Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to you, Mr Bayley, for your guidance. As you will notice, my amendment states:

“This rule is subject to an independent assessment of the Boundary Commission as to the potential electorate within any area where the Commission, having consulted—

the Electoral Commission,

(b) the Registration Officer of the local authority or authorities in that area,

(c) such other organisations and individuals whom the Boundary Commission may choose to consult”.

I mentioned the margin of error in order to contrast it with the proposal in my amendment, which would give the Boundary Commission some discretion over how it interpreted the rule. In other words, the commission would be able to take into account the distinction between, as the amendment itself describes, the potential electorate, bearing in mind the variability of registration throughout the country, and the actual electors on the electoral roll. The amendment prises open the issue that several Members have already teased out in today’s debate and, therefore, questions whether the 5% margin of error might in fact reflect a larger margin of error in the registration of electors in each constituency.

The Boundary Commission has not been given sufficient leeway to take account of that variability, and, as others have already pointed out, the Electoral Commission studied the issue earlier this year. It produced a report entitled, “The completeness and accuracy of electoral registers in Great Britain, March 2010”, and I shall quote from the document’s key findings. It states:

“national datasets and local case study research suggest there may be widening local and regional variations in registration levels. While there is no straightforward relationship between population density and the state of local registers, the lowest rates of completeness and accuracy were found in the…most densely populated…areas”

and among “the most mobile populations”.

The report continues:

“Recent social, economic and political changes appear to have resulted in a declining motivation to register”,

and it goes on to state:

“Under-registration and inaccuracy are closely associated with the social groups most likely to move home.”

Across the case study areas, it found, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said earlier, that

“under-registration is notably higher than average among 17-24 year olds (56% not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic British residents (31%).”

It also found that during the year the rate of completeness is likely to decline by about 10 percentage points.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that list of people who are under-represented or not registered. Does he agree that the categories he has outlined, although unregistered, often form the majority of an MP’s caseload, and that that huge impact on their workload should be recognised by the Boundary Commission?

[Andrew George]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I argue further that any Member of Parliament who does their job properly should be seeking out those silent voices rather than waiting for them to come to them. MPs should recognise that people who are not registering are probably not articulating themselves in other ways, so they should be finding ways of ensuring that their needs are properly articulated.

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[Andrew George]

I agree. It may be a function of a change of staff or of the resources of the local authority and how it goes about its task. Inevitably, in different parts of the country, the situation will ebb and flow over time. One cannot necessarily say that a place with high levels of registration will always have them—there may well be variations.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Andrew George]

I will gave way one more time, but I want to bring my remarks to a close.

[Chris Ruane]

Speaking from experience, Gareth Evans, the electoral registration officer in Denbighshire in my constituency, has taken the electorate up from 49,000 to 56,000—a huge percentage increase. That has been achieved partly by having a big, bold reminder in the middle of the registration form saying that not registering is an offence punishable by a £1,000 fine. At the end of the process, the chief executive sends out letters to those who are unregistered saying, “I am now turning this over to my legal department for you to be prosecuted.” That ability to prosecute, which is a powerful tool in forcing people to register, is going to be removed by the hon. Gentleman’s Front Benchers, as was outlined a few weeks ago. What does he think about that?

[Andrew George]

I would be straying beyond the limits of this debate if I discussed compulsion in registration, but it could perhaps be debated in relation to other parts of the Bill.

As well as the groups in the community that the independent Electoral Commission found were under-represented, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and I, and many other hon. Members—the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) referred to this—represent parts of the country where there are large numbers of second homes. Those part-time residents often like to ensure that they are on the electoral register. Given the relative weight of the significance and marginality of the two, or possibly three or more, seats in which they have their votes, one suspects that in some cases—of course, this should not happen—they might decide where they might most effectively cast that vote, if indeed they cast it only once. There are questions about whether they should register to vote in the first place, which of course they are entitled to do for local authority elections. Strictly speaking, they should not cast a vote in the general election because they are not in their primary residence.

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[Graham Stringer]

The right hon. Gentleman makes his point well and I am sure the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) heard him.

