Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Wayne David]

No doubt the Minister is convinced that I am determined to make mischief on the clause. I am sorry to disappoint him. I will not embellish the concern that some Conservative Members expressed to me privately, and one or two of them in the Chamber, that this might open the way for a new symbol to be adopted if there were joint Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates in an election. I will not go that way.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

What would happen to a Labour /Co-op candidate?

[Wayne David]

The hon. Gentleman pre-empts my next point. That is precisely what I want to refer to.

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[Mr Heath]

I did indeed think that the hon. Gentleman intended to make further mischief, and he may have done so, marginally. May I reassure him that there is not the slightest intention of my party standing joint candidates with the Conservative party? We come together as a coalition of principle in this Government but at the next general election—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman does not keep up with the news if he believes that there are not divergent opinions developing on policies after the next election. We will see what happens.

The clause deals with a simple anomaly that affects the hon. Gentleman’s own party at every election where there are Labour/Co-op candidates and they cannot use a symbol that relates to their joint candidacy. It is not only the Labour party that is affected. Some of us, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), may remember Cynog Dafis, formerly a Member of the House. He was elected on a Plaid Cymru/Green ticket. The problem did not arise then, because at that time we did not have party emblems on the ballot paper, but were he or another candidate to stand on the same basis today, he would not be able to have a joint emblem to denote his candidature. It is a small discrepancy, and the clause amends rule 19 of the parliamentary election rules in schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983 to enable a candidate who is standing on behalf of two or more registered political parties to use a single emblem on the ballot paper.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I do not claim to be expert in this and I can see that the clause allows a candidate to use one emblem of one party. Does it disallow the use of an authorised combined emblem of two parties?

[Mr Heath]

I believe I am right in saying that the clause would allow that if the emblem were registered as the emblem of those two parties in combination. I imagine the Labour and Co-operative party will wish to register an emblem to indicate that their candidates will be taking on that joint sponsorship.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. If his interpretation is not right, perhaps we can be written to and the matter considered before the Bill makes progress in another place. It would be useful if the Government said whether they intend a candidate standing with the agreement of more than one party to be able to use a symbol combining elements of the symbols of both parties. If the intention is to disallow that, it would be interesting to hear that. If the intention is to allow it, it would be nice to know that explicitly.

[Mr Heath]

For the avoidance of any doubt, I will write to the hon. Gentleman. The emblem would have to be registered by one of the political parties, but it could be an emblem that indicates the cross-sponsorship.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It may be that that would have to allow for the possibility that a party would register two emblems, one by themselves and one with another party. It does seem to be a slightly more complicated issue than we understand at the moment.

[Mr Heath]

It does seem to be a much more complicated issue than I expected when I stood at the Dispatch Box. My understanding is that under the present arrangements parties can register more than one emblem, for example to demonstrate regional or national differences within a single party, so I do not think that that is a problem. That is my understanding, unless I have completely misunderstood the intention behind this. I will write to the hon. Gentleman to clarify that point.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly referred to other elections. This applies only to parliamentary elections because we have already made the necessary changes in secondary legislation to address the issue for most other elections that are affected by the change. We cannot do that for UK parliamentary elections without primary legislation, and that is why it is in the Bill today. It will complete the process, so that we no longer have that discrepancy. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 19 to 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.



New Clause 1

Personation

‘In section 60 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (Personation) after subsection (2) insert—

“(2A) The Secretary of State shall introduce regulations by statutory instrument to facilitate actions by electoral registration officers, their agents and others, including candidates and their agents in elections, to—

(a) prevent, and

(b) detect personation.”.’. —(John Hemming.)

This Clause would enable action to be taken to prevent or deter personation.

Brought up, and read the First time.

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[John Hemming]

There was no apology. They did start going down a different route, but they then started prosecuting people for offences that were not offences. There was one case where they prosecuted someone for what they thought was postal vote fraud, but they made the mistake of not checking whether the votes were cast to work out whether there was a chance that there was postal vote fraud. Most people indulge in electoral fraud to get more votes and be elected, but if someone assists someone else in filling in the forms for a postal vote and the vote is not actually cast, one can assume that there is no offence. A person was prosecuted for that. There has been no apology for it.

