Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Wayne David]

The hon. Gentleman pre-empts my next point. That is precisely what I want to refer to.

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

On the subject of a joint Liberal Democrat and Conservative emblem, could a blue duck—is it a duck or a dove that the Liberal Democrats have?—or a yellow oak tree be an amalgam of the emblems of the two parties?

[Wayne David]

I dread to think what it could be.

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[John Hemming]

I did provide that information to the police in 2004, and they had an operation called Operation Gripe, in which they basically did nothing. We have now moved on. We are eight years down the track. I do not think that it would be reasonable to prosecute people for things they did eight years ago. Let me quote again from the judgment:

“The reaction of the police can be best summed up by drawing attention to the code name they gave to complaints of malpractice—Operation Gripe. This indicated better than anything else their view that the whole business was a complete waste of time and that Mr Hemming and the other complainants were a tiresome nuisance.”

I gave all the evidence to the police, who piled it in a box, called it Operation Gripe and did nothing. At the same time, we have to be realistic. We have moved on eight years and I am not going to spend all my time trying to get a particular woman prosecuted for handing poll cards to the Labour party. What I said to the returning officer, the chief executive of the council, was that I wanted her to stop doing it, not get her imprisoned. There are questions about the objectives. My objective in the campaigning I have done on election fraud over a number of years is to stop it. To do that, we must have systems to monitor and detect things. That is where these particular probing amendments come in. They would give the Government a facility to make changes. I happen to think that the proposal for video recording in the polling station would be one of the best solutions.

[Chris Ruane]

What estimate has the hon. Gentleman made of the cost of kitting out every polling station in the UK with such video evidence?

[John Hemming]

What value does the hon. Gentleman place on integrity in electoral processes? That is the real question. One of these new video camera thingies, such as a mobile phone, would cost about £100 per polling station, and if we do not necessarily introduce them throughout the country, the question is, what value do we place on integrity in election processes? To me, the integrity of an election is absolutely critical.

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about integrity, but within that, and in hard times, we have to weigh two things in the balance: integrity and cost. So what assessment has he made of the incidence of such electoral fraud—personation or whatever? Would it be worth paying out £100 for every polling station in the UK, or would some of that money be better spent on installing disabled access, which is a far bigger problem?

[John Hemming]

Somewhere in the judgment, Members will find that I made about 50 complaints to the police in 2004 in Birmingham. As I have said, things have moved on, and some progress has been made on dealing with election fraud.

One issue was the large amount of postal vote fraud, and we proved that a small number of people had forged all the witness statements, but since then witness statements have been abolished so we can no longer prove whether any are forged. So changes have been made, but not all have necessarily been good changes.

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman says that things have moved on in eight years. Does he have the statistics for the number of cases of electoral fraud and personation last year and this year? Is it a current problem, or would we be spending £100 on every polling station to resolve problems that existed eight years ago but do not exist today?

[John Hemming]

Paragraph 717 of Richard Mawrey’s judgment states:

“The systems to deal with fraud are not working well. They are not working badly. The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been.”

In paragraph 714, which I did not read out earlier, Mawrey states:

“In this judgment I have set out at length what has clearly been shown to be the weakness of the current law relating to postal votes. As some parts of this judgment may be seen as critical of the Government, I wish to make it clear that the responsibility for the present unsatisfactory situation must be shared. All political parties welcomed and supported postal voting on demand. Until very recently, none has treated electoral fraud as representing a problem. Apart from the Electoral Commission, whose role I have described above, the only voices raised against the laxity of the system have been in the media, in particular The Times newspaper, and the tendency of politicians of all Parties has been to dismiss these warnings as scaremongering.”

So there we go: personation is still going on.

In South Yardley ward this year, for instance, we put in a little bit of effort after the election and uncovered personation, but one difficulty is that when people are asked, “Did you vote?” they all tend to say yes—whether they did or not. There is a record of people who voted in 2012 but not in 2011, and when they are asked, “Do you remember whether you voted in 2011 or 2012?” they tend to say, “We voted both times,” when in fact we know that they did not vote in 2011.

