Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are in Committee but I think I am right in saying that the procedure is that until the noble Lord has moved the amendment, no others should intervene. Could we allow the noble Lord to move the amendment? Then we can have the normal Committee stage open discussion.
Lord Rennard
I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister. All that I am arguing in my contribution is that there should be consistency across government use of databases. We should use the DWP database to help some people, and other databases which may help many other people, get on the voting register and have their democratic entitlement. We know that students, for example, are also very under-represented on the current register and may be even more under-represented under IER. However, there is an easy way in which this could be addressed. If the Government had the will to pursue what they say is their objective of maximising voter registration, students and former students could easily be located through the Student Loans Company, invited to register and reminded of their legal responsibilities to do so.
Attainers are a particularly important group. Sixteen and 17 year-olds could be identified through schools. There is a precedent for doing this in Regulations 41 and 42 of the Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008, under which the previous Government brought in a system whereby schools had electoral registration officers visiting pupils at the age of 16 or 17 as part of their civic lessons. At the conclusion of their lesson about voting systems and registration, forms were completed to register those 16 and 17-year-olds at school. However, so far there is no such provision to do so in Great Britain. There is also a particular difficulty with transient tenants in the private rented sector. They could be tracked down through tenancy deposit schemes and, again, invited to register and reminded of their obligations to do so.
These are all government databases and my argument is that the Government should be consistent in using them for data mining and data matching to try to make sure that we improve registration to improve the health of our democracy. There are also private databases and a huge wealth of information available through credit reference agencies—many of which are used at the moment by local authorities, including many Labour local authorities. The credit reference agencies use the electoral register as their own starting point, so some of these people are already registered. Those agencies also know of many more people with perhaps several forms of credit made available to them, more than one bank account legitimately registered and, perhaps, several credit cards used legitimately. Yet they know that those people, who exist, are not on the voting register even though they are clearly entitled to be on it. I believe that they should be invited to be on the register and told of the requirements.
At the moment, many local authorities are using exactly these data to try to check on the single person’s council tax discount. They know from their data that there is often one person on the register yet several people are resident. Local authorities are using these reference agencies to write to the people they know within this household, pointing out that they know that those people are there and should be on the electoral register and that perhaps it is not appropriate for them to claim a single person’s council tax discount. Local authorities have no difficulty in doing this. I think there is a great deal to be said for using more effectively the data of the credit reference agencies. I know that the Government have been holding discussions with them. However, there is as yet no commitment from the Government to use either these other public databases to which I have referred or the private ones.
I turn briefly to Amendments 11 and 15 to 20. I would simply say that they appear to be also on the Marshalled List for the purpose of probing these sorts of issues, so I will not comment further on them from our Benches. However, we believe that the Government must look closely at all these areas and give some commitments before Report so that we can be sure that the final regulations on data sharing are far more ambitious than they are at present and that they are seen to be fair and in the interests of promoting our democracy. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for the little education he gave me in an earlier group about the precise wording of Amendment 24. I am very grateful for that. I also thank him for moving this amendment. I speak to very similar ones tabled by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and me. All these amendments seek to achieve essentially one thing: that those who hold, for quite proper and official reasons, the names and addresses of our citizens should make them available to election officers who then must write to those citizens, encouraging them to register.
I say to my noble friend Lord Reid and the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, that we are in a position where the Government want to move very fast from one system of registration to another. I hope they will both remain for the next group of amendments, which are about another device to ensure a full register—an annual canvass. That is a different group of amendments. Without these sorts of activities, we risk after the general election of 2015 suddenly moving on to a half register. Unless we take these sorts of steps, we will not have contacted a large swathe of people who absolutely have the right to vote and, I would argue, therefore have the right to be told that they have the right to vote and what they should do about it. Whether it is, as suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler, the Student Loans Company, DVLA and tenancy deposits schemes, or, as we suggest, pension benefits agencies, the Passport Office, education establishments and landlords, they should all provide quite willingly information to the relevant election officers, who would then be under an obligation to write to those not on the register encouraging them to sign up.
One of the reasons for this is that we know from research—I think done by the Electoral Commission—that many of those not on the register believe that they are. That may even be the Minister’s own research. Forgive me for not getting the source quite right. We know that a large number—I think it is 45%—of people not on the register think that they are. There will be many of us who have done the political work on polling day of taking people round only to find that they are not on the list. There may be a number of reasons for that. One is the assumption that it just happens. Maybe they have lots of other dealings with the state: they may have applied for and been issued with a passport or driving licence, get a pension or a benefit, pay their council tax or visit their local hospital or GP. That gives them the feeling that they are part of society and a community, and are a citizen. A number of them probably assume that, as part and parcel of that, they are also on lists held by the Government so do not need to separately sign up to register to vote. We are coming in with a new system—in quite a hurry—so it is important to make clear that these other lists also held by the Government or government-authorised agencies do not of themselves give them the right to vote.
It is also important that the Bill should require EROs to let all people know of the other important uses made of the register. The Minister mentioned credit checks earlier in Committee and there is certainly also mortgage eligibility. When those of us of a certain age want our freedom passes, the first thing our local authority will do is see whether we are on the electoral register. There are many advantages to being on it.
Until my noble friend Lord Reid and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke, I thought that it would seem obvious to most people that EROs would look to the sources of data that exist elsewhere to find those missing from the existing registers—or the new ones as individual registration comes up—and write to them. It seems that we should not just leave it to EROs to take that initiative, but write in the Bill that such data should be shared, and shared in a timely manner so that those of our fellow citizens not already on the register will receive a personalised invitation to register for what is their right—the ability to vote.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, before I address the amendments directly, I take up some of the broader issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, which were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, in our first Committee session before dinner. They are extremely wide issues and I agree that they are important. It was for that precise reason that I went to be briefed by the head of the Government Digital Service last week.
As the noble Lord, Lord Reid, pointed out, as we move towards cloud computing, the questions of where data are stored, to what uses they are put and how far they are shared become a very delicate and important area. I also flag up that the question of what is a public database and what is a private one becomes a little more difficult than it is now. There is a whole set of issues there that we need to return to in other contexts because this has the potential to transform the way in which society, the economy and government work as a whole. I was assured that the protocols that now govern what is called identity verification—the very limited use of data sharing to ask, “Is this person real?”—are strong and, as used by the credit agencies and others, provide firewalls which prevent too much information being shared.
Some of us might differ on how far we would be happy for the DWP, HMRC and the National Health Service to share information on what people claim to be earning, claiming or whatever; those questions will also come into that debate. I strongly agree that this is an extremely important long-term issue. However, if I understand it correctly—and I am at the absolute outer limits of my knowledge of computers at this point—I am told that one does not need to amass new databases. That is the difference between what is now beginning to happen and the old ID debate. One can put different datasets in touch with each other for limited purposes to enable one to discover whether X is really X and whether there is a Y. I thank the noble Lord for his intervention; these are very important long-term issues.
The Government believe that maximising electoral registration and voting is not purely the function and responsibility of the Government. It is the function of political parties; it is the function of all sorts of voluntary organisations. We all know about Operation Black Vote and Bite the Ballot. Noble Lords may be interested that one person last week suggested to me that if Tesco was willing to offer a voucher to everyone who signed up to the electoral register at the age of 18, that would increase the number of 18 year-olds signing up. For myself, I would prefer the Co-op to do it. Perhaps we should consider the extent to which such incentives are, sadly, in our modern world, necessary.
The Government are sympathetic to the spirit of the amendments, but wish to stress that we are already working in this area. We want to retain a degree of flexibility, and a lot of pilots are under way. In last year’s pilots, we matched databases from not only DWP but HMRC, the Royal Mail, the address reallocation service, the Department for Education, HEFCE—the Higher Education Funding Council for England—the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Transport, the Student Loans Company, the Ministry of Defence for service voters and the Improvement Service company. The noble Lords, Lord Reid and Lord Martin, will understand about that company a little better than I do, because it holds data on behalf of local authorities in Scotland.
Lord Tyler
Perhaps my noble friend could address the particular problems found when the Cabinet Office funded additional research by the Electoral Commission about the completeness and accuracy of the register. As the noble Baroness said earlier, a high proportion, 44%, of those not on the register in April 2011 incorrectly believed that they were. Even more significantly, only 14% of those who moved between the 2010 canvass and those who appeared on the register in April 2011 were there. It is often the move that is the problem. That is why some of the data-matching suggestions made, to which my noble friend has just referred, were particularly addressed to those people. DWP does not particularly help with those; DVLA, Royal Mail and all that seem to be more relevant.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I entirely take the noble Lord’s point, and add that an information campaign is clearly an important part of the transition to get to those who think that they might be on the register but may not. I would be entirely happy for noble Lords to press us further on the question of attainers, education in schools and civic education, which must be part of the transition process.
