Anonymous Registration (Northern Ireland) Order 2014

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Randerson]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Anonymous Registration (Northern Ireland) Order 2014.

Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Wales Office (Baroness Randerson) (LD)]

My Lords, the order was laid before the House on 24 February. It is the first in a series of six statutory instruments to establish a scheme of anonymous registration in Northern Ireland. Four of those instruments were published for consultation in September of last year. The changes are being introduced in a series of instruments for technical reasons.

This first order extends provisions made for Great Britain in primary legislation to Northern Ireland, with amendments to reflect some differences in the electoral systems in Northern Ireland. It also makes other changes required to primary legislation for Northern Ireland, predominantly in relation to local elections. Other instruments to follow will include regulations to implement the system of anonymous registration in respect of different elections and to prescribe provisions relating to political donations by anonymous electors.

As noble Lords will know, the full electoral register lists the name and address of everyone who is entitled to vote. This is used mainly for elections and referendums but can be used for other purposes, such as the prevention and detection of crime and eligibility for jury service. It may also be seen on request by any member of the public, under supervision. Anonymous registration ensures that the names and addresses of individuals who are at risk do not appear on the full register. Those at risk may include victims of domestic violence, witnesses in certain criminal cases and other vulnerable people who wish to vote but whose safety could be compromised by the inclusion of their details on the electoral register.

As in Great Britain, individuals will qualify for anonymous registration if the safety of the applicant or of another person in their household would be at risk if the register contained their name or address. I will bring regulations before the House later this year which will detail the evidence required to show that a person is at risk. As in the draft regulations published last September, a person will be able to show that they are at risk either by presenting a court order demonstrating the risk or by obtaining an attestation from a senior professional—for example, someone in the police—stating that they are at risk.

If a person is shown to be at risk, the scheme works by replacing the name and address of vulnerable individuals in the register with a number. A full list of those voters will be held securely by the chief electoral officer for cross-referencing. This prevents their details being available to someone who might try to trace their whereabouts by means of the electoral register.

Anonymous registration was introduced in Great Britain by Section 10 of and Schedule 1 to the Electoral Administration Act 2006. The scheme was not extended to Northern Ireland at the time due to a number of differences in Northern Ireland that needed to be taken into account. These differences included the additional checks on identity used in Northern Ireland to prevent electoral fraud, and the operation of the jury system in Northern Ireland. However, Section 1 of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006 gave the Secretary of State the power to make equivalent provision for Northern Ireland by Order in Council at a later date.

Many of the Great Britain provisions are extended to Northern Ireland without amendment in this order, but there are four main differences between the provisions for Great Britain and those being put in place for Northern Ireland, either in this order or in the instruments that will follow.

First, the duration of an anonymous entry will be longer than it is in Great Britain. Applications for an anonymous entry must be made annually in Great Britain, in the same way as applications for registration. In Northern Ireland, an anonymous entry can last for a maximum of five years. This makes practical sense in the context of the continuous registration system in Northern Ireland. If persons do not have to reapply to be registered annually, it would be onerous to require vulnerable individuals to reapply for an anonymous entry on an annual basis. This difference is also intended to help the PSNI and other bodies manage the greater volumes of applications for attestations that are expected in Northern Ireland because of the security situation there and the number of people who may be considered at risk.

In view of the longer, five-year timeframe in Northern Ireland, this order allows the chief electoral officer to terminate a person’s entitlement to an anonymous entry in some circumstances. The regulations brought forward later this year will set out the details of how the chief electoral officer can make this determination. For example, if the chief electoral officer receives information that a person is no longer part of the household to whom the relevant evidence applies, their entitlement to anonymous registration should be reviewed.

Secondly, as noble Lords will be aware, all voters in Northern Ireland are required to show photographic identification at the polling station to receive their ballot paper. This is incompatible with the principle of maintaining a voter’s anonymity and so, under this order, those with an anonymous entry will not be able to vote in person. Instead, this order makes provision for anonymous electors to be automatically eligible for a postal vote. This is to prevent a person who is anonymously registered being questioned at a polling station about their identity.

Thirdly, linked to the provisions on postal voting, the order makes it possible for an anonymous elector to submit a tendered ballot paper by post. It is possible to apply for a tendered ballot paper when a person states that they have lost their ballot paper or believes someone else has voted on their behalf. However, a tendered ballot paper can usually be submitted only in person at the polling station. Persons with an anonymous entry will be allowed to submit a tendered ballot paper by post instead to prevent them being disadvantaged by the requirement to use a postal vote.

Lastly, persons with anonymous entries will remain eligible for jury service, as they are in Great Britain. However, because jury service selection operates in a different way in Northern Ireland, the provisions in this order that deal with this matter differ from the England and Wales provisions. The order ensures that any anonymous elector information is protected when the jurors list is passed from the chief electoral officer to the Courts and Tribunals Service.

