Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

Second Reading

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Mr Speaker has selected for today’s debate the amendment, which will be moved in accordance with normal procedure.

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[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for sharing the information about the online system with some of us last week. He will know that one of the concerns that some of us have is about access to national insurance numbers as a means of taking part in that system. There is some difficulty in that people do not readily have access to their national insurance numbers. What suggestions has he for improving that?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary is trying to be extremely helpful to the House, and he has taken lots of interventions. However, perhaps he will bear it in mind that he has been speaking for more than 40 minutes, that many Members wish to participate in the debate, and that there will be winding-up speeches.

[Mr Harper]

I am very grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I predicted when I was being perhaps excessively generous that I would be taken to task at some point, and that has happened.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. In that case, it is a shame that the Parliamentary Secretary did not take his own advice.

[Mr Harper]

I know that one of my faults is that I am generous to a fault, and I will do my best to rein in that generosity. I will respond to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and then I will finish my speech without taking further interventions. I am grateful for your direction, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am sure that other hon. Members will realise that I am simply following wise advice rather than being ungenerous.

The hon. Gentleman made a good point about national insurance numbers. We have done quite a lot of work on that. The vast majority of members of the public have ready access to their national insurance numbers. When polled, 95% of people did not feel that it would be a problem. Of course, we will ensure that, on the online system, as on the paper-based system, we give people advice if they do not have a national insurance number about the process that they have to follow to get one. There will be an alternative mechanism for the small number of people who do not have a national insurance number to demonstrate their identity to the ERO. However, we do not want to allow that to be a get-out for everybody else. If the hon. Gentleman has anything further to say on the matter, I am obviously happy to discuss that with him.

I believe that the changes that I have outlined on individual registration will ensure the completeness of the register. I think that the Government have listened, learned and improved the Bill.

Let me consider briefly the clauses in part 2 about the administration and conduct of elections, which are intended to improve the way in which elections are run. They address issues that parliamentarians and electoral stakeholders have raised, and make several practical and sensible changes. I will not go through them all, just the most significant.

First, let me consider the provision that extends the electoral timetable for UK parliamentary elections from 17 to 25 days. That will benefit voters, particularly overseas voters and service voters based abroad, enabling them to have more time to receive and return a postal vote. It also makes it easier to combine general elections with other polls.

The Bill also provides for assisting postal voters—I hope that that is of assistance to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East—whose votes are rejected at elections because their postal vote identifiers do not match those stored on records. For example, someone’s signature may have changed or they put down the wrong date—for instance, not their date of birth but the date of the election. Around 150,000 postal votes are rejected at elections. Regulations will make EROs have a duty, after the elections, to inform voters that their identifiers have not matched. [Laughter.] I do not know why the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) is laughing. The provision is included so that the identifiers can be updated and that, instead of those voters losing their votes at every subsequent election, they can ensure that their votes count in future. At the moment, there is no duty to inform them. While the right hon. Gentleman’s party was in government, hundreds of thousands of postal votes were rejected at elections and nothing was done. Rather than laughing at the sensible provisions, I would hope that he supported them.

Alongside that provision, the Government plan to introduce secondary legislation to make it a requirement that 100% of postal vote identifiers are checked at elections. At the moment, legislation provides for only 20% of postal votes to be checked. Ensuring that 100% have to be checked will strengthen the integrity of the process.

There are also provisions to allow the Secretary of State to withhold or reduce a returning officer’s fee for poor performance, but with the important check that there must be a recommendation by the independent Electoral Commission. That is to ensure that returning officers are more accountable. That provision was implemented on a test basis in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011—it was a power that the chief counting officer had. It worked well and we are therefore taking it forward.

The final shape of the proposals demonstrates the value that pre-legislative scrutiny adds to the development of legislation. I hope most hon. Members will see that the Government have taken a careful, thoughtful and measured approach in developing our policy. The Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), is not sitting in his usual place as he has been upgraded to the Opposition Front Bench, but he said in January that

“the House is in severe danger of doing the job that members of the public elected it to do. The Government have submitted a pre-legislative proposal to the Select Committee, which is how things should happen. The Select Committee responded with non-partisan efforts to determine a better Bill and to make better proposals, some of which have already been heard by the Government.”—[Official Report, 16 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 508.]

The Government have since accepted more such proposals. In that spirit, I commend the Bill to the House.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This debate has to finish at 7 o’clock. In order to fit in everybody who has been in the Chamber waiting patiently to speak, I regret that it is necessary for me to reduce the time limit to nine minutes, from the next speaker. Interventions should occur only if they are absolutely necessary and truly interventions, because otherwise we will not even get those Members in.