Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The answer I gave was not intended to be specific to the issue of public hearings, but rather was meant to be illustrative of where there obviously will be changes from what is set out in the Bill at the moment as a result of amendments to be brought forward at the Report stage in response to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, about counter-representations. That is why I wanted to make the point that we cannot really expect the Boundary Commissions to produce draft guidance when they do not know what they are actually going to be asked to deliver. Clearly, we will have to examine what the issues of public hearings and counterproposals mean in terms of timing in the coming weeks. However, as I just indicated, it has been the practice in the past that, as the secretary to the Boundary Commission for England confirmed for the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the other place, the commissions again intend to issue guidance. The point I sought to make was that I did not think that they had issued draft guidance in the past, and I certainly would not anticipate any draft guidance before next week or whenever we debate the Bill on Report.

I am also advised that the Boundary Commission for England published its recommendations on a county basis, which coincides with what the noble and learned Lord said. It is certainly a matter for the Boundary Commission itself to determine how it will report. It could use regions, and I understand that it would be consistent with the powers in the Bill for it to do so. But I envisage that this matter will become much clearer when the Boundary Commissions get the Act of Parliament, as we hope, and they can respond. I have no doubt whatever that we will hear what the respective Boundary Commissions propose in terms of bringing forward reports.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The target size is 76,000, with the 5 per cent leeway making a ceiling of something like 79,500 per constituency. What will happen when a ripple effect is caused by the five-yearly review of constituencies which are all on the maximum and there is no slack in the system to take up? Surely the Boundary Commission will have to report on huge areas because of the ripple effect on each constituency which has already met the 76,000 plus 5 per cent limit. Will the Government take into account this ripple effect on Boundary Commission decisions when finally they make their statement on the commission?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I hear what the noble Lord says. Whether it would work out like that is a matter of conjecture. However, it underlines the fact that these matters are probably better left to the Boundary Commissions. They should determine how they issue their reports and deal with these points, rather than Ministers or the legislation being prescriptive in that sense. It should be permissive rather than prescriptive.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry to come back on a question I asked earlier, but it is quite important. May I give the Minister a scenario with which many constituency organisations across the country may well be confronted? Imagine six Conservative seats in a county all on the margin of 79,800. In other words, they have taken up the 5 per cent slack above 76,000, making a total of 79,800. When the review takes place, they will all have to change. The date when that information is made public is very important because the constituencies in the county next door will want to know exactly what is happening on the boundaries for those six constituencies. Whatever decision is taken with regard to those six will affect the adjacent county where there equally might be Members of Parliament of the same party who are arguing over seats.

Is there a timetable which will be made available to deal with what would happen in those circumstances where all constituencies are on the 5 per cent-plus margin, at 79,800, and where automatically they have to start crossing boundaries to sort out the new quota?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, as I understood that question following on from the previous intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, we are now looking to the second review which we are looking towards publishing in October 2018. The answer does not vary, inasmuch as it will be a matter for the Boundary Commission to take into account the likelihood of any ramifications of its decisions at that point and the extent to which it publishes, either county by county or region by region. This is not a matter which, with the best will in the world, we could stipulate in legislation. We must leave that to the good sense and discretion of the Boundary Commissions.

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[Baroness McDonagh]

This amendment is not a criticism of the Government but an opportunity to right a wrong created by my own party. I suppose that successive Governments who did so much good would also occasionally get things wrong, and this is one of them. I shall just explain the current situation for registration both now and historically. We have household registration, which means that a form goes to each household, be it a flat, a house or a bungalow, and one person in the household fills out the form on behalf of all others living there. That person is normally mum, who fills out the form for her children who are aged over 16, and her husband or partner. If we think of our own situations, whatever type of family relationships we have or the people we have shared our homes with in the past, there is always one person in the household who takes responsibility for things such as voter registration, paying bills and so on. The result is that we have a fairly accurate register that is one of the cheapest in the world to administer.

