Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Mark Williams and Paul Blomfield

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith]

I appreciate that point, and I have read what the Electoral Commission has said about it. However, the key point is the one I made a few moments ago, which is about the importance of getting it right. Secondly, the Electoral Commission has a certain perspective on this. A different perspective would understand the importance of stability at a time of radical change in the registration process. It has to be said that for as long as most of us can remember the culture of this country has seen us running an annual canvass in October every year. That is what people have come to understand, and under the new system there will still be a requirement for the head of the household, or someone in the household, to supply the information to the ERO to enable the sending out of the invitations to register. We will still have that culture of a form being filled in for every property, completed for every residence and returned to the ERO. Opposition Members feel it is important to continue the culture of running that exercise every October, not least because it is the time of year when further and higher education colleges enrol their new students.

In what is often a five or six month gap between the completion of the canvass and the establishment of the new register and the election, the chances of that register being grossly inaccurate are reasonably small. The risk of that is smaller than the risk of a drop-off—a fall—in the number of registrations because we have messed about with the time of year when people will register. I do not think that any hon. Member feels that an annual canvass should be run in July, Easter or post-Christmas. Is there any point in the year, other than October, that makes sense? There is a reason why October is the date, and we think we should stick with it. Amendment 6 would reinstate the requirement that EROs run an annual canvass in October of every year.

Amendment 8 seeks to strengthen and improve the process; this is the belt and braces approach that I talked about earlier in relation to amendments 9, 10 and 11. The gazetteer is a very complete and up-to-date list of any property in a local area. We believe that EROs should write once a year to every property listed in the gazetteer, supplemented by those properties that they know to have been built in the past two years, when registration forms have been returned in the past 10 years and when a property has been involved in the charging of taxes by the local authority in the past five years. In all those circumstances, we believe that the ERO should send a form to the property concerned to ensure that we do everything we can to guarantee the highest possible level of completion of each new register.

Earlier we argued for the need to glean information from university institutions, sheltered housing providers and private landlords in order to aid the process of building a high quality and highly complete register. We also believe, however, that such an approach should be supplemented by our using the soundest possible sources of information about which properties are occupied in any area when the local authority qualifies as an electoral registration authority. If the House agrees to those requirements, that will mean that we have done our best to guarantee that the new individual registration process succeeds rather than fails. That is the key point that Opposition Members are trying to make.

Amendment 7 deals with house-to-house inquiries on which, in our view, the Bill is far too weak. It gives EROs the power possibly to conduct a few house-to-house inquiries, stating that they “may” do so, but in our view they must carry out house-to-house inquiries, particularly when citizens have constantly and repeatedly refused to register to vote. Given that we have included a penalty in the Bill and reinstated the principle of enforcing the requirement on citizens of this country to register to vote, it makes sense that we should require EROs to do their utmost to ensure that the law on electoral registration is complied with. “May” is only one word, but it is very important and saying to EROs that they may, rather than must, conduct house-to-house inquiries represents a watering down of the commitment in the Representation of the People Act 1983.

I am convinced that not only Opposition Members but Government Members are fundamentally democrats at heart who believe in people’s right to vote and in the importance of their registering to vote. Let me make a plea to the Minister, who I know to be a man of logic and reason. The replacement of the single word “may” with the word “must” is a small concession to make for the sake of this House doing its best to ensure that democracy in this country is properly served and is as legitimate as it possibly can be. I call on the Minister to concede this amendment and to put hon. Members’ minds at rest on this point.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Amess, for the opportunity to comment, particularly on amendment 6 on the annual canvass, and the issues that it raises in relation to young people’s engagement in politics, and that of students in particular. I recognise that not all students are young people, but the vast majority are. Sadly, according to a million+ report produced recently, there are declining numbers of mature students as a result of the Government’s policies on higher education.

