ thorough scrutiny.

Labour Members can be proud of an unmatched record on reform, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) made clear at the beginning of the debate. We have introduced many of the changes in the relationship between this House and the House of Lords, and we are proud to be the party of reform. The House of Lords Act 1999 finally removed the hereditary principle from membership of the second Chamber. Interestingly, the decision elicited this response from the then Leader of the Opposition, the current Foreign Secretary,

“let me make it clear…that we believe it is wrong to embark on fundamental change to the Parliament of this country without any idea where that will lead.”—[Official Report, 2 December 1998; Vol. 321, c. 876.]

It would be interesting to know whether the Foreign Secretary feels the same about the Deputy Prime Minister’s desire to curb parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill. My feeling is that he just might.

The result of the 1999 Act was that, overnight, the size of the other place was reduced from more than 1,300 to just 669. In 2006 we created the post of elected Lord Speaker, separated the judiciary from the Lords by establishing the Supreme Court and created people’s peers—all steps that strengthened our democracy.

It is also important to remember that in 2003 and 2007 Labour initiated votes on whether there should be a fully or partly elected second Chamber. Although the 2003 votes were inconclusive, the 2007 votes favoured a 100% elected second Chamber. The Opposition recognise that vote and believe that the job of Lords reform will not be complete until we have a 100% elected second Chamber. We committed to that in our last manifesto, and we stand by that commitment.

The Deputy Prime Minister agreed with that policy just over a year ago, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting said earlier. I wonder what made him abandon yet another apparently strong belief. Page 88 of the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 manifesto stated that they would:

“Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House.”

Despite all that, the Deputy Prime Minister has made proposals for only an 80% elected House—then again, we all know how much the Deputy Prime Minister’s manifesto promises are worth. Leaving that to one side, it should be clear to all Members that the Bill deserves the fullest possible scrutiny, precisely because of issues such as I have mentioned. The Joint Committee was split, and it is clear that a rigorous debate is required before the issue is settled in statute. The House’s task, therefore, is to ensure that the Bill is fit for the long term, fit to endure in our democracy and fit to last a great deal longer than the legacy of its main architect.

Many hon. Members have referred to the primacy of the Commons, including, to mention just a few, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). It is now 101 years since the Parliament Act 1911, a measure that the House laid before Parliament to curb the powers of the other place. We should consider how emboldened an elected second Chamber might be if it disagrees with the Commons. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting said, clause 2 reasserts the powers of the Parliament Acts, but it is silent on the future power and roles of a reformed Chamber, and relies on the evolution of conventions for the maintenance of Commons primacy. An elected second Chamber could evolve to challenge the conventions. Rigorous debate informed by constitutional expertise is required on Commons primacy. As the Foreign Secretary has said in the past, it is important to know and to try to establish where such measures lead.

The Opposition believe that such a major constitutional change should be put before the British people in a referendum—another hot topic in the debate. The idea was supported by numerous Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) and for Dudley North (Ian Austin), and my right hon. Friends the Members for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). The last of those made it clear to the House, in his usual straightforward and blunt style, that he is a strong supporter of the reforms, but he also made it very clear that he supports a referendum. If cities can have referendums to decide whether they want a mayor, surely it is right to trust the British people on such a major change to our democracy.

One must be careful that referendums do not undermine the representative nature of our democracy, but there is a strong case for the mechanism when major constitutional change is proposed.

[Duncan Hames]

The hon. Lady is keen to tell us that the Labour party supports Lords reform and wants a referendum. Will it therefore campaign for a yes vote to deliver House of Lords reform in such a referendum?

[Angela Smith]

That depends entirely on what the Bill looks like when it is presented to the British people. Hon. Members who have sat through the past seven hours of the debate will realise that the vast majority of Members of the House want the Bill debated thoroughly and amended to make it fit to put before the British people. The Joint Committee agreed unanimously on that point. It remains a mystery to Opposition Members that the party that was so keen to hold a referendum on the alternative vote system is so shy of supporting a referendum to determine the essence of our democracy and our parliamentary institutions. What on earth are they afraid of?

[Mr Jenkin]

I remind the hon. Lady that the Liberal Democrats were not keen to have a referendum on the AV system; it was forced on them by circumstance.

[Angela Smith]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point.

The Bill clearly needs improvement if it is to work effectively to strengthen our democracy and our law-making processes. It needs to be informed by rigorous debate and further consideration of constitutional expertise. It needs scrutinising not only in relation to the issues I have already referred to, but in relation to the size of the proposed Chamber, which was mentioned by a large proportion of the Members who contributed to the debate; the proposed length of terms of representation; the transition period; and the voting system for the election of its Members. The Bill currently recommends a semi-open list system, as opposed to the single transferable vote proposed in the draft Bill. Today, however, we have witnessed a lack of clarity about what the numerous variations of proportional representation mean, so once again the need for thorough debate has been firmly underlined.

The Bill proposes the biggest constitutional change our country has seen since the Parliament Act 1911, which is why we need to take care over its progress—we need to get it right. It would damage our democracy if the House were to force through the Bill without adequate debate and scrutiny—an argument that has asserted itself at every twist and turn of this debate. It was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett)—to mention just a few.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough pointed out that a range of views are present in this debate. The fact of those views absolutely makes the case for a period of thorough scrutiny. I would particularly mention the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who pointed out rightly that Members need to read carefully the comments of the Clerk of the House about the reforms, particularly in relation to Commons primacy. That is a really important point. Members need to acquaint themselves with those comments and concerns before making up their minds about the Bill on Third Reading. Moreover, it would help the Bill if the Commons arrived at a consensus on the way forward by hammering out agreed positions via a process of debate and amendment.

