EU: Scottish Independence

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what advice they have received on the consequences for the European Union membership of the remainder of the United Kingdom should Scotland secede.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the UK Government have already confirmed that they hold legal advice on this issue. The overwhelming weight of international precedent suggests that, in the event of Scottish independence, the remainder of the UK would continue to exercise the existing UK’s international rights and obligations and that an independent Scotland would constitute a new state. The UK Government judge that this situation will be recognised by the wider international community.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, in view of the events over the weekend in Catalonia, it is inconceivable that the European Commission would not be looking at the consequences for member states of the secession of one member state. In Scotland we have had enormous difficulty getting straight answers as to what the consequences will be for the citizens, so we need every citizen of this country to be confident that we have genuine advice and information on what will happen. Will the Government consider the establishment of an expert panel to look at the issues around the separation of Scotland from the rest of the UK to make sure that all British citizens do not suffer as a consequence of the break-up of Britain?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend and colleague—and perhaps even noble kinsman—the Advocate General for Scotland has a legal forum, which met last Friday, which is considering these issues. In the course of 2013 the UK Government will publish a number of studies on some of the issues engaged. On the question of Catalonia and Spain, it is entirely clear that the Spanish Government are opposed to any idea of secession and would be likely to veto a Scottish application to join the European Union under current circumstances. There have been exchanges between the Spanish Government and the European Commission on this exact issue.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it would be quite a tall order for an independent Scotland to seek to negotiate opt-outs of both the eurozone and the Schengen agreement? While I am always very keen to see employment in the Scottish Borders, border posts were not something I ever had in mind.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It opens up all sorts of questions about the future of Gretna Green. There would also be a number of questions about Scotland having to negotiate for fishery quotas and for the financial contributions that Scotland would wish to make. Those who argue that it is Scotland’s oil would recognise, perhaps, that it would also be Scotland’s financial contribution.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the corollary of his first answer—that the rest of the United Kingdom would inherit the current UK membership of the European Union and that Scotland would have to apply separately for new membership—is that Scotland would then go to the back of the queue behind Croatia, Turkey and all the other countries that are seeking membership? It would have to satisfy, in its own right, all the acquis and conditions of membership. It could take many, many years and that is yet one more really good reason why Scotland is better off as part of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is not an orderly queue for EU membership. There is a list of criteria for EU membership which applicant countries have to fulfil. Turkey applied during the 1980s, rather ahead of some of those countries that have since joined. Of course, Scotland would have to meet a whole range of criteria and there would be, no doubt, some careful and detailed negotiations. Whether or not Scotland would be allowed—as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has already posed—to opt out of Schengen or to opt out of the euro and keep the pound is something we would have to consider.

[The Duke of Montrose]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, if Scotland is separated from the United Kingdom, the contribution the UK makes to Europe will be reduced and that any rebate that is payable to the UK at the moment would also be reduced?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a question that Her Majesty’s Government have not entirely considered yet, since we have every confidence that when it comes to a referendum the people of Scotland will vote to stay in the United Kingdom. The question of the rebate and of the United Kingdom’s financial contribution is, as Members may have noted, itself under negotiation.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, do the Government also realise that it is not just Spain that is concerned about the break-up of the country, but a whole range of other countries, including France with regard to Corsica? Automatic admission as the consequence of the disintegration of an individual state would not be looked at happily by the European Union. My noble friend Lady Liddell made a very important point when she spoke about the importance of informing the Scottish electorate of the consequences of a division that might not be recognised by the European Union and also, if it was recognised, could still result in major differences in what it opted out of, in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, mentioned. It is a profoundly important issue, not just for the rest of the United Kingdom but for the Scottish people.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I can confirm all of that. It is a recognised, long established principle of public international law that when a part of a state secedes it inherits obligations under treaties but it has to apply to join international organisations. When the Soviet Union broke up, that applied to Ukraine, Belarus and others. When India broke up, it applied to Pakistan and then to Bangladesh, so this is a well established principle.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, do we know yet precisely what legal advice the Scottish Government took on this issue?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we do not know. That is one of the things that everyone is longing to discover.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, would the UK have a veto on a Scottish application for membership such as General de Gaulle exercised in respect of British membership in former times?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all mongrels. My father was a Scot; there are many of us here who have mixed Scottish, English, Irish and Welsh antecedents so we all hope that this question will not come up. If it did ever lead to separation, we would, of course, have to consider it. The Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922. Incidentally, that was relatively peaceful—although not within Ireland itself—and Ireland had to reapply to join international organisations.

Electoral Registration Data Schemes (No. 2) Order 2012

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Electoral Registration Data Schemes (No. 2) Order 2012.

Relevant Documents: 10th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, The order will provide the legal basis for a further electoral registration data-matching trial, by enabling the sharing of specified data between several data-holding public authorities and some 22 local authority electoral registration officers. The work that we plan to do under this order will form a significant part of our planning for the implementation of individual electoral registration.

The Committee will be aware that this is the third draft order of its kind since the summer of last year. It may be helpful if I were briefly to recap the story so far, before I go into detail about what the present order will do.

The first order—the Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011—allowed us to carry out a set of data-matching schemes and evaluate the results. In those schemes, we were trying to find out whether matching their registers against public authority databases would help electoral registration officers to find potential electors who were missing from the register, so that they could contact those people and invite them to register. We were also trying to find out whether data matching would help registration officers to find entries on their registers that might be inaccurate or fraudulent, so that they could investigate them and then, if necessary, take steps to remove them.

We learnt a lot from those first schemes about the challenges of data matching and about the techniques and the technology that we would need to put in place if we were to do data matching more effectively and on a larger scale. When the schemes were over, the evaluations told us that more piloting work would be needed if we were to ascertain the potential of data matching, and data mining, for finding potential electors who are missing from the register.

What last year’s schemes did reveal, however—rather unexpectedly, it is fair to say—was that data matching might give us a way of confirming the majority of existing electors on the register in the transition to individual registration. If that turned out to be correct, most of the electorate would not have to register individually as soon as individual registration is introduced. That would be more convenient for electors; and for electoral registration officers. There would be significant savings in time and money which would enable EROs to concentrate on those whose details could not be matched and those who were missing from the register altogether.

We needed to test our understanding, however, and we needed to do it quickly so that, if this was shown to work, the necessary systems could be put in place in time for the transition. The second order—the Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2012—approved by the House in the summer, was sought mainly to enable that testing, and the schemes for confirming existing electors are now in progress. That order also allows us to carry out further testing of data matching for finding missing potential electors and inaccurate or fraudulent entries; but only in the areas specified in the order, and only using data held by the Department for Work and Pensions. But I told the Committee in the summer that if we decided to extend the schemes to include further areas or data sets, a separate order would be laid before your Lordships at a later date. We are now ready to do that further testing, hence the order now before the Committee.

This latest order will allow EROs in the areas listed to compare their registers against specified public authority data sets. The public authorities which have agreed to make their data available for these schemes are the Department for Work and Pensions, for areas that were not included in the previous order; the Department for Education or, for schemes in Wales, the Welsh Government; the Student Loans Company; and Royal Mail Group. The schemes will target three particular groups where there are high levels of under-registration: people who have recently moved home; young people of 16 to 18 years of age who are just going on to the register; and students. They will complement a programme of work that the Cabinet Office has in hand to maximise electoral registration among groups identified as currently under-registered and at risk of falling off the register during the transition to individual registration.

The main purpose of the schemes will be to see how far data-matching helps EROs to improve the accuracy and completeness of the register by finding people who are missing from the register and finding entries on the register that should not be there. The schemes will also help us to design, develop and test the technology that we will need if data-matching is to play a significant part in future arrangements for electoral registration.

In addition, the order will enable EROs in four lower-tier authorities in two-tier local government areas to match their registers against education data held by their county council, to see whether it helps them to find 16 to 18 year-olds who are not yet registered. Registration officers in unitary authorities already have access to such data because it is held by the same authority that appointed them, but their counterparts in two-tier areas have no right to access the same kind of data if it is held by a different council. The results of these schemes will help us to decide whether it would be worthwhile to legislate to correct this anomaly.

The order will also enable us to augment the work that is already being done on confirming existing electors, by allowing us to carry out a statistical analysis to find out how far other public authority data sets might add to the match rate obtained from DWP data. The Higher Education Funding Council for England has agreed to make its data available for this purpose alone.

As in previous instruments of this kind, the draft order requires that before any data can be transferred, a written agreement must be in place between the ERO and the data-holding public authority setting out the requirements for the processing, transfer, storage and destruction of the data. It sets 17 July 2013 as the date by which each of the schemes must have been evaluated by the Electoral Commission. I also assure the Committee that after the pilots have ended and the evaluation is complete, the data created and held for the purposes of the pilot schemes will be securely destroyed.

The Information Commissioner’s office has been consulted on this draft order. The office has welcomed the fact that the current phase of pilot schemes has identified a much narrower range of data, and that the schemes will inform the extent to which personal data to be collected from electors can be minimised. I hope that the Committee will recognise the value of this further work for improving the accuracy and the completeness of our electoral registers.

I would like to make some additional points which I hope will help the Committee. All of this feeds into the wider context of digital transformation and the development of what in the trade is called “identity assurance”. This morning, I had a useful briefing from the government digital service on exactly this matter. Further down the road, there are delicate issues about the balance between the use of public and private databases, to which we will want to return in that wider context. I reiterate that the current electoral register has deteriorated quite badly over the last 25 years —especially in its coverage of vulnerable groups. We are very conscious of that and are therefore strongly committed to this move toward individual electoral registration and to using this transformation to maximise the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register. I hope that the Committee will accordingly approve this order.

[Lord Rennard]

These orders are clearly welcome to me, as they show potential ways forward for increasing voter registration and improving the accuracy of the electoral register. It seems to me, however, that further pilots are clearly needed, because earlier pilots were certainly not considered to have been a complete success. The Electoral Commission raised serious concerns about the reliability of the earlier pilots because they had,

“an absence of a clear, common, methodological framework”.

This, it said,

“had a significant impact on our ability to draw clear conclusions about the effectiveness of data matching as a tool for maintaining the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers”.

The Electoral Commission has raised a number of concerns about this next set of pilots, of which, I am sure, the Minister will be aware. In particular, will he tell us how closely the IT systems to be used in these pilots will match the IT systems being developed for eventual use in implementing individual electoral registration? It is clear that they are not the same systems, as the eventual IT systems to be used are not yet ready. Does he therefore accept that there is a significant element of risk in making an assessment of these pilots and drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of the IT systems that will eventually be used?

The commission raised a number of concerns about the methodological framework for the pilots. I am sure that the Minister will assure us that the Cabinet Office will do its best to address them. He has told us that the commission will evaluate these pilots by 17 July 2013. It seems to me that the crucial issues of the completeness and accuracy of the electoral registers will depend on the relative success or failure of approaches being taken in these pilots and other measures which are yet to be announced. It certainly will not be before these pilots can be evaluated that we will know whether a register based exclusively on individual electoral registration will be fit for purpose. That is why the existing Bill must provide for Parliament to decide whether the process has been sufficiently successful for our elections and for future boundary reviews to rely exclusively on it; just as Parliament will also have to approve any decision to abandon the annual canvass.

When the Minister responds, I hope that he will provide some clarity to the Committee about when the Bill will come back and we can debate further the issue of when it may be considered safe to rely exclusively on an electoral register based on IER. In the mean time, we have to hope that the transition will be as successful as possible, as quickly as possible, in terms of the stated aims of improving the completeness, as well as the accuracy, of the electoral register. It seems to me that these aims are best served by testing as many potentially relevant databases as possible. Use of the DWP database will help to ensure that, for example, people who are retired will be registered. The DWP is clearly happy for its database to be used in that way.

However, I understand that the Department for Transport has not given permission for its database at the DVLA to be used in a similar fashion. Both databases are national, government databases and both, of course, will have significant levels of inaccuracy. Surely, it would be better to use them both rather than just one of them. Perhaps the Minister will explain if the DVLA database will be used in due course. It would be very disappointing and quite unacceptable if the Government, having been asked repeatedly to use the DVLA records, were to argue in the future that the fact that there had been no pilots with the DVLA data was the reason for not using the DVLA database for the final process of transition to IER. The DVLA holds data on millions of adults, which is reasonably up to date, because it is a legal requirement to notify the agency if you move.

