Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015

Lord Bridges of Headley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward]

I do not challenge that. The noble Lord has made the point for me. We are talking about people who are registered or not registered and not about the ghost voters whom we are talking about in this debate.

There are other areas of deprivation where they have cleansed the register very effectively. There is a whole series of authorities in Wales—places such as Bridgend, Cardiff, Swansea and Rhondda Cynon Taff. All of them have low figures of problems, if I may use the term, in cleansing their registers. I have not raised this, but if it is right that it was possible in Wales to have cleansed the registers in those sorts of authorities, why is it not the case in London? If it is suggested that this is to do with boundaries, then the places that will suffer are the valleys of Wales because they have cleansed their registers. The boroughs of London which have not cleansed theirs will benefit.

In conclusion, we have been talking about this group of people—these ghosts—as if there is no burden. There is a substantial burden on local authorities. They have to print the electoral rolls with all these people on them, many of whom should not be there. They issue polling cards. They issue ballot papers. There has to be freepost provision for these people for some elections. There is an attendant burden. No wonder the AEA makes its views clear on what it thinks would be the best position. It recognises that there is an unnecessary burden on a large number of local authorities. If one removes retained voters from the register, we will not be sending out all the unnecessary cards, ballot papers, freeposts, et cetera, during the upcoming election.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I have been trying to get in for some time—

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. A lot has been said this afternoon. It has been an excellent debate, and there have been very good contributions from all sides, although I profoundly disagree with some of what has been said, as I will come on to. It is always nice to be reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that I have not read my Aristotle. He firmly puts me in my place.

I shall start by taking a step back to make two fundamental points, on which I hope we can all agree. First, we all agree that we want more people to engage in the democratic process and register to vote, but those who are not on the register today will clearly not be affected by the measure we are discussing, which is the removal of ghost entries. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Lexden said in his excellent speech, nobody will lose their right to vote as a result of the government proposals that we are debating today.

Instead, the core of what we are debating comes down to the accuracy of the new electoral register. Do we keep on the new register ghost entries—entries of people who may have moved house or died or may never have existed in the first place? Are these ghost entries living, breathing voters, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, calls them, or hundreds of thousands of database errors which need to be removed ahead of the important elections next year? As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly pointed out—let us not disguise this fact—for the sake of completeness, the Electoral Commission wants to keep those entries on the register, even if this means that the accuracy of the register is undermined. It judges the risk of fraud to be acceptable, and the Government disagree.

First, we believe that after 18 months of transition and more than a decade of waiting, as we enter a year of elections and possibly a referendum on Europe—possibly—the time has come to move fully to the new system. Secondly, we see the risk of fraud as unacceptable. Thirdly, we believe that people have been given ample opportunity to register on the new system. That said, fourthly, we entirely agree with those who want more people to register to vote and participate in the elections, but we do not make the register more complete by stuffing it with inaccurate registrations.

I shall take those points in turn. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, we have been waiting for the full transition to individual electoral registration for more than a decade. As the current chair of the Electoral Commission said:

“This change is something we’ve been calling for since 2003 and is an important step towards a more modern and secure electoral system”.

To give the former Labour Government their due, they legislated to introduce individual electoral registration in 2009. The coalition Government further legislated in 2013 and, finally, in the summer of 2014, the new system was introduced. I remind your Lordships that at the general election, in its manifesto, the Conservative Party committed that:

“Building on our introduction of individual voter registration, we will continue to make our arrangements fair and effective by ensuring the Electoral Commission puts greater priority on tackling fraud”.

This Government believe that it is time to finish the process, and finish it now. This decision is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, rash.

