Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. I should have said that the Bill implements these measures in Great Britain rather than in the United Kingdom. We have learned a great deal in Northern Ireland, for example on implementing a carry-forward provision to reduce the risk of a significant drop-off. Interestingly, the research that we commissioned from the Electoral Commission, which was published last year, demonstrated that although we in this country have had the rather complacent attitude that we did not really have a problem, under the individual registration system in Northern Ireland, the proportion of eligible voters registered to vote is about the same as it is in the rest of Great Britain. We therefore have a lot to learn.

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

rose—

[Mr Harper]

May I first finish responding to the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds)?

On the right hon. Gentleman’s second point about young people, I had an opportunity to visit Grosvenor grammar school in Belfast to see an example of what, in engaging with people individually, the Electoral Office does with young people in schools. The interesting thing, and another lesson for us, is that a larger proportion of 16 and 17-year-olds are registered to vote in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain. As well as making sure that we deal with the potential risks, we have an opportunity to do a better job in getting younger people and disabled people, for example, registered to vote.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

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[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. As she says, the single piece of information that suggests whether someone is on the electoral register is frequency of movement. We recognise that, and several of the steps that we are taking with stakeholders are intended to work out how we can better deal with it. I will set out later how we propose to fund this and ensure that the money reaches local authorities, and if the hon. Lady thinks that I still have not dealt with the issue, I will take another intervention from her.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am going to make some progress, and will perhaps take an intervention from him later. Otherwise I will not get through my speech, and many other Members wish to contribute to the debate.

It is clear that the current system of registration is unacceptably open to electoral fraud. There is widespread concern about that; indeed, a survey carried out at the end of last year found that 36% of people believe that it is a problem. If citizens do not have confidence in the integrity of our electoral register, they will not have confidence in the integrity of the outcome of elections. We need to tackle that. When we came into office, we did not think that the plans for which Labour had legislated, which involved a voluntary process initially running in parallel, were the best way to tackle the problem. We thought that it would lead to confusion and have a very significant cost. That is why we want to speed up the introduction of individual registration so that the register published after the 2015 annual canvass will consist entirely of entries that have been individually verified, with the sole exception of some of those in the armed forces.

The Electoral Commission supports that position. At the beginning of the month, Jenny Watson, chair of the commission, said, when commenting on alleged fraud in the recent London mayoral elections:

“The Electoral Commission wants to see our registration system tightened up and it’s good that the Government plans to introduce new laws to do this which will apply to any of us who want to vote by post before the 2015 General Election.”

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[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

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[Mr Harper]

We will carry out two sets of data-matching pilots. The first set, for which the orders have been laid before the House, although not yet debated and approved, involves the DWP specifically because it will pilot the pre-confirmation process. The second set, for which we have not yet laid the orders, will use other Departments. We have had conversations with private sector agencies. One problem is that there is some circularity in the process, because one way in which they construct their databases is by using the electoral register. It is therefore arguable how much information we would learn from them. However, we have had conversations with them and we will continue to do so.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Mr Betts]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

Go on then; I give way to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane)

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the Minister very much for giving way.

On the private sector’s knowledge of electoral registration, two and a half years ago I was informed by Experian that 6.5 million people were missing from the register. When I raised that with the Electoral Commission, it said that the figure was 3.5 million. Six months ago, the Electoral Commission said that, having done its research, the figure was 6 million. The private sector has excellent databases, which we should be utilising to maximise registration.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman has made that point before. As I said to the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), we are not closing off that option and we will continue to have conversations with those organisations.

Following the 2015 general election, there will be another full household canvass and all potential electors who appear—

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[Mr David]

With all due respect, I say to the Liberal Democrats that, yes, concessions have been made, but there is still a long, long way to go. As I hope the Liberal Democrats come to realise before the end of the passage of the Bill, some measures in it might well work against their interests. The advantage will be with the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats might pay a very high price for acquiescing in the policies of their Conservative masters.

What is the significance of 1 December 2015? It is when the next parliamentary boundary review takes place. As we should all be aware, under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, if, for whatever reasons, there is a decline in the number of electors in certain constituencies, the parliamentary boundaries must be redrawn. It would be most unfortunate for the Government to give the impression that they were seeking political advantage by introducing IER at the end of the transitional period, when the size of the electorate could be temporarily diminished. It could be that the new data-matching pilots will indicate that December 2015 is precisely the time when electoral numbers are likely to be at their lowest.

