Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) explain why Sunderland nearly always gets its count done first, whereas in Edinburgh we tend to be propping our eyelids open at 5 am, waiting for our results. It is about having the resources—in that case, the resources to get the count done, but in this case the resources to get registration done and so on. Those resources will be important when we implement the proposal.

Unlike a couple of my hon. Friends, I am not saying that individual voter registration should not be happening, and, to be fair, that is not Labour’s position either. After all, Labour introduced legislation on this in the previous Parliament. We are asking, however, why it is necessary, in effect, to re-legislate. There was already a proposal and timetable for individual voter registration. Having heard the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), my colleague on the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, I have to ask why she has apparently changed her mind about the timetable. When the original legislation was going through, she supported that timetable and said how important it was that it be done carefully and step by step. She now expresses her concern, however, that a further two years have elapsed to get to this point. That was partly because her Government have chosen to re-legislate. If the original timetable had been adhered to, we would have been making the step-by-step progress she appeared to think would be good.

[Mrs Laing]

I thank the hon. Lady for allowing me to answer her question. I have not changed my mind. During the last Parliament, I said that it was equally important to ensure that we improved the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of the register, but that we wished to do it more quickly than the then Government—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) is shaking her head, but I know what I said. I said that those provisions could be brought in more quickly, if it was done carefully and in a measured way, and I have always adhered to that view, because that would bring benefits to the voting people of this country.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the hon. Lady for clarifying the position, although I still think, given the comments that she made previously, that she had been prepared to support the previous timetable.

The process of pre-legislative scrutiny has been helpful, and the Government have clearly listened to the issues that were raised by the Select Committee, the Electoral Commission and others. That has been an important part of the process. It is an important part of the process for any legislation, and the Select Committee takes it very seriously. We make this comment frequently, and we made it quite vociferously when the opportunity was not given to scrutinise some of the early constitutional legislation in this Parliament. I believe that my fellow Select Committee members agree that that was detrimental to that legislation. The process has been valuable in this case. Even if some of the issues remain unresolved, we nevertheless got a response to the process. I hope that we will see much more of this kind of scrutiny for other legislation. The more debate, discussion and detailed scrutiny we have, the better. That kind of scrutiny is not always possible in Committee, whether on the Floor of the House or upstairs, as time is often limited. The Select Committee process has therefore been helpful.

We all go out and about, and we know just how variable registration can be. That is one of my major concerns about the Bill. When I walk down a street of bungalows and villas in my constituency, I can be sure that I will knock on every door in that street, because all the people living there are on the electoral register. Equally, in other parts of the constituency, the number of registered households can be as low as two or three of the 10 or 12 on a stair in a tenement. Edinburgh is a city of tenements. There are modern flats and also traditional tenements, and many people living in them are not registered.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) seemed to suggest that the fall in the numbers of people registered during the past year was somehow to be placed at the door of the previous Government because they wanted registration to fall. What has actually happened is a substantial change in certain types of housing tenure.

In Edinburgh, the proportion of people living in the private sector was between 6% and 7% in the late 1990s, but it is now 20%-plus and, in some areas, between 30% and 40%. That is important, because the time spent by people living in that form of tenure is shorter. Most private lets are shorter; people have to move on. In that situation, perhaps they do not form the same commitment to their community, and sometimes they have no sooner registered themselves than they are moving on. Not all the tenements have lifts, especially the old-style ones. I think that the highest such building in my constituency is five storeys high—or six, if we are using the British naming of floors. Having puffed my way up to the top, I often find that the people who were registered as living there have moved on, and that the new tenants have not yet registered. It is a particular issue in certain areas.

It is important that the additional money promised by the Government is spent on the process of ensuring that registration happens properly. Even the data matching will be quite differential. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central touched on that, explaining that in some areas the data-matching pilots had shown only a 55% match—not the two thirds that the Government have mentioned.

Why is that important for the size of the register? If the aim is to move people over as a result of data matching—that was not its original purpose, although I accept that it has considerable benefit, helping to ensure that people do not find themselves off the register—areas such as Edinburgh, which has many varied styles of description for tenement flats, help to explain why data-matching will not work. For example, the way in which flats are referred to within tenements is often quite variable. Some flats are referred to in some records as “stair 9/1, stair 9/2, stair 9/3” and so forth, whereas they are called something quite different in other registers for the same address—perhaps strange things like “1F1, 1F2, 2F2” or something rather peculiar like “PF1”, which puzzled me for a long time, as I thought it might refer to a platform, but it refers, in fact, to the ground floor.

[Gavin Shuker]

It strikes me that my hon. Friend is advancing the point that individual electoral registration officers and returning officers are well placed to understand their local communities, if given the appropriate level of resources for the challenging set of circumstances in which they have to do their job.

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is exactly my point. It is not just about the levels of population within an area, as variability is also important. Far more work will have to be done in areas with such difficulties, as the data matching will simply not happen in the circumstances I was describing. It is not because people do not exist or are in any way phantoms on the register, but simply because there are two sets of data identifying the same property in a very different way. That difficulty will be thrown up in the process. In those circumstances, certain areas will require more resources to ensure that people are registered.

The decline in registration is worrying, and it is worrying that in some parts of our communities so few people are taking even the first step towards registration to vote. Being registered to vote is, of course, no guarantee that people will vote, but if they are not registered, they certainly cannot vote.

Finally, I would like to hear more from the Minister about the extent to which the Government want to encourage somewhat more innovative ways of getting people to register—not just through the canvass and other traditional ways. Would it be possible, as happens in some countries and as some commentators have suggested, to offer people the opportunity to register when they are involved in other transactions with the state? If, for example, people were applying for a driving licence—that is particularly appropriate for young people—could they not be offered the opportunity to register? We cannot make them register, but that would provide the opportunity to do so.

Perhaps even more valuable for the future, would it not be possible, given all the systems we have, to allow people both to register and to vote at the same time? Most people are of course most interested in voting when an election campaign is going on. We have all encountered people suddenly realising that they are not able to vote at the point when they want to do so. Allowing people to register and to vote at the same time might be difficult, but it certainly happens in many states in America. I urge the Government to look at as many different ways of getting people to register as possible.