We did, however, find a small number of personated votes in South Yardley ward—not enough to affect the result, but the point is that we found some. There are difficulties in dealing with things retrospectively, however, and that brings us to the point about new clause 1, which is about facilitating change. Emotionally, I like what some democracies have, which is orange or purple dye on the finger.

[John Hemming]

First, I do not think that that is true; and, secondly, the new clause is not necessarily the best way to deal with the issue, because it is an important one that needs consideration in primary legislation. Experiments—pilot schemes—might be undertaken to see how the proposal worked in certain areas, but it is an important issue that in primary legislation would attract far more Members than are currently in the Chamber to look at it. So we cannot say now what the exact solution would be, but at the moment Richard Mawrey is still right: there is no system for controlling personation.

A voter does not need their polling card, so they can turn up and say, “My name is X, of this address, please give me a ballot paper,” and the officials are under a duty to do so. Interestingly, during the 2010 general election I had in Birmingham observers from Kenya and Bangladesh, and, after I took them round and showed them how it all worked, they were quite surprised at how easy it was to defraud the system.

To return to the point I was about to make before the previous intervention—that is no criticism of the intervention—I am emotionally attracted to the practice in some countries of putting purple dye on a finger.

[Chris Ruane]

If we were to adopt the hon. Gentleman’s policy of putting an extra 60,000 CCTV cameras in polling stations throughout the country, how would that fit with his party’s view that there are too many such cameras already? An extra 60,000? Surely that would be Big Brother.

[John Hemming]

The question we have to ask is whether the use of something is proportionate, because in my constituency I supported the use of closed circuit television cameras, for instance, in the Yew Tree shopping centre, where they provide a useful function in an area with a history of crime. Sadly, there has been a history of crime in certain polling stations too, and, although I am not saying that we should put cameras all over the place, I think there is an argument for them as an option.

[Chris Ruane]

What criteria would the hon. Gentleman use for placing those—[Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) sniggers, but this is a serious issue. What criteria would the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) use for placing those extra 60,000 CCTV cameras across the nation? Would he do so if there had been previous electoral fraud or personation in an area, or if a certain socio-economic group or ethnic group had been involved? If he had a plan of the UK, where would he plonk those cameras?

[John Hemming]

Any decision would be better driven by the requests of the political parties. If they were willing to fund the measure so that it did not affect the deficit, they could place a camera to record what was going on and make sure that people were not being intimidated in the polling station.

There have been serious problems with people being bullied by their families in what is supposed to be a secret ballot. That is not supposed to happen, but it happens at the polling station as well.

[Chris Ruane]

Would political parties decide where the cameras went throughout the nation? If there were 60,000 of them, would there be 20,000 for Labour, 20,000 for the Tories and 20,000 for the Lib Dems, or would there be some kind of proportional representation for the allocation of CCTV cameras? Will the hon. Gentleman clarify that point?

[John Hemming]

One point about the new clause is that it does not try to be explicit about how we might deal with a specific problem; it would allow a discussion to take place. I am very pleased to have the hon. Gentleman’s interventions, however, as we look creatively at how we can deal with an issue to which, effectively, a blind eye has been turned for more than a century. When political parties had larger memberships it was easier to arrange polling agents all over the place; it has become harder as political party activity and social capital has gone down. So the hon. Gentleman might make that proposal, but what is important is that something should happen.

[Chris Ruane]

I was not making that proposal; I was asking the hon. Gentleman whether he agreed with it and was proposing it.

[John Hemming]

I am proposing, believe it or not, new clause 1, which would facilitate secondary legislation to deal with the matter. I accept the point that the issue is so important that it should be dealt with in primary legislation, but it would be nice to see the Electoral Commission showing some interest in pilot schemes to deal with these issues. Personation is well known in many areas of the country, and the noble Lord Greaves has highlighted cases in his area.