I shall speak to amendment 38, which is in my name. With permission, Mr Bayley, I should also like to press it to a Division. Other than what I said on amendments 341 and 342, arguments about the number of people on the electoral register lie behind this debate. One argument that was touched on earlier is bogus, and it should be discounted: namely, that the number of electors that it takes to elect a Member from one political party is different from the number it takes to elect a Member for another party. That is irrelevant to this debate. Turnout, the number of candidates and the distribution of electors also affect the number of people it takes to elect a Member for a political party. If people want a kind of representation that means that it takes exactly the same number of people to elect each MP, the answer is PR. I am against that and in favour of first past the post. However, that is nothing to do with the clause.

The second point at the heart of clause 8 is that constituencies should be based on an equal number of registered electors. That is a reasonable starting point, but there are two exceptions—one is relevant to this clause and the other will be debated later. If people are to represent constituencies, geographical features, boundaries and real communities should be significant considerations, as well as absolute numbers. However, how can the Committee say that absolute numbers is the overwhelmingly relevant consideration and accept that change to the system when 3.5 million people are not on the electoral register?

In amendment 38, I am seeking, in a different way from the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), to address voter registration. He is trying to get the Boundary Commission to assess the difference between those who are registered and those who are not. The point of my amendment is to get the Electoral Commission, which is the more appropriate body, to try to satisfy this House and the other place that enough changes and processes have taken place to ensure that as many people as practically possible are registered. Once that has been done, but not before, the figures can be taken into account when considering boundaries.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend says that 3.5 million people are missing from the register, but the Government announced the other week that they will introduce individual registration and remove some of the measures that could help us to increase registration. When individual registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, there was a 10% drop in registration. If it is introduced on the mainland, that could mean 4.5 million people fewer on the register, so that 8 million people—including the most vulnerable in society—could be missing from the register. Does my hon. Friend agree that that constitutes a very little English coup?

[Graham Stringer]

I would not use the word “coup”, but I would use the word “gerrymandering”. In fact, a double gerrymander lies at the heart of this Bill. I would like the Electoral Commission to look at the issue of registration and report to both Houses, because there are sins of commission and sins of omission involved in why the electoral register is not complete. It has already been said that some electoral registration officers are more effective and efficient than others, and that is true. I represent areas of Manchester and Salford, and the electoral registration and returning officers there are doing a good job. They have done three canvasses and use what data they may legally access to ensure that electoral registration is as complete as possible. But that is not the case in several constituencies.

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[Gavin Barwell]

I take your point, Mr Bayley, but some of the amendments in the group are also about the need for speed and whether the proposals in the Bill should take effect by October 2013. The point that I was trying to make in an earlier intervention is that the average size of Labour seats is significantly smaller than those of Conservative Members. That is an unfairness and it is important to correct it, but I shall take your advice and come on to the issue of registration.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Barwell]

I am nervous about being drawn back into what I have just been told to move off, but I will give way briefly.

[Chris Ruane]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the information I have received from research by the Library shows that of the top 100 seats with the most number of unregistered people, 96 are Labour seats? Should it not be borne in mind, when he is pointing out unfairness this way and that way, that those unregistered people are in Labour seats?

[Chris Ruane]

I think that that is a question about registration, so I can certainly address it. It has always been the case historically that, in deciding on constituency boundaries, we have looked at the number of people who are eligible to vote; that is, we have looked at electorates as the basis on which to draw the boundaries. Opposition Members have raised the issue of registration in this debate, with some amendments asking for a report on the issue and others going further, making the radical proposition that we should look at the number of adults who are eligible to register in a constituency when drawing up the boundaries.

That may well be a debate of principle that we need to have at some point, but it seems to me that the arguments of Opposition Members have varied and have been based on a number of different potential categories. We could look at electors, the number of people over 18 who are eligible to vote, or the total adult population over 18, but when the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) was quoting his figures earlier, I think he was actually quoting the figures for the adult population over 18. I do not know any data sets that can give an accurate figure for the number of people over 18 who are eligible to vote, which is an entirely different thing, because there will be many people who are not UK citizens—and who are therefore not eligible to vote—but who will appear on the census. Or we could go even further and look at the total population in each part of the country when drawing up boundaries.

My real concern is that the amendments before us suggest that we should draw up constituency boundaries based on a guess. They suggest that we look at the census data, but many Members—particularly those who represent urban constituencies—will be aware of the real problems relating to the accuracy of those data. The census is carried out only every 10 years, and there are often gross inaccuracies in the published figures, certainly for London.

