Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
2. What assessment he has made of the implications for his policies on constitutional reform of the introduction of a British Bill of Rights.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The hon. Lady will know that the Commission on a Bill of Rights is investigating the introduction of a UK Bill of Rights, building on our responsibilities under the European convention on human rights. It is due to report at the end of this year. We look forward to its report, but I do not want to pre-empt its conclusions.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Minister for his response. Given that there are absolute rights and qualified rights under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the margin of appreciation doctrine, does the Minister know whether the commission is considering the possibility of the Human Rights Act sitting alongside the Bill of Rights in a happy coalition of rights and responsibilities?
Mr Harper
I do not know whether that is what the commission will recommend. It gave us some welcome interim advice on reform of the European Court of Human Rights, which was helpful in the negotiations that secured the agreement of all 47 members of the Council of Europe to some improvements, which were welcomed on both sides of the House. I will wait to see what the commission recommends at the end of the year.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that, far from nibbling away at this problem, which many of us fear is what the commission is doing, any Bill of Rights will be based on Westminster legislation, not on European Union legislation or the European convention on human rights?
Mr Harper
Again, I do not know what the commission will recommend. It contains distinguished and eminent lawyers on both sides of the argument. I think that it will come up with a very good report, and the Government will consider what it says. I remind my hon. Friend that this country signed up to the European convention on human rights only because this House decided that it should do so. We will listen to the commission’s conclusions and act on those that the Government support.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Given the special circumstances that exist in Northern Ireland, will the Minister have direct discussions with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland about Northern Ireland’s human rights legislation and a separate Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland?
Mr Harper
My understanding is that discussions are under way on that point, but that the parties in Northern Ireland have not been able to reach a consensus. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will continue to have discussions, but he wants to reach a consensus among the parties in Northern Ireland before making progress.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Is it not a fundamental right of the British people to elect those who make our laws? Is it not a reasonable expectation that Parliament, once it has agreed that principle, will not allow it to be prevented by delay?
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
3. What progress he expects to make on reform of the House of Lords; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
On the very subject that we were just discussing, the House will this afternoon conclude day two of the debate on the House of Lords Reform Bill. I look forward to the House supporting our Bill, which builds on a lot of the work that was done by the Labour party. We heard some good speeches from Labour Members yesterday, including the right hon. Members for Neath (Mr Hain) and for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), in support of the Bill.
Fiona Mactaggart
If, as looks possible, the programme motion is defeated tonight, will the Minister promise the House that he will move an allocation of time or committal motion before the recess?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Lady is committed to reform, which I believe from her record she is, I hope that she will support all the motions relating to the Bill on the Order Paper so that we can make progress—something that the Labour party never managed, despite the good work that it did, in all the years that it was in office.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
8. The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware of the reports that the House of Lords Reform Bill is linked to the eventual passage, or not, of the boundary changes. As somebody who has an interest in that matter because, unfortunately, I do not face very good boundary changes, will the Minister confirm for me whether he will go ahead with that link?
Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister was asked that question by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). He made it clear that there is no specific link between different parts of the Government’s programme. Of course, we will urge Members from both coalition parties to support the whole of the Government’s programme, as we have to date.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
4. What his policy is on the holding of a referendum on his plans for House of Lords reform.
House of Lords Reform Bill
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I was a little confused by the right hon. Gentleman’s criticism of the open list system. One of the things that we did after listening to the Joint Committee was adopt an open list system, in the spirit of consensus, as it is exactly what the Labour party put in its manifesto.
Sadiq Khan
The Minister is wrong to suggest that the Joint Committee had an opportunity to consider the system that he has now put in the Bill. It simply did not. I am willing to give way to the Minister again. Did the Joint Committee consider the type of voting system that is in the Bill? Well, the Minister has decided to remain in his seat, which is his prerogative.
There are legitimate concerns about the possibility that this hybrid system will lead to tensions between the different types of Member, and that those who are elected and are full time will consider themselves more legitimate, and be treated as such, than those who are unelected and part time. There are also other concerns, which will no doubt be raised over the next two days.
Jesse Norman
My hon. Friend is exactly right. As my noble Friend Lord Forsyth put it, what would be the point of electing these people if not to give them more power? Exactly the same thing as has happened in the US will happen here. I refer my colleagues and Members across the House to Lord Pannick’s brilliant memorandum on the issue, which has been published this afternoon. Lord Pannick is widely regarded as one of the most excellent lawyers and advocates of his generation, and is specifically expert in the Parliament Acts. He is also precisely the kind of person who would never be willing to stand for election to a new Senate. In his words:
“The Bill does not adequately address the central issue of constitutional concern: the fact that a House of Lords most of whose members will be elected will almost certainly be much more assertive than the unelected House of Lords and reluctant to give way.”
Lord Pannick states that the Parliament Acts
“only relate to the end of the legislative process, and not the day-to-day conventions which (at present) result in the Lords giving way to the Commons. Indeed, the Parliament Acts do not apply at all to Bills introduced in the House of Lords or to subordinate legislation.
The crucial question is this: should the Bill seek to regulate all these matters, or leave them to convention? If it leaves them to convention, then the result will be disputes between the two competing chambers. If it regulates these issues, then the result will be that relations between the chambers become justiciable in law, as they did over the Hunting Act, which went all the way to the Supreme Court.”
McKay Commission
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
Since the establishment of the Commission examining the consequences of devolution for the House of Commons, a significant programme of work has been commenced, including multiple thorough oral evidence Sessions. This has inevitably led to increased time commitment of the Commissioners.
Sir Geoffrey Bowman’s own personal time commitments mean that he has reluctantly decided to step down from his position as a member of the McKay Commission.
The Government believe that there is still a good range and balance of expertise among the remaining panel of five Commissioners. Therefore they have no plans to appoint another Commissioner in place of Sir Geoffrey Bowman, but will continue with the remaining Commissioners.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I shall speak briefly on this group of amendments, which we broadly support, on the role of the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is, of course, strongly in favour of individual electoral registration as a means of fighting electoral fraud, and I commend it for taking that position. However, the commission’s role needs to be used as a safeguard to ensure that IER will work as intended—this should be prior to its introduction —and for continued monitoring afterwards.
Amendment 30 particularly interests me because of the proposal for registration objectives in the Bill. As hon. Members will know from my contributions to the Opposition day debate on this subject and on Second Reading, my primary concern is for the inclusion of as many eligible registrations as possible on the electoral roll. I am sure that that aim is shared by all hon. Members. The Electoral Commission’s most recent estimate was that about 6 million eligible adults were missing and that registers were between 85% and 87% complete. Therefore, these changes, which we can expect will further diminish the completeness of the electoral register, and which as we saw when IER was introduced in Northern Ireland, may well be counter-productive in terms of including people on the electoral register.
I would like to see a duty on the Electoral Commission and on individual electoral registration officers for their principal aim to be that registers are as complete as possible and that there is a presumption in favour of inclusion on the roll, rather than deletion. As we have discussed previously, there is the opportunity for electoral fraud, but the number of convictions for that offence has been small. That is not to say that there is not a problem, but I believe it is more important that we get people on to the electoral register and entitled to vote. That is especially the case now, given the equalisation of constituency electoral rolls being introduced for Westminster elections and the new proposals from the Secretary of State for Wales for boundary reforms for elections to the National Assembly for Wales. No change is not an option now in terms of the National Assembly for Wales; even if we retain the 40:20 split, there will be new, equal-sized constituencies for the 40 seats.
Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill should clearly not be brought into force until IER has been trialled, and until the Electoral Commission is convinced that any adverse impacts will be as limited as they can be and that the completeness of the register will not be affected.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I should say at the beginning that I was slightly surprised that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) said that the Opposition were in favour of individual registration, as I could have sworn that on Second Reading they not only tabled a reasoned amendment, but voted against the Second Reading of the Bill. That was strange; it is difficult to see how they are in support of it. If they had only voted for the reasoned amendment, I could have accepted it as a principle, but it seems to me that they are opposed to our fundamental position.
I wish to make one or two points that I hope are helpful to the Committee. The hon. Gentleman drew attention to the lengthy period of pre-legislative scrutiny we have had. Not only did we have that, but, as I think he has acknowledged, we made a number of significant changes to our approach as a result. All I say to the Committee is that I hope the progress of the Bill reflects that considerable pre-legislative scrutiny. It is probably also worth saying that, as the Committee may have noticed, we deliberately decided not to use knives in the programme motion for the first two days of debate in order to enable it to focus on points that hon. Members thought were important. I hope that the flexibility that that gives the Committee is used properly and that we make reasonable progress that focuses on where the Committee thinks the important issues are.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) for the amendments that they have led on. They have participated very well in the experiment that the Procedure Committee has asked us to undertake. This Bill is an example of it, because all hon. Members tabling amendments were asked to include explanatory statements to enable hon. Members to understand better the nature of the amendments. I am pleased that they have done so, as it is very helpful to the House. It is just a shame that the official Opposition appear to have ignored the fact that we are conducting that experiment and have not taken that opportunity. I am sure that the Procedure Committee will draw the appropriate conclusion.
Mrs Laing
I thank the Minister for expressing his gratitude. Does it occur to him that the official Opposition might not have wished to publish explanatory statements to support their amendments as they do not want to explain their effects because they are trying to have their cake and eat it by opposing the Bill while saying that they do not oppose it? The more smoke and mirrors that are involved and the less clarity there is about their amendments, the better it is for their purpose.
Mr David
I am more than happy to provide an explanation. Resources are extremely limited for Opposition Members and the Minister will have noticed how many amendments we have tabled. That shows our concern about the fine detail of the Bill. However, we thought it was far better to follow the time-honoured practice of tabling amendments and using the facility of being at the Dispatch Box to explain our points and that is precisely what we are doing.
Mr Harper
I am sure that the Committee will thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I simply observe that my hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest and for The Cotswolds do not have the benefit of £6 million or so of Short money to provide resources, but they seem to have been able to draft very good explanatory statements for the benefit of the House.
I said on Second Reading that I intended to publish secondary legislation in draft for the House to consider. I was criticised by Opposition Members—indeed, I think that it was in their reasoned amendment—for the fact that we had not done so by Second Reading. I said that we would do so while the Bill was in Committee and I drew the House’s attention to the fact that the Opposition were responsible in government for two similar Bills, but they published no draft secondary legislation before those Bills received Royal Assent. I can confirm that I have placed in the Library of the House the first tranche of draft secondary legislation, which will be available on the Cabinet Office website tomorrow morning, for Members to consider while the Bill is in Committee. We have published the first tranche of documentation and will publish it all while the Bill is still going through Parliament and by the time the House returns in the autumn. I hope that that is helpful and it is a useful example of something that the Opposition did not do at any point when they were in government.
Mr David
I hope that the Minister will explain—after all, that is the Government’s job. If there is to be full and proper scrutiny, there is no point in publishing some of the draft legislation—we do not know which pieces—in the middle of our consideration in Committee. I raised this matter as long ago as last November and surely it would have been better for secondary legislation to have been prepared so that we could have proper parliamentary scrutiny in Committee; the Electoral Commission made the same point. It is no good producing part of the secondary legislation halfway through when we do not even know which legislation it is.
Mr Harper
The first tranche was published before we started our consideration this afternoon—on day one, not halfway through. As I said, with two similar pieces of legislation, both of which delegated significant powers to Ministers, the Labour party published no draft secondary legislation at any point during the passage of either Bill through either House of Parliament. It was all published after the Bill had received Royal Assent. I accept that this Government might not be perfect, but on this issue we have made enormous progress compared with the Labour party.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
Is it not a bit rich for the Front-Bench spokesman of the Labour party to make a fuss about this issue? When the Opposition were in government, I remember spending hours and hours in the House while they virtually rewrote entire Bills, not only by rafts of amendments as late as Report stage, but sometimes by secondary legislation after Report? I congratulate my hon. Friend on attempting to improve the procedures of the House.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing that point to the attention of the Committee. As I said, I think we made a useful step forward with pre-legislative scrutiny. We have been publishing the secondary legislation in draft so that people can read it and look at the Bill in the light of it, and I think that is a step forward. We may not be perfect yet, but we are getting there. We are getting an awful lot better.
Mr Love
Prior to the general election, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) moved his legislation introducing individual electoral registration, he made every effort to achieve cross-party agreement. That does not seem to be the case with the present Government.
Mr Harper
I am sorry, but that is a rewriting of history. If I get any details wrong, I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest will correct me. When that Bill was introduced in the House, it did not contain any provisions about individual registration, which is why we tabled a reasoned amendment and voted against the Bill. Those clauses were not in the Bill when it left the House. They were added in the other place under enormous pressure from the Conservative Members there, so this House did not even get a chance to debate them until we considered Lords amendments. I am afraid that Bill was not an example of good parliamentary practice.
Mrs Laing
I agree with my hon. Friend’s recollection of the history of a couple of years ago. The Bill to which he refers was massively changed and we had very little time in this Chamber to discuss the provisions. They were ill thought out and it is fortunate that this Minister has managed to make sense of the previous provisions introduced by the Labour Government.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point.
Before I come to the amendments, let me say something about the tone adopted by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, a point to which my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) drew attention. One of the things that I have been very clear about all the way through is that the Government are as focused on completeness as they are on accuracy, but both of those—getting on to the register everyone entitled to be on the register, and also making sure that no one is on the register who is not entitled to be on the register—are equally important. One is not more important than the other. The hon. Gentleman’s amendments, in this grouping and elsewhere, all seem to be focused on completeness, with no sense that accuracy is equally important.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) went further than that and explicitly said that he was not particularly bothered about accuracy; it was all about getting people on to the register. Getting people on to the register who are not entitled to be there is a problem. That is why 36% of the public think there is a problem with electoral fraud. It is also why, when the groups from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe come and inspect British elections, they say that if we have low levels of electoral fraud, it is not because of our electoral system, but in spite of it. That is not good enough, and it is why we need to fix the system. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall is right: we should be as focused on completeness as on accuracy. That has informed the proposals that the Government have put forward, and that is why they were well received during pre-legislative scrutiny and why we made the changes that we have.
The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) asked when it would be right to take steps if the number of people on the register fell precipitously. We do not think that that would be the effect of our proposals. I will set out a little more about our proposal for confirmation and say why we think we can successfully move two thirds of electors over to a new register. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that it was under the previous Government that 3 million people ceased to be on the electoral register, and we know that from the research that this Government commissioned. The previous Government were unaware of that fact because they commissioned no research and did not know what was going on. As a result, they took no action at all. So Government Members will not be lectured about large numbers of people falling off the electoral register, because it happened under the previous Government and no action was taken in response.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is quite right in one respect. There are two objectives: one is to get everyone on the register who is entitled to be on it; and the other is to ensure that no one is on it who should not be. Both are central to, and inform, everything we are doing. That is partly why we put the carry-forward proposals in place. If anything, they do a little of what the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr suggested, which is to ensure that for the 2015 general election—the first for which the new register will be used—people do not inadvertently fall off the register and become unable to vote. I think that that is a sensible proposal.
Amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, proposes that we should not be able to commence with these provisions if the Electoral Commission does not say that the new electoral system is operating effectively. It relates to the guidance issued by the Secretary of State. The reason we thought it appropriate to have guidance issued by the Secretary of State is that there will be important operational details that registration officers will have to think about, particularly on how the new IT service for verifying applications will operate. We therefore thought that the transitional period should effectively switch off after five years.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly tried to make a big hoo-ha about the use of the word “likely” and the choice of five years. It seemed to me to be a sensible period of time. I could have written “certain”, but then he would have criticised by arguing that I could not possibly know the future. It is a sensible set of proposals. We are working closely with the Electoral Commission on all these matters, and it is represented on the programme board. We worked closely with it during pre-legislative scrutiny and listened carefully to its advice, but I am clear that, ultimately, Ministers are responsible for the implementation of the system—they have the advantage of being accountable to Parliament—which I think is right.
Amendment 30, which the hon. Member for Edmonton spoke to earlier, would ask the Electoral Commission to pronounce on the state of the register or the proposal. My first point on that is that the chair of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, has welcomed our move and, indeed, the timetable. She 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.”
I see no great value in the commission producing a report on the basis set out in the amendment. It refers to
“an electoral register made up solely of electors who have registered individually”,
but one of the things we have learned from the experience in Northern Ireland, to which the hon. Member for Caerphilly referred, is that the register used for the 2015 general election will not entirely consist of people who have registered individually because we have a carry-forward proposal to ensure that those who are on the previous register and failed to register individually do not drop off the register and miss out on their opportunity to vote. That is an important safeguard, and one that we inserted, having learned from the experience in Northern Ireland, and it has been generally welcomed outside the House. When Northern Ireland Members have commented on that, they have also welcomed the fact that we have learned from it. I do not think that amendment 30 is justified by the evidence.
