Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I want to refute the calumny that I am participating in this debate only to go down in parliamentary history as one who was present at the first-ever hybrid Grand Committee of the House of Lords. It is not true. Indeed, it goes contrary to my strongest principles because, as a noble Lord said earlier, this Bill should be on the Floor of the House; it is constitutional, but it goes beyond its constitutionality.

We should consider the scale of the change in the Bill, the degree of disruption that it will cause if it is put into effect in full, the ruined lives down the other end of the Corridor—going from 600 to 650 helps, but it does not help as much as not having a 5% variant—the disruption it will cause and the loss of confidence among the population because they will not know who their Member will be next time round. This is really large-scale stuff—and that is without getting into the issue, which I do not intend to cover this afternoon, of whether this is in fact a gerrymander. No doubt we will have a chance to discuss that later in Committee and on Report. So I am not participating just to be in a hybrid Committee. I wish we were not in a hybrid Committee but on the Floor.

The second calumny is that I am intervening on this amendment only because the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I are such comrades, if I may use that word in the House of Lords. We are great veterans of the 2011 attempt to persuade the Government of the points, or most of the points, that I have just made. That attempt narrowly failed, due to a piece of stubbornness on David Cameron’s point of view. It is a great pity that those measures went through—they had to be ditched anyway—but it gives us a chance to have a second, more sensible, go. Unfortunately, I do not think that the Government have succeeded in doing that.

As I say, my noble friend Lord Foulkes is a comrade. He knows that we disagree on electoral reform. The idea that electoral reform would necessarily destroy the relationship between MPs and their constituents is nonsense. It was shown to be nonsense by something that nobody round this table other than me will remember: the Jenkins report on the electoral system. I remember it quite well because I was on the commission. Those noble Lords who remember that will remember that it had most constituencies represented by a single Member, as now. There were some additional Members to deal with discrepancies in the amount of support that each party needed to elect somebody, but they were on a county basis; they were not asked to represent the whole country at large or any of the things that go with other proportional systems, so there is no necessary link between electoral reform and whether you go ahead with this sort of system. It should be debated on its own complicated merits. I suppose I had better come to the amendment about now.

At the moment we have the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which implies that elections take place every five years. It makes sense to me that you should have a fixed gap between a boundary review and an election—they should come in that order. If you had 10 years under the present system, that is what would happen. It would come at the same distance before an election each time. Eight years tells you nothing. It means that sometimes you will have a boundary review immediately after a general election, so you will fight the next election on completely outdated boundaries. The time after that will be just before an election, so no would-be Member of Parliament will have time to get to know his electorate. It is a complete absurdity. It is so absurd that I can think of only one argument that the Minister could use to defend it, which would be to say, “We committed in our manifesto to get rid of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act”—and I recognise that that is the case.

However, do not be surprised if the Prime Minister and his party do not in the end show the enthusiasm that they have shown so far for the proposition that they go back to the old system where the Prime Minister calls the election every time. I should say, first of all, that the record of Prime Ministers calling elections when they have that discretion is bloody awful. I go back to Jim Callaghan, who I was then privileged to be an adviser to, funking autumn 1978 and going for 1979 and therefore making Mrs Thatcher possible. I understand why he made the decision, but I think he was wrong—and I think he thought he was wrong. More recently, Theresa May, befuddled by the opinion polls and having adopted a policy for social care that was bound to lead to at least a 10-point drop in the Tories’ reckoning, went for an election that was the end of her.

Even more recently, not the Prime Minister but the leader of the Labour Party, in the face of irrefutable evidence that his party would be massacred if it went to the country under his leadership, nevertheless decided that his party should vote for an early election, thus handing Boris Johnson the easiest victory in electoral history. My experience of politicians is that they do not much like choosing election dates anyway. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act, for all its defects, seems to be basically right, so if we keep that, we will keep five-year Parliaments and one review for each 10-year stretch.

