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

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not support the fatal amendment put forward by the Liberal Democrats last night because I thought that it was constitutionally inappropriate. However, I shall support this one, not least because, arguably, the constitutional issue at stake today is even more important than the ones that your Lordships debated last night. Those constitutional issues concerned the respective legitimacies of your Lordships’ unelected House and the elected House of Commons. The issue today concerns the legitimacy of the elected House of Commons and, as such, is of profound importance to our constitutional arrangements.

Electoral registration is often a highly technical issue but it is always an important one. The struggle for the right to vote defines the history of our democracy and electoral registration makes that right a reality. Individual electoral registration is desirable and, as we have already heard, the previous Labour Government legislated to introduce it. However, it is generally accepted that, for all its merits, the introduction of individual registration carries with it the severe risk that significant numbers of people who are eligible to vote will not register and so will be unable to do so. For all the good work done in recent years by successive Governments, the Electoral Commission and local authorities, we can see these risks being realised as individual registration is introduced across the United Kingdom.

There is already a serious problem with the electoral register. The most recent assessment, last year, by the Electoral Commission estimated that the register was only 85% complete. More than 8 million voters are eligible to vote but cannot do so because they are not on the register. The fact that so many people who should be on the register are not, despite all the measures taken by previous Governments to increase registration, shows how intractable this problem is. The improvements that individual registration is likely to bring to the accuracy of the register are undoubted, but they have to be balanced by the deterioration that it is bringing and is likely to bring to the coverage of the register. I hope that that helps to address the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. This is a difficult issue and we are trying to balance competing priorities.

The Labour Government tried to do that by linking the introduction of individual registration to the achievement of a comprehensive and accurate register. In opposition, that approach was supported by both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. The coalition Government could have continued that approach, but they did not; they rejected it, for reasons that they have never adequately explained. They rushed forward with a timetable for individual registration, removing that key safeguard of the requirement of a comprehensive and accurate register.

This Government are now trying to make this bad situation worse, increasing the risk of disfranchising millions of voters by rejecting a carefully argued and proportionate recommendation from the independent Electoral Commission. Why might the Government be doing that? They have suggested systemic threats to the integrity of the register as a reason for this haste. We have just heard a very well-argued speech by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on precisely that point. There is undoubtedly localised fraud—there is no question about that—but how serious an issue is it? The independent bodies tasked with safeguarding the integrity of our electoral system do not share the assessment suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. They do not share the Government’s assessment of fraud. The analysis carried out by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission into the 2010 election, for example, found,

“no evidence of widespread, systematic attempts to undermine or interfere with the May 2010 elections through electoral fraud”.

The report stated that,

“we are not aware of any case reported to the police that affected the outcome of the election to which it related nor of any election that has had to be re-run as a result of electoral malpractice”.

No analysis is yet available, at least in public, of the 2015 general election but, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, if the Government want to make their case for this statutory instrument on the basis of widespread fraud, that raises fundamental questions about the general election that put them into power. If the Government are so worried about the integrity of the system, why do they not bring in this legislation and agree to rerun the general election so that it can be run on the basis of an electoral register that everyone agrees is complete and accurate? I look forward to the Minister’s response to that suggestion, but I think I can guess what it is.

There is never any justification for any complacency about even a single incident of malpractice, but the evidence does not suggest that the spread of electoral malpractice justifies the risk that the Government are running with the electoral register. An extensive Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust report in 2008—some time ago, admittedly—concluded:

“It is unlikely that there has been a significant increase in electoral malpractice since the introduction of postal voting on demand in 2000”,

and that what malpractice there was,

“related to a tiny proportion of all elections contested”.

What evidence does the Minister have that suggests that that 2008 analysis now needs to be revisited?

Nor will individual registration address all cases of electoral malpractice—it is not a panacea. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission concluded that the nature of recorded electoral malpractice changes as measures to combat it change. As one form of electoral malpractice is tackled, another rises to take its place.

Your Lordships can see just how seriously the Government take the issue of fraud by their response to the recommendation by the Electoral Commission in January 2014 that a key way to tackle fraud would be for voters to be compelled to produce proof of ID. After an extensive analysis, that is what the Electoral Commission suggested in January 2014. I understand that the Government have still not responded to that proposal. That is how seriously they take this issue of fraud.

The weakness of the Government’s case for their approach is matched by the damage it risks doing. It risks excluding millions from their democratic right to vote. It junks the principle followed for very good reasons by successive Conservative and Labour Governments that fundamental constitutional change such as this should proceed, wherever possible, only on a bipartisan basis.