Finally, let me turn to amendment 31. It appears implicitly to support the Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order and the pilots it will set up, so I look forward to the support of the hon. Member for Caerphilly for the order tomorrow in Committee. Again, I think that the use of that order is very sensible. When we did our first set of pilots, more than 2 million records were matched against Department for Work and Pensions data. That showed us that we could check the accuracy of the information against the DWP database and, therefore, be confident that those people really existed and lived at those addresses. Therefore, that is a good way for moving two thirds of the electors on to the new register, thereby reducing the risk and enabling electoral registration officers to focus on the remaining third of electors. The Electoral Commission said that because we had drawn those conclusions from pilots where that had not been the intention of the pilots—they had been about using data matching to look at increasing the number of people on the register and at people who had not previously been registered—it felt that we should run a further set of pilots with that specific objective in order to be absolutely certain that confirmation would work.
We are very confident that confirmation will work, and we think that what the Electoral Commission said was very sensible, which is why the order we will be debating tomorrow will enable us to run that set of pilots. That will do two things: first, it will confirm to our satisfaction and that of the Electoral Commission that confirmation will work; and secondly, it will enable us to refine the process so that we make the process as efficient as possible for electoral registration officers. I think that is very sensible.
David Wright
When does the Minister expect the process to be complete? Will the Government assess whether the process has been effective, and what happens if it is not? Will we have to go through a further phase of piloting, or will the Government proceed anyway?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman asks some very good questions. The pilots will run this year and then be assessed not just by the Government—we will of course assess them—but by the Electoral Commission, as the previous set of pilots was. We will then publish our assessment, and the commission will publish its assessment, so we will be very transparent about the process and Members will be able to see what has happened.
Based on the pilots that we have already run, we are pretty confident—I am not going to say “certain”, because that would be complacent—that the process will work and that confirmation will enable us to move a significant number of electors on to the new register in a way that is much less risky, increases confidence and, very importantly, enables EROs not only to focus their efforts on the electors they cannot confirm, but to do some work with electors who may not be on the register—people who perhaps move more frequently. That is important, and that is how we have set up the funding mechanism. We have been very transparent about the process, which will be published, and it will enable us to take sensible decisions.
The Bill strikes the right balance between completeness and accuracy, both of which are very important, but the amendments would tilt that balance in an unhelpful direction.
Mr Harper
I am not really sure that there is an enormous rush. The Electoral Commission likes to point out that it has been calling for individual registration since 2003—nine years ago. We made it very clear that, as the hon. Gentleman now knows from what I and my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said, when his Government were legislating for individual registration, having been forced to do so because of pressure from, among others, my hon. Friend, we said that we thought they were going incredibly slowly and we could speed them up. Indeed, it was a commitment in our manifesto.
We have not suddenly speeded up the process. We said from the beginning—in the previous Parliament—that we thought it could be done much more quickly. That is important, because—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that we did not object, but actually we did. When the proposal was finally included in the Bill in the other House, my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest gracefully accepted that the Government had moved, and it would have been a bit churlish if, having got the stuff on the statute book, she had then started cavilling about it.
We made it very clear at the outset, however, that the proposal should have been in the Bill from the beginning, but it was not, which is why we voted against the Bill by way of a reasoned amendment. The proposal was inserted in the other place only at the eleventh hour. We have been very consistent; we think that the provision should have been introduced some time ago, and the Electoral Commission has been calling for it for the best part of a decade. No one can really accuse us of going at break-neck speed.
Mrs Laing
With all due respect, the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) is wrong about what my party did in opposition. I happened to be speaking for the Opposition on this issue, so I know what we did. What the Minister has said is absolutely correct.
We accepted the last Government’s proposals because they were better than nothing, but we always said that the matter should be dealt with more quickly and that the relevant measures could be implemented more quickly than the last Government wanted. We always said that we would have a view not only to the accuracy but to the comprehensiveness of the register, and that we would proceed at the right pace. The fact that this Government are very much more efficient than the last one in implementing a necessary policy is a matter on which to congratulate the Government and the Minister in particular, not criticise them.
Mr Harper
I have not yet finished answering my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, but of course I will give way before I ask the Opposition to withdraw their amendments.
On pace, I should say that we have hardly rushed this matter. In September 2010, I made an announcement at this Dispatch Box about our proposals. We then published draft legislation. We have conducted pre-legislative scrutiny, which I think even the hon. Member for Caerphilly admitted has gone at a reasonably leisurely pace. We have hardly been bounding through. Unlike the previous Government, we have not at the drop of a hat introduced Bills that no one had ever seen and then rammed them through the House. We have conducted ourselves in a thoughtful way, and we have hardly been rushing.
Angela Smith
In 2009, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said:
“That is one of the reasons why we will not oppose the timetable the Minister has suggested this evening…the Electoral Commission…and others who will be involved in the implementation of the Government’s current plans are concerned that this should not be rushed, but taken step by step to ensure that the integrity of the system is protected—and not only protected, but seen to be protected”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 108.]
Will the Minister explain the change in point of view?
Mr Harper
There has not been a change in point of view. I did not want to bother the Committee with this again, but I am going to have to now. On Second Reading of the previous legislation in 2009, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude) made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, but we thought that it could be accomplished earlier. We said at the time that it could be done earlier, and on page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to implement it swiftly. This is not new news.
As I said, when the Bill for which the Labour party was responsible left the House, it contained no provisions about individual electoral registration; they were inserted in the other place. When the Bill came back, it seemed to me that, having got the Government at least to move on that issue, it would have been churlish to have started cavilling about it.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
I gave the hon. Lady a lot of latitude to correct the record, but she needs to do that only once.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend has corrected the record and put the matter straight. I heard the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) talking from a sedentary position, so let me say that we are working very closely with the Electoral Commission on this matter. It is represented on the programme board, as are the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the Association of Electoral Administrators.
Mr Harper
No, I will not. I have given way to the hon. Gentleman several times, and I am concluding my remarks.
The Government are responsible for delivering this proposal. It is better that such things be the responsibility of Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament and to Members of Parliament, than to give the responsibility to bodies that, yes, are statutory, but are not really accountable to this House in that way. I urge the hon. Member for Caerphilly to withdraw his amendment and to support clause 1 standing part of the Bill.
Mr Harper
The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and a number of others raised a point about service personnel. About 75% of our service personnel are registered to vote. I will not be quite as harsh to Labour Members as one or two of my hon. Friends were, because, admittedly, their Government made some progress, on that as on many other issues involved in the Bill. Some of my hon. Friends took every opportunity to harry Labour Members, but they did make progress, although, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who has now left the Chamber, they did so only at the last possible moment. At the time of the most recent general election, they made specific arrangements to enable our service personnel stationed in Afghanistan to vote.
One of the problems involves the electoral timetable, which, for general elections, is quite tight. I will not go into that in detail now, because we will deal with it when we reach clause 13, but one of our reasons for wanting to extend the timetable is our wish to ensure that overseas voters, both service personnel and others, have a much more realistic chance of casting a vote themselves, by post, rather than having to rely on appointing a proxy. I think that if they could vote by post and had an opportunity to make their votes count, more of them would feel incentivised to do so. When our troops are deployed overseas in significant locations, we will repeat the exercise that the Labour Government organised for the general election and we organised for the referendum on the alternative vote, and take specific steps to enable our service personnel to participate. Like my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), I am very pleased that we are retaining the first-past-the-post system for the foreseeable future.
Mr Syms
Is not one of the good by-products of five-year fixed Parliaments the fact that everyone will know the most likely date of a general election well in advance? That will make electoral registration for central and local government, and the build-up to it, much easier to deal with.
Mr Harper
Yes, that will make a difference. My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) gave some statistics. In the December 2010 register, which followed the most recent general election, 32,000 electors were registered to vote overseas—which, admittedly, is not a huge number in comparison with the 4.3 million cited by my hon. Friend—but by the following year, the figure had fallen to 23,000. It appears that the incentive of the general election is a spur to registration, as it is for domestically residing voters. I think that knowing when an election will take place will help both registration officers and people living overseas.
My hon. Friend referred to the attestation requirements involved in the registration process. I know that they can pose difficulties, especially in countries where there are not many other British citizens. We are trying to establish whether there is anything that we could do. If we need to alter the requirements, we can do so by changing secondary legislation. We are also considering a trial of online registration, which I think could help not just voters living in the United Kingdom, but those living overseas.
That brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall about communication. The Government are currently trialling—without universal approbation from Members on both sides of the House—a website featuring statements from all the candidates for the police and crime commissioner elections, which will then be promoted by the Electoral Commission and in the material that goes to voters. We may consider a similar procedure for a general election, with an eye on overseas voters.
I should also say to my hon. Friend that overseas voters can vote only in parliamentary elections. That makes their relationship with their local councillors slightly less consequential, but it also means that their votes are not just about who their Member of Parliament will be but about what flows from that, namely who will govern their country—and they are, of course interested in that.
My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds made the important point that most British citizens overseas are working there, winning orders for Britain and working for British companies that bring wealth into this country. It is important for them to have an opportunity to contribute to the decision on who will govern the country.
Mark Menzies
The Minister is absolutely right. I have several hundred BAE Systems constituents who are out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and I want to ensure that they are not disfranchised.
Mr Harper
That is a good point. One of the ways in which we can grow our economy is to win orders abroad. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke of those who work hard for many of our companies overseas. That means basing British citizens abroad, sometimes temporarily but often permanently, so that they can work with companies to win orders and install and support equipment, and it is very important for them not to be disfranchised.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend has heard the fairly strong opinions held by, at least, Conservative Members. He has said, adeptly, that the attestation requirements could be changed by means of secondary legislation, but he has not said whether they would be changed by that means. Will he give us some idea of the action that he will take following the debate?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend has anticipated my closing remark. As he knows, we have been considering the matter. Along with my officials, I am continuing to think about ways in which we could replace the attestation process with a process involving appropriate levels of security—my hon. Friend’s thoughtful proposals touched on that—and also making it much easier for people to register. I will add my hon. Friend’s well thought through model to my current thinking. I have listened carefully to the thoughts that have been expressed in the House. If we decide to make changes, which I hope to be able to do, the House will have to vote on them in the usual way. I hope that that reassures him.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1
Register of electors: alterations and removal
Frank Dobson
Although there is apparently a consensus on moving to individual electoral registration, I declare that I do not subscribe to that consensus. I think I had been in the Commons for about a month when there was a vote on which both Front-Bench teams were agreed on some principle. Bernard Braine, an old Tory MP, said to me, “Come on, let’s vote against, because when both Front Benches are in agreement, somebody is being swindled out of their rights.” There is a real danger that in implementing the general proposal, many people will be swindled out of their rights.
We should bear it in mind that estimates of the number of people currently entitled to be on the register but who are not on the register vary between 3 million and 6 million, but no one queries the fact that at least 3 million of our fellow citizens who are entitled to vote are not at present on the electoral register. We are now contemplating a change that will make it more difficult to register. Logically, it would appear that the 3 million will be added to, rather than reduced. We are also talking about the non-carry-over of many postal votes. The people who are on that list are not exclusively disabled and disadvantaged, but many of those who have a postal vote for several elections, which as far as they are concerned is indefinite, are among the most disabled and disadvantaged. It is difficult to see how we can be complacent about knocking them off the register or the list of postal voters, particularly when there are doubts about the appeal arrangements, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) said. The Government, on behalf of the House of Commons, need to address those points, because so far that has not been done.
Another point I will make for Tory Members is that their party has always been the best, by miles, at getting people postal votes, so there is every possibility that once in a while it will be quite a lot of Tory voters who lose the right to a postal vote. I urge Government Members, in their own self-interest, to consider whether that is a good or a bad idea.
My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly also talked about the application of the new arrangements to the electoral register which will be used for the next round of boundary changes. I must admit that I am opposed to the whole approach to boundaries at the moment. Members used to represent a locality, but in future they will represent an anonymous agglomeration of people and there will be little sense that they represent a particular area. Indeed, we could reasonably start talking about constituency No. 10 or constituency No. 245 rather than the place they allegedly represent, because it will no longer be a place; it will be just a group of people. I think that there is a real danger—in fact, almost a certainty—that the introduction of individual electoral registration will mean that the boundary changes that will be considered after the next general election will be mean a smaller number of voters than were on the register at the previous general election.
Apart from a very limited number of people who are paid to support what is proposed, I have yet to meet anyone who does not admit in private conversation that the likely consequence of introducing individual electoral registration is a reduction in the number of people who are registered. We need to get things in perspective. If between 3 million and 6 million people are entitled to be on the register but are not on it, knocking some people off because there might have been a limited amount of fraud seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse.
Mr Harper
I can reassure the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) that he can simultaneously support his party and oppose individual registration, because it says it is in favour of it but then votes against the Bill, so he can have his cake and eat it. To pick up on the central thrust of his remarks, I simply do not accept his proposition on the number of people who will be on the register. In Northern Ireland, where individual electoral registration was introduced, what went wrong—after all, it was introduced by the Government of whom he was a member—was its introduction overnight with no carry-forward process, which caused a number of people who were eligible to be registered to drop off the register. That was recognised and the carry-forward process was reinstituted. We have learned from that. If we look at the status quo, the register is more accurate in Northern Ireland than it is in Great Britain; fewer people who are not entitled to vote are on the register and it is at least as complete as it is in Great Britain. In other words, there are at least as many people who are entitled to vote on the register under individual registration. I am not going to start comparing people who live in different parts of the United Kingdom, but if in Northern Ireland they can manage to register under an individual electoral registration system and have a register that is both as complete and more accurate, it should be perfectly possible for citizens in the rest of the United Kingdom to manage that, too.
Frank Dobson
What is the Minister’s source of information on the number of people on the electoral register in England, Scotland and Wales who are not entitled to be on it?
Mr Harper
The information comes from a very good piece of work that we commissioned the Electoral Commission to do, so that we had a clear understanding of the electoral registration system’s starting position before we introduced individual electoral registration. We mean to carry out that piece of work after we have introduced the system so that we can demonstrate that the right hon. Gentleman’s fears are groundless. As I have said, the system is working very well in one part of the United Kingdom, and without all of these problems. We have learnt from Northern Ireland’s transitional experience so that we do not repeat the mistakes—mistakes that were introduced under the Government of whom he was a member. I think that he really exaggerates the fears.
Graham Jones
Following the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), in the piece of work the Minister says the Electoral Commission has done, how many people were excluded from the register or were not on it? Was it 3 million or 6 million? What was the figure?
Mr Harper
I can tell the hon. Gentleman, although I am not pleased to, that the figure was 6 million. I can confirm, therefore, that under the previous Government 3 million people disappeared from the register, so I will take no lectures from the Opposition on that. I am confident that, under the proposals we have set out, we will not see the problems that they have suggested there will be. The brutal truth is that when they were in government they commissioned no research to help them understand the position post-2000 and so they did not know what was going on. Having commissioned that work and had the Electoral Commission carry it out, we now know that the problem actually got worse and the previous Government did nothing about it. We are confident that our proposals are robust, and I will set some of them out and respond to the amendments in a moment. We know that the system works well because it works perfectly well in Northern Ireland and we have learnt from the problems that occurred during the transitional process.
Mr David
The Minister says that he is confident about his proposals, but the sure way to test whether his confidence is well placed would be to delay the introduction of the process until the second tranche of pilot schemes have been assessed. Why does he not allow that assessment to take place before deciding, because then he would see whether or not his confidence is well placed?
Mr Harper
We have hardly rushed in the way we have conducted this legislation. I announced our decision in September 2010 and we then published the legislation with the pre-legislative scrutiny. We have been doing this in a very deliberate and careful way, as I think most people would accept.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
The Minister has referred to the experience in Northern Ireland, but does he accept that the dip that took place there was not just a temporary blip after which the numbers were immediately recovered following one step, because it took some time to recover? Does he also accept that there is something qualitatively different about the current proposal because for the first time individual electoral registration will be used to determine a boundary review? That is an overnight use of a new system.
Mr Harper
There are two points there. I accept that there was a problem and that it took some years to get the register back after that drop, and that is precisely why having learnt from the experience we have put the carry-forward process in place—so that we do not get the drop in the first place. That point is quite right. I will address the hon. Gentleman’s second point directly when I refer to amendments 20, 18 and 19. If he does not think that I have done so, he can come back to it.
