Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

May I make an alternative suggestion? Perhaps it could be a dead duck sitting in an oak tree.

[Wayne David]

Perhaps there should be a competition to determine the most appropriate symbol.

On the issue of joint Co-op and Labour party candidates, I understand that the Government explained on Second Reading and before that the clause is intended to address a gap in the legislation. Can the Minister provide reassurance not only that it will address an anomaly in the case of parliamentary elections, but that there is no difficulty in the case of local elections, and that is covered by other legislation?

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[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I would rather he had not made it, because I had intended to say that and now he has mentioned it first. I think that technology has facilitated recording in polling stations. Making that recording available would be the best sort of change, because it would not record which way people vote.

I had started to talk about the Greek situation, where transparent ballot boxes are used, which, in terms of transparency, are better than black boxes. In Cheetham Hill ward in Manchester in 2003 a ballot box went astray for about an hour and a half after the end of polling. Obviously that is a good opportunity for ballot box-stuffing, as people can put a few extra votes in the ballot box as they drive around Manchester. There are a number of advantages with the filming process. If someone is personating, we would see who it is, which in a sense is the better challenge.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s example, but surely if someone stuffs extra ballots into a ballot box the number of ballots in it would not tally with the number issued at the polling station.

[John Hemming]

What happens is that basically they mark off extra votes on the marked register, so it is not difficult.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but that is not what they do; they mark off the marked register, but there is also the counter stub with the number on, which is then tallied with the number of votes issued. I think that what the hon. Gentleman suggests would be very difficult for someone to do unless they also had control of the book of ballot forms.

[John Hemming]

We have experience in Birmingham of identified presiding officers campaigning for the Labour party in the polling station. In Hodge Hill ward, for instance, the presiding officer was handing out poll cards to the Labour agent, which is a criminal offence, and I reported it to the chief executive at the time. In one polling station the poll cards were given to the Labour party. It cannot be assumed that just because people are presiding officers—I accept that there are two people there—they suddenly become perfect people who behave exactly as we would wish them to. If we had enough activists and we could put polling agents in each polling station for all the hours of the poll and monitor what was going on, that would not be such a problem.

[Mr Jones]

I find it remarkable that the hon. Gentleman opened his speech by saying that electoral fraud, of which I think there are a tiny number of cases, affects all parties, because he seems to be very partisan in using examples only from the Labour party. Is he really suggesting that polling agents and people who work in polling stations are involved in fraud, because in my opinion that is not the case? There is a danger in what he is suggesting, because if we put in agents from some parties they could intimidate the polling clerks.

[John Hemming]

Under election law, putting in polling agents is already allowed; that is not a change to the law.

[Mr Jones]

Well, that can be done, but what is being suggested is that they would somehow have a role in interfering with the polling agents. I am sorry, but I think that would be a dangerous move.

[John Hemming]

I have two little points to make on that. First, I said that all parties have people who are responsible for election fraud but in Birmingham we have tended to find problems with the Labour party, so I am tending to talk about the Labour party. Secondly, with regard to polling agents, that is the current law. If the hon. Gentleman does not know the current law, that is life. The current law allows people to appoint both counting agents and polling agents. Most people do not appoint polling agents but in Birmingham, because of the large amount of personation that tends to go on, we appoint polling agents in some wards when we can manage it. I have sent to the presiding officer, with evidence, examples of presiding agents who attempted to persuade people to vote for the Labour party in the Soho ward in Birmingham. There would have been other election petitions in 2004 on the basis of those particular issues had it not been for the fact that running one election petition is a major challenge and running two would be a bigger challenge, so much so that we had legal assistance on the second one.

