Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend has clearly done so much work on the issue that he anticipates one of the points that I was going to make. He is absolutely right.

I want first to illustrate the mismatch by comparing my constituency, Sheffield Central, with the neighbouring constituency, Sheffield, Hallam. I am glad that I shall be walking through the same Lobby later as my political neighbour, but the two constituencies are of a very different nature and they illustrate my argument.

Sheffield Central is inner city and multicultural; we have large council estates, houses in multiple occupation, two universities and very high levels of voter turnover. Already, 17% of households have nobody on the register. Sheffield, Hallam consists of our city’s leafy suburbs; it is largely monocultural with large areas of comfortable owner-occupation, and a very stable population. Only 4% of its households have nobody on the register. There is a huge disparity between the number of people represented by the MPs for those two constituencies.

I have made that point before, but I now have the advantage of supporting it with the latest information available, which is from the 2011 census. If the argument was reduced to a simple question of constituency size based on the number of registered voters, our two constituencies would appear to be pretty similar in size. However, if we compare the population according to the 2011 census with the number of voters registered on 2 January 2013 according to the council’s electoral registration officer, we can see that the picture is completely different. Sheffield Central has 76,596 registered voters whereas Sheffield, Hallam has 71,559—the difference is just 5,037, or 7%. According to the census, Sheffield Central has a population of 115,284 whereas Sheffield, Hallam has a population of 89,356, and so the difference is 25,928, or 20%.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I, too, am a representative of an inner-city seat. Surely the hon. Gentleman recognises, as I do, that one of the main reasons behind such differences is the number of non-UK nationals in a particular constituency who often live in households containing no UK nationals and therefore no UK voters. I know that puts a huge additional burden on him as a Member of Parliament, as it does on me—all these people require representation—but they are not UK nationals and therefore should not be voting in UK general elections.

[Paul Blomfield]

There is a bit of a difference between the two inner-city seats that the hon. Gentleman and I represent. Although there is some evidence to endorse his point, it does not explain the enormous disparity between the two seats in Sheffield.

Many of those who are excluded from the electoral register are precisely the people who form a huge proportion of my casework and I know that the situation will be the same for many Members who represent inner-city seats. More importantly, the combination of legislation means that their voice in Parliament will be reduced. If the Electoral Commission’s original concerns about the impact of the Bill came into being and were compounded by a process of redrawing boundaries based on the register as at December 2015, the gap would widen even more. If boundaries were redrawn based on an average electorate of 76,641, which was the basis for the Electoral Commission’s calculations, the actual population of Sheffield Central would be approaching 50% more than that of Sheffield, Hallam.

Some might argue that the Electoral Commission’s worst fears might no longer come true, particularly in the light of some of the concessions the Government have been forced to make. In the longer term that might be true, but crucially the next boundary review would be conducted at the low point of the registration cycle in December 2015. Let me make it clear that like those on my Front Bench I support the principle of equalisation. In so far as there is public interest in constitutional reform, that argument has enormous resonance with the public, but the people to whom I have spoken were shocked to learn that equalisation is based not on population but on the number of registered electors. The effect of the combined legislation will be not to reduce but to enhance inequity.

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[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend, and to ensure that I do not offend Mr Speaker or anyone else in the House, I welcome the opportunity to put on record the fact that I think all Liberal Democrat Members are honourable ladies and gentlemen, but I hope during my speech to point out to them what they would need to do to remain so by tomorrow morning.

The answer to this puzzle is found not in the amendments but in the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has made it quite clear that Liberal support for the changes has been withdrawn because the House of Lords Bill could not be passed. I remind the House that that is the same Deputy Prime Minister who was quite categorical in his assurances that one had no influence over the other, while the battle for the constitution still raged. It has doubtless not helped the Liberals’ mood that the public so comprehensively rejected their plans for electoral reform. The Liberals have withdrawn their love because of a contrived slight.

The Deputy Prime Minister can repeat until he is blue in the face—although a fuller conversion to that colour might prove harder to achieve—that the programme for government promised Lords reform, but that will not make it true. There was never any obligation for Conservatives to support Lords reform, and I rebelled with a heavy heart but a clear conscience. Will the same be true for the Liberals in the wrong Lobby today?

[Mark Field]

I share much of my hon. Friend’s frustration, but does she agree that this row would not have happened if, instead of focusing on the rather fatuous arguments about saving a relatively small amount of money, we had set out to equalise the constituencies but to keep the number at 650 for this House?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Even if we set aside the vital matter of the absence of an obligation on Lords reform, to make the allegation that Conservatives broke a coalition promise requires considerable front. Thirty-six per cent. of the Liberal Democrats rebelled over tuition fees, by comparison with less than 30% of the Conservatives on Lords reform. It is only because the Liberals have fewer MPs than we do—that is, they received a smaller mandate from the people—that their rebellion did not matter.

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[Chris Ruane]

He does not. I think that he has forgotten about the Act of 1536 which settled these issues.

[Mark Field]

The hon. Gentleman has a very selective memory on the actions of the previous Labour Government. The massive extension of postal voting and the resulting lack of trust that is now in the electoral system was brought about with the massive majority to which he referred. That has made an enormous difference to the running of our elections and has led to a huge amount of distrust, particularly in inner-city seats.

[Chris Ruane]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at one of the 400 questions that I have tabled on this issue, he will see that the number of people who have been prosecuted for electoral fraud each year is about one or two. That is bad; any electoral fraud is bad. If he looks at the other side of the scales of justice, he will see that there are not, as we thought, 3.5 million people missing off the register, but 6 million. If individual electoral registration had gone ahead as proposed by the Government, 16 million people would have been missing off the register.

Let us have a look at the pans of justice. With one or two cases a year of electoral fraud, all the resources are made available, but with 6.5 million people off the register, no resources are available. One of my questions, which was answered two weeks ago, asked for some numbers on this subject. If electors do not fill in the extra registration form, the electoral registration officer has to send a canvasser to their house at least twice—that is the law. Labour managed to implement that law, and in 2010 only eight local authorities disobeyed it; I think that they were all Tory authorities. In 2011, when the Tories had got their feet under the table, that figure massively increased, to 30 or 40. Of the 60 constituencies in England that do not send an electoral registration officer to knock on the doors of the non-registered, 55 are Conservative, one is Labour—Telford—and I think that the rest are Lib Dem. There is an element of politicisation in what the Conservative party is proposing.

Three years ago I went to see Experian to discuss the issue of the unregistered. I told its representatives that 3.5 million people were not on the register, but they said that the actual figure was 6.5 million. I took that information to the Electoral Commission, which said, “That can’t be true. We’ll do our own research on the issue.” Lo and behold, 18 months later, the commission came back to me and said, “Mr Ruane, you and Experian are absolutely right, but the 6.5 million people who are off the register are a different 6.5 million people from those noted by Experian.” I therefore asked the Electoral Commission whether 13 million people could be missing from the register; I said it tongue in cheek, but millions of people are missing from the register and the resources have not been made available to get them on to it.