As part of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, the previous Government included a section that will change that system so that each individual will be responsible for registering themselves. We need to look no further than Northern Ireland to know what will happen if this change is implemented. In 2002, when the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act was passed, under which individual registration was introduced and each person had to register themselves, 10 per cent of the public were lost overnight from the register, which went from 96 per cent to 85 per cent of the population.

When an investigation was held into the loss from the register, it was found that it consisted mainly of three groups of people. The first group consisted of young people, first-time voters and 18-25 year olds, the second group consisted of people in areas of high social deprivation, and the third group consisted of people with mental health disabilities. Mencap has produced a useful report in Northern Ireland should anyone wish to look at it.

Before implementing such provisions across the rest of the United Kingdom, we should consider the fact that there are sections of the population here that are not similar to that in Northern Ireland. For example, Northern Ireland does not have a very mobile population. There is no high provision of privately rented, insecure tenancies of a year or under; there is very little multiple occupancy; and it has a stable population—people do not move far from their parents and grandparents. The rest of the United Kingdom has a large population of ethnic minorities; a recently arrived, large population of inward migrants; a huge private rented sector of tenancies of a year and under; and many multi-occupancy properties. Many people also move for jobs. We know that something like 20 per cent of the population of Great Britain moves every year.

At the last general election, just over 45 million people were registered. If what happened in Northern Ireland were to happen in the rest of the UK, we would lose 4.5 million people from the register in addition to the 3.5 million that are already missing. This would amount to 8 million. Academics suggest that we would lose another 10 per cent because of the reasons that I have outlined, which would remove another 4 million people from the register. This would mean that almost 12 million people in this country would not have a stake in the democratic election of our Government.

In Northern Ireland in 2005, some 160,000 voters who did not complete registration forms were reinstated on the register. I therefore do not understand why the Government, when looking at their databases to increase registration in this country, could not do something similar to what has been done in Northern Ireland. As I said, there were 160,000 more voters at the 2005 elections.

We have an opportunity to change this situation now because we have not yet moved to individual registration, which was initially envisaged to happen post the 2015 election. I am now confused because I believe the Government might soon introduce these provisions. Perhaps the Leader of the House will come back to me on that if it is envisaged that the new system will be in place by the 2015 elections.

If we retain this as it currently is, it will allow us to have a very cheap form of registration, and it will avoid the dip in registration that was seen in Northern Ireland. Household registration is also a recognition of the big society; it represents the understanding, responsibility and role of adults in the household, and also the importance of the family as a unit.

My own party was misguided in introducing these provisions in the 2009 Act, and this is a fantastic opportunity for this Government to change these provisions.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Is the real danger of individual registration that when it comes to the second boundary review—in so far as there will be a reduction in the number of people who have registered under individual registration—there will be even more distorted constituencies?

[Baroness McDonagh]

That is absolutely right, and that is why I hope the Government will consider this. I also hope that the Government will consider bringing in an average number to each constituency, rather than a simple limit on 600. If this number of people falls off the register—and we all know the areas that will fall off the register—when you combine the current under-registration and the fall-off in the new register, in certain parts of the country some of these constituencies will have something like 150,000 eligible electors, not registered electors. That is not good for our society, in which we have so many people who do not have a stake in the democratic election of our Government. That creates weak communities and ends up creating bad government. I beg to move.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

At the risk of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, giving his automatic counter another click so that he can update his blog tomorrow, I just want briefly to support the excellent amendment of my noble friend Lady McDonagh. As always, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, finds the nit-picking objections and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler agrees. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, of course, is the constitutional spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. I do not know what that makes the noble Lord, Lord McNally, or indeed Nick Clegg, but the Liberal Democrats obviously need lots and lots of constitutional spokespersons.

My noble friend Lady McDonagh is absolutely right; this is a mistake that the former Labour Government made. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, is not here today to hear this because he was the principal architect of it, but it worries me. My noble friend has great experience of running the Labour Party and understands these things intricately, and I give all credit to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. He opposed this individual registration on every opportunity in this House—again and again—vigorously and consistently, and no one paid any attention to him.

