Overseas Electors Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman: I do not see how it is relevant.

New clause 7 requires the Minister for the Cabinet Office to publish a report on postal voting arrangements for overseas electors. We talked earlier about the scale of the number of people who would be affected if the Bill were to take its full course. I think that all the issues raised in new clause 7 will have to be considered, and that the Government should keep an eye on whether or not everything is in place to deal with the consequences. This new clause is also fairly self-explanatory.

[Neil O’Brien]

New clause 7(3) says:

“The report shall, in particular, consider the effectiveness and cost of the International Business Response Licence for postal votes and any associated implications”.

What particular concern did my hon. Friend have about the international business response licence? I could not understand what the concern was here.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right to ask me to elaborate. If he were to look up how the IBRL operates he would see that its “At a Glance” guide says customers can

“Receive direct mail responses from overseas customers”

and

“Only pay for the responses you receive”,

which is all fine, but the third part says:

“Responses arrive in 7-10 working days”,

I hope my hon. Friend will consider that that might cause a difficulty. That is from the IBRL’s “At a Glance” guide to its service, and it seems to me that that might not be wholly suitable for an election, especially when we are dealing with huge volumes and all the rest of it. That is why I put that provision into the new clause: because I am not sure it fits the bill. The Government should have a duty to consider that very carefully and see whether there is a better system that should be used.

I am sure we all have examples of possible problems. In my part of the world in the Bradford district we have had some terrible things happen with postal voting and postal vote fraud over the years, and we must always be very careful. When we are having a huge extension of voting and of postal voting we must be cautious, and this provision is merely an attempt to show some caution in moving forward and make sure we are not causing problems that might not have been expected at the time.

[Neil O’Brien]

For the benefit of the Minister who will have to implement new clause 7 can my hon. Friend make clear what his expectation is on timing? It seems from the tenor of his remarks that he is expecting this review to take place before commencement; is that the case?

[Philip Davies]

I would like that to happen: before having an extension it would be useful to have a review of where we are now, because that might highlight some of the areas of concern. So, yes, I would like to see that done sooner rather than later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend thinks that flattery is going to get him everywhere, but on this occasion I am not entirely sure that it will. It is very kind of him to say what he did, and—if I may reply in kind—no one is better than him at asking incisive questions and getting to the nub of things, particularly given his background. The problem is that we pass so much legislation in this place covering such a wide area that, no matter how good or bad any of us might be, we just cannot keep on top of it all. It is impossible to do that, and we sometimes need a prompt to remind us of the pieces of legislation that have gone through. I do not think it would do anyone any harm if a report came out that made them think, “Oh yes, I remember this piece of legislation. I’m interested in this one.” Even the best of us forget from time to time what legislation has been passed through this House.

[Neil O’Brien]

I tend towards agreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) rather than with my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) about this and about the importance of evaluation. For the benefit of the Minister who would have to compile the report, I think my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is quite right to ask for a breakdown by parliamentary constituency, but would he also advise the Minister providing the report to provide a breakdown by host country of overseas electors, so that we could see whether our efforts to improve take-up were doing better in some countries than others? They might be going well in Spain but not so well in France, for example. Would my hon. Friend also welcome that information?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am certainly not going to disagree with him about that. However, I fear that he might have done untold damage to his career in this place by saying that he tended to agree with me rather than with my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham. I am sure that the Whip on duty is busy writing that down even as we speak, in order to thwart his attempts at getting promoted. He might need to say at some point that he did not really mean it. We can pretend that he never said it and move on, if that would be of benefit. I certainly would not encourage him to say it on a regular basis—that would be fatal—but I am grateful to him for his support.

I am sure the whole House will be relieved that I am not going to read out the whole of new clause 10, because it covers more than three pages and that could take some time. I will take it as read that people can see it for themselves. It is quite detailed, and it may or may not find favour with colleagues, but I am anxious to move on—

[Neil O’Brien]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I am anxious to move on, but my hon. Friend clearly is not, so I will give way to him again.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am genuinely confused about some parts of new clause 10. The deadline for registration for a general election in the UK is midnight 12 working days before polling day, and the deadline for applying for a postal vote is 5 pm 11 working days prior to an election. In the new clause, however, we have deadlines of both 18 and 13 days and at a time of 5 pm, which is before the end of most people’s working day these days. Will my hon. Friend explain why there is a discrepancy between the deadlines for UK-registered voters and those who will be voting overseas? Does he agree, on reflection, that 5 pm is not necessarily the right deadline?

[Philip Davies]

Well, in terms of the time of the deadline before an election for overseas voter registration to take place, if my hon. Friend will allow—he probably thinks I am trying to dodge his incisive question, but I want to come back to amendment 40, which touches on this subject, in due course—perhaps I can move on to that later.