[Chris Ruane]

What reason have the Tory Government given for bringing forward IER by one year and putting back the next election to the latest possible date, which is May 2015? Is it happenstance or could it be for political advantage?

[Mr David]

I do not think it is mere coincidence. It is possible to look at the dates and come to certain conclusions. I only wish that the Liberal Democrats would do the same and recognise that there is a lot in what I say.

That concern has been identified by many others. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has raised it, as has the Electoral Reform Society, which pointed out that a depleted register could lead to the reduction of inner-city constituencies, while leaving

“thousands of…citizens who will not be accounted for or considered in many key decisions that affect their lives, yet will still look to MPs to serve them as local constituents.”

I ask the Government, therefore, to dispel any impression that their agenda is partisan. To do that, all they need to do is adopt a more reasonable time scale for the introduction of IER that goes beyond December 2015.

It is because the Government have so far been unable to acknowledge our concerns or act on our proposals that we have tabled our reasoned amendment. If the amendment is unsuccessful, we will oppose the Bill’s Second Reading. That is not a course of action that we want to take, but we feel it absolutely necessary to uphold the integrity of the electoral system while ensuring that our democratic system is built on firm foundations.

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[Mr Jackson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who has great experience in the House.

The Bill is absolutely right, in that its central aims are to tackle electoral fraud, improve the integrity of our electoral system, particularly the electoral register, and modernise the electoral registration system, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) says, is most important. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) was gracious in paying tribute to the Minister and the Department for engaging in an open and wide-ranging debate during the pre-legislative scrutiny and public consultation, and for producing the White Paper and a detailed, comprehensive Government response in February 2012. It is far from the truth that this is some kind of rushed, gerrymandering Bill. It has attracted a lot of support, including from organisations such as the Electoral Commission. There is consensus around the Bill.

The proposals in the Bill featured not only in the Conservative manifesto of May 2010 but in the coalition agreement, so we certainly have a mandate for carrying out this policy. If the hon. Member for Caerphilly were more generous of spirit, he would perhaps admit that the previous Government wanted to proceed in a similar way when they were in power. Reference has been made to the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 in that regard.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman answer a question that has so far remained unanswered? The 2009 Act was passed as a result of consensus across the Chamber, and its provisions were to start in 2015. Why is it so important to bring them back by one year? Why could we not have retained all-party consensus by keeping the date at 2015?

[Mr Jackson]

Because we see this as in the best interest of the body politic generally. There is a plethora of evidence to show that cumulative cases of electoral fraud—I will come on to discuss this issue later both for my own constituency and across the country—have grievously damaged the faith and trust people have in the electoral process. The Minister is quite right that we have all been complacent in assuming that we live in a society where transparency, openness and fairness exist above all in the electoral process. I did not think I would ever encounter a case in which a judge would describe a British electoral result—in this case, for Birmingham city council—as comparable to one of a banana republic, yet that happened in 2004 under the watch of the Government whom the hon. Member for Caerphilly supported.

Important parts of the Bill are uncontentious, but I will bring some concerns to the House’s attention later. Of course individual electoral registration has been broadly supported across the House over a number of years. Some elements, such as the review of polling places, are innocuous and will not be contentious, as I said.

On civil penalties, I mentioned earlier that we must be cognisant of the fact that some people are not interested in the political process. We cannot force people to register on the basis of a criminal sanction—it is not right to do so—if they genuinely do not feel part of the process. That is a function not of a political process, but of societal change over many years. International comparisons are important for understanding how to get people to register. Australia is an interesting example. The level of civic engagement in schools and colleges there and the amount of publicity given to financial education, for example, has led to school children and young people understanding the importance of being involved in the system. I think that is a much better way of proceeding than having criminal sanctions and a penalty. Our society is much changed.

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

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), because I totally disagree with everything that he has just said, so perhaps we can have a real debate about the amendment and the party political difference on the matter.

The Bill will improve the electoral register’s comprehensiveness and accuracy. It is long overdue. It is absurd that, in the 21st century, a person’s right to vote depends on the head of household filling in a form. Each individual member of our society should be responsible for registering themselves to vote and should have the vote that they deserve. I have never understood why the Labour party—it is in opposition now, but the situation was the same when it was in government—has been so reluctant for the last two Parliaments to go ahead with that obvious modernisation of our electoral administration system.