[Stephen Pound]

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman, because he is making a coherent and cogent case. I must point out, however, that there are empirical data out there, and that we do not have to rely on guesswork. As any Member of Parliament will tell him, his or her constituency roll will show EU and Commonwealth citizens who can register but cannot vote for their Member of Parliament. Bizarrely, even though those people will surely come to their Member of Parliament for advice and assistance, they will not count when it comes to classifying the size of a parliamentary constituency. Surely that cannot be right.

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[Gavin Barwell]

I take that point, but my response would be that, rather than using figures that are guesstimates, we should use the actual electorate figures. We should also, however, take action across the country to replicate the work of the best local authorities to drive up representation.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Stephen Twigg]

rose—

[Austin Mitchell]

I rise to speak—briefly, I hope—in support of amendment 127. I gather from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that we are going to press it to the vote. I also support amendment 341, which I hope the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) is going to put to the vote—he must. I support amendment 38, too, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), which he is going to press to the vote.

All three amendments are an attempt to soften the rigours of the brutal redistribution proposed in clause 8. Indeed, it is a redistribution so brutal that it amounts to a gerrymander. The pretext is that the unequal seats work against the Tory party. We have heard that argument put at length by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). It is true that the inequality in seats helps the Labour party and works against the Tory party, to which I would reply, in the classic words of Demosthenes, “Ah, diddums. What a great shame”! Various factors are relevant, including turnout, people taken off the register, which happens all the time—[Interruption.] Ah diddums, rural seats and so forth. Another factor, which has not been dealt with in the debate so far, is that the population moves.

There was a similar bias in the 1950s, but then it favoured the Tory party because of rural seats and the rurality factor. I hope Members will remember—I certainly do; I am old enough to remember—that the Conservative party won power in 1951 and had a working majority, but Labour had secured over 500,000 votes more than the Conservatives. The system then worked in favour of the Conservatives, who at that time were not so adamant about the need for a redistribution and a massive upsetting of the whole system to make it fairer. Now they are adamant. That unfairness towards the Conservatives persisted until the 1960s. Now it has worked the other way because of the subsequent drift of large Labour majorities out to the suburbs, where the vote is more evenly distributed.

These amendments all provide an opportunity to modify the brutality of the redistribution that the Government propose, with Liberal support, to remedy this deficiency. Clause 8 is effectively creating what I would call a doomsday machine. It is rather like the monsters my grandchildren watch on television. They are called transformers—they are huge metal monsters that go out clumping all around the country. It is a kind of redistribution by Blitzkrieg! It is just like that when this has to be done so suddenly and in defiance of any community centre or local government boundaries.

[Chris Ruane]

Why does my hon. Friend think the Con-Dem alliance is in such haste?

[Austin Mitchell]

Well, it is quite simple. The alliance wants its redistribution completed before the election in 2015—it is going to determine the date in another piece of legislation—because it will favour the Conservative party. It hopes to reduce the number of Labour Members. We shall come later to the reduction in the size of the House, but it is another attempt in the same direction—intended to reduce the number of Labour Members and increase the number of Conservative Members. The alliance simply wants to give itself a doughty majority. AV is supposed to work for the Liberals and the redistribution is supposed to work for the Conservatives. That is the calculation behind it, which is why it has to be completed before the next election, so that it can hang on to power by gerrymandering the system in its favour.

This is going to be a redistribution by steamroller—not a reasonable redistribution in which we will have the power to put opposing points of view, to argue for a sense of community or a sense of locality or to put forward views about the crossing of county boundaries. We will not have a chance to put democratic and fair arguments to the redistribution committee in the way we have been accustomed to, and the way that has been institutionalised. The committee will simply plough on with its Blitzkrieg.

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[Mrs Laing]

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) has just given the game away. He has at last revealed what this part of the debate is really about: the convenience of Members of Parliament, and the desire to make sure that they are not unsettled. This House should not be making laws for the convenience of Members of Parliament, however; we should be making laws for the good of the people of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman has made many good points during the debate, and he has just made an excellent speech, albeit from his point of view—I disagree with him of course, but he always makes excellent speeches—but I am glad that he gave the game away at the end of his contribution.