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[John Hemming]

Paragraph 717 of the Mawrey judgment, which I quoted earlier, deals with the hon. Gentleman’s point. These are probing amendments. However, we do need systems to detect and prevent personation, and according to Mr Justice Mawrey, we do not have them.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

This has been a fascinating debate. In my view, one of the weaknesses of the new clause is that it calls for action but does not outline what should happen.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that the number of cases of fraud in this country is small. Overall, we have a very good electoral system. In the Electoral Commission’s report after its voting pilots of the early 2000s, it found that the incidence of fraud was quite small, but, as we know, concentrated in certain communities, whether Asian communities in big cities such as Birmingham, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) represents, or those in other areas such as Bradford and Tower Hamlets, where the Liberal Democrats do not have a fantastic record. We must therefore be careful not to get this out of proportion.

I am worried about some of the hon. Gentleman’s suggested measures to detect fraud, which would be completely out of proportion to the problem that is being addressed. Having seen his performances in this House over the past few years, I am not surprised that the police chose the name Operation Gripe. Making scattergun accusations such as those he made today is not very helpful, either to the police or to the real debate about electoral fraud.

The hon. Gentleman proposes to extend these measures to candidates and polling agents. In Durham, political parties do appoint polling agents, but their role is very clearly defined. They cannot interfere with the issuing of ballot papers. They can ask people for their numbers, but many, rightly, do not give them. They may be asked for the number of people who have voted, and will be happy to give that. If polling agents were able to sit over the polling clerks, as he suggests, that would be wrong because it might intimidate them. The polling clerks I have dealt with in the many elections in which I have been either an agent or a candidate are very professional individuals. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence of a polling clerk issuing ballot papers incorrectly, then he must provide it. He should not throw it out in such a casual manner as he has today. I would be very uncomfortable with polling agents taking on the role that he suggests in sitting over the clerks when they are doing their job.

I accept that the hon. Gentleman’s community is very different from the one that I represent, but I find it strange that voters take other people into the polling station to vote. In my experience of the elections in which I have been an agent or a candidate, if someone arrives who is infirm or needs assistance, the polling clerk will take them into the voting booth to assist in pointing out the names of the candidates. I have never known polling clerks allow a relative, or a candidate or representative of a political party, to go with somebody into the voting booth. The message is the quality and rigour of the polling clerks, who, in my experience, are professional individuals who know what the rules are.

In Durham, when polling clerks take numbers at polling stations, it is made clear that they must sit way outside the balloting area—if it is a school, usually in a corridor; if it is a community hall, usually outside—so that they cannot in any way interfere with the process. I have sometimes taken infirm people to vote. The usual procedure is to take them to the door and indicate to the clerk, who will take over from there so that we do not get involved in the process.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, the hon. Gentleman is doing us a disservice in perpetuating the myth that electoral fraud is a huge problem in general, because it is not. I accept that it is a huge problem in certain areas, and the people involved should be dealt with properly.

I find it strange that a Liberal Democrat has such a schizophrenic attitude towards CCTV given that the Liberal Democrats pride themselves on saying that CCTV is against civil liberties. I would not want any recording device in polling stations, because the ballot is private. No matter how many assurances people were given, they would fear that a CCTV camera was recording or indicating which way they had voted.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

First, we have had for some time the experience of having police officers in polling stations from the days when they might have been needed to keep order. Secondly, surely the proposed CCTV camera is intended to show the ballot paper being issued and put in the box, not to go behind the screen where the paper is marked.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman says that, but what is to prevent someone from shifting the camera so that it covers the voting booths? My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd also made a good point about cost. I think that many electors would find it intimidating to be filmed while they were performing their democratic right. I therefore think that this is a very strange suggestion from the Liberal Democrats. They rail against the Big Brother state a lot, but this would be taking the Big Brother state to a huge and strange conclusion.

I also find it strange that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is in favour of people marking their fingers. Again, I am not sure that that would go down well in my constituency.

[Chris Ruane]

Stick it on the end of their noses!

[Mr Jones]

I am—

[John Hemming]

As I said, I think that it creates an emotional attachment, but I do not think that it is a good solution.

[Mr Jones]

It might have been only a suggestion but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, why not stick the ink on people’s noses? Why not brand people? I am sorry, but that is not the way in which the electoral system operates in this country.

