Electoral Registration
Sadiq Khan Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House recognises the importance of a complete and accurate electoral register to the health of our democracy; welcomes the fact that 1.8 million voters have registered using online registration, but notes that, according to the Electoral Commission, 7.5 million eligible voters are missing from the register; notes with concern that an estimated one million voters have left the register in the past year and that the shift to individual electoral registration could see millions more fall off the register; calls on the Government and the Electoral Commission to do more to tackle under-registration, including block-registering students in university or college accommodation and people living in adult sheltered accommodation and care homes, introducing a schools registration scheme, on the model of the Northern Ireland Schools Initiative, to boost registration in time for the General Election on 7 May 2015, and maximising the use of national and local data sets in securing a complete register; and further calls on the Government to set a clear goal to reduce the numbers of missing voters and to delay fully implementing individual electoral registration until this goal is met.
As the Government’s timetable has meant limited time for debating this important matter, I shall focus my remarks on the motion and how we can ensure that the general election in 92 days’ time is as fair as possible. We want the electoral register to be as complete and accurate as possible—something that I hope we all want. After all, it is the lifeblood of our democracy. If a person is not on the list, they cannot vote—it is as simple as that.
However, the electoral register also performs a much wider civic function. It provides the building blocks that the Boundary Commission uses to decide parliamentary constituency boundaries. One of the fundamental principles of our legal system—trial by one’s peers—depends on the register, as it provides the list of those who can be called for jury service. Those who are not on the register will find it more difficult, and maybe even impossible, to secure credit or a mortgage.
That is why it is so appalling that according to the Electoral Commission’s own research some 7.5 million people are missing from the register. We know what kinds of voters are more likely to be missing: young voters, students, those who have recently changed address, those who rent privately, the unemployed, those from ethnic minorities and those in socio-economic groups D and E—in other words, poorer members of society.
Some 95% of the over-65s are on the electoral register, yet estimates of the proportion of 18 to 24-year-olds on it vary from 56% to 70%. If that were not a big enough problem, we know that there is also considerable variation in the rates of those who actually vote. Just 44% of 18 to 24-year-olds voted in the 2010 general election, and the figure for the over-65s was pushing 75%.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
On 13 October 2011 the right hon. Gentleman said that 10 million people would lose the right to vote, but he has just said that the figure is only 7.5 million, so how has the situation improved since then?
Sadiq Khan
I am not sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make—that 7.5 million is somehow more acceptable? He will appreciate, because he cares about these matters, that it depends on what figures are referred to. The Electoral Commission has done some estimates, as have other academics. It might be a laughing matter for Conservative MPs, but we think that it is a very serious issue.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way in this incredibly important debate. Does he share the concern of many people in Liverpool that the figures for attainers—the under-18s who still need to go on the register in anticipation of becoming eligible to vote—show a 97% drop in the number of 16 and 17-year-olds on Liverpool’s electoral register as a result of the introduction of the Government’s new scheme, from 2,635 to just 76? Is he as appalled as I am about those new figures?
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend makes an important point. As I said, the register that will be used for the general election in 92 days’ time will have missing from it those who have just reached the age of 18 and should be taking part in general elections. It is estimated that there will be 3.3 million first-time voters on 7 May, and we are concerned that too many of them will be missing from the register.
Almost three quarters of those who vote are in socio-economic class AB—the wealthiest—yet fewer than two thirds of C2s and Ds do so. Our elections are being fought on the basis of a seriously skewed register, with key groups and communities under-represented.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sadiq Khan
In a moment.
Our election results are being decided by voters who are older and more affluent. This is an appropriate time for me to give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Sadiq Khan
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we introduced the measure in 2009, and he supported it. Under our motion, we would not get rid of individual voter registration but ensure that there were safeguards before the next general election.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I represent an inner-city seat where we shall see a significant reduction in the overall number of our electors, and I am concerned about the implications of that. Individual voter registration came in cheek by jowl with the concerns about electoral fraud that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) mentioned. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the genuine concern about the fact that we can now have postal votes at will? The number of postal votes went up from some 920,000 in the 1997 election to over 6 million in the last election. It is the concern about the misuse of postal votes that makes individual registration so important.
