Elections: Voting Arrangements

Lord Roberts of Llandudno Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, I wish to express my appreciation for the debate secured by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, and to say thank you to the noble Lord, Lord Wills, for the effort that he made to enfranchise the Armed Forces when he was Minister in the other place. I have great hopes for the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. I agree with everything he says. I thought that he would turn to the electoral system in the Irish Republic, but he did not. He condemns the system which is so close to my heart—that of proper proportional representation—but I am sure that we shall remain on speaking terms. However, he spoke of the importance of service personnel being able to vote. I battled with this a couple of Sessions of Parliament ago when I tried to get serious consideration of the automatic registration of people when they sign up to the Armed Forces, so that they are included on an electoral register. We have a registration officer for every unit but I think we need more. Automatic registration would meet the criteria quite easily.

Others have already mentioned the very tight general election timetable: between the close of nominations and polling day there are just 11 working days. I suggest that 11 working days is far too short a period for nominations to be verified, for papers to be printed, for them to be dispatched, for them to reach the furthermost parts of our interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere and for them to be filled in and returned. It is nice to speak of doing things online, but I am sure that many of our troops are out of the reach of any sort of computer, so would be unable to take advantage of that method of voting.

This morning, the MoD confirmed that we have 9,500 troops in Afghanistan. How many of them voted? It says that at the time of the general election there were 9,000 or 10,000, so this morning I was astonished to receive figures from the Electoral Commission showing that, in the 2010 UK general election, 294 proxy voting applications were received and forwarded to electoral registration officers and 270 postal votes were successfully returned from Afghanistan to returning officers in about 120 authorities. That is out of 9,000 people who are eligible to vote. That is totally disgraceful and is not acceptable in any modern democracy.

I suggest that one of the reasons for that is the period of 11 days for the whole transaction. That contrasts with other timetabling for elections: for example, for the National Assembly for Wales, where we shall have an election very soon, there is a gap of 19 days; for the Scottish parliamentary elections, 23 days; for the Northern Ireland Assembly, 16 days; for the London Assembly, 24 days; and for the European Parliament and for local elections in England there is a gap of 19 days. When we have such important elections, why is the gap only 11 days? We tried to sort this out with the previous Government but I am so sad that they were not able to proceed to retimetable the gap between the close of nominations and polling day. It is nonsensical.

The situation becomes even more confused. Last year, a general election took place on the same day as local elections in England. Agents, returning officers and their staff were all involved in election campaigns and there was tremendous inconvenience because the different elections had different timetabling, even though they were to take place on the same day. Not only were ballot papers not returned in time because of the 11-day timetable, but candidates and parties were unable to reach the electorate with their messages and manifestos. The Representation of the People Act 1983 states that any candidate can send one item of election literature free of postage to each elector. However, that does not apply to people overseas. You get a ballot paper at the last minute but no information about the candidates and there is nothing to promote them. We need to extend this ridiculous period of 11 days so that there is sufficient time, not only for the ballot papers but also for the material from the various candidates to reach those who are entitled to vote.

Finally, having a consistent workable timetable, say of between 18 and 25 days—I believe that the Electoral Commission wants 25 days—between the close of nominations and polling day would enable those overseas, especially those serving in the forces, to play a much more significant part in our elections in the United Kingdom.