Labour Members now want that modernisation to be delayed. I understand their objection a little better having listened to the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras, but the arguments of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) simply do not hold water. The Government are not, as he said, rushing pell-mell. The proposals have been discussed in the Chamber and other places for seven years, and this Government have taken two years and two weeks to introduce the Bill. That is not “breakneck speed”.

The Opposition amendment is ridiculous. They state that

“the proposals would mean the young, the poor, ethnic minorities and disabled people would face an increased risk of being unregistered and thus excluded from a range of social and civic functions”.

I entirely take the point that measures must be in place to help people who are disabled or elderly, and there is a duty on local authorities to provide such help. The Government are as concerned as the previous one, and Government Back Benchers are as concerned as Opposition Back Benchers to ensure that people who are elderly or disabled get help to register to vote if they need it.

How many hon. Members as candidates in elections or as election managers knock on somebody’s door, find that they are not registered, get them a form and ensure that they register? How many of us knock on a door and find an elderly person who might find it difficult to get to the polling station and offer to arrange them a lift? All Members on both sides of the House do that. We sometimes help if we think the person might vote for our candidate rather than someone else’s, which is fair enough, but there is every likelihood that someone from all political parties will knock on that door. Somebody will help that person to get to the polling station or have a form sent to someone by the local authority to ensure they are registered to vote. We all do it because it is in our interests.

However, I am amazed that the Opposition say ethnic minorities will be less likely to register to vote under the Bill, because the opposite is the case. I am thinking particularly about women in certain ethnic minorities who have their right to vote, or indeed to participate in wider public life, restricted by a head of household who exercises the power of a head of household. In this Bill we are giving greater rights to women in those ethnic minorities.

My greatest concern is the idea that young people will not register to vote if their mother or father does not fill in the form for them. What absolute nonsense! I shall go further: if a young person cannot organise the filling in of a form that registers them to vote, they do not deserve the right to vote—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I thought that might be controversial, but I do not mind.

[Chris Ruane]

That argument smacks of the Conservative’s attitude towards the poor in general—the undeserving poor and the deserving poor, the undeserving voters and the deserving voters. In whose political interest is it? It is in the Tory party’s political interest to keep those poor voters off the register.

[Mrs Laing]

Not in my constituency, it is not, where a large majority of them vote Tory. I want them on the register. This is simply not a reasonable argument. If someone is responsible enough to exercise their right to vote to decide the Government of this country, or at any level of local government, they should be responsible enough to register to vote.

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[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I should like to speak in support of the reasoned amendment tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but before I make my points, I should like to comment on some of the issues that have been raised in the debate. I do not recognise the picture of electoral fraud being painted by some Members on the Government Benches. I have worked on elections for 30 years or more, and that is a world that I do not know. That is not to say that electoral fraud does not happen, and when it does, it should be tackled aggressively by the police and the authorities. The number of prosecutions is small, however, and it is perhaps stretching the truth to suggest it constitutes the general behaviour during elections.

I have sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said about heads of households, and about mums signing up for their families. We will lose that practice, which happens in a lot of places. Also, people already have the right to register individually; they do not have to register on a form filled in by the head of the household.

My final introductory comment relates to what the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) said. Thank goodness postal voting on a specific issue is not going to return. The first time I applied for a postal vote was when I was expecting my second child. Although my baby was due in the week of an election, because I was active politically, I still wanted to vote. What a palaver it was getting that postal vote, so thank goodness the Bill does not include postal vote provisions.

Let me proceed to my main arguments. I speak from my personal experience of elections and on the basis of talking to the people who run elections in Sunderland—my local authority, the electoral registration officer and the elections officers. To put Sunderland in context, it has a fairly static population, not one that churns very quickly. We also have a high percentage of postal votes, partly as a result of the postal vote experiment of 2004, I think, when we had all-out postal vote elections. Many people have retained the right to their postal votes because they like voting that way; they find it convenient. The key to any election is not just having an accurate electoral register, but making it as easy as possible for people to cast the vote to which they are entitled.

Sunderland delivers its counts very quickly—something of which I am proud—and this is based on organisation relating to the whole electoral process. Bill Crawford and Lindsay Dixon, who run our elections office, take great pride in the finest detail of their work. Efficient counts and efficient election days come from the compiling of the electoral register and the planning that goes into running elections.