Sadiq Khan
The hon. Gentleman’s point is not relevant to the motion, but I will deal with it directly. If he has concerns about the misuse of postal votes, I advise him to report them to the police and to the Electoral Commission. He will be aware of the numbers of prosecutions that there have been over the past few years. We have to be quite careful about using parliamentary privilege to make allegations. If he has specific examples, I ask him to refer them to the police and the Electoral Commission.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
The constituency with the highest proportion of postal ballots is Tatton, with 96%. Is the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) aware that 93% of people transferred their postal ballots from household registration to individual registration? Postal ballots are valued by the voting public.
Sadiq Khan
That is a very important point. In some constituencies the number of people using postal votes is incredibly high. I am sure that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster was not suggesting that the voters in Tatton are committing electoral fraud.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a complete red herring? The Electoral Commission’s report of 2006, when we had all-postal pilots—in my own constituency, for example—found that fraud was not an issue.
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend makes an important point. To be fair to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, he was not suggesting that there was huge-scale fraud but pointing out the concerns that exist. He is nodding, so I think he accepts that.
Mark Field
I was suggesting not that there is widespread fraud but that the large number of postal votes makes it all the more important to ensure the sanctity and security of the electoral system. Taking the individual registration route was an important part of that. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman’s party, when in government, made it clear that we should go down this route. The concern that he is expressing about students and people from certain socio-economic groups is part and parcel of the individual registration process.
Sadiq Khan
I am grateful for that clarification, and to demonstrate what a nice guy I am, I shall give way one last time.
Chris Ruane
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way a second time. May I inform him and the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) that there has been one successful prosecution for postal ballot fraud in the past seven years?
Sadiq Khan
I thank my hon. Friend for confirming the point that I was seeking to make a short while ago.
There is some good news. Many people out there are not prepared to put up with this inequality. I pay tribute to all those involved in registering people to vote—it is a tough job, but critical—from local authority electoral registration officers to political party activists of all parties pounding the pavements, and from the NUS to HOPE not hate, Operation Black Vote and our trade unions, who tirelessly work to get people registered. I also pay tribute to the Daily Mirror’s No Vote No Voice campaign, getting its readers and their families and friends registered to vote.
In particular, I want to pay tribute to and thank Bite the Ballot, the architects of tomorrow’s national voter registration day. Anyone who has been involved in one of their sessions with young people cannot fail to be impressed by the infectious enthusiasm of Mike Sani and his team. It is a real pity that the Prime Minister chose to snub their leaders’ debate, although it is perhaps indicative of how some in the ruling classes view younger voters.
To complicate matters further, the whole way we go about registering to vote is undergoing a fundamental change. Yes, it was the last Government who, in 2009, legislated to introduce individual electoral registration. That legislation was shaped by the experiences in Northern Ireland—when they moved to IER, there was an 11% fall in the numbers registered, so to counter that a transition period was put in place for long enough to prevent a repeat. Safeguards were also put in place at key milestones to check against any deterioration in the completeness of the register. Colleagues on both sides of the House welcomed that careful and considerate approach to moving to IER.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), now Madam Deputy Speaker, who in those days spoke for the Conservative party, said:
“I am very pleased to have the opportunity to put it on the record once and for all that we agree with the Government that the accuracy, comprehensiveness and integrity of the register and of the system is paramount. That is one of the reasons why we will not oppose the timetable the Minister has suggested this evening.”
The then Liberal Democrat spokesman said:
“I do not think that anybody was suggesting that the timetable be artificially shortened, or that any risk be taken with the comprehensiveness of the register.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 108-12.]
After the last general election, the coalition, in its arrogance, decided to rip up the cross-party approach supported by all sides in the previous Parliament. The coalition agreement contained a commitment to
“speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration”,
and the Government introduced the reckless Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, which removed the voluntary phase and instead introduced compulsory individual electoral registration from July 2014.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. He correctly predicted the drop-off in the electoral register, and the scrapping of the voluntary arrangement in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 is the root cause of these problems. Does he share my concern that the loss of those electors will lead to the long-term deterioration of the electoral register?
Sadiq Khan
Absolutely. Having fewer and fewer people taking part in elections is a bad thing for all of us. The Government’s justification for getting rid of the voluntary phase was that it would save money, but it is right to remind the House that we warned that speeding up the process and stripping out the key safeguards was gambling with the completeness of the electoral register. We were not alone. Similar warnings were voiced by experts, academics, the Electoral Reform Society and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who is in his place. We take no satisfaction in saying, “We told you so.”