[Chris Ruane]

For the record, I want my hon. Friend and the rest of the Committee to know that that was a joke. I was not honestly suggesting that we put ink on the end of people’s noses.

[Mr Jones]

Having known my hon. Friend for many years, I know his sense of humour and will take his comment in that spirit. I certainly would not support electors having to have their fingers, noses or any other part of their anatomy dipped to show that they had voted.

I think that robust training for polling clerks is important. The safeguards are already there. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spoke about police officers at polling stations. That is a good idea where there are problems. If there are problems in certain wards, as hon. Members think there are, the Bill allows for community support officers to take that role. That is a good move because it will free up police resources. The mechanisms are there to ensure that the ballot is run fairly.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made the accusation that somebody was giving out polling cards to the Labour party. His speech was interesting in that he said that the problem affects all parties, but did not name one case that involved his party, when we know that the Liberal Democrats have been at this on an industrial scale in parts of the country. If he has evidence of polling cards being given out, he should report it. The only problem comes if he bombards the police with 50-odd minor complaints. In that case, even I would consider him an irritant.

[John Hemming]

I did report that problem—it was called Operation Gripe.

[Mr Jones]

I am not being funny, but if somebody turns themselves into a serial complainer, I can understand why an authority would start to ignore some of the complaints. The hon. Gentleman would be better off concentrating on specific cases on which he has hard evidence, rather than throwing complaints around like confetti, which is not helpful.

The other thing that will help the process is individual registration, which will ensure that the register is as up-to-date as possible. I reiterate that elections in this country are largely run fairly and correctly. We should keep reinforcing that message. When we had the pilots for all-postal and e-mail voting elections in the early 2000s, the report from the Electoral Commission was very positive. A council by-election in my area achieved a 67% turnout. If the number of votes cast is increased, the effect of minor fraud is diminished, so getting turnout up is important.

I accept that the constituency that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley represents is very different from mine, and that there are communities that engage in electoral fraud. The effort should be made in those places, rather than there being a scatter-gun approach. I therefore see no reason for the new clauses. They are quite weak, because they do not prescribe what the action would be. They are not well thought out.

Finally, we should praise the many local returning officers and council chief executives who work very hard and are scrupulous in running elections.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The speech from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was interesting. It was like saying that 788 planes landed safely at Heathrow and that only one crashed, and then asking why we are spending our time on the crash.

The new clause is a probing suggestion that something should happen. Clearly, something should happen. It would be good if the Minister said that he will get the Association of Chief Police Officers together with the Electoral Commission, electoral registration officers and others to come up with a way of finding out how much of a problem there is—that means research—and a statement of how the police gain the information on which they can base prosecutions when problems are reported.

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[Mrs Laing]

Yes. My hon. Friend once again comes up with an interesting contingency. Supposing someone at the front of the queue collapses or becomes ill and attention is thus diverted, the five or six people who are legitimately standing there at 10 or five minutes to 10, expecting without any problem to be given their ballot paper, cannot be given one if the clock strikes 10. That just cannot be right.

The courts—this is a statement of the law at present—have ruled:

“We are of the opinion that the true dividing line is the delivery of the ballot paper to the voter. If he has had a ballot paper delivered to him before”—

10 pm—

“he”—

I say “he”, because I think that the judgment was delivered before the female of the species was entitled to vote. Let us therefore bring this judgment of the courts up to date: when I say “he”, I mean “he” or “she”.

The judgment continues, finding that

“he is entitled in our judgment to mark that ballot paper and deposit it in the ballot box before the ballot box is closed and sealed. This interpretation of the enactment…appears to us to give a simple, definite, and just rule of procedure… As the polling commences at”—

7 am—

by the officials, and the machinery being ready then to supply ballot papers to voters who apply for them, so in our view the poll must be no longer ‘kept open’ beyond”—

10 pm—

“the officials then ceasing to supply ballot papers to applicants.”

