Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I concur with many of the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), but as regards her quoting of the Deputy Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), I think that the aspirations they alluded to are shared by everybody in the Committee.

As the Minister and others will be aware from the Liberal Democrat submission to the consultation on this issue, we believe that the annual canvass is important and that it should continue. I want to ask the Minister about his reasoning for the discussions that have taken place so far and what tests or standards will have to be passed before the annual canvass is abolished. I understand the point in the explanatory notes that in years to come the annual canvass may no longer be needed because of the online opportunities for registration, to which the hon. Lady alluded. I am a bit more of a sceptic about that because I represent a rural area where the internet is not universally available. It will also be difficult to deem the register perfect at any point as it is constantly changing. What test would have to be passed to deem the annual canvass no longer useful?

The Bill gives electoral registration officers a new duty to maintain the all-important accuracy and completeness, which I welcome. How will they fulfil that duty without a canvass? In other words, how will the Minister ensure that that duty on electoral registration officers is tested?

The Bill provides for the Electoral Commission to be consulted if the annual canvass is to be abolished. That is clear. However, I understand that the Electoral Commission has concerns about why it would not be consulted if the annual canvass were to be reinstated. The Government have said that it is conceivable that that might have to be undertaken in a short time frame. However, the Electoral Commission has said that it has often been required to respond to Cabinet Office consultations in a limited time frame and that it does not believe that the requirement to consult would delay the process unduly. More importantly, it is essential that there is a mechanism for external scrutiny of any step that is taken in a short time frame.

On Second Reading, I expressed concerns about the abolition of the canvass. I noticed my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House wincing slightly when I made that point. He said that there is an obligation, if it is necessary, to reinstate the canvass. That reassured me, but I am concerned about the mechanisms by which such a reinstatement would have the consent of the Electoral Commission. I also have questions about why the annual canvass may need to be abolished.

I am heartened by what Ministers have said about the data-matching pilots and by the aspiration for online voting. However, we have a long way to go and, in the interim, I believe that we still need the annual canvass.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

The annual canvass has been, and for the moment still is, the principal method by which we keep the electoral register up to date and accurate, in so far as it is up to date and accurate. I do not think that anyone believes that the current situation is satisfactory, but what we want is improvement, not reduction.

My constituency is rather strange in nature, not simply because it has elected me in eight successive elections, but because it has a huge electorate. It numbered some 87,000 people at the last general election and I understand from the registration officer that the total is now 94,000 electors. That gives me 26,000 more electors than the Deputy Prime Minister and, remarkably, 26,000 more than the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).

Equally different is the turnover of electors, which in my constituency is phenomenal. It has always been high, partly because of the large number of students and young people in the area. People arrive and get a job, and then they decide that they would be better off doing the same job in Lincoln, Scunthorpe or Bolton, usually because the cost of renting or buying a house would be much lower.

We have a massive turnover all the time, and the Government’s proposed housing benefit changes, which will be introduced at the same time as proposals in the Bill, will also lead to an increased movement of people—they will certainly move out of the area, but I am not sure whether they will come in—so the coalition’s social cleansing policies will have an effect on the need for the canvass. The Prime Minister’s latest essay—he wants to knock off housing benefit given to anyone under 25—is also likely to increase turnover in my area.

It is worth reporting that, last year, for the whole of Camden, the annual canvass added 27,000 electors, but also deducted 27,000 electors, which reflects the massive turnover in both my constituency and the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency. It also indicates that the annual canvass is important from the point of view not just of numbers, but of accuracy—it is the principal means by which people who are no longer entitled to vote disappear off the register. The Government and some outside the House who are fanatical about their proposals seem to ignore that.

The annual canvass is the bedrock of the current system—it is not peripheral; it is at the heart of it. Any other means that the Government propose to improve electoral registration, both so that the 6 million people who are entitled to be on the register get on it, and so that the register is accurate, must be introduced only to augment the annual canvass. The canvass still does an important task, and is likely—this is my opinion, and no more—to carry it out more effectively than the proposals.