We now look at why the Government are doing this. What they are doing matters for specific electoral reasons as well as on grounds of general democratic principle. Most agree that eligible voters who are not registered to vote are most likely to vote Labour when they do vote. The Liberal vote in the inner cities, such as it still is, is also likely to be affected. The Electoral Commission found over and over again that underregistration is notably higher than average among the young, private sector tenants and black and minority British residents, and that:

“The highest concentrations of under-registration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas”.

The evidence suggests that the party that will suffer least, if at all, from such a flawed electoral register is the Conservative Party. Electoral registration has been significantly lower in Labour areas than in Conservative areas. It is significant that, despite the fact that the register is still only 85% complete, the only action that the Government proposed to take in their 2015 manifesto to increase that figure was to increase registration among British citizens living overseas. There was not a word about British citizens living in British inner cities, which we know are likely to be significantly underregistered. I am sure that I do not need to remind your Lordships that British citizens living in British inner cities do not tend to vote Conservative in large numbers.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has also pointed out, as I did at length in another debate, that conducting the boundary reviews on the basis of this sort of flawed register is likely to benefit the Conservative Party. Sadly, the reason that the Government have rejected the Electoral Commission’s recommendations about individual registration seems all too clear.

Parliament and politicians have been falling into disrepute in recent years. I ask your Lordships, therefore, to consider the impact on the health of our democracy if it turns out that the outcome of a future general election has been determined by the fact that millions of eligible voters could not vote because they were not registered to do so, and that this was the result of a government policy deliberately pursued, despite all the evidence that it would have precisely this consequence. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. We keep hearing about these extraordinary numbers who will be denied the vote. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that 1.9 million people will be wiped off the face of our democracy. Surely that is a fantasy. Yesterday we listened to a very fine speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis—almost too effective a speech, from my point of view—in which she was able to quote time and again the individuals who believed that they would suffer from the tax change that we were discussing yesterday. Today, I have listened to all these speeches and so far not a single individual has come forward to say that they believe they will suffer, despite the fact that apparently 1.9 million are going to be wiped off the face of our democracy. Surely this is fantasy. Where are these mythical hordes that the noble Lord keeps talking about?

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that characteristically energetic and vivacious intervention, but we have to make policy on the basis of the evidence available to us. Of course the noble Lord is right that we cannot look into the future, and maybe magically, in the next few months, the electoral register will go from 85% up to, say, 95%, which is probably as close to being comprehensive as one can reasonably hope. Maybe it will but, on the basis of all the evidence that we have, it is unlikely to happen.

I quote to the noble Lord the experience of Northern Ireland. When it introduced individual registration, the independent Electoral Commission of Northern Ireland found 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 social deprivation”.

It concluded—this is the sort of evidence on which we have to make policy—

“While these findings relate directly to Northern Ireland, they are not unique and reflect the wider picture across the UK. They present a major challenge to all those concerned with widening participation in electoral and democratic processes”.

There is the evidence that something has happened, and we have to learn from that.

We have had experience over several years of trying to increase the register to tackle precisely these sorts of problems. Sadly, despite all the efforts made by the coalition Government, who spent millions of pounds on this and went to a great deal of effort to try to increase the levels of registration—I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who was the Minister responsible and who stood up many times in this House and told us precisely what the coalition Government were doing—they are still not having an impact. This is known to the Government, and despite these problems being known to them on the basis of historical fact—I cannot predict the future, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out, but we can go on the basis of the evidence available to us—and despite all the problems that are faced, the Government are proceeding.

[Lord Dobbs]

I will try to be brief on this. The noble Lord is talking about individuals who are not on the register. This whole order is about names that are on the register but should not be. That is a completely different argument from the one that he is putting forward.

[Lord Wills]

No, my Lords. As I have already said, this is a difficult issue because we are trying to balance competing priorities. Of course the accuracy of the register is important, which is why all sides support the introduction of individual registration and why as a Minister I legislated to bring it into play. There is no question about the importance attached to accuracy. However, it has to be balanced by a comprehensive register, for all the reasons I have endeavoured to set out today. The Government could have done a very simple thing: they could have accepted the Electoral Commission’s recommendations. It would not have solved all the problems—they are too intractable for that—but it would have helped. The Government have decided to reject that. The risks are clear but, for no good reason, the Government have ignored them. Despite the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and what I am sure will be the eloquence of the Minister in due course, no good reasons have been given for doing this.

The last time I spoke in a debate with the Minister at the Dispatch Box, I recommended that he read Aristotle. I am sure that, with his very heavy workload, he has not managed to pull down that well-thumbed volume from his bookshelves, so perhaps I may remind him of the words of that great Greek philosopher. He said that,

“constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct and just without qualification, whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers”—

or, in this case, only at the advantage of the Conservative Party—

“are deviant and unjust because they involve despotic rule which is inappropriate for a community of free persons”.