There have been two phases of consultation on anonymous registration in Northern Ireland. The first was conducted by the previous Government in 2008. The second took place in 2013 on the draft legislation. The consultations have allowed us to take account of the views of a range of devolved bodies that will be involved in implementing the scheme, including the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and health and social care boards, as well as political parties and groups representing those most likely to benefit from the new system.

I hope that noble Lords will agree it is important that people who wish to exercise their right to vote are able to do so without fear or threat to their safety. This order gives vulnerable people in Northern Ireland the same protection as those in Great Britain. I commend it to the Committee.

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her thorough exposition of the proposed legislation. I should say right from the start—because it always needs to be said in relation to Northern Ireland—that we are fully supportive of the legislation. My honourable friend in the House of Commons, Stephen Pound, in a very entertaining speech, asked a number of questions. Some of them were not, to my book, completely answered, so I will go through them and see if I can get a wee bit more information out of the noble Baroness.

It has been stated by the Minister and others that the necessity for this legislation in Northern Ireland is—as it is in the rest of the United Kingdom—mainly to support women in what they face when being pursued by former partners or husbands or subjected to violence. So the legislation is quite in order.

However, on the higher percentage that is envisaged, it is worth commenting that the higher percentage of anonymous voting approvals for Northern Ireland is, according to the words of Mr Robathan, 40 times greater in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom. That signifies that there is a continuing situation in which people need anonymity in voting, and the sooner we can move away from that, the better. However, the need for this legislation is still quite clear because women have enough to put up with without being subjected to that as well.

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I hope that we will have a wee bit more elucidation on the points raised in questions by Mr Pound, but I repeat that we are fully supportive of the Government’s proposals in this field. They are absolutely necessary, and they have our full support.

[Baroness Randerson]

I thank the noble Lord for his support on this. I will do my very best to answer the questions that he feels still need to be answered.

The noble Lord is right that the issue of supporting victims of domestic violence is a key mover behind the legislation. It was introduced for Great Britain very specifically at the request of groups supporting victims of domestic violence. But it is also aimed at supporting, for example, people who are part of the witness protection scheme. I am sure that the noble Lord will appreciate that there are far more people in that situation in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain.

There are currently 1,739 people in the anonymous registration scheme in Great Britain. My right honourable friend the Minister of State in the other place referred to the expectation that there would be around 40 times that number in Northern Ireland. This figure is based on the numbers known to have benefited from existing programmes to protect individuals at risk; for example, 1,805 individuals have benefited from the special purchase of evacuated dwellings scheme in Northern Ireland. Of course, this is just one group of eligible individuals. I mentioned the witness protection scheme earlier, but members of other groups might be judged to be at risk, such as prison officers. I could give other examples, but that one number—1,805—shows that proportionately the numbers would be around 40 times greater for Northern Ireland. Therefore, one of the reasons that the anonymous registration will apply for a five-year term is to enable those involved in the registration and attestation process to deal effectively with the number of requests that we estimate will come forward.

The noble Lord also asked whether Irish court orders would be recognised and treated in a spirit of reciprocity. It is very unusual to reference court orders from outside the UK in domestic legislation because to do so would prevent Parliament scrutinising changes to the law. The Government recognise that it is highly likely that some people at risk in Northern Ireland will be beneficiaries of an Irish court order. On the subject of domestic violence, people marrying across the border—with one partner from the Republic and one from Northern Ireland—is obviously a very common thing. Therefore, we will make clear in guidance that, when an attestation is considered, if an applicant holds a similar injunction to those listed in the order from Ireland or any other member state of the EU, an attestation will be made. It is not done in an identical manner. A court order would mean that the anonymous registration would be automatic. An Irish court order would lead to an attestation process, as I understand it. It is important to bear in mind that there is a legal issue here; that is why this is being dealt with in this way.

The noble Lord asked about the level of the staff who will make the attestations. As the number of people registered anonymously is likely to be higher than in the rest of Great Britain, it is important that attestation is seen to be no less rigorous than in Great Britain and that it is very rigorously applied. The Government remain of the view that only people who are eligible to attest applications in relation to Great Britain would also be eligible to attest applications in relation to Northern Ireland. So the process will apply at the same level in both cases. It should not be necessary, however, for people applying for anonymous registration to go in and meet the director of social work or the chief constable. We would expect applications to be considered at a lower level within the organisation, and a recommendation would then be made higher up the chain within the organisation. We have consulted the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in relation to the seniority of social workers who will be eligible to attest applications for anonymous registration. In the case of the PSNI, the attestation will be made at the level of superintendent and above.

I hope that I have answered the noble Lord’s questions and I commend the order to the Committee.

Motion agreed.