That position, as stated in court, was confirmed most recently by an election court in Northern Ireland, which in 2001 stated:

“It was the duty of the presiding officer to close the poll at 10pm by ceasing to issue any more voting papers. So long as voting papers were issued by 10pm, however, if electors marked them and deposited them in the boxes without delay the votes were valid.”

The Electoral Commission, in guidance published for the Scottish elections in May this year, issued strict directions to presiding officers on what exactly should happen. Some people have argued that it would not be possible to determine where a queue ends and where exactly the cut-off point should be for people who are entitled to vote, but that criticism has to be nonsense. The presiding officer—surely, in a position of responsibility—will be able either to close the door or to usher people inside the polling station, and to say exactly where the cut-off point should be.

The guidance states:

“If there is a queue shortly before 10 pm”—

the presiding officer should—

“find out if anyone waiting is delivering a postal vote so that they can hand in the postal vote before the 10pm deadline; Make sure that nobody joins the queue after 10pm; If there is a queue at 10pm and if the polling station can accommodate all the electors in the queue, ask electors to move inside the polling station and close the doors behind the last elector in the queue”.

That is so simple. The guidance continues:

“If the polling station is too small to accommodate all the electors in the queue, a member of the polling station team should mark the end of the queue by positioning themselves behind the last elector in the queue”—

again, terribly simple and straightforward. The presiding officer, the guidance notes state, should also:

“Explain to anyone who arrives after 10 pm and tries to join the queue that the poll has closed and that, by law, they cannot now join the queue to be issued with a ballot paper.”

All that is terribly simple and straightforward.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Lady agree that under the Bill a police officer, or a local community support officer acting with the same powers as the police, could be in attendance so that if there were any dispute they could ensure that people knew exactly where the end of the queue was?

[Mrs Laing]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. However, as I am sure the Committee will appreciate, this is not about an outbreak of violence, a riot, a demonstration, or unruly electors behaving in a somehow inappropriate fashion; it is about decent, law-abiding potential voters who turn up at a polling station before 10 o’clock, or whenever the close of poll might be, and find that because of some unforeseen contingency they do not get as far as having their ballot paper issued by that time.

Let me explain the difference that new clause 4 would make. At the moment, most people think that if they are in the polling station at 10 o’clock, they will get their ballot paper and be able to vote. That is a reasonable position, and the new clause would make it law. It is an unreasonable position to say that someone who has arrived at a polling station ahead of 10 o’clock, and for some unforeseen reason does not have a ballot paper issued, cannot still have one issued for a few minutes after that time. Nothing in the new clause would mean that the poll stayed open beyond 10 past or quarter past 10. We are talking about a very small amount of time for the sake of fairness. In the 2010 general election, 1,000 people were denied the opportunity to cast their vote when they had every right to do so. I am simply asking the Committee to bring the law up to date in order to give everybody who has the right to vote the chance to cast that vote.

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[Meg Hillier]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. We need to ensure that we tighten this law now to make it fairer for electors. They would be upset that, having gone to the expense of another election and having come out to vote again, the election result and the will of the people could be affected by such a situation. That is indeed a serious concern. Rather than repeat the excellent arguments made, I rest my case there. I hope that the Government will introduce this change in this Bill to ensure that electors in my constituency never have to have this terrible experience again.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) on tabling the new clause. She explained clearly that what we need to do is include in this Bill—we have an opportunity to do it—what is “reasonable” and “practical”, as she put it. We are not asking for any major changes to the system we use for elections in this country, but it was quite clear in 2010 that large numbers of people in some constituencies were denied the right to vote even though they intended to wait in queues to get into the polling stations, as the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said.

One issue that needs to be clarified is that the new clause would help returning officers to know exactly what the law is, as there were different responses in different parts of the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) mentioned Sheffield. In the Sheffield Hallam constituency, long queues of students waited to vote for the now Deputy Prime Minister. I doubt they will have that problem at the next general election, but if they have such problems when they turn up to vote him out, those who have turned up to vote in reasonable time should be able to cast their ballot.