Once again, I recommend those words to the Minister; and to your Lordships’ House, I also recommend the conclusion of the royal commission, in 2000, that your Lordships’ House should act as a “constitutional long-stop” to ensure that,

“changes are not made to the constitution without full and open debate and an awareness of the consequences”.

That is why I will support this Motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, two very different arguments are being advanced today about the purpose of this statutory instrument. The government position, if I may paraphrase it, is that it is simply a tidying-up of the voting registers. However, the position of most of the parties and of the independent Electoral Commission is that it is wrong in principle to remove people from those registers prior to elections in much of the country next May, and in particular in advance of the start of the Boundary Commission’s work on drawing up new constituency boundaries. All the measures just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, are welcome but could not be done within the next five weeks, before the Boundary Commissions start work on the new boundaries based on the electoral registers as of 1 December 2015. That date cannot be changed.

The Government’s position must be called into question because of the suddenness with which they laid this order before Parliament, at almost the last possible moment specified in the legislation, only a few days before the Summer Recess, without consulting any of the bodies with elections next May, and in the face of unequivocal opposition from the Electoral Commission, which advises us independently on such matters.

Three years ago, work by the Cabinet Office showed that our electoral registers were far less complete than we had been led to believe. We now know that today’s registers are no more complete than they were then. Perhaps 8 million people who should be on them are missing. The evidence for this—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs—is that we know from the census figures how many people there are aged over 18 in the United Kingdom, and we know that there are far fewer people on the voting registers. The advice of the independent Electoral Commission is that, even with these 1.9 million people included, there may be another 8 million who exist but are not yet included. The Government are seeking to make that problem worse by removing from the register up to 1.9 million people who are currently on the register before the end of this year.

In our debates in the House about electoral registration and administration almost three years ago, it was generally recognised that there is a small but not very significant problem with a few people who are on the register but should not be. There is a much bigger problem, however, with people who should be on the registers but are missing from them. This House decided, after much debate and on the basis of the government amendment, that the appropriate date for finally removing people from the electoral register if they had not completed the individual registration process was 1 December 2016. Much is made in our debates in this place about the need for compromise and consensus, and the date of 1 December 2016 was agreed as a compromise to allow the process of individual registration to proceed. At the same time, the compromise amendment, which came from the Government, gave specific power to either House of Parliament to say no if a future Government sought to speed up the process in the way that is being proposed, which would exclude a significant number of people from the voting registers, unless it was convinced that the process of individual electoral registration was so successful that it could be brought forward.

We know that the electoral register is no more complete now than three years ago. It is suggested that none of these 1.9 million people are real people and that they should not be included on the electoral rolls, but that is not the case, as is evidenced by the fact that the other 8 million people, who we know exist, should be on the registers but are missing from them. Many of these 1.9 million people will have voted in the general election in May, and it is possible to check from the marked registers who actually voted in that election. The Government have acted with suspicious and unseemly haste in suddenly proposing that these people be excluded from next year’s elections and, perhaps most importantly, from consideration when new constituency boundaries are proposed.

Part of the problem is that many of these 1.9 million people do not understand that they need to return the forms that are sent to them. The forms do not properly explain the obligation to co-operate with the process or the benefits in doing so. Independent research by the Electoral Commission shows that most people believe that the electoral registration process is automatic and does not require any action at all on their part. Most people not on the register do not know that they are not on the register and will not receive polling cards telling them how to vote in a future election.

Those of us with experience of canvassing in elections—and there are many of us across the House—know that more than one or two calls at the door are required in order to speak to every individual within a household, especially if those calls are being made to properties in multiple occupation and when people are unlikely to be at home. It may be cheaper and easier for some returning officers to have to deal with fewer people on the voting lists, but that would be the wrong priority because it would mean effectively excluding many people from the democratic process. The Electoral Commission advises us from its independent viewpoint that it is not safe in democratic terms to remove these people from the electoral rolls prematurely. If the Government were, as they say, simply seeking to improve the accuracy of the electoral registers, they might have consulted the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the London Assembly or local government in advance of proposing changes to the registers that will be used for elections next year, but they did not, and they have subsequently not received backing from any of those bodies.

Many of the people who will be removed from the registers are in urban areas and in London in particular. The London Assembly debated this very issue, overwhelmingly rejected these plans and asked us to do so as well. It may be argued that making changes to our democratic processes and the rules for the conduct of elections are not our business, but it was our business that insisted three years ago on the date of 1 December 2016 for full implementation of the new voter registration system, not the date that is now proposed. We agreed then with a government amendment that the date could not be brought forward if either House objected. What is now proposed follows from the fact that we have a Government who were elected with the support of less than 25% of the electorate. Instead of trying to increase that level of support, the Government now seek to remove people less likely to support them from the voting registers. Most importantly, in the long run, they seek to ensure that in future there will be fewer constituencies that can be won by their opponents. They seek to make the system less fair, not the other way round.