The Opposition welcome reform of the House of Lords, and want to secure its progress and conduct the process constructively. My concluding words are therefore directed at the Deputy Prime Minister, who was asked in a letter sent to him last week by a Member of the other place to show a little more respect for our ermine-clad colleagues:

“If the future of one of the key parts of our British Constitution is to be debated in a responsible way, it is surely important that deliberate factual errors and insulting insinuations should not be part of the debate.”

The House is familiar with the cavalier manner that the Deputy Prime Minister deploys when making his arguments, and we are well accustomed to his tendency to exaggerate to make an argument, but today’s debate has underlined the point made by the other place. For the most part, this debate has been good humoured and civilised. He should respond by curbing his excesses and working with colleagues, not against them.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) was brilliantly opaque in his view of Labour’s plans for timetabling. Will the hon. Lady be a littler clearer about Labour’s plans for Third Reading? Does she propose to support Third Reading, oppose it or abstain?

[Angela Smith]

The House needs to decide what are the important principles in the Bill. It needs proper discussion, and we have made it clear that we will work with the Government to ensure that progress is made, but we do not believe it appropriate to pre-programme the timetable. We have been absolutely clear on that.

Many colleagues today have had to curtail their comments because of the time pressures, and it is clear that the appetite for further debate is strong. We support the Second Reading of this far-from-perfect Bill but believe that today’s debate has put it firmly on the record that the House does not wish to give the Bill a swift passage into law, as the Deputy Prime Minister suggested earlier. Rather, it wants thoroughly to scrutinise and improve the Bill and make it fit for presentation to the electorate in a referendum. I, with the rest of the House, look forward to tomorrow’s debate.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I have not yet finished answering my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, but of course I will give way before I ask the Opposition to withdraw their amendments.

On pace, I should say that we have hardly rushed this matter. In September 2010, I made an announcement at this Dispatch Box about our proposals. We then published draft legislation. We have conducted pre-legislative scrutiny, which I think even the hon. Member for Caerphilly admitted has gone at a reasonably leisurely pace. We have hardly been bounding through. Unlike the previous Government, we have not at the drop of a hat introduced Bills that no one had ever seen and then rammed them through the House. We have conducted ourselves in a thoughtful way, and we have hardly been rushing.

[Angela Smith]

In 2009, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said:

“That is one of the reasons why we will not oppose the timetable the Minister has suggested this evening…the Electoral Commission…and others who will be involved in the implementation of the Government’s current plans are concerned that this should not be rushed, but taken step by step to ensure that the integrity of the system is protected—and not only protected, but seen to be protected”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 108.]

Will the Minister explain the change in point of view?

[Mr Harper]

There has not been a change in point of view. I did not want to bother the Committee with this again, but I am going to have to now. On Second Reading of the previous legislation in 2009, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude) made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, but we thought that it could be accomplished earlier. We said at the time that it could be done earlier, and on page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to implement it swiftly. This is not new news.

As I said, when the Bill for which the Labour party was responsible left the House, it contained no provisions about individual electoral registration; they were inserted in the other place. When the Bill came back, it seemed to me that, having got the Government at least to move on that issue, it would have been churlish to have started cavilling about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Thank you, Ms Clark.

The danger for the hon. Member for Caerphilly is that, in his proposals, he urges us to deal with completeness, but, if we accept his argument that they would increase completeness, and I am not sure that they would, we find that they may do so at the expense of accuracy. They would leave on the register people who were not likely to be at the address in question any more, because they would not have responded to an electoral registration officer for some time.

[Angela Smith]

If accuracy is more important than completeness, why is the Minister allowing the register to be used for the general election in 2015? If it is good enough for the election, it is good enough for the boundary review.

[Mr Harper]

There is a very clear answer: the register’s use in the election will be its first use, and we know that at the time of a general election people will be very focused on it. By the time of the publication of the registers in 2015, individuals who have not been confirmed automatically at the start of the transition will have had more than one year to register individually, had more than two canvasses, been contacted a number of times by the electoral registration officer and between canvasses had a general election, a time when awareness of politics and voting is at its highest.

Our intention remains that EROs will write to individuals who have neither registered nor been confirmed towards the end of the 2015 canvass to inform them that they will be removed and to offer them one further chance to apply. It seems to me that, for somebody to be eligible to be registered, at their property and not to have registered individually for the 2015 register, they will almost have had to go out of their way to avoid being contacted by an ERO, and almost deliberately have not registered. The steps that we have put in place are very robust.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith]

I beg to move amendment 5, page 18, line 27, at end insert—

‘(4A) In section 53 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (power to make regulations as to registration, etc), after subsection (1) insert—

( ) Provisions shall be made by regulations requiring local authorities to share data with a registration officer in Great Britain for the purpose of—

(a) verifying information relating to a person who is registered in a register maintained by the officer or who is named in an application for registration in, or alteration of, a register,

(b) ascertaining the names and addresses of people who are not registered but who are entitled to be registered, or

(c) identifying those people who are registered but who are not entitled to be registered.

( ) Registration officers in Great Britain are to be under an obligation to utilise such information for these purposes.”.’.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 9, in clause 4, page 4, line 13, at end insert—

‘(5A) All higher and further education institutions must cooperate with local officers in providing a comprehensive list of students in all forms of residential accommodation.

(5B) Such lists must be provided at the start of each academic year.

(5C) Local authority officers must write individually to all students with an electoral registration form.’.

Amendment 10, page 4, line 13, at end insert—

‘(5D) In all forms of sheltered accommodation the person with responsibility for managing an individual premises must provide a list on an annual basis of individual residents to the local authority officer.

(5E) The local authority officer must write individually to all residents whose names have been provided on such lists.’.

