Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David]

I am not entirely reassured by what the Minister has said. In fact, I found his comments contradictory and confusing. It is a straightforward matter, and I hope that he provides in his winding-up speech the clarification that the Opposition and organisations such as the Royal National Institute of Blind People want.

There is also a worry that moneys for EROs to support transition have not been adequately ring-fenced. I listened carefully to the Minister. He provided more clarity, but has specifically not stated that the money will be ring-fenced so that it is spent on the purpose for which it is intended, which was a key Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recommendation; I pay warm tribute to the Committee’s work.

Many other concerns are referred to in the reasoned amendment, one of which is the power that the Bill gives to Ministers to cancel annual canvasses. The Government’s argument is that we might at some point no longer need annual canvasses, when registers are complete. The Opposition argue that an annual canvass is needed even if we eventually have high registration levels, because we must always guard against, and be diligent about, any deterioration of the electoral roll.

The Government have made much of their U-turn on civil penalties. I do not want to belittle their volte face, but before the House can make an assessment of the civil penalty that the Government propose, it needs to know exactly how much the penalty will be. The Minister has said in other exchanges that the penalty will be like a parking fine, but the size of parking fines varies enormously across the country. Here in Westminster, they can be as high as £130, but in Rhondda Cynon Taff in south Wales, they can be as low as £25. Nobody wishes large numbers of fines to be issued, but if fines are to be an incentive for people to register, they need to be fixed at a reasonable level, and yet we do not know what that will be.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

When I was a Conservative party agent way back in the 1980s—[Interruption.]—people were forced to pay a fixed fine of £50 for non-registration, but does the hon. Gentleman know how many people were forced to pay it?

[Mr David]

That is not much of an argument. We need an indication from the Government, which they have failed to provide, of the level at which the fixed fine will be set. There is no question of varying the fixed fine, of course; it will be a uniform fixed fine. We simply want to know what it should be. The Observer suggested that it might be £100. There have been other suggestions, too. I am simply saying that given that the Government are making a big thing of having listened to the opinions of many people outside the House and are committed to a civil penalty in principle, we need to know what they judge an effective figure to be.

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[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I have been involved in this issue for the past 30 years, having trained to be a Conservative party agent in Wanstead and Woodford, which was next door to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). That was a most interesting time. If the gentlemen who trained me were alive today, he would be somewhat horrified that I am involved in the debate, because he had been Winston Churchill’s agent for the last year of his parliamentary career.

It is interesting to be involved in this debate with the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who was in the Chamber recently, for the simple reason that, for 10 years, I was the Tory party agent in that constituency, where I worked for Angela Rumbold, who was a very distinguished politician—she was not only an Education Minister but a Home Office Minister.

I am keen to support the Bill because it is about ensuring that individuals take responsibility for their own lives and decide whether or not they want to be on the electoral register. We must do everything we can to encourage those people to ensure that they are registered. My hon. Friend the Minister has included a number of measures in the Bill that will help in that respect.

Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport is—surprise, surprise—the home of the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, 3 Commando Brigade and 29 Commando. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) mentioned the university in his city. Plymouth is also a university city; it has the third largest university in the country. It is also a dispersal centre for asylum seekers.

I am curious as to why Labour Members have been critical of the individual registration measures in the Bill, because the previous Labour Government decided that it was no longer possible for the commanding officers at 29 Commando, the Royal Navy base or Stonehouse barracks to hand over a list of people serving in their units. The then Government decided that everyone had to make a service declaration, and that has had a devastating effect on the number of service personnel registering. We must do everything possible to encourage them. It would be unfortunate were we to say that service personnel were lesser people who did not need the opportunity to register and vote. It is vital that electoral registration officers in Plymouth and other garrison towns should be forced to hold registration surgeries, speak to the commanding officers and ensure that those people register.

The story is similar for universities. Whenever I go knocking on doors in my constituency, I find that the previous occupants—students who gave up a year or two before—have moved on and that the new occupants have not registered. Many houses in my constituency are multi-occupancy. We need to address that issue. Electoral registration officers should also have stands at freshers’ fairs to ensure that people are registered.

As mentioned, there is also an issue with bad registration. Some people who should not be here are on the electoral register. That is a key issue. It would be helpful were the Government willing to share information on asylum seekers with local authorities to ensure that those people are not included on the register. The risk is that they get lost in the whole thing. As hon. Members might know, candidates can ask the police to ask two questions of any voter. The first is: are they the person on the electoral register? The second is: are they the person residing at this address? I think there should be a third question: are they qualified to vote? It is important that we crack down on people voting in this country who are not entitled to do so.

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[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He has anticipated a point that I shall be making later if time permits.

There has been a suggestion that there is limited evidence of fraud, and some Opposition Members have suggested that there is no such evidence. I remind the House that last year I took a random sample of 100 people who had been to my constituency seeking leave to remain, and who had absolutely no right to vote in this country. Of those people, 21 were on the electoral roll. I repeated the exercise this year, and it produced a similar result.

[Oliver Colvile]

Might not this be one of the reasons: a piece of paper comes through the door, it looks official and people feel that they should reply? They think that they are being incredibly good and behaving themselves, but in reality they are filling in a form when they should not be doing so in the first place.

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend has far more experience of these matters than I have. I believe that there are a multitude of reasons, including that one. I do not believe that it is all about fraudulent intent, but it can lead to the exercise of a franchise by someone who has absolutely no right to do so. It is clear—and it has been raised—that some people deliberately seek to get on to the electoral register when they have no right to do so, perhaps to improve their chances of obtaining credit. The fact is, however, that the door is open for them to do so, and we must slam it shut.