Elections and Returning Officers

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to bring this matter to the House’s attention yet again, and to see that more than one or two colleagues are here. There is some interest in the matter. That is not a great surprise; if there is one thing that we can be sure Members of Parliament know at least a little about, it is elections and the conduct of elections.

There was much publicity after the general election in May this year, when we saw dreadful scenes that looked as though they came from some third-world country whose democracy was not very well developed. People queued to vote in the general election but were unable to do so after 10 o’clock due to rules made there and then—or, rather, interpreted on the spot—by returning officers.

My interest in the matter did not begin on the night of the general election. For the record, the electoral registration officer in my constituency, who is the acting returning officer, ran an extremely good and efficient election. It also had the right result. I talked to him about the process throughout the build-up to the election, because I was interested in such matters, and I saw how things were conducted in Epping Forest. It was an example of how an election ought to be run.

Although the vast majority of returning officers and electoral registration officers do their jobs impeccably and are never open to criticism, others are unfortunately not quite up to the mark. We discovered before the general election that returning officers are responsible to almost no one. A debate took place in this Chamber on 3 February 2010 in which such matters were examined in relation to election counts. At that point, there was a lot of fuss in the media about whether the result of the general election would become clear the day after or not until later. As it happens—hindsight is a wonderful thing—the true result of that particular general election did not become clear for several days. However, that cannot be blamed on the conduct of returning officers; it was a direct result of the decision of the electorate, which is another matter, and one that we are not here to debate.

The question that arose before the general election was whether the votes ought to be counted at 10 o’clock, immediately on the close of polls, or—as many returning officers decided—on the following day. Some of us got rather exercised about the decisions to wait and said that it was unacceptable behaviour on the part of returning officers. We brought the matter to this Chamber, where it was well debated. However, I was extremely surprised on doing serious research into the role and duties of returning officers to discover that their power and authority extends from a 19th-century statute and has been little modified in more than 100 years.

Parliament dealt with the difficulty in relation to whether returning officers should count votes at 10 o’clock somewhat unusually, by amending primary legislation. I tabled an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. As an Opposition amendment, it looked as though it would be a talking point only, but fortunately, the then Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), decided that the matter needed to be dealt with there and then. He put his name to my amendment, which then became part of the Bill. By a last-minute amendment to primary legislation, returning officers, unless they could demonstrate extenuating circumstances for doing otherwise, were required to start counting votes immediately on the close of poll. That gave us the right results for the last general election, but surely it cannot be right that the law on such a matter should be made ad hoc, in primary legislation, just a few weeks before a general election.

My purpose in asking for this debate was to allow the issues to be aired once again and to begin a general discussion now, I hope, to help the Minister, who I know is intent on improving matters in that area of the law. I also hope that we can begin a discussion that considers what the duties of returning officers are and who undertakes the duty of electoral registration officer and then acting returning officer.

Returning officers, as I am sure hon. Members are aware, are usually not paid officials but the high sheriff of a county, for example: another leftover from 19th-century legislation that has never been properly updated. The person with the official duty and responsibility of returning officer is the titular head of the returning officer’s organisation but takes no actual part whatever in the running of elections, whether day to day, annually or every four or five years. That work is done by the acting returning officer. When one goes back into statute to examine where the acting returning officer’s power derives from, one finds that it is a grey area. Those matters must be updated. In most cases, although the returning officer is, perhaps, the high sheriff or lord lieutenant, the acting returning officer is usually the electoral registration officer, often a high-ranking official in a local authority.

After the debacle during the general election in May, when a significant number of voters were left standing outside polling stations, denied their right to vote due to administrative upheaval and a lack of administrative control and planning, we discovered that acting returning officers are paid a considerable fee for their work in organising a general election. I make no complaint about the structure of that system because, of course, the duties associated with organising a general election only occur once every four or five years. Happily, the general election is now likely to be on a certain date every five years. That will perhaps aid the ability to plan because we will have far more certainty about the date of an election. Indeed, we should all be happy about that.

If someone undertakes to do a job every four or five years, of course, it should not be a permanent position—the job should be paid, and the duties allocated and required only for that time. However, on further examination of the situation, we discovered that very large sums were being paid to returning officers. That has been well documented so I will not read out the sums, because it does not help the debate to put a particular person on the spot, give a particular name and say how much he or she was paid to do a job.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

But that is what the hon. Lady’s Government have just done in relation to everyone earning more than £80,000. I do not know why she is being so coy about the matter.

[Mrs Laing]

I accept the shadow Minister’s comment. I understand what he is saying, but he is making a different point on a different matter. I have a list of returning officers who allegedly did not do their jobs very well and yet were paid sums in excess of £12,000 or £15,000 to do that particular job for a few weeks. I am not the kind of politician who embarrasses individual members of society by announcing their names to be recorded in Hansard. We will leave that sort of thing to the tabloid press. The point is that there is no chain of accountability. That is where the problem lies, and that is where the problem lay when we examined how returning officers could be required or even just encouraged to start the election count upon the close of poll. That is also what we discovered when inquiries where carried out correctly by the Electoral Commission into how administration was taken forward for the election in May this year.