Amendment 11, page 4, line 13, at end insert—

‘(5F) All private landlords must provide the relevant local authority on an annual basis with a list of all individuals to whom they rent residential accommodation. The local authority officer must write individually to all residents whose names have been provided on such lists.’.

[Angela Smith]

Before I move to the amendments, I want to reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), when he said that the Opposition support the principle of individual registration—it is important to keep repeating that—but that we think it can be improved. To some extent, then, our amendments seek to test the Minister’s thinking on information sharing.

Schedule 2 deals with information sharing and checking, and provides a clearing-house approach, so to speak, to verifying applications to join the register and to ascertaining the correct information for those who have not applied or those who are registered but not entitled to be so. The schedule provides for an important role, allowing the Secretary of State to establish the boundaries of the process for collecting, processing and disposing of data once used for the purposes for which it was released.

The schedule also makes it clear that criminal penalties will be levied for disclosing information in breach of regulations yet to be laid. Paragraph 93 of the explanatory notes makes it clear that the Secretary of State may require the Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner and any other person he or she thinks appropriate to play a part in establishing the provision, and

“may also require the Commission to prepare a report on how data sharing arrangements have worked by a specified date.”

Furthermore, if a report is provided, it must be published by the Secretary of State concerned.

We consider that the right arrangement. We have laws relating to data sharing, which obviously is a sensitive issue, and those laws are rightly the law of the land. Nevertheless, we have some important questions. The Minister has committed in the legislation to funding the above provision. Will he commit to funding the provision properly, so that the work can be done efficiently and promptly? Will he share his thoughts about establishing the mechanism? Who will staff the new provision? Will it be another quango? Will it be another public body? If so, to whom would it be accountable? Who will oversee its work? And, importantly, will service-level standards be laid down in regulations? The last thing we want is for the right to register to be delayed unnecessarily because of backlogs or because data provided by applicants has not been verified by this new public body—if that is what it is.

Amendment 5, on data sharing, is slightly different: it is not about data sharing between one public body and another but about data sharing within a local authority. We want the Bill to oblige electoral registration officers, within local authorities, to use the data already available to him or her to verify as many applications as possible. We mostly know what those data are. The council tax database is one of the quickest and most effective means of verifying, in particular, the addresses of applicants. We also have council tenant lists and school rolls. All these databases, owned by every local authority in the land, can be used to help identify applicants.

There is no need, then, for the clearing-house mechanism in schedule 2 in relation to the data already held by a local authority. There is a clear distinction to make. A clearing-house mechanism is required, for example, when comparing Department for Work and Pensions data with the data supplied by applicants, but that is not the case within local authorities. That is an efficient use of public money. Many good electoral registration officers already follow this practice and make use of council tax databases to identify those who fail to register, but we need to strengthen that practice by obliging them to do it as a matter of routine.

Amendments 9 to 11 relate to clause 4 but have been grouped under schedule 2. We will come to clause 4 later in proceedings, but suffice it to say that the amendments relate to data sharing. A relatively superficial level of data could be shared by organisations such as universities, sheltered housing providers and private landlords.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Is there not a problem for sheltered accommodation, which has such a quick resident turnaround that the hon. Lady’s suggestion might prove difficult to implement?

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith]

Not necessarily, if we believe in the principle of the annual canvass, which covers whoever is in the accommodation at a given point in time. That is the key point.

Amendments 9 to 11 would be a common-sense approach to maximising the completeness of the electoral register under individual registration. They would require institutions such as universities, sheltered housing providers and private landlords to share with the ERO information on those resident in their premises—in other words, university residential accommodation, sheltered housing and homes rented out by private landlords. In two of those cases, the data would be simple addresses. Those addresses should be available via the council tax database, but nevertheless it would be a useful addition to the many strings that EROs need to do their job properly.

Schedule 2 also deals with much more serious data-sharing issues relating to more sensitive information, such as dates of birth, national insurance numbers, possibly passport numbers and information, and so on. There is a clear distinction, then, between clause 4, to which we will come and under which amendments 9 to 11 fall, and clause 2.

As I have said, amendment 9 relates to a requirement, which we think ought to be laid on universities, to pass over information relating to the students in their residential accommodation. The key point relates to an issue that was raised on Second Reading, when some Members clearly thought it ridiculous to suggest that students are somehow incapable of getting themselves registered once they go to university. However, the key point is that many students often assume that their parents register them at their home address—in other words, where they have come from to study. As the Minister said a few moments ago, however, most students are entitled to register at both—their home address and their university address—so it is important to do what we can to enable and encourage them to make use of that entitlement, so that they can choose where they exercise their right to vote.

Indeed, the response that the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) earlier this year illustrates the point perfectly. She asked the Minister:

“what assessment he has made of the effect that the introduction of individual electoral registration will have on levels of student registration.”

His response was:

“Research is currently being undertaken into the barriers young people face in registering to vote. This research will inform the development of our proposals for individual electoral registration …and in particular our approach to making the transition for students as simple and accessible as possible. In addition, we are working with organisations which represent students to establish the most effective methods of engaging students throughout the transition to IER. The Government will also be conducting further work to explore the potential of data matching for encouraging students to register.”—[Official Report, 19 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 530.]

I think we would all be interested to hear this evening what progress is being made on that work. It sounds to me as though the Minister is at least sympathetic to the principles behind our amendments, which would make it necessary for those involved with the enrolment of students in an institution to make it as easy as possible for them to register.

The importance of this issue cannot be overestimated. Constituencies such as Sheffield Central, which is my neighbouring constituency, have more than 30,000 students potentially eligible to register to vote. Indeed, constituencies up and down the country, in places such as Cambridge, York, Oxford and Manchester, will, I would have thought, have similar numbers of students potentially eligible to vote—they include Manchester, Withington and Leeds North West. I am absolutely convinced that the Members in most of those constituencies will be very exercised about ensuring that the maximum number of students register to vote in those areas. Indeed, I am sure that the students there will be determined to exercise their right to vote in 2015 and that the Members there will want to facilitate that.