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We come back to the question of the secret ballot. One of my concerns about the postal voting system is that it is quite easy for people to be intimidated into voting in a particular way because the circumstances in which the ballots are cast are not controlled. In Norway, for instance, there are controlled circumstances for absentee ballots. That is important. In Birmingham, people have gone en masse into a polling station and been pressurised by family members about how to cast their secret ballot. In my view, each individual family member has a right to cast their secret ballot in whichever way they wish. We have had serious problems, with the police being called to polling stations because of the frantic things going on. Again, I am going back to 2004, but it is a continuing problem. One of the difficulties in dealing with electoral fraud is that unless one looks for it one does not find it. The challenge on election day is whether to spend time trying to get the vote out or find out what is going on.

[Chris Ruane]

In a recent parliamentary question, I asked how many successful prosecutions of electoral fraud there are every year, and the answer came back, one or two, but 36% of the British public think that the situation is worse than that. Part of the reason for that disparity could be that MPs and Ministers stand up in the Chamber and on the news and say that electoral fraud is a terrible problem, but really it is not and there are very few cases. Yet the whole gist of the Bill—

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

In fairness, Mr Hemming, you have taken a lot of interventions, and we have to deal with other new clauses after this. You have already been speaking for 30 minutes, and I think you are in danger of being drawn into something you do not want to be drawn into. It may be helpful if you are not drawn into it, and I am sure that you are now coming to the end of your speech.

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[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman says that, but what is to prevent someone from shifting the camera so that it covers the voting booths? My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd also made a good point about cost. I think that many electors would find it intimidating to be filmed while they were performing their democratic right. I therefore think that this is a very strange suggestion from the Liberal Democrats. They rail against the Big Brother state a lot, but this would be taking the Big Brother state to a huge and strange conclusion.

I also find it strange that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is in favour of people marking their fingers. Again, I am not sure that that would go down well in my constituency.

[Chris Ruane]

Stick it on the end of their noses!

[Mr Jones]

I am—

[Mr Jones]

It might have been only a suggestion but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, why not stick the ink on people’s noses? Why not brand people? I am sorry, but that is not the way in which the electoral system operates in this country.

[Chris Ruane]

For the record, I want my hon. Friend and the rest of the Committee to know that that was a joke. I was not honestly suggesting that we put ink on the end of people’s noses.

[Mr Jones]

Having known my hon. Friend for many years, I know his sense of humour and will take his comment in that spirit. I certainly would not support electors having to have their fingers, noses or any other part of their anatomy dipped to show that they had voted.

I think that robust training for polling clerks is important. The safeguards are already there. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spoke about police officers at polling stations. That is a good idea where there are problems. If there are problems in certain wards, as hon. Members think there are, the Bill allows for community support officers to take that role. That is a good move because it will free up police resources. The mechanisms are there to ensure that the ballot is run fairly.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made the accusation that somebody was giving out polling cards to the Labour party. His speech was interesting in that he said that the problem affects all parties, but did not name one case that involved his party, when we know that the Liberal Democrats have been at this on an industrial scale in parts of the country. If he has evidence of polling cards being given out, he should report it. The only problem comes if he bombards the police with 50-odd minor complaints. In that case, even I would consider him an irritant.

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[Chris Ruane]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to my earlier intervention. That research is already in place. I referred to a parliamentary answer from a few weeks ago, which stated that there are one or two cases a year. We need to get this problem into perspective.

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[Wayne David]

Yes, that is a real concern. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was present when I referred to my own mother of 86. She ticked the box and assumed she would have a postal vote for the rest of her life. She will be surprised if she does not get through the data-matching exercise and finds she has to fill in a complicated form to be able to exercise the vote she thought she always had.

Those are our two real concerns, which loomed large in our Committee debate. We have other concerns as well. The role of the Electoral Commission has been referred to many times by a number of Members in debating different clauses and amendments. We think that the Electoral Commission should play a pivotal role in achieving the move towards individual electoral registration. We are concerned that the Government as a whole seem intent on undermining and degrading the Electoral Commission’s role.

We are also concerned about the lack of ring-fencing of moneys for electoral registration officers—

[Chris Ruane]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to ring-fencing, I would like to say that the Electoral Commission has been pivotal over the past year or so in putting the case for the proper introduction of electoral registration. Does he think that that has upset the Government and explains why they want to reduce its role, as the Electoral Commission has come up with the facts and figures and supported the arguments of the civic societies and, indeed, my hon. Friend’s position as shadow Minister?