It is appalling that senior people in local authorities who have a position of responsibility and normally command salaries well in excess of £100,000—usually far more than that, as far as I can see from the statistics—have not properly planned for a general election and have got things so badly wrong that people were deprived of their vote. In the instances that occurred in May, it is fortunate that there were no cases in which the number of electors who allegedly were unable to vote because of returning officers’ maladministration was greater than the majority in that particular seat. Therefore, there was no reason for an appeal to the courts on the election result. In one way, that is fortunate because it would have meant uncertainty about the results of the election. In another way, however, it is unfortunate, because the matter has not been properly examined, which is another reason for my initiating this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton, and yet again to gather together this group of hon. Members who take an interest in electoral matters. No doubt we shall gather again this afternoon for the next round of discussions. I congratulate the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). There are many things I do not understand about the Government, one of which is why she is not a Minister. She is extremely efficient, capable and competent, and she always makes her argument very well. Yesterday she got a little cross with me. I do not take any offence at that, although a lot of people do.

The basic message from the debate, which I hope returning officers will understand, is that many of us who are involved in politics as elected politicians worry that we are taking democracy somewhat for granted. We all worry about the fact that turnout has fallen, as the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) mentioned. Turnout rose slightly at the last general election, but it is still lower than it was in the 1980s and earlier. Now is not the time to rehearse those arguments, but in Wales turnout was consistently above 75% or 80%. Wales often had the highest levels of turnout, but lately they have been some of the lowest. That is a worry to us all.

It is all too easy for local authorities, which often make the decisions about funding for the democratic process, to take democracy for granted. A local authority might have to choose between keeping a swimming pool open, which will cost £100,000 a year, or doing a full canvass of every house to ensure that everybody who is entitled to vote is on the register, and that everybody who is not entitled to vote is not on it. Elected politicians at local level sometimes choose to protect the swimming pool rather than the democratic process.

I suspect that over the past few years, the whole anti-politics movement—to give it a name—has added to that problem. Too many people felt that all politicians of whatever political party were in it just for themselves, and that there was no point in voting because, in terms used by many comedians, “If voting made any difference, they’d abolish it.” The issue of Members’ expenses also fed into that, and that cynicism has weighed heavily on the political system over the past few years. That has fed into the presumption that money spent on the electoral register or on electoral processes was not money well spent. That is a mistake.

I am sure that we can all remember watching the first time that people voted in South Africa. There were queues not only down the street but round the block for days. People were camping out and waiting to vote. Watching people vote in countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan, where they might have been running terrible risks to do so, fills a lot of us with admiration. In the Balkans, boycotts of elections have sometimes been organised by one ethnic grouping, and it has been great to see turnouts that were significantly higher than many had anticipated. That is why the scenes that we saw in May were sad. It is fortunate—and only fortunate—that there was no constituency in which the number of people who we know were not able to vote was higher than the majority of the candidate who won. Therefore, we can be confident that that issue may not have affected the result.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) makes an extremely good point: we have no way of knowing how many people went to the polling station, saw a long queue and thought that they would come back later. Perhaps they came back later but still saw a queue and gave up.

[Mr Leech]

There is also the fact that there were local elections on the same day. I guess that in some constituencies, the result of the local election in a particular area was very close. It may be that some people were elected to local councils who would not have been elected if everyone had had the chance to vote.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point, and I hope that the Minister will be able to answer him on it. I will speak about combined polls a little later.

The Opposition tried to provide an answer to the issue of 10 o’clock voting with an amendment that was discussed last Monday. Unfortunately, not enough hon. Members felt able to vote for it. The Minister said that the problem with our amendment was that it introduced the concept of a queue into British legislation, and that that might be difficult to define. If the British Parliament cannot define a queue, I do not know which Parliament in the world would be able to do so. Many other places in the world have a system in which, for example, a person’s finger is dabbed with indelible ink the moment that they present themselves, and that is the moment at which they are entitled to receive a vote. I am sure that many other ways could be devised. I hope that the Minister will look specifically at a way of ensuring consistency across the country.

The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North made the point tellingly: in some constituencies, the returning officer decided to be generous and to stretch the regulations in one direction, but in other constituencies they decided to be extremely strict about how they operated the system. That inconsistency around the country does not inspire confidence in voters. In subsequent elections, people might think that if it is 9.30 pm or 9.45 pm there is no point going to vote because there are always queues at the polling stations.

I do not want to be nasty to the Minister this morning—

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

Keep it for this afternoon.

[Chris Bryant]

I cannot keep it for this afternoon because I do not think that the Minister will be responding to the debate then. However, I thought that he was a little complacent about that element last Monday afternoon. He said that the issue was not an enormous problem and that there was not an enormous number of instances in which it had happened. The figure of 1,200 was suggested, but I suspect that many more people were affected. I suspect that in Hackney North and Stoke Newington alone more than 1,500 people ended up not being able to vote because of the situation. I hope that the Minister will return to the issue with some means of providing consistency around the country.

