Individual Voter Registration

David Morris Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

This debate, which is on voting in this country, is one that is naturally at the heart of our democratic process. In the past, electoral fraud was a small, minor problem, and few people worried about it, but in my view that has changed. The prevailing view is now that electoral fraud is much more widespread than it once was. The numbers being investigated and convicted show that we are certainly going downhill at a rate of knots when it comes to accountability.

In the past, the electoral register was accurate, and fraud was not a major problem. Anyone committing fraud would have needed the bravery to appear at least twice, and perhaps even three times, at the polling booth before they were caught. From what we can tell, that did not happen very often. Today, as a result of postal votes on demand, people can vote without ever having to see anyone. That has led to an unknown number of people listing fictitious residents at their properties and voting by post on their behalf.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain his source for his last assertion—that large numbers of people are registering multiple times—because his Government’s review suggested that there was a negligible amount of such behaviour?

[David Morris]

I am speaking from personal experience. I have stood in three seaside resorts and have come across situations—including in the 2010 election—in which voters have died six months prior to their votes being cast.

Listing fictitious residents has led to an unknown number of people—

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way? Presumably he has contacted the police about that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[David Morris]

This has led to an unknown number of people listing fictitious residents at their properties and voting by post on their behalf. The vital failsafe in our system—namely, going to the ballot box in person—has been removed. This means we need a new failsafe, and I think that that is agreed on both sides of the House. There are various ways we can do this and I know the last Government saw ID cards as the answer. I do not.

I support fully the proposal to have individual voter registration. It is simple, cheap to administer—unlike ID cards—and fits in with the existing system, because it works on the same principle. Individual voter registration requires very few changes to our system, and we know from Northern Ireland that it works. But in today’s debate, some hon. Members have got two different issues muddled up. One is the issue of fraud that IER seeks to address, and the other is how we encourage more people to go to the ballot box. Making fraud easier will undoubtedly boost turnout, but it will not encourage more real people to vote. People do not bother to put themselves on the electoral register because they do not feel engaged, and do not want to vote. Similarly, there are millions of people on the register who do not want to vote. We need to make those people feel that their votes count.

It is not surprising that people cannot be bothered when 70% of our laws are edicts from an unelected Government in Brussels. People feel as if they cannot make a difference whichever way they vote, and that is the issue that we need to address. I really believe that repatriation of powers from Brussels, devolving more decisions to local councils and electing more police commissioners will help to engage people in the democratic process, but this has nothing to do with individual voter registration.

Individual voter registration is about reducing fraud and building confidence in the system. Today, once again, we see that electoral fraud and confidence in the system seem to be an entirely secondary considerations. They must be our central considerations, not least because people will have less confidence in the system if they feel they will be outvoted by electoral fraudsters. How many people will bother trudging to the ballot box when they rightly or wrongly believe that their views will be overridden by the fraudsters?

Maintaining the status quo will continue to undermine our system, so we do need to encourage more people to the ballot box, but the way to do this is with greater democracy. We need to stop electoral fraud, and the way to do this is to make people register individually.