Let us consider the progress that has been made. Back in May, 96% of the electorate was successfully registered under the new system. It is the remaining 4%—the so-called “carry forwards”—that the Government believe should be removed from the register at the end of December. It is not the entire register that we are questioning, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seems to suggest; it is the 4%. Then we have to ask ourselves: what do these entries represent; who are they; do they exist? The reality is that neither we nor the Electoral Commission know who they are. They may be people who have moved or have died, or they may never have existed in the first place. However, we have gone the extra mile to find out whether these entries actually are people living at the registered address. Electoral registration officers have been working tirelessly to confirm whether the remaining entries are real people or whether they are merely ghosts.

These people will have first been sent three invitations to register. If they had not done so by last autumn, an electoral registration officer would have visited the address linked to the entry. If this failed to elicit a response, a further letter would have gone to the address earlier this year. Where carry-forward still exists, these addresses will receive three further letters and another visit from an electoral registration officer this autumn. That is the second fact that I would ask noble Lords to remember. These people, if they are people, will have been contacted at least nine times by December. I ask noble Lords to compare that with the number of times people are contacted about renewing their TV licence—four times. These people, if these entries do indeed represent people, have been contacted nine times. On top of this, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, the Government made available to councils up to £3 million of additional funding to support extra efforts targeted specifically at carry-forward entries, and £1.2 million of that was drawn down.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He has always been very courteous when we have been debating issues of the constitution. He will be aware that the Electoral Commission has taken everything that he has said into consideration, yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said, it has still given a very clear recommendation that the transition period should not come to an end early. One reason is the significant polls scheduled for May 2016. The Minister knows that I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament. On an issue of principle such as this, it is inconceivable to me that the Government would not have consulted the Scottish Parliament in bringing forward the transitional period, given the significance of the polls in May 2016. Can he confirm formally, at the Dispatch Box, whether the Government did or did not consult the Scottish Parliament? If they did, what was the view of the Parliament?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, the timetable for the start of IER was agreed with the Scottish Government and allowed the referendum to take place before IER got under way. There is no legal requirement to consult on this order, and electoral registration is at present within the competence of the UK Government. I will come back in a moment to the other points raised by the noble Lord.

I refer those who argue that we should wait for another year to the Electoral Commission itself. It said that such efforts are likely to see:

“Diminishing returns because a greater proportion of these electors are no longer resident at that address”.

On the point that the current canvass will address this issue, I agree entirely. The canvass going on at the moment means that we can be even more sure that the vast majority of these entries are ghost entries.

I come to the next point. Where are these ghost entries? Six of the local authorities with levels of carry-forwards above the national average have been identified as among the authorities more at risk of electoral fraud. As my noble friend Lord Hayward said, one of these boroughs is Tower Hamlets. There, the election judge slammed the “extremely lax” registration rules of the previous system as opening the door to electoral corruption. It is worth noting that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets was awarded top marks in the Electoral Commission’s performance standards for electoral integrity.

In Hackney, which is not even one of those six authorities, there were in May 43,000 carry-forwards. That is 23% of its electorate—I repeat: 23%. It is worth noting that in Hackney the register has increased by 10% since the introduction of individual electoral registration. The Electoral Commission states that the increment in the number of entries,

“may have therefore been inflated by a high volume of inaccurate entries”.

What might be the cause of those inaccuracies?

Hackney, and many other areas where there are large numbers of ghost entries, share a common characteristic: their population is, as has been mentioned, mobile—and in mobile populations many people rent their homes. Again, the Electoral Commission itself has suggested that those who rent private sector accommodation are more likely to have been carried forward. Why is that? One in three households in the private rented sector moves every year. It is therefore hardly surprising that we see a high percentage of carry-forwards in these areas given that the entries to the register are over a year old, dating from February 2014, which was before the introduction of the new system. As my noble friend Lord Hayward pointed out, these numbers are not just in Labour areas; the last time I looked, Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Windsor were blue.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The noble Lord has quoted the Electoral Commission several times. As a matter of process, the opinion of the Electoral Commission is extremely important. As a member of the coalition Government, my clear understanding was that we had agreed that we would complete the process by December 2016 unless there was—as the Electoral Commission has confirmed there is—compelling evidence that it was not necessary to go that far. The Electoral Commission has said, very clearly, that it thinks we are mistaken in what we are doing. Is the Minister saying that the Government consider the commission not to be relevant in this crucial area, although he is using it to support his argument in other areas? Why do the Government not regard the Electoral Commission’s argument? I repeat that this is a matter of the rules of politics, which have to be seen as fair.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I completely agree with the noble Lord that the rules of politics must be seen to be fair, which is why we are taking this action today. We believe that it is wrong to have so many inaccurate ghost entries on this register and that the facts have changed, in that by December these four out of 100 voters will have been contacted at least nine times. I will go on.