One issue mentioned by the hon. Lady, with which I agree, concerned the preparation for elections. For nearly 11 years, I was a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne and in 2010 I went back to help with the general election in my old ward of Walkergate. I was shocked by what the Liberal Democrat administration had done to that ward by reducing the number of polling stations. Not only did people have to travel large distances to get to the polling station, as I mentioned the other day, but there was a capacity problem in trying physically to deal with the number of electors. Making the law clear would be helpful. As I understand it, in one polling station in Newcastle the returning officer took what was referred to afterwards as a “practical” and “common sense” step by allowing people into the polling station if they had arrived at 10 o’clock, locking the doors and allowing them to vote. If the law was clear, it would, as the hon. Lady said, be quite simple to know where the end of the queue was.

The new clause is long overdue and would help not only returning officers but the many thousands of constituents who were denied their vote in 2010. As we have said on numerous occasions during the passage of this Bill, that vote is the core of our democracy.

[Mr Heath]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Evans, and am grateful to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) for tabling her new clause. We have had a valuable debate involving the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) and for North Durham (Mr Jones).

It is simply unacceptable that significant numbers of electors are unable to cast their vote due to the organisation of a polling station. It should never happen again and we must take steps to ensure that it does not. Those Members who have expressed their concern and even anger on behalf of their constituents are perfectly in order to do so, as such things should not happen.

I should also point out that only a small number of polling stations were involved: only 27 out of 40,000 across the country. That is not a representative sample of electoral arrangements in this country, and there were not many large queues at polling stations at close of poll that left people unable to cast their vote. That in no way reduces the impact on those who were affected, but it at least puts it in context.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), has made it clear in everything he has said on this issue in Committee and in this House that the primary cause of the problems was a lack of effective planning by returning officers. That will be effected not by legislation but by administrative action to make sure that they do the job better in future to avoid those unacceptable scenes. They should ensure that enough polling stations are provided to accommodate the electors in each area. It is not acceptable for there to be too few polling stations. They should ensure that polling station staff have sufficient time and training to manage the flow of electors well, as they generally do in most parts of the country and in most elections. In some ways, the firm closure of the poll at 10 pm should concentrate returning officers’ minds to ensure that, given that it is hardly news that the poll will close at 10 pm, they have the right arrangements in place to ensure that a complete and smooth passage for those arriving seeking to vote is effected at that hour.

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[Chris Ruane]

It is a pleasure to speak on Third Reading—the final part of this long debate. My interest in these matters goes back not just over recent years but over the past 10 years.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) mentioned that there was a feeling of conspiracy on the Opposition Benches and he is right. There are just reasons for that because there was a settled consensus in 2009 that this legislation would be introduced with the support of both sides of the House by 2015. During that six-year period there was to be an opportunity to raise electoral registration levels to their maximum so that we could have a full analysis of the drop and get people back on the register. It was all agreed and cut and dried after many years of debate that the date would be 2015, but the first act of the coalition was to bring that consensual date forward by a year. That might have been happenstance or coincidence, or it might have been that it would benefit them.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Like my hon. Friend, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but one does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to look at the facts and see where this change and the redrawing of the boundaries came from. The Conservative party has learned from the United States, where the American Legislative Exchange Council, which backed and funded the Atlantic Bridge scheme in which senior Government members were involved, did exactly the same thing to make it more difficult for people to vote in local elections.

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. It was my hon. Friend himself who put me on to relevant websites. There are specific examples across the whole of the United States, and lo and behold they happen in Republican states. They call it voter frustration or voter suppression. There are examples of the poor and the black being kept off the register going back to the 1950s.