The other key point to make before I move on is that students do not pay council tax. That means that the information about the residents of an area that is usually available to the local authority is not available for students, which perhaps makes amendment 9 more important than the other two amendments in this group, when it comes to the Government dealing with this issue and making it easier for students to register to vote.

Amendment 10 deals with sheltered housing. The point here is surely that, as things stand, the local authority will have to write to every unit—if Members will forgive my using that term—of housing within a scheme to establish who lives in those properties before issuing an invitation to apply to register. In a way, most of the residents of sheltered housing schemes will be living either on their own or, perhaps, as part of an elderly couple, so a great deal of duplication could be avoided by giving the provider of sheltered housing the responsibility for ensuring that the invitations to register are sent out accurately, by providing information on who is resident in the properties in the first place. The information is available on the council tax database, but all in all, amendment 10 would make the whole process easier to implement and should improve the accuracy of the scheme. The other point is that many elderly disabled people live in sheltered housing. For them, it is important that someone—either the warden of a scheme, where we have them nowadays, or the person in charge of it—should take responsibility for ensuring that the names of all the people in that accommodation are passed on to the ERO.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

A number of points have been raised; let me go through them.

First, I shall respond to the hon. Lady’s questions about the IT service. Part of the point of developing the pilots, and particularly the set that we will be discussing in the delegated legislation Committee tomorrow—I do not know whether I shall have the pleasure of seeing the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) or for Caerphilly (Mr David) there—is to ensure, as I think I mentioned, that they are scalable. One of the things that came through in the original pilots was that they are quite resource-intensive. One of the things that we want to look at, in seeing how some of this data capture will work, is ensuring that the process is scalable. The final shape of how the IT service will operate is something that we will work on over the next period, although the service will definitely not be a quango, because, apart from anything else, we deliberately do not have the power to create quangos in this Bill. The final shape is yet to be decided, but we are not going to create another unaccountable non-governmental organisation that nobody will have any control over.

The hon. Lady’s amendments fall into two groups. Amendment 5 deals with local authorities, a point that divides into two parts. In two-tier areas, the ERO already has the ability to look at all the data that the local authority they were appointed by possesses. He or she can therefore look at council tax data and housing benefit data. The gap arises in two-tier areas where the ERO currently does not have the ability to look at the data held by the higher-tier authority. One of the things we will do—not in the pilots that we will debate tomorrow, but in a further set of pilots—is look specifically at how effective the sharing of data is between those tiers of local authorities. If the pilots show that it is effective, we would propose to enable it for local authorities through secondary legislation—that is, if it works, we enable it.

However, the specific pieces of data that the hon. Lady mentioned, such as council tax—I think she also mentioned housing benefit—are already available to the ERO. Interestingly, not all of them use those data to the extent that they are able to, but they absolutely have access to it. Clearly, it is more sensible to use those data, because they map quite considerably across the population and there is access to them. In fact, one of the factors determining registration is people moving. When people move, they generally get registered for council tax purposes. If the EROs are doing their job properly, they will use those data to ensure that their register is up to date.

The situation is slightly different in other circumstances, however. The hon. Lady mentioned further and higher education institutions. Under regulation 23 of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, registration officers already have the power to

“require any person to give information required for the purposes of that officer’s duties”.

They can, and do, use that power to require FE and HE institutions to provide such information. That is the legal basis on which it is provided to EROs by, for example, universities with student accommodation. Otherwise, the institutions would not have a legal basis on which to disclose it. So that amendment is unnecessary, as the power already exists.

The hon. Lady asked what we were doing specifically about students. We are working with groups that represent students, such as the National Union of Students. From memory, I think that I have a meeting in my diary this week to discuss this issue with the relevant NUS officer, who has written to me about it. We are also working with organisations that interact with students, such as the Student Loans Company, to look at ways of using the information to ensure that students are given every opportunity, and that it is made as easy as possible for them, to register to vote. It is worth remembering that the existing block registration applies only to university students in halls of residence. It does not apply to those living outside the halls, and the situation will obviously vary across universities. We are absolutely taking this issue seriously.

The question of sheltered accommodation has been raised by a number of organisations. EROs already have the power to require the managers of sheltered accommodation to provide the relevant information to them. Their duty then obliges them, once they have the information, to write to those people. We are also working with organisations that represent people who live in sheltered accommodation, to look at ways of simplifying the process and making it more straightforward. This information will be considered in our second round of data-matching pilots.

The hon. Lady’s final point related to private landlords. I do not think that her proposal adds a great deal, however. The main reason that those in private rented accommodation are less likely to be registered is not directly related to their being private tenants; it is related to the fact that they move more often.

[Angela Smith]

That is what I said.

[Mr Harper]

Yes, I know that the hon. Lady said that, but it is because they are likely to move more often that they are also likely to miss the annual canvass. She will know that relatively few people use rolling registration to register to vote. Also, asking those landlords to provide an annual update—assuming that local authorities had a full list of all their private landlords—would have exactly the same flaws as the annual canvass. It would be unlikely to add anything to the process, except a lot of bureaucracy.

The hon. Lady referred to the barriers to registration. The work that we are doing with under-represented groups in that regard is well under way, and I will be in a position to publish it before the summer recess. What we really want to do is develop some of these proposals with evidence. We want to look at the barriers that prevent the various groups from registering. We know who the groups are, from the quantitative research carried out by the Electoral Commission, but our qualitative research, which will tell us why they are not registered, will be ready in the not-too-distant future. At that point, we will be able to consider how to tackle those barriers in a systematic and co-ordinated way.