I have moved to support individual voter registration in principle, albeit with some reservations, as I have outlined that there have been problems with accuracy and the completeness of the register in the past. That is why, when in government, Labour introduced the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. I welcome the Government’s moving of the annual canvass to 2014, which I think will be a help, but I still have some very serious concerns.

First, on the data-matching exercise, the accuracy of Department for Work and Pensions records is a problem. As an MP, I regularly get casework relating to that inaccuracy. Numbers are flagged to the wrong people. People are usually made aware that their national insurance records are flagged to the wrong person only when they apply for something like a maternity benefit or whatever. The first time they apply for something, the problem arises. Although we can easily get those problems sorted out as MPs, it does highlight the inaccuracy of DWP records. I have also experienced problems surrounding the recording of multiple births. The DWP is not that good, in my experience, at issuing the correct national insurance numbers. Sometimes people simply do not know their national insurance number. Issues about accuracy are evident.

One of the Department’s pilot schemes involved a ward in my constituency. Having discussed this with the people running the elections in Sunderland and compiling the electoral register, I found that only about half the people data-matched to DWP records. Given that I mentioned that Sunderland has a fairly static population, that is quite a worrying statistic. If we are talking only about half the people in my constituency, I suggest that the proportion might be significantly higher in a constituency with a higher churn. Another problem is that electoral registration records tend to be property-based, whereas DWP records tend to be name-based. Overall, the data-matching process is going to be time consuming and costly to administer. The Department needs to take note of that.

My second concern relates to postal and proxy votes during the transitional arrangements. The annual canvass will happen in 2014, when the data-matching exercise will be going on. My main concern relates to households in which people remain on the register. People who remain on the register because they are on the household and DWP records will automatically retain their postal votes if they have applied for indefinite ones. However, if authorities are satisfied that they live at those addresses because they have checked their own housing benefit or council tax records, those people will remain on the register but their indefinite postal votes will fall, and they will have to reapply. I think that some confusion will be caused when one member of a household retains a postal vote and another does not. Some of the charities that represent people with disabilities fear that such people may be disfranchised.

In my constituency, there is currently a mini-canvass in February. People are sent a letter telling them either that they are on the register or that they are not, and that they do or do not have postal votes. They are asked to respond to the letter for the purpose of accuracy, and very few do not do so; it receives a massive response. I think that that is a good model to follow and that adopting it would mop up some of the problems with postal votes, particularly in the early years of the transition. I hope that the Government will consider providing funds for it. The mini-canvass ensures that there are very few problems on election day, because if time has been taken to get the register and the postal vote records right, not many people turn up wanting to vote and finding that they are unable to do so.

My third concern relates to online registration. I have already mentioned problems involving national insurance numbers. Not everyone knows their national insurance number. We saw a demonstration last week, and it was clear that if people did not have their national insurance numbers, the system would stop. We raised the issue, and it is possible that it will be investigated.

[Chris Ruane]

I asked an outside computer expert at the demonstration what would happen when people did not have their national insurance numbers. I was told “We are working on that.” We know what has been said and what has happened in the past. Computer programs costing hundreds of millions of pounds have been put in place, and they have not worked. We need to get this one right.

[Julie Elliott]

I could not agree more. It is not that I am opposed to online registration—we must move with the times, and people do more and more things online—but getting it right is very important. I have read about secondary ID involving passports and driving licences, but we should bear in mind that not everyone has a passport or a driving licence.

The Government need to listen to the experts who have been involved in the pilots and who run elections and compile registers, because they are the people who really understand the details. The Government also need to ring-fence enough money. I welcomed what the Minister said about section 31 funding, but the provision of enough money is the key, particularly in the early years. The way in which the money will be distributed or bid for is not yet clear; that needs to be considered carefully and spelt out to us before the next stage of the process.

A serious look should be taken at the rules governing postal voting. As we all know, in the world of cuts upon cuts in which we are currently living, local authorities’ finances are very tight. My own authority has experienced and is still experiencing massive cuts. However, I think that the Government should put money into ensuring that the system works, because otherwise the results could be disastrous.

I think that the proposal to use the 2014 canvass for the next round of boundary reviews is a dangerous one with massive implications. It is possible that we will not end up with the best register that we have ever had at the first attempt: as everyone knows, when something is done for the first time there are teething problems. It is not the best way of ensuring democracy in this country, and I think that it is a very negative step.