There is a feeling of conspiracy on the Opposition Benches because the date has been brought forward by one year. As I said, it might have been happenstance or coincidence, but I think it was a deliberate attempt to gain maximum political advantage first for the 2015 election and secondly for the redrawing of the freeze date for the next Boundary Commission in December 2015. There was particular concern on the Opposition Benches, and, I hope, on the Government Benches as well—I know that some senior Liberal Democrats were concerned—when the Electoral Commission said that the number of current unregistered voters was 6 million, not 3 million. I informed the House that I had told the Electoral Commission that two years previously and that it had said, “No.” Then it did the research and said, “Yes, you are right—it is 6 million but it is a different 6 million” from the figures I got from Experian. When it predicted that that 6 million would go to 16 million unregistered voters, we were at risk of becoming like a banana republic, with 40% of our electorate being off the register.

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[Chris Ruane]

Let me set out a list of the constitutional changes that Labour implemented and the way in which we approached them. We changed the position in 2001 so that if someone did not put their name down for two years on the trot, they were taken off the register. That was the cause of the first big drop. Some 1 million to 2 million people came off the register as a result of the Labour Government’s action, and they were our voters. I thought it was daft, but we did it, even though it went against us.

In Scotland, a consensus was in place five years prior to devolution, meaning that everything had been squared with all sections of society. We introduced proportional representation for European elections when we did not need to, and we went from four Labour MEPs in Wales down to one.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It was a mistake.

[Chris Ruane]

Politically, they were all mistakes, but constitutionally it may have been the right thing to do.

When PR for local government was introduced in Scotland, Labour lost its natural base. Had we not introduced the change, we could have been in control of local government in Scotland. We also introduced devolution for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In 1997, we had a huge majority of 180, so we could have railroaded those proposals through and used first past the post for the devolved Administrations, but instead we used proportional representation. All Labour’s constitutional changes were neither party political nor politicised, and that is the big difference compared with this Government’s constitutional changes. The Deputy Prime Minister said that his proposals were the biggest constitutional change since 1832, and House of Lords reform is probably the biggest constitutional change since Magna Carta or 1066, but they are all being rushed through for party political advantage. A Government who use party political advantage on constitutional measures set a dangerous precedent because the party that comes in after them might do exactly the same thing, so it becomes a zero-sum game. Such measures should be taken forward with party political consensus.

I give some credit to the Government—this is the nice part of my speech, although there will be a sting in the tail—because, despite their initial position of intransigence, their Ministers then listened. That was only because the Opposition’s excellent Front-Bench team took the issues out to wider society, such as the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy and Age Concern. Those organisations held meetings in the House of Commons, took evidence and contacted the Government. The Electoral Commission, the independent monitoring voice, had massive concerns about the proposals. I also pay tribute to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee under its excellent Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), which took evidence and produced a consensual report containing strong recommendations. Our Front-Bench team has shown strong leadership throughout the process.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned Denbighshire county council, and while I am giving out plaudits, I pay tribute to the council and its electoral registration officer, Gareth Evans, for increasing elector registrations in Vale of Clwyd from 47,000 to 57,000 over five years. I pay tribute also to the leadership of the chief executive, Mohammed Mehmet, who was the one who issued the letters to the non-responders, saying that if they did not fill in their electoral registration form, he would turn them over to the county council’s solicitors and they would be fined £1,000. That had a big impact and increased registration. Even in the Rhyl West ward, one of the poorest wards in the whole country, with 900 houses in multiple occupation, registration increased from 2,500 to 3,500 electors.

Now for the sting in the tail. I am pleased with the concessions made so far, but there are two outstanding concessions that we want. If the Minister were to say that he was prepared to listen to us on this, we may not vote against Third Reading. The first concession that we seek is on the next boundary date—2015. There needs to be a carry-over from the old register to the new register. The second is a carry-over for postal ballots. There can be no reason whatever for not accepting this, except party political advantage. I warn the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition to be very wary. The advantage will be for the Conservatives, and it will come up and bite the Liberal Democrats from behind in the inner cities, where they have some presence, and in the south-west, if they do not sort the issue out.