On amendment 3, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) talked about the appeals system and asked very perceptively whether the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David)was trying to keep in place the existing system or to put in place a new one. I think that the answer, which the hon. Gentleman obfuscated, is that he is after keeping in place the existing system, and I can confirm that sections 56 and 57 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 already make provision for appeals against the decisions of registration officers in Great Britain, including those to remove people from the register.
Paragraph 17 of schedule 4 to the Bill makes the necessary amendments to ensure that that provision continues to apply under the new system, and I refer hon. Members in particular to the proposed insertion of paragraphs (azd) and (aa) in section 56(1) of the 1983 Act, which would deal with appeals against decisions under proposed section 10ZE.
That sounds very complicated, but basically it means that the existing appeals system will continue as now but under the new system. It is quite complicated and not easy to follow because this Bill amends the 1983 Act, but I hope that, with that reassurance, at least on amendment 3 the hon. Gentleman will not feel the need to press it to a Division.
Electoral fraud came up in the debate, and I now have in front of me the quotation from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Its office for democratic institutions and human rights undertook an election assessment mission report in 2010, on page 11 of which it describes the voter registration system in Great Britain as
“the weakest link of the electoral process due to the absence of safeguards against fictitious registrations.”
So there is a real problem, and about 36% of voters think that there is a real problem with electoral fraud. Indeed, the problem is with not just electoral fraud, but the use of the electoral register, which has been identified as an important stage in identity fraud and financial crime.
Nick de Bois
I remind the Minister that I have reported to the House on two occasions, last year and this year, that from a random sample of 100 people who came to my constituency and had no entitlement to vote, more than 20% were found on the electoral roll—for a number of reasons, I concede, which backs up my hon. Friend’s point.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me continue with my point about fraud.
A recent Metropolitan police and national fraud initiative analysis, looking at 29,000 strands of identity data found on forged and counterfeit documents, showed that 45.6% matched electoral registration data, and a lack of any robust verification process is a tool that criminals use for creating fictitious identities to be used not in voting fraud but for financial crime, so we need to deal with that as well.
When police have electoral fraud drawn to their attention, and it is the responsibility of the police given that electoral fraud is a crime, they take such matters seriously. I recently met the Association of Chief Police Officers’ lead on the issue and have discussed it with the Electoral Commission, and, if colleagues think that there is electoral fraud and report it to the police, the police will certainly take it seriously, but colleagues will be expected to stand up the accusations they make and be prepared to swear statements and to enable the police to take action. There is both a perception of a problem and a real problem with, in particular, financial fraud.
In amendments 20, 18 and 19, the hon. Member for Caerphilly sets out his concerns about our proposals. Amendment 20, which would extend the transition to individual registration by extending the carry-forward, focuses only on completeness, not on accuracy, and one problem with his suggestion is that, if we did what he wanted, by the time of the publication of the registers after the 2015 canvass, it might have been almost two years since EROs had actually heard from people—[Interruption.]
The Temporary Chair (Katy Clark)
Order. Will Members refrain from chatting and enable the Minister to be heard?
Mr Harper
Thank you, Ms Clark.
The danger for the hon. Member for Caerphilly is that, in his proposals, he urges us to deal with completeness, but, if we accept his argument that they would increase completeness, and I am not sure that they would, we find that they may do so at the expense of accuracy. They would leave on the register people who were not likely to be at the address in question any more, because they would not have responded to an electoral registration officer for some time.
Angela Smith
If accuracy is more important than completeness, why is the Minister allowing the register to be used for the general election in 2015? If it is good enough for the election, it is good enough for the boundary review.
Mr Harper
There is a very clear answer: the register’s use in the election will be its first use, and we know that at the time of a general election people will be very focused on it. By the time of the publication of the registers in 2015, individuals who have not been confirmed automatically at the start of the transition will have had more than one year to register individually, had more than two canvasses, been contacted a number of times by the electoral registration officer and between canvasses had a general election, a time when awareness of politics and voting is at its highest.
Our intention remains that EROs will write to individuals who have neither registered nor been confirmed towards the end of the 2015 canvass to inform them that they will be removed and to offer them one further chance to apply. It seems to me that, for somebody to be eligible to be registered, at their property and not to have registered individually for the 2015 register, they will almost have had to go out of their way to avoid being contacted by an ERO, and almost deliberately have not registered. The steps that we have put in place are very robust.
Mark Durkan
Reflecting on the Northern Ireland experience again, does the Minister not recognise that one problem in Northern Ireland was that people thought, because they had voted in a recent election, that they were already registered automatically for future purposes? The amount of information actually created confusion and an assumption that if someone had a vote they were on the register in future.
Mr Harper
It is worth pointing out that, after the general election in 2015, there will be another full canvass of households to ensure that we get people on the register. The danger with just carrying everybody forward for ever and a day is that we just perpetuate inaccuracy; we might get completeness but it would be at the expense of ensuring that the data were accurate.
Mr Harper
Let me make some progress, because otherwise I will not be able to deal with the amendments that the hon. Member for Caerphilly tabled. I will see how things have moved on at the end.
We have announced that about two thirds of voters will be confirmed automatically, but the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who is no longer in her place, said that the figure will not be uniform throughout the country, and that is quite right—I confirmed it on Second Reading. She also referred to funding, and we propose to deal with the issue by ensuring that better support for funding is available to areas with bigger challenges. In the summer, I will publish our proposals on how we allocate funding in order to receive feedback from electoral registration officers throughout the country so that they feel that the funding mechanism is sufficiently robust.
Amendment 18 and 19 are about the carry-forward of absent votes. If we were undertaking this process is a purist way, we would not bother having the carry-forward at all; we would just have individual registration and then test it out. But we have learned from Northern Ireland, so we are introducing the carry-forward to stop people dropping off the register.
We do not propose to extend the canvass to those who have an absent vote, because there is a risk in the system with absent voters: if registrations are fictitious in the first place, the checks and balances on identifiers for absent votes will not really add any security to the system. If someone can make up an identity, they can make up the identifiers, so we think that there is more risk involved in that process.
To deal with risk, however, we propose, first, to use data matching to undertake confirmation, meaning that two thirds of voters will be moved over automatically on the register, including two thirds on average of those who have an absent vote.
Secondly, as colleagues on both sides of the House will know, people with postal votes have postal identifiers, their date of birth and their signature, which they have to refresh every five years because signatures can change and deteriorate over time. We are therefore going to delay the postal vote identifier refresh in 2014 and bring forward the refresh from 2015, so all electors using postal voting methods whose identifiers are due to be refreshed in those two years will be asked to provide them as well as to register. Those whose entries on the register have automatically been confirmed will be asked to provide their refreshed identifiers when they get their letter. EROs will be communicating to anyone with an absent vote who is invited to register under the new system, to make it quite clear what happens if they do not register. If they do not register, they will be written to again and informed that they have lost their absent vote but given another opportunity. All the steps that we propose will make things very clear and it will be difficult for someone inadvertently to lose their absent vote.
The final point is about disabled voters. As I said on Second Reading, we are also going to look at having an online registration system; moving away from a paper-based system to one in which people can register electronically is a way of getting more disabled people registered.
Sheila Gilmore
The Minister stated that concern about carrying forward the postal vote is to do with fictitious people. However, he appears to be happy to carry over other people, who might equally be fictitious. If a fictitious person is on the roll at the moment and carried over, come the general election someone using that identity could go to the polling station and vote; we do not check identity as people vote. If large numbers of people using fictitious identities are trying to vote, they can do that. Why is it thought that there is a greater problem with postal voting, for which at least some additional safeguards are in place?
Mr Harper
Those safeguards work only if the person with the postal vote is legitimate in the first place. The postal vote identifiers are very good for checking that the postal vote cast is the one for the person who has registered; there is a good check in that part of the system. That is not helpful, however, if the person who has registered has created a fictitious identity. We know that it is easier for somebody to set up a fictitious identity and cast a postal vote than vote in person using that identity. The hon. Lady seems to be arguing in favour of having ID cards before one votes, but the Government do not plan to introduce those.
I urge the Opposition to withdraw amendment 3 on appeals and not to press their remaining three amendments. The steps that I set out are robust. We are providing proper funding in the system for electoral registration officers to be able to communicate with voters and make sure that the system is sufficiently flexible. In parts of the country where there is a bigger challenge, for whatever reason, EROs will have access to more funding.
Frank Dobson
I thank the Minister for his snotty response. Oddly enough, I was simply seeking information. The Minister confirmed—I am glad that he did—that the current appeals machinery will cover people being knocked off the electoral register. Will that also apply to people being taken off the list of postal voters? If so, will they be informed in time to appeal?
Mr Harper
The provision for appeal against the decisions of registration officers are against the decisions of registration officers. If those decisions are made because a rule laid in statute is being followed, the appeal will not get very far. As I said, we will make sure that EROs contact people who are registered with an absent vote a number of times to encourage them to register individually. If they do not register individually, EROs will explain to them on a number of occasions the consequence for their absent vote, so that people are given the opportunity.
One would have to be trying hard to avoid knowing what was going on and avoid registering individually. Part of the reason for the confirmation process is to get the on average two thirds of voters moved to a new system, to enable electoral registration officers to focus on those who do not, to target resources better, to use public money more efficiently and to have a more efficient, complete and accurate register.
I hope that the Opposition will withdraw their amendment and let the schedule stand part.
Mr David
I hear what the Minister said about amendment 3 and I am pleased that his reassurances are clear. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said, we are talking about a new system and it might not be possible simply to use the current system for a new system. I urge the Government to keep the issue under review, bearing in mind that, as has been said, more people might want to appeal against an ERO’s decision than have until now.
I am minded not to press amendment 3 to a vote, but we shall press amendments 20 and 18 at the appropriate time. We will leave amendment 19 to one side. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 2
Applications for registration and verification of entitlement etc
Mr Harper
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) said, amendment 1 is largely a probing amendment. It concerns an important issue, and as I said to him when we exchanged words on the subject previously, it is of course right that people who are eligible to vote in more than one location because they genuinely reside there should be able to exercise their rights. We do not have any plans to change what elections someone can vote in once they are registered to vote. If they are on the register legitimately, they will be able to vote in those elections.
In the amendment, my hon. Friend probes whether registration officers should be able to ask people whether they are registered to vote elsewhere. I can confirm that the draft secondary legislation that I have published today, which is available in the Library, contains a provision to be made under the powers in clause 2 requiring that an application form for registration must ask for other addresses at which the applicant is resident. That will mean that registration officers can then perform checks to ensure that the applicant is genuinely resident there. It is not about owning property there; it is about being resident there. If they are, they should be able to be registered to vote there in accordance with the law and not otherwise.
We will need to design the paper forms carefully so that we do not make them too complicated and user-unfriendly, and the Electoral Commission will do so. I feel sure that my hon. Friend will be reassured if he examines the draft secondary legislation in the Library. Given that he said amendment 1 was a probing amendment, I hope that he will feel able to withdraw it.
Mark Reckless
The Minister may have reassured my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), but the issue that I raised was what happens when someone votes twice. The Minister suggested that ACPO took that seriously, but why does ACPO decide how seriously electoral fraud should be taken, and what can we do to see that there is proper enforcement when illegal behaviour has clearly taken place?
Mr Harper
I listened to my hon. Friend very carefully. I obviously do not know the circumstances of the case that he mentioned, but I can give an example of why the police may not have pursued the case beyond simply giving advice. The constituent in question may have voted more than once inadvertently, not understanding the rules. I do not know what the circumstances were, but that is entirely possible. For example, after the last election I received several letters from colleagues writing on behalf of constituents who were not British nationals or Commonwealth citizens, so were not legitimately able to participate in our general election but who had been erroneously registered as such. They had found that the electoral registration officer had been a bit more diligent and had suddenly told them that they could not vote in our general elections. They were writing because they were outraged, and one did not like to put it to them that they had actually been breaking the law for the past few years in casting a vote. If those cases were raised with the police, they might consider that the law had been broken, but they might also consider that the appropriate mechanism would be to explain matters to the person rather than pursue them.
If my hon. Friend has in mind a specific case, I suggest that he speak to the Crown Prosecution Service and ask why it did not pursue the case. There are two tests of course, one being an evidential one and the other whether a prosecution is in the public interest. I suggest that in this specific case it may be worth his doing that. If he does not get anywhere with the police or the CPS, I would be obliged if he would get back to me and I would be happy to take it up for him.
Amendment 4 would require details of the information that we would require to be put in the Bill. That would not be helpful for two reasons. First, the draft legislation that I published earlier today sets out the requirements and the information that individuals will need to provide. It is worth saying that although regulations are made by Ministers, all the regulations under this Bill are affirmative and will have to be debated and voted for by both Houses of Parliament. It is not a power only for Ministers—there is parliamentary control over it. We will ask for that information as set out in the draft legislation.
Secondly, as well as being unnecessary, the amendment would be unhelpful. Putting the details on the face of the legislation would make it difficult to change if it became preferable to use different evidence in the future. Although we expect the national insurance number and date of birth to be the standard information for the vast majority of the population, we have said that if there are people—it will be only a small number—who do not have an NI number, it should be possible for them to provide alternative evidence so that they may register to vote. Given that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) wants to be assured that no eligible elector would be disfranchised, putting the specific details in the Bill and not allowing any exceptions would be unhelpful.
Mr Harper
An example might be if someone did not have an NI number but had other evidence of identity. A citizen from another Commonwealth country who had never worked or claimed benefits in the UK, and did not have an NI number, might be able to use their passport. It is about providing a range of evidence that fulfils the accuracy test so that we can be confident about someone’s identity in that small number of cases in which people are not able to provide NI numbers. When the hon. Gentleman looks at the draft secondary legislation, he will see that it sets out that information in detail.
The hon. Gentleman read out the information in the privacy impact assessment, and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) also picked up that point. The first piece of information will obviously have been provided already. It is worth saying that none of the extra information requested will be published or added to the electoral register. It will be used to confirm someone’s eligibility to vote—for example, the reason for asking for immigration status if someone is not a British or EU citizen is that Commonwealth citizens are eligible to vote in our elections only if they do not need, or have, leave to remain. At the moment, it is not clear in many of the forms that people have to fill in that that information is required, which may be one reason why people vote genuinely not understanding that they are not entitled to do so.
Nor is immigration status checked on any systematic basis. It is checked in Northern Ireland, where it is one of the checks that the electoral officer does. In answer to my hon. Friend, we are working with the Border Agency to se whether—in a scalable way, given that Northern Ireland has a much smaller population—that information can be checked systematically so that only those people eligible to vote can go on the electoral register. I know that will reassure him and others.
For the sake of completeness, the reason for asking people about their previous address—some electoral registration officers already ask for this—is so that we can ensure that we clean up duplicate registrations. If someone moves, the new electoral registration officer will ask where they previously lived and can then inform the previous electoral registration officer so that the person can be deleted from the old register. That sometimes happens now, but it is not done systematically. We received feedback during pre-legislative scrutiny that it would be good to ensure that we no longer had lots of duplicate registrations. It was one of the arguments made for a national register. We did not like that idea because we did not want to create a national database, but this is a way to deal with the problem without creating such a database.
Mr Harper
Yes. This is about people who have moved. People who legitimately reside in more than one place, which may well include students, are entitled to be registered in either or both of those places. It is up to them to choose. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall, we will also ask people if there are other locations where they reside and where they are registered or intend to be registered. That will not drive anyone away, but will help electoral registration officers to make sure that the register is more accurate.
I hope that with those assurances my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Dan Rogerson
I am delighted to hear what the Minister has to say and it was remiss of me not to have checked in the Library before I spoke. I am grateful to him for his remarks and for how he has listened over the past couple of years to me and my constituent Mr Angus Lamond, with whom he has corresponded on several occasions. My constituent was an independent council candidate in the elections and was incensed because he felt that second-home voters were being targeted and mobilised in some way. I am delighted that the Government are taking this issue seriously and dealing with it proportionately. I look forward to seeing the proposals that the Minister has put in the Library today come into effect, and I beg to seek leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr David
I just have a query on my amendment. The Minister was slightly cavalier in comparing primary legislation, and matters on the face of the Bill, with secondary legislation. Yes, both have to go through the House as part of the parliamentary process, but there is a world of difference. I would not like to think that the Minister was undervaluing primary legislation.