This kind of legislation reminds me that a lot of the thinking in some of our legislation comes from middle-class, middle-aged people sitting in drawing rooms in the south-east of England. I do not know whether they have sectarian discussions around their dinner table, but they have certainly come up with some of the craziest legislation.

No account is taken of the fact that some elderly people are confused and find it difficult to deal with that kind of form. Many years ago, I was the chairman of the Scottish adult literacy agency. A large number of people cannot read and write and are unable to fill in this form; they need someone to fill it in. I can go through category after category of people who would need help as they would be reluctant and unable to fill in that form. It is very difficult for students away from home and for people overseas. My son is working out in Bolivia at the moment, but he is still going to come back and will be entitled to vote. We can think of all sorts of examples of how this will make it difficult to vote.

My noble friend Lady McDonagh is absolutely right; it is about time that people in both Houses started to think of ordinary people and of the lives that they live. They do not all sit round the dinner table every night discussing these kinds of things. They lead a hard, difficult life. They might have difficulties with poverty or literacy, or they might be confused, in many cases, and need that kind of help. I hope that more people will come and support this.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I will intervene only briefly and do not really want to go down all the roads that I went down some years ago during the Labour Government’s two attempts—the second was successful, in my view quite mistakenly—to reintroduce individual registration. I have never been able to understand why the Liberal Democrats supported that. I understand that the Electoral Commission, in its various reports, kept on promoting the principle. However, the Liberal Democrats must have been aware of the dangers that would arise, even in some of their own seats such as the one that includes Bermondsey. Bermondsey is in a seat that could be gravely damaged through the introduction of individual registration, and I simply cannot understand why they seemingly allowed it all to happen.

My own view was very simple; there was a problem to be resolved, and that was fraud within the electoral system. That, I suspect, was the driving force behind those who argued for it. They chose an extremely expensive way of resolving the problem, whereby the whole of the United Kingdom would be subject to individual registration, against the parts of it in which there was a particular problem. Without going into detail, most Members of the Committee will understand precisely what I mean. There is a problem in certain parts of the United Kingdom, which had to be dealt with.

On two occasions under two separate Bills, I came up with a recommendation that would have sorted out that problem by giving local authorities the right to opt for a particular status whereby they would be given additional resources to sort out the problems in their areas, but the Labour Government unfortunately turned it down. Indeed, I lobbied almost every member of the Labour Cabinet about it to try to get them to understand the importance of avoiding individual registration, which will do immeasurable harm to our party in the longer term. Now we have it in place at a time when local authorities’ budgets in this area are not ring-fenced and when local authorities will not place the money that is necessary to ensure a high level of individual registration.

I welcome my noble friend’s amendment, and I hope only that the Government will accept it. They will not, of course, because they too have been convinced by this rubbish recommendation from the Electoral Commission, which should have known better.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I, too, stand convicted of being convinced by the rubbish recommendation of the Electoral Commission. I believe that the principle of moving to individual registration is right. Apart from anything else, the concept of modern citizenship is that the task of registering to vote should no longer be the preserve of the head of the household. However, if the principle of individual registration is correct, the practicality involved in the best way to get there is more complicated. As the experience of introducing individual registration in Northern Ireland has shown, the consequences can be catastrophic if you get the process wrong. The very swift introduction of individual registration in that part of the United Kingdom in 2002 led to a collapse in the number on the electoral register, with a fall of around 119,000.

Learning the lessons of that experience, the Labour Government legislated to introduce individual voter registration according to a clearly phased timetable based on the twin principles of ensuring the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the electoral register. That process gave the Electoral Commission a central role in determining whether the final move from household to individual registration was safe to proceed with, and the transition was based on a two-stage process—a voluntary phase and a compulsory phase. The legislation made it clear that the voluntary phase would not finish before 2014. In 2014, the Electoral Commission would then be required to assess, based on trends in voter registration, whether the collection of identifying information should be made obligatory. Assuming that a positive recommendation was agreed by Parliament, compulsory individual registration would follow in 2015.