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
Does the shadow Secretary of State not accept that anyone who was on the household register in July 2014 who is still in the same house remains on the new register today? Is that not a serious safeguard?
Sadiq Khan
I shall come to the data-matching shortly, but we have considered those on the register in December 2013 and those on the register in December 2014, after the data-matching. An estimated 1 million voters have dropped off the electoral register. For 1 million to be missing in a year is bad enough, but the trends in the groups that are unregistered is also worrying. Data coming in from local authorities are showing serious drops among students and those turning 18. In the patch of my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), the number registering fell from 630 to 114 in just 12 months. As has been said, the figure for attainers registering in Liverpool has slumped from 2,300 to just 76. Three areas with large number of students —Cardiff, Newcastle and Brighton—have seen drops of between 9% and 10.5% in the numbers registered.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the country, with an increasing number of young private renters—there are more private renters than home owners in the constituency—and people who move frequently drop off the register. I pay tribute to my borough of Hackney, which has put money and time into bringing the register up again. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the cost of doing so is also a problem for local tax payers?
Sadiq Khan
To give Members an idea of the scale of the challenge, local authorities now have to write to each individual voter rather than to each household, which is a huge expense. To be fair—because I like to be fair—the Deputy Prime Minister has finally woken up—
Sadiq Khan
A Tory Minister of course stands up when I mention the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mr Gyimah
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for being gracious in giving way. Liverpool authority received £161,000, which was the third highest allocation for maximising registration funding in the country. If there is any question to ask about the drop-off in registrations, it should be directed towards the council.
Sadiq Khan
Let us get this right. Academics, experts, the Select Committee, the Electoral Reform Society and everyone else says “Slow down”, but the Government go ahead. We warn them that it will go wrong, but who do they blame when it goes wrong? Somebody else. They are the same old Tories.
Mr Kevan Jones
I must say that I take great exception to the Minister’s arrogance, because his letter—agreed with the Electoral Commission—missed off attainers, and that has led to the drop in the number of 17-year-olds being registered.
Sadiq Khan
Perhaps Ministers do not realise what officials in the Cabinet Office are sending out, but they have accepted that it was their mistake.
To be fair to the Minister, his boss, the Deputy Prime Minister, has finally woken up to the mess that this Government made by speeding up the process. That must be why, last month, the Deputy Prime Minister announced £9.8 million to help with registering voters who are currently under-represented. He accepted that he had messed up. Will the Minister confirm that that money is ring-fenced solely for electoral registration activities?
Another critical factor is the extreme pressure on local authorities because of the cuts imposed by this Government. Local authorities have to write to 48 million individual voters, instead of 20 million households. Unlike the Minister, who criticises them, I take my hat off to local authorities, most of which are doing a remarkable job dealing with this massive change in our democracy, all against a backdrop of enormous pressures on council budgets.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
In Coventry, more than 8,000 people have not been registered, the bulk of whom are students. Coventry city council, alongside the students, has organised a registration day tomorrow at both universities. The situation is very serious, and it is no good the Government blaming everybody else but themselves when things go wrong.
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I am sure we all agree it is outrageous that the Government are once again seeking to blame somebody else for cock-ups that they were warned about.
The electoral register is in a parlous state. It is just 92 days until the general election, and just 75 days until the deadline for registration on 20 April. We need action, and we need it now. Doing nothing is not an option. The main thrust of our motion is to propose a number of remedies to which the House should give its backing. A particular priority must be young people. All the evidence shows that if people vote when they first become eligible, they are more likely to vote for the rest of their lives, because voting becomes a habit. The opposite is also true: if people do not vote early in life, taking part in elections will never be much of an issue for them. There must be a greater onus on schools and colleges to provide focused activities.
Mr Kevan Jones
The Electoral Commission and the Minister have not learned. Even though the issue of attainers has been raised with him, the letter that authorities are sending out, to which he and the Electoral Commission have agreed, does not refer to 17-year-olds being electors. They have not learned the lesson, even though the issue has been pointed out to them by electoral registration officers all over the country and certainly by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane).