I very much welcome the addition to the list of databases secondary schools and academies, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Student Loans Company and the Royal Mail Group. The presence of educational institutions makes particular sense when it comes to adding so-called “attainers”; that is, young people who are coming up to voting age. I hope that the presence of those institutions in this list is an early sign that the Government will accept that the use of secondary schools’ pupil information must be integral to the IER regime, as it is in Northern Ireland.

It seems to me that in this respect we have at least had a four-year pilot in Northern Ireland. My understanding is that it has been very successful in engaging with 16 and 17 year-olds to add them to the register. We learnt today from the report of the Electoral Commission on registration in Northern Ireland that it was probably unwise to abandon the annual canvass there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the order. It is very difficult to disagree with one word said either by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, or my noble friend Lord Maxton. I have no shame in using the expression “ID card”, and the Minister is no doubt ruing the day when the Government decided that they did not want to continue with that scheme.

We warmly welcome the measure in broad terms; it is necessary, whether or not the ERA finally goes through. We hope that the process will happen in any case, because it is about finding those who have a right to be on the electoral register but are not there at the moment. It may be that it should have started earlier, but we welcome it all the same.

We have just a few questions. First, as I asked on the previous occasion, has there been any discussion with the political parties about the pilots? As I have said before, and as the evidence we have heard today from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, shows, political parties understand these issues really well and it would have been good if they had been involved in discussions on the pilots to make them as good as possible.

Secondly, like the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, we have a slight lack of confidence in whether the methodology is sufficiently robust. It looks slightly hit-and-miss, with various areas choosing which bits they would like to do. I hope that it is a little more scientific than that, which it needs to be if the conclusions are to be robust. Perhaps the Minister could assure us that the methodology is sufficiently robust to enable lessons to be learnt and that a sufficient number of authorities are participating for any general conclusions to be drawn. I had not thought of the issue of computer-matching which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised, but, even without that added dimension, we need to be sure that the range is broad enough for us to be able gain good evidence.

Thirdly—this is again related in part to what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said—to whom will the Electoral Commission report on its evaluation? Is it only to be to Ministers or will it be to the House? What happens if the pilots prove either too expensive per new elector identified or if, as has been suggested, database problems seem insurmountable? What happens if unforeseen data-confidentiality issues arise, or if some other weakness is identified? Is there a plan B to locate unregistered voters?

Fourthly, it is essential, as the Government’s own Explanatory Notes suggest, that the 22 areas have sufficient expertise and staffing to make the pilots meaningful. What assurance can the Minister give us that they will be sufficiently resourced?

Fifthly, what lessons have the Government learnt from the pitiful turnout for the recent police and crime commissioner elections? Can the Minister assure us that these pilots are not displacement therapy for the embarrassment caused by those unnecessary elections? In case he needs reminding, the elections cost £100 million, which would have paid for 3,000 police officers. It would be interesting to hear whether he thinks that at least some good has come out of those elections in terms of lessons for systems of electoral registration.

The Minister might also like to take the opportunity to say a little more about the Electoral Commission’s report on continuous electoral registration in Northern Ireland—to which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred—which was published today. According to the commission, the report,

“provides clear lessons for Great Britain as we move to individual electoral registration”.

Electors in Northern Ireland are now only registered once and only have to re-register if their personal details change.

This new report assesses the effectiveness of such continuous registration in Northern Ireland. It shows that the electoral register is now only 71% complete and 78% accurate, whereas the previous assessment in 2008 estimated the register to be 83% complete and 94% accurate. It appears that this significant and worrying decline is because the processes used to manage the register are unable to keep pace with people moving home or people becoming newly eligible to join the register.

We will obviously return to this in due course, with suitable amendments to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. Again, as has already been mentioned, the Minister will recall that we spoke of our deep concern about the provision in the ERA Bill for the annual canvass to be abolished. We trust the Government will reassess this provision in the light of the Northern Ireland example. Hitherto, the Minister has called Northern Ireland in aid as a defence for the Bill, but I think today’s findings are a little worrying—particularly about people moving, because within certain parts of Great Britain, our population mobility is even higher than in Northern Ireland. Therefore, this continuous updating would be particularly important. However, none of this undermines the general support for these plans to take place.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank noble Lords for their comments. We are a small group, but it is very good to have an expert and interested group in this extremely important and difficult transition from a very elderly system of household registration to a necessary, but not entirely easy, system of individual electoral registration.

I will try to answer some of the questions that have been raised. The government digital service is working actively on IT systems and the compatibility between one system and another. I was amused this morning to have a government digital service team arrive with a Mac presentation that they wanted to put on the House of Lords Microsoft-based video system. They are well aware of these problems; there will be full end-to-end testing of the IER digital service before the introduction of IER. This is not necessary for the purpose of the data pilots, but from the briefing that I have so far had from the government digital service, this is very much one of the things that they are actively working on and are confident that they are making progress in resolving. As I commented to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, earlier, I was struck by the different cultures of the government digital service and the House of Lords; we had forced two members of the government digital service to put on ties and suits to come to the House of Lords this morning and they felt extremely uncomfortable in this unusual clothing. We intend to be able to integrate IT systems at the local level and a considerable amount of work is under way.

I have been asked by several noble Lords to provide more clarity on when the Bill will come back. I can, with great assurance, tell them that the answer is “soon” and that I look forward to a more precise explanation of when soon will be, since that will also assist my diary.

I was asked about the role of the Electoral Commission and whether its report would be published. The report will be made to the Secretary of State, but in the nature of the relationship between the independent body, Parliament and government, it will of course also be published.

On the question of the Department for Transport and the DVLA, the latter’s database was used for the original data-matching pilots but is not currently available to us. Discussions are vigorously under way between the Cabinet Office and the Department for Transport, and we hope that we will regain access to the database at a later date. I am well aware that the DVLA database, as the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, commented, is accessed by other agencies including private insurance companies. It is not an entirely closed system and we very much hope that we will be able to resolve the issue.

[Lord Tyler]

On the point about the DVLA, I wonder whether my noble friend would accept that the Committee would like to strengthen his arm in any discussions with the Department for Transport and the DVLA. It is extremely important that the Cabinet Office recognises that the priority must be people who are not sufficiently well attended to in the registration process. As he said, the current register is deteriorating fast, particularly for those who are young and mobile in the inner cities. The priority must be to go to those databases that tend to pick out those individuals. Clearly the DVLA is one of them, but so, too, are the tenancy deposit scheme and the credit agency schemes. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues in the Cabinet Office will accept that those must be the priorities. There is a democratic deficit among young people in inner cities, who are the most mobile part of the population. It is natural that they should be the priority, and that is where we should put most emphasis. I hope that the Minister will take back from the Committee’s proceedings that we would like to strengthen his arm, and those of his colleagues, in dealing with the Department for Transport and the DVLA.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am very happy to take that back. I will report back to my colleagues on the strongly held sentiments. Perhaps I may take the questions about tenancy and deposit schemes and credit agencies at the same time. The initial assessment by the Cabinet Office of the suggestion from my noble friend Lady Berridge that tenancy deposit schemes might be used was that it was not sufficiently obvious that the processes of these databases could be adapted to support IER. However, that does not exclude renewed consideration.

Of course, the question of credit agencies takes us over the boundary between public and private. Credit agencies are part of the private sector. The issue is part of a broader discussion that we all need to have with the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, and others, about the extent to which, as we move into a new world of data transmission and availability, private and public databases can be used for identity assurance. That was the basis for the briefing I received this morning from the government digital service. It would be helpful to organise a meeting for Peers as a whole on the work that it is doing—for longer-term and wider purposes than this Bill alone—on these issues. Private databases are increasingly useful, but their use raises questions about civil liberties and public and private interests with which we need to be concerned.

[Lord Rennard]

The Minister suggested that there was a great gap between private sector credit reference agency databases and public sector databases. Would he not accept that private sector databases used by credit reference agencies are already used extensively by public local authorities? Many local authorities use data held by credit reference agencies to determine whether there may be more than one person living in a household, in particular when someone is claiming a single person’s council tax discount. Credit reference agencies may have information suggesting that more people are present in the house, and revealing who they are. Local authorities, which are public sector organisations, are already using the data from private sector credit reference agencies. Would it not be logical for electoral registration officers to do what their colleagues in finance departments are doing to identify the existence of people who are there but who are not on the electoral register, and invite them to be on the electoral register? I am not aware of any objections from civil liberties groups to any of these existing practices.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank my noble friend for that strongly worded intervention. I take that on board as one of the issues that we are edging towards. The civil liberties lobby may not have caught up yet with the point that he is making, but I expect that it will do so soon. There are some very broad issues here that we have to be concerned about. I point out, as he has done, that one of the principles of our system of electoral registration is that it is in the hands of local authorities. We do not have a central database, so what one local authority does with credit agencies may be rather different from other local authorities do.

On the question of why this particular collection of local authorities was chosen, the answer is that these are the ones that volunteered to take part. They seem to us to be relatively representative, but this is the nature of the system under our current legal arrangements. Happily, the selection of local authorities is sufficiently wide that we and the Electoral Commission are persuaded that they will provide us with sufficiently reliable information.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Is the Minister concerned that they are, in a sense, good local authorities? The fact is that if they volunteer to do this they are probably doing quite a lot in any event, and therefore probably not the ones that are of concern to us. I was very glad that they volunteered, by the way.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As I have discovered, the world of electoral registration officers and their staff is a wonderful subculture of its own. They interrelate across the board, and they know which are the good local authorities and which are not. I am less worried than I was when I started in this process after having discovered this wonderful population of people, for whom I have a great deal of respect, having been briefed by a number of them.

My noble friend Lord Rennard asked me for an assurance that the databases chosen are properly representative of the UK population. We are pursuing the greatest diversity possible in databases, which is why I take on board what has been said about the DVLA; the wider the collection of databases that we use, the more likely it is that we will catch students, attainers, rapid house-movers and others. That is precisely what we are trying to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, made an interesting comment that he might perhaps wish to pursue further: he would like an opt-out electoral registration system rather than an opt-in one. That is a point of some significance that would bear some consideration and further thinking. There are some large issues there on voluntary registration and the balance between voluntary and compulsory, which are not currently within our remit in the Bill.

[Lord Maxton]

It is right that registration should be compulsory, but voting should not.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

These sorts of interesting questions are considered by the behavioural insight team at the Cabinet Office, which plays around with tipping people’s balance in favour of doing one thing rather than another, and the noble Lord is certainly beginning to touch on them.

No, we do not rue the day when ID cards were dropped, but we are persuaded that developments in the computing and electronic world, and the way in which it is possible to use digital databases and compare among them, is opening up the possibility of providing identity assurance and a simpler relationship between the citizen and state, which would not only be more efficient but astonishingly cheaper than the original ID scheme. Again, this is something that needs further exploration, and I will do my best to provide one or more briefings for interested Peers.

On the question of whether we have discussed this with political parties, the answer is yes, of course, on a number of occasions. I particularly enjoyed the meeting which Chloe Smith, myself and a number of others had with the HS Chapman Society—a body of electoral agents chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould—at which we had some fairly sharp questions, including some to registration officers about the particular details in the Bill. We fully understand that political parties have a great deal of expertise. I am told that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has a little expertise in this area himself.

I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about the lessons that the Government have learnt from the low turnout in the PCC elections: I would want to add from the low turnout in by-elections as well. The lesson that we all need to learn from the declining turnout—this is a matter which all political parties need to talk about—is that people are less and less engaged in politics, and that we have to fight very hard, which necessarily means on an all-party basis, to re-engage our disillusioned electorate and persuade them that it is worthwhile to support candidates for election and to take part in the political process. We should also recognise that we have to overcome the barriers which an increasingly cynical media place in front of us as we attempt to do that.

