Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, it is entirely appropriate that this unelected second Chamber should be debating, probing, examining and questioning the electoral system in our country. As none of us is elected, we can approach this with a degree of objectivity and dispassion, which was how the noble and learned Lord began his remarks. I welcome that; it is a sort of oblique argument in favour of not having an elected element to this House, but I leave that debate for another day.

The independence of this House in electoral matters was very much evidenced in 2004 when postal voting by demand, introduced by the Labour Government in an Act in 2001, was eventually implemented that year by another Act. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, was involved at the time, as was one of his colleagues. This House insisted that there should be proof of identity in postal voting. That was resisted by the House of Commons again and again, and there was an episode of ping pong. Eventually a proof of identity was put on to the statute book, which I think is entirely appropriate. Anyone who has fought in an election, as have seven or eight speakers in the debate, knows how important the register is. They will also recognise how out of date and inaccurate it is, and how frustrating it is to be met by your supporters during an election campaign who say, “I’m afraid I am not registered”. We have all had that experience. There might be a case for late registration, which should be looked at by the Electoral Commission and possibly by the Government.

The purpose of the Bill is to try to suppress fraud. Fraud in election comes in many shapes and sizes. The old traditional one was a straightforward impersonation in the ballot room—you turned up and said that you were somebody you were not. I think it was derived from the old Irish custom of polling the dead, but wherever it came from that was the most likely method. If you look at the recent fraudulent cases, you will see that that rarely happens now. Fraud in elections has become much more sophisticated, and the real fraud now in elections takes place as a result of having a postal vote by demand. There is a good case for that in trying to increase the number of people who are going to vote in our country, but there is absolutely no doubt that after it was introduced there was a flood of fraudulent activities. I will give noble Lords some idea of its extent. Recorded proceedings were taken and charges were laid in the following places: Birmingham, twice; Coventry; Burnley, twice; Halifax; Middlesbrough; Rochdale; Leicester; Pendle; Hyndburn; Blackburn; Woking; Slough; Peterborough; Reading; Oldham; Bradford; and Tower Hamlets, which has become the centre of this activity and where there is an ongoing criminal investigation.

The original cases in 2005-06 were principally between the Labour and Liberal Parties in the northern cities. The Conservative Party was no slouch in this. It quickly got in on the act and there was really no difference between the various parties in this matter: all parties have engaged in that sort of fraud.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Perhaps he could help the House by saying two things. First, what percentage of total votes cast were represented by those challenges in that long list that he outlined? Secondly, is he familiar with the 2008 Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust study on postal voting? If he is not, I suggest he familiarises himself with it. I am going to quote extensively from it later in my speech. I will not tire the House with it now, but I hope that the noble Lord will stay around to hear exactly what it said about the extent of postal vote fraud.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

I am familiar with the Rowntree report and I intend to quote something from it which rather refutes it, so we will have an exchange of quotations later. On percentages, the point about the list I have read out is that this particular fraud has certain characteristics. It is urban and it is in marginal seats. In many seats where there is a clear majority, either for the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, there is no fraud because it is unnecessary: it will not affect the result. It will affect the result only in marginal seats where a small balance of a small number of votes can determine who is going to win at a local election or at a general election. That is the comparison that one must make.

This fraud takes place in high-density communities with crowded premises in towns and cities. There is a high turnover because people are moving all the time from flat to flat and from residence to residence. There is often a floating population which can generate what has been described by some electoral pundits as clan loyalty whereby people want to see their immediate friends and colleagues elected. Many of these cases have landed up in court and there has been the imprisonment and bankruptcy of some of the people involved. Mayors and councillors have been involved, and reputations have been destroyed. It has been a very sad episode. It is in the interests of all our parties to try to eliminate this as much as we can.

In May 2010, the Sunday Times reported that 27 people were registered in a single property in Southall and in February this year the Evening Standard reported that dozens of flats in Tower Hamlets were registered with eight people per bedroom. The quotation that I shall use, which is rather later than the Rowntree report, comes from Judge Richard Mawrey, the expert on electoral fraud in our country. He has dealt with many cases. He said that,

“where a small number of votes will make a considerable difference, then the opportunities for fraud are enormous, the chances of detection very small, and a relatively modest amount of fraud will guarantee you win the election”.

That is the problem we have to face. What can one do about that?

I remember when I first stood in a council election back in the 1950s. In those days, if you wanted a postal vote or a proxy vote—fellow parliamentarians will remember this—you had to justify it and explain that you were elderly, housebound, or bedbound, were going to be abroad or out of town, or worked in a town that was different from the town in which you were registered to vote. There was a variety of reasons. You had to have that application signed by a magistrate, an MP, a doctor or a professional person. I well remember—and I am sure my noble friend Lord Rennard will remember because in these matters I look upon him as a professional expert—that in those days in all constituency fights you had a committee of people who sought out postal votes for your party. I think the Liberal Party was the first to do so, but we followed quite quickly. You identified people who you knew were going to be abroad and got them registered. I would go back to something like that, but that may be a little unrealistic unless the checks and balances that we create are effective.