[Wayne David]

I cannot, of course, speak for the Government, and unfortunately I cannot read the Government’s mind, but I believe that there is some concern in Government circles about the role of the Electoral Commission. We strongly believe that the whole electoral process needs to be firmly depoliticised—that it needs to be outside and above the short-term interests of party politics—and we think that the Electoral Commission is the key organisation that can ensure that that happens. We therefore think it important for the commission’s role to be defended and enhanced whenever possible.

I was going to say something about the ring-fencing of resources. The chief executive of the association of electoral registration officers, whose views I have quoted previously, says that there should be a firm demarcation and ring-fencing of what resources are available, so that EROs know exactly where they stand when it comes to the resources they need to introduce a new system. It is not just a question of ensuring that the right systems are in place; it is also a question of ensuring that EROs themselves are trained and retrained, and are competent to make the system work effectively. We fear that the money may not be sufficient, and it certainly is not ring-fenced.

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[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way yet again. About five years ago, when Labour was in office, I asked the Government to specify the amount spent per elector in each local authority area. The figure for England was not available, but I managed to obtain the figure for Wales from the Welsh Government, and lo and behold I found that the more a local authority spent on registration the greater the registration rates. I think that funding is crucial to proper implementation, and that ring-fencing the funding is crucial to the actual spending of it.

[Wayne David]

My hon. Friend makes his point forcefully and clearly. I pay tribute to him for the work that he has done locally and among his colleagues here in Parliament in raising awareness of an issue that is central to our democratic process. We have all come round to his point of view that it is a vital issue, but he was the trailblazer, and I want to record our particular and general thanks, as a House, for his efforts.

Let me list, very briefly, a number of other matters that concern us. In its present form, the Bill gives Ministers the power to cancel the annual canvass at any time. The Government’s reasoning is based on the idea that an annual canvass will not be required as the register becomes more complete and accurate. We believe that, although a Minister might push that through Parliament, it gives Ministers far too much power to intervene in a crucial aspect of the electoral registration process. Removing annual canvasses risks causing a marked deterioration in the quality of the electoral roll.

If we are fortunate enough to move eventually—as I think it may well be, rather than straight away—towards an electoral register that is pretty complete, we need to ensure that it remains complete. That is why it is so important that we do not rest on our laurels but ensure that the annual canvass is in place, that as many people as possible are on the register, and that they stay there.

On the first day of the Committee stage, the Minister made great play of the publication of secondary legislation. He told us that some had been placed in the Library before the Committee stage had begun. Well, that was partly true. I went to the Library and found that some secondary legislation in draft form had been placed there minutes before the beginning of the debate, so that it had not been possible to have sight of it beforehand. There were only two pieces of draft legislation there anyway, both of which refer to verification. One addresses what alternative evidence might be required if an individual were unable to come forward with a national insurance number or a date of birth. The Government suggest that there should be a list of alternative documents. The first list mentions a utility or landline phone bill, a Post Office, bank or building society statement, a debit or credit card statement, and a mortgage statement. The individual will be asked to provide two or more documents from that list. It is perfectly possible that an individual will be unable to provide two such documents, however. As we all know, ever fewer people are using landline telephones, so they would not be able to produce that document—people increasingly rely solely on mobile phones. They may not have a bank account, or own a house either, so they will not have a mortgage statement, and they might not have a Post Office account. Such a person would have a moral right to claim they ought to be on the register even though they were unable to fulfil the criteria the Government have asked of them.

In respect of the second list, it is stated that:

“Proof of name and date of birth will also need to be provided. Currently our view is that this will involve one document from the list below”.

That list consists of Commonwealth or EU passport, Commonwealth or EU identity card, and a British passport. Again, it is perfectly possible that a British citizen might not have a passport. Therefore, yet again, the Government are being too prescriptive and are not allowing people to exercise their democratic right to be on the electoral register. I have concerns about the secondary legislation, therefore.