We resist the exact terminology in the amendments, and ask for more flexibility on the terms that we are looking at all these areas. We do not want to limit such schemes to the organisations named; we are experimenting with the range of datasets that can be helpful in this regard.
As we stated in our response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee:
“The Government feels that the categories of persons should not be prescribed in primary legislation in this regard—
because—
“the Government does not intend to introduce an amendment to restrict the categories of persons that may be authorised or required to provide information, but will listen carefully to the views of the House on this issue during Parliamentary debate”.
The Government will reflect carefully on all those points and make clearer our intention on Report. So we are considering the precise detail of the alternative verification procedure beyond the immediate, primary identifiers and will consider a range of options to provide an accessible but secure approach.
Amendment 11 would require local authorities to share their data with electoral registration officers. That already takes place. Electoral administrators are part of local authorities and have for some time accessed relevant other local authority databases for the purposes of checking names and addresses together. The Bill would allow for such data sharing if it were decided that it was necessary and valuable in addition to that which already takes place. The next phase of government data-matching pilots will look at which datasets are most useful for electoral registration officers to carry out their duties. Some of the pilots will target students; some will target recent home-movers, which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, flagged up as particularly important; others will explore how sharing data between two-tier local authorities, in those parts of the country where they exist, may assist them further.
However, on local authority data, I repeat that registration officers are already authorised to inspect records held by the authority that appointed them and are required to inspect records where they are permitted to do so both under the 1983 Act and the Representation of the People Act 2001.
On Amendment 15 and the whole question of students, we are already working with the National Union of Students, which represents students, and organisations with which students interact, such as the Student Loan Company and universities, to establish ways in which the registration process and the transition for those groups can be as simple and accessible as possible, building on the changes that we are enabling to the registration system, which will make registering to vote more convenient for all. Again, that work is under way; we are discussing and consulting with the other relevant public and private stakeholders.
Similarly, as for sheltered accommodation, which is the subject of Amendment 16, registration officers already have the power to require information from an individual to maintain their election register. That would include requiring managers of sheltered accommodation to provide the names of residents. Once registration officers are aware of that information, Clause 5 would require them to write to each individual who was not already registered at that address to invite them to register to vote. Amending the legislation is therefore unnecessary to empower registration officers to obtain information about individuals in sheltered accommodation or to require a registration officer to invite them to register.
As noble Lords will gather, the Cabinet Office is already actively engaged in a programme of work with groups which represent students, helping to provide alternative channels of registration, looking at the elderly in sheltered accommodation and how we could signpost people towards registration as they come into contact with other government agencies.
Amendment 17 addresses the question of private landlords. The real question here is whether a requirement on private landlords adds sufficiently to the toolkit of electoral registration officers to be worth the additional burden being placed on private landlords. That, again, is something that we are investigating further but our current view is that the marginal benefits of that measure over, to take just one example, the canvassable properties in the area do not justify imposing that additional burden.
Amendment 18 talks about the local authority providing additional information on council tax and other documents. Again, the Cabinet Office is testing out where it is most valuable and useful to provide additional information and, as the behavioural unit puts it, to prompt people to consider more actively ensuring that they are registered to vote. There are some questions about the complexity of the council tax document. I am not entirely sure that I read the whole of my council tax documents either in Bradford or in Wandsworth last year, but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, read his in great detail from cover to cover. We are therefore not entirely sure that this is the best document to use for these purposes.
Amendment 19 requires local authorities to invite individuals to register to vote when they first register and begin paying council tax. This idea has a certain amount of utility and there is certainly no reason why local councils should not do that on the initial council tax form, but of course this would capture only the bill payer. There is a need for additional mechanisms to be in place to capture other people living inside the same property.
On Amendment 20, on the whole question of awareness-raising in other, wider government services and other transactions, we are looking with organisations from the public, voluntary and private sectors—I emphasise that it is not just in government agencies—to see where we can identify a potential benefit to introducing, for example, some form of prompting or signposting during the course of a transaction. We will test the different options to establish the extent to which they will assist the citizen.
On Amendment 24, to provide the explanation of the other uses of the register, opinions might differ on whether that was a plus or a minus. There have been one or two suggestions that there are those who wish not to be on the register so that they avoid jury service; it is not one of the most popular aspects of civic duty. That is another issue that we should perhaps explore further.
To sum up after this very large discussion of different ways of using and accessing databases and encouraging people to register, this is very much what we as a Government are already engaged in. We are happy to brief people further on what we are doing, how the data-matching pilots are going and how the information campaigns will be planned. We hope that on that basis the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw their amendment at this stage, and we will be happy to have further discussions on how we go forward to ensure that our shared aim, which is to maximise the number of people who register under individual electoral registration, will be achieved to the satisfaction of all.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of what the Government are doing and his confirmation that he is still willing to talk and listen about what we can do to ensure that the Government walk the walk to emphasise maximum voter registration. In his discussions with all parties who are concerned about this issue, I ask him to keep emphasising that while people talk about “data sharing”, imagining that these are a lot of data on someone, we are simply talking about name and address—nothing else. In his discussions with people on this issue, he should emphasise that it is simply a matter of names and addresses so that we contact people to ensure that they are aware of their right, and their obligation, to register to vote so that we have a healthy democracy. People are concerned about access to data, but these data are names and addresses. In this debate some people seem to be unaware that if you wish to get details of someone’s name and address in any area, you walk into a local library where a “database” called the electoral register is freely available, and you look at the names and addresses on the register. So the principle at the moment in this country is that the names—
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, remarked that there was much else for the House to do, but I am happy to say not for this evening.
Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
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Lord Cotter
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to address the issue of late payments to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, central government policy is to pay undisputed invoices within five days and to pass 30-day payment terms down supply chains. Moreover, the Crown representative team in the Cabinet Office is encouraging prime contractors to pay more quickly than the 30-day commitment on a voluntary basis. We have tasked departments across Whitehall to manage their contracts to ensure that prime contractors pay their subcontractors within 30 days.
Lord Cotter
I thank the Minister for his Answer. Will he and his officials look at the important reports and surveys carried out by the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce and note their recommendations? There is a lot of very good information in there. I am glad that the Government have improved their record on payment, but it is still not satisfactory that local councils and other departments are not paying as promptly as they should. I am encouraged by the Minister saying that government departments are going to look at their suppliers. I ask him to ensure that they sign up to the prompt payment code.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have it in my notes that the Local Government Association, in the form of no less an important person than the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has agreed that local authorities will be encouraged similarly to follow best practice in this regard. The Cabinet Office has among other measures introduced a “mystery shopper” service through which small contractors who are dissatisfied with the service they are getting, either from a department or from a prime contractor, can anonymously feed this information through to the Cabinet Office.
Baroness Sharples
What is the average time taken by ministries to settle their bills?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I suspect that the answer is that because there are so many bills that have to be paid it would take a great deal of time, effort and cost to acquire that information.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, does the noble Lord take assurance from the fact that, certainly in the health service, we have penalties for not paying small and medium-sized businesses first, before we do anything else, no matter where we are in the budget? I think that that ought to apply perhaps in other places as well. I had intended to save my question for the next debate but I just could not resist saying that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Thank you. It is an aspiration of this Government to increase the proportion of government contracts which go to small and medium-sized enterprises. When we entered government, the proportion of government contracts going to SMEs was 6.5%. Our aspiration is to reach 25% by 2015. The latest figures we have are that we are almost at 10.5%, so we have some way to go but are going in the right direction.
Lord Borrie
The Minister has confined his answers so far to government or governmental bodies which owe debts to small and medium-sized firms. What about simply the failure of large firms to pay small firms the money they owe them? So far, it is left to the initiative of the SMEs. Since there is a significant Bill going through Parliament at the moment dealing with financial services, I wonder whether one might get more results if the public officials of those bodies that are to take over from the Financial Services Authority under the new Financial Services Bill had a responsibility to ensure that debts were paid.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are not yet convinced that we need to take legislative action, but we are thoroughly in favour of all pressure possible to encourage large corporations to pay their small contractors as fast as possible. There is indeed a new booklet produced by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Experian, the Forum of Private Business and the Institute of Credit Management which is a guide on how to ensure prompt payment and has been produced in co-operation with the Government. I must say that a number of newspapers, including in particular the Telegraph, have been very helpful in exposing the tendency of some large corporations deliberately to delay payment to their subcontractors. We all know that transparency and reputational damage are things which multinational companies are well aware of, supermarkets included.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, if my noble friend wishes to increase the number of small and medium-sized enterprises which tender for and secure government business, will he have a look at the complexity of government tendering processes which tend to put off smaller companies from competing in those competitions?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are also well aware of that. My right honourable friend Francis Maude and others have been looking in particular at the complexity of the pre-qualification questionnaires. We are doing our best to get rid of those for all contracts below £100,000 per year and to simplify the pre-qualification questionnaires for all others.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, following the last question, I ask the Minister also to look at the contracts offered by the Department for Work and Pensions. In terms of getting people back to work, these contracts are going to very few, very large contractors, and as a result charities and voluntary organisations which in the past have done this work are now being pushed out of the bidding process.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
We are well aware of this problem. We are talking about a culture change within Whitehall. We are conscious that it is often easier when drawing up a large contract to give it to a prime contractor who will then subcontract, rather than having to go through the more onerous processes of distributing it around the country. That is part of the culture that we are trying to change.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, the Minister’s earlier response on the problem with large companies was illuminating. However, if we are going to rely on investigating journalists to uncover such cases, would it not be better for the Government to consider forcing large companies to publish how many days they take to pay people in their annual reports?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I dare say that that is a question which will come up if and when we next move on to a company law reform Bill.
