Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David]

It is for the Government to speak for themselves about their proposals. The Electoral Commission has said that it is concerned about that potential problem and believes it should be tackled through the allocation of resources. We will consider the matter when we discuss the provisions that fall much later in the Bill, but I do not think that the Government are taking the question of addressing the problem at all seriously. If they were, the simplest thing would be to do what the Select Committee recommended and ensure that the same carry-over arrangements apply to proxy and postal voters as to everybody else. The case has not been made for treating postal and proxy votes differently.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

How will this impact on local government? We might see a significant fall in registration in certain wards, so would that lead to boundary changes? What will happen to the boundary changes at local government level that are implemented before we see individual voter registration?

[Mr David]

That is a big issue. One of the concerns I expressed earlier was about the impact a depleted register could have on the next boundary review in December 2015. From a democratic point of view, if many people who are entitled to be on the register are not, that will have a knock-on effect on how the new boundaries are drawn up. That will have an impact on other boundaries, too, as it will be taken into account in one way or another.

[Graham Jones]

So, what would the impact be when the number of people registered in a ward dropped below 66%? Does anything in the Bill or in my hon. Friend’s conversations with the Government suggest that that would have an impact?

[Mr David]

The objective analysis of likely voter depletion shows that there is unlikely to be uniformity throughout the county. We are likely to see a marked contrast between the rural and urban areas, as I said earlier. If my hon. Friend wants to break it down to regions, I think that there will be a great contrast between the number of electors who will be able to vote in the north-east of England and the number in the south-east of England. That reflects the differences in movement, in demographic trends and in the social and class structure. A particular concern has been expressed about London. Greater London has the greatest amount of movement of individuals and is thus likely to be the area where the greatest number of people who are entitled to vote are not on the electoral register. I would contend that the greatest contrast is likely to be between Greater London and more affluent parts of the south-east of England; let us be blunt about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The information comes from a very good piece of work that we commissioned the Electoral Commission to do, so that we had a clear understanding of the electoral registration system’s starting position before we introduced individual electoral registration. We mean to carry out that piece of work after we have introduced the system so that we can demonstrate that the right hon. Gentleman’s fears are groundless. As I have said, the system is working very well in one part of the United Kingdom, and without all of these problems. We have learnt from Northern Ireland’s transitional experience so that we do not repeat the mistakes—mistakes that were introduced under the Government of whom he was a member. I think that he really exaggerates the fears.

[Graham Jones]

Following the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), in the piece of work the Minister says the Electoral Commission has done, how many people were excluded from the register or were not on it? Was it 3 million or 6 million? What was the figure?

[Mr Harper]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman, although I am not pleased to, that the figure was 6 million. I can confirm, therefore, that under the previous Government 3 million people disappeared from the register, so I will take no lectures from the Opposition on that. I am confident that, under the proposals we have set out, we will not see the problems that they have suggested there will be. The brutal truth is that when they were in government they commissioned no research to help them understand the position post-2000 and so they did not know what was going on. Having commissioned that work and had the Electoral Commission carry it out, we now know that the problem actually got worse and the previous Government did nothing about it. We are confident that our proposals are robust, and I will set some of them out and respond to the amendments in a moment. We know that the system works well because it works perfectly well in Northern Ireland and we have learnt from the problems that occurred during the transitional process.