I was asked to comment on the Northern Ireland report out today. I recognise that it is a sobering report, which raises a number of questions. I take the point made by several Peers about the relevance of the annual canvass for this. We will, of course, as well as the Electoral Commission, take that into account. I think it shows just how difficult the task is to maintain a complete and accurate electoral register. As we go through this transition, we have to make sure that we make every effort possible to arrive at as complete a register as we can. Having made those points I hope that the Committee will accept this order.

Motion agreed.

Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Insolvency and Dissolution) Regulations 2012

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Insolvency and Dissolution) Regulations 2012.

Relevant Documents: 10th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the next two instruments on the Order Paper form part of a package of secondary legislation that will enable the implementation of the long-awaited charitable incorporated organisation. The package builds on the framework introduced by the previous Government in the Charities Act 2006, which is now consolidated in the Charities Act 2011.

The CIO is the first legal structure in England and Wales designed specifically and only for charities. Just over 80% of registered charities currently have an unincorporated structure, either as a trust or unincorporated association. But an unincorporated structure exposes trustees to potentially unlimited financial liability and means that contracts have to be entered, and property held, in the names of individual trustees. Many charities have sought the benefits of incorporation through incorporating the charity as a company limited by guarantee. This brings the benefits of limited liability for members, protection for trustees and, as the company has its own legal personality, makes it easier to enter into contracts and to hold property. I have to say that, before I began to get into the whole charities world, I had not realised just how many charities hold property.

The downside of incorporating a charity as a company is that it results in dual-regulation and registration under company law and charity law. The CIO is a structure that has the benefits of incorporation but is registered and regulated solely under charity law by the Charity Commission. It will represent a significant reduction in red tape for charities that want the benefit of limited liability.

Although the CIO model is intended to be a relatively easy way to set up and run a charity, it also has to be robust enough to inspire public confidence. As it has the benefits of limited liability, the CIO framework needs to provide the right level of protections for third parties which may wish to do business with the CIO, in particular lenders and contracting authorities. We believe that the draft package of secondary legislation achieves the right balance between ease of operation on the one hand and third party protections on the other. I hope that it will help noble Lords if I give a brief explanation of the instruments before us today.

--- Later in debate ---

I know the Minister will have answers to these questions; I have seen the pieces of paper going towards him. The queries do not undermine our support for this, but having been involved in insolvencies—as he will have gathered—for a bit of time, one cannot help but notice the small print.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for her questions. She asks fewer questions than many Front-Benchers from the Opposition, and they are always extremely well thought through. She explains what she is asking, so it is possible to write down each question as she asks it—unlike some of her colleagues, who fire questions so rapidly that it is impossible to write them down or remember them afterwards.

I am extremely grateful that, some years ago, I became a trustee of two musical charities before I realised that I would have to learn so much about the enormously complicated world of charities. I am even more surprised to discover now as I read through the material that what I thought were two small charities—one with a turnover just short of £500,000 and the other with a turnover of about £250,000 a year—rank as medium, or even on the fringes of large charities. There are many that are much smaller than that in terms of their turnover.

I apologise that it has taken so long to come to this, but if the Government are at fault, it is partly because they have spent such a long time consulting all the affected parties. It is also the case that the insolvency issues have been extremely complicated, and getting the question of insolvency and dissolution right—which involved an external review by insolvency and charity law specialists—was something that we wanted to make sure we achieved. Charities law, as Members of the Committee will know, is a very complex and specialised field—it is only about 500 years old as it has slowly developed—so when we make changes, we want to make sure that what we are doing will stand for a considerable period.

I take the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Methuen, about encouraging volunteers to come forward and limiting the liability of trustees and other volunteers. We note and welcome the two reports by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, Unshackling Good Neighbours and his very large and worthwhile review of the Charities Act 2006. We are alive to his concerns and, while we cannot at this point say anything specific, we hope that there will be a response to this in reasonable time.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, also raised the question of powers to ban trustees. The Charity Commission has very wide powers to suspend or remove trustees; we nevertheless recognise, as he pointed out in his Charities Act review, that there are one or two gaps in the Charity Commission’s powers, and this is something that we look to address. Of course, the conversion into charitable incorporated organisations will do something to resolve this issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, also raised the provision of training for trustees of charitable incorporated organisations. That is something on which we will have to consult the Charity Commission. I take the point, however, that if company directors are now to receive more effective training, that should apply also to trustees. From my own limited experience, I have learnt that one needs someone with considerable legal skills as well as someone with very useful accounting skills on any board of trustees of a charity with a reasonable turnover.

The question of when charitable companies will be able to convert to charitable incorporated organisations has been left to the last phase. According to my notes, charitable companies will be able to convert in the course of 2014, which will also be phased in by size of turnover. Separate conversion regulations will be laid in 2013.

The noble Lord’s point about repetitive reports and returns will of course be eased by the transition; indeed, part of the purpose of moving towards charitable incorporated organisations is precisely to simplify the level of returns that charities and charitable companies have to provide and to reduce duplication.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, raised the question of shell charities and their necessary continuation. This is a very complex area, particularly, as she remarks, because of the issue of legacies and wills that have been written a very long time before. I am not entirely sure what the answer to this is, and I will write to her with more detailed concerns.

I am very struck by the issue of what one might call moribund charities. I am struck by the fact that some of the new community foundations in Yorkshire have been doing useful work in discovering charities that are in effect simply sitting on assets that are no longer used, and persuading them to dissolve or merge into the community foundations and use those assets now for more appropriate, but related, functions.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, asked why we do not have the general regulations and the commencement order, and how that will all be brought into force. The general regulations are subject to the negative resolution procedure and therefore cannot be laid in draft. They, along with the commencement order and the draft instruments that we are considering today, will all be made at the same time once both Houses have approved these affirmative instruments. A draft copy of the general regulations is annexed to the Explanatory Memorandum to the dissolution regulations.

I hope that I have covered all the necessary points. On the question of criminal liability if, on the dissolution of a CIO, one of the trustees is unaware of an insolvency event, I congratulate the noble Baroness on the detail and technicality of her question, and I hope she will accept that I will have to write to her with the answer.

Having answered those points, I hope that all Members of this Committee will welcome this order; it has taken rather longer than many of us would have liked but it is now coming in. It is actually a major and very constructive development for the charity sector. I therefore hope that it will receive a welcome and that we will begin to see this new form of charitable status taking effect over the next three to four years.

Motion agreed.

Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Consequential Amendments) Order 2012

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Consequential Amendments) Order 2012.

Relevant Documents: 10th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

Motion agreed.

European Union Committee Report

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his six-minute speech. I am conscious that we are past 7.30 pm and I will attempt to be shorter than is usual in a wind-up speech and I will promise to write to noble Lords if I do not cover everything. I should start with a number of regrets. I share the Committee’s regret that the House took a decision to reduce the resources available to the committee. I recognise that this is an issue for the whole House in terms of how many committees the Lords should have and what resources are available. That is part of the wider debate about the future of this Chamber which we tackled and failed to come to a conclusion on earlier this year.

The Government value the work of this committee enormously. I value the work of this committee enormously. I feel that I almost came in at the beginning of it. Michael Wheeler-Booth, the first Clerk of the committee, used to enjoy telling the story of how a young woman who was one of the few experts on the EU outside the Government at the time came to give evidence to one of the first sessions and he gave her a double gin and tonic to stiffen her nerves. That young woman, my wife, was also educating me about the European Union at the time.

When I was chair of one of the sub-committees I was conscious of the very high reputation that our reports have in Brussels. I met last Thursday with a Polish Minister who, in almost his first remark, said how glad he was to be in the House of Lords and how much the Polish Government valued the reports of this committee, so we are maintaining the standard and the reputation.

We are all conscious that the weight of work and the number of Commission proposals and communications —and therefore of Explanatory Memorandums— continues to grow. This committee struggles very well to strike the balance, to which the noble Lord, Lord Boswell referred, of detailed scrutiny and capturing wider issues at an early enough stage to influence the debate. A number of excellent examples of that have been mentioned today

Let me say a little about the Government’s current approach to the European Union and therefore to the role of this committee. Her Majesty’s Government are strongly committed to continued membership of the EU, as my noble friend Lady Warsi repeated in the Chamber today, and to active engagement in the development of European Union policies. This is not from any commitment to a European ideal, let alone, as some Eurosceptic conspiracists claim, to the creation of a European superstate: it is, clearly, that the coalition Government believe that continued membership remains in the UK’s national interest. That is our belief and that is how we have to defend the European Union. As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, remarked, it matters not whether we are pro or against: we have to look at the hard evidence and see where Britain’s interests lie.

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, attacked the European project—the belief in an ever closer union through which power would progressively be transferred from national Governments to Brussels. That is now over, although there are still some within the Commission who cling to that ideal. Generational change has swept away some of the old disillusion with the European state and enthusiasm for Europe instead, but our interests remain engaged with our neighbours across a range of shared concerns.

Of course, the current crisis in the eurozone is forcing changes in the EU’s priorities and structures, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, remarked. The Foreign Secretary, in his speech in Berlin, and the Deputy Prime Minister, in his speech at Chatham House, in the past few weeks have both addressed this broader issue. As the Foreign Secretary said during his recent speech in Berlin, the EU will be stronger if it made more sense to people by acting only where there was clear justification for action at the European level, which is one of the themes that we all need to discuss. The catholic principle of subsidiarity, which to me is similar to the liberal principle, is that decisions should be taken as close to those they affect as possible; that the most democratic politics is local politics. I say in mild criticism that I am not ever sure that grass-roots sport is an appropriate area in which the European Union should interfere.

One should always ask the hard question of whether or not such matters are dealt with by the federal Governments in Australia, Canada and the United States, and if they are not, we should look carefully before we transfer competence, authority, cost and benefit to the far weaker and less democratically accepted institutions of the EU. That is what we are trying to do in the balance of competences exercise. I encourage this committee, as the whole Government wish to encourage it, to get as actively engaged in the balance of competences exercise as possible over the next two years. I speak with some passion on this because I have now been nominated as one of the three Ministers who will play a role in scrutinising this review within government and we are looking for engaged and expert partners on the outside. We will be briefing the committee throughout as fully as possible and I hope that it will respond to calls for evidence. This will help to inform an evidence-based debate within the UK, which is what we now need.

I hope that, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has said, we are opening up again a wider, rational debate about whether Britain should stay in the EU. I stress “rational” debate, because when I saw the 10-page spread in the Daily Mail last week about common purpose and the conspiracy in the Leveson inquiry, I rapidly went on to Google to see what was behind it and found myself discovering the wider shores of Euroscepticism. One of the articles even told me that Francis Maude is not really a Conservative but is part of the socialist conspiracy to establish a European superstate. This is the world of alternative reality and irrational belief. Mainstream arguments are the ones that we have to address, with, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, the rational Eurosceptics—and there are many. That is what the balance of competences exercise in Britain, but engaging others, wishes to do. We already have some interest from Berlin in contributing to that exercise. Chancellor Merkel has said that less in some areas is a good thing for the European Union, and the leader of my party, the Deputy Prime Minister, when he was an MEP used to talk about the European Union doing less better, which is an entirely sensible approach.

The balance of competences review is very important to us in promoting a debate and therefore, I hope, to your Lordships as a committee. Similarly, the whole question of the JHA opt-in, the Protocol 36 debate, is one in which we hope that the committee will remain actively engaged. The Government have not reached a settled view on the final decision to opt in or opt out. Noble Lords will remember the exact words used in the Statement given to Parliament, which were that the Government’s “current thinking” was to opt out, which meant that a final decision had not yet been taken. It very much depends on active debate in detail on the various proposals made, consultation with other Governments, consideration of national interests and so on. In terms therefore of engagement with Parliament, we are committed to a vote in Parliament when the Division comes up and we wish therefore to maintain active discussion on all these matters—I hope perhaps on the Floor of the Chamber as well as in Grand Committee.

A number of noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Roper, talked about co-operation with other national Parliaments. Again, Her Majesty's Government would encourage your Lordships to develop those links as far as we can. I am a member of a European affairs sub-committee of the Cabinet which is about to go to Berlin in early January for its second meeting there and its third meeting overall with our German counterparts. Germany is clearly one of the most important partners that we have to deal with in the world and the most important partner in the European Union. We hope that your committee will perhaps develop a similar bilateral relationship with your German counterpart but also pursue further the ways in which COSAC, COFADS and the various other conferences of your EU Committee chairs can help you to plug into other national debates.

