Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Mark Tami

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The House has heard what my hon. Friend has said.

Should the amendment be supported, it would mean having more time to address the deficiencies in the current electoral register, particularly against the backdrop of the move towards individual electoral registration. The reason why that is so important is that the electoral register is the very basis on which boundaries are drawn and redrawn. It is the raw material from which the Boundary Commission constructs parliamentary constituencies. If that raw material is of poor quality, the subsequent output from the Boundary Commission will also be of questionable quality.

It is not necessary to take just my word for it or that of the House of Lords. The Electoral Reform Society said last year:

“A depleted register has major implications for political boundaries. A substantial fall off in registered voters, weighted towards urban areas, would require the Boundary Commission to reduce the number of inner-city seats. This will create thousands of ‘invisible’ citizens who will not be accounted for or considered in many key decisions that affect their lives, yet will still look to MPs to serve them as local constituents.”

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need only look at what happened in Northern Ireland to see some of the dramatic effects and the drop in the number of those registered?

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right to remind the House of the lessons we can learn from Northern Ireland. A recent report by the Electoral Commission recorded its concern about the record drop in the number of people on the register.

Individual Voter Registration

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Mark Tami

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that according to the Electoral Commission there are currently up to 8.5 million electors missing from the UK electoral register and that the shift to individual registration is the biggest change to electoral matters since the introduction of the universal franchise; notes that there was cross-party support for the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, which proposed a phased five-year timetable for its introduction with safeguards to protect against a drop in registration levels, but that the Government proposes speeding up the timetable, removing some of these safeguards and eroding the civic duty on registering to vote by not applying the legal obligation to respond to an electoral registration officer’s request for information as exists for the household registration; further notes that, according to the Electoral Commission, if these proposed changes are not implemented properly there could be a reduction in registration of up to 65 per cent. in some areas, potentially leaving over 10 million unregistered voters, and that this would have a negative impact on the list from which jurors are drawn; believes that the 2015 boundary review process risks being discredited as a result of the unregistered millions; and calls on the Government to reconsider its current proposals that will lead to large-scale under-registration.

The move to individual electoral registration is the greatest shift in our electoral system since the introduction of the universal franchise. As a result, there is the highest imperative on us to get this right. There is wide support for the move to individual registration and an acceptance that the current system of household registration is neither fit for the modern world nor suitably robust against the perils of electoral fraud. The move is supported by the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Reform Society and the main political parties in the House. Our concerns are not about the ultimate objective of individual electoral registration but about some of the proposed means of achieving it.

I would like to make a point that I have made a number of times before about the importance of trying to get cross-party support for constitutional change. I am afraid that I do not agree with the wording in the coalition agreement on individual electoral registration—I will come to that later—but I welcome the process that the Government have adopted and how they are acting on this matter. We have had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny, and the Deputy Prime Minister has said twice on the Floor of the House that the Government are willing to listen to concerns—so too, when giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, did the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who has responsibility for political and constitutional reform and whom I welcome to his place. They appear to be keen to reach consensus before the Bill is finally published.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that when individual voter registration was introduced in Northern Ireland there was a dramatic fall in the level of registration? What will be put in place to ensure that that does not happen this time?

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right to remind the House that in 2002, when individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, there was a huge fall of 11% in the number of people on the register. I hope that this Government, like the previous Government, have learned the lessons of those changes. I shall come to that point shortly, if he will allow me.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and Mark Tami

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The problem is that an amendment was moved, hon. Members took part in the debate, and then the Minister introduced the other option, yet gave us no chance to respond, because of the guillotining by those on the Government Front Bench.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Surely the point is that the Minister knew that information at the start of the debate, but he chose not to inform Members House at that stage.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes the point well.

More recently, and more importantly for this House, our concerns about the length of the Parliament have been strengthened since the Bill was in Committee by the Lords Constitution Committee. In his short contribution, the Deputy Prime Minister cherry-picked parts of its report, but he missed out the most crucial bit. In the Constitution Committee’s view, five years is simply too long. Like us, it argues that four years is more appropriate. Its report challenged the Deputy Prime Minister’s assertions that the Government’s progress on constitutional and political reform, of which the Bill is a key component, will make Parliament more accountable to the people. The Constitution Committee argues that the provisions in the Bill to fix the length of Parliaments to five years would lead to less frequent elections and make the legislature less accountable, not more. Under a system of fixed five-year terms, there would have been four fewer elections since 1945.

I know the pressure that will be brought to bear on Government Members to support the Bill—a Bill that they do not believe in and that they have a problem with. However, when they come to decide whether to give it a Third Reading, they should remember the words of the Lords Constitution Committee, which said that a five-year term was

“inconsistent with the Government’s stated aim of making the legislature more accountable, inconsistent with existing constitutional practice and inconsistent with the practice of the devolved institutions and the clear majority of international legislatures”—

except in Rwanda. If the Bill goes through this House, the Opposition will be looking to the Lords to heed the advice of their own Constitution Committee and recognise that four years is a much more sensible length of time for a fixed-term Parliament.

Time is short, so I will not go into the other problems that we have with the Bill. However, what I will say, and for the second time in a number of months, is that I am optimistic and sincerely hopeful that the other place will inject some sanity into this Bill, through proper scrutiny. This Bill is rushed, self-serving and opportunistic. It is an affront to how we ought to go about amending and improving our constitution. We shall be voting against it being given a Third Reading.