I represent a city where, as Members are aware, voters were turned away in large numbers at the general election. It is an issue which new clause 4 deals with later. Those voters were largely students or others who were affected by a surge in student voting, and those students were whipped up to vote by the fairly relentless campaigning of the Deputy Prime Minister on both our campuses, which are both in my constituency. Members will remember the “trust me, we’re different” initiative during the general election—the promise that

“We will resist, vote against, campaign against, any lifting”

of the cap on tuition fees, with a plan to abolish tuition fees within six years. I notice Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches looking a little bit embarrassed, and understandably so. That was no subscript in the manifesto. In constituencies such as mine, it was at the very heart of their party’s campaign, as the president of the Hallam university union, Caroline Dowd, said at the time:

“We could not get”

the Deputy Prime Minister

“out of our union before the general election.”

Afterwards, when she was being held to account, she pointed out that they could not get him in.

The broken pledge on tuition fees has not simply damaged the Liberal Democrats’ party; it has damaged trust in politics for a whole generation of young people. All the people who were persuaded to vote, queuing in Sheffield Hallam because they believed the pledge, they believed in a fresh approach, they believed that when people signed a solemn promise, they would keep it, feel betrayed by the trust that they put in politics. So many of them whom I have spoken to are now saying, “Why should we vote?” I have knocked on many student doors during subsequent local elections. This is precisely the time when we should be making extra efforts to engage students, not reduce their participation. Amendment 6 and the annual canvass in October specifically address that issue.

[Mr Mark Williams]

On a more positive note and with reference to amendment 7, which refers to the importance of face-to-face dialogue with students, will the hon. Gentleman endorse the comments of his hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on the Front Bench that simply sending communications to students, many of them in halls of residence, and getting post through to students is a particular difficulty, and face-to-face dialogue is extremely important in building trust and building students’ confidence to sign up to the electoral register?

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman is right. It is necessary to complement an annual canvass in October and support that process with face-to-face contact. It is a point that I will come to in a moment.

My city is associated with steel and still produces steel and engineering products, as it always did, but it is now also a major student city. As I said, both of our great universities are in my constituency. At the last count, 31,800 students live in Sheffield Central, and they are very much part of the place. They live there for at the very least 31 weeks a year, and many for 52 weeks on full accommodation contracts. For all of them, it is their main place of residence. They contribute to the economy and the life of the city and they have a right for their voice to be heard in elections.

At the university of Sheffield there is a block registration scheme for all eligible students in university accommodation, which will end with this legislation. The Government claim that individual electoral registration is about preventing fraud. I assume that they do not think the university of Sheffield is guilty of electoral fraud. Therefore, one wonders why the Government think it necessary to remove the opportunity for block registration in this legislation. But they are pressing ahead, so I think that amendment 6 and the need for an annual canvass would go some way towards mitigating the damage that will create.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Williams]

The hon. Gentleman might have guessed that I share an interest in higher education; I, like him, have two universities in my constituency. Might not an alternative approach be to have the students register to vote when registering for their college courses? Is that not an opportunity to maximise student participation in the electoral register?

[Paul Blomfield]

I think that that is an opportunity; there might be innovative ways to combine the registration process with other processes. However, there are certain difficulties because, as the hon. Gentleman will know, many universities now have fairly sophisticated online registration processes at the point of joining the institution, rather than the face-to-face contact to which he refers, so there are potentially some difficulties. In essence, we need to look creatively at every opportunity, and that would indeed be one of them.

The point the NUS makes is that, if we are to avoid a fall-off in registration, considerable information, communication and investment are needed. I must say that I think it would be simpler all round if we retained block registration, but the Government, whether or not they think that universities are guilty of electoral fraud, are pressing ahead. When I raised that issue on Second Reading, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) challenged me, suggesting that I underestimated the ability of students to complete forms, but that is not actually the point. I have been lobbied strongly by students on the issue. Only today the newly elected officers of the University of Sheffield students’ union met me in Westminster, along with their outgoing predecessors, and made the point again. One of them, Harry Horton, summed up the difficulty—the hon. Member for Ceredigion will appreciate this—and explained that when students first arrive at university and live in halls, among all the other things going on in their lives, registering to vote is not necessarily a priority, so it is comforting for them to know that it is done automatically. If that changes, registering becomes another form to fill in during the first few whirlwind weeks away from home when their whole lives are being turned upside down. As a result, the fear is that some students, particularly those who do not come with a commitment to engagement in democracy, will not register.