A better awareness of the complexities of national history was what the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, talked about, which of course fits in with another issue that we were discussing last week: the 100th anniversary of World War I. I remind your Lordships of the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian succession. I trust that the House will plug into all those matters. If I may rapidly put in a plug: I am interested in discovering what your fathers, grandfathers and great uncles did in the First World War. I have so far discovered in this House one whose grandfather fought for the Germans at Tannenberg, another whose father fought for the Austrians at Caporetto and a third whose father was rescued from a torpedoed troop ship by a Japanese destroyer. There must be a lot that will demonstrate to us the complexity of our relations with our European partners in our modern world.

I strongly sympathise with those who have said that the third task of this committee, which is outreach and engagement with wider public needs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, needs to be thought about further. That perhaps means asking for more time in the Chamber and paying more attention to making sure that reports are fully covered in the media and get on to the “Today” programme, as I know you have succeeded in doing, rather more often.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, asked about the mysterious process by which Peers are selected and invited to join committees. That sounds like a subject worthy of in-depth sociological analysis, but perhaps if he were to ask his good Whips they would tell him a little better.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, asked about representation at the EU peace prize. That has not yet been decided although some interesting and rather imaginative ideas are currently floating around Whitehall.

We need a wider debate in the United Kingdom and across the EU, as the EU now struggles to adapt to the current crisis in the eurozone, to deal with the challenge of further enlargement. We all recognise that enlargement is getting more and more difficult and, with each extra applicant country, there is a lot to contribute. Perhaps the committee would like to invite evidence from Norway and Switzerland. The chairman of the recent massive Norwegian study on the advantages or disadvantages of Norway’s current relationship with the EU—

[Baroness O’Cathain]

I am rather astonished to hear the Minister say that we should go and get evidence from Norway. We have; we do it all the time. There is a disconnect between people in government who are in ministries in positions of power and those who work on the sub-committees. There is a lot of discomfort, too, about the response, both in the Chamber and from the Government, to the very difficult reports on which we have spent hours and weeks collecting evidence. The Government’s response to reports is pathetic and the Minister ought to look at that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I stand corrected. I am not sure whether the justice and home affairs inquiry has yet taken evidence from the Irish Government, who have a clear stake in the question of the opt-out or the opt-in. It may be that the Irish Government—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Just to enlighten the noble Lord, as he has effectively asked a question, the call for evidence does address the Irish dimension. It will, of course, be a matter for the Irish Government to decide whether or not to offer evidence. I do not think that we should go around telling other Governments what they should do. It has been made clear to them that evidence would be extremely welcome.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord very much for that. I happen to know that there are those within the Irish Government who are enthusiastic about coming to give evidence, and I look forward to them accepting the invitation that has been made.

The wider issue we all face is the gap between globalisation—internationalisation—and publics who regret the extent to which power is slipping away from local control. Last summer I read an excellent book by Dani Rodrik, the Turkish economist who is now at Harvard, on the limits of globalisation in which he talks about the underlying contradiction between popular desire for stability, local control and understanding what has happened, and the driving forces of a global economy—the global social elite, immigration, et cetera—that appear to be taking power away from the local level and sweeping away autonomy, identity, sovereignty and democratic accountability. That is the tension that we all face. In the United States the American Tea Party takes it out on international law, international organisations and the federal Government. In Britain, by and large, our often disturbed and discontented public take it out on the European Union. Part of what we have to do is address that contradiction to see how far we can persuade our public that some of the regulation that now appears to them to be imposed from the European Union is unavoidable, desirable and necessary, and to persuade the European Union in return that it should not attempt to regulate everything in sight or expand its competences too far.

China: Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I sometimes feel that the best Thursday debates in this House are slightly like a really good academic seminar. I feel that I have been benefiting from that today through the speeches of a number of noble Lords, including some from whom I learnt on my first visit to China in 1981. I went from Beijing to Hong Kong, where a very wise political adviser called Wilson, as I recall, explained to me what I had half-understood while I was in Beijing.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, talked about the ancient past. In preparing for this debate and in thinking about what we are asking of the Chinese, I was reminded of when I, as a very green graduate student, started learning about nuclear deterrence and nuclear reassurance in the early 1960s. The first seminar I went to on nuclear reassurance was a discussion between Professor Hans Morgenthau and Professor Hans Bethe, one of the atomic scientists who designed the bomb, on “Are Nuclear Weapons Moral?”. Hans Bethe, in particular, was involved with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and then Pugwash in attempting to establish a dialogue with Soviet experts.

In the 1960s, that was extremely difficult. Most of their Soviet counterparts were coming out of an extremely dark period that had no previous contact with the West. Nevertheless, we managed, through successive formal and informal engagement—what we now call, particularly in east Asia, dual-track diplomacy—to begin to establish common terms, a common language, which we are now attempting to do with the Chinese. I think we would say that it is, in some ways, a little easier with the Chinese because they came out of their dark tunnel rather longer ago—20 years ago now—than the Soviets with whom we were dealing in the 1960s.

The United Kingdom retains a firm commitment to the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Our aim is to build an international environment in which no state feels the need to possess nuclear weapons; an environment that will allow nuclear states to disarm in a balanced and verifiable manner. That is to say that Her Majesty’s Government do not share the rumbustious views of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, which clearly provide a strong argument that the world would be safer if Saudi Arabia and Iran had their own nuclear deterrents.

The agreement of the first-ever NPT action plan in 2010 was a major step in the right direction on multilateral nuclear disarmament. For the first time, all 189 signatories to the NPT committed to make progress towards this shared goal. But of course we understand that we and the other nuclear weapons states—that is, not just Russia and the United States, but including the UK and China—have particular responsibilities. I would emphasise to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that the United Kingdom policy has been a matter of continuity from one Government to another for a considerable time. This is absolutely not an area of partisan disagreement.

This Government announced in our 2010 strategic defence and security review that we are reducing operationally available warheads from fewer than 160 to no more than 120, reducing our overall nuclear weapon stockpile and reducing the number of warheads so that we are the smallest of the nuclear weapons states in terms of the number of operational warheads and missiles. That is perhaps partly why the Chinese look to Russia and the United States as their natural counterparts. However, that is not to say that the United Kingdom has been standing back from this important area. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, noted, we have entered into the ground-breaking UK-Norway initiative on disarmament verification, the first of its kind in bringing together a nuclear weapons state and a non-nuclear weapons state, and the Prime Minister recently agreed with his Brazilian counterpart that we will explore with Brazil how we can work together on further ways to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. We are a firm supporter of the comprehensive test ban treaty. We are a firm supporter of the need to negotiate a fissile material cut-off treaty, and we bitterly regret that Pakistan has so far put a block on further progress on that. We are also firm supporters of nuclear weapons-free zones, and we hope that a new zone, the south-east Asia nuclear weapons-free zone, will be ratified soon.

The UK and China therefore share a fair amount of common ground. We are both committed to starting negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty. We have both given negative security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states and to nuclear weapons-free zones. I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that in the SDSR in 2010 the UK announced a new stronger negative security assurance, and the UK and the P5 have given negative security assurances in the context of nuclear weapons-free zones. We are not standing still on that.

While China has not yet ratified the CTBT, China has signed it, has maintained a moratorium on testing since 1996 and continues to signal its commitment to ratification. This is dependent of course on how the Chinese see the US Senate as making progress towards ratification. We continue to call on China and all other states that have not yet done so, including the US, to ratify the CTBT at the earliest opportunity.

The UK continues to work closely with China and the other nuclear weapons states to encourage further progress towards multilateral disarmament. I should pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for initiating the P5 process, because that precisely pulls together all five countries. The 2009 London P5 conference brought together for the first time officials from the five nuclear weapons states when the noble Lord was Secretary of State for Defence. That makes clear our unconditional support for the NPT and our insistence that we wish to engage in dialogue aimed to build mutual understanding and trust to take forward our commitment to disarmament. Since then, we have had important further exchanges in Paris and then most recently in Washington in June this year. In between, there have been a number of other more specialist discussions. The P5 has agreed to hold a fourth conference next year in the context of the 2013 NPT preparatory committee. We naturally hope that one of the two P5 states that have not yet acted as host will host this conference—perhaps next, most appropriately, the Russians.

We welcome, in particular, the constructive role that China is playing in this dialogue, especially its leadership of work to develop an agreed P5 glossary of definitions for key nuclear terms. This glossary will be a key tool in increasing our mutual understanding and in facilitating further P5 discussions on nuclear matters. The Chinese have shown considerable drive in taking forward this crucial piece of work, including hosting the first P5 experts meeting in Beijing. Again, I remind noble Lords that it was with that sort of work that we started with Soviet experts in the 1960s. It establishes a common understanding of what one is talking about across different spoken languages and different traditions of expertise.

We welcome, too, the constructive role that China has played in seeking progress with Iran through the E3+3 process, and the positive way in which China has engaged with the United Kingdom on a range of nuclear security initiatives and on efforts to reach agreement on an arms trade treaty. Increased transparency by China, for example by providing a good deal more information on the scale and capabilities of its nuclear arsenal, would help everyone, and would help achieve our shared commitment to build mutual confidence and trust. Uncertainty about China’s nuclear capabilities risks creating misunderstanding, particularly in the context of its current military modernisation programme. China is modernising its deterrent. We have only unverified estimates of how far that modernisation also involves expansion, which leaves room for alarmist estimates from some quarters—as we have seen.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, asked what would happen if larger multilateral discussions on nuclear disarmament were started to expand the bilateral process. Since the UK deterrent is so much smaller than those of Russia and America, it makes good sense for those countries to be the two most directly engaged. However, we welcome the expansion of discussions as far as we can into a multilateral process. That is in part why we see the P5 exercise as being so enormously valuable.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asked how far verification would be part of the P5 process. We have already discussed the UK-Norway initiative. When the P5 countries met at expert level in London in April 2012, it was the first time they had discussed verification. The British and Norwegians presented some of their work. The question of transparency for all nuclear weapon states was also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne. The UK has taken great steps on transparency. We have done our best to explain as clearly as we can how many nuclear warheads we have and how many we are putting on each of our minimum-deterrent submarines. We see that as an example to all others to provide as much information as they can, and of course we regret that China has not yet begun to release information on the size of its arsenal. We see our dialogue with the Chinese as one way of encouraging them to improve their transparency and thus build up mutual confidence between states.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, also raised the question of how far P5 discussions should be reported to Parliament. It is a condition of P5 discussions that they are confidential. It is felt by all those engaged in them that this is necessary to enable open and meaningful dialogue, which is where the value of the P5 process lies. However, the P5 countries issued a joint statement after each of their conferences—something that we hope will happen again at the end of next year’s conference. I will certainly feed back on whether the Government should provide a Written Statement and as full information as we can to Parliament.

A number of noble Lords raised the question of developments in China, and of how far the British are actively engaged with China. I asked the Box for some figures on the number of British ministerial visits to China. More than 14 senior UK Ministers went in 2011, together with two Scottish Ministers, the First Minister for Wales and there were a number of royal visits. There were fewer visits this year, partly because when the leadership is in transition, it is less easy for them to find the time to have extended dialogues with senior politicians from abroad, or for us to know exactly who we might want to visit. However, we are actively engaged and see the Chinese as natural partners. In particular, I will remark on Andrew Mitchell’s role in visiting China to persuade the Chinese to sign a development memorandum of understanding just before the last multilateral conference on global development in Korea. We talked to the Chinese about a partnership in helping African development and that is the sort of way we see ourselves engaging with the Chinese, to encourage them, little by little, to shoulder more global responsibilities. We are engaging. I do not agree, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Browne, suggested, that the United Kingdom is in any sense holding back politically in China.

