Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2013

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Grand Committee

There is a lot more that can be said. Usually I do say it but I am not going to this afternoon. We must give young people the opportunity to register to vote. The different-coloured registration forms and postal vote applications should be provided. A very important aspect of this is that our military personnel, wherever they are, are given the opportunity—fairly—to cast their vote. I agree with so much of what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, but there is more to be discussed here.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for the careful way in which he set out the basis of these regulations. I want to associate myself with the great sweep of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Lipsey and the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. I do not think the Minister will be surprised to hear that I still have concerns about this legislation, but he will, I hope, be pleased that I do not intend to rehearse all those concerns today. This is not the appropriate place to discuss the Government’s approach to introducing individual electoral registration. My noble friend Lord Lipsey has already set out for the Committee the importance of that, so I will not go over it.

There appears to be very little that is exceptionable in these regulations. I welcome much that is in them. However, your Lordships’ House is being asked to approve them without the benefit of crucial information, which is available to the Government but not to your Lordships. This cannot be an acceptable way to proceed in a healthy democracy, where there is proper scrutiny of the Executive by the legislature.

As far as I am aware, every independent body has warned of the potential damage to levels of registration by the Government’s approach to this legislation. All experience and evidence suggest that there are specific groups at particular risk of seeing their registration levels fall as a result of government policy: young people; students, as we have already heard; people with learning disabilities; people with disabilities generally; people living in areas of high social and economic deprivation; and ethnic minorities. These concerns were extensively rehearsed during the passage of the Bill and were brushed aside by the Government, who have still not produced any evidence to justify their insouciance. Their responses have brimmed with hope and aspiration, but they have not really put forward anything to justify their confidence.

It is not credible to argue, as the Government often do—we have heard a trace of it again today from the Minister—that there are significant problems with current levels of registration. It is no justification at all to make a bad situation worse. We are not in a position to assess the arguments put forward for the efficacy of the measures that the Government have outlined today and elsewhere, because we do not have the information to judge whether they are sufficient. It is impossible to assess whether these measures are adequate without knowing the assessment of risk that the Government have made.

The Minister suggested in the past that the Government had indeed considered these concerns. If your Lordships’ House is to approve these regulations, surely it should have access to the same evidence as the Government about the risks to electoral registration of their policy. Yet, we do not. I have been trying for nearly a year to secure it under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. I have been fobbed off with what I regard as inadequate excuses for not giving it. These excuses have consistently been delivered late—well outside the provisions of the Act. I last wrote to Cabinet Office officials on 6 November. I am still waiting for a response. The Minister, I am sure, can work out that the response is out of time.

Will the Minister today at least spare me—and, more importantly perhaps, his long-suffering officials—further grief? Will he tell your Lordships what assessment the Government have made of the risks this legislation poses to levels of registration among young people; among students; among people with learning disabilities; among people with disabilities generally; among people living in areas of high social and economic deprivation; and among ethnic minorities? If he will not, please will he explain why he will not?

There can be only two possible explanations for the Government’s persistent refusal to share this information with your Lordships’ House. The first is that all the concerns that I have referred to are groundless, but the Government are not revealing this because of their worries about extending transparency in government. Will the Minister say whether this is indeed the reason for the Government’s refusal to reveal the detail of their assessments of the risks to electoral registration of this legislation?

The only other possible explanation for the Government’s lack of transparency is that their assessment indeed confirms all other independent assessments of the risks that so concern everybody else and that they are embarrassed to reveal it, because that would throw a harsh light on the profound flaws in the legislation.

I would be grateful if the Minister could say today which of these two arguments applies to the Government’s lack of transparency in this area. If he will not respond to that—and I fear that probably he will not—will he at least make a guarantee? It is only a small request, but it would save everybody a lot of grief and place the Government in a much better light than they currently are in. Will he guarantee that I will receive replies to my freedom of information requests—which, I must give due warning, are unlikely to stop now—within the statutory limits provided for under the Act? I hope that the Government recognise that the sort of inexcusable tardiness I have experienced until now undermines their frequent claims to the promotion of transparency in government.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I draw Members’ attention to my interest as a member of the Electoral Commission. I am also the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Voter Registration.

The order and regulations we are considering in Grand Committee today are important as part of the process of bringing into effect individual electoral registration. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who described to the Grand Committee just what is at stake and how important the regulations—and all that we are discussing here today—are. I look forward to many more discussions and debates on this over the coming weeks and months.

National Voter Registration Day, which the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, mentioned, is something that I very much support. We discussed it many times at the all-party group meetings. It is very important that we get young people registered to vote. They are a real risk group, as other colleagues mentioned. There is, as my noble friend Lord Wills said, much that we agree with here, but there are real risks. I agree with him very much. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will be able to address the points my noble friend has made; in particular, I hope that when my noble friend puts in FOI requests, he will get proper and adequate responses and that this will be addressed.

