Overseas Electors Bill

Jim McMahon Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I think that my hon. Friend is the one doing the chiding. I suspect he is probably right to do so. I was unable to find the time to do that, and he is right to pick me up on it. If I had, colleagues might have had more of their questions answered. I listen to him a great deal, and particularly on these issues pertaining to Fridays, how things should be done and the importance of their being done, he tends to be right.

[Jim McMahon]

I say this advisedly, but can the hon. Gentleman confirm that he wrote the amendments he has tabled? With almost every intervention, he has been unable to answer a single question that has been put to him.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman has not had a very good record on interventions in this debate so far. Most of them have been wholly inaccurate. I think that it is fair to say that I have tried to answer every question that I have been asked.

Occasionally, there was a technical question. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough asked not about the amendment but about whether particular permissions from the Scottish Executive would be needed; I do not know the answer to that question. The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton is obviously some kind of know-all, so given that he seems to know everything about everything, perhaps he could answer the question. No doubt, as a fine parliamentarian, he has studied every last word of the amendments, although his previous interventions would not suggest that. Given his expertise on the subject as a know-all, does he want to intervene again and answer the question asked by my hon. Friend? I will leave him to do it.

[Jim McMahon]

One thing I do know about is the amendment tabled in my name and those of many others who support votes at 16. I can answer in a great deal of detail on that, because of course it is my amendment. I would expect the hon. Gentleman to be able to answer questions about his own amendments, if they were indeed his own amendments. Did he write the amendments that have been tabled, or not?

[Philip Davies]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is in need of some medical attention, but I fear for his wellbeing. Perhaps he was not listening, or perhaps it was not even here—he is in a different place now, so perhaps he absented himself from the Chamber and then beetled back in. I think that I have made it abundantly clear at the start of every amendment that they have often previously been tabled by the hon. Member for City of Chester. I have made that clear. Was the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton not listening? I have said at the start of each amendment that most of them were tabled by the hon. Member for City of Chester and I thought that they made very good points that were worthy of further consideration in the House.

I am not entirely sure which bit of this provision, originally tabled in Committee by the hon. Member for City of Chester, is difficult for the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton to grasp, as the point seems straightforward. Is it difficult for him to understand? Does he not understand those words? The provision on the Royal Mail that I mentioned was one I tabled and we had discussed it; my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough asked a detailed question about why I had included subsection (3), and I gave a detailed answer about that point. Perhaps the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton got out of bed on the wrong side this morning, as he seems to be in a particularly grumpy mood, not only about the amendments I have tabled, but about the ones tabled by the hon. Member for City of Chester, who, apparently is his best friend, even though he seems to think that all the amendments he has tabled are a load of old nonsense. I will leave the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton to explain to the hon. Member for City of Chester why he thinks his amendments are ridiculous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I do not want to get sidetracked from the Bill, but the point I make to the hon. Lady is that many of the new clauses I have proposed and will go on to propose are about making the system robust, so that we have an honest result and we do not have any problem with the result being disputed in any way. Given the problems we have faced, certainly in my Bradford district, at polling stations and in postal votes, I support the Government in believing that we need identification at polling stations. In many cases, presiding officers in polling stations have faced a nightmare in terms of being able to identify people properly. That has been an issue for some time. I believe the same happened in Northern Ireland and they dealt with it there, but unfortunately some of those problems persist in the rest of the UK. It is right that the Government do something to make sure that the results of elections are robust. I am getting sidetracked, Mr Speaker, because this is not really relevant. The point I am trying to make is that I do not see a conflict.

For the benefit of the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, new clause 11 is on a subject raised in Committee by the hon. Member for Nottingham North. I hope that is clear enough for the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton to understand. The new clause is about the offence of registering to vote as an overseas elector in more than one constituency. When he suggested this change in a new clause in Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North said that it was his

“last stab at allaying the concerns that electoral administrators have expressed following the publication of the ‘votes for life’ document and the Bill.”

He was talking about their concerns relating to double registration. He went on:

“The principle is that when electoral registration officers use address data to verify someone’s eligibility to register, they will establish whether someone has lived in that place. However, they will not try to establish whether that is the last place where the person lived, or whether they have lived in multiple places and are having the same conversation with multiple electoral registration officers around the country, and possibly voting in two or more places.”

He rightly pointed out that there was therefore a

“live danger that might merit an individual sanction”.––[Official Report, Overseas Electors Public Bill Committee, 14 November 2018; c. 115.]

That is what new clause 11 provides. It says that somebody commits an offence by registering to vote in two separate parliamentary constituencies as an overseas elector. That is absolutely right. It comes back to the point I made before about making sure that the results are robust and without question and all the rest of it. Currently, there is something lacking in our system in respect of people voting in more than one constituency at parliamentary elections, and there have been complaints about that. I genuinely do not know how widespread the issue is, and I am not sure that there is any great evidence one way or the other, but, anecdotally, people are concerned that the system is not as robust as it should be. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to highlight this potential issue, and we should do what we can to stop it.

[Jim McMahon]

rose—

[Gareth Snell]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am going to crack on. I do not think anyone could say that I have not been generous in giving way.

Amendments 68 to 70 are linked to other new clauses that we have already discussed. I want to mention amendments 75 and 76. Amendment 76 would delay the coming into force of the extent, commencement and short title provisions by 12 months. I want to raise that because, whatever the merits or otherwise of a general election outside the fixed-term rules, it seems to me that if a general election were to be held sooner rather than later, this Bill coming into force immediately could cause some problems. Amendments 75 and 76 would delay the implementation of the Act for two years, which would give more time to prepare for the next general election, or even the one after, if we have one before the five-year term is up.

We could end up with people who are eligible to vote not being able to because the systems are not in place to cope with the rush. It would be blatantly unfair on qualifying overseas voters if some of their votes counted and some did not, and if some were able to register and some were not. I think that that can happen already, to be honest, but the problem would be made much worse if we extended the franchise and brought the provisions in very quickly. We would almost certainly create a problem.

All in all, I am sorry that we have had such a truncated operation and that my speech has gone on far longer than I anticipated. Obviously I was agitating some Members, and I wanted to accommodate their requests, because in all seriousness, that is how legislation should be debated in this place. We end up with better legislation when we listen to everybody’s point of view. We have heard in interventions today people making some very good points that we should bear in mind and that expose some of the flaws in the amendments I have tabled. That is why it is important that we go through this scrutiny of important pieces of legislation.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire for bringing his Bill this far. I hope that the provisions of the Bill will be introduced at some point, but with the necessary improvements. I urge the Government to listen again to the arguments made in Committee by the hon. Member for City of Chester and the hon. Member for Nottingham North in particular, because if their suggestions had been taken on board, this would have been a much better piece of legislation.

[Jim McMahon]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing this point of order; I appreciate your generosity. Clearly time has run away with us, and we have had three urgent questions. That means we have not moved on to the second group, which would have included a debate on votes at 16. I recognise completely that that is legitimate in terms of how Parliament works, but I would like to place on record the names of members of Oldham Youth Council who submitted their personal responses about what votes at 16 would mean to them. Roshni Parmar-Hill, Charlotte Clasby, Samah Khalil, Liam Harris and Tia Henderson all sent in representations. I want to thank them and place on the record our appreciation for those submissions.

[Mr Speaker]

That is perfectly fitting and has been done with characteristic grace by the hon. Gentleman. I hope he feels that he has achieved his objective and secured in the circumstances a consolation prize, albeit a modest one.