I am more concerned about the fact that we are doing nothing to control personation. I want to draw a distinction between actions that enable the system as a whole to act to prevent personation and actions that enable political parties to do so. Issuing an election petition is very difficult. Again, it is worth reading the judgment. The prosecution in Birmingham took place in the Birmingham and Midland Institute, in a room that could accommodate possibly 300 people, and there were often 200 people there watching the election court’s proceedings. It was the best entertainment in town at the time, and many people who saw it would accept that as a fair description of the situation. Whatever processes are put in, there must be a facility that allows them to be transparent and enables the political parties to be involved in challenging them through an open and transparent judicial process in an election court.

At the same time, it is useful to have processes that allow the police to get involved. In Birmingham it was clear that 4,000 people’s votes were stolen in the Bordesley Green ward. There were three local election votes and one European parliamentary vote, so basically 16,000 votes were stolen. That involved threats to the postman, who was told, “We’ll give you £500 if you give us your box of postal votes or we’ll kill you.” It is an offer you cannot really refuse. One letter box was actually set on fire in an attempt to stop postal votes reaching the electoral office. There was a semi-riot involving 200 people, because obviously when this sort of thing goes on the tension goes beyond what we would normally have in rows about unparliamentary language and people start fighting in the street instead. Those are the sorts of issues that arise.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The hon. Gentleman’s new clause rightly suggests first deterring people and then being able to catch them and take action. False registration is clearly an issue, and obtaining postal votes when they are in transit is another. Has he considered whether powers are needed to be able to film each person delivering a vote in person, because there is either the postal vote personation or the voting-in-person personation?

[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I would rather he had not made it, because I had intended to say that and now he has mentioned it first. I think that technology has facilitated recording in polling stations. Making that recording available would be the best sort of change, because it would not record which way people vote.

I had started to talk about the Greek situation, where transparent ballot boxes are used, which, in terms of transparency, are better than black boxes. In Cheetham Hill ward in Manchester in 2003 a ballot box went astray for about an hour and a half after the end of polling. Obviously that is a good opportunity for ballot box-stuffing, as people can put a few extra votes in the ballot box as they drive around Manchester. There are a number of advantages with the filming process. If someone is personating, we would see who it is, which in a sense is the better challenge.

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[Mr Kevan Jones]

This has been a fascinating debate. In my view, one of the weaknesses of the new clause is that it calls for action but does not outline what should happen.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that the number of cases of fraud in this country is small. Overall, we have a very good electoral system. In the Electoral Commission’s report after its voting pilots of the early 2000s, it found that the incidence of fraud was quite small, but, as we know, concentrated in certain communities, whether Asian communities in big cities such as Birmingham, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) represents, or those in other areas such as Bradford and Tower Hamlets, where the Liberal Democrats do not have a fantastic record. We must therefore be careful not to get this out of proportion.

I am worried about some of the hon. Gentleman’s suggested measures to detect fraud, which would be completely out of proportion to the problem that is being addressed. Having seen his performances in this House over the past few years, I am not surprised that the police chose the name Operation Gripe. Making scattergun accusations such as those he made today is not very helpful, either to the police or to the real debate about electoral fraud.

The hon. Gentleman proposes to extend these measures to candidates and polling agents. In Durham, political parties do appoint polling agents, but their role is very clearly defined. They cannot interfere with the issuing of ballot papers. They can ask people for their numbers, but many, rightly, do not give them. They may be asked for the number of people who have voted, and will be happy to give that. If polling agents were able to sit over the polling clerks, as he suggests, that would be wrong because it might intimidate them. The polling clerks I have dealt with in the many elections in which I have been either an agent or a candidate are very professional individuals. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence of a polling clerk issuing ballot papers incorrectly, then he must provide it. He should not throw it out in such a casual manner as he has today. I would be very uncomfortable with polling agents taking on the role that he suggests in sitting over the clerks when they are doing their job.

I accept that the hon. Gentleman’s community is very different from the one that I represent, but I find it strange that voters take other people into the polling station to vote. In my experience of the elections in which I have been an agent or a candidate, if someone arrives who is infirm or needs assistance, the polling clerk will take them into the voting booth to assist in pointing out the names of the candidates. I have never known polling clerks allow a relative, or a candidate or representative of a political party, to go with somebody into the voting booth. The message is the quality and rigour of the polling clerks, who, in my experience, are professional individuals who know what the rules are.