When I was in Northwood some months ago, I was fascinated to hear from people involved with Operation Atalanta about the way in which there is now limited engagement with Chinese warships on anti-piracy patrol. It is a limited area of engagement—the Chinese will have nothing to do with multilateral command— but clearly there is a sense of growing mutual understanding of how one goes about keeping the international sea lanes open. Much of this, however, is strengthened by what in east Asia they call two-track diplomacy. Here, things such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative have an enormous value. I have learnt much about that over the years from my noble friend Lady Williams. We give every support we can to initiatives of that sort. The Government also support Wilton Park conferences, the UK-China forum, which I have been on once or twice, the activities of the body of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and many other conferences, links and intellectual and student exchanges.

The last time I visited Beijing, I found myself lecturing at Peking University to a joint London School of Economics-Peking University MA in international relations. That is all part of how, I hope, we are helping to train generations five and six of the Chinese leadership—we are now on generation four and a half, as I see all the newspapers telling us. The Government welcome enormously the work going on outside governmental constraints to engage the Chinese in all these discussions. We are committed to the P5 process and to preparations for the next review conference of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which will come up in 2015. We look forward to continuing our constructive engagement with China on all levels; bilaterally, as part of the successful P5 dialogue, and through our regular multilateral exchanges. We are committed to encouraging further progress with China and all NPT states parties against our shared commitments. We are also clear—I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert—that we will remain resolute in pursuing positive steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.

First World War: Centenary

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, on 11 October this year the Prime Minister announced a series of measures to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. The Government’s preparations will include national commemorations for key events, including for the outbreak of the war on 4 August 2014. Key partners in this include the Imperial War Museum, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and local groups and schools across the country.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

I thank the Minister for that Answer and the Government for the way in which they are approaching this very delicate commemoration. As it is so delicate, is the Minister aware that it could be easily sidetracked? The Government seem to share the view of most of us that the aim of the commemoration in this country is to recognise the extraordinary bravery, courage, heroism and gallantry of the millions of conscripts and volunteers who came forward to do their patriotic duty before returning to civilian jobs. Will he therefore be vigilant that nobody seeks to sidetrack this commemoration into other purposes, such as glorifying militarism?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I entirely share the noble Lord’s concerns. The Prime Minister in his speech at the Imperial War Museum to launch this said that the important elements that the Government wanted to see in this process of commemoration, which will last about five years, are remembrance, youth and education. This huge series of events in our history and in the history of a large number of other countries included an awful lot of civilian and industrial issues. It transformed the role of women. The Bradford Industrial Museum will be among those leading a recollection of what happened in the transformation of the industrial base of that northern city. So we will be commemorating a great deal which is not simply about the Armed Forces.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

What part will be played by the Commonwealth in this commemoration, since so many Commonwealth or imperial troops died in that war?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Australians and Canadians are ahead of us in their plans. I have read the extensive Australian report on what they plan. The variation between different Commonwealth countries as to how much they want to be engaged is marked at the moment. For example, the South Africans want, among other things, to remember the South African Native Labour Corps and in particular the sinking of a ship in the English Channel carrying 800 members of the South African Native Labour Corps from which, sadly, no one was rescued. So there are a number of sensitivities, including about the Indian army, which we are well aware of and which we are already actively discussing with other Commonwealth countries.

[Lord Dannatt]

Will the Minister expand on the educative aspect of what he said, on the basis that mistakes were clearly made in the run-up to 1914, and that future generations must understand that the failures of diplomacy and politics at that time must be avoided in future?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is aimed at secondary schools. Of the £50 million allocated for the commemorations, £5 million has been targeted at secondary schools, with the intention that every secondary school in England will be supported in sending two students and one teacher to Commonwealth cemeteries on the continent associated with the local communities from which they are drawn. I should perhaps add that the advisory board which has now been set up for the commemoration of World War I is about to hold its first meeting in support of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. It includes eight Members of the current House, including the noble Lord and me.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

My Lords, can I make a suggestion rather than ask a question?

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

I suggest that we use this opportunity to commemorate the women who played such a vital role in the First World War, working in the fire service, the police service and factories.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is absolutely part of what we intend to do. To illustrate what we are thinking of, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has suggested that on 4 August commemorations might take place at two of its cemeteries. The first is Brookwood Cemetery in England where a number of nurses who served in France are buried, as are soldiers from most Commonwealth countries who died in England while suffering from their wounds. The second is Saint Symphorien Cemetery outside Mons, which was established as a German war cemetery where the Germans buried the first British soldier killed in the First World War and where the last British soldier killed in the First World War was buried just after the Armistice was signed.

[Lord Morgan]

My Lords, should we not recognise—I think that the Minister wisely does—that the First World War was a very important chapter in our social and cultural as well as our military history? Should we not therefore focus on aspects such as the role of women, the centrality of trade unions in our life and the sensibilities of war poets, who were disgusted by that obscene episode? Should we not focus on that rather than, as I fear Remembrance Sunday is becoming, a celebration of militarism?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this year I watched the Remembrance Sunday commemoration very closely from the Foreign Office and I did not think that it had become more militaristic. I was also struck and encouraged that a number of veterans from other countries were marching in the parade. That is also highly desirable. It is not entirely, therefore, a national or nationalistic occasion.

On the question of the wider social context, that is absolutely part of what we will do. In my area, the Saltaire History Club and the Bradford World War One Group—there is one—are already discussing how they will look at the impact on the mill in Saltaire, which turned over to producing khaki cloth and all the other dimensions. A large number of its workforce ended up being women.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, can we make 4 August 2014 a day of national reflection, with all the shops closed and with a proper opportunity for everyone to consider precisely what terrible things happened in a war on which, on the very last day, when the Armistice was signed, twice as many people were killed as have been killed in Afghanistan?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, 4 August is not the easiest day in the year to ask people to reflect solemnly on anything. One of the questions with which the Government are currently concerned is: which is the most appropriate day, and what to do? Perhaps I might also add that while the British wish to commemorate the beginning of the war, the Somme battle and the end of the war, many of our Commonwealth partners and allies will want to commemorate other dates: Vimy Ridge for the Canadians, Gallipoli for the Australians and New Zealanders. There is therefore quite a lot of delicate negotiation about how we manage all this. Finally, among the great expertise in this House, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has given me a copy of her volume, in Chinese, on the origins of the First World War, which I am very happy to lend anyone who would like to read it.

United States: Presidential Election

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the United States presidential election, what plans the Prime Minister has to meet the successful candidate; and which areas of policy they regard as the priorities for United Kingdom-United States relations in the next four years.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I congratulate the noble Lord on the timeliness of his Question and hope that he got some sleep last night. The Prime Minister has congratulated Barack Obama on his successful re-election as President of the United States. We will continue to work closely with President Obama on the full spectrum of international issues that are essential to our mutual prosperity and security, including the global economy, the situation in the Middle East and progress in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister said of Barack Obama:

“I have really enjoyed working with him over the last few years and I look forward to working with him again over the next four years … we need to kick start the world economy and I want to see an EU-US trade deal”.

The Prime Minister also emphasised the need to do more to solve the crisis in Syria.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Triesman]

What approach will the Prime Minister suggest to reinvigorate the peace process in the Middle East, given the authority that President Obama certainly will enjoy as a second-term victor? Will the Prime Minister support the President’s commitment to a growth stimulus programme to mitigate uncertainty and a flat-line lack of growth—a strategy we sorely miss in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all conscious that the Middle East peace process will be a very delicate and urgent issue over the next few months. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority has suggested that it may take back the question of its status at the United Nations to that body next week. We will be in urgent discussions with our American and European partners on our approach to that extremely difficult conflict. The strategy for global growth is of course a matter that we are discussing within the G8, the G20 and the OECD.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, will my noble friend give the House the Government’s assessment of the nature of the relationship? Is it now increasingly bilateral, given our diminishing role in the European Union, or would the Americans prefer the United Kingdom to be a stronger player both bilaterally and multilaterally through the EU?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Washington sees the United Kingdom as a valued friend in Europe—within the EU and other European institutions. The issue of the UK’s place in Europe is an important matter for the USA.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, the conventional wisdom is that in a second term the President need not be constrained by the same sort of considerations as apply in a first term. In what areas does the Minister feel that the President is now less constrained, in spite of Congress and in spite of the facts in the Middle East being the same? For example, does he see that the President’s commitment to the crisis posed by climate change, as opposed to that which Governor Romney would have had, is a real window of opportunity for us?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that most people here would welcome the extent to which President Obama has flagged up climate change in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Indeed, he mentioned in his acceptance speech the importance of combating climate change. We look forward very much to a more positive American policy towards global co-operation in combating climate change.

[Lord Stirrup]

My Lords, can the Minister reassure the House that Her Majesty’s Government will work with the second Obama Administration to ensure that when the Afghan national security forces take on sole responsibility for security lead in their own country, they will be given all necessary support by NATO and will not be left wholly in the lurch, as seems to be the proposition at the moment?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord is well aware that the British are already in active discussions about providing training for officers in the Afghan national security forces and we are working with all other NATO forces within ISAF to ensure that there is a smooth handover.

Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this interesting debate. I am constantly struck by how much diverse expertise we have in this House on the many countries around the world. I can recall the questions that were asked some months ago on the Georgian Government’s reform of public services by a number of Peers who had just returned from Georgia. I recall my first visit to Yerevan in 1995, when the key lady on the floor of the hotel where I was staying said to me, in hushed tones, that I was staying in the very same room that Caroline Cox—the noble Baroness, Lady Cox—had stayed in some months before. I recall some years later in Abkhazia, with Anna Politkovskaya and a number of other journalists, meeting the Foreign Minister of what seemed to me that benighted and unrecognised country. His last words to me as I turned to leave were: “May I ask you, when you return to London, to please give my best regards to Lord Avebury?”.

We all recognise that there are many comings and goings. I enjoyed the pictures on the web that I looked at this morning of the noble Lords, Lord Laird and Lord Kilclooney, on their most recent visit to Azerbaijan. If I may make just one partisan point: when noble Lords demand that Ministers should travel more often and then demand that Ministers are always here at short notice to answer debates, it should be recognised that this coalition Government have visited more countries with more senior Ministers than our predecessors but that the demands of Parliament are one of the things that hold us all back.

The coalition Government are of course keen to promote Britain’s security and prosperity and, at the same time, to influence the Governments with whom we deal to improve the quality of their rule of law, human rights and democracy. None of the three countries in the Caucuses is yet a fully-fledged democracy. All of them have had problems with media freedom and media ownership; all have had problems with the rule of law. We are extremely happy that Georgia has just had an election which was ruled by most observers to be free and fair, and in which there has been a democratic change of Government from one party to another. Azerbaijan has not yet reached that stage, nor is there a fully-fledged opposition in Azerbaijan, but there was not one in George until relatively recently. Armenia has elections next year, which we very much hope will be up to the standard of being assessed as free and fair.

We are working across the region with our partners in the EU, the Council of Europe and the OSCE. I should say to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, that our assessment of the EU’s mission is that it is there to strengthen the stability of our neighbourhood. The basis of the European neighbourhood policy—the eastern partnership is part of this—is that we export security or we import insecurity. It is much better to export security. There is no more expansionist mission than that. I have visited Georgia on a number of occasions and talked to the EU and OSCE representatives there, and that is very much what they are attempting to do. He commented that the relationship between Russia and Georgia is very similar to that between Britain and Ireland. I did once say in a discussion in Moscow that it seemed to me that the attitude that the Russians—with whom I was talking—had towards Georgia was very similar to that which the British had towards the Catholic Irish in the middle of the 19th century. That is part of the problem of accepting that these are countries which are entitled to their independence and to be treated as equal partners. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who complained about the Azeris acquiring weapons in large quantities from others, that the Russians sell weapons to Azerbaijan and to Armenia. That is one of the problems in trying to resolve that frozen conflict.

We are, as several noble Lords have remarked, the largest foreign investor in Azerbaijan—primarily in the oil industry, but also now spreading to the retail sector and others. I recognise that several noble Lords have commented that they would very much like to see a senior Minister going there. As we speak, the Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey, is in Baku attending the internet governance forum. The Prime Minister has met the Azerbaijani President twice in the last six months. Other Ministers have visited the country. There are at the present moment no plans for a Cabinet Minister to visit in the near future, but such plans are kept fully under review. I had the great pleasure last night of speaking at the Iraqi-British business commission with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who was, as always, fully up to speed. It is not simply a matter for the Government: I encourage all noble Lords to be as actively engaged as possible in encouraging further British investment and trade with all these developing countries.