That would also avoid unnecessary disruption. Every time constituencies change, as ex-Members of the Commons have told us so eloquently this afternoon, there is considerable disruption. There is a tremendous problem that may do for these plans in the end. It is perfectly true, and if Ministers were honest they would admit it, that on the whole this change is probably slightly biased in favour of the Conservative Party. But that is one thing. It is another thing when the Back-Benchers are going to see the Chief Whip every week and saying, “We can’t have an election, look at what’s been done to my constituency. We only held it last time because I had so many supporters in Borrowstown and now they’ve been moved off to that fat, useless Tory Member for Bugglestown.” That is why they did not do this last time. It was not a matter of principle or because they saw that they were wrong, or even because of what the Lib Dems might have done about it. It was because it was rightly causing bedlam on the Conservative Back Benches.

This may seem to those who advise the Prime Minister like a bumper wheeze for getting a few extra Conservative seats. I promise that, before the next election, they will be eating their words and the Prime Minister will be saying, “Who the hell got me into this? Haven’t we got anything better to do than deal with Back-Benchers who feel that they’re going to lose their seats and it’s our fault?” There is no worse accusation to be made against a Government than that they are knifing their own party in the back.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I have enjoyed the speeches so far in this debate. I come here as a former chair of the political parties parliamentary panel of the Electoral Commission. We had something to do with elections and it is our fault that MPs had those reviews and the consequences of them. It seemed to me that the most important thing to the MPs whom I and other parties dealt with at the same time were the lines on the map: “Where will my majority be most or least affected?” So the co-operation between parties was immense in many respects in drawing up the constituencies, because it was a question of trading these voters for those voters and so on, to protect each other’s majorities and therefore the relationship.

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Moved by

[Lord Lennie]

11: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Impact on constituency boundaries: automatic registration
Within the period of 18 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Boundary Commission must review and report on the impact on constituency boundaries of the introduction of automatic voter registration, including for attainers.”

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, we were about to find out during the adjournment what my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours will say about this amendment, but he quite rightly got cut short by the clerk. The amendment calls for the now rather beleaguered Boundary Commission to conduct another independent review of all the consequences of automatic registration, from improved numbers of electors, to absence of democratic participation and everything in between.

This issue has gone to and fro for some time between the major parties without any party being able to point to conclusive proof that theirs is the right position. I am particularly grateful to the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, which produced a report on this issue and in broad terms supported automatic registration. It said in its second key recommendation:

“The Government should pursue further modernisation of registers, including piloting automatic registration for attainers and introducing assisted registration to prompt eligible voters to register when accessing other public services.”


We are talking about up to 9 million people—more than 100 constituencies-worth of voters—who are currently unregistered. They are mainly in rented accommodation, from the BAME community, from poorer households, students or vulnerable community members—people whose votes matter and who should take issues to their constituency MP and have them looked at, but do not participate in democracy. When they are surveyed, they all say that they want to participate in the democratic process, register to vote and vote, but they do not take the action to do so. It seems that this is pushing at an open door.

I think that the Conservative Party generally feels that this conflicts with their policy of individual registration, which has been around for a few years now. I do not think that individual registration has increased democratic participation in our country. Therefore, something is missing in attracting people into democratic participation. It is our view that it should be reviewed and looked at. We should look at all the evidence. People should come to give their views. The Boundary Commission would not hold an opinion on this, but it would hold the review. At the end of the review, we can take a decision, one way or another, about whether automatic registration should apply or be piloted throughout the land. However, we would need to have the evidence before us to make up our minds on automatic registration. I beg to move.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24, which is in the same territory as that which has just been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, but this is not tickling the Boundary Commission’s fancy; it would require government action. It is particularly influenced by my serving as chairman of the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, on which a dozen Peers served and toiled over several months to produce its report. As an interesting point, I looked up today that between us we had contested at least 47 parliamentary elections and I do not know how many local government elections.

The decision to introduce individual electoral registration in place of head-of-household registration was the major feature of the Act that we were looking at. This is not the time to have a fulsome debate on that report: that is for another day. The report was published on 8 July and the Government have got until today to respond; they have less than six hours. Bearing in mind what we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, there is a chance that we might get something at 9 o’clock tonight—is there not—depending on who is responsible for this. We look forward to that, and that debate on another occasion.