We get things right in Sunderland because we are organised, and because we provide proper resources for elections and electoral registers. If we get the register right to start with, we can get the postal and proxy votes right, and if there are enough people doing the job on the ground, the elections themselves will be run properly.

I hope the Government listen to the concerns I have raised. I have been as un-party political as possible, because this is too important to get wrong. Members on both sides of the House have concerns, and this needs to be done properly.

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

It is a pleasure and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who has been a staunch campaigner on these issues for many years, ever since I informed him that his Bronglais ward had the worst registration rate in the whole of Wales, at just 56%.

I wish to touch on a number of issues. I have had a big interest in this subject for 10 years, and I have tabled about 300 parliamentary questions and spoken many times in Parliament on it. We all thought that there were 3 million to 3.5 million people missing off the register. Two or two and a half years ago, I had a meeting with people from Experian, who told me that the real figure was nearer 6 million to 6.5 million. I took that figure to the Electoral Commission, which said that it was not true. It then undertook its own research and, lo and behold, it said last November that 6 million to 6.5 million people were missing off the register—but they were not the same as Experian’s missing 6 million, so even more people may be missing off the register. I mentioned in an intervention that I think that the private sector has a role to play in helping us to improve the registers. It has the detail already and we should be listening to it.

The profiles of the missing 6 million people include, in the main, the poor, those living in social or council housing, those on the minimum wage, the unemployed, black and ethnic minority people and young people. At the moment, 6 million people fitting those profiles are off the register and had the changes gone ahead as originally proposed, the Electoral Commission—not Chris Ruane, Labour MP—said that that figure would have gone up to 16 million. We would have been left without a properly functioning democracy. I give credit to the Government for listening to many calls from Members on both sides of the House and from civic society, but the Electoral Commission has stated that the registration rates could go down as low as 65%.

I want to contrast the previous Labour Government’s attitude to constitutional issues with that of the Conservative and Liberal Government over the past two years right up until very recently. We never treated the issues as party political, but pursued them in the interests of democracy. In 2001, Labour instituted a rule that took people—often quite poor people—off the register if they failed to sign their electoral registration form for two years on the trot, as we wanted an accurate register. Millions disappeared, mainly Labour voters. We did not do that for party political reasons, as it worked against us.

In 1998, we proposed proportional representation for European elections. We did not have to do that, but we did because it was the right thing to do, and Labour suffered in Wales, going from four MEPs to one. We had a Scottish consensus on Scottish devolution that lasted for three or four years, and we introduced PR knowing that Labour would not get full control.

[Mr Harper]

Let me take the hon. Gentleman back to the subject of the European election system. He said that the previous Government always operated by consensus, so why did they feel the urge to ram that legislation through using the Parliament Acts?

[Chris Ruane]

It was the right thing to do. I personally did not think that that was the right thing to do, but my Government did and they overrode my voice from the Back Benches.

When PR for local government was introduced in Scotland, it worked against the Labour Government. Labour delivered individual electoral registration in 2009. Throughout our period in office, we operated consensually and for a better functioning democracy.

What happened under the previous Conservative Government? The poll tax was pursued as a means of pushing people off the register and Dame Shirley Porter undertook social cleansing in Westminster to secure party political advantage. This Government’s original proposals sent a shiver down my spine, much like that recently experienced by Ms Lagarde. The agreed date for individual electoral registration, on which there was consensus, was brought back from 2015 to 2014 and the date of the next election was put back to the last possible date of 2015. Either the Deputy Leader of the House or the Parliamentary Secretary can intervene at this point, as we still have not had a satisfactory answer on the reason for the decisions. Was it happenstance or accident, or was there a political agenda?

[Mr Harper]

It is very simple. We put through the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 because we thought that it was sensible and that the Prime Minister’s right to pick an election date at a time of his choosing to suit his party political convenience was wrong. We took that power away and that was a step forward.

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[Chris Ruane]

The Minister has given me half the answer, but why did the Government bring the agreed date of 2015 for IER forward to 2014?

The Tories have mainly acted on such issues with a party political advantage as the main thing that they want to pursue. The equalisation of seats should not have gone ahead with 6 million people missing from the register. I do not want to be too curmudgeonly, however.

[Mrs Laing]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument on party political advantage, but is he actually suggesting that someone who is likely to vote Labour is more likely to fail in their civic duty to register to vote than someone who is likely to vote Conservative?