In Durham, when polling clerks take numbers at polling stations, it is made clear that they must sit way outside the balloting area—if it is a school, usually in a corridor; if it is a community hall, usually outside—so that they cannot in any way interfere with the process. I have sometimes taken infirm people to vote. The usual procedure is to take them to the door and indicate to the clerk, who will take over from there so that we do not get involved in the process.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, the hon. Gentleman is doing us a disservice in perpetuating the myth that electoral fraud is a huge problem in general, because it is not. I accept that it is a huge problem in certain areas, and the people involved should be dealt with properly.

I find it strange that a Liberal Democrat has such a schizophrenic attitude towards CCTV given that the Liberal Democrats pride themselves on saying that CCTV is against civil liberties. I would not want any recording device in polling stations, because the ballot is private. No matter how many assurances people were given, they would fear that a CCTV camera was recording or indicating which way they had voted.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

First, we have had for some time the experience of having police officers in polling stations from the days when they might have been needed to keep order. Secondly, surely the proposed CCTV camera is intended to show the ballot paper being issued and put in the box, not to go behind the screen where the paper is marked.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman says that, but what is to prevent someone from shifting the camera so that it covers the voting booths? My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd also made a good point about cost. I think that many electors would find it intimidating to be filmed while they were performing their democratic right. I therefore think that this is a very strange suggestion from the Liberal Democrats. They rail against the Big Brother state a lot, but this would be taking the Big Brother state to a huge and strange conclusion.

I also find it strange that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is in favour of people marking their fingers. Again, I am not sure that that would go down well in my constituency.

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[Mr Jones]

I am not being funny, but if somebody turns themselves into a serial complainer, I can understand why an authority would start to ignore some of the complaints. The hon. Gentleman would be better off concentrating on specific cases on which he has hard evidence, rather than throwing complaints around like confetti, which is not helpful.

The other thing that will help the process is individual registration, which will ensure that the register is as up-to-date as possible. I reiterate that elections in this country are largely run fairly and correctly. We should keep reinforcing that message. When we had the pilots for all-postal and e-mail voting elections in the early 2000s, the report from the Electoral Commission was very positive. A council by-election in my area achieved a 67% turnout. If the number of votes cast is increased, the effect of minor fraud is diminished, so getting turnout up is important.

I accept that the constituency that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley represents is very different from mine, and that there are communities that engage in electoral fraud. The effort should be made in those places, rather than there being a scatter-gun approach. I therefore see no reason for the new clauses. They are quite weak, because they do not prescribe what the action would be. They are not well thought out.

Finally, we should praise the many local returning officers and council chief executives who work very hard and are scrupulous in running elections.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The speech from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was interesting. It was like saying that 788 planes landed safely at Heathrow and that only one crashed, and then asking why we are spending our time on the crash.

The new clause is a probing suggestion that something should happen. Clearly, something should happen. It would be good if the Minister said that he will get the Association of Chief Police Officers together with the Electoral Commission, electoral registration officers and others to come up with a way of finding out how much of a problem there is—that means research—and a statement of how the police gain the information on which they can base prosecutions when problems are reported.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I respect the hon. Gentleman, but I am trying to develop a slightly different approach. I will do so very briefly.

First, there should be a one in 100 check on postal vote applications. Secondly, there should be a retrospective check on whether postal votes have been used by the elector themselves. Thirdly, there should be a place where people who think that postal votes have been stolen—literally and physically stolen—can report it, and there should be a way to check those reports. Lastly, the police should be asked what it is they lack that would make it possible for them to investigate complaints and suggestions of impropriety properly. I think that that approach would solve the problem.

[Mr Heath]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this Committee, Ms Clark.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) has raised an important point about impersonation and other electoral fraud offences. He was very fair in what he said at the beginning of his remarks. First, he said that this is a probing new clause. I therefore do not intend to dissect the wording of his new clauses to any great extent, because I do not think that he intends to press for a Division. Secondly, he was fair in saying that electoral malpractice is not confined to one party. We all need to be aware of it, to be on our guard against it and to take all appropriate steps to ensure that it does not happen, either in our own parties or in the wider electoral process. He, of course, recounts what he has experienced in Birmingham, and it is perfectly proper for other hon. Members to raise issues that reflect the experience in their areas.

