Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

Of course the noble Lord is right. There are some people who decide, as a matter of choice, not to vote in any election of any kind or may, in the past, have had some reason for not putting their names on the register. However, my amendment seeks to ensure only that local authorities have taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible.

[Baroness McDonagh]

Is my noble friend aware that there is a legal duty to register? It is the choice of the citizen whether to vote, but it is a legal responsibility and requirement to register.

[Lord Bach]

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for reminding the Committee of that. During the course of this Committee, I asked the Government Front Bench whether it is a legal requirement to register—of course it is not a legal requirement to vote, although I must say that I was brought up to believe, and still believe, that it is a duty. As my noble friend has reminded me—I cannot remember which Minister replied—the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in an Oral Question some months ago maintained that it is not a legal requirement to register. That is a very important matter that needs to be determined. It may be that registration is a legal requirement that is observed more in the breach than in fact. That would still make it a requirement, albeit one that is somehow put on one side.

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Moved by

[Baroness McDonagh]

102BA: Clause 18, page 15, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) Section 11 shall not come into force until legislation has been passed introducing household voter registration throughout the United Kingdom.”

[Baroness McDonagh]

This amendment is not a criticism of the Government but an opportunity to right a wrong created by my own party. I suppose that successive Governments who did so much good would also occasionally get things wrong, and this is one of them. I shall just explain the current situation for registration both now and historically. We have household registration, which means that a form goes to each household, be it a flat, a house or a bungalow, and one person in the household fills out the form on behalf of all others living there. That person is normally mum, who fills out the form for her children who are aged over 16, and her husband or partner. If we think of our own situations, whatever type of family relationships we have or the people we have shared our homes with in the past, there is always one person in the household who takes responsibility for things such as voter registration, paying bills and so on. The result is that we have a fairly accurate register that is one of the cheapest in the world to administer.

As part of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, the previous Government included a section that will change that system so that each individual will be responsible for registering themselves. We need to look no further than Northern Ireland to know what will happen if this change is implemented. In 2002, when the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act was passed, under which individual registration was introduced and each person had to register themselves, 10 per cent of the public were lost overnight from the register, which went from 96 per cent to 85 per cent of the population.

When an investigation was held into the loss from the register, it was found that it consisted mainly of three groups of people. The first group consisted of young people, first-time voters and 18-25 year olds, the second group consisted of people in areas of high social deprivation, and the third group consisted of people with mental health disabilities. Mencap has produced a useful report in Northern Ireland should anyone wish to look at it.

Before implementing such provisions across the rest of the United Kingdom, we should consider the fact that there are sections of the population here that are not similar to that in Northern Ireland. For example, Northern Ireland does not have a very mobile population. There is no high provision of privately rented, insecure tenancies of a year or under; there is very little multiple occupancy; and it has a stable population—people do not move far from their parents and grandparents. The rest of the United Kingdom has a large population of ethnic minorities; a recently arrived, large population of inward migrants; a huge private rented sector of tenancies of a year and under; and many multi-occupancy properties. Many people also move for jobs. We know that something like 20 per cent of the population of Great Britain moves every year.

At the last general election, just over 45 million people were registered. If what happened in Northern Ireland were to happen in the rest of the UK, we would lose 4.5 million people from the register in addition to the 3.5 million that are already missing. This would amount to 8 million. Academics suggest that we would lose another 10 per cent because of the reasons that I have outlined, which would remove another 4 million people from the register. This would mean that almost 12 million people in this country would not have a stake in the democratic election of our Government.

In Northern Ireland in 2005, some 160,000 voters who did not complete registration forms were reinstated on the register. I therefore do not understand why the Government, when looking at their databases to increase registration in this country, could not do something similar to what has been done in Northern Ireland. As I said, there were 160,000 more voters at the 2005 elections.

We have an opportunity to change this situation now because we have not yet moved to individual registration, which was initially envisaged to happen post the 2015 election. I am now confused because I believe the Government might soon introduce these provisions. Perhaps the Leader of the House will come back to me on that if it is envisaged that the new system will be in place by the 2015 elections.

If we retain this as it currently is, it will allow us to have a very cheap form of registration, and it will avoid the dip in registration that was seen in Northern Ireland. Household registration is also a recognition of the big society; it represents the understanding, responsibility and role of adults in the household, and also the importance of the family as a unit.

My own party was misguided in introducing these provisions in the 2009 Act, and this is a fantastic opportunity for this Government to change these provisions.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Is the real danger of individual registration that when it comes to the second boundary review—in so far as there will be a reduction in the number of people who have registered under individual registration—there will be even more distorted constituencies?