Why are we interested in the region? Of course for all these connections; the transit of oil and gas to Europe via a southern energy corridor is of considerable importance to Europe’s energy security as a whole. The region is important to us in terms of security, and is one of the many transit routes to Afghanistan. Noble Lords have mentioned that Iran is also a neighbour and that the sanctions on Iran have led to an increased Iranian interest in both Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Azeris are always conscious that there are more Azeris living in Iran than in Azerbaijan itself and that to go to Nakhchivan you have to go partly through Iran.

However, our common security means that we are engaged with the region. All three countries have contributed to the ISAF in Afghanistan. There are now two Georgian battalions in Helmand, taking over some tasks from the US Marine Corps and thus actively assisting the British forces in that region. The Eastern Partnership sees this as a collective Western relationship with the region. Georgia is the country which has most openly declared its intentions of joining both the European Union and NATO. This is a long-term process, but deeper relationships are currently being negotiated with Armenia and Georgia, and a deep and comprehensive free-trade area, to use the EU jargon, is now under way in terms of negotiation with both these countries.

We have also talked about the frozen conflicts. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, what happened across Georgia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in a number of other areas as the Soviet Union broke up, were some very bloody and disorderly conflicts, which have left us with what we have now. There were faults on all sides. Let us also touch on what happened in Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine. We are left, however, with the enormous problem of the Nagorno-Karabakh and with people on both sides of this ethnic conflict who feel deeply aggrieved at each other.

The Minsk process has failed yet to make much progress. We do, however, have only that process to work with. The United Kingdom, which is not a member of the Minsk group, continues to support the Minsk process, difficult as it is. We cannot entirely get rid, for example, of Russia as a major player in all this. Therefore, to rebuild a group which would attempt to negotiate without Russia would not be particularly helpful. If we were to invite China to adjudicate, I am sure that the Chinese Government would be much more impartial than the current chairs of the Minsk group but they might not necessarily be that much more helpful.

The British Government are putting in a certain amount of money themselves in terms of supporting NGOs, British and others, within Azerbaijan and across the region. We also support what the EU is doing in terms of promoting human rights and the rule of law. Of course, we invest as well. We would love the Azeris to fund what we do but we have, across the whole of eastern Europe, invested heavily, as we now are also doing in north Africa, in rule of law missions, in improving the capability of political parties to take part in elections and in looking at the administration of elections. That is very much how we see our democratic mission.

To wind up, we are committed to this region because it is part of the wider European neighbourhood. We are committed with our European partners because we share common interests. We are committed as a country that is an active exporter to compete with our European partners—the Germans, the French and others—for business and investment in the region. So we have a mixture of interests in which we recognise the growing importance of Azerbaijan, the importance of the Caucasus as a whole to our future energy security and the importance of helping the Caucasus to become more stable, more prosperous and more democratic for the peace of that region and of our broader region as a whole.

Committee adjourned at 7.44 pm.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I apologise also for having missed Second Reading, for family reasons on that occasion. I will just throw in two or three examples of the dangers of fraud that have arisen from the comments of several noble Lords this afternoon and which any revision to the system must take into account.

First, whichever way a register is compiled, if it involves a canvass, those who are involved in undertaking that canvass could be open to pressure or could indeed be exerting influence. Forty years ago this year, I won a seat on a local authority by just some 50 votes out of a register of 8,000. To our great surprise, when the next register came out there was a reduction of several hundred voters in our ward. We attempted to see the correlation between our votes and those that had disappeared; there was something like a 70% correlation. What had happened was, yes, that forms had been dropped into every house, as they should have been, but in certain houses the knock on the door to pick them up was very light and they were not picked up. They had a right, of course, to take those forms in or to post them in but people did not do so. That was one avenue of fraud.

Another example, which noble Lords will be well aware of, is the pressure that is put on people with postal votes in a personal manner. In certain elections in my own area, I am aware of a motorcade following the postal van that was going around. As the postal votes were dropped, there would be a knock on the door: “Hello, Mrs Jones, can I help you? Do you want a witness? Do you want me to post this for you?”. The pressure that can be put on in that way obviates all the efforts that are made to ensure that we have a fair and reasonable system.

The third example that I would mention is, again, one that your Lordships will be very much aware of: the pressure that people felt at the time of the poll tax. Many people wrongly thought that there was a correlation between the right to vote and being on the register and there was a massive reduction in the number of people on the register. The outcome of the following general election was held to be because of the reductions in key constituencies that would have made a difference to that outcome. Often, as has been mentioned, those in private rented houses may have thought that they might avoid having to pay so much poll tax and were, in that case, avoiding being on the register. Other circumstances as well could lead to people wanting not to be seen at certain addresses. All these factors have to be taken into account when dealing with these sorts of changes.

I welcome the provision in Amendment 36, particularly its second half, to make sure that there is a relationship with the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly because there is a bearing on the elections that take place there, particularly in 2016. Careful thought needs to be given as to how things roll out in that year. However, we need to look even further at how we can ensure that the system is absolutely watertight.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have almost been having another Second Reading debate. Since this is the beginning of Committee, perhaps I might be allowed to say a few general things before answering on these amendments. As a number of noble Lords have already said, across the parties we all share an interest in restoring as far as we can the accuracy and completeness of the register as we go through this transition. We also share the principle of that transition: that we should be moving away from a household system of registration dating from the 19th century, when only the head of the household was allowed to vote, to one which is much more appropriate to the more varied households and the different relationship between the citizen and the state which we have today.

Over the summer, I have talked to a number of electoral administrators and read a fair amount. I would like to say a few things on that. I was struck by the strength of feeling that some electoral administrators have about making a faster shift to individual electoral registration than the previous Government proposed. It is faster, cheaper and clearer but we all understand that how we manage the transition is key. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that the transition in Northern Ireland was a big bang; here, we are taking it over more than two years. We all share the interest in getting this right, which is what these and some later amendments touch upon.

I hope that noble Lords will have seen a couple of interesting pieces of research that were published over the summer. There was, for example, the article published by Parliamentary Affairs in August on The Quality of the Electoral Registers in Great Britain and the Future of Electoral Registration.

It states that,

“the estimated level of completeness of the December electoral registers has fallen since 1950: dramatically so over the last 10 years”.

In other words, we already have a problem. The completeness of the register has fallen quite remarkably in the past 10 years. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, said that he did not like the phrase,

“so far as is reasonably practicable”,

but that recognises that we may not be able to get back to the wonderful period of the 1950s when the level was up to an estimated 95%. However, we certainly hope to restore as far as we can a percentage in the high 80s rather than the one in the low 80s to which we are heading.

Another weighty piece of research, undertaken for the Government and published in July, is on Under-registered Groups and Individual Electoral Registration. Among other things, it states that the motivation to register is closely associated with the motivation to vote, which should be sobering for all of us. Those who are not interested in voting are, of course, not interested in registering either. That is one of the strongest correlations in lack of interest or resistance to registration. We all recognise that turnout has fallen during the past 25 years. Party membership has fallen remarkably during the past 25 years. That is a much wider issue, which we again all share, of regaining the confidence of our electorate and persuading people to vote.

Both pieces of research show some interesting things. Age is the biggest single differentiator of registration; social class is not—I say this to Labour Peers in particular who may worry that there is a real differentiation between classes. However, we know that housing tenure and frequency of moving are a major differentiator and that young people in private rented accommodation are the hardest group to get at. There is some evidence that recent immigrants to Britain—people who are not British citizens but are EU or Commonwealth citizens—represent a disproportionate percentage of those who are not currently on the register but should be.

There are also some large issues around social change which I have discovered in talking to people who are concerned with this. Doorstep canvassing was much easier a generation ago than it is now. Fewer people are in; both members of a household are working; or it is a single-member household and that person is out working. People actively resist talking to a doorstep canvasser and think that they are interfering. Among the reasons why we think the annual canvass will in the long run have less utility are precisely those sorts of social change. Gated communities are more common. We were told that 24,000 households in Wandsworth, many of them the new flats going up along the river, are behind gated entrances. All of us who deliver leaflets and canvass know how much more difficult it has become in recent years to get into private accommodation and blocks of flats. That also makes it more difficult to discover who is there.

There are difficulties of communicating with young people. I have been told robustly, not only by electoral administrators but by friends and other parents, that young people do not answer letters. In particular, young men do not even pick up letters addressed to “The Householder” or “The Occupier”; you have to get at them if you can via their iPhone because that is something that they are more likely to answer. That is one of the reasons why among the experiments which we are undertaking is the introduction of online registration. A number of noble Lords came to see the demonstration that we offered. That is clearly the direction in which we have to go, in particular to catch the younger generation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I asked my noble friend a specific question. I fully appreciate that the agreement reached by the Prime Minister in Edinburgh allowed for the Scottish Government to extend the franchise to 16 year-olds, but I think that my noble friend’s namesake, our noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, told the House that the Scottish Government would not be able to have a new electoral register: they would have to use the existing register. So I asked what the Government’s view is of the declaration by the First Minister that he intends to bring forward a Bill to create a new register for all 16 year-olds who would be able to vote on the referendum. For the first time in this country, we would have a devolved register that applied to the referendum and a register that applied to general elections. That is a constitutional nonsense. Are the Government content for that to happen?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I said that registers are compiled and kept locally. We do not have a single, central national register—to the deep regret of the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. There is some room for at what stage one puts what we call the attainers—those 16 and 17 year-olds—on the register. There are some differences already between local registers. I am struck by the strength of the difference between the electoral registration forms that I have seen from different local authorities. We do not have in the United Kingdom a single centralised approach to electoral registration.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I do not think the Minister quite understands what is happening in Scotland. It may be that, whereas the UK Government are consulting with the devolved Administrations, perhaps a devolved Administration are not consulting with the UK Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, our understanding from the media is that the Scottish Government are publishing a Bill that will allow people who are 16 years old on the date of the referendum—that is, some time in October 2014—to vote. That means an entirely new cohort of people on the register. It means going round to find out where people who are now 14 and 15 year-olds are, getting them on to a register, publishing the register—locally, as the Minister said. How is that to be done? Has he been consulted about that? Has he made any comments about it? Does he know what is going on in Scotland?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not follow the Scottish media as closely as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and it is very difficult for the Government to ask to be consulted on reports in the Scottish media. I will have to write to him on the detail of something which may or may not be what the Scottish Government are proposing if it has so far appeared only in the Scottish media.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, let us forget about the Scottish Government for a moment and think about this Government. I was given an assurance by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, that the extension of the franchise to 16 year-olds would apply only to attainers—that is, to people on the existing register. Is that correct or not?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To be absolutely sure that I am entirely consistent with my namesake, I will write to the noble Lord when I have checked as thoroughly as I can to ensure that I am entirely accurate.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

To follow up the original question of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which is a question of constitutional relevance, however the register is achieved—whether the attainers are dealt with from one particular date or another—is not the point the inconsistency between that referendum franchise and the one then applicable for Westminster elections and how will that be dealt with?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

In allowing 16 year-olds to vote in a Scottish referendum, we are making an exception. That is evident; that is part of what has now happened. We have a register which has various people on it with different circumstances. There are those EU citizens who are entitled to vote in local and European elections but not national elections; there are Members of this House, who are entitled to vote, similarly, in European and local but not in national elections. So there are already some variations between categories on the register. I will check as thoroughly as I can on this to ensure that I am entirely accurate on a point which, I fully understand, is important.

Perhaps I may now turn to the three important amendments. The issue at stake for all of us is how confident we are that we will manage the two-year transition and what we do when we reach the end to ensure that we have gone all the way through the transition. The reason for having a two-year transition is precisely to ensure that we are successful as we come to the outcome. The Electoral Commission will be following that very closely. We will be reporting back to the House on how the new system operates, so we are confident that by the autumn of 2015—with, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, correctly pointed out, a different Government, or certainly a new Government, in place—we will be able to make a full transition.