It is a pity that the constitutional affairs Minister, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), has just left the Chamber, because I was hoping he would stay to hear about my next area of concern; I hope he returns before we vote. It is unfortunate that, despite his earlier utterances, he said that in his view, “Secondary legislation isn’t that important because we’re considering primary legislation here.” A key point we have been making throughout this entire debate is that this area of legislation is highly dependent on the fine detail of secondary legislation, as the Electoral Commission has said on numerous occasions. Therefore, the secondary legislation should have been produced in full for proper consideration, so we could have had comprehensive democratic scrutiny of what has been suggested. It is a great shame that the Government have not done that, despite our repeated requests over many months.

I welcome the fact that the legislation is to include a civil penalty, but the Government have not come forward with details about how much that civil penalty might be. We have moved forward slightly, as I was told I was not far wide of the mark when I referred to parking fines, but no specific details have been given.

We had an important debate about university accommodation and sheltered accommodation in particular. We are worried that multi-occupancy buildings such as halls of residence present a particular challenge that is not effectively met by the Government’s plan for individual electoral registration. The National Union of Students, among others, has expressed concern about the drop in electoral registration levels in university halls of residence. We share those concerns, and the Government have not come forward with any proposals that have convinced us that this potential problem will be effectively tackled.

Our very last debate was about queues at polling stations. My final disappointment is that, despite a cross-party consensus on the Floor of the House uniting, dare I say it, all reasonable people, the Government were unable to offer any convincing argument about why they did not accept the reasonable suggestion to ensure that all people could vote in general elections. I find that very disappointing.

As I have said time and again, we welcome individual electoral registration, as we legislated for it and we are convinced it is a sound principle, but we are concerned that the Government have not moved beyond their initial concessions and have not responded to the concerns that hon. Members have expressed in Committee. Therefore, I feel that we have no alternative but to vote against Third Reading. We believe that completeness and accuracy are important concepts, and we certainly support them, but the Government have not done anything near enough to make them into meaningful reality. The Bill is flawed and therefore it is unable to command our support this evening.

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[Chris Ruane]

It is a pleasure to speak on Third Reading—the final part of this long debate. My interest in these matters goes back not just over recent years but over the past 10 years.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) mentioned that there was a feeling of conspiracy on the Opposition Benches and he is right. There are just reasons for that because there was a settled consensus in 2009 that this legislation would be introduced with the support of both sides of the House by 2015. During that six-year period there was to be an opportunity to raise electoral registration levels to their maximum so that we could have a full analysis of the drop and get people back on the register. It was all agreed and cut and dried after many years of debate that the date would be 2015, but the first act of the coalition was to bring that consensual date forward by a year. That might have been happenstance or coincidence, or it might have been that it would benefit them.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Like my hon. Friend, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but one does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to look at the facts and see where this change and the redrawing of the boundaries came from. The Conservative party has learned from the United States, where the American Legislative Exchange Council, which backed and funded the Atlantic Bridge scheme in which senior Government members were involved, did exactly the same thing to make it more difficult for people to vote in local elections.

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. It was my hon. Friend himself who put me on to relevant websites. There are specific examples across the whole of the United States, and lo and behold they happen in Republican states. They call it voter frustration or voter suppression. There are examples of the poor and the black being kept off the register going back to the 1950s.

There is a feeling of conspiracy on the Opposition Benches because the date has been brought forward by one year. As I said, it might have been happenstance or coincidence, but I think it was a deliberate attempt to gain maximum political advantage first for the 2015 election and secondly for the redrawing of the freeze date for the next Boundary Commission in December 2015. There was particular concern on the Opposition Benches, and, I hope, on the Government Benches as well—I know that some senior Liberal Democrats were concerned—when the Electoral Commission said that the number of current unregistered voters was 6 million, not 3 million. I informed the House that I had told the Electoral Commission that two years previously and that it had said, “No.” Then it did the research and said, “Yes, you are right—it is 6 million but it is a different 6 million” from the figures I got from Experian. When it predicted that that 6 million would go to 16 million unregistered voters, we were at risk of becoming like a banana republic, with 40% of our electorate being off the register.

[Angela Smith]

To go back to my hon. Friend’s previous point, does he share my surprise—astonishment, actually—that Government Front Benchers have never managed to come up with a decent reason why the carry-over register cannot be used for the boundary review in 2015?