Members will be aware that the previous Labour Government put on to the statute book individual electoral registration and a process for bringing it into effect. With the new Government coming into office, the process was accelerated and other changes were made with the passing of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. As many noble Lords said, IER is supported by all parties and we all welcome its introduction. It is another safeguard to ensure that our democracy is both protected and enhanced. It is important for the governance of our country at all levels, for society in general, for our citizens, for political parties and for our reputation around the world that we can all have confidence in our electoral process. It is largely built on trust, but it needs safeguards for protection.

I have a number of questions for the noble Lord. I am sure he will answer as many as he can today, but I do not expect him to be able to answer them all—or all the questions posed by other noble Lords. Where that proves to be the case, I assume that he will write to me and other noble Lords who have asked questions and place a copy in the Library of the House

I turn first to the order that requires electoral registration officers throughout England, Wales and Scotland to undertake specific activities in relation to the transition to IER. As my noble friend Lord Lipsey said, there are real concerns with the IT needed to deliver this. Fundamental decisions have to be made and some may have to be reviewed. Will the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, tell the Grand Committee what safeguards are in place? About 70% of electors were confirmed through the tests in the data-matching exercise—the noble Lord said it was 78%. However, as he will be fully aware, we do not have an overregistration problem in this country but an underregistration problem. Will he tell the Grand Committee what else is proposed to get electors on to the register, other than the online proposals?

Noble Lords are all aware of the Northern Ireland experience. I accept that this is being done in a different way, but it would be good to hear what other plans the Government will put in place to ensure that we do not have a similar problem. It has to be a bit more than the ERO being able to concentrate on the other 30% who are not identified through this process. Will he also tell the Grand Committee what the status is of other databases and matching exercises? Are these not going to be looked at further? Will they be able to give us what we want? Might we look at any others in the future? What is the review process for looking at databases as we move forward?

I am sure that the noble Lord will understand that the completeness and the accuracy of the register are not the same thing. I note the baseline measurements of 86% complete and 85% accurate for our electoral register. However, to put it another way, our electoral register baseline measurements are 14% incomplete and 15% inaccurate. Is that acceptable to him—and, if not, what will the Government do to improve the situation?

My worry is that, as other noble Lords mentioned, it will be students, people living in private rented accommodation, service men and women and their families, and other groups that have the potential to move around who will be at the greatest risk of being lost to the system. I am sure that the noble Lord is well aware of the importance of the register that will be published in December 2015, as it relates to the next parliamentary redistribution of seats. I think that I am right in saying this will be the base figure that the Boundary Commission will take. If there is a drop in the number of people registered to vote, that will have very serious consequences for how seats are redrawn and could create a gross injustice and unfairness. How will the noble Lord ensure that that will not happen? What contingency plans do the Government have in place?

I turn to the other regulations before the Grand Committee. Changing the name of the edited register to the open register is a very sensible move and I fully support it. The Government are a bit obsessed with the retention of data and I have some concerns about losing the ability to detect fraud that their keenness to destroy records could create. Where someone has failed to be matched and cannot produce documents that satisfy the ERO, they will need to have their application attested by an elector who is registered in the same local authority—someone of good standing. Can the noble Lord tell the Grand Committee who is a person of “good standing” and how many applications they will be able to sign per year: one, two, 10 or 100? When do alarm bells start to be rung?

Does the noble Lord think that one visit and two follow-up invitations will be enough? Does he not accept that in many places EROs will have to go much further than this? What advice would he give to EROs about using the requirement-to-register power: is it something he would expect EROs to do only in exceptional circumstances, or is it something he would encourage them to do much more frequently than that to improve the completeness and accuracy of the register in their locality?

On postal vote identifiers, will he give a commitment to look at the date of birth identifier in particular? As I see it, the most common problem is that people will give their signature and date of birth when applying for a postal vote, but, when casting their postal vote, they will sign the document and put that day’s date on the form. That would be an understandable mistake, but it would mean that their vote was not counted. I am sure that the noble Lord would regret that most sincerely, as would I.

As I said at the start of my remarks, I fully support IER, as do all parties—and, I am sure, all noble Lords. However, I and other noble Lords have raised a number of concerns at which the Government will have to look seriously as these changes move forward.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am grateful for almost everything that has been said in this debate. We all agree, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, that it is extremely important, first, to get maximum registration, and then to get maximum turnout. We also accept that both of these are difficult and have become more difficult; and that the question of the legitimacy of government is, of course, caught up in this. We are all well aware that we might possibly elect a Labour Government at the next election with 35% of the votes cast on a very low turnout. I can imagine what the Daily Mail would say about the legitimacy of that Government.

We have a shared interest across all parties, first, to make sure that we maximise registration and then—this is something on which we need to have some active cross-party conversations—persuade our deeply alienated electorate, let alone our deeply hostile media, that politics is an honourable profession; that voting is important; and that maximising the turnout at the next election has to be seen as a civic duty and not as something that, as some newspaper columnists tend to suggest, will only encourage the bastards.