Sadiq Khan
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I pay tribute to him and other colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), for working hard with the universities and young people in their constituencies to get young people on the register.
We need special provisions for this group of people. We should allow universities and colleges to block-register those who are in halls of residence, to meet the unique challenge presented by younger people, and students in particular. That could be done very quickly and in time for May. A similar case can be made for care homes and sheltered accommodation: large groups of people who are under the responsibility of an organisation, a local authority or a charity should be allowed to be block-registered.
A scheme in Northern Ireland called the schools initiative has proved to be successful in raising the registration levels of younger people. It places a duty on schools and colleges to provide the ERO with lists of those who are approaching the age of majority. The EROs then go into the schools and colleges with pre-populated registration forms and get the students to complete them. That is even easier now that online registration is allowed.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the two parties that form the coalition have a vested interest in keeping down the number of students and would-be students on the electoral register, because those two parties are the ones that put the fees up to £9,000?
Sadiq Khan
Many people will start thinking that, unless the Government take action. It is in all our interests for as many people who can vote to be on the register and to vote.
One of the brighter spots of the move to IER, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), has been the use of DWP data to verify those on the old household register in order to register them automatically on the new individual register. It is far from perfect and it has struggled with many of the under-represented groups, such as students and younger people, but it has taken the pressure off many millions of people who have not had to go through the rigmarole of registering individually.
That has showed how we can use data that are already in our possession to make the job easier. Why should we restrict that to DWP data? Why can we not look at registering people automatically if local EROs are confident that they are eligible to vote? That is covered in the later sections of the motion. The Government are in possession of considerable data about members of the public, including on benefits, social security and pensions and data held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Passport Office and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Local authorities have data on council tax, council tenants, parking permits, school rolls, meals on wheels and so on. Those agencies should all be geared up to ask members of the public whether they are registered to vote when they come into contact with them. We could perhaps set up systems to notify a local authority if somebody applies for a new driving licence or changes their address with the taxman.
We should be more ambitious. We should be making better use of data so that people are put on the register automatically. I have had informal chats with some local authorities and they believe that they could construct a more complete register if they were allowed to use the data in their possession. We would, of course, allow people to ask to be removed from the register. The idea of maximising the information that we possess to populate the register has legs, and we will explore it in detail if we win in May. It would be useful to hear from the Minister why it is not being looked at and to hear what his objections are.
In conclusion, it is unacceptable that so many people are unregistered and are being deprived of their say in the way the country is run. I am disappointed that the Government and the Electoral Commission are so complacent about the bad news on the state of the register —bad news that grows by the day. We need a clear statement of intent from Ministers and a goal for the reduction in the number of missing voters, because we cannot afford to take risks with the register. A chronically depleted register, with missing voters concentrated in certain communities and parts of the country, will call into question the legitimacy of our democracy. Let us act now before it is too late.
Mr Gyimah
The letter to which the hon. Gentleman refers was tested and approved by the Electoral Commission, and in terms of users. [Interruption.] I want to make some progress now.
The £2.5 million that I have announced will be delivered through a number of organisations, including the British Youth Council, Citizens UK, Mencap and Operation Black Vote, to ensure that as many people as possible are placed on the register. The right hon. Member for Tooting mentioned data-matching. There is much more that we can do in that regard. We are currently running pilots involving the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and there will be a report on them in September. Once IER has bedded in, we shall consider other ways in which we can use data that is gathered when people interact with other public services to help them to register to vote.
Sadiq Khan
Earlier in his speech, the Minister made the point that everyone should be treated equally. The fact that he is allowing data-matching means that every single person must fill in a form. If he accepts the principle that everyone should be registered in the same way, why will he not extend that people to allow block registration in halls of residence?
Mr Gyimah
The registration of students, and block registration in particular, is a key issue in the motion. In my view, you either believe in individual voter registration or you do not. You cannot have it both ways. Singling out any group of voters for block registration would be a step backwards to the old, discredited system of registration.
What is most farcical about the stance adopted by the Opposition today is that they want to give 16-year-olds the vote, but do not trust them to be able to register themselves, even once they are at university. Their whole approach is based on political gimmicks. That is why the Leader of the Opposition ended up making a speech on under-registration in Sheffield, although Sheffield university, which has piloted a registration system involving the use of data when people enrol, has one of the highest student registration rates.