Amendment 1 asks for guidance to be maintained for registration officers beyond the five-year period. Again, we are into questions about central direction and local autonomy for registration officers. Having spoken to a number of electoral administrators, I have considerable sympathy for the strains under which they work and the efforts which they put in to maintain as complete and accurate a register as possible. We will come back to the issue of how electoral registration is maintained on our third day in Committee.

We will of course continue to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the system during the five-year period, but we are confident that at the end of it the transition will have been fully taken through and we will have achieved a relatively stable system. When I say “stable system”, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, that I am also confident that we will have moved to a considerable extent towards an online system. I recall telling the House some months ago that the DWP expects that the number of its customers who interact with it online will have moved from some 20% to some 80% over the next 10 to 15 years, so we are in a system in which we will be moving from paper and letters to online interaction. I am also confident that we will find that data matching and data checking will become more and more constructive and accurate as a means of checking whether someone who registers is precisely who she says she is.

[Lord Maxton]

Surely the point about data matching and so on ought to be that people go on the register rather than the other way round. Rather than checking whether or not someone is accurate, there ought to be a way of putting people on to a register and then saying to them, “Are you the person who the register says you are?”.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord is asking some very large questions that of course relate to his preference for having a central register for all citizens, which would mean an ID card. That is rather larger than the remit of the Bill, as he well knows. Over the two years we will be conducting some further data matching and data mining to confirm existing electors. There will be individual invitations to those who are not confirmed by this process—in other words, concentrated individual canvassing rather than an overall individual canvass—a full household canvass in 2015 and a carry-forward to protect those who have not been contacted by the 2015 general election. There will be a civil penalty to encourage applications and the change will take place at the time of the next election when there will be the highest amount of popular interest in politics. I think I recall correctly that in the run-up to the previous general election some 500,000 additional voters registered in the two to three months before the election. That will bring a number of people back on to the register. We are confident that the efforts that will be made during the period of transition will complement each other to a point where we have reached at least the current level and, we hope, a great deal more.

On Amendment 36, as we go through this transition, the Electoral Commission will be carrying out research to give us measures of how well we are doing and to give us an after-measure using the December 2015 measures. We are confident that we can rely on the Electoral Commission to give us the figures that we need.

[Lord Wills]

Before the Minister leaves that amendment, will he say why, as I gather he is resisting it, he wants to deprive Parliament of the opportunity to debate what the Electoral Commission finds and propose remedial measures if necessary? Is he so confident in what he is producing, or is there some other reason why he does not want to give Parliament the right to scrutinise that report?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I envisage that Parliament will continue to scrutinise this as it goes through. I recognise that this is a concern for the whole House, and it may well be one of the things that we need to discuss off the Floor between Committee and Report. The Government are not convinced that we need to have an absolute point at which Parliament says yes or no to the entire transition, partly because, if we have gone through the two-year to three-year transition, there is the question of what the alternative should be if you have not gone far enough. That would mean a much more out-of-date register, which we would know would be extremely inaccurate by then if we failed to carry through. For myself and for the Government, we prefer a process in which a dialogue will be continuing as we go through the transition. A number of experiments will be taking place at that time to ensure that we achieve the aim that we all need. We are confident—

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Will the Minister remind the House of the legal provision in the Bill which would allow the Government to retreat from compulsory individual electoral registration if everybody agrees that the transition has not worked and there is an unacceptable reduction in the completeness of the register? The Minister is talking as if the transition is bound to succeed, but everybody accepts that it might not. What happens if it does not?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I said at the beginning of my speech that we have been suffering from a decreasingly complete and accurate register over the past 15 to 20 years. The current register is very imperfect. That is the reason why I hope that we all agree that we need to make this transition. If we were to come to a point halfway through the process where we recognised that there were some severe problems, we would have to look at those problems because the current register is increasingly suffering from inaccuracy and incompleteness.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Will the Minister confirm that there would need to be a new Act of Parliament at that point?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will have to consider that and come back to the noble and learned Lord. I recognise that part of the reason that we are resisting this is because if you then say no to the transition, what do you go back to? That is something that we clearly need to think through.

[Lord Rennard]

There is a precise and important point that relates to this amendment. Will the Minister confirm that there is no provision in the Bill if we come to that conclusion that the system is less satisfactory than the present system? We know that the present system is far from satisfactory at about 82% complete. If under the new system IER is only 65% complete and there is no provision in the Bill to deal with that problem then, would it not be better to have some provision so that Parliament could look at the issue rather than just the Government deciding whether to start again with a new Act?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I think I need to take that away as well. If we were to go back to the old system, we would face the risk that we were retaining a much larger number of inaccurate and fraudulent entries in the system. Part of the reason for this Bill is to remove those fraudulent entries.

[Lord Rennard]

I do not wish to sound pedantic in relation to this issue, but it is not a question of going back to the old system rather than using the new one. The amendment that I have tabled for discussion later on is about whether the carryover from the old register needs to be continued for longer. It may be that if we have not succeeded with IER in the way that we hope, we might continue with the carryover for rather longer. That is a decision that Parliament should take at the appropriate time. It cannot take it during the passage of this Bill because we will not see how the data matching and data mining pilots have succeeded. We will not have that information, but we should have that information, and decide on it, before full implementation, by which I mean ending the carryover.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I recognise that we shall come back to some of the issues that have been raised when we come to debate the noble Lord’s Amendment 58, which we have almost been debating. The question of a further carryover at that point will unavoidably involve carrying over a large number of names about which we will all have less and less confidence because they will be people with whom electoral administrators have had no contact for the previous two years, in spite of considerable efforts—letters and attempts to canvass—to check their data. The Government would be very reluctant to carry over further than that, but I take the degree of concern that we hear around the Chamber seriously, and we will consider that further. Having offered these responses to a very wide-ranging debate, which has touched on almost everything from Scottish devolution to central registration and the authoritarian system of identity cards that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, loves so much and a little on the computer revolution, I ask the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment. We will continue to discuss many of these very important issues as we go through Committee and into Report.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My noble friend has offered to write to me, which I appreciate, and I do not want to detain the Committee with too many matters Scottish. However, Amendment 36 suggests that a report should be brought by the Electoral Commission,

“on the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register in each part of the United Kingdom, which will detail variations in registration rates within and between the different parts of the United Kingdom”.

I have no idea what the First Minister of Scotland is proposing but it sounds to me like he is going to bring a Bill before the Scottish Parliament that will allow for individual registration by 16 year-olds on a voluntary basis. That would result in the political parties campaigning. No doubt he thinks that the Scottish nationalists will be able to get more 16 year-olds to be on the electoral register than otherwise. If, as my noble friend was suggesting in his earlier remarks, he sees that as being akin to the present situation where you have Peers on the electoral register who are allowed to vote in some elections but not others, I am deeply shocked by that. The reason why Peers do not vote for elections to the House of Commons is that we are our own representatives in Parliament, which is entirely consistent.

Are we not in danger here of ending up with a complete dog’s breakfast of an electoral register in Scotland which is not consistent with England because the Government appear to have washed their hands of responsibility for the electoral register and the conduct of elections? I thought that that was a reserved matter. It has nothing to do with devolution but everything to do with the Minister’s responsibilities.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I recognise the importance of that issue, which has grown up, so to speak, since we began the parliamentary discussion of this Bill. I think it is fair to ask that I might take that back and check very completely, including the accuracy of these stories in the Scottish media, and that we should return to this issue later.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is being rather unusually moderate in what he is saying. As the referendum is not until October 2014, it will be the current 14 and 15 year-olds whom they will be trying to get on the register. The significance of this is very substantial. I am grateful that the Minister has given an assurance that he will write to us about this. I hope that it will be after consultation with the Scottish Executive and that it will be a detailed response.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course, and I hope that the noble Lord will apologise in due course to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for describing him as moderate.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

Before the noble and learned Lord either withdraws or presses his amendment, perhaps I may say a few words. I have held back to hear the noble Lord speak from the Front Bench. We have had a very interesting debate. We have covered all sorts of aspects, from the Scottish aspect to whether we should return to the debate about central register and identity cards. We have discussed the nuts and bolts and the administrative problems that arise from the Bill.

The noble Lord said something very interesting about the motivation to vote, which is what concerns me. In a real democracy, the motivation should come from the heart and the mind, and because people believe that it is worth getting on the register and worth going out to vote. I am of an age when the register was about 90% accurate of those who were entitled to be on it. However, that has fallen considerably. People were on the register then because they wanted to be on the register, and they insisted that they were on it—and God help the registration officer if his or her name was not on the register.

Something has gone wrong, because people now do not do that. I go back—because I have fought many elections in my life, as other Members of this House have done. I remember the election of 1955 when in Reading Ian Mikardo was under pressure. In that election, because people were motivated to go out to vote and to be on the register, we got an 85% turnout—and of course he won. He was not supposed to win, but he won because of the people’s motivation. That was a good word that the Minister used. It does not matter what we say about going around and getting people on to the register; what we really need is the motivation of the people themselves to go on to the register and to believe that it is worth going out to vote because it makes a difference. At the moment, they see no difference between the political parties. They believe that it does not matter what they say or what they do because the Westminster and Whitehall elite will do what they think. As well as being concerned in this Bill about the nuts and bolts, the administration and even Scotland, we should really be thinking about whether the political class is doing sufficient to make people enthusiastic about getting on the register and going out to vote.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, refers to a golden age when he himself sought office by election and when everybody was very keen to vote. Now we are in a different age, or so he identifies—maybe because he is no longer seeking election and, as a result, there is not that motivation on the part of people to vote.

It has been a very interesting and important debate. At its heart was the issue of what steps would be taken to ensure that the move from household to individual electoral registration would not lead to an undue reduction in the number of people registered. At the heart of our amendments was the idea that you have to have independent assessments made of that. What emerged in the debates was that the Government were so supremely confident that all would be well that they were removing the involvement of the Electoral Commission in giving independent advice, and there is no mechanism, other than a new Act of Parliament, to ensure—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is important to understand that the concern is to prevent a further reduction in the completeness and accuracy of the register. I stressed very heavily in what I said at the beginning that part of the problem that we face is that the register has lost a good deal of completeness and accuracy over the past 20 years.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I agree with that, which makes it even more significant to ensure that there is no undue reduction in relation to the number of people who are registered.

The debate was very marked by the forensic power of some of the interventions. That of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was very effective, because I have to say with respect—and I do not blame the Minister for this—no answers were given to the points that he raised. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, gave a very well informed analysis of what the effect may be. My noble friend Lady Jay indicated what the constitutional importance of it is, while the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, urged us to vote in the way in which we vote in “Strictly Come Dancing”, although that may not necessarily be what we have in mind. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on his 71st birthday, for not flagellating myself for my own historic failures. I can see that that was what he had in mind, and it would have been a birthday treat.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

3: Clause 2, page 2, leave out lines 13 to 28 and insert—
“(2A) Provision made under sub-paragraph (2) authorising or requiring a registration officer in Great Britain to—
(a) require a person who has made an application under section 10ZC or 10ZD to provide evidence that he or she is the person named in the application, or(b) require a person who has made an application under section 10ZC or 10ZD, or any person who has an entry in a register, to provide evidence for the purpose of enabling the officer to determine whether a person is entitled to be registered in a register maintained by the officer,must specify the kind of evidence that a person may be required to provide (for examples, see paragraph 3ZA(5)).”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 6, 8 and 9. Noble Lords will be aware that Amendment 7, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is also in this group. These amendments all cover the question of what forms of acceptable evidence can be used to verify entitlement to register. The Government are responding to earlier criticisms that this should not just be left to ministerial guidance but should be prescribed in secondary legislation. It has always been the Government’s intention that the evidence required in an initial application will be prescribed in regulations; nevertheless, the Bill introduces permitted guidance to be used.

There is an important distinction between the evidence provided in an initial application, which we might call primary forms of evidence, and the alternative forms of evidence that may be used if an applicant cannot supply the primary evidence or if it is not possible to verify their identity without further evidence.