[Lord Wills]

The Minister keeps referring to this figure of 96%. Can he be absolutely clear that he accepts that 85% of the eligible population has registered to vote? In other words, 15% of those eligible are not registered. Many noble Lords have made the point in this debate that the process now under way, which the Government are hurrying forward in this way, will prejudice attempts to get that other 15% on to the register.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I completely agree that we need to get more people on the register. However, let us not confuse apples and oranges—these are two separate things. If people are not on the register, there is absolutely no way they can be taken off the register, which is what we are saying today. I do not understand—maybe I am not explaining it clearly enough. However, I will go on, if I may.

When people move, we should not leave their entries on the register. That increases the risk of not only electoral fraud but benefit and financial fraud. In advance of Northern Ireland moving to a system of individual electoral registration in 2002, the police said that it would,

“go a long way to eliminating the opportunities for fraudsters to commit the offence of personation”.

The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, asked about fraud. Let us just remind ourselves that since 2002-03, courts have imposed jail sentences for electoral fraud in Ashford, Blackburn, Bradford, Bristol, Burnley, Coventry, Derby, Guildford, Oldham, Peterborough, Slough and Walsall.

[Lord Greaves]

Will the Minister agree that in I think all those cases, but certainly in almost all of them, the fraud was linked to postal vote and proxy vote fraud, not registration fraud?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, it is electoral fraud; we are trying to make sure here that—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

No—I am absolutely clear. We need to make sure that we take every step possible to cut down on electoral fraud. Therefore, after such an effort to contact the ghost entries, which puts pestering PPI calls in the shade, and given these facts, the Government believe that the time has come to remove these entries from the register.

I will repeat a crucial point which I made at the start. Even if someone is removed inadvertently from the register, he or she has not lost the right to vote, as some would have it. Indeed, as I have said before, we want more people to register. A number of noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, have highlighted the number of those who are not on the register already. I agree—they are right—there are too many of them, and we need to encourage them to register, as I said at the start. Individual electoral registration will help them do that. It is now easier to register than ever before and takes minutes to do online: 460,000 applications were made on the registration deadline for the general election alone—that is five applications a second.

As the Minister for Constitutional Reform said in his speech last week, the approach to registration needs to be updated and modernised, building on the success of online registration. This will help to meet the challenges of finding and registering those currently missing from the register and build on the excellent work that was done under the coalition.

The key point is this: the need to encourage voter registration has nothing to do with removing the inaccurate carry-forward entries on the register. As I just said, if a person is not on the register already, they obviously cannot be affected when these ghost entries are removed from the register. As I said at the start, the answer to underregistered groups, such as young people or expatriates, is not to stuff the electoral roll, and potentially the ballot boxes, with the names of people who do not exist but, instead, to encourage more people to vote.

A number of your Lordships referred to the boundary review, which, as your Lordships will know, begins its work early in the new year, fulfilling the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitment to cut the number of MPs and make votes of more equal value. If we are to create constituencies of equal size, the electoral registers used for the boundary review must be accurate across the UK. Otherwise, areas with large numbers of carry-forwards will get more MPs than those with small numbers.

