Electoral Registration

Debate between Chris Ruane and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is an agreeable chap. I can only assume that his conspiracy theory arises from his upbringing in the murky world of Labour and trade union politics in the north-east. Like his friend the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), he sees a conspiracy round every corner.

I have been in politics for 30 years, but for Labour Members it is always about politics, not about what is in the national interest or what is right. Even when they start off by doing what is right, proper and decent to address an issue, they turn around a few years later and say, “We don’t agree with it any more, because it does not suit our narrow partisan interests.” How do they have the gall?

The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd trooped through the Lobby to vote against fair and equal boundaries. Along the coast from his constituency, Arfon has an electorate of 49,000, while my next-door constituency of Cambridgeshire North West has almost 100,000 electors. He considers that to be democratic, but it is not.

[Chris Ruane]

When making seats equal was being railroaded through, 7.5 million people were missing from the register, which would be the equivalent of 100 extra parliamentary seats.

[Mr Jackson]

I am not wholly convinced that the Labour party has ever taken electoral integrity as seriously as it should have done. The hon. Gentleman talks about the criminal cases over the past few years. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) alluded to the fact that we simply do not know how much electoral registration stuffing there has been, because EROs and local authorities have not had the capacity to check that across the country. Under the Labour party, we saw electoral malpractice and criminal activity in Pendle, Derby, Birmingham, Bradford, Slough and Peterborough, to give just a few examples.

Let us be honest: this debate is a wasted opportunity for the Labour party. It is inviting us to conclude that an impact assessment of its Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, in which individual electoral registration was originally contained, would have shown no reduction in the number of people registering. Of course that is not the case. I was in the House at the time and we all knew that there would be a reduction after the first major change for many years.

The Labour party now comes back and says that this is an evil, wicked Tory plot to drive poor people off the register. The crocodile tears were not flowing when it blocked servicemen and women—people who were fighting and dying for our country—from coming back, casting their ballots and using the universal franchise. Labour Members were not worried then. Now they are full of crocodile tears and faux outrage over the patronising notion that their voters are not on the register.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) bemoans the situation with older people and postal votes. Does she think that people who are older are so stupid that they cannot fill out forms? Before the 2001 changes, older people and pensioners were able to fill out forms in cases of ill health, if they were working away or if they were in other circumstances. More to the point, the turnout was much higher.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jackson]

I named her, but I have named a lot of people in this debate.

The Labour party’s problem is simple: it is useless Labour councils. Those useless Labour councils are being given a lot of taxpayers’ money to do the job properly. They should be canvassing, registering people, ensuring that the right people are on the register and ensuring that there is electoral integrity in the register. If Labour Members have problems in Bristol, County Durham and the London borough of Merton, all of which are controlled by the Labour party, they should take them up with local people.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Mr Jackson]

I cannot give way, I am afraid, because I have little time.

If this were a plot, we would not be putting so many public resources into the process. There has been £500,000 to boost confidence in the electoral system, £2.5 million has been spent on students and overseas voters, £6.8 million has been given to local authorities by the Department for Communities and Local Government for physical canvassing for registration, and there has been work on universities and housing associations as part of the Cabinet Office’s £9.8 million funding.

We accept that some people will be missed in the DWP data-matching. In the central ward in my constituency, about 40% of people were missed. We understand that, but it is ultimately the responsibility of local authorities to find the missing voters by physical door-to-door canvassing. In that way, we will have a full register with integrity.

For most of the time, the previous Labour Government were content to see the potential for electoral register stuffing.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Chris Ruane and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.