If this business of postal fraud continues—and I think we are going to try to stop it with this Bill, very imperfectly, if I may say so—what can one do? The basis of the previous system was verification by an outsider. Under postal vote by demand the verification is by the registered person and, as the Minister said and the noble Lord confirmed, there will be three qualifications: a signature, a date of birth and a national insurance number. This is going to be a matter for the Secretary of State to lay down in regulations after the Bill. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the national insurance number will be added. That would certainly deal with the problem of illegal immigrants because the national insurance number is the closest thing we in this country have to a national number.

Other checks are important. The canvass is important. There is going to be a canvass in 2014. That means that returning officers will have to carry out a canvass. I remember this happening once in Dorking. It surprised everybody. People were visited by people from the council who knocked on doors to see who lived there and who they were, but it happened only once during my 30 years-plus in the House of Commons. I think it is an important step in the verification of electoral registers, and there is a possibility that it could be suspended, postponed or done only partially, and that is quite wrong.

The other check is the verification of postal votes by returning officers. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, answered a Question last year or the year before about the 2010 election. In only two-thirds of the cases had returning officers checked the signatures on the ballot papers. Those of us who have postal votes know that you have to sign them, having previously registered your signature. That was done in only three-quarters of the cases. I would have thought that it would be necessary to make that mandatory for all seats.

One other matter I would draw to the attention of the Government is the spate of fraud from about 2005 to this year, mainly based around postal votes, and only partially on proxy votes. There have been one or two cases of late where the fraud seems to have moved to proxy voting. There was one case where somebody turned up with 50 proxy votes; that is just like the 18th century, when the Duke of Newcastle turned up with a number of votes and said, “That’s it”. I would have thought that there is a case for saying that anybody who has a proxy vote should have a vote for only one other person—not for another 50—to bring to the poll. That is not in the Bill; perhaps the Government might consider that carefully, to see whether such an amendment could be introduced.

I would make only these further points. This Bill also extends the length of the campaign from 17 days to 25. I do not know where this proposal came from; I always thought that 17 days was quite enough for a campaign. One of the great virtues of our system is that we have a short, sharp campaign. In America, it lasts for a year or 18 months, but in Britain, 17 days was absolutely ideal. I do not why we need another eight days for campaigning, when one counted and ticked off the days and the hours and hoped for polling day. That will be a big expense for the parties; they will need quite a bit more money to run the campaign for another week. It seems to be government policy and also I suppose coalition policy, too. It was—good Lord. In that case, I support it, although I do not really see the justification for it.

The other point I shall touch on is the extraordinary civil penalty which has been created: that the returning officer imposes a civil penalty on people who do not register. That reminded me of the Anglican confession:

“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done”.

It seems extraordinary to create a civil penalty and a fine for not doing something. It would face enormous trouble in the courts. I am sure the Minister is aware that there are very strange religious cults in our country, which are not remotely concerned with the electoral system here; they are mainly concerned about the accessibility of the next world. They will certainly tell their supporters on no account to bother to register. Sure enough, there will be a case with some awkward person who will actually go to court and challenge this, and almost certainly end up in a human rights court, challenging whether his human rights have been denied by not registering. He would be hauled up because he had not performed his civic duty. Civic duty is another extraordinary concept of this Bill and I have not come across this previously in legislation. I know it as a concept. When the human rights court gets such a case before it, it will almost certainly find in favour of the litigant. After all, it was prepared to disregard civic duty to the extent of allowing prisoners— who have abandoned their civic duties—to have votes. I think this will be a big problem area for the Government; I do not know where the problem arose.

In conclusion, it is in the interests of all parties to ensure that there are no obvious areas of fraud. I believe that in spite of the checks and balances introduced by this Bill, there will be scope for elaborate and very ingenious fraud through postal and proxy voting. That should be checked. It was checked in the 19th century and the early 20th century; we have made it much looser. That is not in the interests of democracy or fairness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, this Bill is part of the coalition’s ongoing search for constitutional change. We have had a Bill on how we vote, with AV. We have had a Bill on who we vote for, with the House of Lords reform. Now we have a Bill to decide whether we can vote at all. Let us hope that this Bill is rather more useful than the others.

In essence this is a good Bill, although it will need a great deal of work in Committee if it is to become as sound as it is important. It is a paradox, is it not, that, as so often, it will be this unelected House whose duty it is to sort it? Many of us party politicians—someone suggested today that we should call ourselves party-linked parliamentarians, which is a much nicer phrase—have political backgrounds, although I hope that we can approach this in a non-partisan fashion. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, suggested that this was a partisan Bill. I do not agree with him on that. He did not provide much evidence. I much preferred his points about funding.

