Electoral Registration

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I pay tribute to him and other colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), for working hard with the universities and young people in their constituencies to get young people on the register.

We need special provisions for this group of people. We should allow universities and colleges to block-register those who are in halls of residence, to meet the unique challenge presented by younger people, and students in particular. That could be done very quickly and in time for May. A similar case can be made for care homes and sheltered accommodation: large groups of people who are under the responsibility of an organisation, a local authority or a charity should be allowed to be block-registered.

A scheme in Northern Ireland called the schools initiative has proved to be successful in raising the registration levels of younger people. It places a duty on schools and colleges to provide the ERO with lists of those who are approaching the age of majority. The EROs then go into the schools and colleges with pre-populated registration forms and get the students to complete them. That is even easier now that online registration is allowed.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the two parties that form the coalition have a vested interest in keeping down the number of students and would-be students on the electoral register, because those two parties are the ones that put the fees up to £9,000?

[Sadiq Khan]

Many people will start thinking that, unless the Government take action. It is in all our interests for as many people who can vote to be on the register and to vote.

One of the brighter spots of the move to IER, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), has been the use of DWP data to verify those on the old household register in order to register them automatically on the new individual register. It is far from perfect and it has struggled with many of the under-represented groups, such as students and younger people, but it has taken the pressure off many millions of people who have not had to go through the rigmarole of registering individually.

That has showed how we can use data that are already in our possession to make the job easier. Why should we restrict that to DWP data? Why can we not look at registering people automatically if local EROs are confident that they are eligible to vote? That is covered in the later sections of the motion. The Government are in possession of considerable data about members of the public, including on benefits, social security and pensions and data held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Passport Office and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Local authorities have data on council tax, council tenants, parking permits, school rolls, meals on wheels and so on. Those agencies should all be geared up to ask members of the public whether they are registered to vote when they come into contact with them. We could perhaps set up systems to notify a local authority if somebody applies for a new driving licence or changes their address with the taxman.

We should be more ambitious. We should be making better use of data so that people are put on the register automatically. I have had informal chats with some local authorities and they believe that they could construct a more complete register if they were allowed to use the data in their possession. We would, of course, allow people to ask to be removed from the register. The idea of maximising the information that we possess to populate the register has legs, and we will explore it in detail if we win in May. It would be useful to hear from the Minister why it is not being looked at and to hear what his objections are.

In conclusion, it is unacceptable that so many people are unregistered and are being deprived of their say in the way the country is run. I am disappointed that the Government and the Electoral Commission are so complacent about the bad news on the state of the register —bad news that grows by the day. We need a clear statement of intent from Ministers and a goal for the reduction in the number of missing voters, because we cannot afford to take risks with the register. A chronically depleted register, with missing voters concentrated in certain communities and parts of the country, will call into question the legitimacy of our democracy. Let us act now before it is too late.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Streeter]

I will not give way again if that is okay, as I have a lot to say in the next two minutes.

This week, on Monday 2 February, the commission’s new national advertising campaign launched a series of online display adverts to highlight the fact that anyone who is not registered will be unable to vote in the general election on 7 May. The adverts provide a direct click-through link to the gov.uk/registertovote page. On the same day, the commission also launched an online campaign across the 20 countries in which UK expatriates are most likely to live, to make expats aware that they might be able to vote and to encourage them to register to do so. The important point has been made several times by Government Members that everyone who is eligible to vote should be encouraged to register, and not simply those in certain groups.

The commission’s main national public awareness campaign for the UK parliamentary general election will begin on 16 March 2015 in Great Britain and will include television, catch-up TV and online advertising. The commission has set the ambitious target of 1 million additions to the register in Great Britain between 16 March and 20 April, with a further 10,000 in Northern Ireland.

[Frank Dobson]

We have had targets before.