Mr Harper
I do not undervalue primary legislation. Indeed, it is because I recognise that the Bill contains significant secondary legislative powers that we have published the first tranche in draft today, and I have committed to doing so while the Bill is still in this House. It is important that colleagues on both sides are able to look at what we are intending to use those powers for and what we are intending to bring forward for approval. It is not sensible, however, to put all that detail in the Bill, because it would mean that every time we wanted to change something we would have to produce a Bill and take it through all its processes. On these important issues, it is right to have affirmative legislation so that it has to be debated and voted on in both Houses of Parliament. That gets the balance right between proper parliamentary control and the flexibility to change with changing times.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2
Sharing and checking information etc
Mr Harper
A number of points have been raised; let me go through them.
First, I shall respond to the hon. Lady’s questions about the IT service. Part of the point of developing the pilots, and particularly the set that we will be discussing in the delegated legislation Committee tomorrow—I do not know whether I shall have the pleasure of seeing the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) or for Caerphilly (Mr David) there—is to ensure, as I think I mentioned, that they are scalable. One of the things that came through in the original pilots was that they are quite resource-intensive. One of the things that we want to look at, in seeing how some of this data capture will work, is ensuring that the process is scalable. The final shape of how the IT service will operate is something that we will work on over the next period, although the service will definitely not be a quango, because, apart from anything else, we deliberately do not have the power to create quangos in this Bill. The final shape is yet to be decided, but we are not going to create another unaccountable non-governmental organisation that nobody will have any control over.
The hon. Lady’s amendments fall into two groups. Amendment 5 deals with local authorities, a point that divides into two parts. In two-tier areas, the ERO already has the ability to look at all the data that the local authority they were appointed by possesses. He or she can therefore look at council tax data and housing benefit data. The gap arises in two-tier areas where the ERO currently does not have the ability to look at the data held by the higher-tier authority. One of the things we will do—not in the pilots that we will debate tomorrow, but in a further set of pilots—is look specifically at how effective the sharing of data is between those tiers of local authorities. If the pilots show that it is effective, we would propose to enable it for local authorities through secondary legislation—that is, if it works, we enable it.
However, the specific pieces of data that the hon. Lady mentioned, such as council tax—I think she also mentioned housing benefit—are already available to the ERO. Interestingly, not all of them use those data to the extent that they are able to, but they absolutely have access to it. Clearly, it is more sensible to use those data, because they map quite considerably across the population and there is access to them. In fact, one of the factors determining registration is people moving. When people move, they generally get registered for council tax purposes. If the EROs are doing their job properly, they will use those data to ensure that their register is up to date.
The situation is slightly different in other circumstances, however. The hon. Lady mentioned further and higher education institutions. Under regulation 23 of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, registration officers already have the power to
“require any person to give information required for the purposes of that officer’s duties”.
They can, and do, use that power to require FE and HE institutions to provide such information. That is the legal basis on which it is provided to EROs by, for example, universities with student accommodation. Otherwise, the institutions would not have a legal basis on which to disclose it. So that amendment is unnecessary, as the power already exists.
The hon. Lady asked what we were doing specifically about students. We are working with groups that represent students, such as the National Union of Students. From memory, I think that I have a meeting in my diary this week to discuss this issue with the relevant NUS officer, who has written to me about it. We are also working with organisations that interact with students, such as the Student Loans Company, to look at ways of using the information to ensure that students are given every opportunity, and that it is made as easy as possible for them, to register to vote. It is worth remembering that the existing block registration applies only to university students in halls of residence. It does not apply to those living outside the halls, and the situation will obviously vary across universities. We are absolutely taking this issue seriously.
The question of sheltered accommodation has been raised by a number of organisations. EROs already have the power to require the managers of sheltered accommodation to provide the relevant information to them. Their duty then obliges them, once they have the information, to write to those people. We are also working with organisations that represent people who live in sheltered accommodation, to look at ways of simplifying the process and making it more straightforward. This information will be considered in our second round of data-matching pilots.
The hon. Lady’s final point related to private landlords. I do not think that her proposal adds a great deal, however. The main reason that those in private rented accommodation are less likely to be registered is not directly related to their being private tenants; it is related to the fact that they move more often.
Mr Harper
Yes, I know that the hon. Lady said that, but it is because they are likely to move more often that they are also likely to miss the annual canvass. She will know that relatively few people use rolling registration to register to vote. Also, asking those landlords to provide an annual update—assuming that local authorities had a full list of all their private landlords—would have exactly the same flaws as the annual canvass. It would be unlikely to add anything to the process, except a lot of bureaucracy.
The hon. Lady referred to the barriers to registration. The work that we are doing with under-represented groups in that regard is well under way, and I will be in a position to publish it before the summer recess. What we really want to do is develop some of these proposals with evidence. We want to look at the barriers that prevent the various groups from registering. We know who the groups are, from the quantitative research carried out by the Electoral Commission, but our qualitative research, which will tell us why they are not registered, will be ready in the not-too-distant future. At that point, we will be able to consider how to tackle those barriers in a systematic and co-ordinated way.
I hope, therefore, that the hon. Lady will see that the necessary legal powers for electoral registration officers in all those circumstances are already available. We are doing the research, which will be published before the summer recess, and we are already working with most of the organisations that work with the under-registered groups. To be fair, she acknowledged that. On that basis, I urge her to withdraw the amendment.
Angela Smith
I thank the Minister for his response. I acknowledge that any scheme to enable data-sharing—particularly when those data are sensitive—will be IT-based, but I have never yet heard of an IT system that works without having the necessary people to put in the data in the first place. The Minister did not give a response about the cost, or about the commitment to funding the scheme properly to ensure that the service runs smoothly and without unnecessary delays. That is the key point, but he did not respond to it. If data sharing is to be used to verify applications in this way, we need to ensure that it does not lead to unnecessary delays, particularly in the run-up to the general election in 2015.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady is quite right; I did not respond to that point. I had written down all her other points, but I simply omitted to mention that one. The transition to IER is fully funded by the Treasury for this comprehensive spending review period; we are confident about that. We did not inherit a budget for this, incidentally; this was a budget that we had to put in place. I am confident that that is covered and that there are not going to be any issues relating to it. As I said, part of our work in the data-matching pilots involves ensuring that the project is scalable and that it works. We are conscious that, particularly when there is high demand for registration in the run-up to an election, we need to ensure that it all works. One element that will help EROs, particularly at high turn-out elections, is the fact that we know when the next general election is going to be, so it will not be sprung on them at short notice. That should help them with their planning and preparation.
Angela Smith
I thank the Minister for that very full response. I think that there was also an acknowledgment that the Government are relying on the data-testing pilots to ensure that the system runs properly. There is also, however, a refusal on the Government’s part to acknowledge the need to complete that testing work before we stop using the carry-over data for the boundary review in December 2015. There is therefore a potential problem, as we discussed earlier, in relation to the amendments. I am sure that we will come back to that matter.
On amendment 5, I entirely take the Minister’s point about the two-tier authorities; he is absolutely right. Nevertheless, he will be well aware that a large number of authorities are now unitary or metropolitan authorities. I said that a degree of data-sharing was already taking place internally within local authorities, but it remains the case that not all EROs are making use of that facility or using those data effectively to raise levels of completeness in their electoral registers. The amendment is about placing an obligation on EROs to use those data to make life easier not only for people wishing to register but for the EROs themselves in the long run.
On amendment 9, the Minister made the point that the power already exists to require higher and further education institutions to supply the relevant information to EROs. Again, that power is not necessarily being used. Now that we are introducing a radical new way of registering people to vote—namely, individual registration —it is even more important that that power should be properly used. We shall not therefore allow that amendment to lapse; we will seek to press it later.
As for the amendments relating to sheltered housing and private landlords, we believe that amendment 9, which deals with the provisions for universities, is a test of the Committee’s feeling on this key point about the sensible and common-sense sharing of data and the placing of obligations directly in the Bill to maximise the use of data-sharing practice without requiring complicated IT provisions or the verifications of the more sensitive data referred to in the schedule.
Opposition Members are receptive to the Minister’s point about barriers. Our deepest concern is that we might end up with an electoral registration system that effectively discourages and discriminates against those parts of the population that are the least likely to register. That is a great concern to us. That is why we believe we need a belt and braces approach to maximising registration and that that approach should be placed as much as possible on the face of the Bill.
Mark Durkan
I appreciate your indulgence, Mr Amess, and I hope the Minister will be able to offer some assurances about the concerns I raise.
This schedule is entitled “Sharing and Checking Information etc” and it clearly relates to the integrity of the registration process per se. I briefly consulted the draft secondary legislation, which the Minister advertised in response to previous invitations to establish whether the matter about which I am concerned is addressed in that secondary legislation. It is not addressed in the Bill, certainly not in schedule 2.
Issues about the sharing and checking of information arise not just at the registration stage, but during the key phase in the conduct and management of any given election process itself—whether it be a local government election, a general election, elections to health authorities or for police and crime commissioners, local referendums or whatever. A number of different votes now take place, and those charged with electoral management have to go to the market quite often to procure the services and supplies from companies that are in a position to support them. It is a growing and significant market, so the whole question of datasets is hugely important in that context. If suppliers cannot have proper access to the relevant datasets because somebody else says that they are really in control of them and leans on electoral registration officers to say that another firm will not get access to their formats or that access will not be made easy, it makes it hard for other suppliers to compete fairly.
That has been an issue in the past, and I have raised it previously. There is a very successful firm in my constituency, which has developed its position in electoral management services. It is a firm called Opt2vote. Local government officers here told the company that they were not in a position to procure from Opt2vote simply because it would cause them difficulty—in respect of time and for budgetary reasons—to issue the contract as another company, Express Ltd, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Electra of Electoral Reform Services Ltd, has ability to access the data formats. Registration data should by its nature be deemed to be in the public interest and to be public property, and it should be fully and readily accessible to any firms competing to provide services. That is in the interests of both fair competition and best-value public procurement.
I hope that the Minister will address the whole question of open data standards in the Bill, because it would be odd if it were not addressed there. I have looked at the draft secondary legislation, in which the Minister has provided a list of other issues that he intends to address in that legislation and others that he does not intend to address. The issue that I have raised appears in neither list, which reinforces my request to him. The Cabinet Office evaluation of data matching pilots in 2011, published in March 2012, noted—on page 33—that there were also issues relating to the consistency of data sets with EMS systems, and that the formatting of some of the data sets meant that match rates were not always as high as they could be. The key way in which it suggested that that could be improved was the standardising of address and name formats throughout national data sets. Recommendation 4 stated:
“Where possible there should be greater consistency between the national datasets and the electoral register/EMS”
—electoral management system—
“to ensure compatibility. In particular improved standardisation of data formats and the use of UPRNs in national datasets would improve match rates, in addition to more sophisticated algorithms.”
We may have to be cautious in interpreting that recommendation. It does not imply that all electoral management systems should use the same data format; it simply implies that the national data set used should be compatible with all electoral management systems, which is substantially different. The Minister might consider it unreasonable to expect data from, for instance, the Department for Work and Pensions to be made available in three different formats to suit each of the electoral management systems. Perhaps the problem would be resolved more easily if only one data format were used.
Given that the Government have invested a substantial amount in developing a common interface electoral mark-up language to meet the objective of introducing a uniform and reliable way of allowing systems that support the running of elections to inter-operate, could the Government use the Bill as a vehicle to ensure that a common data standard is applied across all systems? That would end the anomalies that are inherent in the current market, which lead to abuses or, at least, to allegations of abuse, in which data standards are not common and access is not guaranteed to be open.
If Electoral Reform Services Ltd tries to refute the allegations that I have made about it tonight, and the insinuations that I have made about it in the past, I will suggest that the best way in which a company of its kind could be protected from such allegations—and the best way in which a company such as the one in my constituency could be protected from any future abuse—would be for us to address the issue properly in the Bill. It would be a dereliction of duty for that not to be done.
Mr Harper
I will not go into the issues in quite as much detail as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), but I will make a couple of points.
The mandating of the data standards that local authorities use for their individual electoral registers is a matter for them. We have been clear about the fact that theirs are local databases, and that we are not trying to recreate a national database. However, the hon. Gentleman made a good point about interoperability and the exchange of data. In terms of data matching, existing national databases such as the DWP database have a consistent format. We are working with all the electoral management service suppliers who are contracted to local authorities in Great Britain as part of the process in order to optimise the working of the system.
Given that the hon. Gentleman has raised a number of issues, the best thing for me to do is reflect on them and then either write to him or, if it is not appropriate to do just that—given that he mentioned a specific company in his constituency—arrange a meeting with him, which might be more helpful, to make sure that I have addressed his points.
One of the things that we are doing in the pilot—I alluded to this in relation to confirmation—is making sure that the process whereby electoral registration officers send data to the DWP, and vice versa, is scalable. The hon. Gentleman referred to issues in the first set of pilots whereby a lot of EROs found the process resource-intensive. That is one of the things we want to focus on in the second round of pilots, in order to make sure that the process is scalable and does not generate lots of resource issues. Some of that may be about having open standards and making it easier to transmit the data. Let me reflect on the issue further, however. I will then write to the hon. Gentleman and, if necessary, we can have a meeting. I hope that that is a satisfactory response.
Question put and agreed to.
Schedule 2 accordingly agreed to.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Annual canvass
Angela Smith
I beg to move amendment 6, page 3, line 39, leave out from ‘canvass’ to end of line and insert—
‘(1A) The annual canvass must be held during the month of October every year in relation to the area for which the officer acts.’.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill will tackle electoral fraud by speeding up the introduction of individual electoral registration—that is, requiring electors to register individually rather than by households. In doing so, we will move towards a system in which individuals have to provide information to enable their application to be verified. That will modernise our electoral registration system, facilitate the move to online registration and make it more convenient for people to register to vote. We want to tackle electoral fraud, increase the number of people registered to vote and improve the integrity of the electoral register.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
This is a very early intervention, but 23,388 of our fellow citizens living abroad are entitled to vote, while 1,147,401 French citizens will be voting in the French parliamentary elections next month. Why do we deny that core citizenship right to so many of our fellow citizens simply because they do not live within the UK? I am not sure that the situation is within the purview of the Bill, but it represents a shameful denial when other countries are so much better than we are.
Mr Harper
The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. There are about 5 million British citizens overseas, and there is a debate to be had about the length of time—currently 15 years—that one should remain entitled to vote. Of the 5 million citizens overseas, only 30,000 or so are registered to vote, and for those who have been overseas for less than 15 years there is no bar at all on voting.
There are questions to be asked of all of us about why those people do not feel the urge to register and to cast their vote in our elections, but in part 2 of the Bill, which I shall come on to later, we are going to lengthen the period of a general election campaign, making it more practical for overseas voters to receive and to cast a postal vote so that it counts in an election. I hope that that will be helpful.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so early in our deliberations. The point about overseas electors bears a great deal of exploration. If they are not going to participate, alongside citizens who are still resident, in the democratic process and in our constituency-based system, will more information be provided to political parties and to independent candidates about how to contact overseas electors? The information that has been on the electoral register up until now would not allow for much discussion or interaction with them.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point—to which we might return in Committee, given that I have not got very far with my speech and want to make a little progress before I take any more interventions.
As I was saying to the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), part 2 also contains provisions to improve the administration and conduct of elections, thereby serving to increase voter participation and to make a number of improvements to the running of elections.
Before I explain the rationale behind our proposals, I shall deal briefly with the Opposition’s reasoned amendment and approach.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Before the Minister turns to the burden of his argument, may I congratulate him on how he has involved the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform and the House in the deliberations on the Bill? It is an exemplar of good practice, but he will see from the reasoned amendment that there is still some way to go. May I also put on his agenda the question of fines for people who do not register? They will be introduced under secondary legislation, so at the moment we have no idea whether an effective and proportionate fine will be available. Will he address that in his remarks?
Mr Harper
I am grateful to the Committee’s Chairman for what he says, and I hope that by the time I finish my remarks the House will see that I have addressed satisfactorily all the points in the reasoned amendment, at which stage I will of course urge Members on both sides of the House to support the Bill’s Second Reading.
We debated this subject on an Opposition day in January during which I welcomed the tone that the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) adopted. He said, for example, that he welcomed the process that the Government had adopted and how we were acting; he noted that we had had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny; and he noted that the Deputy Prime Minister and I had said that we would not just listen to concerns, but act on them and make changes accordingly.
At the time I noted that that was a shift from last autumn, when the right hon. Gentleman’s party leader said, in response to our making registration individual rather than household, that the Labour party was going to go out and fight against the change, and when the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said that our proposals were
“a shameful assault on people’s democratic rights.”