Lord Mitchell
My Lords, small companies in particular depend on prompt cash flow—indeed, it is their lifeblood. However, it is still true that many organisations in different areas, but particularly those in the public sector, are notorious for paying late. Despite the assurances that the Minister has given, I ask the Government to issue a firm directive to all organisations in the public sector stating that payments to SMEs are to be made within a short time after the receipt of an invoice.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government have done that and are introducing a number of practices to ensure that that is done. The mystery shopper and other efforts are always feeding back to ensure that where it is not yet done, steps are taken to improve matters.
EU: UK Membership
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Lord Liddle
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for making the case for the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are committed to playing a leading role in the European Union to advance our national interests. We play an active role within the EU on many issues—Iran, Syria, Burma, the single market and improving Europe’s competitiveness—and work closely with other EU countries to deliver those important objectives. There is no question of the UK disengaging or withdrawing from the EU. We will remain leading proponents of the EU’s most successful policies.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, although it is always a pleasure to face the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I was rather hoping to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to answer this Question—I think it is the first Foreign Office Question that she has had the opportunity to answer. It is a pity, on a day when the Prime Minister is coming back to the other place to report on the European Council, that she is not here.
What the noble Lord said is all very well, but most of what we hear from the coalition is refusal to enter negotiations on questions that are central to our economic interests, such as the fiscal treaty and the banking union. We hear about opt-outs from justice and home affairs measures that are vital to fight organised crime. We hear about repatriation of competences.
Lord Liddle
Okay. We hear about a future renegotiation. Is it any surprise that the public standing of the EU is at a low ebb? When will we hear from the Government clear leadership that our membership of the EU is vital to our economy and essential to our place in the world? Since the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is answering for the coalition, how much longer are the Liberal Democrats prepared to put up with the Government’s policy of isolation, defeatism and retreat?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I say on behalf of my noble friend Lady Warsi that she answered three debates last week and she will be here tomorrow. She has other responsibilities.
On the question of defending our position within the EU, the Government have made it clear through a number of senior Ministers, not just the Prime Minister, that we intend to stay in the European Union—rather more clearly than leading members of the previous Government in their last two to three years in office.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
It is not complete nonsense. I am sure that when the noble Lord was a special adviser to Tony Blair he was often rather disappointed by the then Prime Minister’s unwillingness to make the case for Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.
Lord Giddens
Perhaps I might push the noble Lord on his answers. Does he agree that as a condition of its survival, the European Union must become more integrated politically and economically? Notwithstanding what the noble Lord said, does this not inevitably mean that the UK will be progressively marginalised and, in the end, without significant influence within Europe?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the eurozone may well have to become rather more integrated, but the European Union as it exists is not a simple first-tier/second-tier issue. In a couple of months’ time, we will debate the new Irish protocol. There are Czech protocols, Danish opt-outs and Irish opt-outs. When it comes to defence and foreign policy, Britain and France are very much at the core and Germany is occasionally on the edge. So it is not a simple matter of insiders and those on the fringes.
Lord Dykes
My noble friend’s credentials on Europe are of course impeccable, but will he reassure us that other senior members of the Government are not drifting almost accidentally and in a cavalier way into extreme referendumitis in order to appease some of their eccentric colleagues in the other place?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I read the stories in the Sunday newspapers the other week. I have no idea how authentic they were.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, is the answer not that the Government cannot make the case for our membership of the EU because there is now an overwhelming case for us to leave it and thus create a great many jobs by relieving us of its suffocating clutches? Beyond that, is it not time for the EU itself to be wound up, with a similar benefit for the democracies of Europe? What is now the point of any of it? I hope that the noble Lord will not give me the nonsense about peace.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am sorry that the noble Lord thinks that peace is nonsensical. It is not an unimportant issue for us. The noble Lord clearly thinks that international regulation of the open markets is not an important issue either. I am well aware that UKIP thinks that we should follow the example of Switzerland and have a sort of Swiss relationship with the European Union, although since UKIP also thinks that we should double our defence spending, I think the UKIP model is Switzerland with nuclear missiles and a large navy.
Lord Tomlinson
Would the noble Lord accept that there is fairly substantial inconsistency in what he said about the single market? The Government are always expounding the virtues of the single market, yet anybody who listened to Mrs Theresa May yesterday on “The Andrew Marr Show” would have heard her calling into question fundamental aspects of that single market, such as the free movement of people.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I did not see the Andrew Marr programme. I apologise; I was picking apples at the time. We are all clear that free movement is one of the four bases of the single market and needs to be maintained as far as possible.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That it be an instruction to a Committee of the Whole House to which the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill has been committed that it considers the Bill in the following order:
Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clause 2, Schedule 2, Clauses 3 to 5, Schedule 3, Clauses 6 to 12, Schedules 4 and 5, Clauses 13 to 26.
House of Lords: Appointments
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether further appointments to the House of Lords are expected to be made during the remainder of the current Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, any appointments will continue to be made in line with the commitment in the coalition programme for government to reflect the share of the votes secured by the political parties at the most recent general election.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, yesterday the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made it clear that, regrettably, he and the Government will not support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in the other place. Given that, and given the size of this House, is the Minister really saying that the Government are determined to make dozens more appointments, to increase the size of the House and to shore up the political majority of the Government? Surely not.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the idea that we are packing the House with coalition Peers is a little idiotic. Of the 122 appointments made since May 2010, nearly one-third, 39, have been Labour Peers. That is not packing the House on one side. The largest group in the House remains the Labour Benches.
One of the ways in which we wish to maintain a vibrant House is to refresh the House from time to time. The committee on retirement has proposed that the statutory retirement scheme is now available. We regret that only two Peers have so far availed themselves of it. However, 20% of this House is now over 80 and, as we know that life expectancy in this House is very good, we encourage others to consider that scheme.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, how will my noble friend explain to the voters of this country the Government’s policy to reduce the size of the House of Commons in order to save public money when they are now proposing to increase the size of the House of Lords at public expense, having previously brought forward a Bill arguing the importance of reducing it?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are not proposing to increase the size of this House. Sadly, we have lost 40 Members since May 2010; I dare say that, sadly, we may lose more over the next two years. The question of refreshing the House from time to time therefore arises.
Lord Grocott
The Minister’s Leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, has repeatedly said—and I agree with him, which surprises me—that the House of Lords, the Second Chamber, is too big. How can it be that I agree with the Minister’s Leader while he disagrees with him? Can he explain to us why he disagrees with the Deputy Prime Minister?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am very glad to hear that the noble Lord agrees with Nick. We in this House have to be very careful about saying, “We’re all very comfortable here and we all want to stay, and no one else should be allowed to come in until there has been a longer process”. Over a five-year period we need to consider the balance of the House and the question of the occasional refreshment of its Members, and we are certainly not going to close our minds to that in an interim House. We will certainly encourage some of the older Members to consider statutory retirement or a long-term leave of absence.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, to avoid understandable suspicion, and indeed accusations, of personal self-interest, would it not be wise for the Government to give a lead and say that, as far as Ministers are concerned, no MPs who voted against the Government’s reform Bill should be nominated to this House?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I do not think that I ought to answer that question. I am very conscious that there are those who, in the Corridors of this House, have said to me, among others, that those who are asked to leave the House should be compensated for doing so. To that I would say that membership of this House is a privilege, not a right, and the idea that one has to be bought out before one leaves is not one that should be considered.
Baroness Hayman
Will the Minister now answer a question about which the Government have been reticent? To which of the political parties contesting the last general election does the coalition commitment that he has reaffirmed today apply?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, over lunch I made a calculation which, even though I was unable to find a calculator, I hope was correct. If one were to be strictly accurate, the Labour Party as represented in this House is roughly in tune with the percentage that it received in the last election. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is as good as 10 people. The most underrepresented group, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, knows, is of course the Liberal Democrats.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, if the Government take this House and Parliament seriously, how can they continue to refuse to contemplate reforms along the lines of those included in the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel? My noble friend has referred to this as an interim House. Some believe that it can be a permanent House, giving permanent value to our constitution. The Government are flying in the face of that fact.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the consensus in this House is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration. The House of Commons voted by a substantial majority in favour of the principle of an elected second chamber. All three parties had the principle of an elected second chamber in their manifestos in the last election and the coalition programme stated that we will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. We want to achieve a consensus. I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who has laboured very hard to achieve a consensus on reforms. That is clearly the only long-term way forward.