[Neil O’Brien]

It sounds as though my hon. Friend will return to my question later, but one specific point about the new clause is that it refers to Scottish regulations. Do we have legislative consent for that? Do we need to? What is the position?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend has gone way beyond my expertise, which people will probably think is not a difficult task in itself. I am afraid that it would take greater minds than mine to answer the question whether those permissions are needed, have been acquired, would be required and have been given. I do not know. This shows the benefit of having proper scrutiny of legislation in this House and I commend my hon. Friend for doing that, but I am not sure that I am the right person to answer those technical questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. Personally, I see a difference, which is that people can quite legitimately register in different places in the UK because they can vote in all those places in a local election. If they are a council tax payer in Yorkshire and a council tax payer in Dorset, they are perfectly free to vote in both, quite properly and legally—there is nothing wrong with that—but they are not allowed to vote twice in a parliamentary election. They can register, but they can only vote once.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Philip Davies]

I will in a second.

It seems to me that there is a difference for overseas voters, because they do not need to vote in the local election because they live somewhere else, so it is really about the parliamentary election. They do not need to be registered in two different places to vote in a parliamentary election, given that they can vote only once anyway. It is a question of where they last lived, so there is a difference.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not know the precise problem in Reading, but I am sure it exists in other places too. He is right to raise that. As I made clear earlier, if the House imposes duties on electoral registration officers, it is only right that we provide them with the resources to perform those duties—it would be completely unacceptable not to—so I take his point and would tend to agree with it.

[Neil O'Brien]

Further to the point from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), does my hon. Friend agree that there is a potential problem here for those who have been registered perfectly legitimately in two different places so that they can vote in two different local elections? If such a person became an overseas elector, it would be easy for them to forget to deregister themselves for parliamentary elections in one of the two places they were registered. It seems this is not an insuperable problem, because we could create a mechanism automatically to deregister them, but does he agree that that does seem to be an essential step to avoid accidentally criminalising people?

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I take that point, which is a good one. These points are all worthy of further consideration. I do not disagree at all. Equally, however, democracy is precious, and when people start calling results into question, because of people voting twice or whatever, it does massive damage to our democracy. A democracy works only when the losing side accepts it has lost. If it does not, perhaps because the result was rigged or people voted twice—we see this in dictatorships around the world where people do not accept results because of various irregularities—we are on a very slippery slope. We need to do whatever we can to eliminate discrepancies that call results into question. My hon. Friend is right, though, and I certainly am not for unnecessarily criminalising decent people just because they make a mistake; I just thought the issue so serious as to be worthy of further consideration.

[Neil O'Brien]

At risk of doing further damage to my career, I strongly agree with my hon. Friend about the menace of people voting in multiple places and the need for strong sentences for those who do. His new clause 11 suggests that people who vote in two constituencies should be eligible for up to a level 5 fine. For other types of electoral offence—for example, false registration of information, false registration in relation to postal voting, personation and so on—a person can receive a level 5 fine and a six-month sentence, and for things such as postal voting fraud they can get a two-year sentence and an unlimited fine.

Does my hon. Friend agree that we might want to rationalise the existing system for these different offences—there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it—and that we should review the maximum level 5 fine if it does not prove sufficient to deter people from committing what is a serious anti-democratic crime?

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I agree. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. These are serious offences, and the criminal justice system should see them as such, so I very much share his sentiments.

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[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his suggestion, which has a great deal of merit. I am not entirely sure that a private Member’s Bill was the best route for this legislation, and we probably do need a bit more expertise, as he suggests. I certainly would not disagree with that.

I am not entirely sure whether I had got to new clause 12 or new clause 13, but, in the interests of trying to get through my amendments, I am going to move on to new clause 13 and hope that that was where I had got to.

[Neil O’Brien]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, new clause 12 calls for a report on electoral offences, including on whether the number has changed as a result of this legislation. Will he tell us how we might be able to pull apart the effects of the extension of the franchise in this Bill and the many other factors that could affect both the number of offences and the number of overseas electors? Page 9 of the Commons Library briefing on the Bill shows us that many factors, including electronic voting, referendum campaigns and general elections, cause the numbers to move far more than changes to the franchise.

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I understand my hon. Friend’s point, and it is a good one. New clause 12 is more probing than one that I intended to push to a Division. The point that I was trying to make when tabling it was that it seems that the chances are that more offences will be committed if we extend the franchise so widely. It is therefore right that the Government look into this point in some detail. A report therefore seemed to be a sensible suggestion. However, I understand his point and do not necessarily disagree with it.

New clauses 13 and 14 are basically sunset clauses. I am a big fan of legislation with sunset clauses, because it means that a Bill that turns out to be hopeless is put out of its misery without any further need to do anything. If it is particularly good legislation, presumably there will be no problem with somebody wanting to resurrect it or bring it back. Sunset clauses are a good way to ensure that we end up with good legislation and that we get rid of bad legislation. New clauses 13 and 14 offer different suggestions for how long the legislation should last—one of five years and one of three.

[Neil O’Brien]

I want to put the case against my hon. Friend’s argument in favour of sunset clauses. Last Friday, we were debating the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), which would put an end to the sunset clause put on the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009. That sunset clause had no particularly clear rationale. I understand the case for such clauses when we do not know whether we will solve a problem by legislating, but when we are making a principled and permanent change, they seem unnecessary and could eat up the time of the House. Does my hon. Friend agree?