I thought that that was nonsense when she said it. In January, the right hon. Member for Tooting appeared to think so, too, and he adopted a sensible tone that was welcomed not just by me, but by Members on both sides of the House, so I am disappointed that in tabling this reasoned amendment he appears to have reverted to the Labour party’s original approach.
One of the main points in the reasoned amendment that I will not cover later in my speech is the assertion that there was cross-party support for the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. As I said in January’s Opposition day debate, it is true that we supported the proposals in the Act for individual registration, but it is worth reminding the House that the previous Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to include them. They were not in the Bill when it was introduced in this House, and that is why we voted for a reasoned amendment. In fact, they were not in the Bill when it left the House of Commons, although by that stage the Labour Government had made a commitment to include them. They were, however, introduced in the other place. My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), now Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, who led for us on the issue, ably assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), said:
“I am glad that at the eleventh hour the Government have, at last, agreed to move ahead with individual voter registration, albeit in what still seems to be a lamentably leisurely time scale. They committed to the principle of individual voter registration many years ago, but a bit like St. Augustine, they seem to be saying, ‘Make me chaste, but not yet.’”—[Official Report, 2 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 695.]
My right hon. Friend made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, which we thought could be accomplished earlier. We said that it would be our intention to do so, and on page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to
“swiftly implement individual voter registration”.
It is not fair and right, or at least it leaves out something quite important, to say that there was complete cross-party consensus on that measure.
Before I set out the Bill’s provisions in detail, let me explain the rationale on how we got to this stage following the draft proposals and the significant amount of pre-legislative scrutiny that has taken place. The move to individual registration was supported by all three main parties in the previous Parliament and was in each of their manifestos. It is supported by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators and has been called for by a wide range of international observers. We remain one of the few countries in the world to rely on a system of household registration. I believe, as I am sure many Members do, that a system that relies on the rather old-fashioned notion of the head of household, whereby just one person in the house is given the responsibility of dealing with everyone else’s registration to vote, is out of date. It does not engender any personal responsibility for being registered or promote a person’s ownership of their own vote, and it could give that one person the ability to disfranchise others. That is not the approach that we adopt in other areas where people engage with the state.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I welcome what my hon. Friend is endeavouring to do in this Bill, particularly his determination to modernise our system and to get more people registered to vote. Does he share my concern that many people are on the register who should not be, and, in particular, that people who do not have leave to remain in the country are participating in voting? Will that also change under his system?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend is right. There are two aspects to what we are doing. We want to make sure that the register is more complete and that people who are eligible to vote are on it, but it is equally important to make sure that those who are not eligible to vote are not on it. I hope that he will be reassured about that as I set out some of the details. On his specific point, there will be changes to make it clearer for people to identify when they are a Commonwealth citizen and what their immigration status is. We will be piloting some work with the UK Border Agency to see whether we can create a systemic process to check people’s leave to remain so that only those who are entitled to be here are able to vote here. That will be a welcome step forward.
Mr Dodds
The Minister said that the United Kingdom is one of the few countries that does not have individual registration. Of course, we have had that in Northern Ireland for some 10 years. I think it has been a success, and I therefore warmly welcome his proposals. However, it has led to a drop in the number of people registered, partly for the reasons that he outlined—for example, because some people should not be on the register in the first place. Will he take on board the lesson that we learned in Northern Ireland, which was that resources needed to be put into the Electoral Office to ensure that young people, in particular, got signed up to the register?
Mr Harper
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. I should have said that the Bill implements these measures in Great Britain rather than in the United Kingdom. We have learned a great deal in Northern Ireland, for example on implementing a carry-forward provision to reduce the risk of a significant drop-off. Interestingly, the research that we commissioned from the Electoral Commission, which was published last year, demonstrated that although we in this country have had the rather complacent attitude that we did not really have a problem, under the individual registration system in Northern Ireland, the proportion of eligible voters registered to vote is about the same as it is in the rest of Great Britain. We therefore have a lot to learn.
Mr Harper
May I first finish responding to the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds)?
On the right hon. Gentleman’s second point about young people, I had an opportunity to visit Grosvenor grammar school in Belfast to see an example of what, in engaging with people individually, the Electoral Office does with young people in schools. The interesting thing, and another lesson for us, is that a larger proportion of 16 and 17-year-olds are registered to vote in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain. As well as making sure that we deal with the potential risks, we have an opportunity to do a better job in getting younger people and disabled people, for example, registered to vote.
Ms Buck
Does the Minister agree that this is an issue of proportionality? At the moment, approximately 6 million people are not on the electoral register. Does he recognise that the main issue of concern is not spread across the country as a whole but targeted in particular areas and on particular communities, particularly frequent movers? We already know that only one in six of the population who moves frequently is likely to be on the electoral register. Does that not reinforce the need for targeted investment to support individual registration, because otherwise it will be people in inner cities and in the private rented sector who lose out in not finding themselves on the electoral register?
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady makes a good point. As she says, the single piece of information that suggests whether someone is on the electoral register is frequency of movement. We recognise that, and several of the steps that we are taking with stakeholders are intended to work out how we can better deal with it. I will set out later how we propose to fund this and ensure that the money reaches local authorities, and if the hon. Lady thinks that I still have not dealt with the issue, I will take another intervention from her.
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am going to make some progress, and will perhaps take an intervention from him later. Otherwise I will not get through my speech, and many other Members wish to contribute to the debate.
It is clear that the current system of registration is unacceptably open to electoral fraud. There is widespread concern about that; indeed, a survey carried out at the end of last year found that 36% of people believe that it is a problem. If citizens do not have confidence in the integrity of our electoral register, they will not have confidence in the integrity of the outcome of elections. We need to tackle that. When we came into office, we did not think that the plans for which Labour had legislated, which involved a voluntary process initially running in parallel, were the best way to tackle the problem. We thought that it would lead to confusion and have a very significant cost. That is why we want to speed up the introduction of individual registration so that the register published after the 2015 annual canvass will consist entirely of entries that have been individually verified, with the sole exception of some of those in the armed forces.
The Electoral Commission supports that position. At the beginning of the month, Jenny Watson, chair of the commission, said, when commenting on alleged fraud in the recent London mayoral elections:
“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.”
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Did the Electoral Commission find any fraudulent activity in the London mayoral election?
Mr Harper
There have been a number of cases of fraud, although admittedly not many proven cases. An international observer body, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, which is part of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, described the voter registration system in Great Britain as
“the weakest link of the electoral process due to 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 very important. As I said, 36% of the public think that our electoral registration system is vulnerable to fraud, and that is clearly a problem.
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
I welcome this proposal, because during the recent elections in Burnley there were reports of wholesale fraud taking place on an industrial scale through personation and fake postal votes. Is the Minister considering proposals to require photo identification when people turn up to vote to cut out the appalling growth in personation that is taking place in some polling stations? [Interruption.]
Mr Harper
That point has been raised with me. At the moment, I do not think that striking the balance between making sure that people who are eligible to vote can vote and preventing those who are not eligible from doing so requires voter ID at polling stations. I heard several Labour Members shout out that that was an illiberal proposition, which is rich coming from people who thought that having compulsory ID cards was a good idea. This Government legislated to get rid of ID cards, and we do not mean to bring them in via the back door.
Last June, we published a White Paper and draft legislation setting out our proposals. We proposed that in 2014, every elector on the register would be invited to make a new application providing personal information that would be verified by comparing it to data held by the Department for Work and Pensions, to ensure that the applicant was a genuine person. Every elector would have to make a new application and anyone who did not, or whose application was unsuccessful, would be removed from the register published after the 2015 annual canvass.
We held an extensive public consultation on those proposals, which had more than 900 responses. As its Chairman said, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee carried out pre-legislative scrutiny, and there have been a number of debates and questions on the matter in both Houses.
Members may have noted that earlier today, to assist the House in its consideration of the Bill, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House announced in a written ministerial statement that the Bill will be part of a pilot for explanatory statements on amendments. I hope that all hon. Members who plan to table amendments will participate in that pilot, as will the Government.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
What percentage of the eligible UK population does the Minister believe will be registered after 2015 under his plans?
Mr Harper
I sincerely hope that it will be no lower than the population that is registered today, and indeed that it will be higher. One of the interesting things that we learned from the information that was published last year was that the number of people who were registered was not as high as we had hoped. That research, which the Electoral Commission carried out last year, will act as a baseline for the process. I have made a commitment to get the Electoral Commission to carry out the same research after the process, so that people can see how successful it has been. We want the process to be transparent and we have nothing to hide.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
I take the Minister’s point about two thirds being the anticipated carry-over to the new register. However, I understand from reading the information from the Electoral Commission that voters who are on the register and who do not reply to the request for individual electoral registration will still be able to vote in the general election of 2015. Is that correct?
Mr Harper
Yes, that is correct. I referred to that point in response to the right hon. Member for Belfast North, when I spoke about the carry-forward. There is the important safeguard that if people fail to register to vote individually and there is no reason to think that they are not eligible to vote, there is a carry-forward process to stop the drop-off that we saw in Northern Ireland when it moved to a new system.
Mr Harper
There are, but I do not think that Members would be very pleased if I took all of them to speak from the Front Bench. Other Members want to participate in the debate.
I will finish answering the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal). If the check with the DWP database, the data matching or other information suggests to the electoral registration officers that a person is not eligible to vote, because they are not a real person or because they do not live at the given address, of course they will remove them from the register. This is about carrying forward people when there is no information to suggest that they are not eligible, and they simply have not registered. We thought, on balance, that it was better to do the carry-forward to avoid the problem that occurred when individual registration was implemented in Northern Ireland. The consultation suggests that we have got that balance right.
Mr Harper
Let me make a little more progress, then I will take more interventions.
Although there was widespread support for the principle of individual registration, concerns were raised about how our initial proposals might affect the completeness of the register. We have listened to those points and have made four significant changes to the initial proposals. Those changes are included in the Bill and we are confident that they will safeguard the completeness of the register as we move to the new system.
The first major change is that the Bill enables us to delay the timing of an annual canvass. There were concerns that in the initial proposals the gap between the last canvass under the old system and the start of the transition to individual registration was too long. It was thought to be preferable to carry out a full canvass in 2014, before sending electors individual invitations to register. We do not want to have an extra canvass, as that would be costly and confusing, but we intend to use this power to move the last canvass under the current system from autumn 2013 to spring 2014, so that the register is as up to date as possible before the transition to the new system.
Mr Harper
I have already allowed one intervention from the hon. Lady. Let me make some progress and I will take more interventions in a moment.
The second major change in the Bill will enable us to require electoral registration officers, instead of inviting everyone on their register to make a new application, to begin the transition by matching the names and addresses of every elector already on the register against the DWP’s customer information system. Where the name and address match, and the ERO therefore has confidence that a genuine person lives at the address that they say they live at, that person will be confirmed on the register and retained. They will be informed that they do not have to make an individual application to register. That means that we can balance the integrity of the register with not insisting that every voter takes action in the first transition.
Evidence from the data-matching pilots that we carried out last year suggests, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West mentioned, that the details of about two thirds of electors can be verified in that way. Today, I will place in the House of Commons Library the evaluations of the data-matching pilot by the Electoral Commission and my Department. Subject to parliamentary approval, we plan to run further data-matching pilots later this year to refine that method.
When an individual’s information cannot be verified, the electoral registration officer will invite them to register individually. They will be asked to make a new application and to provide their national insurance number and date of birth. As we set out last year, there will be reminders and the extensive use of door-to-door canvassing, as there is now, to encourage applications. If a person does not make a successful individual application, they will still be able to vote in the 2015 general election, as my hon. Friend said. However, any individual who wants to use an absent vote, where the risk is higher, will have to make a successful new application or to have been confirmed and retained on the register. That will ensure that people have greater confidence in the integrity of that election.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for giving way. In the further pilots, will the Department use credit reference agencies such as Experian to see whether that boosts electoral registration?
Mr Harper
We will carry out two sets of data-matching pilots. The first set, for which the orders have been laid before the House, although not yet debated and approved, involves the DWP specifically because it will pilot the pre-confirmation process. The second set, for which we have not yet laid the orders, will use other Departments. We have had conversations with private sector agencies. One problem is that there is some circularity in the process, because one way in which they construct their databases is by using the electoral register. It is therefore arguable how much information we would learn from them. However, we have had conversations with them and we will continue to do so.
Chris Ruane
I thank the Minister very much for giving way.
On the private sector’s knowledge of electoral registration, two and a half years ago I was informed by Experian that 6.5 million people were missing from the register. When I raised that with the Electoral Commission, it said that the figure was 3.5 million. Six months ago, the Electoral Commission said that, having done its research, the figure was 6 million. The private sector has excellent databases, which we should be utilising to maximise registration.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman has made that point before. As I said to the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), we are not closing off that option and we will continue to have conversations with those organisations.
Following the 2015 general election, there will be another full household canvass and all potential electors who appear—
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Lady lets me make the point on the canvass, I will then take her intervention.
All potential electors who appear on the returned canvass form but have not been verified individually will be invited by electoral registration officers to register. That canvass will include reminders and the extensive use of door-to-door canvassers. At the end of the canvass, the EROs will—
Mr Harper
No; let me finish this point, then I will take the intervention from the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who got her bid in first.
At the end of the canvass, the EROs will send personally addressed individual electoral registration application forms to individuals who appeared on the electoral register produced at the end of the old-style canvass, who have not been verified individually and whom electoral registration officers do not believe to have moved. That will act as a final check to ensure that individuals who are to be removed from the register understand what will happen if they do not make an individual application. That will be a robust process, because people will have to go out of their way to avoid being registered. The register that will be used for the 2015 boundary review will therefore be robust, complete and accurate. The relevant part of the Opposition’s reasoned amendment does not hold up at all.
Siobhain McDonagh
Under clause 4, the procedure for the canvass will change. At the moment, if the ERO or their canvasser knocks on a door and finds somebody who is not registered, they fill in the form there and then. Clause 4 states that that can no longer happen, and that the canvasser can only take people’s names and addresses and then send a form to them. Surely the point is that canvassers knock on doors because people have not filled in their forms without assistance.
Mr Harper
Canvassers will be able to identify that there are voters at an address, but each voter will have to register individually and provide their information to the local authority so that it can be verified. We will examine the canvass process when we develop the secondary legislation. Because of the nature of the information being collected on the doorstep—not just people’s names and addresses but their national insurance numbers—we need to take data security carefully, as we have at every step of the way. We will continue to have discussions with local authorities and the Information Commissioner about how best we can do that, but we have a robust set of processes in place to ensure that everyone is registered.
Mr Harper
Let me make a bit more progress, then I will give way to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who has been bidding to get in for some time.
The use of data matching to confirm existing electors will simplify the transition process for most people in the country. It will create a floor below which registration rates cannot fall, and importantly it will allow registration officers to focus their efforts and resources on electors whose details cannot be confirmed and eligible people who are not on the register.
Mr Betts
The Minister said that there would not be transitional arrangements for people who have a postal vote. Does he understand that people who have applied for a postal vote in the past now assume that they are going to get one at every election? There could be a real problem with the Government’s proposals, because, in 2015, people who assume that they are going to get a postal vote will not get one as the lists will have been scrapped. That could have an adverse affect on turnout, because postal voters are more likely to vote, and it could effectively discriminate against the elderly and people with disabilities, who are proportionately more likely to have a postal vote.
Mr Harper
The two thirds of voters whose details are confirmed automatically will be moved over to the new register once their information has been verified. If they are absent voters, their absent vote will automatically be carried forward as well. [Interruption.] That is what will happen. Absent voters whose details are confirmed and who are moved on to the register will be able to use their absent vote. However, people whose information has not been verified and who do not make an individual application will not be able to have an absent vote. Of course, local authorities know who those people are, and we are working with them and with the Electoral Commission to ensure that everyone with an absent vote is contacted so that they know that if they want to continue having an absent vote they need to register individually. We are confident that local authorities will do that. In a moment, I will set out how we will ensure that local authorities get the funding needed to ensure that that takes place.
The third major change that we have made is removing the opt-out provision from the Bill. The original intention was very simple: to enable EROs to focus their resources on people who wanted to register to vote, rather than having to keep chasing individuals who had no intention of registering. However, we have listened to the arguments made by Members of the House, the Electoral Commission and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. We want the maximum number of eligible people to be registered to vote, so we have decided to remove that provision.