[Chris Ruane]

I will come on to that point when I conclude my speech, but I share my hon. Friend’s concern.

There was a lack of co-operation at the start of this process. The Government were sure that they were absolutely right and that the independent Electoral Commission’s figures were nonsense. They initially dismissed the concerns of civic society, including Unlock Democracy, the Electoral Reform Society and Age Concern.

We can compare the Government’s approach with Labour’s attitude on the constitutional changes that we made during our 13 years in government. People may say that we did not do enough to get those who were unregistered back on the register. I would agree with them entirely, because I was knocking on Ministers’ doors—and Prime Ministers’ doors—to say that there was a problem, but it was not properly addressed. However, Labour cannot be accused of using those changes for party political advantage.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Given that the hon. Gentleman raises that point, I refer him to the Government of Wales Act 2006, because there was not much cross-party support for the reforms that were led by the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain).

[Chris Ruane]

Let me set out a list of the constitutional changes that Labour implemented and the way in which we approached them. We changed the position in 2001 so that if someone did not put their name down for two years on the trot, they were taken off the register. That was the cause of the first big drop. Some 1 million to 2 million people came off the register as a result of the Labour Government’s action, and they were our voters. I thought it was daft, but we did it, even though it went against us.

In Scotland, a consensus was in place five years prior to devolution, meaning that everything had been squared with all sections of society. We introduced proportional representation for European elections when we did not need to, and we went from four Labour MEPs in Wales down to one.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It was a mistake.

[Chris Ruane]

Politically, they were all mistakes, but constitutionally it may have been the right thing to do.

When PR for local government was introduced in Scotland, Labour lost its natural base. Had we not introduced the change, we could have been in control of local government in Scotland. We also introduced devolution for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In 1997, we had a huge majority of 180, so we could have railroaded those proposals through and used first past the post for the devolved Administrations, but instead we used proportional representation. All Labour’s constitutional changes were neither party political nor politicised, and that is the big difference compared with this Government’s constitutional changes. The Deputy Prime Minister said that his proposals were the biggest constitutional change since 1832, and House of Lords reform is probably the biggest constitutional change since Magna Carta or 1066, but they are all being rushed through for party political advantage. A Government who use party political advantage on constitutional measures set a dangerous precedent because the party that comes in after them might do exactly the same thing, so it becomes a zero-sum game. Such measures should be taken forward with party political consensus.

I give some credit to the Government—this is the nice part of my speech, although there will be a sting in the tail—because, despite their initial position of intransigence, their Ministers then listened. That was only because the Opposition’s excellent Front-Bench team took the issues out to wider society, such as the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy and Age Concern. Those organisations held meetings in the House of Commons, took evidence and contacted the Government. The Electoral Commission, the independent monitoring voice, had massive concerns about the proposals. I also pay tribute to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee under its excellent Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), which took evidence and produced a consensual report containing strong recommendations. Our Front-Bench team has shown strong leadership throughout the process.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned Denbighshire county council, and while I am giving out plaudits, I pay tribute to the council and its electoral registration officer, Gareth Evans, for increasing elector registrations in Vale of Clwyd from 47,000 to 57,000 over five years. I pay tribute also to the leadership of the chief executive, Mohammed Mehmet, who was the one who issued the letters to the non-responders, saying that if they did not fill in their electoral registration form, he would turn them over to the county council’s solicitors and they would be fined £1,000. That had a big impact and increased registration. Even in the Rhyl West ward, one of the poorest wards in the whole country, with 900 houses in multiple occupation, registration increased from 2,500 to 3,500 electors.

Now for the sting in the tail. I am pleased with the concessions made so far, but there are two outstanding concessions that we want. If the Minister were to say that he was prepared to listen to us on this, we may not vote against Third Reading. The first concession that we seek is on the next boundary date—2015. There needs to be a carry-over from the old register to the new register. The second is a carry-over for postal ballots. There can be no reason whatever for not accepting this, except party political advantage. I warn the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition to be very wary. The advantage will be for the Conservatives, and it will come up and bite the Liberal Democrats from behind in the inner cities, where they have some presence, and in the south-west, if they do not sort the issue out.