While sitting through this lengthy debate, I have been wondering why so many Members have made illogical and inconsequential speeches. That is unusual for Members of this House—[Interruption]—especially those such as the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who is laughing, and who has engaged in many debates on these subjects over many years. Why is nobody talking about individual voter registration, even though it is an integral part of improving the registration process?

[Chris Ruane]

I have just mentioned individual registration. We all know what it is about: it is about driving a further 4.5 million people off the register to join the other 3.5 million, in order to keep the Conservatives in office for another generation.

[Mrs Laing]

It is not; on the contrary, in fact. The last Government, with the support of the then Conservative Opposition, introduced individual voter registration and this Government have speeded up the process.

I am not going to take up much of the Committee’s time as we have heard many speeches on these subjects tonight and I have had the good fortune of being able to make many interventions in other Members’ contributions. In counting the number of people who are represented by each Member of Parliament we should count on the basis of democracy and the workings of democracy, not on the basis of social work. [Interruption.] Well, we all have several roles as Members of Parliament, and one of our roles is the pastoral one of looking after the people who live in our constituencies regardless of whether they are registered to vote, of their nationality, and of where they live. We are all decent Members of Parliament, and if someone comes to us with a problem, it will be dealt with—or it certainly would be in my constituency surgeries. I am sure that that is the case for almost everybody here. I see assent from Labour Members. However, we must separate those two roles, and that is integral to the point that we are discussing.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) may have thousands of people in his constituency who are not voters—who are either not eligible or not registered to vote. He therefore possibly has more casework, but that can be dealt with by giving him greater resources to deal with it. The issue should not be dealt with by distorting the democratic process and the way in which the Chamber works.

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[Paul Blomfield]

The previous Labour Government did a great deal. Much of the responsibility for execution, of course, lies with the city council, which is run by the Liberal Democrats and it characterised itself by turning voters away from the polling station.

[Chris Ruane]

Talking of Liberal Democrat councils, is my hon. Friend aware of the previous Liberal leader of Islington council, who, when the Labour group asked for a registration drive before the election, said, “No, we’re not having that. That’s how we win elections”?

[Paul Blomfield]

I was not aware of that. I am grateful to have been informed and I am not at all surprised. As I said, in Sheffield Hallam, where there is only 4% under-registration, we begin to see the real nature of what lies behind the Bill.

I must disagree with the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing)—this is not just about those who are eligible to vote. Significant numbers of people who are not eligible to vote still need the support of their Member of Parliament. That should be taken account of when determining constituency size because we are there to provide a voice for all those in our constituency.

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[Paul Blomfield]

Amendment 125 takes the census as one source of information, but there are and have been fairly well-justified suggestions of gerrymandering based on the way in which the electoral register would be used were it applied in the December of any year.

[Chris Ruane]

On that point, electoral registration officers can calculate the eligible population in each ward in each of our constituencies. They have that information on databases such as the housing benefit and council tax databases, so it is available and could be produced to a high degree of accuracy.

[Paul Blomfield]

I accept that point and add that taking the electoral register in the December of any year in a constituency such as mine, with its turnover, would ensure that the numbers would be depressed. In the four months leading up to the general election, we added about 4,000 voters to the register in Sheffield Central. They were caught up in the excitement of the campaign that we were running, but those additions reflect the difficulty of using the December figure.

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[Simon Hughes]

If the hon. Lady had been present a few minutes ago, she would have heard that point made by one of her colleagues. I have heard it made before. [Hon. Members: “It is still true.”] I am making the point that for Labour to be critical of the fact that 3.5 million people are not registered but should be registered is entirely unjustified, because for 13 years Labour were in government. They could and should have done much more.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Simon Hughes]

No, I am not going to get into a big debate. I address my comments to my ministerial friends, and they know what I am going to say next. There is a duty on Government to do much more to ensure that people who should be registered are registered. In my constituency there is a turnover of about a quarter of the electorate every year, so registration is difficult.