We have traditionally been extraordinarily complacent in this country about our electoral administration arrangements. We have assumed that most people play the game according to the rules, and most people do. However, in making that big assumption, we have sometimes omitted to take elementary steps that would be considered perfectly normal in other jurisdictions to prevent the possibility of those who do not want to play by the rules doing things that we would not consider to be normal.

As I indicated earlier in the passage of the Bill, I have considerable experience of monitoring elections overseas as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Indeed, I have led international monitoring missions in a number of countries. The things that I have seen done in other countries, which we say in international forums are the things that we would like to see, are completely omitted in our country. Some of the things to which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley referred, such as the use of transparent boxes to avoid ballot stuffing, are normal in most new democracies. It is normal in most new democracies for representatives of parties to act as observers in polling stations as a trust-building measure. Indeed, it is common in a lot of countries to have a method of indicating that somebody has voted, such as the use of dye. Those are not measures that we should or need to take in this country, but it is important that we do not have a complacent view of fraud, or an old-fashioned view that such things cannot happen in the United Kingdom—they can, and we should be on our guard.

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[Mr Heath]

I mentioned in the debate on an earlier group of amendments the extraordinarily valuable work that has been done between the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers. That work, which has involved comparing notes and finding best practice, has brought it home to local police officers that electoral fraud is their responsibility, and that attempting to undermine our democratic process by doing things incorrectly is a serious offence and should be taken seriously.

That has not always been the case—Governments, too, have not always taken electoral fraud seriously. I give credit to the previous Government because they started to take it seriously latterly in legislation, but I emphasise on behalf of this Government that we take electoral fraud very seriously indeed and regard the integrity of the ballot as a top priority. That is precisely why we introduced the Bill and measures such as individual elector registration.

We need returning officers and their staff to work closely with local police forces, candidates and agents to raise awareness of voting offences and the proper procedure for reporting concerns. The joint guidance from ACPO and the Electoral Commission in advance of a poll, for which the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) asked, will give examples of best practice on detecting malpractice. It will be enormously valuable. For example, polling station staff will be issued with guidance notes routinely on how to identify individuals they suspect of committing a voting offence, and on what to do if they are not satisfied that a person is a genuine or eligible voter.

Under existing law and under the Bill, polling station staff can ask voters certain prescribed questions before issuing them with a ballot paper, including asking whether they are the person named on the register under the relevant entry and whether they have already voted in that election. Staff can withhold a ballot paper from those attempting to vote more than once. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley that the process of a tendered ballot is not well understood, but it ought to be in such circumstances. Staff must also mark each voter’s name on the register before they are issued with a ballot paper to prevent people from voting several times.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Marking prevents the person who should be casting the vote from doing so, because someone will have used their name before.

[Mr Heath]

That is precisely the point about the tendered vote. The person who subsequently arrives at the polling station can vote—whether a personation has occurred is determined at a later stage.

Similarly, measures are already in place to prevent postal voting fraud. All postal voters must supply postal vote identifiers—a signature and a date of birth—both when they apply for and when they return a postal vote. Anyone seeking to abuse a postal vote that is addressed to someone who has moved out of a property would have to replicate a signature and know the date of birth to pass the rigorous checking system. In addition, the Government will introduce secondary legislation to make it mandatory—this deals with an issue raised by the hon. Member for Worthing West—for returning officers to check 100% of postal vote identifiers on return postal vote statements. Taken together, those measures will make it very difficult for a third person to intercept a postal ballot and commit personation.

The evidence is that the number of instances of personation remains relatively low. That is not complacent—in certain areas under certain circumstances, there is a higher number, but overall the rate is relatively low. The encouraging thing is that the joint report by the Electoral Commission and ACPO shows a reduction in the proportion of reported cases following the 2011 referendum compared with previous ballots. The existing safeguards in legislation and practice perhaps are beginning to have an effect, but we are introducing further safeguards in the Bill.

As I said, I shall not dissect the new clauses, but the concern we have with the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley is that they are vague—unidentified measures could be taken by delegated powers, of which hon. Members have traditionally taken a dim view because they allow Ministers a freer rein to introduce new measures. If we were to take additional powers to deal with such problems, we would want to do so in primary legislation.