The House of Lords Reform Bill was printed today. It states that the freeze date for that election will be December 2011, so there will still be 6 million people missing from the register. Remember, those who are elected—the new Lords or senators or whatever they are—will be elected for a 15-year period, so if those 6 million people cannot participate in the first vote, they will have to wait about 18 years before they can have any influence on who represents them in the other place.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On electoral registration and issues to do with election, there has always been a degree of consensus in the House, which has ensured that it is not a political issue and that there is cross-party support for any changes that are introduced. But on the Bill and the boundary changes, we have seen a politicisation of the arguments.

We do not have to look very far to see where that came from. Individuals in the Conservative party were determined to use this Bill and the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill to gain political advantage. They learned that from the United States, where the American Legislative Exchange Council has been trumpeting these changes, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) said, have made it more difficult for other people to register to vote or actually to vote in elections. That is exactly where the policy came from. What was the connection? The Atlantic Bridge, of which senior members of the Government were members, was supported and paid for by that organisation, which is sponsored mainly by wealthy right-wing neo-cons in the United States.

Has the Bill been improved? Yes, it has, because of the outrage that has been generated. I do not include in what I have just said the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). He is increasingly becoming the Minister for dealing with sticky sticks. He is obviously going to—

[Chris Ruane]

Did my hon. Friend really mean sticky sticks?

[Mr Jones]

I certainly did. I am far too polite to suggest anything other of the Minister. He is a fine gentleman. He dealt with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, he has had this Bill to deal with and he has Lords reform to deal with. I look forward to the long debates that we will have on that. Overall, the hon. Gentleman has tried to do the right thing.

Has the Bill been improved, or have the most radical and extreme parts of it been expunged through the process of pre-legislative scrutiny and Committee? Yes. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd, I pay tribute to the Select Committee for the work that it has done, to the various outside bodies, such as Unlock Democracy and the Electoral Reform Society, and to the Electoral Commission, which focused on the fact that if the Bill had remained in its original format it could have changed democracy in this country. The idea of being able to opt out of the register was clearly designed to make things harder and push down the register in certain areas. Just by chance they are the inner-city seats that are mainly represented by the Labour party.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend refers to the fact that if the Bill had gone through in its original form it would have damaged democracy. Does he agree that we could have been looking at a British coup?

[Mr Jones]

Yes, and that is what is sad about what the Bill has done. When any legislation to do with elections or boundaries came before the House it was always consensual. This has been highly political, as the opt-out clearly was.

The Liberal Democrats’ position is very strange. As I said the other day, it is the first time I have seen turkeys voting for Christmas. They are doing it yet again on this Bill. They think that they will get some advantage out of it, but I just do not see that at all.

I am still concerned about how the Government will deal with the penalty. If it is a derisory amount, will it be effective? I do not think that it will be. I wait for the Government to come forward with that. The measures were clearly designed to hamper registration and make it difficult for people to register to vote. As democrats, we should be encouraging people not only to vote, but also to get on the electoral register. As I said on Monday, the important thing is not only to get people on the register, but for it to be accurate.

A lot of things have changed since the last general election when the Liberal Democrats were in opposition, but I want to read what the then Liberal Democrat Member for Cambridge, David Howarth, said in the House on 13 July 2009. He said:

“The validity and credibility of democratic elections depend both on the register being comprehensive and on its having a great deal of integrity. If the register is not comprehensive, it is not the electorate who are making a choice but some subset of the electorate. If it is not secure and we cannot be sure that the people whose votes are being counted are electors, that people are not voting more than once or that there is not fraud going on, equally there is a threat to democratic credibility…I do not think that anybody”—

[Interruption.] If the Minister is patient, I am coming on to the issue around changing the date in terms of using the register for the 2015 boundaries.

David Howarth went on to say:

“I do not think that anybody was suggesting that the timetable be artificially shortened, or that any risk be taken with the comprehensiveness of the register.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 111-2.]