This should not be a partisan point, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said. Areas with high carry-forwards include Conservative authorities such as Windsor and Maidenhead, and Kensington and Chelsea. It is right that overregistration be tackled in these areas. Equally, Labour councils such as Barrow, Cardiff and Hartlepool have below average numbers of carry-forwards. Surely it cannot be right that we leave 17,000 carry-forwards on the register in Kensington and Chelsea, according to May’s figures, while there are just 558 in Hartlepool. If we allow this to happen, it will distort the distribution of seats, hitting, in particular, Wales and Northern Ireland, where there are no carry-forwards as they already have individual electoral registration. A full transition to the new system will ensure fairness—something we all should want.

As we enter a year of elections, the Government believe that we should not retain these ghost entries on the register, making it inaccurate and perhaps making elections open to fraud. As has been said, we are not alone in thinking this. As my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord Hayward said, the Association of Electoral Administrators supports ending the transition this year for primarily this reason, saying that:

“It is crucial to have the most accurate register possible”.

All democracies depend on a weighing up of interests and a careful consideration of the facts. This is no less true of our electoral system. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, we must take an approach that strikes the right balance between safeguarding the integrity of the register and ensuring that the electors registered to vote for the elections next May are accurate. The Government believe that we are past the tipping point. Remember, 96 out of every 100 electors have successfully registered on the new system. By December, at least nine attempts will have been made to contact those entries that were carried forward. The chance of a large number of the remaining carry-forward entries being eligible to register to vote is vanishingly small. No one is losing the right to vote and registering is easier than ever before. This is why the Government oppose the Motions today.

Although I heed the words of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I would like to echo the words of my noble friend Lord Cormack. Having broken a convention yesterday by failing to respect the primacy of the other place, the House supporting these Motions would defeat a statutory instrument, not on the grounds that it has been improperly made but because the noble Lords who tabled them disagree with it. It is up to your Lordships to make your decision clear, but it would be killing a statutory instrument—something this House has done only five times since World War II. With a further fatal Motion on the Order Paper for later today, the House is being invited to withhold its approval to three statutory instruments in two days; doing in two days what this House did in the 13 years between 1997 and 2010.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The House will be doing so partly because the Electoral Commission has advised us to do so. That is the question the noble Lord has not answered.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, the Electoral Commission is an independent body but we are not bound to observe it. As I have set out very, very clearly, we believe that we have a strong case for proceeding as we have.

Although this House is unelected, I believe that we should be doing our utmost to protect the integrity and accuracy of our electoral system. That is the duty we have to voters. We believe that it is time to finish the transition to individual electoral registration in December 2015 so that we can all be confident in our electoral register.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I think the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is going to accept my amendment, so I am grateful to him for that. The Minister has not made a convincing case to the House this afternoon. The Government also failed to persuade the Electoral Commission, an independent body set up by Parliament which is expert in this field, to which a number of noble Lords referred, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton.

As has been said, the Electoral Commission urged the House to support the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. My noble friend Lord Wills made a powerful contribution, particularly pointing out that the Electoral Commission recommended the use of ID cards at polling stations. The Government have not moved on that and they should do so if they have concerns about electoral fraud.

The noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Lexden, made reference to the Northern Ireland schools initiative. I agree that it is a very good initiative and I have repeatedly said from the Dispatch Box that the Government should introduce it in Great Britain, but to no avail so far. I know that EROs target groups, and supporting the Motion today will be giving more time to EROs to do more work on the register.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made an excellent point about the completeness of the register, which underlines the underregistration problem we have in Great Britain today. It is important to note that a cut-off date of 1 December 2016 was in a government amendment. It has been mentioned here before and nothing has changed since then. No one suggested here today that it is so successful that we can take a year off the period. From my time on the Electoral Commission, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that it worked with great determination on IER. It was the champion initially and worked really hard on completeness. When it says that this is a risk, we need to look at that very carefully.

My noble friend Lady McDonagh made an excellent contribution, highlighting the data-matching issues that have been experienced across the country. The case has not been made today.