Lord Richard
My Lords, the noble Lord said that I tried very hard to get this House and everybody to agree that it should be an elected second chamber. Of course I did. But if the Government have decided that they are not going to go for an elected second chamber, they really must look at the size of this House. You cannot just leave it on the basis that it is going to creep up to nearly 1,000 and then pretend that somehow or other the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, will rectify it. It will not. If the Government have any sense—I am not sure that they do on this issue—they should now commit themselves actively to pursuing policies whereby the size of this House can be reduced.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I would welcome proposals from noble Lords as to how we achieve that. I have mentioned already the voluntary retirement scheme. Let us discuss off the Floor of the House the possible acceptability of a maximum age.
Lord Scott of Foscote
I am grateful to the noble Lord. Does it remain the Government’s intention that when members of the Supreme Court retire, those who are not already Members of this House will be invited to become Members of this House?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, those Supreme Court judges who were Members of this House before the Supreme Court was separated from it are currently on leave of absence. I am not aware that the Government have any definite position on what will happen to those appointed to the Supreme Court since it was separated from this House.
The Steel Bill has clearly now become extremely popular with a number of Members of this House. I am not entirely sure whether it is the emasculated Steel Bill which people wish to promote or the original Steel Bill. I have worked through several efforts to get the Steel Bill through the House, but it has not received much welcome in particular from a number of hereditary Peers.
Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Review
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much it has cost to conduct the review of parliamentary constituency boundaries in the United Kingdom.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the four Boundary Commissions spent about £5.8 million up to the end of August 2012 on the boundary review. They expect to spend about £3.8 million from September 2012 to the end of the review.
Lord Touhig
I am sure that I am not alone in believing that that money would be better spent keeping disabled people, like the Remploy workers, in a job, but we are where we are. We remember that the Conservative and Lib Dem Peers were united in their enthusiasm to pass the Bill to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies. Does the Minister expect both coalition parties to be equally united and enthusiastic to vote for the final report of the Boundary Commissions when it comes here next year? Furthermore, will the Minister be voting for it?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are a coalition. We have our open disagreements. I recall well the official who said to me last year that it was really rather easier working with this coalition than with the Blair/Brown coalition because we have our disagreements in the open whereas they plotted against each other. When it comes to the vote next year, we will consider our views.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, would the Minister agree that perhaps any further public spending would be better aimed at making sure that some of the millions of people in this country who are entitled to vote but are unable to do so because they are not on the voting register are included in those registers, so they can participate in the democracy of our country, rather than on the Boundary Commission review process, which is now clearly, simply, an academic exercise?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we will be returning to the question of why people resist registering to vote during the Committee stage of the individual electoral registration Bill, and I commend to Members of the House the Electoral Commission study on it, which was published in June.
On how much has been spent, the previous boundaries review cost £13 million. This review was estimated to cost £11.5 million and it is now expected to cost £9 million. Much of the remaining £3.8 million has already been committed, so even if we said “stop” now, the possibility of saving very much money would be small.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, the Deputy Prime Minister has said that Liberal MPs and Liberal Peers are going to vote against the boundary changes. Is it not crazy to continue with it? Surely, we are going to waste nearly £4 million which could be better used. Why are we going ahead with it? I understood that the new chairman of the Conservative Party said that the plan is to withdraw these proposals. Can the Minister make it clear? Are they really pressing ahead with these proposals, given that the Deputy Prime Minister has said that they are effectively dead in the water?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am glad to see that the noble Lord reads the Daily Mail which, I think, was where the report came from. Primary legislation requires the commissions to report to Parliament before October 2013, and it would require primary legislation to stop that. It would then be for Parliament to consider the recommendations. There is precedent for Parliament voting against the acceptance of a Boundary Commission review; it was done by the Labour Government in 1969.
Lord Kakkar
My Lords, do Her Majesty’s Government consider that the 221 hours and 24 minutes over 35 days spent in your Lordships’ House and the other place on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill was a wise and mature use of precious parliamentary time, in view of the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has suggested that Liberal Democrat Ministers and MPs will vote against the secondary legislation when it comes before this Parliament?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think that it would be a little brave of me to say what I thought was a useful use of the time of this Chamber or of the other Chamber and what I thought was not. I have sat through a number of debates over the last 15 years that I have felt were not useful uses of this Chamber’s time.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, is it not necessary that we have some certainty here? It is not just about money. There are candidates to be selected and party organisation to take place. The Prime Minister can bring certainty now by introducing primary legislation, or by making it absolutely clear that these boundary changes will not be going ahead, which will save money and enable people to get on with the existing boundaries.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I take that point and I simply reiterate that in all matters of political and constitutional reform and order, it is much the best if we can achieve consensus among all the parties. However, we have to remember that one of the reasons why we are not proceeding with House of Lords reform is because the Labour Opposition in the House of Commons voted down the programme Motion.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Moved by
That the Bill be read a second time.
Relevant document: 6th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the aim of the Bill is to tackle electoral fraud, to increase the number of people registered to vote, to give people greater ownership of their own registration and to improve the integrity of the register. The Bill also includes provisions to improve the administration and conduct of elections, which will serve to increase voter participation, and to make a number of improvements to the running of elections.
Last year, the Cabinet Office funded the Electoral Commission to carry out a detailed analysis of the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register in Great Britain. It showed that as of December 2010 the electoral register was 85% to 87% complete and by April 2011 was 85% accurate. This translates to there being over 6 million people missing from the electoral register compared with some 3 million estimated 10 years earlier.
To provide some perspective, Northern Ireland, which introduced individual registration in 2002, now has an electoral register which is also 85% complete but is 94% accurate. This Bill, by facilitating the use of such things as online registration and data matching, will help tackle the problem of declining registration. In doing so, the Government place equal importance on the completeness and accuracy of the register.
Britain is one of the few countries in the world still to rely on a system of household registration, inherited from the period when only heads of household voted. A system that relies on this notion of the head of household does not engender any personal responsibility for being registered or promote a person’s ownership of their vote. It is increasingly unsuitable in multi-occupation dwellings, where it may not even be clear who the head of household is.
As well as the current problem with completeness, the system is also unacceptably open to fraud. There is widespread concern about electoral fraud in this country. If citizens do not have confidence in the integrity of the electoral register, they will not have confidence in the integrity of election outcomes. For a number of years, observers of UK elections have highlighted concerns about the registration system. In its election assessment mission report on the general election of 2010, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights described the voter registration system in Great Britain as the weakest link in the electoral process because of the absence of safeguards against fictitious registrations. It recommended:
“Consideration should be given to introducing an identification requirement for voters when applying for registration as a safeguard against fraudulent registration”.
That is why in the Bill we are legislating to speed up the introduction of individual registration. The register published after the 2015 annual canvass will consist of entries that, with the exception of some of those for the Armed Forces, have all been individually verified. This is a position that the Electoral Commission supports. Jenny Watson, chair of the commission, when commenting on alleged malpractice in the London mayoral elections, said:
“The Electoral Commission wants to see our registration system tightened up and it’s good that the Government plans to introduce new laws to do this which will apply to any of us who want to vote by post before the 2015 General Election”.
Some individuals have advocated introducing a requirement for electors to provide some form of ID at a polling station. In considering any such proposal, we need to maintain a balance between security and accessibility, and to avoid introducing measures that would risk disenfranchising legitimate electors. The Electoral Commission is looking to carry out a review of the existing policy and is not asking for any changes to be made at this stage. The Government therefore have no plans to introduce ID at polling stations at this time, but will give careful consideration to any findings that emerge from the commission’s review.
Before I set out what we plan to do to reach individuals who are not registered, I will briefly set out the transition from the current to the new system and the steps we are taking to ensure that legitimately registered electors will not be removed from the register in the transition to individual registration. The last canvass under the current system will be postponed from autumn 2013 to spring 2014. This will ensure that the register will be as up to date as possible before the transition to the new system in 2014.
We plan to confirm about two-thirds of existing entries by matching the names and addresses of every elector on the register against the Department for Work and Pensions’ customer information system. Following this data match, electoral registration officers will carry out an amended canvass in the summer and autumn of 2014. The remaining one-third of electors whose details have not been confirmed through data matching will be sent a personal invitation to register under the new system. At the same time, the Electoral Commission will run a publicity campaign to inform the general public of the change to the new system.
If an individual fails to make an application after the first invitation, the registration officer will send them another invitation to register. If they fail to apply, the registration officer will be required to send a door-to-door canvasser to encourage their application. The registration may also, in specified circumstances, require an individual to make an application by a certain date—and if an individual fails to do so, a civil penalty may be issued.
