Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Norton of Louth

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart: and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on his previous interventions. We are greatly reluctant about compulsory voting, which has to be right. People have to have the option of not voting at all. I am afraid that on this issue I am not with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as I was on his previous amendment, but I was rather attracted by his suggestion of incentives to vote, rather than doing what the Australians always purport to do, which is to fine people who do not vote. I do not quite know how many Australians get fined for not voting, but I suspect that it is not a very efficient system.

However, an incentive to enable people to vote strikes me as rather attractive. An incentive that takes the form of, say, a voucher to knock something off your rates or something of that sort, which you are given in the polling station, would encourage people to vote in person. That would get us away from the problem of the growing number of postal votes and all the fraud involved in that, which was alluded to in an earlier discussion.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I shall not repeat my earlier points about whether it should be included in the Bill, which I will take as given. I will briefly address the substance of the argument. I acknowledge that there are quite substantial arguments for compulsory voting, but my view is very much along the lines advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Voting should be regarded as a civic duty. It should not be a statutory obligation. If people do not wish to vote, we should not force them to vote. I am also a bit wary of the argument that is sometimes used in favour of compulsory voting: that there is an increasing disaffection with politics, which is why people are not voting, so there should be compulsory voting.

I do not find particularly attractive the argument that we should say to people, “Look, you are being put off politics, therefore we are going to force you to vote”. That would increase their disaffection rather than ameliorate it. I do not find the argument persuasive, although I accept that there are arguments on the other side. I rather warm to the thinking advanced about incentives to get people to the polling station. That is well worth exploring, but with the obvious proviso of “not in this Bill”.