The House of Lords Reform Bill was printed today. It states that the freeze date for that election will be December 2011, so there will still be 6 million people missing from the register. Remember, those who are elected—the new Lords or senators or whatever they are—will be elected for a 15-year period, so if those 6 million people cannot participate in the first vote, they will have to wait about 18 years before they can have any influence on who represents them in the other place.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On electoral registration and issues to do with election, there has always been a degree of consensus in the House, which has ensured that it is not a political issue and that there is cross-party support for any changes that are introduced. But on the Bill and the boundary changes, we have seen a politicisation of the arguments.

We do not have to look very far to see where that came from. Individuals in the Conservative party were determined to use this Bill and the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill to gain political advantage. They learned that from the United States, where the American Legislative Exchange Council has been trumpeting these changes, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) said, have made it more difficult for other people to register to vote or actually to vote in elections. That is exactly where the policy came from. What was the connection? The Atlantic Bridge, of which senior members of the Government were members, was supported and paid for by that organisation, which is sponsored mainly by wealthy right-wing neo-cons in the United States.

Has the Bill been improved? Yes, it has, because of the outrage that has been generated. I do not include in what I have just said the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). He is increasingly becoming the Minister for dealing with sticky sticks. He is obviously going to—

[Chris Ruane]

Did my hon. Friend really mean sticky sticks?

[Mr Jones]

I certainly did. I am far too polite to suggest anything other of the Minister. He is a fine gentleman. He dealt with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, he has had this Bill to deal with and he has Lords reform to deal with. I look forward to the long debates that we will have on that. Overall, the hon. Gentleman has tried to do the right thing.

Has the Bill been improved, or have the most radical and extreme parts of it been expunged through the process of pre-legislative scrutiny and Committee? Yes. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd, I pay tribute to the Select Committee for the work that it has done, to the various outside bodies, such as Unlock Democracy and the Electoral Reform Society, and to the Electoral Commission, which focused on the fact that if the Bill had remained in its original format it could have changed democracy in this country. The idea of being able to opt out of the register was clearly designed to make things harder and push down the register in certain areas. Just by chance they are the inner-city seats that are mainly represented by the Labour party.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend refers to the fact that if the Bill had gone through in its original form it would have damaged democracy. Does he agree that we could have been looking at a British coup?

[Mr Jones]

Yes, and that is what is sad about what the Bill has done. When any legislation to do with elections or boundaries came before the House it was always consensual. This has been highly political, as the opt-out clearly was.

The Liberal Democrats’ position is very strange. As I said the other day, it is the first time I have seen turkeys voting for Christmas. They are doing it yet again on this Bill. They think that they will get some advantage out of it, but I just do not see that at all.

I am still concerned about how the Government will deal with the penalty. If it is a derisory amount, will it be effective? I do not think that it will be. I wait for the Government to come forward with that. The measures were clearly designed to hamper registration and make it difficult for people to register to vote. As democrats, we should be encouraging people not only to vote, but also to get on the electoral register. As I said on Monday, the important thing is not only to get people on the register, but for it to be accurate.

A lot of things have changed since the last general election when the Liberal Democrats were in opposition, but I want to read what the then Liberal Democrat Member for Cambridge, David Howarth, said in the House on 13 July 2009. He said:

“The validity and credibility of democratic elections depend both on the register being comprehensive and on its having a great deal of integrity. If the register is not comprehensive, it is not the electorate who are making a choice but some subset of the electorate. If it is not secure and we cannot be sure that the people whose votes are being counted are electors, that people are not voting more than once or that there is not fraud going on, equally there is a threat to democratic credibility…I do not think that anybody”—

[Interruption.] If the Minister is patient, I am coming on to the issue around changing the date in terms of using the register for the 2015 boundaries.

David Howarth went on to say:

“I do not think that anybody was suggesting that the timetable be artificially shortened, or that any risk be taken with the comprehensiveness of the register.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 111-2.]

But that is exactly what the Government are doing and that is exactly the situation we will face if the carry-over is used for the 2015 boundaries. The Conservatives know exactly what they are doing. They know that the register will be depleted and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) said earlier, if the money assigned for electoral registration is not ring-fenced, in certain parts of the country no real effort will be put into ensuring that the register is as complete as possible, no matter how much guidance and encouragement is given nationally to local councils, and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd gave an example the other day relating to the leader of Islington council.