[Baroness McDonagh]

That is absolutely right, and that is why I hope the Government will consider this. I also hope that the Government will consider bringing in an average number to each constituency, rather than a simple limit on 600. If this number of people falls off the register—and we all know the areas that will fall off the register—when you combine the current under-registration and the fall-off in the new register, in certain parts of the country some of these constituencies will have something like 150,000 eligible electors, not registered electors. That is not good for our society, in which we have so many people who do not have a stake in the democratic election of our Government. That creates weak communities and ends up creating bad government. I beg to move.

[Lord Rennard]

I am sure the noble Baroness will respond to the debate, but I just wanted to raise a couple of questions. It seems to me that since the boundary review will depend on electorates as of 1 December 2010, the only effective change brought about by this amendment would be to change the electoral registration system in Northern Ireland. Did she consult any of the parties in Northern Ireland, or indeed the Northern Ireland Assembly, in suggesting that the basis of electoral registration in Northern Ireland be changed in this amendment? Would it generally be accepted that the only effect of making that change in registration processes in Northern Ireland would be to delay the entire boundary review beyond the date of the next general election in 2015?

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[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble and learned Lord sounded as though he agreed to it in principle but thought that the implementation was wrong, whereas the noble Baroness and the noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Campbell-Savours, were never in favour of it. I must say that I very much allied myself with them in the past in that I was not convinced by the case for individual registration. However, I am now in government and we support it.

Noble Lords opposite know exactly what I am going to say; this is not the Bill on which to have this debate, so we are not going to accept the amendment, although there is an interesting debate to be had. I do not want to say “We are where we are”, although we sort of are where we are. Two or three years ago, I think that I would have allied myself with noble Lords on the Back Benches opposite, but the law was changed by the previous Government with cross-party support. Provision was made for an eventual move to individual registration in the rest of the United Kingdom under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. The Electoral Commission supports a move to individual registration, and Her Majesty’s Government are committed to speeding up the process of registration in Great Britain because, as is widely known, the current system of household registration is vulnerable to fraud. Although the number of cases of electoral fraud is low, the perception created by them undermines confidence in the electoral system as a whole.

The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, asked whether we are speeding up the process. The answer is yes. The Government are speeding up the introduction of individual voter registration by making it compulsory from 2014. Under the new plans, the voluntary phase of individual registration will be dropped and, instead, Great Britain will in 2014 move directly to compulsory individual registration. If this amendment were passed, it would delay the commencement of one of the central provisions of the Bill, and this would prevent a boundary review from being carried out in time for the next general election. I am not suggesting that that is the noble Baroness’s motive, but it would be the effect if it were to be agreed. As the Committee knows, we must proceed with a boundary review to ensure that when the next general election is held, boundaries in England are not 15 years out of date and do not continue to exacerbate the inequality that is present in the current system.

Returning household registration to Northern Ireland would, we feel in government, be a detrimental step that is likely to lead in time to the widespread perception of fraud that was so prevalent in Northern Ireland before 2002. We want to prevent that from returning, with the consequent undermining of confidence in the political process in Northern Ireland.

It has been an interesting and useful debate, and I urge noble Lords to run a campaign on it, but they should do it outwith the provisions of the Bill, and I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I thank the Committee for its contributions to the debate. I will quickly answer a few questions and come back to a couple of points. This amendment would make no difference whatever in Northern Ireland; the 2002 Act has been superseded by the Electoral Registration (Northern Ireland) Act and we are reinstating and registering people who had not even filled in forms. If the Government were to agree to continue with household registration, I would have no problem in removing Northern Ireland from the provisions of this amendment, but it would not make any difference, as I explained. They have reinstated some 160,000 voters already, and I remind the House that this has not resolved issues of fraud but has disenfranchised adult children, people in areas of social deprivation and people with mental health disabilities.

On the second question that was asked, yes, I do appreciate that it would have an impact on the second boundary and that the current boundaries would be the ones that were drawn up on the register at the end of last year. I am in no way seeking to delay the current Boundary Commission redrawing in my amendment. I particularly want to thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes. I have lived in households that have adults with literacy issues, and it is obvious that one person in the household takes responsibility for registration, bills, paperwork and so on. This is not an old-fashioned concept of the head of the household; it is about understanding families and understanding that everyone has a different responsibility and everyone helps everyone else.

I did see a sapling, a glint from the Leader of the House, on this issue. I thank him for his comments, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 102BA withdrawn.