At the same time, properties with no registered electors, and properties where a registration officer believes that there are unregistered residents, will be sent a household canvass form to help identify potential new electors whom the registration officer will invite to register, and follow up, as I set out. Following this canvass, a register will be produced, and only where a registration officer determines that an existing elector is no longer eligible will they be removed from the register. In other words, there will be a “carry forward” provision for existing electors so that, even if they have not had their details confirmed, and they have not made a successful new individual application in 2014, they will still be able to vote at the 2015 general election. However, any individual who wishes to vote by post or proxy at the 2015 general election will have had to have made a successful new application or have been confirmed and retained on the register through data matching. The electors who lose their postal or proxy vote will be informed and encouraged to register individually.
Following this canvass, and up to the 2015 general election, individuals will be able to register at any time. After the 2015 general election, registration officers will carry out another full household canvass. The new household canvass form will be pre-populated—that is, the names will already be on it—with the names of those electors who have successfully applied to be registered under the new system and those confirmed through data matching.
Before the end of the 2015 canvass, registration officers will send personally addressed application forms to existing electors who have not yet made a new successful application and whose details were not confirmed at the beginning of the transition. This acts as a final reminder for the individual to make an application before their name is removed from the register. Following this canvass, registration officers will remove all electors, except some service personnel, who have not made a successful application to register under the new system and whose details were not confirmed through data matching.
Let us be clear that, by this stage, this group will have been data matched to try to confirm them automatically in 2014, invited to register with a follow-up by post and in person in both the autumn of 2014 and the autumn of 2015, and received a final notification that they will be removed from the register. They will also have had the opportunity to register when political awareness was at its highest prior to the 2015 general election. The transition that I have just outlined, particularly the use of data matching to retain automatically the majority of electors on the register, will ensure that the registers created during the transition to individual electoral registration will be robust.
We are not aiming merely to stem the decline in the proportion of electors registering. The move to individual registration will also open up opportunities to improve the completeness of the register in Great Britain. The Bill will, for example, facilitate online registration. This will make it more convenient for individuals to register to vote; more accessible for people with visual impairments; and easier for young people. It will also make the whole process of electoral registration more efficient. We intend that the online system will be fully operational when the transition to individual registration begins.
Following the example of Northern Ireland, the Bill will also enable the use of data mining to find potential eligible electors who are missing from the register. Last year, we ran pilots for the first time to test this process in Great Britain and, subject to parliamentary approval, we plan to run a further set in February and March 2013 to test their use for identifying key target groups. The results of these pilots will allow us to see which data sets can be of most use for electoral registration officers.
We are also currently taking steps to maximise registration among under-registered groups. This will include working with a range of partner organisations, including Bite the Ballot and Operation Black Vote, to reach groups currently under-registered by testing a range of activities. Officials have also recently met the National Union of Students.
I want to touch briefly on some features of the Bill that were debated in the other place. The first of these is the new civil penalty. It is our intention that the warning on invitations to register, well before the question of imposing a civil penalty arises, will help encourage people to do their civic duty and register to vote. The Bill provides that after a registration officer has followed specified steps, they can require an individual to make an application. We have already published draft secondary legislation which sets out these specified steps. The Bill also sets out that the size of the civil penalty will be stipulated in regulations. We are of the view that the penalty should be within the parking fine spectrum, and the draft regulations set out the arguments for it being at the lower end, at around £40, or at the higher end at around £130. We will shortly be engaging with relevant stakeholders to seek views as to the appropriate level and we will make a decision based on these discussions.
It is also the Government’s intention to produce further iterations of the draft legislation by the time this House returns from the Summer Recess. These will include the regulations setting out the appeal procedure for any civil penalties issued and the enforcement mechanism. This will enable the House to debate the details of the civil penalty scheme while the Bill is in Committee.
Another issue that aroused debate when the Bill was in the other place was Clause 6, which provides for a power to abolish or amend the annual canvass. I want to put it on record that the Government have no current intention to abolish the annual canvass. It is, however, sensible to take this power now as it will allow future Governments to keep pace with technological developments. For example, in future it may be that a data matching exercise such as that used in Northern Ireland may be able to replace some or all of the canvass, thus simplifying the registration process further for individuals. I should remind the House that it was the previous Government who abolished the annual canvass in Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006. The use of this power is subject, in addition, to strict safeguards including, but not limited to, consulting the Electoral Commission on any proposal and requiring it to produce a report. We have allocated £108 million over the spending review period to fund the costs of transition. We will be funding local authorities in England and Wales directly through grants under Section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003, allocated for the purposes of paying for the transition. In Scotland, electoral registration is carried out for the most part by electoral registration officers who, barring the two exceptions of the City of Dundee and Fife, are independent of each local authority. The additional costs of implementing the new system will be paid directly to them.
I hope that noble Lords will accept that this Bill, which has already undergone pre-legislative scrutiny and significant consequent changes, represents a reasonable set of proposals which will safeguard the completeness of the register during the transition to individual electoral registration.
I turn now to the clauses in the Bill concerning the administration and conduct of elections. They address issues that have been raised by parliamentarians and stakeholders and make a number of practical and sensible changes that will help to deliver more effective electoral administration. The Bill includes provisions that extend the electoral timetable for UK parliamentary elections from 17 to 25 days. At present, postal voters have a maximum period of two calendar weeks to receive and return their postal ballot pack, but that shrinks when the time taken to print and distribute the packs is factored in. This creates a particular problem for service voters based abroad, their families and other overseas voters. The changes will address these problems by increasing the time period to up to four calendar weeks.
To assist with the understanding of this proposal and the related proposal to require electoral registration officers to publish two additional updates to the electoral register in the run-up to an election, I will today place in the Library of each House a paper which sets out in detail the current electoral timetable, our proposed extension of that timetable, and the benefits it will bring. The Bill also includes provisions that relate to postal voters whose votes are rejected at an election because their postal vote identifiers do not match with the identifiers stored on record. The Bill will enable regulations to be made that will place electoral registration officers under a duty to inform electors, after the election, if they fall into this category. However, electoral registration officers will continue to be able to use their discretion not to inform such persons if any impropriety is suspected.
Alongside this measure, the Government plan to introduce secondary legislation to require that postal vote identifiers are checked for 100% of postal votes, as opposed to the current 20%, at elections to strengthen the integrity of the electoral process and to provide an additional safeguard against electoral fraud. The Bill also includes provisions to allow the Secretary of State to withhold or reduce a returning officer’s fee for reasons of poor performance, on a recommendation by the independent Electoral Commission. These provisions will help to ensure that returning officers are accountable for their actions in respect of the conduct of parliamentary elections, making them liable to lose out on some or all of the fee that they receive for their services in connection with an election if there has been a clear failure to provide an adequate service.
In sum, the Bill will help to stem and reverse the recent decline in the completeness of our electoral register, to tackle fraud and to improve the integrity, administration and conduct of elections. I commend the Bill to the House.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this has been a very worthwhile Second Reading, and a number of very valuable points were raised that we will all pursue further in Committee. I say straightaway to the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, that he raised a number of very interesting points on which I was not fully briefed, so I will be very happy to write to him on them.
We can take either a partisan or a non-partisan approach to this Bill in Committee. I very much hope that we will follow the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. Surely our goal must be to achieve a complete and accurate register—although I have to say, as complete and accurate a register as possible, because we all recognise that we already have problems with the register in both respects. We are trying to improve that, and none of us has the hope that we will be able to get complete accuracy or completeness. So let us take as non-partisan an approach in Committee as we can.
If I were to take a partisan approach, I would be quite sharp with both the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, whose opening speech reminded me of one that a prosecuting counsel might make in a case where he knew that the evidence was relatively weak. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, suggested in effect that this was a vast Conservative conspiracy in which the Liberal Democrats were somehow co-conspirators. I have done my politics in cities and I know of many cases of election fraud, mainly in local elections and often by Labour voters against Liberal Democrats, that were not pursued by the Liberal Democrats because of the immense expense involved in mounting a challenge. I am talking about Kirklees, Manchester and Bradford, although I am well aware of cases in Burnley, Birmingham and elsewhere. As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, what sort of democracy is it when we have severe problems at local level? I am also very conscious—
Lord Wills
I must correct the misapprehension that the Minister is under. I do not think that I used the word “conspiracy”, and I was not alleging any grave conspiracy. I was trying to take noble Lords through the consequences of the Government’s approach to the review of boundaries in 2015, and the partisan political consequences that could well ensue—that was all. It is perfectly open to the noble Lord to give me good arguments why those consequences will not happen, and I shall be completely reassured. There is no question of a conspiracy; it is just a question of natural consequences following from what the Government are trying to do.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I shall do my utmost to reassure the noble Lord by the way that we handle the Bill as it goes through. I regret that the level of Cross-Bench participation in this Second Reading debate was not higher, because there is a lot of expertise on those Benches about the groups we most want to reach—the most vulnerable and marginal groups in society who are least involved in politics. We share a common interest in trying to get those people re-engaged in politics, and we recognise that we all have a problem in getting them re-engaged. I spent some time over recent weekends on big estates in Bradford where the level of turnout was astonishingly low and the level of registration fairly low.
