Electoral Fraud

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not interesting to note in the detail of the report that the Electoral Commission is finally prepared to recognise that there are high-risk areas, which it identifies and lists, which are identifiable as having ethnic minority populations, where it believes that there is a particular problem? Is it not true that if the commission had been prepared to admit that four years ago, when the legislation was introduced, we could have avoided spending tens of millions of pounds on an individual registration scheme, which is a total waste of public money, and could have targeted that resource on the areas where there is a particular problem? We are wasting public money on a scheme which is utterly ridiculous.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely disagree with the noble Lord on that. We are one of the few democracies that clings to the 19th century approach of household registration. Individual electoral registration is much more appropriate to the population we now have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am well aware of this; indeed, the noble Lord has made sure that I am well aware of it. I am conscious that the Cabinet Office owes him a letter, which is in process, in reply to his previous Question.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that this whole debate is riddled with political correctness? For the great majority in the United Kingdom, there is no problem whatever of electoral fraud. Why are we wasting tens of millions of pounds?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not quite as confident that there is no problem of electoral fraud outside the South Asian Muslim community, which I think the noble Lord was getting close to saying. As a young Liberal, I listened to many people talking about quite considerable electoral fraud among the white population during elections held in the 1940s and 1950s. I am not entirely sure that it has completely disappeared today.