The final major change we have made to our proposals is that we will enable electoral registration officers to issue a civil penalty when an individual who has been required to make an application fails to do so. Over the past few months, there have been discussions about whether an offence should be attached to an individual form. At the moment, it is not an offence not to be registered, which will not change, but there is a criminal offence of not returning the household canvass form. That, too, will remain, because by not doing so somebody can disfranchise other people.
We were faced with the question whether we should create a new criminal offence to be applied to the individual application form. We did not think it appropriate to criminalise people who simply did not register to vote. After careful consideration with key stakeholders, and after listening to Members, we believe it is appropriate to create a civil penalty—akin to a parking fine—for individuals who, after being required to make an application by a certain date, fail to do so.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
The Minister will know that I am very pleased by that announcement, for which I have lobbied. I am grateful for the Bill and the changes the Government have made to it.
To maximise the number of people registered and get people to understand the penalty if they do not respond, will the Minister ensure that local authorities, social landlords, schools, colleges, sixth forms, the high commissions of Commonwealth countries and the Irish embassy play their full part in getting the system known among those with whom they regularly deal?
Mr Harper
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, and he has indeed been greatly involved in making points on the matter in the House, for which I am grateful. In his constituency there is significant voter turnover each year, which presents challenges to his local registration officer. We are already working with groups that represent some of the categories that he mentions, but he also mentions a couple that we had not previously considered, such as high commissions. We will certainly bear them in mind, and I will discuss the matter with my officials.
Mr Harper
I will finish my point about the civil penalty, then I will take an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson).
The Bill provides that after a registration officer has followed any specified steps and an individual has not made an application, he can require them to do so. If at that stage they fail to do so, he can impose a civil penalty. The intention is that only those who refuse repeatedly can be fined. We do not think it would be particularly helpful to democracy if we fined hundreds of thousands of people, so we expect the number of fines levied to be similar to the number of prosecutions at present. Nor do we want to create a financial incentive for local authorities to use fines as a revenue-raising measure, so any moneys collected—[Interruption.] I hear one of my hon. Friends chuckling, but one or two local authorities have been known to do such things, so any moneys collected will be paid back to the Exchequer through the Consolidated Fund.
Mr Jackson
I agree with the compromises that my hon. Friend has made on the opt-out and the civil penalty. I am sure he agrees that people’s propensity to register for elections is a function of societal change as much as anything else. The Electoral Commission has stated:
“Recent social, economic and political changes appear to have resulted in a declining motivation to register to vote among specific social groups.”
That is associated with
“changes in the approach to the annual canvass…as well as matters of individual choice and circumstances (such as a decline in interest in politics).”
Surely we need to concede that some people do not want to register because they are not interested in the process.
Mr Harper
We do. The main impact on an individual who does not register to vote is the rather obvious one that they lose their opportunity to vote and have their say in how their country is governed, but there are also some public policy reasons why we want people to register to vote. One reason is to ensure that there is a complete register for the purpose of boundary changes, and another is that the electoral register is used as the pool for jury service. We therefore want to ensure that it is as accurate as possible.
My hon. Friend is right that is up to Members and to people involved in politics of all descriptions to motivate people to register to vote and then use their vote. The use of the vote will, of course, remain sanction-free. It will be entirely up to people whether they use their vote.
Mr Harper
Not at this point.
I shall set out how we intend to fund the transition to individual registration. We have allocated £108 million over the spending review period to do so, including by meeting local authorities’ costs over and above the current cost of electoral registration. I can confirm today—this is new information—that we will fund local authorities in England and Wales directly through grants under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003. Those will be allocated grants for the purpose of paying for the transition, not just money buried in the revenue support grant. In Scotland, electoral registration is carried out for the most part by EROs who, barring two exceptions, in the city of Dundee and in Fife, are independent of each local authority. There, the additional costs of implementing the new system will be paid directly to them.
Mark Tami
The Parliamentary Secretary talked a lot about the canvass. Does he accept that the quality of the canvass is important, and that some local authorities are much better than others? I welcome his comments on the extra money, but will he ensure that it will be spent on that and not just ferreted away somewhere else?
Mr Harper
Local authorities will have legal obligations to deliver those measures, and I will consult them over the summer about the precise details of the timing of and approach to grant allocations so that they get the money to pay for transition when they need it, and ensure that there is clear accountability, showing that they are taking the steps required by law to prepare for the transition to the new system.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary makes an important point, but will he give a commitment to the House now that the money will be ring-fenced?
Mr Harper
Section 31 grants are specific grants, and the hon. Gentleman needs to be aware of an interesting point: local authorities already fund about one third of the cost of electoral reform, so if we insisted on a specific amount being spent on electoral registration, it would be easy for local authorities that wanted to do so to evade that. They could use the money that we gave them to pay for their business-as-usual electoral registration and not do any of the things that we want them to do. We will give them money directly; we will consult about the mechanism so that we have some accountability; we will recognise that some local authorities have bigger challenges than others so that all the money is not dished out in the first place—we want local authorities that face the biggest challenges to be able to bid for extra funding—and we will try to ensure that we have a workable system that is not too bureaucratic. I am confident that local authorities and electoral registration officers will welcome our announcement about not allowing the money to be swallowed up in the overall revenue support grant by paying direct grants under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003. They will have the confidence that they have the money to deliver the programme.
We consulted widely on our proposals for individual registration, which have undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. We have worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and groups of front-line staff on our plans. We will begin publishing draft secondary legislation for IER in June, and we will continue to add to the package as the summer progresses, aiming to conclude publication before Parliament returns in the autumn. We will talk to those key groups about the detail of the proposals as we go along.
There will be some matters for which we do not intend to publish draft legislation—for example, those for which we have no current plans to use the powers. There will be other matters on which we want to seek stakeholders’ views about the approach. In the amendment, Labour Members deplore our not publishing secondary legislation and it is therefore worth saying that, for two similar measures—the Electoral Administration Act 2006 and the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, both of which contain significant powers to be made by regulation—no secondary legislation of any description was published at any stage during their passage. It was all made and published after the Bills had received Royal Assent. On that issue, therefore, the Labour party is very much in the mode of “Do as we say, not as we do.”
The Government’s approach is to treat the House much more seriously, to publish Bills in draft, to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny, and to publish draft legislation while the measure is still going through the House. May I pick up the point that the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee made? Members can see what is proposed while the Bill is undergoing its parliamentary passage. I will take no lectures on that from anyone on the Labour Benches.
So far, I have discussed the measures that we are taking to mitigate the risk of the transition to the new system. There are also several opportunities to do better. The Bill will facilitate online registration, whereby an individual will complete the end-to-end process without having to fill in a paper form. That will make it more convenient for individuals to register to vote, more accessible for, for example, people with visual impairments, and more accessible for young people. It is our intention that the online system will be fully operational when the transition to individual registration begins. As I said yesterday during Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, that is a genuine opportunity, certainly for disabled people.
For example, Scope said that it
“supports the change to a system of IER, and warmly welcomes the Government’s commitment to ensure that disabled people’s needs are taken into account”.
It agrees with our assessment that
“the introduction of IER should improve access for voters with disabilities. The current arrangements do not adequately allow for disabled people’s access needs to be taken into account”,
and that the introduction of IER offers an ideal opportunity to put in place a more accessible system. We intend to do that.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for sharing the information about the online system with some of us last week. He will know that one of the concerns that some of us have is about access to national insurance numbers as a means of taking part in that system. There is some difficulty in that people do not readily have access to their national insurance numbers. What suggestions has he for improving that?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary is trying to be extremely helpful to the House, and he has taken lots of interventions. However, perhaps he will bear it in mind that he has been speaking for more than 40 minutes, that many Members wish to participate in the debate, and that there will be winding-up speeches.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. In that case, it is a shame that the Parliamentary Secretary did not take his own advice.
Mr Harper
I know that one of my faults is that I am generous to a fault, and I will do my best to rein in that generosity. I will respond to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and then I will finish my speech without taking further interventions. I am grateful for your direction, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am sure that other hon. Members will realise that I am simply following wise advice rather than being ungenerous.
The hon. Gentleman made a good point about national insurance numbers. We have done quite a lot of work on that. The vast majority of members of the public have ready access to their national insurance numbers. When polled, 95% of people did not feel that it would be a problem. Of course, we will ensure that, on the online system, as on the paper-based system, we give people advice if they do not have a national insurance number about the process that they have to follow to get one. There will be an alternative mechanism for the small number of people who do not have a national insurance number to demonstrate their identity to the ERO. However, we do not want to allow that to be a get-out for everybody else. If the hon. Gentleman has anything further to say on the matter, I am obviously happy to discuss that with him.
I believe that the changes that I have outlined on individual registration will ensure the completeness of the register. I think that the Government have listened, learned and improved the Bill.
Let me consider briefly the clauses in part 2 about the administration and conduct of elections, which are intended to improve the way in which elections are run. They address issues that parliamentarians and electoral stakeholders have raised, and make several practical and sensible changes. I will not go through them all, just the most significant.
First, let me consider the provision that extends the electoral timetable for UK parliamentary elections from 17 to 25 days. That will benefit voters, particularly overseas voters and service voters based abroad, enabling them to have more time to receive and return a postal vote. It also makes it easier to combine general elections with other polls.
The Bill also provides for assisting postal voters—I hope that that is of assistance to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East—whose votes are rejected at elections because their postal vote identifiers do not match those stored on records. For example, someone’s signature may have changed or they put down the wrong date—for instance, not their date of birth but the date of the election. Around 150,000 postal votes are rejected at elections. Regulations will make EROs have a duty, after the elections, to inform voters that their identifiers have not matched. [Laughter.] I do not know why the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) is laughing. The provision is included so that the identifiers can be updated and that, instead of those voters losing their votes at every subsequent election, they can ensure that their votes count in future. At the moment, there is no duty to inform them. While the right hon. Gentleman’s party was in government, hundreds of thousands of postal votes were rejected at elections and nothing was done. Rather than laughing at the sensible provisions, I would hope that he supported them.
Alongside that provision, the Government plan to introduce secondary legislation to make it a requirement that 100% of postal vote identifiers are checked at elections. At the moment, legislation provides for only 20% of postal votes to be checked. Ensuring that 100% have to be checked will strengthen the integrity of the process.
There are also provisions to allow the Secretary of State to withhold or reduce a returning officer’s fee for poor performance, but with the important check that there must be a recommendation by the independent Electoral Commission. That is to ensure that returning officers are more accountable. That provision was implemented on a test basis in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011—it was a power that the chief counting officer had. It worked well and we are therefore taking it forward.
The final shape of the proposals demonstrates the value that pre-legislative scrutiny adds to the development of legislation. I hope most hon. Members will see that the Government have taken a careful, thoughtful and measured approach in developing our policy. The Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), is not sitting in his usual place as he has been upgraded to the Opposition Front Bench, but he said in January that
“the House is in severe danger of doing the job that members of the public elected it to do. The Government have submitted a pre-legislative proposal to the Select Committee, which is how things should happen. The Select Committee responded with non-partisan efforts to determine a better Bill and to make better proposals, some of which have already been heard by the Government.”—[Official Report, 16 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 508.]
The Government have since accepted more such proposals. In that spirit, I commend the Bill to the House.
Mr David
I do not think it is mere coincidence. It is possible to look at the dates and come to certain conclusions. I only wish that the Liberal Democrats would do the same and recognise that there is a lot in what I say.
That concern has been identified by many others. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has raised it, as has the Electoral Reform Society, which pointed out that a depleted register could lead to the reduction of inner-city constituencies, while leaving
“thousands of…citizens who will not be accounted for or considered in many key decisions that affect their lives, yet will still look to MPs to serve them as local constituents.”
I ask the Government, therefore, to dispel any impression that their agenda is partisan. To do that, all they need to do is adopt a more reasonable time scale for the introduction of IER that goes beyond December 2015.
It is because the Government have so far been unable to acknowledge our concerns or act on our proposals that we have tabled our reasoned amendment. If the amendment is unsuccessful, we will oppose the Bill’s Second Reading. That is not a course of action that we want to take, but we feel it absolutely necessary to uphold the integrity of the electoral system while ensuring that our democratic system is built on firm foundations.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I like the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), but I fear that spending too many evenings in parliamentary Labour party meetings has made him quite paranoid, given that the previous Government advanced the same substantive proposals for individual electoral registration in Northern Ireland and that the consultation document that was published in 2005 was followed by the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006, which gave rise to individual electoral registration in Northern Ireland. Neither we nor anyone else accused those measures of being rushed through. The hon. Gentleman must be the first Front Bencher to argue against the substantive proposals of the previous Government. The bigger question is why the integrity, autonomy and authority of the electoral register should be more important in Northern Ireland than in England, Wales and Scotland.
Mr Harper
I would have made this point to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), had he shown the generosity of spirit that I did. Given his complaints about the diminishing register and the risks involved, would my hon. Friend like to consider why the Electoral Commission’s research showed that in 2000, under the previous Government, 3 million people were missing from the electoral register and that by 2010, just after they had left office, the figure had risen to 6 million? If there is a party in the House that has shown itself to be a past master at driving people off the electoral register, it is not the party on the Government Benches; it is the party opposite.
Mr Jackson
The Minister makes an astute point. In 2001, the year in which the hon. Member for Caerphilly entered the House, the English electorate numbered 37.3 million. By the end of Labour’s second term, in 2005, the figure was 37.1 million. So Labour did not push up registration rates in an increasing population either.
I take with a pinch of salt Labour’s protestations and faux outrage. We have argued for many years that overseas voters should also have the right to be registered, and that active steps should be taken to achieve that. That point has also been made by the hon. Member for Caerphilly’s erstwhile right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane). However, that did not happen during the 13 years of the previous Government. Indeed, they more or less ignored services voters, despite many people from military constituencies saying that that was an outrageous and egregious oversight.
Mr Jackson
We are making specific proposals. I think that the hon. Lady is tarrying with the wrong person. I saw the huge resources that were devoted to investigation of postal vote fraud by the Cambridgeshire constabulary—who, as far as I know, received little if any help from the Government of whom the hon. Lady was a member—between 2004 and 2008. It took four years for Operation Hooper to complete its investigation, which resulted in the imprisonment of, I believe, five individuals—two of them Conservative and three Labour, as it happens—following the European and city council elections in the central ward of Peterborough in June 2004.
We cannot say that we should not bother about this because we have no proof that it happens. It does happen, it is costly, it undermines the very basis of democracy in this country, and we should ensure—as I believe the Bill does—that the correct procedures operate to ensure that it does not happen in the future. The hon. Lady may wish to reconsider her rather lackadaisical approach to the integrity of our electoral system.
One proposal with which I strongly agree, although I do not think that the Government have gone far enough, is the proposal in clause 19 to allow police community support officers into polling stations. I think that if there is a missed opportunity in the Bill, it is our failure to consider the serious problem of personation and intimidation at polling stations. We saw that in Tower Hamlets earlier this month, and we have seen it too often in Peterborough. I must not major on Peterborough’s central ward, but it is the one that I know best. In that ward we have four polling stations. About half a dozen members of the Cambridgeshire constabulary and mobile CCTV are required at each of them because of the issue of personation, of which there have been cases in Peterborough.
We are not going far enough in looking again at the Representation of the People Act 1983, because the power of the presiding officer inside the polling station remains extremely limited. If the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden were to go into a polling station in Mitcham and Morden and say she was Elvis Presley and that name was on the electoral register, the polling clerk would have very little power to say, “Actually, you’re not Elvis Presley. You’re our esteemed local Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden.” That is not satisfactory. The legal test for proving that the hon. Lady is her good self, rather than Elvis Presley, is very difficult. We have missed an opportunity to look again at that issue.
In closing—which is what the Whips are imploring me to do—may I make two quick points? I have concerns about the removal of the co-ordinated online record of electors—CORE—database. I have no interest in promoting national ID databases—I voted against identity cards—but the Minister must tell us how successful he has been in removing the difficulties of duplication, which have frequently arisen. CORE ameliorated that, but it is no longer in place.
On a slightly mischievous note, this morning on the ConservativeHome website my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) made a point about clause 18 and allowing a parliamentary candidate standing on behalf of two or more parties to use a registered emblem of one or more parties. Can the Minister assure me that there is no hidden agenda in that, and that it is just a helpful way to assist Labour and Co-operative party representatives to get elected in their seats?
