Representation of the People (Electoral Registers Publication Date) Regulations 2020

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I first thank my noble friend Lord Patten for his kind comments about my family. From the elections he fought, he will have noticed that the fields and farms voted very heavily indeed for him. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for giving me due notice that she is unable to be present this afternoon and that therefore the order has been changed.

There is general agreement that these regulations are necessary, and I will not touch on that further because I share that view. I will raise just one or two points. I particularly welcome my noble friend’s comment, in his introduction of these regulations, that the AEA has been consulted. The committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred was regularly overwhelmingly impressed by the effort the EROs put in as we legislators impose more and more elections on them with more regularity. They had such a positive, can-do attitude and no doubt are approaching these regulations in exactly the same way. I am under the impression from the introduction that this is providing general flexibility and building on a basis of flexibility for the system to ensure that we can adequately cope with the circumstances we face under Covid.

I will touch on two other points. First, for the record I ask my noble friend to identify the reasons why Northern Ireland is not included in these regulations. As I understand it, it is because it operates a different system, but it is worth identifying that it does not do an annual canvass.

Secondly, in the Explanatory Memorandum there is a reference to EROs and, on page 3, the

“lack of access to specialist software and printed correspondence”.

I am somewhat confused by the persistent reference to the absence of adequate software. IT programmes have been in existence for rather a long time. We heard this the other day in the committee at the other end of this building on the parliamentary constituency boundaries, and I am really not sure why the software was not available. I am beginning to wonder why that is so regularly the case.

In conclusion, I pick up on one thing the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said. He cited Australia and New Zealand. In fact, Ireland operates exactly the same system. Our committee heard evidence from the Cabinet Office that the cost was exorbitant. Not only does it seem to me that software packages in EROs’ offices are inadequate, but I encourage the Cabinet Office to look more seriously at the costings it has been given for some of these alternative programmes.