Let us face it, none of us owns this or that group of voters and no party has entirely grime-free hands in these areas. Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, showed himself to be a past-master in the dark practices of electoral fraud, as befits a former Conservative Party chairman. If that has come out wrong, I am sure that the Hansard writer will find a way to make it slightly more acceptable. Of the many instances he gave, we have to acknowledge that some of those involved Tories.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, is far too young to remember 1969 when the late Lord Callaghan, who was then simply known as Jim, buried a boundary review simply because it did not benefit the Labour Party. I have even heard outlandish rumours that some Liberal Democrats are threatening to do the same now. I wait in expectation for one of them to jump up and say that this is not the case. But we must move on from the suggestion that this is a partisan measure.

The vote was a right that our forefathers and mothers fought for with too much sacrifice and too much suffering for it to be cheapened by this Bill being turned into a game of musical chairs, waiting for others to be shoved out of the way and off the register when the music stops. We all of course have our differences and preferences but I think that we are all agreed that some measure of change is needed.

The current system is open not just to inaccuracy but to fraud. As Judge Maurey has said, the postal voting system is one which,

“would disgrace a banana republic”.

That must change. But I entirely understand the anxieties expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that change that is too rapid or too ill thought through might disadvantage various minority groups. We must take that seriously and study it in Committee, although I have to say that the arguments are frequently overdone. For example, if a student is capable of registering for a loan, he or she is equally capable of registering for a vote. We must test the provisions of this Bill to make sure that they are fair and balanced.

We have heard much in this good and very informative debate. Perhaps I may share with noble Lords my experience of the last election. It is well known that I am a man of limited imagination. As a result, I named my second son Michael. Therefore, in our household we had two Michael Dobbs on the register in Wiltshire. As it happens, some nameless, faceless registration officer decided, quite sensibly perhaps, that there were too many people with that name on the register. But, without any checks or thought, on a personal crusade to implement data matching, my son’s name was crossed off the register. He found himself unable to vote. After many years of being on the register, he was unable to vote last time around. Fortunately, it was of no great consequence. The admirable John Glen was elected in Salisbury with a handsome majority.

However, that is not the point. Under the current system, some who should be on the register are not and some who are on the register should not be. We need to change that. In Committee, we will deal with many issues. This evening, I want to highlight only one; namely, Clause 13, which extends the timetable between dissolution and polling day. The Bill suggests that this should be lengthened from 17 days to 25 days, which sounds innocuous. The reasons for this seem to be to make life easier for returning officers. I believe it is suggested that it delivers a small cost saving. But there is a bite in the tail, and not simply that of voters being bored to death, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Baker.

Of course, it is not simply 25 days. There are “dies non” which refer to weekends and bank holidays. In fact, those 25 days stretch to five and a half weeks. We recently passed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which, in normal circumstances, means very predictable elections every five years. But not all circumstances are predictable. Let us imagine a national crisis—for example, a desperate economic and financial collapse in Europe, and political paralysis here at home. Let us further imagine a Government no longer capable of commanding a majority and losing a vote of confidence; and there being no agreement on a replacement and an election being called. Because of the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, that cannot be for another two weeks. Five and a half weeks becomes seven and a half weeks, which adds to the political and economic crisis that has created this situation.

We are talking of a potential situation of political paralysis and governmental chaos at a time of national crisis that could stretch into months. We cannot always predict political crises, let alone avoid them. But we can prepare for them better than the straitjacket of Clause 13. We need to look at it again, and I hope that Ministers will take a look at this and allow us to discuss it in greater detail.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

The noble Lord has had great experience at Central Office. I agree with him entirely about the extension. Does he have an estimate of the extra cost that parties will have to bear as a result of extending this campaign? At the individual constituency level, there will be considerable cost. At the national level, all the main parties will want to advertise. I wonder whether he has considered replying to the Liberal Party, which proposed this, and telling it that a great deal more money will have to be found for campaigning in these extra weeks. I wonder where it will find that money.

[Lord Dobbs]

That is an excellent point. In this Chamber previously, I have suggested that the lack of adequate funding for political parties is one of the things that undermines our parliamentary democracy. We will not solve it through this Bill but there is no reason why it should be worse either.

There are many other details to discuss and I will not detain the House any longer, except to point out that the other place spent three days discussing these matters before the guillotine fell and they gathered up their buckets and spades and departed. Once again, this unelected House will have to do the donkey work of democracy. It leaves me wondering where we would be if we were elected—off on the beach with the other lot, I suspect. On that note, perhaps I may express the wish that your Lordships will long retain the cherished position alongside the mentally incapable and convicts and continue to be denied the vote.