But that is exactly what the Government are doing and that is exactly the situation we will face if the carry-over is used for the 2015 boundaries. The Conservatives know exactly what they are doing. They know that the register will be depleted and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) said earlier, if the money assigned for electoral registration is not ring-fenced, in certain parts of the country no real effort will be put into ensuring that the register is as complete as possible, no matter how much guidance and encouragement is given nationally to local councils, and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd gave an example the other day relating to the leader of Islington council.

I also have great fears about the data matching. I think that it is a good idea to rely not just on the annual canvass, but to use other methods as well. Durham county council has pioneered that and my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly raised another good example. But if local councils are faced with budget cuts and they can get out of doing the annual canvass, they will, which will deplete the register even further. I think that the annual canvass will be more important in the early stages of individual registration than it is today. The only way to get to hard-to-reach communities practically will be through individual canvasses of those electorates, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said earlier and as the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said excellently yesterday when speaking to his amendment, particularly in relation to disabled people and those who have difficulty either accessing the registration forms or filling them in. Therefore, I fear that there are things in the Bill that will be used by certain people to ensure not only that it is harder to get on the register, but that there are disincentives for doing so.

The most scandalous thing in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly has already said, is the carry-over relating to the 2015 boundary changes. It will be interesting to see what the Government do if there is a big drop, which is clearly possible. Clearly such a drop will not be in the more affluent areas represented mainly by the Conservative party. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), said, it will be in the inner-city London constituencies such as his and others where the register will drop substantially. That will then affect the figures that will be used to draw up the new boundaries. They will therefore be artificial and will not truly reflect the electorates.

We should be encouraging people to get on the electoral register, but what the Government are aiming for here—we know why the Conservatives are doing it—is to ensure that those people are not taken into account when the new boundaries are drawn up. I will give an example from the present redrawing of the boundaries. Durham county council, when it came into being, took responsibility for electoral registration; before it was a unitary council, seven district councils were responsible. Registration was patchy in different parts and the councils all did it in different ways. I described the other day how in some areas, such as Derwentside, it was obvious to see that there were mistakes in the register but the council made no effort to address the gaps. When the county council took responsibility, it made a real effort to ensure that the register was as accurate as possible. It put over 12,000 missing electors on the register, and that had an impact on the boundary commission’s deliberations for the recommendations in the latest redrawing of boundaries. In the city of Durham, for example, a lot of students were not on the register, but they were put on and that had an effect, so there is clearly going to be an effect if we do not have such a carry-over. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee was very clear about that, and its Chair said:

“There are real risks in moving to a new system, not least that people with the right to vote could fall off the electoral roll in large numbers. This would be damaging to democracy, to public engagement in politics, and to the fairness of the basis on which MPs are elected.”

That is fundamental, and if we read the report we find that, even though the Committee has a Labour Chair, those sentiments are shared across the political spectrum.

Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg of the University of Liverpool said in evidence on 8 September 2011:

“If we do see a large number of people drop off the registers, even if in all likelihood they are not going to vote, that will have a profound implication for the redrawing of boundaries under the new rules that have just gone through.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd did earlier, I think, whether the Government have provided a good explanation for introducing the measure. No, they have not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said that, in the previous Parliament when we introduced individual registration, there was consensus on the timetable, and it is more important to get the measure right and to make the register comprehensive than it is to do what the Conservative party in the coalition is doing, which is to make it more difficult to create an accurate register, meaning that the boundaries will be affected when they are redrawn.

The other strange thing that I cannot understand is why those who have postal and proxy votes will not be carried over, either. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly referred to his 86-year-old mother, and her situation will be replicated throughout the country by disabled people and people who have had postal votes for many years, as they will think that, because they have one, it will continue on and on. It will not. If we do not engage with those individuals, we will find that large numbers of a very vulnerable section of society, are disfranchised. My hon. Friend said that MIND and other pressure groups dealing with that section of society have argued against the measure, but the Government seem to be ignoring them, and in Committee of the whole House I did not hear any explanation for it.

Major changes have been made to the Bill, and it is better than the one we started with, but it still has within it that bit of poison, which the Conservatives will use in their attempt to gerrymander the next boundary review, and that is why I will not support it on Third Reading.