Mr Harper
I am happy to be able to give my hon. Friend that assurance. There will not be coalition candidates at the next election; there will be separate Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates. I must say, too, that the attitude of Labour Members is a bit depressing. The only reason why we are making this change is that when the Labour party was in office it could not draft legislation properly and inadvertently “cocked it up”, to quote the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). Because of that, and because we are fixing what is largely a problem for Labour and Co-operative Members, one would think they could be slightly less churlish.
Mr Jackson
Finally, let me say that the data-matching projects are very useful, but in Peterborough’s case they resulted in merely a 54.7% matching rate. More work needs to be done in the second tranche, and sufficient resources must be allocated, as this will be the bedrock of individual electoral registration.
I thank the Minister for his detailed and comprehensive remarks. The Bill is excellent. It restores integrity, honesty and transparency to the electoral system. That is long overdue. The previous Government should have done this, but it has been our new Government who have taken this courageous step, in order to make sure we can all have faith and trust in the system that puts us here and puts councillors in their seats. That adds to British democracy.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
The first time I heard of the proposal for individual registration, I expressed my opposition to the idea. I remain of that opinion, like my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).
The Bill is unique in the history of all changes to electoral law over the past 180 years. All the others added citizens to the electoral register; this one, as we all know, will do the reverse. Individual registration will reduce the number of people on the electoral roll. Those who support the Bill say that its object is to reduce the scope for electoral fraud, but whatever the intentions behind it, its main effect will be to reduce the number of people entitled to vote. That number will be reduced not by keeping swindlers off the electoral roll but because it will become more inconvenient, complicated and difficult for the law-abiding majority to get on to it.
The right to vote is the birthright of every British citizen and the most important right granted to those who become British citizens. It is a symbol of our democracy. Over the centuries, British people have struggled, fought and in some cases died for the right to vote. In the last century, women had to battle for it. This afternoon, we are being asked to vote to make it harder for many of our fellow citizens to exercise that democratic right.
Frank Dobson
I am rather surprised that the hon. Gentleman gives the example of Northern Ireland, because he cannot deny that there was a massive drop in registration immediately after individual registration was introduced. I see no reason to believe that the people of Northern Ireland are inferior to any other people.
No one can deny that there have been examples of electoral fraud, which are deplorable. We know that, because people have been successfully prosecuted. However, the number of fraudsters is small, otherwise there would be more prosecutions. The most glaring scandal of our electoral system is not that some have swindled their way on to the electoral roll but that as many as 9 million of our fellow citizens have been left off it. That is the scandal that we should be addressing. Instead, the Government want to add to the number of their fellow citizens who will be denied their birthright.
We are being asked to pass a law to make life more inconvenient and difficult for the law-abiding many, in response to the law-breaking of the wrongdoing few. Instead, we should be targeting more effort, and much more effective effort, at whenever and wherever electoral fraud is suspected.
Frank Dobson
I do not think that is what will happen in practice. I admit that it may happen in some cases, but in a very large number of cases, particularly in inner-city areas such as my constituency where people live in houses in multiple occupation, it will be more difficult for people to get on the register. Virtually everyone in the Chamber accepts that that is likely to happen, but apparently regards that reduction as a bit of collateral damage in the headlong pursuit of individual registration.
Mr Harper
The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken about houses in multiple occupation. At the moment, people in houses in multiple occupation get one form and depend on someone to whom they are not even related to put them on the electoral register. Under our proposals, they will all be written to and all get the chance to register individually. That is a step forward, not backwards.
Frank Dobson
The measures are proposed for areas where there is about a 30% to a 33% turnover of population each year. To whom will the electoral lot write if people have moved on? The proposals do not reflect the practicalities, problems and inconveniences that arise.
The Bill reminds me of when the police tried to counter football hooliganism by inconveniencing the majority of law-abiding football fans by treating all football fans as hooligans. It did not stop hooliganism. It was only when the police started to identify and target the trouble-making few that widespread hooliganism was stopped and the law-abiding many felt safe again. If we want to deal with the fraud, we need to target the potential fraudsters much better.
By all means we should ensure that no one votes who should not vote, but surely a far more important task is ensuring that everyone who is entitled to do so can cast their vote. The whole approach is simply back to front. Our first priority should be to get on the register the 6 million people who are not on it—I do not know whether by a slip of the tongue I said 9 million. Even the benighted Electoral Commission admits that the figure is about 6 million. The Bill proposes all sorts of cross-checking of official records, but largely with the object of getting people off the electoral roll. We should cross-check official records and private databases with the object of adding people to the register. The Bill’s object is wrong. Getting more people on the roll should be the main task of all involved in the electoral system: registration officers, the Electoral Commission, the Boundary Commission, civil servants, Ministers, holders of private sector data and political parties.
The Bill is back to front, dealing with a minor problem compared with the glaring scandal that 6 million of our fellow citizens are not on the electoral roll. Even if there are 10,000 fraudsters—I do not accept that there are—we are paying far more attention to them than to the absence of 6 million people who should be on the electoral register. The whole damn thing is back to front and it is about time we took our duties seriously and discharged our obligations in the way in which my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and for Mitcham and Morden suggest. We should go out there, day in, day out, using every possible method we can devise to get on the register people who could legitimately be on the electoral register. The Bill has a cock-eyed priority.
Mr Harper
Members who do not think that young people will register are being overly pessimistic. When I visited Northern Ireland, I noted that, with IER, electoral registration officers could interact directly with young people. They go to schools and get more young people registered to vote than we do in Great Britain. Members have a huge opportunity to engage with young people in our schools. We know that often young people are more engaged in politics than their parents.
Mrs Laing
I agree entirely with the Minister. Of course, it is relatively easy for electoral registration officers to find young people, because up until 16 they are at school or college, and at that point can be approached, educated, given a form and encouraged to register to vote when they reach their 18th birthday.
The Opposition’s argument simply does not hold water. The Bill will give more individual power to every person in this country, particularly the 3 million—I am glad the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras agreed the figure was not 9 million—who should be on the register but are not. It will be far, far easier for them to register on their own behalf, rather than having to do so through a head of household.
Mrs Laing
No—that is completely wrong. My point is that if someone is just outside the polling station—in the school playground, perhaps, or the car park of the village hall—but there is not sufficient space for them to get in through the door, the presiding officer should have the power to designate the end of the queue, so that those people can move forward and vote.
Mr Harper
The Government did listen, and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee agreed with our view that
“careful planning and allocation of resources are likely to be more effective in ensuring all those who are eligible can access their vote without resorting to legislation.”
That was our view, the Committee agreed with us, and that is the position at which I think we will remain.
Mrs Laing
I appreciate the Minister’s position, but perhaps that is something we can look at as the Bill passes through the House.
There is nothing in the Bill that will give party political advantage to any political party. It is a simple, straightforward modernisation of electoral administration. It is vastly overdue, and it will give more rights, not fewer, to the electors of this country. The amendment before us is based on nonsense, and it should be rejected. The House should support the Bill.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
It is a pleasure and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who has been a staunch campaigner on these issues for many years, ever since I informed him that his Bronglais ward had the worst registration rate in the whole of Wales, at just 56%.
I wish to touch on a number of issues. I have had a big interest in this subject for 10 years, and I have tabled about 300 parliamentary questions and spoken many times in Parliament on it. We all thought that there were 3 million to 3.5 million people missing off the register. Two or two and a half years ago, I had a meeting with people from Experian, who told me that the real figure was nearer 6 million to 6.5 million. I took that figure to the Electoral Commission, which said that it was not true. It then undertook its own research and, lo and behold, it said last November that 6 million to 6.5 million people were missing off the register—but they were not the same as Experian’s missing 6 million, so even more people may be missing off the register. I mentioned in an intervention that I think that the private sector has a role to play in helping us to improve the registers. It has the detail already and we should be listening to it.
The profiles of the missing 6 million people include, in the main, the poor, those living in social or council housing, those on the minimum wage, the unemployed, black and ethnic minority people and young people. At the moment, 6 million people fitting those profiles are off the register and had the changes gone ahead as originally proposed, the Electoral Commission—not Chris Ruane, Labour MP—said that that figure would have gone up to 16 million. We would have been left without a properly functioning democracy. I give credit to the Government for listening to many calls from Members on both sides of the House and from civic society, but the Electoral Commission has stated that the registration rates could go down as low as 65%.
I want to contrast the previous Labour Government’s attitude to constitutional issues with that of the Conservative and Liberal Government over the past two years right up until very recently. We never treated the issues as party political, but pursued them in the interests of democracy. In 2001, Labour instituted a rule that took people—often quite poor people—off the register if they failed to sign their electoral registration form for two years on the trot, as we wanted an accurate register. Millions disappeared, mainly Labour voters. We did not do that for party political reasons, as it worked against us.
In 1998, we proposed proportional representation for European elections. We did not have to do that, but we did because it was the right thing to do, and Labour suffered in Wales, going from four MEPs to one. We had a Scottish consensus on Scottish devolution that lasted for three or four years, and we introduced PR knowing that Labour would not get full control.
Chris Ruane
It was the right thing to do. I personally did not think that that was the right thing to do, but my Government did and they overrode my voice from the Back Benches.
When PR for local government was introduced in Scotland, it worked against the Labour Government. Labour delivered individual electoral registration in 2009. Throughout our period in office, we operated consensually and for a better functioning democracy.
What happened under the previous Conservative Government? The poll tax was pursued as a means of pushing people off the register and Dame Shirley Porter undertook social cleansing in Westminster to secure party political advantage. This Government’s original proposals sent a shiver down my spine, much like that recently experienced by Ms Lagarde. The agreed date for individual electoral registration, on which there was consensus, was brought back from 2015 to 2014 and the date of the next election was put back to the last possible date of 2015. Either the Deputy Leader of the House or the Parliamentary Secretary can intervene at this point, as we still have not had a satisfactory answer on the reason for the decisions. Was it happenstance or accident, or was there a political agenda?
Mr Harper
It is very simple. We put through the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 because we thought that it was sensible and that the Prime Minister’s right to pick an election date at a time of his choosing to suit his party political convenience was wrong. We took that power away and that was a step forward.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
4. What steps he is taking to improve the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
We are bringing forward our Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, which has its Second Reading in the House tomorrow, to improve the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register.
Amber Rudd
How does my hon. Friend expect individual voter registration to help with efforts to get more disabled people and young people registered to vote?
Mr Harper
It is certainly true that there has been a lot of focus on the possible risks to this approach. When we debate Second Reading tomorrow, I hope that colleagues will see that we have taken a lot of steps to deal with that. However, there are also a number of opportunities, one of which is through the online registration system that we are introducing. We hope that disabled people, particularly those with visual impairments, will find it more convenient and easier to register. We may therefore find that, among certain groups, we have a better chance of getting people registered to vote and able to exercise their democratic rights.
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
Will the Minister publish an ongoing league table showing the number and percentage of people on the electoral register?
Mr Harper
Information about people on the electoral register is, I understand, already published by the Office for National Statistics. It is difficult to publish a league table showing the percentage of eligible voters, because no clear information is available about the number of eligible people in each parliamentary constituency. However, information on the number of people registered to vote in each area is regularly published by the Office for National Statistics.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend assure me that all appropriate steps will be taken to reduce the risk of people falling off the register, and that registration officers will have all the tools available to them to ensure that registration is maximised in their local areas?
Mr Harper
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. We have made a number of changes to the Bill to reflect the recommendations of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, whose Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), is in his place today. When colleagues on both sides of the House study the changes, they will see that we have taken all the steps to maximise the accuracy of the register and to ensure that no one eligible to vote falls off it in the transition.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
If the Government wish, as they say, to have a complete and accurate electoral register, why are they pressing ahead with their individual electoral registration legislation before the results of the next round of data matching are known? Can it be because they are thinking about the parliamentary boundary review of December 2015?
Mr Harper
That is not the case. The hon. Gentleman knows that, based on the data-matching pilots we have already run, we think that there is good evidence that we will be able to confirm two thirds of voters who are already on the electoral register and move them over to the new one, assured that they are real people registered at those addresses. We will run more pilots later this year, subject to parliamentary approval of the orders, to test that proposition further and see whether there are any other lessons to learn. However, we are confident from the work that we have done so far that the process is robust.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
6. What plans he has to bring forward proposals on the regulation of the lobbying industry.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
9. When he plans to implement the commitment in the coalition agreement to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) will know that we have just carried out a consultation on our statutory register of lobbyists, which closed on 20 April, and we are now studying the responses. We will publish our response to that consultation before the summer recess, and we will publish a White Paper and draft legislation later this Session.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I thank the Minister for that helpful answer. Abuse of lobbying is nothing new, but in recent years we have had to deal with the issue of helpful calls to News International. We have seen the Conservative co-treasurer offering dinner dates with the Prime Minister, Bell Pottinger offering influence at No. 10, and Adam Werritty and so on. So may I ask the Deputy Prime Minister to get on with this register, because people were disappointed not to see it in the Queen’s Speech and this situation is undermining our democracy?
Mr Harper
I would add to that list of examples, because people are also concerned when trade unions write amendments for the Labour party. I will not take any lectures from the Labour party on dealing with this issue at speed, because it had 13 years to tackle the issue and made no progress at all. It is important that we get this right, so that we do not have to keep returning to it. We have published a consultation, I have set out the steps we are going to take to publish a White Paper and a draft Bill, and I have already made a commitment, when giving evidence last week to a Select Committee, that we will deal with this issue, as we have committed to do, this Parliament.
Mr Crausby
The Prime Minister has already been proved right when he said that lobbying would be the “next big scandal” to happen, so why this delay? Does the Minister not agree that any failure to bring forward meaningful legislation will justifiably feed the public mistrust of politicians? Is it not time that we completely cleaned up this place?
Mr Harper
I am very happy to agree with the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question; the Prime Minister is, indeed, always right. On the second part of the question, the hon. Gentleman did not listen to my previous answer. I am not going to take any lectures from the Labour party, which did nothing on this subject. It is important to get this right. We have published the consultation document. He will know, from listening to what people have said publicly, that there are a range of views on how we deal with this. We are going to look at those consultation responses, publish our proposals and put them up for pre-legislative scrutiny, so that people can look at them, and we will legislate and deal with this matter in this Parliament, as we have committed to do.
Stephen Timms
The Minister still has not explained to us why the Government are dragging their feet. It was widely expected that this Bill would be in the Queen’s Speech and we have been told that the draft legislation is going to be available before long, so why not just get on with it and bring the legislation forward?
Mr Harper
Again, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that his party did nothing about this when in government. We will take one lesson from his Government: rushing forward with ill-considered legislation that then is not brought into force or which goes wrong when it is introduced and then has to be revisited is not a good way of legislating. We have published a number of Bills in draft so far, in the first Session of this Parliament, including the one dealing with electoral registration. That is a good way of legislating and it is generally supported across this House. It is better to get it right and do it well, rather than rush it and make a bodge of it.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
What is my hon. Friend doing to regulate that most destructive form of lobbying—that which comes from Liberal Democrat Back Benchers and is designed to undermine the economic recovery by arguing against the regionalisation of public sector pay and against the Beecroft report?
Mr Harper
Speaking for myself, I enjoy being lobbied by Back Benchers of all descriptions, be they Members from the Government parties or Opposition Members. I am very happy to listen to views. The Government will then move forward with their proposals on lobbying, based on the evidence and on the responses to our consultation.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
The Minister will know that there is considerable opposition on both sides of the Houses to any regulation on lobbying, and we all know why, certainly after 13 years of the Labour Government. However, will he confirm that the key is transparency? If the public know which politicians are meeting whom, it will be much harder for anything dishonourable to happen. I hope that that will be a key part of any announcement.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on transparency. It is one reason why Ministers in this Government are much more transparent about those whom we meet than Ministers in previous Governments were—[Interruption.] It is no good the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) laughing; this Government are much more transparent about the meetings that Ministers have. Transparency is the key; that is where we have identified the problem and this is what we are going to solve with our proposals. As I said, it is important to get it right and get the job done, and that is exactly what we are going to do.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
8. What his policy is on upholding the principle of accountability in a reformed House of Lords.
Backbench Business Committee
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Natascha Engel
My other criticism of the Backbench Business Committee is in dealing with e-petitions. Potentially, they are a mechanism for Parliament to have direct contact with our electorate—an opportunity that we do not often get between elections. They could work tremendously well in letting us know directly, in Parliament, what the electorate are thinking. Unless e-petitions are dealt with in a much better way, however, rather than having hundreds and thousands of people making contact with us through signing an e-petition, they could be disappointed by their contact with Parliament.