[Mr Streeter]

Yes, we have, and the right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to learn that the Electoral Commission hit its target in the run-up to the last general election. I am pretty confident that it will do so again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

The report last week deals comprehensively with that, and there is another report to which I will refer the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Let me deal first with the important issue of why the Labour party really has adopted this attitude. I made an assumption about the backing away from Labour’s previous stance that we saw from the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan). I am sorry he is not in his place, because I know he is a great fan of block votes and he is probably looking for a few in the London Labour party at the moment for the nomination for Mayor—I am sure we could pass that on to him. I assumed it was the normal reaction that we get from the Labour party nowadays. IER was, of course, introduced—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) must contain himself for a moment. IER was, of course, introduced in 2009. What is that magic figure of 2009? Of course, Tony Blair was still around, so it is a legacy of the previous—[Interruption.] The Labour party is anxious to forget everything that went before and the reason the previous Government come into it is this: the Labour party had a track record of being extremely flaky on adopting IER.

The Electoral Commission published a report in 2003 and the Labour Government responded to it in 2004, saying that they were sympathetic to the principle of individual registration but they were not going to implement it—that is the reality. Ever since then, Labour has had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards improving the quality of the electoral register. In the end, the experience in Northern Ireland, where IER certainly produced a reduction in the number of people on the register but also significantly reduced fraud, made it clear that Labour’s position was untenable. The people of Northern Ireland blazed the way for the rest of this country and we should salute the introduction of IER there. If it is good enough for Northern Ireland, it should be good enough for the rest of the UK as well, and it is no good the Labour party trying to row back from that now.

The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 made provision for this phased implementation of IER. Ironically, that was not originally in the Bill and it was put in only as a result of pressure from the then Opposition parties in the House of Lords. The Labour party was reluctant even to take that step.

[Frank Dobson]

It is often said that the country would be better governed if there was a consensus, but may I say that I have never been part of the consensus on IER? I thought it was stupid when it was suggested by the stupid Electoral Commission and it has remained stupid ever since. We have had the mad situation that in this democratically elected House we have knowingly voted to reduce the number of people entitled to vote—it has been a disgrace.

[Robert Neill]

I am delighted to see that the right hon. Gentleman is taking a hard-line stance, which is consistent with his political views. There is no doubt that he demonstrated that same consistency when he voted down changes to the boundaries that would have ensured that the electorate of his constituency was broadly more equal with that of mine, but we will not trouble him with that unfortunate matter.

The fact that the issue of electoral fraud has been dismissed so often by the Opposition suggests that they think it is irrelevant, but it is not. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) made an important point. The real difficulty that we have is proving cases, and the complacency shown by the Opposition on this matter is breathtaking. The reality is that the six-month time limit makes it particularly difficult to get the evidence required for this type of offence. I hope that, in the future, we will revisit that matter. We should extend the timeline for bringing prosecutions for election offences, and I hope that we can consider that in the new Parliament.

The very nature of the offence makes it difficult to prosecute, particularly when it involves the head of the household, as it has in the past, filling in forms on behalf of other people. It is also difficult to get people to stand up against members of their own family on whom they may be dependent. That is why there are fewer prosecutions than we would expect. That fact is borne out by the useful report, “Electoral Offences since 2010”, which has been issued by the Library of the House of Commons. Members might be interested in looking at it. It was published on 30 July 2014, and details, over a raft of pages, individual instances of allegations of electoral fraud. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon mentioned, it has been difficult to bring many of those cases to a successful prosecution, but the report is, none the less, really worth looking at.

In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, there have been repeated cases of fraud. Let me say here that I am not trespassing on the current court case. This has nothing to do with the election petition against the mayor. Historically, there have been repeated allegations of malpractice in Tower Hamlets, largely by abuse of the block registration of postal votes. In March 2012, Tower Hamlets removed 127 names from the electoral register. It was not possible to bring a prosecution in that case, but the names were removed because they should not have been on the register. Clearly, malpractice was going on. Some 550 people were registered in 64 properties in the borough. In some cases of registration, there were eight people to a bedroom. It was nonsense, but it is something that the Labour party regard as “fairly minor”. It says that it is a small price to pay. I say that it is not, because it demeans the electoral process. But that does not matter as far as Labour is concerned. Its ersatz view of quantity seems to trump the importance of quality in the elector register. At the end of the day, it is the quality of the electoral register that is most important. If it is not honest, people will lose faith.

My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) made the point that we can drive up the number of people properly on the register through the excellent initiatives of the Electoral Commission. We do not need the specious arguments of the Opposition to do that. We can have safe and secure electoral registration and sensible campaigns to increase voter registration.