To suggest—as I think I also picked up from some noble Lords on the Benches opposite—that somehow these people belong to Labour and are naturally Labour, even if they do not vote or even register, is stretching the argument. They belong to no party, and we all share the problem of how to get them re-engaged in society, politics and community life. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that in this respect we have many problems. We are struggling against a deeply cynical media that reinforces the instinctive scepticism of rising numbers of voters. We all have to demonstrate that we share a concern for the quality of our democracy and of our democratic institutions.
Perhaps I may make one more partisan remark before I return to being my usual entirely non-partisan self. In the 2005 general election, the Labour Government returned to power on 35% of the votes cast—barely a quarter of the electorate—and the majority of the media and the Opposition did not cry, “Illegitimate and improper”. However, it was close to the bounds of democratic acceptability.
How will we engage young people? The noble Lord, Lord Bates, in particular asked how we are working with Bite the Ballot and Operation Black Vote. We have not looked very far into the question of whether we should have campaigns which involve personalities and celebrities. However, we have looked at using social media more. We are looking at the experience in Northern Ireland where working in schools with what are called the “attainers”—16 and 17 year-olds—has provided better civic education. Taking registration forms into schools has clearly had a very positive effect. As we move to individual registration, we very much hope to follow this experience to ensure that we catch the attention of young voters, many of whom are not terribly interested in politics at that time.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, raised the issue of elderly and disabled people. We are consulting Scope, Mind and a number of other bodies on how best to make sure that access is maintained and how to improve access to polling stations where possible. The levels of suspected fraud for postal votes and proxies are much higher than for those giving personal votes in the election. Therefore, asking people to reassure us during the transition that postal and proxy votes are real is a justifiable way of improving the accuracy of the system.
Perhaps I may talk about the difference between this Bill and the previous Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred to a “ruinous timetable” as if this were being rushed through unannounced. I remind the noble Baroness that this Bill has been through pre-legislative scrutiny and through the other House. We have listened and changed the Bill. When the Political Parties and Elections Bill was introduced in the Commons, it contained no provisions for individual electoral registration. However, when the Conservative Opposition tabled a reasoned amendment and voted against the Bill, relevant clauses were added in the Lords. These were not discussed fully in the Commons, except when the Bill returned from the Lords. It is, therefore, grossly unfair to suggest that we are rushing into this or, indeed, as I understand the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that the previous Bill was perfect and this is somehow imperfect.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked me about the statement on the invitation on the civil penalty and how prominent it would be. The Electoral Commission will design the invitation form and will test it with users to achieve the best possible form to encourage registration. I know that there is much concern about differences between local authorities in the duties of the electoral registration officers. These duties will be clearly set out in the Bill, secondary legislation and in Electoral Commission guidance. We are working closely with the Electoral Commission to ensure, as far as possible, a consistent approach across local authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, will no doubt return in Committee to how large the civil penalty should be and how often it should be applied. If an individual has been issued with the penalty and subsequently applies to be registered, we intend that the penalty will be waived. We are not persuaded by his suggestion of multiple fines in a single year—whatever it might do to assist the Treasury.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asked what we are doing now to increase registration rates. I have already said a little about that. We are closely studying the experience of Northern Ireland. We have seen the excellent work there and we hope to learn from it to ease the transition, which I have already described in my opening speech. The Cabinet Office is leading a programme of work to maximise electoral registration among the groups on which we all agree—that is, the ones that are currently under-registered or identified as at risk of falling off. However, we recognise that under-registration is not the responsibility of Government alone. We will work closely with partners across the public, private and voluntary sectors. I hope that we will all engage in this effort and encourage people from voluntary organisations to engage in it as well.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, also asked me what evidence should be required. We dropped the requirement for a signature on the grounds that a date of birth and a national insurance number would be adequate in themselves. We propose to require these to enable online registration. We hope that people will gradually move forward with the technological change. I was struck by the DWP evidence about the speed at which people are moving to interact with the state online. Within the next five to 10 years, the overwhelming majority of people, including those of our generation, will be likely to interact with the state online. That is why we are moving in this direction and why it is proper to take in this Bill a power to suspend the annual canvass at some point in the future, as has been done in Northern Ireland, when it seems that the number of people dealing with registration online has reached an appropriate level.
The noble and learned Lord also asked me questions about the budget of the high-level implementation plan. I am sorry that he did not pick up from my opening speech that there is £108 million allocated over the spending review period. We are also making excellent progress in developing IT and we are pleased by the engagement of electoral registration officers of the Association of Electoral Administrators—
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Although I am very encouraged to hear about the excellent progress being made, perhaps it would be possible to write and say precisely where we have got to because it is not easy to make an assessment when things are going fabulously. One needs a little more detail, if that is possible. I accept that it may not be for now.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was just coming to the further detail. Perhaps I may issue a personal invitation. A number of parliamentarians have already seen a demonstration of the website that is to be used for registration. I am happy to offer a further demonstration of the prototype if any noble Lord, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, would like to see it. Progress is being made, but it is being tested as we move forward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and others suggested that the data-matching pilot had not yet been evaluated. The Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office have evaluated the pilots undertaken so far. A further exercise is taking place this year, and that will be evaluated over the next few months. The first pilots were very valuable in testing the usefulness of data matching and what is required to share and match data effectively. The evidence suggests that we can simplify the transition for existing electors by using data matching to confirm their details as accurate. As I have already explained, it produces a floor of around two-thirds of people, which enables us to concentrate our efforts on the remaining third to make sure that we get them back on the register as well. Later this year we will run a second set of pilots to confirm the conclusions of the first round and to refine the process of matching data.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, suggested that we should use data mining on private databases as well. I have to say that we would begin to get into issues of privacy and access to data if we were to go too far in that direction. As I have been learning about this process—and in regard to the census—I can hear Liberty and some other groups at my back as they begin to worry about it, so there are questions of privacy. However, we are speaking to organisations that hold potentially useful data, including the credit reference agencies, to establish the most useful data for the purposes of finding people who are not registered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked about the publicity campaign. That will be the responsibility of the Electoral Commission, which of course will play a major role in the entire process. I do not accept the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that there is an apparent downgrading of the role of the Electoral Commission. Perhaps we can discuss that further before the Committee stage, but if it is a concern then clearly we need to meet it. I anticipated the question about risk registers. The Government do not publish risk registers, and we can return to the point at a later stage.
I was asked why we are abolishing the annual canvass. I again suggest that we have no intention of abolishing it until we are sure that we are getting sufficiently good results by other means.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The question I put to the noble Lord was why the Government had taken on the power to do so rather than it coming back to the other House.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
It may be that the other House thinks that it needs an affirmative resolution. It is a very good point that we can of course discuss in Committee, but it certainly does not need primary legislation. As the noble Baroness knows, it has been carried through in Northern Ireland and it appears to have been successful there.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked about whether there would be a single level for the civil penalty. We intend to reach a single level within the spectrum, but we are consulting with various interested parties on what they think the appropriate level should be. Perhaps the noble Baroness would like to put down an amendment suggesting that we adopt the Finnish system, which is that the appropriate level should be a percentage of a person’s declared income for the year. That is how the Finns impose traffic and parking fines, but that is not our intention at the moment.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
Or maybe we could use the system in Brazil. You cannot get a driving licence unless you are on the register.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I regret to say that that might be of declining utility. One of the things I have learnt while looking at data sets is that the number of young people who are registering as drivers is declining. It is a good thing for those of us who think that public transport is much more important in the cities, but fewer young people are learning to drive and getting driving licences, which is why that data set is not quite as useful as we thought.
My noble friend Lord Norton asked why the Government were taking in Clause 21 a power to repeal the establishment of a co-ordinated online record of elections. As we have said before, the costs of building and running the record seem to us to be disproportionate when weighed against its potential benefits. He also asked about the edited register, to which we will clearly return in Committee. The edited register is much beloved of charities and voluntary organisations. Now that I have to speak for the Cabinet Office, I have learnt that the lobbies in the charities sector are as determined and uncompromising as the lobbies in any other sector. They are very strong on maintaining the edited register, but the Government are committed to maximising registration rates, although we recognise that there are a number of issues about the names that appear. Perhaps that is another question for discussion in Committee.
Lord Empey
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. Could he address the issue of whether any research has been or will be undertaken to establish why people are not registering to vote? Do we have any detailed research or is any being planned?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is a very good question to which I do not have the answer, so I will write to the noble Lord about it. I suspect that there is a multitude of reasons. Of course, some people have good reasons for not being on the register, including people in witness protection programmes and some celebrities. A range of issues can be cited, and there are others who are simply moving around too quickly, are not interested or who do not want to have contact with the state.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, queried the phrase,
“as far as is reasonably practicable”.