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful for what the Minister has just said and want to associate myself with those remarks profoundly. I would like to “mark his card” with a particular potential problem on which I hope the parties could collaborate. That is the problem about funding for electoral registration in this context. As the Minister will know, it is not ring-fenced—although I personally believe that it should be. However, because it is not ring-fenced, local authorities under a lot of pressure might well be tempted to skimp, shall we say, on some of the efforts made. The problem could arise, therefore—and it is only a potential problem at the moment—that local authorities with a particular political complexion will not necessarily see it as in their interests to canvass areas that support the other parties. I am sure that the Minister can imagine the sort of scenarios that could occur.

At the moment, there is no protection against that happening. I am not saying that it will happen. Most local authorities in my experience as a Minister were extremely diligent and took their democratic duties extremely seriously. I would be very surprised if it was a widespread problem, but it could be a problem. I welcome the comments just made by the Minister and his reassurance that he will at least explore what might be done to protect against that sort of eventuality.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I hesitate to get into a discussion on ring-fencing, which the noble Lord and I have debated several times before. The good news is that the data matching so far has come up with a much higher proportion than we originally anticipated. That will enable us to focus funding on those vulnerable groups and particular areas that we now know to be the most difficult. We all understand which those groups are. They are young men above all—young men who tend not to open letters and who move around very rapidly—students, young black voters, and other challenging groups of one sort or another. That is the area on which we are currently concentrating. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and others that the Government are co-operating actively with Bite the Ballot, Operation Black Vote and other organisations that are working to increase the intention and willingness to register within their own communities. We are also working with universities and students to ensure that they, too, are able to raise interest and maximise the registration of those groups in their areas. We are well aware of this and we are doing everything we can.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, asked whether we were going ahead for 2015. So far, things are going better than anticipated. We have not completely gone snap on it, but the IT has demonstrated more resilience than we feared might be the case, so it is on track. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s comments on the open register. There are some wider considerations here, as we all understand, such as the questions of credit references and identity verification for mortgages, and other such things. There is also an issue about overseas voters, since they will be asked to demonstrate that they have been, within the past 15 years, resident somewhere in a particular constituency. All of these things fit in with maintaining an accurate register, let alone the question of longer historical research, which relates to the future of the census—another complicated area on which I will not go into more detail here.

Yes, of course we will review the situation after 2015, and we will be absolutely concerned to do whatever we can about service registration. The question of service voting and registration is becoming a little less difficult than it has been, because as troops return from Afghanistan and from Germany, the proportion of our serviceman living outside this country is going through a relatively rapid decline. Of course they will continue to move around, but arrangements for Armed Forces voters and their spouses will be maintained in as strong a form as we possibly can.

We are absolutely concerned to get good young people’s registration forms. I have already mentioned our work with universities and other groups. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, talked about access to the Government’s risk register. Again, we have discussed this before and I have reiterated that the Government work through a risk register as a matter of course but do not publish it. We have just all agreed where we know the risks are in this shift in registration, but I have to reiterate that we knew where many of these risks were already. It is relevant that we have already had increasing problems with young men, people living in rented accommodation and ethnic minority voters. Those existed already; we simply have to work harder to get through to all of them; that is why we are targeting our efforts.

[Lord Wills]

Very briefly, everyone knew where the risks were with the current system of registration. The question I have been trying to get the Government to address is: does the way in which they are proceeding to introduce individual registration increase those risks, maintain the same level of risk or decrease the risks? Which is it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, our efforts are intended to mitigate a risk that was already increasing and is likely to increase further. We will continue to need to look at a range of issues. I am well aware that a Labour Private Member’s Bill, which has been presented two or three times in the House of Commons, suggests, for example, that benefit seekers should not be able to receive their benefits unless they are on the electoral register. This provision is not included in the Bill. It is something that the noble Lord may wish to pursue further. There is a range of questions that we still need to consider, but he and I know how difficult this is: first, getting these people on the register and then persuading many of them to vote.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked how aware we were of the importance of the register for December 2015, because it is likely to be the basis on which the redistribution of seats next time around will be drawn. Again, this is not a new problem. We are already aware that there has been underregistration in a number of cities—a number of safe Labour seats, one has to say. To the extent to which we have managed to raise the level of registration, we will raise it on a much fairer basis for the next redistribution of seats. Again, we all recognise, on a cross-party basis, that these things go together, and that we share an interest in making sure that as many of these vulnerable groups as possible are persuaded to register.

The last question from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was: who is a person of good standing? I am tempted to say that it is clearly a university professor. However, I take the question as he put it and I promise to write, particularly on the question of how many times the same person can sign a form on behalf of someone else before the ERO begins to question whether they are an appropriate person to sign the form. I am aware of where he is going with that question and I will do my best to answer it. I hope that I have answered all the questions that noble Lords raised, and I beg to move.