I want to make publicly the point that I have made privately to Ministers and to the Deputy Prime Minister. My first proposition is that one of the things that I want us to do—the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), made this point when she was in government—is to work across parties and to put our heads together to think of all the ways in which we can increase registration. I hope the new Labour leader, his Front-Bench colleagues and the deputy leader will work with the Government and all other parties to make sure we—

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No. The hon. Gentleman has intervened often.

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[Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) spoke passionately and ended with words to the effect that this was all about equalising constituencies. There is no equalisation of constituencies. All our constituencies are different. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) would agree with me, I think, that his constituents who identify with Bermondsey do not identify with Deptford, and vice versa.

Even in London, we have distinct communities. We have people who hang together as a community and as a society. That is extraordinarily valuable. I want to examine for a moment who the people are whom the hon. Lady seemed to set aside as though they had no worth because, she said, they are not part of our democracy. Those are real people living in our communities, contributing to our communities. This is not a one-way street. It is not that we are here and they come as supplicants to us, to ask for favours. They are people in their own right, who contribute to our communities even when they do not vote and may not be registered. They are human beings living as part of our communities. We have to think very seriously about being dismissive of a significant proportion of our population.

The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) mentioned the Electoral Commission’s study when the Chamber was far less full, so I shall repeat some of his points. The investigation found that

“under-registration is notably higher than average among 17-24 year olds (56% not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic British residents (31%).”

It found also:

“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas”

and in areas where there are

“high levels of social deprivation.”

That is a representation of my constituency, which is vibrant, alive and contributing, but where there is huge under-registration.

Let me look at those different categories and how they have come to be under-registered. There has been much talk of functional illiteracy being a factor in the lack of registration, but I remind the Committee that many people in my community are entirely literate in their own language. They contribute and work, but often they are not able to function very well in English, which is not their first language. None the less, our local authority, a Labour local authority, has made enormous efforts to register people, but I shall refer again to those categories of people and to why efforts fail.

Many of my constituents are poor people. Members have spoken a lot about poverty tonight, but if someone is poor in my constituency and has the chance to work, they work. People do not lie around and take benefits when they have the option to work; they work. They do two, three and, occasionally, four little jobs on low wages, and by doing all those jobs they pile up enough to live on. However, they are never at home, including when I call to canvass them or to see whether they have any needs that I can represent, and they are not there even when a proactive council such as mine sends people out at all times of the day in order to try to find people at home. There are people who never, ever come into contact with those who would try to help them to register.

[Chris Ruane]

Does my right hon. Friend think that one way around that problem is to employ local people who are trusted in such communities to do the electoral registration there?

[Joan Ruddock]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and there have been attempts to undertake such work. My local authority has recruited well-known people in the community and efforts have been made at community events. We have many young people’s events and an elected young mayor in Lewisham, and all of that contributes to helping people understand that they should be registered and should take the opportunity to vote.

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[Joan Ruddock]

That is a matter for the Boundary Commission; I was not party to its deliberations.

I was talking about people who are not able to be at home, people whose first language is not English, and people who live in houses in multiple occupation. Every one of us who has a constituency where there are houses in multiple occupation will have seen properties in which there is a sea of mailed documents and leaflets on the floor and nobody picks them up. There are major problems in reaching people in such places, particularly those who are living in bad housing conditions. In my constituency, regrettably, we have many thousands waiting for social housing.

[Chris Ruane]

In my constituency, the ward of Rhyl West is the poorest ward in the whole of Wales, which has 1,900 wards, and it has 900 houses in multiple occupation. Yet Gareth Evans, the electoral registration officer in Denbighshire, was able to take that ward’s registration rate up from 2,400 to 3,600 electors by cross-referencing databases and door-knocking. Does my right hon. Friend think that that should be replicated across the country?

[Joan Ruddock]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a most valuable point. I have already paid tribute to my local authority. That job can be done, but because of all the factors that I have mentioned, we will not succeed in registering 100% of people in constituencies such as mine that are affected by the problems identified by the Electoral Commission. That is partly because the population of such areas is so mobile, with perhaps 10% of people moving every year. It will never be possible to equalise constituencies such as Lewisham, Deptford and Epping Forest.

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[Mark Tami]

The Parliamentary Secretary was asked a straightforward question earlier. If he believes in equalisation, why will two seats in Scotland be treated differently?

[Chris Ruane]

Answer that.

[Mr Heath]

I will happily answer—