[Chris Ruane]

I am saying that the Electoral Commission’s research into who has been left off the register shows that in the main they are unemployed or low paid; live in social or council housing; are black or ethnic minority people; or are young students. The hon. Lady can draw her own conclusions about which way they would vote, but I do not think they would vote Tory.

I want to get on to a more positive agenda and give those on the Front Bench some praise for what they have done. That have listened, to some degree, and there are four aspects that I shall highlight. I want also to praise the Labour Front-Bench team, the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), and my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), who has pursued the issue like a dog with a bone. We would not have had the concessions from the Government without his doggedness; I use that word guardedly.

Civic society has rallied on the issue. Two groups in particular answered the clarion call two years ago, when the proposals were announced—the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy. They have helped take the issue out to wider society, to civic society, and made people aware of it—the judiciary, the police, Operation Black Vote, Scope and other organisations. I pay tribute to all those and to the academics who provided us with research. The progress that has been made is good, as far as it goes. From being a lifestyle choice, which in my view was obscene, the right to register has become a civic duty. I thank Ministers for that.

The annual canvass, which was not in place previously, will be in place for 2014. That is progress. The fixed penalty notice is probably the biggest progress that we have had. Again, I thank the Front-Bench team for that. I hate to say it, but threats and fines work. The hon. Member for Ceredigion referred to Denbighshire county council’s electoral registration form. In the middle of that form, in big bold letters, is a message: “If you do not fill in this form, you are liable to a £1,000 fine.” People will be visited and told three times that they are liable to this fine. The local chief executive, Mohammed Mehmet, will write to the individual—I have the letters and the forms, if anybody wants a copy—saying, “My electoral registration officers have been to your household three times. You have refused to return the form. We are now turning this over to our legal department.” If standardisation is to come about—another aspect that I welcome—I urge the Front-Bench team to look at best practice in Denbighshire.

I am pleased with the carry-over from the old register to the general election in May 2015, but why could it not be carried over to 1 December, the freeze date for the next boundary review? It is only six months further down the line. Opposition Members feel that it is a boundary review stitch-up, done in the knowledge that the electoral registration rates will go down by 10% in that critical period. That will leave 10% of probably the poorest people in the country off the register. That could be avoided. The Minister could come to the Dispatch Box and say, “Right, we will carry it over an extra six months,” and he would have cross-party consensus on taking these matters forward.

I am concerned about downgrading the role of the Electoral Commission. I have been a fierce critic of the Electoral Commission over the years. The changes that Labour introduced in 2005-06 took too long to implement. We did not insist on electoral registration officers doing the job that they were being paid to do, but in the past year or so the Electoral Commission has been a star turn. It has highlighted what the impact would be if the original proposals had gone ahead, again saying that electoral registration rates would have gone down to 65%. The commission may have been punished for its effectiveness over the past year.

As the secondary legislation unfolds, a lot more political flack may be coming. We need an independent arbiter who can give a straight-down-the-line view. If we downgrade the role of the Electoral Commission, we are taking away a valuable element providing that independent view.

I understand the Government’s predicament on fixed penalty notices. They do not want to create a system whereby local authorities can go out and fire those notices left, right and centre and get lots of money for themselves, which would be wrong, but the local authorities that will spend the most money will often be the poorest in the country. There will be cuts to social services and education. They will be forced to decide whether to prioritise electoral registration, and canvassing is something they are required to do by law, knocking on the doors of non-responders three times, which is costly. Those local authorities need financing for that work. I ask for that to be considered so that some of the money from the Treasury can be given back to the authorities with the biggest work load.

We need the details of the secondary legislation to be published concurrently so that we can judge exactly what the impact will be. I am afraid that trust will not do on this one; we tried trust two years ago and got only an element of it back in the past couple of weeks.

I mentioned online registration in an intervention. I went to see a demonstration of it in the Jubilee Room, and when I asked what happens for those who do not have their number, it was like throwing a spanner in the works. I was told that no one had yet got on top of it. The Minister said that 5% of people will be unable to find their registration number or their national insurance number. What happens to the ethnic minorities who do not have a good understanding of the English language? What happens to people who are functionally illiterate? We will send them letters telling them to go here or there, apply for a form, then fill it in and put it online, but that will not happen. Again, it will tend to be the poorest in society who will be punished as a result.