As set out in the Bill and in the proposed draft secondary legislation, published in September, the forms of evidence used in initial applications will be the applicant’s date of birth and national insurance number. We had intended that the accepted alternative forms of evidence, examples of which are set out in the proposed draft secondary legislation, would be set out in guidance by the Secretary of State. This was to allow flexibility to respond to any potential threat to the integrity of the register resulting from the security of a form of evidence becoming compromised by fraudsters with excellent skills offering to sell well designed things on the internet or whatever. In the case of evidence used in applications, this is most pertinent in responding to an increasing risk of fraud if a previously accepted form of evidence is found to be compromised and open to fraud. In such a situation, action must be taken quickly, and we felt that this justified the use of guidance in prescribing these forms of evidence.

However, in its report on the Bill, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee expressed concerns about the lack of a requirement for forms of evidence to be set out in regulations. This was echoed by the Electoral Commission and the Constitution Committee of this House. We recognise these concerns and are therefore seeking to amend the Bill to ensure parliamentary scrutiny of the prescription of forms of evidence, while allowing for flexibility.

The amendment will ensure that the list of evidence that is acceptable for the verification of applications is set out in regulations subject to the affirmative procedure. To attain flexibility in responding to extraordinary situations and unforeseen circumstances, we have also provided in the amendments that regulations removing allowable forms of evidence will be subject to the negative procedure. This will allow the Government to act quickly in response to information that an accepted form of evidence is no longer suitable for use in verifying applications. We feel that this strikes the right balance between parliamentary scrutiny and flexibility in response to potential threats to the integrity of the register. I beg to move.

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[Lord Martin of Springburn]

We are all in a learning process but I am concerned about Amendment 7 and the requirement for a person to provide their date of birth and national insurance number. A register is tied in to a constituency and it would be irrelevant if someone’s date of birth and national insurance number alone could get them on to a register because that has to be tied in with their place of residence. I believe that an electricity or rates bill would provide more proof of whether a person was entitled to be on a constituency register than their age or national insurance number—although that may be in the list that was not available before now.

The Minister has touched on other evidence but I believe that there are more ways for a person to prove that they are a bona fide elector than by giving their date of birth. For example, I live in London for several days a week—many of us do; I am not the only one. But my main home is in Glasgow, and if I sought to get on the electoral roll somewhere in London just by turning up and saying, “My name is Michael Martin and my date of birth is 3/7/1945 but I cannot recite my national insurance number”—I can never remember it—that would not prove that I was entitled vote in a given constituency.

Perhaps there is something in the legislation that ties an individual into a constituency, but if I went to an electoral officer and said, “Here is an electricity bill, gas bill or community charge bill”, that proof would tie me in more than my date of birth.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are getting into some of the technical complexities of the Bill. One of the reasons for preferring national insurance numbers is that it is possible to buy off the web electricity bills that are specially designed for you. We are looking for ways of ensuring as far possible that we have accurate identifiers.

The noble Lord, like many of us in this Chamber, is one of the difficult exemptions of people who wish to be registered in two different places because they have two different homes and therefore do not entirely match with the first identifier, which is that your national insurance number is likely to have your current address attached to it; these naturally go together. I am told that some voters do not have their date of birth in their head either. There is a tendency in some of our ethnic communities to assume that your date of birth was 1 January of whatever year it was that you were born.

None of these things entirely matches everyone’s predicament and we are therefore attempting to design something which is as flexible as possible while recognising the importance of parliamentary scrutiny. The changes we have made between the draft legislation in 2011 and the Bill’s introduction into the other place in May this year and these further amendments acknowledge the concerns raised most recently by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that we need to make sure that there is some parliamentary scrutiny. However, when it comes to the alternative evidence provided, we believe that, because of the changing circumstances in which we are operating, some flexibility is needed. We do not wish to box everyone into simply the NINo and the date of birth. I can almost remember my national insurance number—there are two numbers in the middle that I cannot quite get straight—but I must learn it off by heart.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, as he did earlier, wants to raise some much wider questions. I have considerable sympathy with where he is coming from. In 20 years’ time it is unlikely that we will vote using pencil and paper in polling stations, but that is a larger concern for the longer term, and as we have seen in some other countries, on occasion electronic voting is not without its own problems. We are retaining the principle of local registers. When talking to electoral administrations, something I am told immediately is that they have for many years used council tax registration as a means of checking where people live and whether these are accurately placed on the register. The council tax, of course, only gives the head of the household. Indeed, perhaps I should have said in responding to the previous debate that one of the reasons given in recent research for incomplete registration is that the single person’s discount for council tax encourages some people not to put down the others living in the household because that would raise the level of council tax. We have moved on from the poll tax as a disincentive, but the single person’s discount is, we are told, is a disincentive in a number of ways. There is a whole range of different factors to look at as we go into the details of the register.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, and the rest of us will enjoy debating the impact of the data revolution on the way the citizen interacts with the state. I find it fascinating myself, and I think that it will revolutionise that interaction over the next 10 years. However, noble Lords in this House may be among those who are slower to take part. I am sorry that the noble Lord was unable to come to our demonstration of online registration. The Government are considering many other options in terms of how one puts various things online. For example, some experiments show that if, when someone reregisters their car online, they are also offered the choice of transferring to their local authority and checking for a parking ticket, that increases radically the number of people who apply for a ticket.

[Lord Maxton]

As someone who is of the age where they have to renew their driving licence every three years, I can inform the noble Lord that when I do so, all I have to give is my passport number. The photograph that is used on my passport is then automatically used on my driving licence as well.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord makes a useful point. That is precisely the sort of direction in which we wish to go. The noble Lord will also know, of course, that a large proportion of our population does not hold a passport.

I hope that the Committee will be happy to accept these government amendments. We think that they strike the right balance between flexibility and scrutiny. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will also accept that while we understand the direction in which his amendment is going, it threatens to make us a little too inflexible. It is important to retain a degree of flexibility in terms of the alternative forms of evidence because the most appropriate alternatives may well change over time.

Amendment 3 agreed.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are now navigating the delicate area between voluntary and compulsory registration. I think that we all recognise that, for a British state which is by tradition a limited-government state in which citizens have a right not to be too closely engaged with it, this raises a number of very delicate issues.

The purpose of the civil penalty is to encourage citizens to fulfil what we all regard as their civic duty and to make it clear that there are consequences for them failing to do so. It is not intended that it should be imposed on every single person who for whatever reason fails to go through to the complete process. Indeed, the evidence is that prominent inclusion on the registration form of the words, “This is your civic duty. You are subject to a fine if you do not fill in the form”, significantly increases the number of people who fill in that form. That is particularly valuable. But to move on from there to pursuing everyone who fails to fill in the form accurately, or who refuses point blank after many attempts to fill in the form, takes us a little further down the road from voluntary to compulsory voting than many of us wish to go.

I think that we all recognise that one of the important aspects of the transition, which again takes us outside the immediate focus of the Bill but draws on the Northern Irish experience, is that we need to pay more attention to citizenship education—getting into schools and telling young people between the ages of 16 and 18 about what citizenship really involves. We should get them to want to make sure that they are on the register, which too few of them now do, while also perhaps explaining to them that, if they want to obtain credit in future, being on the register is one of the prerequisites for getting a good credit rating. So we are negotiating our way around a range of different factors.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that not understanding that you have to fill in the form as a defence for not applying is also a very delicate area. We know that there are not a insignificant number of voters who are functionally illiterate. We know also that there are a number of voters whose knowledge is English is not ideal. So there is a range of limiting factors. This part of the draft secondary legislation is aimed at those who generally have issues about understanding the requirement being placed on them, whether it is matter of literacy, learning difficulties or knowledge of English. We will look at the language very carefully between Committee and Report to take the noble Lord’s points into account.

In relation to the noble Lord’s Amendments 4 and 5, I emphasise that the civil penalty is intended above all to serve as an encouragement to apply. The Government’s preferred approach to reforms is to keep details of this sort out of the Bill, instead using secondary legislation and guidance to ensure flexibility. It will be for the Electoral Commission to design the forms and the envelopes used in individual electoral registration. Having collected a number of these forms from different electoral administrators over the summer, I am struck by the current diversity in the forms provided, some of which put the importance of civic duty and the potential threat of a civil penalty very prominently and others have it down in the bottom left-hand corner where people are much less likely to see it.

These proposed draft regulations set out a small number of requirements for the content of paper application forms and the invitations that are sent to voters. They include mention of the civil penalty in the invitation but it will be for the commission to decide how best to approach the prominence and wording. For example, it may be that testing shows that a gentle mention of the penalty in the initial invitation works best, increasing the prominence of the message with successive invitations. We are currently undertaking targeted consultation on this publication and we welcome views on the contents. A certain amount of testing is under way on how best to design the forms.

The Government are firmly resistant to Amendments 21 and 22, which seem ultimately to force registration officers to impose the civil penalty on any person who does not make an application to register. Their purpose is the same as that of my noble friend’s other amendments. They would reduce the capacity of registration officers to use their own discretion in judging whether to issue a requirement to register to a person who has failed to make an application to register after being issued with an invitation. Again, we feel that this would take us too far down the road towards compulsion. After careful consideration with key stakeholders, we do not think it appropriate to create a new civil penalty for individuals who, after being required to make an application, fail to do so. We therefore urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendments.

On Amendments 23 and 29, the noble Baroness will recognise the very firm reasons why, in an age where—happily at the moment—inflation is low we nevertheless do not wish to put details of this sort firmly into primary legislation. I am sure that the noble Baroness is too young to remember the old notice that one used to see in trains:

“Penalty for improper use £5”.

When that was first established in railway legislation, £5 was a great deal of money. By the time I was in secondary school, it was rather less money than before—although, when I went out to tea in the local manor house and was tipped £5, it seemed an awful lot of money at that time.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I hope the noble Lord can assure us that he never misused that facility.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course I did not. I would never have thought about it while the train was in the station. I am sure that noble Lords will be as familiar with the song around that as I am.

We intend that the civil penalty should be modest and reasonable. That is why the phrase used is that it should be in the same range as parking fines. The intention is that the amount of the fine should be set out in secondary legislation so that it is flexible. We do not intend and no Government would wish to have to introduce primary legislation on the electoral registration system every two or three years.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I understand what the Minister says here, but the non-payment of a fine can lead to other court actions. Is he not worried that we will get into a wrangle if someone digs their heels in and says, “Look, I do not want to register. I do not want anything to do with registering”? Non-registration is a right that can be exercised by a person, ensuring that their name is kept off the roll—but now we are changing things. Does that then mean that if they refuse to pay the fine, there will be other penalties imposed on that person—even imprisonment?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord has been testing the difference between the Government’s approach and that of my noble friend Lord Rennard—who I think wants to be much fiercer on imposing civil penalties. The Government’s position is that the civil penalty is there as a backstop but should not be used to enforce compulsory registration. It should be very much a means of ensuring that forms are returned, not of insisting that everyone registers. That then takes us over into a different situation which, again, would be a change in the traditional, established relationship between the citizen and the state.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, as I said, the amendments are probing. We seek to continue a dialogue with the Government about the regulations to try to ensure that the system works as well as it should. As we said at the beginning of Committee, we are concerned about what we do if it does not work. Our major concern in considering the Bill is to try to ensure that it does, so the register is accurate and complete.

It is particularly valuable in the new process that the Electoral Commission will be designing the forms for registration, rather than individual registration officers. However, I would still like to press further with the Minister at some point that if those forms are in future to be centrally designed and the Government are laying out in regulations what is required to be on the form, it is important to state on the form the legal requirement that if you do not return this form you could be subject to civil penalty. Thinking in particular about the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Martin, it is clear to me that legislatures at either end of the building are unaware of the existing rules. For example, at the moment, a young man of 20 in, say, Glasgow, is subject to a fine of up to £1,000 if he does not return the form, because if he lives on his own, he is the householder responsible.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

6: Clause 2, page 3, line 4, leave out from “(3)” to end of line 7 and insert “must specify the kind of evidence that a person is required to provide”

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

8: Clause 2, page 3, line 8, leave out from “that” to “person’s” in line 9 and insert “may be specified include a”