Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I should like to speak in support of the reasoned amendment tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but before I make my points, I should like to comment on some of the issues that have been raised in the debate. I do not recognise the picture of electoral fraud being painted by some Members on the Government Benches. I have worked on elections for 30 years or more, and that is a world that I do not know. That is not to say that electoral fraud does not happen, and when it does, it should be tackled aggressively by the police and the authorities. The number of prosecutions is small, however, and it is perhaps stretching the truth to suggest it constitutes the general behaviour during elections.

I have sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said about heads of households, and about mums signing up for their families. We will lose that practice, which happens in a lot of places. Also, people already have the right to register individually; they do not have to register on a form filled in by the head of the household.

My final introductory comment relates to what the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) said. Thank goodness postal voting on a specific issue is not going to return. The first time I applied for a postal vote was when I was expecting my second child. Although my baby was due in the week of an election, because I was active politically, I still wanted to vote. What a palaver it was getting that postal vote, so thank goodness the Bill does not include postal vote provisions.

Let me proceed to my main arguments. I speak from my personal experience of elections and on the basis of talking to the people who run elections in Sunderland—my local authority, the electoral registration officer and the elections officers. To put Sunderland in context, it has a fairly static population, not one that churns very quickly. We also have a high percentage of postal votes, partly as a result of the postal vote experiment of 2004, I think, when we had all-out postal vote elections. Many people have retained the right to their postal votes because they like voting that way; they find it convenient. The key to any election is not just having an accurate electoral register, but making it as easy as possible for people to cast the vote to which they are entitled.

Sunderland delivers its counts very quickly—something of which I am proud—and this is based on organisation relating to the whole electoral process. Bill Crawford and Lindsay Dixon, who run our elections office, take great pride in the finest detail of their work. Efficient counts and efficient election days come from the compiling of the electoral register and the planning that goes into running elections.

I have moved to support individual voter registration in principle, albeit with some reservations, as I have outlined that there have been problems with accuracy and the completeness of the register in the past. That is why, when in government, Labour introduced the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. I welcome the Government’s moving of the annual canvass to 2014, which I think will be a help, but I still have some very serious concerns.

First, on the data-matching exercise, the accuracy of Department for Work and Pensions records is a problem. As an MP, I regularly get casework relating to that inaccuracy. Numbers are flagged to the wrong people. People are usually made aware that their national insurance records are flagged to the wrong person only when they apply for something like a maternity benefit or whatever. The first time they apply for something, the problem arises. Although we can easily get those problems sorted out as MPs, it does highlight the inaccuracy of DWP records. I have also experienced problems surrounding the recording of multiple births. The DWP is not that good, in my experience, at issuing the correct national insurance numbers. Sometimes people simply do not know their national insurance number. Issues about accuracy are evident.

One of the Department’s pilot schemes involved a ward in my constituency. Having discussed this with the people running the elections in Sunderland and compiling the electoral register, I found that only about half the people data-matched to DWP records. Given that I mentioned that Sunderland has a fairly static population, that is quite a worrying statistic. If we are talking only about half the people in my constituency, I suggest that the proportion might be significantly higher in a constituency with a higher churn. Another problem is that electoral registration records tend to be property-based, whereas DWP records tend to be name-based. Overall, the data-matching process is going to be time consuming and costly to administer. The Department needs to take note of that.

My second concern relates to postal and proxy votes during the transitional arrangements. The annual canvass will happen in 2014, when the data-matching exercise will be going on. My main concern relates to households in which people remain on the register. People who remain on the register because they are on the household and DWP records will automatically retain their postal votes if they have applied for indefinite ones. However, if authorities are satisfied that they live at those addresses because they have checked their own housing benefit or council tax records, those people will remain on the register but their indefinite postal votes will fall, and they will have to reapply. I think that some confusion will be caused when one member of a household retains a postal vote and another does not. Some of the charities that represent people with disabilities fear that such people may be disfranchised.

In my constituency, there is currently a mini-canvass in February. People are sent a letter telling them either that they are on the register or that they are not, and that they do or do not have postal votes. They are asked to respond to the letter for the purpose of accuracy, and very few do not do so; it receives a massive response. I think that that is a good model to follow and that adopting it would mop up some of the problems with postal votes, particularly in the early years of the transition. I hope that the Government will consider providing funds for it. The mini-canvass ensures that there are very few problems on election day, because if time has been taken to get the register and the postal vote records right, not many people turn up wanting to vote and finding that they are unable to do so.

My third concern relates to online registration. I have already mentioned problems involving national insurance numbers. Not everyone knows their national insurance number. We saw a demonstration last week, and it was clear that if people did not have their national insurance numbers, the system would stop. We raised the issue, and it is possible that it will be investigated.

[Chris Ruane]

I asked an outside computer expert at the demonstration what would happen when people did not have their national insurance numbers. I was told “We are working on that.” We know what has been said and what has happened in the past. Computer programs costing hundreds of millions of pounds have been put in place, and they have not worked. We need to get this one right.

[Julie Elliott]

I could not agree more. It is not that I am opposed to online registration—we must move with the times, and people do more and more things online—but getting it right is very important. I have read about secondary ID involving passports and driving licences, but we should bear in mind that not everyone has a passport or a driving licence.

The Government need to listen to the experts who have been involved in the pilots and who run elections and compile registers, because they are the people who really understand the details. The Government also need to ring-fence enough money. I welcomed what the Minister said about section 31 funding, but the provision of enough money is the key, particularly in the early years. The way in which the money will be distributed or bid for is not yet clear; that needs to be considered carefully and spelt out to us before the next stage of the process.

A serious look should be taken at the rules governing postal voting. As we all know, in the world of cuts upon cuts in which we are currently living, local authorities’ finances are very tight. My own authority has experienced and is still experiencing massive cuts. However, I think that the Government should put money into ensuring that the system works, because otherwise the results could be disastrous.

I think that the proposal to use the 2014 canvass for the next round of boundary reviews is a dangerous one with massive implications. It is possible that we will not end up with the best register that we have ever had at the first attempt: as everyone knows, when something is done for the first time there are teething problems. It is not the best way of ensuring democracy in this country, and I think that it is a very negative step.

We get things right in Sunderland because we are organised, and because we provide proper resources for elections and electoral registers. If we get the register right to start with, we can get the postal and proxy votes right, and if there are enough people doing the job on the ground, the elections themselves will be run properly.

I hope the Government listen to the concerns I have raised. I have been as un-party political as possible, because this is too important to get wrong. Members on both sides of the House have concerns, and this needs to be done properly.