The timetable received explicit backing from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front-Benchers in the other place. It is a matter of deep concern that the Government have now abandoned those pledges and that they intend to tear up our carefully formulated and agreed timetable and to accelerate the introduction of individual registration without the safeguards that we put in place.

As I have already noted, the rush to the production of individual registration in Northern Ireland produced a dramatic fall in registered numbers. The Electoral Commission subsequently reported that the new registration process disproportionately impacted on young people and students, people with learning disabilities, people with disabilities generally and those living in areas of high deprivation. We must not repeat that outcome when the system is introduced in Great Britain. That is especially important in view of the Electoral Commission’s report of March 2010, which identified who was least represented on the electoral register.

The phased implementation of full individual registration by autumn 2015 was intended to minimise as far as possible the risk of worsening under-registration. The Government already intend to cut seats and redraw boundaries on the basis of an electoral register from which 3.5 million eligible voters are missing. The premature rollout of individual registration would increase that number and, over time, would distort the planned boundary revisions even more. I do not support the policy of reversing the move to individual registration. However, I do support making sure that it is done properly.

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[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, towards the end of a long speakers list in a debate in this House, someone stands up and says, “Everything there is to be said on this topic has been said, but not everyone has yet said it”. That usually raises a laugh, as it has today; good jokes, like wine, improve with age. Here I have invented a variant on the old saw for Committee stage: “Everything possible has been said on this amendment but it has not been said everywhere. The matter can be raised on the Bill”. That is what a harsh critic would say.

I want to say why my amendment is different from earlier amendments which laid down that the referendum should not take place on 5 May. In our earlier debates, the arguments that we concentrated on for not having it on 5 May were that it clashed with the Welsh Assembly elections, the Scottish Parliament elections and the local authority elections, that this would lead to a lot of political noise—particularly as Liberal Democrat and Labour candidates fought each other—and that that would not be an atmosphere in which there could be sensible consideration of this issue. Those arguments are all valid. My amendment is compatible, I admit, with 5 May as a referendum date. It is three months after Royal Assent. We have only to give the Bill Royal Assent on Thursday night. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will be delighted if we achieve that timetable. Stranger things have happened in these Houses of Parliament, so it would be possible to have it on those days. All that the amendment lays down is that there must be three months between Royal Assent and the referendum to consider the matter. That is three months for information, persuasion and contemplation before decision.

Let us consider the present state of public opinion. I am taking a large poll done by YouGov in September last year. It asked first whether people had heard of AV and knew what it was. Roughly one-third said yes, they had heard of it and knew a bit about what it was. Of that one-third, I bet that half were lying—they did not know what it was, though they may have heard of it. One-third said that they had heard of it but they did not have a clue what it meant, and one-third had neither heard of it nor had a clue what it meant. That is the information backlog that we face as we run up to the referendum on this issue. There is a huge job of basic education to be done before we even get to the arguments for and against. Those arguments, which anyone studying the House’s proceedings on Part 1 of the Bill will have heard quite often, are difficult and balanced and need the most careful consideration. The electorate must think very hard about what they are doing.

The suggestion that this can be done in less than three months is not right. Yes, in that time a referendum can be held—the Electoral Commission can do its work, the ballot papers can be printed and so on—but we will not get a properly valid answer. I say that whether it is the answer that I want, a yes, or the one that many noble Lords want, a no. It will not be properly valid because the people will not have had long enough to contemplate the proposition put before them.

If the verdict seems invalid, that will have consequences for legitimacy. The side that loses will be able to stand up almost immediately and say, “It was fixed. It was cooked. This referendum is not the considered view of the British people. It’s a referendum held at a time to suit a political timetable”. Why on earth the Liberal Democrats want the referendum on 5 May continues to escape me, but they clearly do. That would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the verdict.