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[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend raises two issues. The first is whether British citizens are entitled to vote in EU local elections and European elections, as is the case in most European countries. The fact of the matter is that British citizens living overseas for more than 15 years since they last registered are not able to register here in order to vote in our general elections. Secondly, he says that these people have lost allegiance to the UK. I think that that is a slur on many of them. I think many people living abroad have a huge interest in what goes on in this country. I suspect that most of the voters who are unable to register still pay their taxes, or at least some part of them, to the UK. It seems to me that if the UK is prepared to take their taxes, why should they be denied a vote? I just cannot see the case for that.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

My hon. Friend has clearly explained this arbitrary cut-off of 15 years. That is understood. Does he agree that the electoral registration officer is obliged to register people who are entitled to vote here and, if so, who should have the responsibility to register those overseas who are entitled to vote, irrespective of whether they have lived abroad 15 years or more since they last registered here?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is up to the electoral registration officer to consider the application on the basis of the individual involved and the facts of the case. He would no doubt be entitled to make further inquiries—the Minister will put me right if I am wrong—if there were any doubt or confusion about whether the person had been registered here within the 15-year period, outside it or indeed about whether the person was entitled to vote at all.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I understand that, but I was asking a slightly different question. Should someone have the responsibility for trying to recruit these people to register in the same way that domestically resident people like myself are if they are entitled to vote?

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[Mr Streeter]

I shall speak briefly in support of my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) in endorsing new clause 3. I believe that our electoral rules for overseas citizens were fashioned in a bygone age. I realise that the 15-year rule is relatively recent—

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Citizens overseas.

[Mr Streeter]

What did I say?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Overseas citizens.

[Mr Streeter]

Thank you—a very important distinction, I am sure. I am saying that I believe our rules for people living overseas who are British citizens have been fashioned in a bygone age. When we consider the world today, a young person can work anywhere, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) who mentioned the large employers in her constituency, Many students are studying mandarin Chinese and may spend much of their lives—more than 15 years—in China. Many of our fine and bright young people spend more than 15 years in America. Given our weather, many people retire to sunnier climes overseas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) spoke about people giving up their allegiance to this country and the Crown, but many people who aim to retire overseas for ever, end up coming back. The stats are quite staggering on that. People have not given up their allegiance and they will certainly have family here and perhaps property here. As we have heard, they may pay taxes here. I believe that because we have this old-fashioned mentality, we lag behind many of the countries that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds mentioned in respect of our systems to ensure that British citizens living overseas can vote.

The important point about the 15-year rule, apart from the fact that there is an absolute cut-off point after 15 years, is that it creates confusion in the minds of many of our citizens overseas as to whether or not they are allowed to vote, so they do not even look into it fully. I have looked into the process we put in place for people to register to vote in this country, and I have found that it is just about as old-fashioned as could be imagined. I realise that there are security issues, but I think that the Government should consider making the system more streamlined and more user-friendly and allowing greater use of the internet.

I wonder whether, because ours is one of the oldest democracies in the world, we have become a bit complacent. Other countries are so much more dynamic and proactive in encouraging their overseas citizens to vote. I was staggered to learn that well over a million French citizens who were not living in France at the time voted in the recent presidential elections. As we heard earlier, in this country we mustered the staggeringly small number of about 30,000 Brits out of the 3.5 or 4.5 million who were eligible to vote. Fewer than 30,000 had registered to vote, and of course even fewer than that will have actually voted.

I think that we have become complacent about the importance of our democracy. We make only feeble efforts to encourage our active service people to vote, and I think that our lack of support for British citizens living overseas may be another indication of our complacency. I believe that we need to do an awful lot more to remove the barriers and the confusion, and to improve the system. A French person living in London can go to the French embassy to vote in the French presidential elections, but we cannot go to the embassy in Paris. It is all rather odd, and the Government should look into it. Perhaps, in the time-honoured Liberal Democrat tradition, they could even set up a royal commission, but we probably need rather more dynamic action than that.

I support this important new clause, which takes us quite a long way towards being able to send a strong signal to Brits living abroad. We need to be able to tell them, “We still think that you are an important part of our democracy, and we want you to engage in our democratic processes. We want you to register and we want you to vote, because you have a valuable part to play in our country.” Let us remove the 15-year barrier, and make a much more dynamic and proactive effort to encourage Brits living abroad to engage in our democratic processes.