Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

Legally—I will come to that in a moment. Therefore, these regulations are absolutely right. We need to ensure that turnout is up, and that people vote and are encouraged to vote. I am quite attracted by the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, about the increased use of registering online, which is very sensible in this digital age. However, I agree with noble Lords who have spoken about the difficulties one encounters in Northern Ireland because of fraud and intimidation.

One of the first shocks I had when I became a Minister in Northern Ireland was to meet with the—very famous—chief electoral officer, who announced the referendum result in 1998. He came to my office in Millbank with a suitcase, which he plonked on my desk. He opened it up, and there were between 200 and 300 votes, every one of which was illegal. Obviously, we knew that this was going on, but to have it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, concentrated the mind.

The noble Lord, Lord Elliott, was right about the closeness of results in Northern Ireland, not just for the general election but for local government elections and elections to the Assembly. Often, the complicated PR system over there, STV, means that in many cases it literally comes down to single figures. Clearly, there are people elected to public bodies in Northern Ireland who should not be because of the system that I have just described.

I agree with what has been recommended to us, but I ask my noble friend the Minister to keep an eye on developments in Northern Ireland and to work with the chief electoral officer to ensure that we are increasingly aware of fraud and intimidation and that we have a healthy system of democracy in Northern Ireland—one which, as I said earlier, we can improve so that people are voting, the turnout goes up and we get a true representation of what people feel.

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting short debate that strayed a little beyond these regulations, here and there. I thank the Minister for her introduction and the Electoral Commission for the briefing it provided ahead of this debate. I shall be extremely brief.

We support these regulations and see them as a necessary short-term fix to ensure that we do not lose the 87,000 electors from the register. However, I hope the Minister will accept that we probably have to revisit comprehensive, long-term reform of the electoral registration process in Northern Ireland. It is now essential that we modernise the system, perhaps especially ahead of the next scheduled canvass in 2030. Could the Minister say whether the Government intend at some point to introduce automatic or automated voter registration, whether they intend to use enhanced government or local government datasets for a more targeted canvass in Northern Ireland and whether they intend to incorporate electoral registration into other public service transactions to improve efficiency and accessibility?

I agree with the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, to get a government response on the increased use of online registration. It is an extremely important point and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

As other noble Lords have said, confidence in the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registration processes in Northern Ireland is a key part of the democratic process. This measure, although a short-term fix, is important to allow 87,000 electors not to fall off, but I hope that we will look at this more comprehensively in future.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, for setting out the terms of this statutory instrument and to noble Lords from both Northern Ireland and Great Britain for their contributions. As the noble Baroness made clear, the purpose of these regulations is to extend the retention period for electors in Northern Ireland and to retain these electors on the register for an additional three years, bringing the period to six years in total. The regulations also introduce an annual audit of these retained electors, including measures to contact them in an effort to encourage them to reregister.

At present and without this measure, as has been mentioned, it is expected that approximately 87,700 retained electors will be removed from the register on 1 February. While the Opposition obviously support these regulations, does the noble Baroness agree that this is quite a significant number and that we are justified in asking why such a large group of eligible voters is at risk of being removed from the register on this date? The regulations offer a framework for auditing and engaging these electors, but this still raises questions about whether enough is being done to prevent the unnecessary disenfranchisement of the electorate.

The noble Baroness will be acutely aware of the history of elections in Northern Ireland and that, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, they have not always been without controversy. It was due to widespread concerns over fraud that, some 20 years ago, the last Labour Government introduced individual voter registration in Northern Ireland, and I commend them for doing so. I merely wish that they had been more supportive of our efforts in Great Britain to deal with electoral misdemeanours and fraud in the previous Parliament. Even more recently, despite the efforts of the last Labour Government and others, there have been serious allegations of vote rigging.

I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard, refer to Fermanagh and South Tyrone. He will be aware that I was actively involved in the election campaign in 2010 in Northern Ireland, when the candidate agreed by my party, the Ulster Unionists and the Democratic Unionists lost to Sinn Féin by a mere four votes. The noble Lord will also recall that a number of photocopied ballot papers mysteriously turned up at polling stations shortly before 10 o’clock that evening.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, also referred to vote stealing. She will remember that in the Foyle constituency in 2017, Sinn Féin defeated the former leader of her party, Mark Durkan, by a mere 169 votes, I think it was, there were again many serious allegations of vote stealing. As far as I am aware, these were investigated and no evidence was found, but the suspicions remain very widespread, and the noble Baroness was right to raise them.

Despite the progress that has been made in tackling fraud, the need for vigilance remains, not least when a number of constituencies in Northern Ireland are much more marginal than they might have been in the past. Indeed, I think around half of the constituencies in Northern Ireland are held by majorities of under 6,000 these days. This highlights, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, said, the importance of every vote, and we must ensure that no eligible voter, particularly in closely contested areas, is unfairly removed from the register and that retaining people on a register for longer periods does not increase the scope for fraud. While the extension of the retention period may provide flexibility for electors who are unable or unwilling to respond in a timely manner, it could also open the door to exploitation. The longer individuals remain on the register without reconfirmation of their eligibility, the greater the risk that ineligible individuals could be made, either deliberately or inadvertently, to vote fraudulently.

Can the Minister therefore reassure the Committee how the Government, working with the chief electoral officer, will ensure that the retention of electors for up to six years does not create opportunities for fraudulent activity? Are there sufficient safeguards in place to prevent ineligible individuals from being added to or retained on the register, particularly if they have not been adequately contacted or if the audit process has not been thorough enough?

My final point touches on issues raised by the former Secretary of State, the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, and my noble friend Lord Hayward regarding voter turnout, which in 2024 was down by four percentage points to just 57% of the electorate, which is very low. Again, can the Minister assure us that this is an issue that the electoral office takes very seriously and that every effort will be made to boost turnout across Northern Ireland? My noble friend Lord Hayward made some very sensible suggestions regarding online registration, and so on, to boost turnout next time for both Stormont and Westminster elections.

On that note, I will finish, but I reiterate that the Opposition support the regulations before the Committee this evening.