It is clear that many, if not most, of the people to be removed from the electoral registers are young or living in the private rented sector or may not have English as their first language or are simply the least literate. Those people who would be omitted from the register are concentrated in urban areas and they are known to be less likely to vote Conservative. I suggest that the biggest reason for the proposed change is to ensure that more Conservative parliamentary seats are created in future while people who do not vote Conservative are represented by fewer MPs.

[Lord Dobbs]

I promise not to interrupt again, but this is a very important point which goes to the heart of this matter. The noble Lord has talked at great length about all of these people who will be disenfranchised. Can he please identify a single real person? Otherwise, we have to dismiss this as simple hyperbole. It is a little rich for us to have a lecture from the noble Lord’s mouth about electoral advantage as he is well known for his love of electoral advantage. Can he please nominate a single, real, living, flesh-and-blood individual? If he could identify one, I would welcome changing my mind.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, as I was saying only a few moments ago, it would be technically simple and easy to prove the existence of these people. As the noble Lord will know from his vast experience of elections, the marked register of exactly who goes to a polling station and marks their X on a ballot paper is publicly available afterwards. Returning officers know these people—there are 20,000 of them in the London Borough of Lambeth alone—and it would not be difficult to look and see how many of them actually voted. We know that there are very few people on the register who should not be there compared to the millions whom we know, from independent advice, are missing. They do exist.

The primary purpose of the Government’s proposal is to change the way in which the Boundary Commissions would propose new constituencies. This is happening now because the four UK Boundary Commissions all have to work on the basis of the electoral register as it is on 1 December 2015. If up to 1.9 million people are removed from the registers, there will be fewer constituencies in future which are unlikely to return Conservative MPs. It is as simple as that. The proposal is grossly unfair. We know that millions of people in these categories are missing from the electoral rolls, and their existence should be taken into account if we really want to have fairness in terms of constituencies of equal size, which is a Conservative manifesto commitment from the last election.

The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 specifically gave either House of Parliament the power to say no if a future Government sought to bring forward the agreed date for full implementation of electoral registration. The electoral register is not any more complete, in terms of including all those who should be on it, than it was then. It would be much less complete if this proposal, which undermines democratic principles, goes ahead. We should not let it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McDonagh (Lab)]

My Lords, can I bring the House back to the matter under debate? That is what I would like to speak about this afternoon. I speak in favour of the annulment and the amendment.

Much has been said about Northern Ireland. The real story of Northern Ireland is that when individual electoral registration was introduced, the register collapsed. The registration officers then had to find people, without speaking to them, and put them on the register—a very unsafe process. It has taken several years for them to reach their current situation; we have five weeks. Northern Ireland is a small, homogeneous society in terms of housing tenure, the mobility of the population and so on; we have much more complex problems in terms of registration.

We already know that some 8 million voters are not registered, and we may be in the process of knocking off a further 2 million. We know about those people—real people—because we know the census data, the gaps in properties and the number of young people in school. If the noble Lord opposite would like to meet some of these people, I will be going out and knocking on doors this Sunday. If we meet outside the Chamber, I will arrange to bring him to some of these households to understand some of the problems with registration. This is about 10 million people versus this secondary issue, which has become a bit of—

[Lord Dobbs]

Since the noble Baroness raises the point, what we are talking about is those who are on the register, who she claims are going to be knocked off the register. We all want those who are not on the register, but who ought to be, to be on it. The whole House wants as complete a register as possible, but this is not what we are talking about. We are talking about these ghost votes, which should not be there in the first place.

[Baroness McDonagh]

I am not talking about these ghost votes—I do not believe them to be ghost votes. We know that they have not returned a registration form but we know that they continue to pay council tax. We know that they are there. If the noble Lord does not agree with me, I ask him again to accept my invitation to come out on Sunday and we can talk to these voters together. I can reassure him that they do exist. We know they exist.

We have the problem affecting in the region of 10 million voters versus this smokescreen of fraud, which is the obsession that has hindered us from properly scrutinising this regulation. When has there ever been a case of registration fraud—ever? How many people have registered wrongly? Tell me the numbers we are talking about. Can any noble Lord tell me when they have ever met such a voter? I have been knocking on doors since 1978 and have never come across anybody who has fraudulently completed a registration form. Nor have I spoken to a registration officer who has seen this taking place. I think your Lordships are getting confused with postal vote fraud. Even the impact assessment for the Bill from which this regulation was drawn up says that it is a very rare occurrence, yet it does not name any occurrence ever happening. There has never been a proven case of registration fraud in this country.