I also have great fears about the data matching. I think that it is a good idea to rely not just on the annual canvass, but to use other methods as well. Durham county council has pioneered that and my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly raised another good example. But if local councils are faced with budget cuts and they can get out of doing the annual canvass, they will, which will deplete the register even further. I think that the annual canvass will be more important in the early stages of individual registration than it is today. The only way to get to hard-to-reach communities practically will be through individual canvasses of those electorates, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said earlier and as the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said excellently yesterday when speaking to his amendment, particularly in relation to disabled people and those who have difficulty either accessing the registration forms or filling them in. Therefore, I fear that there are things in the Bill that will be used by certain people to ensure not only that it is harder to get on the register, but that there are disincentives for doing so.

The most scandalous thing in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly has already said, is the carry-over relating to the 2015 boundary changes. It will be interesting to see what the Government do if there is a big drop, which is clearly possible. Clearly such a drop will not be in the more affluent areas represented mainly by the Conservative party. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), said, it will be in the inner-city London constituencies such as his and others where the register will drop substantially. That will then affect the figures that will be used to draw up the new boundaries. They will therefore be artificial and will not truly reflect the electorates.

We should be encouraging people to get on the electoral register, but what the Government are aiming for here—we know why the Conservatives are doing it—is to ensure that those people are not taken into account when the new boundaries are drawn up. I will give an example from the present redrawing of the boundaries. Durham county council, when it came into being, took responsibility for electoral registration; before it was a unitary council, seven district councils were responsible. Registration was patchy in different parts and the councils all did it in different ways. I described the other day how in some areas, such as Derwentside, it was obvious to see that there were mistakes in the register but the council made no effort to address the gaps. When the county council took responsibility, it made a real effort to ensure that the register was as accurate as possible. It put over 12,000 missing electors on the register, and that had an impact on the boundary commission’s deliberations for the recommendations in the latest redrawing of boundaries. In the city of Durham, for example, a lot of students were not on the register, but they were put on and that had an effect, so there is clearly going to be an effect if we do not have such a carry-over. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee was very clear about that, and its Chair said:

“There are real risks in moving to a new system, not least that people with the right to vote could fall off the electoral roll in large numbers. This would be damaging to democracy, to public engagement in politics, and to the fairness of the basis on which MPs are elected.”

That is fundamental, and if we read the report we find that, even though the Committee has a Labour Chair, those sentiments are shared across the political spectrum.

Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg of the University of Liverpool said in evidence on 8 September 2011:

“If we do see a large number of people drop off the registers, even if in all likelihood they are not going to vote, that will have a profound implication for the redrawing of boundaries under the new rules that have just gone through.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd did earlier, I think, whether the Government have provided a good explanation for introducing the measure. No, they have not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said that, in the previous Parliament when we introduced individual registration, there was consensus on the timetable, and it is more important to get the measure right and to make the register comprehensive than it is to do what the Conservative party in the coalition is doing, which is to make it more difficult to create an accurate register, meaning that the boundaries will be affected when they are redrawn.

The other strange thing that I cannot understand is why those who have postal and proxy votes will not be carried over, either. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly referred to his 86-year-old mother, and her situation will be replicated throughout the country by disabled people and people who have had postal votes for many years, as they will think that, because they have one, it will continue on and on. It will not. If we do not engage with those individuals, we will find that large numbers of a very vulnerable section of society, are disfranchised. My hon. Friend said that MIND and other pressure groups dealing with that section of society have argued against the measure, but the Government seem to be ignoring them, and in Committee of the whole House I did not hear any explanation for it.

Major changes have been made to the Bill, and it is better than the one we started with, but it still has within it that bit of poison, which the Conservatives will use in their attempt to gerrymander the next boundary review, and that is why I will not support it on Third Reading.