The Backbench Business Committee is not designed to deal with e-petitions. We are having to deal with the consequences, but unfortunately, we cannot do so ourselves. The Procedure Committee has made some good recommendations, and I hope we can deal with the problem immediately after the Queen’s Speech in the new Session, because it urgently needs our attention; otherwise all those who have signed e-petitions in good faith will be sorely disappointed. The longer we leave it, the more people will be disappointed. We should be able turn the problem round and make e-petitions work, so that people can have adequate and proper contact with us and not be disappointed. My hon. Friend’s point is an important one.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I do not want to take up too much time because I am conscious that this is a Back-Bench debate, but it might be helpful to put on the record that the Government remain proud to have facilitated the House in its decision to set up the Backbench Business Committee. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is sorry that he could not be present today, but he is looking forward to giving evidence shortly to the Procedure Committee on all the matters in the report. He particularly wanted to make it clear that the Government will give special consideration to the points made by the hon. Lady in the Backbench Business Committee’s report about the flexible use of the allocation of time, to see whether that can be improved. I am sure the Procedure Committee will want to question the Leader of the House on that when he gives evidence.
Natascha Engel
I thank the Minister for that helpful intervention. The Backbench Business Committee is brand-new, and the Standing Orders that brought it into existence were basic—dealing with how many people were on the Committee, its complexion and the allocation of time—so we have made everything else up as we went along. In our provisional approach, right at the start, we made it clear that we would take a lot of risks and that we would fail in many areas. Without that failure, however, we would not have been able to learn the lessons.
Police and Crime Commissioners
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
First, let me say that unlike in the previous Government, Ministers from different Departments in this Government speak to each other. We work closely. I am here tonight because I work closely with my colleagues in the Home Office. The Cabinet Office has overall responsibility for electoral policy—owned by the Deputy Prime Minister—and I work closely with Home Office Ministers. My officials in the Cabinet Office work very closely with Home Office officials. We are a very joined-up operation. That may be a new notion to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), as he served in the dysfunctional last Labour Government where the Prime Minister and Chancellor could not bring themselves to speak to each other, but things have changed since the last election.
Mr David
I am saddened, and rather surprised, that the Minister should make a factional and crudely political point in a debate that is about democratic involvement and popular participation.
I am also surprised by what the Minister said about the Home Office. Taking his logic to its conclusion, he or one of his departmental colleagues should answer questions on PCC elections at Home Office questions, but that is not the case.
Mr Harper
The Home Office leads on policy on PCCs, but that also involves elections. The situation is just the same as in respect of the Department for Communities and Local Government: I work closely with my colleagues in that Department, and its officials work closely with my officials. We have joined-up policy across the Government. That is sensible.
As the hon. Gentleman raised the issue of departmental responsibility—and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) tried to raise it—I thought it was worth making that initial point in response. I was also going to say that I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his very complimentary words about me; I wish to be suitably gracious about what he said.
The directly elected PCCs represent a radical reform of policing. The hon. Gentleman’s party was not initially in favour of them, but I am glad that now that Parliament has passed the legislation, it is participating in this process. Indeed, many prominent Labour figures will, perhaps, be candidates in these elections, including Lord Prescott, who has now been converted to the merits of PCCs and the importance of giving more power and control to the public—letting the public choose the people who set policing priorities, rather than their being set by the Home Office.
The PCC elections will be very valuable, and the public will be very interested in them. The police.uk website has had 47 million hits. The public are interested in local crime matters and how police officers conduct their work and how they are deployed. I know from conversations with my constituents and chief constable that people are very interested. I therefore think people will get engaged in this process, despite the fact that the elections will be held in November. There will be a decent turnout, I believe.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman who secured the debate spoke for just over half the time available, so let me address at least some of his questions before taking interventions from other Members.
Our view is that top-down control, with chief constables looking upwards to the Home Office, did not work particularly well, so we want locally democratically accountable figures setting policy. However, operational matters will, of course, remain the responsibility of the chief constable. There will be police and crime panels to ensure that there is scrutiny and transparency.
The hon. Gentleman made a number of points about the elections themselves and I shall deal with some of them in turn. As I said, I am pleased that so many Members of this House and the other place are stepping forward and that we are seeing candidates from across the country. I think we will have a good slate of experienced people. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I believe that a number of people who have had experience in the criminal justice system, some of whom are former police officers but others of whom have been involved in that system, have put their names forward. So I think that the public will be offered a good range of candidates—people with practical experience and people with policy-making experience. Like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I trust the public to be able to sort out the qualities that they want in police and crime commissioners and to make the right decisions in November.
The Government agree that it is important that candidates get their message out. To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), candidates obviously have a responsibility to do that themselves. Of course it is not the case that candidates can spend a limitless amount of money; there will be limits on expenditure, which will be broadly proportionate to those for other types of election. So candidates will be able to spend some money, but they will not be able to spend limitless sums. We thought carefully about how we could assist candidates in doing that, and provisions will be made in the draft legislation to enable candidates, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said, to publish information on the centrally funded website.
In addition, if the public are not able to use the website, they will be able to call a freephone number and request, on demand, printed information to be sent to them directly. We recognise that this is a novel approach, but we think that that blend of online and on-demand information will be very helpful. The website and the print-on-demand phone number will be printed on polling cards sent out in advance of the election.
Mr Harper
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will adopt the same stricture as I did in respect of Labour Members. Let me deal with the points that the hon. Member for Caerphilly raised, as it is his debate, and if we have time, I will be happy to take further interventions.
Polling cards will contain this information, so it will be widely distributed to voters. The Electoral Commission, with which we are working closely, will include that contact and access information in its own literature—indeed, this will be in the booklet that it is distributing to households, which will provide some information about the elections and the supplementary vote system.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly raised the issue of internet access. Although 77% or so of the population can use the internet, we recognise that there are people who cannot; my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) referred to people who live in his constituency in this regard. That is why we have the combination of online and print-on-demand information. I am pleased to tell the hon. Member for Caerphilly, as I anticipated that he would ask about this, that the information will be available in both English and Welsh. Candidates will be able to submit their information to go on the website in either language, and we will make sure that the website content and the printed copies are available in both languages. We will of course make sure that the information is available in a range of accessible formats for those voters who have some form of disability, to make sure that we maximise the opportunities for people to see the information.
Let me deal with why we have chosen that option rather than completely free mailings paid for by the taxpayer. We did consider funding mailings of the type used for UK parliamentary and European elections. We are minded to conclude—this is our preferred option on the website, rather than our final position—that at a time when budgets are tight, it is difficult to justify those mailings for PCC elections. There are also some logistical difficulties involved in producing a candidates booklet, such as those used for mayoral elections. The difficulties are partly to do with the size of the PCC areas and having to produce the 41 booklets simultaneously; this would be very difficult to co-ordinate across the country. We think that the approach we have adopted is a proportionate one that will give people access to the information. We will, of course, look at the experience in practice; we will look very carefully at what happens. I am sure that hon. Members in this House will not be backward in coming forward about any issues, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be sure to tell us of issues in his area in Wales. We will look at this carefully but we are confident that we have adopted a sensible approach; we have worked closely with stakeholders and we think it will be successful.
As I mentioned, the Electoral Commission will be working on some public awareness information. This is in its plan, so it is in the money that it has bid for and had approved by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and by the House. This is something that has been in the Electoral Commission’s programme, so I am confident that it will be effective.
The hon. Member for Caerphilly also asked about the conduct rules. The elections, as he said, will take place in every police force area in England and Wales outside London, although it is worth saying that the first time that people will be able to vote for the directly elected person who will control policing will be in the London mayoral election, now that the Mayor has that responsibility. The detail for the other elections will be in the secondary legislation that we intend to lay before the House shortly. I can confirm that “shortly” means by 15 May, so that legislation will be laid before the House six months before the elections.
We have, of course, worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, returning officers, the Local Government Association, the Welsh Government, the Wales Office and the Association of Police Authorities, among others, to check that the legislation is in good order and that it will work in practice. Preparations have started. The police area returning officers will be administering the elections across the police force areas, a number of meetings have taken place and the preparations are in good order.
The hon. Gentleman asked one or two other questions and I have dealt with his question about the language. He raised some concerns about the website and I can make it very clear that the Government have ensured that they will have no role at all in the content on the website, which will be dealt with by the police area returning officers. The Government’s role is to set up the function and ensure that the information is posted; we will not have any editorial control at all, as is appropriate.
Mr David
I accept entirely what the Minister is saying, but I was making the point that it is important for any Government—whatever their political complexion —not to be accused of any kind of interference. That is why the clarity of the secondary legislation is so important.
Mr Harper
I can confirm that the legislation will be drafted—I am sure this will be tested when it is debated in the House—to ensure that it is clear that there will be no opportunity for the Government to have any role in deciding the content of the information. That would clearly not be appropriate.
Let me come to the final point about victim support services, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). It has been proposed—the consultation by the Ministry of Justice finished just a few days ago—to move from a national to a local model. The Government’s view, on which we consulted in our consultation document, is that rather than Whitehall attempting to pick those services and fund them across the country, the police and crime commissioners, who will be accountable to local people, will do a better job of making those judgments. I have read through the Ministry of Justice consultation document in full, as a local victim support organisation wrote to me in my capacity as a constituency MP and I wanted to ensure, having worked with Victim Support in the past, that I was confident about what would happen. I have been through the consultation document and I think the proposal is a good one that will mean more money gets spent, rather than less, and that decisions will be taken more locally. That makes sense, rather than trying to have a one-size-fits-all policy. The Ministry of Justice will consider the responses to the consultation very closely to see whether it needs to alter its policy in any way.
I think that I have answered all of the points raised by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, so, as we have one or two moments, do any of my colleagues who jumped up to intervene earlier want to do so before I sit down?
Mr Mark Williams
I thank my hon. Friend for what he said about the Welsh language, which is very important in large parts of Wales. What costings were made to examine combining the Electoral Commission’s booklet with an insertion from candidates?
Mr Harper
We did consider that and we discussed it with the Electoral Commission, which is, of course, producing one booklet to be distributed to every household across England and Wales. The difficulty is that if a booklet is going to be produced with the candidate information, 41 different versions will have to be produced. Logistically and for cost reasons, that is quite complicated. It is not quite as straightforward as my hon. Friend put it.
I hope that I have dealt with colleagues’ concerns and I am pleased that the debate was so well attended. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Caerphilly for raising points in the way that he did.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
1. What recent progress he has made on proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
We set out our initial proposals on 20 January. We are undertaking a wide-ranging consultation exercise. I have appeared at a number of meetings and will do so again. We will listen to everything that people have said and in due course we will lay out our proposals for legislation.
Mr Spencer
I have had a number of meetings with the voluntary sector over the past six months. Can the Minister reassure the House that the changes to the lobbying system that we may introduce will not bar small charities from making contact with their Members of Parliament?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. Nothing that we intend to do is intended to stop people legitimately lobbying their Members of Parliament. Indeed, we have set out that lobbying is a good thing to make sure we are aware of the impact of our legislation. The important thing is that it is carried out transparently, and that is what we are aiming to achieve.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
May I ask the Deputy Prime Minister what arrangements he has put in place to define lobbying?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman may ask me, as I am answering the question. We are carrying out a consultation exercise, listening to the industry, to the public and to organisations campaigning for transparency. When we have done that, we will weigh up everything that has been said. We will then publish draft legislation for full pre-legislative scrutiny.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The most recently published information describes all but two of the Chancellor’s meetings with external organisations as being for the purpose of general discussion. The other two are described as social. Does the Minister agree that for proper disclosure of lobbying activity, any register will need to go further than such broad descriptions?
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I wholeheartedly support the idea of a statutory register of lobbyists, but surely it must include the full-time people who do it on behalf of their companies in-house. If we do not know whether the head of lobbying for BP, Shell or whoever else is coming in to see a Minister, we have not really brought about transparency, have we?
Mr Harper
The point that the hon. Gentleman makes about those who lobby for the companies they work for, as opposed to third parties, has been made by others and we will weigh that up. If a person from an individual company comes to see a Minister and the Minister discloses that they have had that meeting, as they do, it is clear on whose behalf they are lobbying. The situation that we are trying to deal with is one where we do not know on whose behalf someone is lobbying. That is the reason for our initial proposals.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
2. What steps he is taking to extend the powers of enforcement of electoral registration officers.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
4. What assessment he has made of the likely effect of bringing forward the annual canvass on levels of electoral fraud.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The Government take combating electoral fraud very seriously. Following a recommendation from the Electoral Commission, I directed that this year’s annual canvass should be started and completed earlier so that the register to be used for police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales outside London is the most accurate and up-to-date register possible.
John Woodcock
I thank the Minister for that answer, but does he believe it right that the nominations for police and crime commissioners and their subsequent elections should take place using different electoral registers?
Mr Harper
I think, in this particular case, that is perfectly fine. It does not deal with the hon. Gentleman’s question, however, which was about electoral fraud. The reason for bringing forward the canvass was to ensure that we were not using a register that was right at the end of its useful life, with significant numbers of people not being at the addresses on the register. That would have provided an opportunity for fraud, and we wanted to reduce that to the minimum.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Is the Minister aware that there are concerns from cities such as mine, which have a large number of students, about the impact of moving the dates forward, that students who have arrived will not be put on the register and students who have left will still be on the register for far too long? Will he look at ways of avoiding that problem?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. One reason for issuing the direction to registration officers as early as possible was so that, in each area, they could think through the consequences for their particular registration and the challenges that they face, and then put in place procedures to ensure that the register used for police and crime commissioner elections is the most accurate and complete register necessary. If he has any specific concerns, I shall be very happy to discuss them with him.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
5. What recent progress the Government have made on devolution; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
7. What recent representations he has received on individual electoral registration.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
We have received a number of representations on our proposals for individual electoral registration, including an excellent report from the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, to which we have responded.
Mr Betts
I am sure that the Minister agrees that if we are to avoid the prospect of many people leaving the electoral register when IER is introduced, we need a significant and robust system of data swapping. If that cannot be achieved in time for the date when the Government plan to introduce IER, will the Minister delay that date or run the risk of millions of people falling off the electoral register?
Mr Harper
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has studied our response to the Select Committee’s report, so he will know that one of the things that arose from our data-matching pilots was that there is a good opportunity to use a pre-verification process to ensure that we, in effect, put a floor under electoral registers to reduce the risk of people falling off the register. We will test that further and no doubt debate it when the proposed legislation is going through the House. That can give us a great deal of confidence that we will not see the problems the hon. Gentleman mentions.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
9. Does the Minister agree that all rights should be exercised with responsibility and that where people have the right to vote they should exercise their personal responsibility of registering to vote, and thus, through the Minister’s introduction of individual electoral registration, the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register will be improved?
Mr Harper
I very much agree with my hon. Friend, who is a prominent member of the Select Committee that looked at this in great detail. I absolutely agree with her. Registering to vote and voting is an act of personal responsibility, but we are also looking to make sure that we reduce the risk of people falling off the register and increase the tools at the disposal of registration officers to ensure that the register is complete.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Does the Minister share my concern that the Electoral Commission said that its main conclusion about the Government’s data-matching pilot schemes is that they
“do not provide sufficient evidence to judge the effectiveness of data matching as a method for improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers”?
If he shares my concern, what action will he take?
Mr Harper
Part of the reason for having the pilots was to learn some information. One thing that we found was that the data-matching pilots were less successful at improving completeness and accuracy, but very good at pre-verification, as I said to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) will know that we plan to have further data-matching pilots, subject of course to parliamentary approval of the appropriate orders. That will build up further evidence, which will show Members that this system will be robust in improving the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
8. What assessment he has made of the potential implications for the Parliament Acts of his proposals for House of Lords reform.
Bill of Rights Commission (Membership)
Mark Harper Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The Government made a written ministerial statement on 18 March 2011, Official Report, column 31WS, announcing the establishment of an independent Commission to investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights. The membership of the Commission has now changed.
The Commission is chaired by Sir Leigh Lewis KCB, a former permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions with a long career in public service. Sir Leigh Lewis is joined on the Commission by: Jonathan Fisher QC, Martin Howe QC, Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws QC, Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, Philippe Sands QC, Anthony Speaight QC, Professor Sir David Edward QC and the recently appointed Lord Faulks QC.
The terms of reference for the Commission remain unchanged. The Commission is investigating the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in UK law, and protects and extends our liberties. It is examining the operation and implementation of these obligations, and considering ways to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties. The Commission reports jointly to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Justice. The Commission is supported in its work by a small secretariat of civil servants.