Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Prescott Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prescott]

My Lords, in the four minutes available to me, I should like to make one or two points about the Bill. I agree with some of it, but my main concern, as a number of noble Lords have expressed, is the turnout. After all, one hopes to get the highest turnout in democratic participation.

Some things in the Bill may improve that. Clause 14 makes it clear that there will no longer be the discrimination whereby there must be three weeks between parish and community council elections. They are being brought together to take place on the same day as the European elections, local government elections, and the parliamentary general election. Those elections are regularly held. However, what about the police commissioner elections? They will be held every four years but are not mentioned in the Bill. Is it necessary to include them to make sure that they can be held on the same day? It is important to do that because the Government, for one reason or another, have decided to hold the elections for police commissioner in November, which will certainly affect the turnout. I therefore hope that when we discuss these matters the Government will look at how the timing will affect those elections.

I had three points to make. The second relates to the statement on the cover of the Bill in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights. It refers to Section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act and then explains further inside. However, Article 8 is about voting. What is the Government’s position on prisoner voting? Does this mean that the human rights provisions apply only in a narrow sense, because there is difficulty? As the Deputy Prime Minister in the other place made clear, the legislation on House of Lords reform does not conform to the Human Rights Act and it could not be written on the face of the Bill. What is the position now? Can the registrar register prisoners? Can they have a vote? Or has there been just a limited human rights interpretation? Perhaps the Minister could tell us.

I apologise for raising matters directly on the police commissioner elections, but on the day that the Grand Committee dealt with that legislation we had the Statement on G4S. I chose to attend here in the Chamber and was therefore denied the opportunity to raise points in that Committee. I hope that the Minister will bear with me as regards a particular point that he may be able to help us with, perhaps not by answering today but by writing to me about it. There is the problem of this new kind of election, which involves police authorities, chief constables and the inspectorate all making decisions in their own different ways on how the candidates are to be consulted. Some are laying down rules for some candidates by saying, “You must all sit in the room together”. As we know, there is nothing in that which we would agree with. You could do it on the first occasion, but each candidate must individually have the right to talk to either the chief constable or the police authority. That seems to be the agreement between those two bodies, but it is not the opinion of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which I have here. It makes it clear that the meetings should take place on a one-to-one basis.

Obviously there are different ways of running this. An example is the financing of the mayor’s election. There will be financing for that but not for these elections. Different rules apply. What concerns me most—the Minister made it clear—is that the Government are looking for a common way to run elections in the future. I understand that and there is a lot of sense in it. However, if we are deciding new rules particularly for this election I wonder whether they might say that legislation is not required, but merely a message from the Home Office to say to the parties involved, “Why don’t you actually allow what is normal in other elections?”. If a candidate chooses to talk to the parties whom he is supposed to ask for information—or, indeed, if he has a responsibility to produce a plan—he should be able to consult them. I hope the Minister will tell his colleagues that they should set out that message, because things are under way. Finally, it is said that things will have to wait until you are registered as a candidate. That will be in October. Then a five-year plan will be produced for us, all within six weeks, that will have to be ready to give to the Government. A bit of common sense should apply here. There should be a common rule and candidates should have the right to be able to talk face to face.