We need precise details on how the £108 million of funding will be ring-fenced and spent. If it is allocated for registration, it should be spent on registration. We saw in the emergency Budget in June 2010 that the first thing the Government slashed was the participation fund for increasing registration, which was £2 million over three years. It was not a priority then, but I hope it will be in future.

The Government point to Labour and say that we did nothing for 13 years and had 6 million people off the register. There is a golden opportunity to change that, but the Minister said at the outset that after all is done and dusted and all these changes have been implemented they hope to have 6 million people—perhaps a different 6 million—still off the register. I do not think that that is good enough.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell) made guarded and thoughtful remarks, but I am concerned about the undertones of some Government Members’ speeches. To my knowledge, in the city of Sheffield, which is a large and multicultural city, only one person has ever been convicted of electoral fraud—fairly widespread electoral fraud—and he was a member of our white community and, indeed, a member of one of the coalition parties.

[Chris Ruane]

Which one?

[Paul Blomfield]

I will tell you later.

I want to express my concern about how this Bill will profoundly undermine our democracy by reference to two groups in my constituency, the first of which is those in urban areas. Let me compare my constituency with that of my political neighbour, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). My constituency is at the heart of Sheffield. It is an inner-city, multicultural area with large council estates, two universities, and a high level of electoral turnover. As a result, 17% of households already have nobody on the electoral register. The Deputy Prime Minister’s constituency consists of our leafy suburbs; it is monocultural with large areas of comfortable owner-occupation, a stable population, and only 4% of households with nobody on the register. There is therefore already a huge disparity between the number of people we represent and the number of registered voters. Assuming, on the basis of current boundaries, that we both have an average of 74,000 registered voters, the Deputy Prime Minister is representing an adult population of about 77,000 while I am representing about 89,000 people.

That situation will be exacerbated in 2020 if the 2015 boundary review is based on the register that many people fear. If we do have 60% registration levels, a redrawn Sheffield Central after the 2015 boundary review will have an adult population of up to 123,000—some 50% more than in Sheffield, Hallam. I recognise that the level may not be 60%, but we should consider seriously that significant imbalance in a depleted inner-city constituency. It is certainly not democratic and certainly not right.

Many of the people who will be excluded from the register are precisely those who form a huge proportion of our casework, and their voice in this Parliament will be reduced. Together with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, the Bill is leading us towards a US-style democracy that excludes the disadvantaged and disengaged at election times and instead focuses on the needs of the more privileged, thereby poisoning our politics. The Deputy Prime Minister has rather grandly compared his ambitions for our democracy with those of the Great Reform Act of 1832. [Interruption.] I understand the reason for the laughter. The Great Reform Act increased representation for our cities, whereas this measure, together with the boundary review and the other reforms, will reduce the voice of our cities.

The other issue I want to talk about is young people, particularly students. Not all students are young, but the vast majority are, and will increasingly be so as a result of this Government’s policies, with reports this week revealing a drop in the number of mature students. Many of those young people are worryingly disillusioned with democratic politics. The Liberal Democrats’ broken pledge on tuition fees has not only damaged their party but damaged the trust in politics of a whole generation of young people. When I talk to students on the doorstep, they are clear that that experience of raised expectations and broken hope has led them to not want to participate in the system.

Both Sheffield’s great universities are in my constituency and 31,800 students live in it. Some of them live there for 31 weeks a year and many for 52. It is their main place of residence and they contribute to the economy and life of the city. They have a right to have their voice heard in elections.

The university of Sheffield, in common with many universities across the country, has a system of block registration for all eligible students in university accommodation. That will end with this Bill. I assume that the Government do not think that our universities are guilty of electoral fraud, so why is there a need to outlaw block registration?

The students union finance officer, Harry Horton, explained the impact to me:

“When students first arrive at University and live in halls, amongst all the other things that are going on, registering to vote often isn’t a priority and it is comforting to know that it’s often done automatically. If this is changed then it would become another form to fill in during the whirlwind first few weeks away from home and some students, particularly those not engaged in democracy, will not be registered”.

Crucially, students will be particularly under-registered in the first term of each academic year. The students unions of both the universities in my constituency run vigorous electoral registration campaigns in the run-up to elections—in February, March and April—and those campaigns work.

The Bill will effectively exclude tens of thousands of students—my constituents—from the electoral roll in December 2015, and therefore from consideration when the boundaries are redrawn, denying them an effective voice.