Representation of the People (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I take advantage of the fact that I have been relieved of the chairing of this Committee by my noble friend Lady Fookes to make one point. It follows the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, with which I wholly agree.

Last Thursday, I went to the Electoral Commission and had a discussion with the chief executive, with other colleagues. We were talking about various aspects of the preparations that they are making for the next general election. However, it will come as no surprise to anyone, and I rise only to make it clear to the Committee, that arising from that discussion was that there is bipartisan support for the point that I am making and which the noble Lord made. There is a crying need for the consolidation of electoral law. I very much hope that in a modest way, the Hansard record of this Grand Committee can be used as further proof of that, and that a future Government will find the legislative time to do this. It will be widely supported when it comes.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has once again demonstrated the essential truth of one of his major campaign pledges during the 1993 Christchurch by-election—that he would be very good at scrutinising secondary legislation. It is always a pleasure to work with him on such matters.

I am tempted to ask the Minister how often the Government have had to bring forward measures such as this, as a tidying-up and housekeeping exercise, since the Elections Act of 2022 became law. I will resist. However, the current measure is one of numerous examples of the Government appearing not quite to understand what they were doing in seeking to implement a Brexit deal which lacked details when it was agreed.

In considering what is before us today, the Shadow Minister in the House of Commons, Florence Eshalomi, explained that understanding this measure required understanding five or six different Acts and regulations spanning over 40 years of legislation. To correct the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, it was in answer to a Question of mine in this place some time ago that it was revealed that at that stage there had been 16 statutory instruments involved in implementing the Elections Act 2022, running to 803 pages, all of which have been added to since then by one, two or three further statutory instruments. This is simply the latest of them. The scale of the statutory instruments required by the Elections Act has presented a significant problem, not just for Ministers but particularly for those responsible for the conduct of our elections. I believe that the burden may have become intolerable and the risk of mistakes in the conduct of our elections has been increased significantly by this complexity.



First, can the Minister update us on government thinking about what we are all asking for—the proper consolidation of all our election laws, as recommended by the Law Commission, which has done much work on this subject?

Secondly, does the Minister accept that the Government’s explanation of the difference in voting rights between EU citizens from Ireland, Cyprus and Malta and those from the 19 EU countries with which we do not have voting and candidacy treaties is an anomaly that requires a fundamental review of the franchises for all our UK elections? In particular, does she accept that the principle of residency would be a good basis for the local election franchise, as those who pay for and receive services from local government should be able to vote for the people in charge of those local authorities? The principle of no taxation without representation is a good one. The Government seem obsessed with removing people from the electoral rolls, making it unnecessarily hard to register and then harder to vote if you are among the categories of people without acceptable photo ID from the very tightly drawn list.

Thirdly, what steps will the Government take to ensure that the different levels of voting rights applying to different EU citizens will be explained to them all?

Finally, what progress is being made with the 19 EU member states with which we do not have treaties concerning voting and candidacy rights to agree such treaties, bringing EU citizens in those countries into line with those from Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland and Denmark?

That said, the measure has our support as it provides some clarification and corrects mistakes that were inadvertently made.