I hope, therefore, that the hon. Lady will see that the necessary legal powers for electoral registration officers in all those circumstances are already available. We are doing the research, which will be published before the summer recess, and we are already working with most of the organisations that work with the under-registered groups. To be fair, she acknowledged that. On that basis, I urge her to withdraw the amendment.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the Minister for his response. I acknowledge that any scheme to enable data-sharing—particularly when those data are sensitive—will be IT-based, but I have never yet heard of an IT system that works without having the necessary people to put in the data in the first place. The Minister did not give a response about the cost, or about the commitment to funding the scheme properly to ensure that the service runs smoothly and without unnecessary delays. That is the key point, but he did not respond to it. If data sharing is to be used to verify applications in this way, we need to ensure that it does not lead to unnecessary delays, particularly in the run-up to the general election in 2015.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady is quite right; I did not respond to that point. I had written down all her other points, but I simply omitted to mention that one. The transition to IER is fully funded by the Treasury for this comprehensive spending review period; we are confident about that. We did not inherit a budget for this, incidentally; this was a budget that we had to put in place. I am confident that that is covered and that there are not going to be any issues relating to it. As I said, part of our work in the data-matching pilots involves ensuring that the project is scalable and that it works. We are conscious that, particularly when there is high demand for registration in the run-up to an election, we need to ensure that it all works. One element that will help EROs, particularly at high turn-out elections, is the fact that we know when the next general election is going to be, so it will not be sprung on them at short notice. That should help them with their planning and preparation.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the Minister for that very full response. I think that there was also an acknowledgment that the Government are relying on the data-testing pilots to ensure that the system runs properly. There is also, however, a refusal on the Government’s part to acknowledge the need to complete that testing work before we stop using the carry-over data for the boundary review in December 2015. There is therefore a potential problem, as we discussed earlier, in relation to the amendments. I am sure that we will come back to that matter.

On amendment 5, I entirely take the Minister’s point about the two-tier authorities; he is absolutely right. Nevertheless, he will be well aware that a large number of authorities are now unitary or metropolitan authorities. I said that a degree of data-sharing was already taking place internally within local authorities, but it remains the case that not all EROs are making use of that facility or using those data effectively to raise levels of completeness in their electoral registers. The amendment is about placing an obligation on EROs to use those data to make life easier not only for people wishing to register but for the EROs themselves in the long run.

On amendment 9, the Minister made the point that the power already exists to require higher and further education institutions to supply the relevant information to EROs. Again, that power is not necessarily being used. Now that we are introducing a radical new way of registering people to vote—namely, individual registration —it is even more important that that power should be properly used. We shall not therefore allow that amendment to lapse; we will seek to press it later.

As for the amendments relating to sheltered housing and private landlords, we believe that amendment 9, which deals with the provisions for universities, is a test of the Committee’s feeling on this key point about the sensible and common-sense sharing of data and the placing of obligations directly in the Bill to maximise the use of data-sharing practice without requiring complicated IT provisions or the verifications of the more sensitive data referred to in the schedule.

Opposition Members are receptive to the Minister’s point about barriers. Our deepest concern is that we might end up with an electoral registration system that effectively discourages and discriminates against those parts of the population that are the least likely to register. That is a great concern to us. That is why we believe we need a belt and braces approach to maximising registration and that that approach should be placed as much as possible on the face of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I will not go into the issues in quite as much detail as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), but I will make a couple of points.

The mandating of the data standards that local authorities use for their individual electoral registers is a matter for them. We have been clear about the fact that theirs are local databases, and that we are not trying to recreate a national database. However, the hon. Gentleman made a good point about interoperability and the exchange of data. In terms of data matching, existing national databases such as the DWP database have a consistent format. We are working with all the electoral management service suppliers who are contracted to local authorities in Great Britain as part of the process in order to optimise the working of the system.

Given that the hon. Gentleman has raised a number of issues, the best thing for me to do is reflect on them and then either write to him or, if it is not appropriate to do just that—given that he mentioned a specific company in his constituency—arrange a meeting with him, which might be more helpful, to make sure that I have addressed his points.

One of the things that we are doing in the pilot—I alluded to this in relation to confirmation—is making sure that the process whereby electoral registration officers send data to the DWP, and vice versa, is scalable. The hon. Gentleman referred to issues in the first set of pilots whereby a lot of EROs found the process resource-intensive. That is one of the things we want to focus on in the second round of pilots, in order to make sure that the process is scalable and does not generate lots of resource issues. Some of that may be about having open standards and making it easier to transmit the data. Let me reflect on the issue further, however. I will then write to the hon. Gentleman and, if necessary, we can have a meeting. I hope that that is a satisfactory response.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 2 accordingly agreed to.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Annual canvass

[Angela Smith]

I beg to move amendment 6, page 3, line 39, leave out from ‘canvass’ to end of line and insert—

‘(1A) The annual canvass must be held during the month of October every year in relation to the area for which the officer acts.’.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 8, page 4, line 6, at end insert—

‘(3A) Each local authority must write once a year to each address in their Local Land and Property Gazetteer (in Scotland the local addresses in the One Scotland Gazetteer).

(3B) Local authorities must also write to those properties not listed in the Gazetteer but which the local authority believes have been built in the previous two years.

(3C) In addition, the local authority should write to every property from which an electoral registration form has been returned within the past 10 years, except where the officer has good reason to believe that the property is no longer residential or has been demolished, and

(3D) The local authority should write to each property to which it has served a notice for charges or taxes within the previous five years.’.

Amendment 7, page 4, line 9, leave out ‘may’ and insert ‘must’.

