Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, can a local authority or the Electoral Commission speak with accuracy regarding steps being taken by a local authority? The amendment says that,

“every local authority has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible”.

That does not mean that it has to be so exact that, as in the days when I was in engineering, you have to be half a thou within your measurement. The amendment says “all reasonable steps”.

I know through experience that the Electoral Commission is a well resourced body. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, had this experience, but it even said that it wanted copyright for a teaching pack to teach returning officers how to carry out their duties. That is the extent to which the Electoral Commission goes into these matters.

Talking about accuracy, my thoughts go back to the days when Strathclyde region was on the go and the famous poll tax was a big worry for every Member of Parliament in the west of Scotland. Strathclyde region took in the whole of the west of Scotland. People were deliberately staying off the electoral register. It was not a case of the man or woman of the house coming to the door and forgetting to say that one of the sons was working offshore but was resident in the household and therefore the canvass could be inaccurate to one person in a family because of the wrong information. This was particularly single people making sure that they stayed off the register to avoid the poll tax. It used to be called the community charge. That was a nice phrase. We called it the poll tax because that was what it was.

Mr James Woods was put in charge of electoral registration for the whole of Strathclyde. All the Members of Parliament for Strathclyde met him and said that the voters roll would be inaccurate. When it came to appeals and the Boundary Commission, a big matter would be the number of people on the electoral roll. He told us all, “Here is what I’ve done. Come and visit my department. I do a canvass and then I do a second canvass and if we suspect that there are people who are taking their names off the electoral roll, we make inquiries”.

There was also the question of people having two homes. Sometimes a wife would register in one home and a husband in the other to avoid a double poll tax. Mr Woods assured us that he was putting a high and accurate return on to the electoral register. It would be reasonable for the Electoral Commission to interview someone such as Mr Woods and ask, “What are you doing? What facilities have you got? We want to visit your premises and see what you are doing”. That would be good enough to give a certificate.

It must be remembered that people used to speak with fondness about a local authority called Saltcoats down on the Ayrshire coast which had the cheapest rents in Scotland—the reason being that it had no direct works department and was a small local authority. The local authority was so small it would even meet if it had to hire a foreman gardener. Local authorities such as that are no longer with us. Local government has been streamlined. There is often a criticism that some chief executives in local government get paid more than the Prime Minister of the day because of their large responsibilities. I do not wish to go into that as I would stray from the amendment but all local authorities that I know of in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland would be well able to hire a highly competent electoral registration officer who could easily convince the Electoral Commission to give the local authority a certificate to say that it is working to ensure an accurate register. If the Government had a worry about the Electoral Commission, it need not be the Electoral Commission but someone else. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned certification; certification is given to shipping, factories and other bodies.

[Baroness Thornton]

This is my first intervention in the Bill. I am pleased to join my happy band of colleagues to, I hope, help with the discussions. I want to get involved in the issue of voter registration in this part of the Bill because of my work with young people, particularly excluded ones, in a variety of charities and also because I am from Bradford. My title is Baroness Thornton, of Manningham. I suspect that Manningham in Bradford probably has one of the lowest records of voter registration in the whole of our city, for reasons that we will discuss in the next series of amendments.

We know that those who are absent from the registers are likely to be drawn from the same social groups as under-registered voters in previous decades. This is not a new issue. Variations in registration levels by age, social class and ethnicity have long been recognised and it is predominately densely populated urban areas with significant concentrations of mobile young people that have the highest levels of under-registration. That is why I, along with other noble Lords, support amendments pressing our concerns for different groups of our fellow citizens.

The Electoral Commission’s March 2010 report The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain highlights that matter. The report states that,

“there are some grounds to suggest that geographical variations in registration levels may have widened since the late 1990s. Available data sources suggest that registration rates in London appear to have stabilised, and may even have improved slightly, since the late 1990s. By contrast, English metropolitan districts appear to have experienced a clear fall in registration levels. Canvass response rates show a similar pattern. In 1996, the average canvass response rates for metropolitan districts were 93%, significantly higher than the 87% achieved by the average London borough. However, by 2004 the average response rate among London boroughs had risen slightly to 89%, while it had fallen to 84% in the English metropolitan districts. Despite improved response rates among metropolitan districts in 2008, the 90% average remained just below the 91% figure achieved by London boroughs”.

As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said, if the electoral roll is to be frozen as at 2010, how much more inaccurate will it be in those areas of the greatest vulnerability by 2015? We know that more than 3 million people are not on the electoral roll. How many more voters would the coalition Government find it acceptable not to appear on the electoral roll by 2015? I think that the Minister needs to answer those questions, given that millions of people—young people, ethnic minorities and people who live in rented accommodation in areas of high density—will in effect be disfranchised by the Government’s proposals.

Our amendment suggests, quite reasonably I think, that the Electoral Commission should ensure that the local authorities that have responsibility for the canvasses that produce the electoral roll should do their job as effectively and as efficiently as possible. I cannot see what is unreasonable about that. Indeed, our suggestion seems entirely proper, so I am surprised to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has a problem with it, as I cannot think what that problem would be. We need to get those 3.5 million people back on our electoral rolls and then—although, as my noble friend said, this is a different matter—to consider voting. I support Amendment 54A and I hope that the Government will do so as well.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I rise to speak on the role of the Electoral Commission, in which I, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others are involved. I apologise first to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for missing the opening phrases of his speech, but I know very well what his amendment is about and have considerable sympathy for it—indeed, I fully support it—as it deals with an important issue.

Of the two things that I want to say, the first relates to the Electoral Commission. When I have spoken on previous occasions when we have considered the Bill, I have not mentioned that I am a representative on the Electoral Commission’s parliamentary advisory group, which includes Members of both Houses and all parties. The parliamentary advisory group offers advice on the Electoral Commission’s proposals and the Electoral Commission listens to our comments.

Given that a number of problems with registration need to be looked at, there is certainly a case for having a debate—although perhaps not at this stage—on the role and powers of the Electoral Commission. The commission performs an important job, for which, as the noble Lord, Lord Martin, pointed out, it is also well resourced. However, I think that the noble Lord would agree with me that one problem is the lack of real clarity on the commission’s powers to investigate and to make strong recommendations on the effectiveness of local authority registration processes. Various members of the Electoral Commission frequently mention—and the Members from the political parties who attend the parliamentary advisory group recognise—that, although the commission can try to persuade local authorities to drive up registration levels, it does not have the power to say, “This is not good enough, so we will not certify you”. Without that power, as I think was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, the local authorities ultimately do not need to try that hard.

As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and others have pointed out, we should all be able to agree that registration levels in this country could and should be far better. The current levels are not good enough. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Thornton quoted the Electoral Commission’s March 2010 report, which makes the point—this is true—that registration levels in London went up and then stabilised but appear to have gone down in other areas.