It is intended to refer to the completeness of the register, which comes back to the point that we do not expect electoral registers to be able to be 100% complete, but we want them to do their utmost to get as far as they can.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
I thank the noble Lord, but that is not the interpretation that is being put on it by the Electoral Commission. It has raised this as an issue that needs to be looked at. Perhaps I could pass the information on because it might be of help.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I have read the note from the Electoral Commission on this.
The question of overseas electors will be raised. I had a conversation off the Floor of the House with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in which we agreed that we are both being lobbied heavily by our local party organisations from Brussels and Luxembourg on this issue. The Government do not have any plans at the present moment to lengthen the period from leaving the country beyond 15 years, nor do we have any really ambitious plans to do what is done in some other countries, which is to allow voting in embassies and consulates. However, the longer electoral period will help.
I hope that that covers many of the questions which have been raised—
Lord Wills
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. I understand from the Companion that the time is now up. However, I did ask quite a large number of very specific and detailed questions, most of which derived from the impact statement published by the Cabinet Office. The Minister has not even referred to them. If there is no time now, I would be grateful if he could write to me with detailed answers to those questions. Also, he told me at the beginning of his speech that he would deal with the particular problem of the impact of any fall in registration on the boundary reviews. Perhaps he might be able to squeeze in a few seconds on that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
We will return to many of these issues in Committee. We have taken on board everything that has been said in the debate. We are confident that by going through the transition process and learning from the Northern Irish experience, we will come out with a register that is at least as complete as it is at the moment, and more accurate. Let us all recognise that we are operating against a decline in the completeness of the register over the past 10 to 20 years and that, first, we have to stem that decline. If we were to continue with household registration, it is likely that it would decline further. If we can work to reverse that decline and bring about a transition by which we will catch those who move around rapidly such as students and young people, we will have done extremely well.
Lord Wills
I am sorry to press the Minister, but will he provide me with the answers to my questions?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am happy to write to the noble Lord in spite of the fact that he strained the patience of the House and of myself with the length of his speech.
Georgia: Public Services
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Lord Harries of Pentregarth
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what lessons they are learning from the introduction of “one-stop shops” for public services in Georgia.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are always willing to learn from examples of good practice from overseas. I compliment the noble and right reverend Lord for highlighting the Georgia case. He may be aware that US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has just made some very complimentary remarks about the Georgian public service halls. The wider public sector in the UK has already done a great deal on one-stop shops, working across organisational boundaries and making it easier for customers to access services in a more joined-up fashion. The implementation of the Government’s Digital by Default agenda will provide government information and services online and in one place that will be simpler, clearer and faster for users.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
I thank the Minister for his reply. I am indeed aware of the Government’s desire to reform public service provision. As he has mentioned, the example of Georgia is truly remarkable. While driving to one such public service hall when I was there recently, our escort asked us for our details. When we arrived only 15 minutes later we were all presented with replica Georgian passports. This was just one example of their speed and user-friendly approach. Will the Minister encourage different government departments to look at the actual design of these halls, because whatever we have in the way of digital provision, there will still need to be a place where some people can go? Secondly, will he see if they can work together, perhaps with the Post Office, in such public service halls?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harriesvili, on his new citizenship. On the question of design, I have looked at the pictures of some of these new public service halls in Georgia—they are magnificent buildings, on a scale that I do not think would be easily accepted by the media in this country; it is easier for a country that is coming out of a socialist era in the way that Georgia is doing. The Government are aware, however, that the Georgian provision depends heavily on using new technology, and that parallels exactly what we are attempting to do with the Digital by Default exercise.
Lord Haworth
My Lords, Georgia is a small, faraway country about which we tend to know very little, although today we now know a little more. The question raised by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, about the way in which Georgia has developed one-stop shops is extremely important. I was with him on the visit to the facility in Rustavi and I was also issued a passport by the Georgians in double-quick time. I also went to a similar facility in a small community high up in the Caucasus, where exactly the same provision is being extended. The modernised interface between public and state that these facilities embody is highly impressive. The Minister may not want to take it from me but he has already mentioned Secretary of State Clinton, although he did not quote her words about,
“very creative and impressive advancements”,
and “modern technological wonder”. Will the Minister reflect on this and possibly consider inviting a delegation of Georgians to come to this country to share best practice with us?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I received a detailed briefing from the Georgian embassy this morning, as they discovered that I was due to answer this Question. We are doing a number of things that work in the same direction: we are looking at the provision of the public service estate, and the capital assets pathfinder exercise, working between central and local government, is looking precisely at how you can bring offices together so that services are integrated. In Hampshire, the new Havant public service village, which is the furthest along in this development, is a project that will bring together Hampshire County Council, Havant Borough Council, Hampshire PCT, Hampshire and Isle of Wight police, Capita, Citizens Advice and other voluntary sector partners in the same building. The aim is to transform public service delivery in Havant. That is very much the sort of thing that we have in mind and, incidentally, will save a considerable amount of space by the time it has finished.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, G4S is an international company but I have absolutely no idea whether it has yet been engaged in Georgia.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, we are about to have elections for police and crime commissioners, with material only on the web and no leaflets. Digital by Default, which the Minister has mentioned, will do for some, but there are a lot of people who need all sorts of things such as passports, licences and debt advice. Could the Minister go to Georgia himself or possibly send Francis Maude there to see what we could learn about people still needing face-to-face advice?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have been to Georgia three times in the last 15 years and would love to go there again. The speed at which our population is moving towards using digital services is quite remarkable and I find, as someone of the older generation—like everyone else here, if I may put it tactfully—the estimates of how many people will use digital services by preference in 10 years’ time very encouraging. However, as in Georgia and the Havant exercise, people who do not find digital access quite so easy will still need assistance to help them use facilities that are more easily available online.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the £4 billion new investment programme announced today for our rail network needs to be accompanied by a more streamlined planning system and that following the abolition of the Infrastructure Planning Commission, the Secretary of State has become the one-stop shop for major projects? Will the noble Lord confirm that the planning process will be better as a consequence?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a little wide of the Question. However, I did book my train tickets for the next two weekends from London to Saltaire online this morning so I am moving in the right direction in using digital means. In terms of planning, all I have done in respect of railways this morning is to check exactly what the Castlefield corridor, part of the new northern hub, is.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there is absolutely no need for him to go to Georgia, nor indeed for visitors to be brought over from there, when they have an excellent ambassador, from Georgia, here in London? I suggest that he talks to the ambassador.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am embarrassed to admit that I taught the current Georgian ambassador in 1995 and 1996.
Arrangement of Business
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have come here today to discuss the extremely important question of the Middle East but I know that many noble Lords will need to get away for the weekend. If noble Lords keep their speeches down to 10 minutes or less, we shall be able to rise relatively early in the afternoon and certainly no later than 3 pm.
Parliamentary Boundary Commission: Electoral Administration
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this has been a rumbustious debate. The noble Lord, Lord Clark, referred to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, as fearless. I felt that in many ways it was a tub-thumping speech. I feel the pain coming from past and present Labour MPs at the way they have been treated by IPSA and by the threat of boundary reviews. In terms of economy, I have to say that I feel moderate pain in the current Government. I go around saying to people that this is the leanest Government we have had for many years because we have cut the government car pool in half and we walk more. With regard to economy but not humiliation, perhaps I may share with noble Lords the occasion on which I went with an official to represent the Government at an international conference. At the end of the conference, the government car collected us, delivered us to the VIP lounge at the airport and, from there, the protocol officer took us to the front of the easyJet queue for us to fly back. That is an approach to economy that Members of the other place may need to share.
With regard to spending on elections and on politics between elections, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, that over the past 25 years the amount provided to sitting MPs for assistance with casework and allowances for communications has given in-built advantages to sitting Members against challengers. That, again, is an issue that we may need to talk about in more detail.
Lord Wills
With great respect to the Minister, I think that I should correct him on that. There were very clear rules in the other place. The expenses given to MPs were solely for discharging their duties as Members of Parliament. They were explicitly excluded from any kind of campaigning purpose whatever. I can speak for myself and for the great majority of my former colleagues when I say that we scrupulously observed those rules. I just wanted to correct the Minister on a point of fact.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I merely referred to the advantages of incumbency and strengthening the advantages of incumbency. I think we both know what we are talking about.
As this Question refers to democracy and political representation, I thought that as an academic I should go back to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and look up the definition of democracy. It says that democracy is a descriptive term synonymous with majority rule. It goes on to say that the plurality rule, as opposed to the majoritarian rule, which selects the candidate with the largest single number of votes, even if that number is less than half the votes cast, may select somebody whom the majority regard as the worst candidate. It says that, nevertheless, countries using this rule for national elections, such as Britain, the United States and India, are normally described as democratic.