[Angela Smith]

Clause 4 is important because it restates the requirement for an annual canvass, which we feel strongly about. It acts as a safeguard against potential long-term deterioration in the accuracy of the electoral register. Indeed, during an evidence session of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made the point that in two constituencies that she had looked at—neither of them her own—the number of electors in 2011 was

“approximately 3,000 fewer than in 2010 when the general election took place.”

Her conclusion was that many people do not bother to re-register once a general election has come and gone. That encapsulates, for me and other Opposition Members, why we still need the annual canvass.

It is also a proactive approach, rather than one based on council officers chasing the gaps—for want of a better phrase—looking at and trying to resolve the apparent anomalies, and dealing with absences in the register via data-sharing and pursuance of the individuals concerned. That latter approach takes place behind the scenes and suggests that we need permanently to coerce people to go on the register. Although it cannot be denied that some people in this country refuse to register—many such cases, unfortunately, date back to the days of the poll tax fiasco, when many voters deliberately fell off the register in order to avoid being detected and paying fines—we believe that the best approach is a proactive one that gives people the opportunity, on an annual basis, willingly to apply to be on the register. That is what democracy is about; it is about saying to the citizens of any city, town or village, “We want you to exercise your right to vote, and to come forward with the information we need to put you on the register.” The annual canvass is a good and effective way of doing that.

As I have said, the clause restates the importance of the annual canvass, but it also deletes the current requirement that it be conducted on an annual basis every October. The key point is that it is 38 years since a general election took place in autumn or winter—that was the crisis election of October 1974. The one previous to that was another crisis election, that of February 1974. As we will all remember, that was triggered by a Prime Minister who wanted to call the miners’ bluff and asked who ran the country. Before that we had the March 1970 general election, which I am just old enough to remember. Prior to that were the elections in 1950 and 1951, which, of course, I am not old enough to recall—I thank God for that. The annual canvass should take place at a time of the year when we are least likely to have elections, and the EROs have the time and space to the job properly. They do not need to feel the pressure of an election coming in six or seven weeks’ time, and to be chasing their tails and worrying about the consumption of resources involved in ensuring that the electoral register that they are responsible for is as accurate and complete as possible.

[Mr Mark Williams]

I agree entirely with the hon. Lady about the huge importance of the annual canvass—she is quite right. I wonder whether she has had the time to consider the Electoral Commission’s comments about the timing of the annual canvass. It has complimented the Government’s measures removing the 15 October date as an opportunity for greater flexibility and greater completeness, because the gap between the canvass and the election could be reduced. I appreciate what she says about the rarity of those elections, but the Electoral Commission seems to be saying something different from what she is saying.

[Angela Smith]

I appreciate that point, and I have read what the Electoral Commission has said about it. However, the key point is the one I made a few moments ago, which is about the importance of getting it right. Secondly, the Electoral Commission has a certain perspective on this. A different perspective would understand the importance of stability at a time of radical change in the registration process. It has to be said that for as long as most of us can remember the culture of this country has seen us running an annual canvass in October every year. That is what people have come to understand, and under the new system there will still be a requirement for the head of the household, or someone in the household, to supply the information to the ERO to enable the sending out of the invitations to register. We will still have that culture of a form being filled in for every property, completed for every residence and returned to the ERO. Opposition Members feel it is important to continue the culture of running that exercise every October, not least because it is the time of year when further and higher education colleges enrol their new students.

In what is often a five or six month gap between the completion of the canvass and the establishment of the new register and the election, the chances of that register being grossly inaccurate are reasonably small. The risk of that is smaller than the risk of a drop-off—a fall—in the number of registrations because we have messed about with the time of year when people will register. I do not think that any hon. Member feels that an annual canvass should be run in July, Easter or post-Christmas. Is there any point in the year, other than October, that makes sense? There is a reason why October is the date, and we think we should stick with it. Amendment 6 would reinstate the requirement that EROs run an annual canvass in October of every year.

Amendment 8 seeks to strengthen and improve the process; this is the belt and braces approach that I talked about earlier in relation to amendments 9, 10 and 11. The gazetteer is a very complete and up-to-date list of any property in a local area. We believe that EROs should write once a year to every property listed in the gazetteer, supplemented by those properties that they know to have been built in the past two years, when registration forms have been returned in the past 10 years and when a property has been involved in the charging of taxes by the local authority in the past five years. In all those circumstances, we believe that the ERO should send a form to the property concerned to ensure that we do everything we can to guarantee the highest possible level of completion of each new register.

Earlier we argued for the need to glean information from university institutions, sheltered housing providers and private landlords in order to aid the process of building a high quality and highly complete register. We also believe, however, that such an approach should be supplemented by our using the soundest possible sources of information about which properties are occupied in any area when the local authority qualifies as an electoral registration authority. If the House agrees to those requirements, that will mean that we have done our best to guarantee that the new individual registration process succeeds rather than fails. That is the key point that Opposition Members are trying to make.

Amendment 7 deals with house-to-house inquiries on which, in our view, the Bill is far too weak. It gives EROs the power possibly to conduct a few house-to-house inquiries, stating that they “may” do so, but in our view they must carry out house-to-house inquiries, particularly when citizens have constantly and repeatedly refused to register to vote. Given that we have included a penalty in the Bill and reinstated the principle of enforcing the requirement on citizens of this country to register to vote, it makes sense that we should require EROs to do their utmost to ensure that the law on electoral registration is complied with. “May” is only one word, but it is very important and saying to EROs that they may, rather than must, conduct house-to-house inquiries represents a watering down of the commitment in the Representation of the People Act 1983.