It seems totally improper to suggest that the annual canvass could disappear before we know the overall effects of all the new changes. Even if the Opposition have tabled no amendment to that effect in Committee, we should perhaps table one on Report. I would hope all hon. Members agree that an annual canvass must be carried out if the numbers come down as a result of the changes, and that we cannot accept a reduction in the number of people on the registers.

Government Members have once or twice quoted judges who have said that registration is currently like something we might find in a banana republic. I suspect that most banana republics would like to give a Minister, without parliamentary approval, the right to end an annual canvass. Nothing should be left to the Minister’s discretion. If anything, the decision should come straight to the House from the Electoral Commission.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Any hon. Member who has played the role of election observer in different parts of the world will know that electoral observation organisations apply themselves to one key thing: ensuring the accuracy of the electoral register. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said, the canvass is an integral part of the electoral system, not only to ensure that there is no fraud—cases in certain communities have been highlighted—but to ensure that the register is as accurate and up to date as possible. As an ex-local councillor and an MP, I think it would give the person elected at a local council or other election confidence if they knew that the majority of electors were registered to vote. I accept that the annual canvass is more difficult to undertake in certain parts of the country than in others, but it will concentrate people’s minds on ensuring that they are on the electoral register.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

Yes. The canvass that would have been carried out in 2013, which we have moved to early 2014, will be done in the traditional way. The hon. Lady knows that we are taking advice from the various political parties and others about the exact date that will be most effective. That will be a full household canvass and during 2014, after the European elections, we will move on to the other components of the proposals so that we have the use of all available material and can, as I have repeatedly said, make the register as complete and accurate as possible.

[Frank Dobson]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

I thought that the right hon. Gentleman made a late but very compelling argument for the equalisation of parliamentary constituencies, and I am grateful to him for that. I invite his participation.

[Frank Dobson]

I seem to attract snotty remarks from those on the Government Front Bench. All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that I have been snotted at by better men than him.

If the Government are so confident that the new methods of putting all this together, which they described in their evidence to the House of Lords as providing a more efficient means of obtaining information rather than a more effective one, and believe that the system will result in registers exceeding the numbers presently arrived at by the household canvass, will they guarantee not to proceed until they have the registers up to the level that the previous household canvass produced?

[Mr Heath]

I repeat again to the right hon. Gentleman that we are not getting rid of the household canvass and it is very difficult to answer his question, which is based on the premise that we are removing it, when we are not doing so. Incidentally, were the circumstances to occur in which this part of the Bill was used to remove the duty for an annual canvass—as I have said, that would happen only if we, the Electoral Commission and both Houses of Parliament were satisfied that other mechanisms were in place that would be as effective or more effective than the annual canvass—the situation would continue to be monitored. If, despite the advice of the Electoral Commission and the best intentions of Ministers and this House, it unexpectedly proved that the proportion of the population that registered was substantially reduced, there is provision within the Bill to reinstate the canvass. Unfortunately, amendment 23, tabled by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge, would remove that power. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) asked a specific question and I can give him an absolute assurance that the power to reinstate the canvass is in the Bill, should it be needed.

[Frank Dobson]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, of course, and I hope that I do so charmingly.

[Frank Dobson]

The hon. Gentleman has said that there is a power to reinstate the canvass, but is there an obligation to reinstate it if the new system is not working?

[Mr Heath]

I do not think that Parliament is normally required to do anything, and this will be a power for Parliament, not for Ministers. We would be treading a strange constitutional path if this Parliament were to require any future Parliament to make any enactment. The power is there to reinstate the canvass without the need for further primary legislation in order to enable the then Government, whoever they are, to react promptly and effectively if necessary. I honestly do not believe that will apply because there are no circumstances in which the annual canvass would be removed without its being absolutely clear, from all the information to hand, that it would not have a detrimental effect on the completeness and the effectiveness of the register.