It is also true, of course, that had the House made faster progress on the Bill—I do not attribute blame on all this; I am delighted that we are now belatedly making progress—the Bill might by now have been law and the campaigning able to be started, so there would have been time to inform the public. However, the passage of time has meant that the time available for contemplating the actual issue in the referendum has been squeezed. My amendment says that it must be squeezed no further. There should be a three-month period between Royal Assent and the referendum. I hope that this is a common-sense proposition in a common-sense amendment and that therefore it will become a consensual amendment around the House. That just shows that I am a very hopeful sort of a chap. However, it should be understood that the argument is as I have set it out. If the Government reject it, it will be for reasons quite other, and arguably less reputable, than the House and the country have reason to deserve.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I intervene briefly and again address my remarks to the Liberal Democrats. They know from previous debates that I support the referendum and am in favour of electoral reform and a version of AV. Therefore, what happens in the polling booth is of great interest to me, as indeed it should be to them. The question is, in what circumstances is it more likely that the AV referendum will be won? I put to them two distinctly different scenarios: one where a person walks into a polling station, having heard a campaign, and votes for it deliberately, in circumstances where it is highly likely that those who are opposed to it will not bother going to the polls. The advantage of having a referendum day on its own is that it would concentrate the minds of those who were in favour of change to go and vote, whereas those who were against change would, more likely than not, simply stay away. The danger of holding a referendum on the same day as an election is that everybody will go to the polling booth and they will all vote. Those who are opposed, who otherwise would not turn up at the polling booth, will then go and vote against electoral reform. The Liberal Democrats will regret what they have done during the course of this Bill. The referendum will be lost for the reason I have given and they will bear the responsibility for that as they will have set the electoral reform agenda back decades.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, the only way in which the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, could correctly say that his amendment is a common-sense proposition is if it suggested a six-month period. The provisions of the amendment are not compatible with a 5 May date: we do not need to look at our diaries to ascertain that. However, I agreed entirely with the rest of his speech. There is not enough time to do the job properly. There never was, in my view. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said, this is a fundamental matter. The Liberal Democrats also know my position. They know that I support electoral reform and I want PR, but this is a dishonest form of AV. In my view, it is a corrupt form of voting. The coalition has chosen the date to match the election date. That is fine; that is the coalition’s responsibility. I am quite happy with that. I do not have a view whether it should be held on that or another day, but the Lib Dems will be severely punished for holding the referendum on 5 May for lots of other reasons. I think that it will be lost. However, it is sad to have a referendum on the major constitutional issue of our voting system—we have never had such a referendum—and to lose it due to insufficient time being given to the process.

I do not want to labour the point but one has only to look at what happened in New Zealand and read the information that was published by the New Zealand electoral commission that went out to individuals. I cannot envisage anything remotely like that being provided here in terms of quality and quantity, and then being taken on board by the electorate. Our Electoral Commission might push out a lot of leaflets but pamphlets and booklets are needed rather than leaflets. This matter goes well beyond two sides of A4. The information must be assimilated and debated if it is to be successful. The assessment was that 10 weeks were needed, which is how we have the date that we have, which was debated in this House back in December. We knew that the Bill needed to get Royal Assent before the recess in February. The assessment was that it could be done in 10 weeks. Mechanically, it can be done. Intellectually and educationally, I do not think that it can be done. That is what I think is wrong with my noble friend’s amendment. It should have been six months, but that is the Government’s responsibility. They have rushed this Bill. There was no need to rush it within a year of the general election. It could still have been done on the election date. I appreciate that the devolved elections come only once every four years, and if that is the key test that more people go out to vote, so be it. However, I just do not think that it can be done in the way that hearts and minds can be won. We will get a poor result. I think it will fail, but it will be for the wrong reasons. I wish it were for the right reasons. I will not support it; I will campaign against it, but I would rather that it failed for the right reasons. I would rather that there were a genuine debate about the real issues; but I do not think that it can be done in the time available.