I am convinced that not only Opposition Members but Government Members are fundamentally democrats at heart who believe in people’s right to vote and in the importance of their registering to vote. Let me make a plea to the Minister, who I know to be a man of logic and reason. The replacement of the single word “may” with the word “must” is a small concession to make for the sake of this House doing its best to ensure that democracy in this country is properly served and is as legitimate as it possibly can be. I call on the Minister to concede this amendment and to put hon. Members’ minds at rest on this point.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Amess, for the opportunity to comment, particularly on amendment 6 on the annual canvass, and the issues that it raises in relation to young people’s engagement in politics, and that of students in particular. I recognise that not all students are young people, but the vast majority are. Sadly, according to a million+ report produced recently, there are declining numbers of mature students as a result of the Government’s policies on higher education.

I represent a city where, as Members are aware, voters were turned away in large numbers at the general election. It is an issue which new clause 4 deals with later. Those voters were largely students or others who were affected by a surge in student voting, and those students were whipped up to vote by the fairly relentless campaigning of the Deputy Prime Minister on both our campuses, which are both in my constituency. Members will remember the “trust me, we’re different” initiative during the general election—the promise that

“We will resist, vote against, campaign against, any lifting”

of the cap on tuition fees, with a plan to abolish tuition fees within six years. I notice Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches looking a little bit embarrassed, and understandably so. That was no subscript in the manifesto. In constituencies such as mine, it was at the very heart of their party’s campaign, as the president of the Hallam university union, Caroline Dowd, said at the time:

“We could not get”

the Deputy Prime Minister

“out of our union before the general election.”

Afterwards, when she was being held to account, she pointed out that they could not get him in.

The broken pledge on tuition fees has not simply damaged the Liberal Democrats’ party; it has damaged trust in politics for a whole generation of young people. All the people who were persuaded to vote, queuing in Sheffield Hallam because they believed the pledge, they believed in a fresh approach, they believed that when people signed a solemn promise, they would keep it, feel betrayed by the trust that they put in politics. So many of them whom I have spoken to are now saying, “Why should we vote?” I have knocked on many student doors during subsequent local elections. This is precisely the time when we should be making extra efforts to engage students, not reduce their participation. Amendment 6 and the annual canvass in October specifically address that issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

Nothing is being superseded. The arrangements that we are putting in place will strengthen the requirement. I do not accept that changing the word “may” to “must” would make the slightest difference to those recalcitrant councils that simply do not do their job properly, and those are the ones that we and the Electoral Commission need to address. We will do so, and I am confident that at the end of the process we will have a better registration process than we have at the moment, and it will be much more inclusive of those who should be registered.

I heard the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) explain the numbering system in Edinburgh on Second Reading and I heard her again this evening, and I am afraid that I am still no more confident that I could understand how to deliver anything there. That is a matter that the electoral registration officer in Edinburgh needs to take very seriously.

I invite the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge to withdraw the amendment and to work with us to ensure that the arrangements in the Bill work most effectively.

[Angela Smith]

It has been a long night. I have listened carefully to the contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) and for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). The points made about amendments 7 and 8 should be taken very seriously, but I will leave it to the other place to discuss them in greater detail. We intend to press amendment 6 to the vote, because we believe that it is crucial to have an annual canvass at the right time of the year—the time when people understand that it takes place by tradition.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee proceeded to a Division.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

I shall come on to that exact point. There are a range of reasons why electoral fraud is not reported, the police do not have the resources to follow it up and the culprits are not brought to justice. Dozens of MPs have majorities in two or three figures and I have real concerns about the integrity of the ballot and its impact on recent elections as well as future ones.

My Labour predecessor in this House, Gordon Prentice, was a vocal supporter of individual voter registration, particularly in April 2008 when he found out that our Lib Dem opponent for the last general election had 27 registered voters living in his house and a household of 44 people. I know that some Members will raise their eyebrows at that, and it was indeed an exceptional case, but I can assure them that in parts of my constituency it is not uncommon for seven, eight or more voters to be registered as living in a terraced house and no one makes any checks on that.

We have also seen a sharp rise in the number of eastern European names appearing on the electoral roll, including those of Polish, Lithuanian or Czech citizens, but few are correctly marked as being unable to vote in UK parliamentary elections or referendums. During my time in Parliament, the names of virtually every illegal immigrant or illegal overstayer with whom I have dealt has appeared on the electoral roll. We know from Operation Amberhill, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), that almost half of all forged or counterfeit documents were positive matches on the electoral register.

Surely all that would lead anyone to support individual electoral registration—and I do—but we need to ensure that it is properly scrutinised for fraud and that the returns are accurate. Scrutiny costs money and it will take a significant amount of time and effort to check people’s citizenship or residency status, in particular, so I welcome the Minister’s comments about extra money for the project.

The nub of the issue of electoral fraud is on-demand postal voting, on which I believe, sadly, that the Bill should go further. It was introduced by the previous Government and my concerns are widely shared by a number of Members and by many of my constituents. In a letter to the Electoral Commission’s Jenny Watson last summer, Pendle borough council’s chief executive, Stephen Barnes, described how

“allegations and perceptions of malpractice around”

postal voting

“are seriously undermining public confidence in the whole electoral process”,

and expressed his own view that those concerns were fully justified, citing examples of probable malpractice and difficulties for the council in taking action.

In a motion last year, Pendle borough council resolved that practices related to postal votes

“affected the result of the election in some wards”.

Just last week, five councillors in Pendle from the three main parties came together to form a taskforce on tackling postal vote fraud. One of those five, Conservative Councillor Linda Crossley, said:

“People used to have to be really ill, virtually bed-ridden, to get a proxy or postal vote, now anybody can get a postal vote”.

