Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Andrew Love

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.

[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 Love]

To return to the previous point on accuracy, amendment 30 suggests that the Electoral Commission’s report, if it was drawn up,

“would help the achievement of the registration objectives”,

one of which is accuracy, so the amendment would take care of that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[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 Love]

The Government seem in something of a rush to bring all that in by December 2015, so I ask the question that was asked earlier: why the rush? Is there not room for flexibility should it prove not to be as easy to register people as the Government currently presume?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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 Love]

Will the Minister give way?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Andrew Love

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Lady, but that question really was not worthy of her. The completeness of the electoral register is as important as making sure it is accurate. It is perfectly reasonable to move towards fairer and more equal-sized constituencies, as this House has made a very clear decision to do, and their lordships will start debating the matter this very afternoon.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

According to research, the level of registration will fall on the introduction of individual registration, and we need only look at the situation that occurred in Northern Ireland to back that up. This was recognised in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. Will the hon. Gentleman take into account the advice given by the Electoral Commission? If it decides that things are being done too quickly to improve the register, will he listen to it?

Individual Electoral Registration

Debate between Mark Harper and Andrew Love

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is, of course, perfectly lawful for individuals to be registered in more than one place—they may do so if they occupy two properties, for example—although it is not lawful for them to vote more than once for the same body. The much-quoted survey about people who are not registered did not address one particular aspect of that issue: quite a lot of students who it said were not registered to vote at their term-time address are, of course, registered to vote at their home or parental address. The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I would be very pleased to meet him to discuss it.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am not sure whether the Minister is aware that there is considerable concern about the answers he gave to my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and that that concern appears to be shared by Members of the coalition parties. The Minister has regularly mentioned the Electoral Commission. What consultations did he have with it prior to making his statement? Is it his intention that it will continue to have, as the Opposition Front-Bench team has said it would, the role it was given in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009? If he is serious about avoiding the consequences that arose in Northern Ireland, will he be flexible about the imposition of compulsory individual registration in order to take into account the difficulties that may arise?

[Mr Harper]

We have, of course, been working closely with the Electoral Commission. My officials have been working with its officials, and both the Deputy Prime Minister and I have met its chair and chief executive to discuss these matters. I think I can accurately say that they are content with our approach. We plan to keep them involved in the process: we want them both to assess the data-matching pilots and, as we move forward, to comment publicly on the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register so that there is an independent check on the progress the Government make.