The concern of the Committee on the state of the accuracy and completeness of electoral registers was our number one item of our six key recommendations. The polling district and ward registers affect constituency electoral boundaries: they are the building blocks. Our recommendations include: piloting automatic registration for attainers—that is young people over 16; introducing assisted voter registration—we heard a little about that in the earlier amendment; greater use of data matching; civic engagement and public engagement, particularly in respect of young people and under-represented groups. The UK looks closely at international experience, where other countries have a far greater percentage of the population registered to vote. It was good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, speak earlier today commending overseas experience. We should not be frightened of it.

We were surprised to learn that the completeness of registers is no better under IER than under the old system. It cannot be right that only 85% of the eligible population is registered, while in Canada it is 96%. In Northern Ireland, where IER was introduced much earlier, back in 2002, completeness was reported to us as being only 74% in a 2018 survey. You would think that having had the experience of that for 16 years, we would be getting a more complete register there. It is evident that IER has not enhanced completeness.

The IER system has led to much event-led registration. On the cusp of an election we heard that 3.85 million people applied to register to vote between the MPs voting for an election on 29 October 2019 and the last date when it was possible to register, 26 November. Only half were subsequently added to the register, as half of them were already registered. Nevertheless, 2 million people were added to the register in that brief period. It cannot be right that our hard-working electoral officers—we met several of them—have to cope with all these registration events alongside the plethora of activity in organising an election and the increasing multitude of postal votes.

This late registration has meant that the registers immediately after the December 2019 election are perhaps as good as it gets under the old registration that we now have. It is in line with the committee’s view that the Government have agreed that it is the register of 2 March 2020 that is to be used for the electorate for the 2023 review. This amendment is to make certain that, as well as endeavouring to maximise the register so that everyone entitled is able to vote, henceforth the constituency boundaries will be based as near as possible to 100% of the eligible population rather than the 85% or so that it is at present.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who tabled these amendments. They have provided an opportunity to discuss the merits of not introducing automatic voter registration and for me to update the Committee on what initiatives the Government are undertaking to improve the completeness and accuracy of the electoral registers.

The Government are not considering introducing automatic registration, for reasons of principle and practicality. On principle, we believe that registering to vote and voting are civic duties; it therefore follows that people should not have these duties done for them or be compelled to do them. There is also the principle of individual responsibility, which is why we introduced the individual electoral register in 2014. Automatic registration is not compatible with the idea that it is each eligible citizen’s responsibility to register to vote. An approach based on individual responsibility also leads to the outcomes that we all want to see. After the introduction of individual electoral registration, the registers for the 2017 general election were the largest ever. There is also some evidence from overseas to suggest that those who register themselves are more likely to vote.

Coupled with that individual responsibility, a more general duty falls on society as a whole, and on all of us here, to explain the importance of registering to vote. The Government welcome and share in these efforts to encourage people to register and to participate fully in our democracy. The Government’s online registration service does exactly this, supporting citizens who want to register by making the registration process easier than ever. Satisfaction with the Register to Vote website is consistently above 90%.

On the practicalities, we have many concerns about automatic registration. I will briefly outline five of them. First, it is almost certain that an automatic registration system would lead to a single, centralised database of electors. We are opposed to this on grounds of the significant security and privacy implications of holding that much personal data in one place, as well as the significant cost that such a system would imply.

Secondly, any system automatically registering citizens who, for example, are applying for a driving licence, a passport or universal credit could present accessibility challenges to those citizens who do not use any of those services.

Thirdly, there is currently no public service whose application procedures capture all the data required to determine eligibility to vote—name, address, age, nationality and immigration status. This means that any so-called automatic system would still require significant amounts of human intervention.

Fourthly, electors have faith in our current registration system. The results of an Electoral Commission survey on the 2019 general election found that a net 78% of those surveyed were satisfied with the registration system. Of the 10% who were dissatisfied, 9% said that people should be automatically registered to vote and 1% said it should be compulsory.