To put that into context and explain how it happens, I shall refer to one ward, Reedley, where the scale and impact of postal voting has been dramatic. I should declare an interest. Reedley was for many years a safe Conservative ward and perhaps it still is, without on-demand postal voting. Until last year all three councillors were Conservative; now there is only one. In 2010, 800 postal votes were issued in Reedley in an election in which 3,049 people voted. The Conservative candidate secured 49% of the vote and was easily elected. In 2011, Reedley saw a 25% increase in postal votes, and this year a further increase of almost 25%. In two years an extra 479 voters felt the need to vote by post. Virtually all were from the British Pakistani community and virtually all were signed up for postal votes by the Labour party. Not coincidentally, Labour was elected on both occasions. The Conservative vote did not collapse. The Labour victory was not on trend across the constituency. Nevertheless, in this ward its support rocketed.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

In 2004 in Sheffield we had an all-postal vote election. Labour won that election against the trend. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that in such instances there is wide-scale fraud on the part of Labour voters?

[Andrew Stephenson]

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

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

We have enjoyed an excellent debate, with contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). My right hon. and hon. Friends all drew attention to the risks of disfranchisement carried in the Bill and talked in detail about the risks to those parts of the population that are perhaps more transient.

My hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East, for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Edinburgh East also stressed the importance of the pilots on data matching and the need to evaluate their effectiveness before moving ahead to full individual registration. The provisions on individual registration concern us. As the Electoral Commission put it:

“It requires careful planning and implementation and needs to be done in a way that puts the voter first.”

That is crucial because voter registration is at the heart of our democracy.

It is always worth reiterating that democracy is deeply embedded in our society and culture. It has developed slowly over the centuries and was, of course, a rallying cry in the English civil war and in the ongoing struggle waged by movements such as the Chartists, the Reform League and the Suffragettes. Many died for the cause, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras. We should therefore not take risks with our hard-earned rights and should do everything we can to strengthen our most precious asset, our democracy. An accurate and complete electoral register is fundamental to achieving that, but we must be cautious and remember the words of the 18th century poet, Alexander Pope, who said:

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”.

We clearly need to tread carefully, and that is why Labour, when we were in government, legislated for a phased approach to the introduction of individual registration.

Let us be clear that there is no backsliding from the Opposition on the overall principle. We are of the view that we are one of the few countries in the world to practise registration on a household basis and the system has outlived its usefulness, but our legislation was based on important safeguards that insisted that the new system should be phased in and that that should be combined with an annual monitoring of progress by the Electoral Commission and a final assessment in 2014 by the commission of whether to move to a fully fledged individual registration system at that point. The key question is why the coalition Government decided to accelerate the process and demote the role of the commission in assessing progress. When my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East asked that question, the Minister replied from a sedentary position that it was because it was too slow.

Whatever the reasons are, the Opposition are saddened and mystified by how the Deputy Prime Minister and the coalition Government have approached the issue. First, the White Paper set out measures which, if they had been retained, would have seriously threatened registration levels. We saw in the White Paper the proposed opt-out from the process, and there was a proposal that there should be no civil penalty for failing or refusing to register, alongside a proposal that there should be no annual canvass in 2014. That these ideas have all been abandoned, thanks to sustained and rigorous campaigning by Labour MPs and democrats everywhere, is at least a signal that the party which brought in the Reform Act 1867 has not entirely lost its democratic roots.

However, the Bill is still far from perfect and it is clear that the Government are not listening to the legitimate concerns of democrats everywhere. Specifically, although the Government have conceded the use of carry-over data for the register for the general election in 2015, this will not be allowed for the boundary review due to start in December that year. This leads to the possibility of a boundary change taking place in the context of wide-scale disfranchisement, particularly in intensely urban areas with higher levels of voter turbulence. The Government must listen to the concerns expressed about this by the Electoral Reform Society and by academics such as Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg.

Secondly, the role of the Electoral Commission in assessing progress in implementation of the new system should be restored. It is critical to the independence of our democratic process that this should be so. Moreover, we believe that both the secondary legislation and the implementation plan should be published before the House considers the detail of the Bill, so that we have the most rigorous debate possible on how individual registration should move forward.

We need to see, too, a proper commitment to ring-fencing the funding set aside by Government for the implementation of the legislation. At a time of swingeing cuts to local government funding, we need safeguards to ensure properly resourced approaches to electoral registration, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East. Alongside this we need to see the Government row back from their intention not to carry forward to the 2015 general election the postal and proxy votes held by many currently on the register who fail to register individually in time for that election. The comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central about the importance of making it easier, not harder, for people to cast their votes were relevant in this context. Furthermore, we need the Government to agree to drop the power to cancel annual canvasses. These will remain a critical tool in the constant drive that is necessary to maximize registration of the eligible voting population.

These concerns are not just Labour concerns. They have been raised by a wide range of organisations, including the Electoral Reform Society, and by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, to whose work I pay tribute. It is in sadness more than in anger that the Opposition feel it necessary to vote against Second Reading, because we remain unconvinced that the coalition Government’s unpicking of the Labour legislation is anything other than a partisan attempt to manipulate the concept of individual voter registration on what one can only assume are political grounds. But we will work at representing our demands in Committee and on Report, and hope that the Government will see sense and modify the Bill accordingly, thereby re-establishing the consensual approach to this topic, which we believe is important if our electoral system is to retain its credibility and its integrity.

The great electoral reforms of the past were steered through Parliament by names that stand tall in the annals of our democratic history: Lord Grey, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone and Lloyd George. We remember, too, Stanley Baldwin, Clem Attlee and Harold Wilson, who all in their own way strengthened the franchise and its integrity, and in so doing strengthened our democracy.

I put it to the House that the Deputy Prime Minister, even at this late stage, should consider whether he wants to be remembered as the politician who upheld the principles of our democracy or the one who disowned and damaged the radical legacy of our political forefathers for the sake of a mean political advantage in the 2015 boundary review. The choice is his: he can either walk with the giants or adopt the stance of a democratic pygmy. We on the Opposition Benches have made our choice and will vote against Second Reading.