The inconsistency around the country applies not only to what happens at 10 o’clock but to a whole series of different issues. In part, that is precisely because of the reason adduced by the hon. Member for Epping Forest: although the responsibilities and powers are laid down in statute, a wide amount of freedom is given to the returning officers and there is little accountability. I agree with the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington that it is ludicrous that such a job is thought of as additional to the job of electoral registration officer, and that somehow people have to be additionally recompensed in order to perform their function when there is a general election. I think that it should be part of the standard job description and that no additional fees should be payable. It should be run of the mill and part of doing the job. Frankly, if someone does not do the job well, they should not remain in it. It should not be a question of getting extra payments.

[Mrs Laing]

It is worth going over that point again. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: not only is it not part of the job description of a local authority employee, but there is also a lack of accountability. The fee for doing the job comes from central funds, but there is no line of accountability to that. As we have seen, some people were paid perhaps £15,000 for administering matters this year. They got it wrong and were not required to pay a penny back.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Lady makes her point extremely well. I hope that the Minister will think about whether we need to look at the structure of how returning officers—in most cases, broadly speaking, an honorific title—and those beneath them are appointed.

In my constituency in 2001, the returning officer appointed himself because he wanted to announce the election result. Unfortunately, he could not speak Welsh. He decided that he had to make the announcement in Welsh first, despite the fact that remarkably few people in the Rhondda speak Welsh, and very few people in the hall spoke it. He certainly did not speak Welsh, so what he announced was virtually incomprehensible. The BBC immediately switched off and went somewhere else. We would be better off with the electoral registration officer, who is the person who knows the law best, being the returning officer. I am sorry if that means that we will be sacking all the high sheriffs and lord lieutenants of the land. I mean no disservice to them but it is a professional job that must be done on a professional basis.

Another point raised was about when the count should take place. I think that people like the drama of election night. It is fascinating that people are watching the BBC’s 1970 and 1974 election programmes, which are now being re-shown. It is quite exciting thinking “I can’t remember who won Plymouth, Devonport” or wherever. I had an Australian friend who was my lodger. This was a few years ago. He was fascinated by Australian politics and refused to watch any news for a week until his mother had sent him the five DVDs with the election television programme from Australia. It took even longer than it might have because the count takes a long time in Australia.

My point is that the drama of election night is very important and, as we saw in our election, all the more important because sometimes it can determine the feeling, when there is to be a hung Parliament, about how Governments may or may not be formed. That is why there should be consistency across the land. If there are combined elections, the general election votes should be counted first, and the count should not start at 4.19 in the morning and finish at 8 o’clock in the morning. That explains why the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North looked just a little weary by the time his election result came out. We should be moving to greater consistency in that regard.

That leaves us with the problem in relation to combining polls. If we are to go to a fixed-term Parliament when we already have fixed-term council elections and fixed-term Assembly elections in Wales and Northern Ireland and for the Parliament in Scotland, we either decide that they will all coincide always, so that that is a fixed part of the programme as it is in the United States of America, where there are elections every two years, or we decide that we will not combine polls at all, because that is better. I think that it is a bit odd that we have elections on the first Thursday in May, because April is a pretty rubbish month to go campaigning. Chaucer got it right when he talked about April with its showers. Perhaps we should think about another month. I say that as someone who was first elected in June rather than May.

Obviously, it is more important that we hear from the Minister than that we hear further expatiations from me. I just hope that the issues of consistency around the country can be addressed, as well as the finance and the accountability of returning officers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington raised. In Manchester, there were polling stations that covered too great a geographical area, or far too many electors were expected to vote in them. It is good to hear that Manchester city council has taken steps to address that. It is one of the issues set out in the guidance from the Electoral Commission. It lays out broadly how many electors should be going to a particular polling station, precisely so that if there is a high turnout, that number of electors can be processed smoothly. It is good to hear that in places where we know that there were issues, they are being dealt with. I do not know overall across the country whether there has been a reduction in the number of polling stations.

I suspect that one problem was that given that turnout was lower at the last few general elections and at other elections, as the hon. Member for Rhondda highlighted, some acting returning officers made assumptions that turnout would continue at a low level and were caught unawares when, perhaps because people were more engaged in the election, they took part in it in greater numbers.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sure that the Minister is absolutely right, and I think that another assumption the officers made was that many more people would vote by post. That has undoubtedly happened: in my constituency we have lost, I think, eight polling stations since I was first elected in 2001, for all sorts of reasons that are pretty much insurmountable. Virtually everyone in those old polling districts now votes by post, notwithstanding the points made earlier by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart).

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I suspect that in some areas people have made assumptions about postal voting. Because of the problems that we have had with such voting at previous elections, quite a lot of my constituents who had decided to vote by post have now gone back to voting in person, partly because they like doing that but also because they feel that it is more secure. Acting returning officers need to take that into account.