The question of how we choose representatives and the place and size of the electorate is something that we have tried very hard to balance over the past 100 years and more. The issue at stake, after all, is the balance struck by the Boundary Commission between the sense of place and the number of electors. The position taken by the coalition Government is that too great an emphasis had been placed on ensuring a sense of place at the expense of ensuring fairness and equality in the size of constituencies. In terms of numbers, noble Lords may know that in 1922, when the Irish left, Parliament consisted of 615 Members and in 1950 of 625 Members, and it has grown slowly to the current number of 650. Of course, all these numbers are arbitrary.
Baroness Corston
Would the Minister acknowledge that we have also had a vastly growing population?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Certainly, and I also acknowledge—this is very important—that there has been an enormous degree of centralisation in the way that British politics, and particularly English politics, has operated. Fifty or 100 years ago, certain casework was conducted by local councillors. However, as the central state has taken on what the local authority used to do, so people have come to their MPs more and more, and that has led to a tremendous growth in the amount of MPs’ casework.
I do not entirely recognise a golden age of constituencies in which every constituency represented a long-term and clear place. The noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, will know that the Colne Valley as a constituency has changed very radically over the years. The first constituency that I fought—Huddersfield West—disappeared very rapidly and is now part of Colne Valley, whereas Saddleworth has long since gone somewhere else. The constituency in which I live, Shipley, has a moor down the middle of it and part of Wharfedale, which is occasionally cut off by snow in winter, is part of the constituency. I found myself at my first election as a candidate there having to explain to people in Wharfedale that they were part of the Shipley constituency and not connected with Ilkley or Pudsey.
One could take many examples of this. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, talked about some of the Kirklees constituencies. When I first started thinking about politics in that region, the Spen Valley was a constituency. We then had Batley, Brighouse and Spenborough, and Batley and Spen. In the 2005 general election I spent an afternoon standing in Huddersfield marketplace meeting people coming in from Heckmondwike, Gomersal, Cleckheaton and elsewhere who said, one after the other, “Can you help me? I’m not sure what constituency I’m in”. I realised how little I knew about the changing boundaries of those West Yorkshire constituencies. As we all know, MPs identify very strongly over time with their constituencies, but their constituents very often do not identify so closely with them in return.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Is there not a slight contradiction in what he is saying? A minute ago, he was saying that the incumbency factor was very significant. Does that not mean that constituents must recognise their MPs?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Some do, some do not. However, we have a larger problem which we should also address. More and more constituents—including those who used to vote Labour, according to my experience in Bradford—do not identify with the constituency, any political party or politics as such and, indeed, do not wish to register. We will return to that wider issue in 10 days time, when we discuss the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, asked me to guarantee that there would be no further decline in registrations in the move to individual electoral registration, but of course the Government cannot guarantee that. We know that between 2000 and 2010, the number of people not on the register is estimated to have doubled from 3 million to 6 million. I am sure the Labour Government that were in office at that point had no intention of allowing that to happen—it happened, as we know, for a range of reasons to do with political attitudes and social change. We will be doing everything we can to maximise the completeness of the individual register, but the accuracy and completeness of the household registration system has been going down, which is very much part of the reason for the change.
Lord Wills
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he recognise that there is a big difference between a Government who are, on the one hand, doing everything they can to improve the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the register and a Government who are doing their best on that but are none the less proceeding with legislation that is undoubtedly going to damage that register even further—and in the interests of one particular political party? That is the difference. Does the noble Lord accept that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I do not accept that and I do not accept that we have not been consulting the Labour Party. The noble Lord and I have discussed this at great length, Mark Harper has discussed this with a number of people on the Labour Front Bench and we are continuing to discuss this as we go on. I have so far dealt with several statutory instruments about the data-matching exercise, which is part of the way in which we are testing the completeness of the register. We know that this will get a great deal more difficult and will be talking with others in the Department for Education and elsewhere about how far we can use school registers and student loan registers to get at some of the mobile young people who are among the most difficult to catch for the register. We will return to this area at some length at Second Reading and in Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. We will come back to that, and to the question of carrying over the registration from May 2015 to December 2015, in that context rather than in this one.
Lord Wills
This will be my last intervention for today. The Minister has made a very important point and I want to be sure that I have understood it, because it will obviously inform the approach of many noble Lords to the Second Reading of that Bill. Is the noble Lord saying that the Government remain open to a carryover for the purposes of the boundary review in 2015? Are the Government now prepared to consider that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was not saying that, I was simply saying that we would need to discuss it further in that context, because we will be spending a good deal of time on the Bill. However, I was saying that a number of continuing experiments are under way with the government statistics authority and with the Electoral Commission about how best to ensure that, as we move to a new register, we maximise the number of people on it. He will know, as we have rehearsed it before, that the argument in respect of the December 2015 register is that maintaining a carryover from a register made over two years before risks carrying over a large number of additional names, particularly in the inner cities, of highly mobile people and those from multiple-occupation residences. There will be a post-May 2015 canvass of all of those who are in doubt on this. We think that the occurrence of a general election in May 2015 should produce the maximum registration available then, but that the question of accuracy and completeness is not best served by maintaining, even after the election, names that have not responded to several attempts personally to canvass them.
The joy and passion that members of the Opposition have for the single-Member constituency is striking. I remind them that the single-Member constituency and the electoral system that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, went for are not necessarily part of the ancient British constitution. The official with whom I travelled to a conference last weekend admitted to me that his grandfather had been one of the two Labour MPs for Blackburn between 1945 and 1950. That was one of the last two-Member constituencies. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is perhaps not quite old enough to remember the three-Member combined Scottish university seat, which was there until 1950. However, I am sure he remembers the electoral system used for that, which was of course the single transferable vote. We now regard the single-Member constituency as the only possible thing for Britain, but other things have been tried before and might be tried again in the future. This Government’s commitment to decentralisation and the revival of local democracy means that we see casework in future more often going to the local councillor, and not always, perhaps, all the way up to the MP.
There have been suggestions of gerrymandering. Looking through my preparatory notes on this, I see that in 1978-79, the then Labour Government postponed the introduction of boundary changes. There were accusations in the right-wing press that this was “jimmymandering” by the then Prime Minister, as a means of ensuring that Labour should not lose those relevant seats. I am conscious, as we all are, that the integrity, accuracy and completeness of the register, for the next election and beyond it, matters to all of us. We are also concerned that some of the underlying causes for the decline in the completeness of the register—political disillusionment and disengagement—need to be addressed, and on an all-party basis.
Lord Lipsey
I do not want the noble Lord to get the records wrong. It was 1968-69 and Jim Callaghan was not Prime Minister at the time, he was Home Secretary. Other than that, the Minister’s point is absolutely right.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Does the noble Lord think it proper for prominent Liberal Democrats to trade Lords reform for the reduction in seats?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord and all those on the other side for their sympathy for the position of the Liberal Democrats. We are a coalition Government and bargain every single day on a whole host of things. I have no knowledge whether what Mr Richard Reeves said as he left for the United States—very unwisely, and without any authorisation or standing, I thought—relates to anything that is being discussed between the two parties.
I hope that I have covered most of the points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked about the application form, which again we will return to when we discuss the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. I understand that the application form that will be designed by the Electoral Commission must include a statement about the possibility of a fine and the size of that potential fine. We were discussing that in the debate in the Moses Room yesterday on the question of behaviour change and how one designs forms best so as to influence people to do the right thing.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
One question that the Minister has not addressed was raised first by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, and to which I have often referred, about the order when it comes to both Houses and that if it is approved by one House but not the other, it will fall. Will the Minister confirm that that is the position?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am trying to answer all the questions. It is not the first time that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has jumped up to ask why I have not answered a question just as I am about to come to it. It is, of course, the rule that statutory orders have to go through both Houses. What would happen if one House said yes and the other said no is a matter that would have to be negotiated between the two Houses. I know that some Members on the Labour Benches sometimes want to suggest that we are not part of the legislature, but for these purposes we are, and we will take part in that decision.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, talked about current changes threatening to undermine the very foundations of our democracy. I have to say that from many of the debates we have had in recent months, there are large questions about the future of our democracy and the characteristics of our representation. I was slightly shocked the other day to listen to the greatest parliamentarian among us, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, promoting the idea of referendums, which are not entirely compatible with the idea of parliamentary democracy. The balance between representative, deliberative democracy and direct democracy, as we slide towards more calls for more referendums, is one of the fundamental issues that we need to address.
I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Clark, when he calls for a wider debate on the crisis of British democracy, the role of the state and the balance between state, society and market. I would also add the balance between the central state and the local state where the coalition Government believe that we have slipped far too far towards overcentralisation. Our system of democracy is not working very well; our public are increasingly disengaged and disillusioned; and we need to think about a whole series of changes in how we behave towards and relate with the public and about the best way in which to engage them again in local and national politics. That goes far beyond the issues raised in discussing representation and democracy in this Motion.