Northern Ireland

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dodds]

May I express my great frustration and annoyance at our being denied time to debate these important matters? However, I am sure that your statement will come as a great relief to other hon. Members, Mr Deputy Speaker.

In all seriousness, as the Minister said, the orders are technical, although they flow from significant primary legislation, which we have already debated at some length since we returned from the summer recess.

On the issue of having the three elections on one day, the orders are designed to make the elections run smoothly and prevent difficulties in the conduct of the elections for the chief electoral officer, his officers and, not least, the electorate. That is welcome, particularly on issues such as making sure that the timetable is consistent for both the council elections and the Assembly elections. There has been some criticism in previous years in Northern Ireland about the rather strange timetable adopted for council elections compared with Assembly and parliamentary elections. If my memory serves me right, when I served in local government and had to submit nomination papers, that had to be done four and a half weeks before election day, so there seemed to be an inordinately long campaign for local government elections compared with others.

Obviously it is important that the timetable is synchronised and that issues such as postal and proxy votes are properly managed so that people applying for them receive one package through the post containing the necessary forms and one containing the three ballot papers. I am glad to hear that there will be three separate, differently coloured ballot papers. I am sure that we have all learned the lesson from Scotland—this never happened in Northern Ireland—when there was an attempt to have two different kinds of ballot on one paper. That was a big mistake and I am sure that it will never happen again.

We are where we are as far as the coincidence of the council and Assembly elections and the referendum is concerned. Obviously, it is preferable that, where possible, there are not so many choices on so many matters before the electorate on any given date, but people in Northern Ireland are used to having joint elections. Indeed, the council elections in 2001 and 2005 coincided with a Westminster general election. If memory serves me right, it may have happened before that. I know that at one time elections were deliberately brought together by the then leader of the Ulster Unionist party, which is no longer represented in this House, because he thought that it would increase turnout and support for his party. As with so many of his calculations, it did not quite work out that way on the day.

This is a sensible set of provisions for 5 May next year. The Minister referred to the date of the council elections for next year, and said that it was the result of the Executive not acting on the recommendation to proceed with the reform of local government. He did not go into the reasons for that, of course, but I would not want the House to be under the impression that this was the result of a lack of desire among most of the parties in the Assembly to make progress on the issue. Even if the reform did not lead to a reduction in the number of councils, other reforms were proposed, such as greater collaboration among councils and the various departments for which they are responsible. Unfortunately, it was not possible to achieve the major cost saving that would have accrued to councils in Northern Ireland because of the intransigence of one party, Sinn Fein, which rejected that constructive proposal. Therefore we are left having to proceed with the election with no real reform to local government due.

When costings were carried out for the council reforms, it became clear that there would have been considerable up-front costs. Given that the Northern Ireland block grant has been severely hit as a result of the recent comprehensive spending review, and the already severe restrictions, difficulties and challenges facing the Northern Ireland Executive on public expenditure, it was felt that this was not an appropriate time to proceed with that particular reform. Obviously, when it comes to choosing between council reform and health expenditure, education and so on, people are right to choose the latter. That is the background to the reason for the proposals for the date of the election and why they will involve the same number of councils as previously.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

The hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), who spoke for the Opposition, referred to the reduction in the number of constituencies in Northern Ireland that may result from legislation going through Parliament at the moment and wondered what would have happened had there been a reduction in the number of councils. Is there not a danger in Northern Ireland that the larger we create constituencies and councils, the more removed government becomes from the people?

[Mr Dodds]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to that. The previous Government proposed reducing the number of councils to seven. I am the first to support a reduction in governance and the number of elected officials and all the rest of it, but a reduction to seven councils would have meant that Northern Ireland councils would be bigger than any other region of Europe. I am sure that the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), will go into considerable detail on that in his speech.

The lack or inadequacy of consultation on the primary legislation with parties in the Assembly and the Executive has been mentioned. I do not want to go over that, but consultation on Assembly and local elections with the chief electoral officer of Northern Ireland is mentioned in the orders and the explanatory memorandum. I recently met the new chief electoral officer. He is a very impressive officer and I think he will do an excellent job, but it is clear that he sought, during consultations on both the primary legislation and the secondary legislation that we are debating, some changes to the way in which elections are carried out that were not proposed by the Northern Ireland Office.

I am thinking in particular about the removal of polling agents from Northern Ireland polling stations. The Minister is nodding his head, so perhaps he has held discussions on polling agents. This is an important matter. Commendably, we have a sophisticated and elaborate system to tackle identity fraud and the abuse of the electoral system. As has been said, people must now produce certain types of photographic identification or sign postal votes, and their signatures are carefully examined. Postal and proxy vote abuse has been considerably reduced from the large-scale abuse that took place in previous elections. Our system is a model for dealing with postal votes for the rest of the UK. If the rest of the UK wants to cut out the abuse of postal voting, people should look at the administration and regime in Northern Ireland. Clearly, our system is now without any kind of abuse at all.

However, why do we still need polling agents—representatives of political parties—sitting in polling stations in Northern Ireland? The NIO, which is still responsible for elections, should address that, because it is clear that one or two parties—I am thinking of one in particular—clearly abuse that for purposes not in keeping with the legislation. Information is taken out of polling stations, so that voters who have not voted can be identified and then, of course, visited. They will be asked, “Why have you not voted?” and told to get out to vote. In certain parts of the Province and in certain circumstances, people will feel intimidated by that, so polling agents are being used for nefarious purposes. I urge the NIO to take that seriously when it next gets a legislative opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

I will be brief, as there are just a couple of issues that I want to raise with the Minister.

Wards are the building blocks for both local government districts and parliamentary constituencies, and one of the consequences of the delay in the local government elections is that the ward boundaries have not been reviewed for a considerable time. In my constituency, as a result of the most recent parliamentary boundary review, the ward of Derriaghy is now split between the Lagan Valley constituency and the Belfast West constituency. It is the only ward in Northern Ireland that is split. Other wards need to be reviewed, as there have been significant population movements since the last ward boundaries revision.

As a result of legislation currently passing through the House, we now face the prospect of new parliamentary boundaries being created and a reduction in the number of constituencies, possibly from 18 to 15 in Northern Ireland. That review will take place on the existing ward structures. I therefore seek an assurance from the Minister that we will have a review of the ward boundaries at a very early date. That has been held back because of the review of local government, but the boundaries are now significantly out of date and there are disparities in ward sizes—and, as I have mentioned, in at least one case a ward is split between two parliamentary constituencies. We would be interested to hear what proposals the Minister has in respect of the urgent need to review ward boundaries in Northern Ireland.

My second question relates to the counts that will follow the two elections and the referendum in Northern Ireland next year. What will be the order of precedence for those counts? Will the referendum be counted first, because it is a UK-wide referendum? Will the Assembly election count take place before the local government election count, as has been the case in the past? Will the Minister give us some idea as to what will be the order of the counting of votes following these three separate ballots, and will they all take place in the one counting centre in each of the local areas, or will the referendum ballot be counted separately? I seek clarity on these matters.