Fifthly, we should also take note of the experience of other jurisdictions that have introduced automatic registration. Registrations may have increased, but so have concerns about errors and inaccuracies. For example, shortly after the introduction of automatic registration in Canada in 2000, the General Election Post-event Overview reported that,

“a majority of candidates and political party representatives indicated a low degree of satisfaction”

with the preliminary lists of voters generated by the national register, and that returning officers reported having

“to deal with widespread or major complaints about the preliminary lists of electors, indicating that the accuracy of the lists did not meet their expectations.”

Before I move on from Amendment 11, I reiterate what I said in the previous debate about the risk of damaging the independence of the Boundary Commissions, were they to be asked to do this work. They would be taking on an entirely new function, publishing a report on the potential impact of the policy. More than that, it would almost certainly damage the Boundary Commissions’ reputation for impartiality and independence. I just wanted to make that clear.

The second amendment in this group is the one tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Shutt of Greetland, Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Janvrin and Lord Wills. It would require the Government to lay before Parliament proposals to improve the accuracy and completeness of the registers. I want to reiterate what my noble friend the Minister said recently and what the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said this evening. The Government are totally committed to ensuring that we have as complete an electoral register as possible and we are working to that end. Between 2014 and 2018 the register rose from 86% to 89%, but the Government are not complacent and we will continue to work to improve that.

I will update noble Lords on the work going on to this day. I share with many in both Houses the ambition that every eligible elector who wants to be, should be included on the electoral register. However, the Government strongly believe that the individual must make the decision to engage with the democratic process themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, pointed out that people have reasons why they do not want to engage. The Government have an important role in making the process as easy as possible to ensure that there are no barriers to registration. That is why the Government have been working hard with electoral administrators to improve the accuracy and completeness of the registers through initiatives such as online registration and reform of the annual canvass process.

I will highlight a few pieces of work in this area. The introduction of online registration has made it simpler and faster for people to register to vote. It takes as little as five minutes. This improvement benefits all electors, including groups that have traditionally experienced barriers to making an application to register. From my own experience, I know that many local authority librarians will help people who do not have the IT knowledge that some of us might have.

The Government, working with partners, have developed a wide range of resources to promote democratic engagement. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, that this is putting too much on to electoral registration officers. This is the bit of work that they like doing. I know that from my experience of working with many electoral officers over many years. They are passionate about making sure that as many people as possible in their communities are engaged in the democratic process. Events are aimed at electoral registration officers, civil society groups, teachers and others to encourage people, particularly young people, to get involved in the process.

We are also in the process of implementing changes to the annual canvass of all residential properties in Great Britain. That will improve its overall efficiency considerably. This will allow electoral registration officers to focus their efforts on hard-to-reach groups. Many noble Lords mentioned these groups. It is interesting that it is the local electoral registration officers that often know who these groups are and how to communicate with them. Electoral registration officers also play an important role in helping to make the registers accurate and complete. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, is right that it is not just about completeness but accuracy.

When thinking of another group of people where we know it is difficult to keep it to one name on the register, we can look at members of the Armed Forces as well as students. They are another group of people that I know well. The Government are also analysing the impact of the new student electoral registration condition which requires higher education providers in England to comply with ERO requests for data and obliges them to work with local authorities to promote electoral registration among their student communities. This is yet another piece of work that is being done locally that will increase the numbers on the roll.

I hope that provides noble Lords with sufficient assurance that the Government are dedicated to improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers, while maintaining individual electors’ liberty to choose to register of their own accord. I therefore thank noble Lords for their amendments but invite them to withdraw or not move them.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, given the time, I will concentrate not on what previous speakers have said, but on what the Minister contributed in her response. The practical measures that she has outlined do not appear to have impacted on the 9 million missing voters. There may be a shuffling between students here or registrations there and so on, but there are still 9 million people who could, and want to, participate but do not do so because they are not registered in the process. We need a step change, moving away from well-motivated and well-meaning electoral registration officers, student leaders and others in institutions, to get to where we need to be, with a marked increase in participation at the next election. This legislation will not happen every single year or Parliament. It is a one-off parliamentary opportunity to make a real impact on the missing voters.

This issue is not going to go away. The Committee has heard the passion on it from the members of the noble Lord’s committee. I believe this will come back at the next stage but, in the meantime, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.