Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I shall speak briefly on this group of amendments, which we broadly support, on the role of the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is, of course, strongly in favour of individual electoral registration as a means of fighting electoral fraud, and I commend it for taking that position. However, the commission’s role needs to be used as a safeguard to ensure that IER will work as intended—this should be prior to its introduction —and for continued monitoring afterwards.

Amendment 30 particularly interests me because of the proposal for registration objectives in the Bill. As hon. Members will know from my contributions to the Opposition day debate on this subject and on Second Reading, my primary concern is for the inclusion of as many eligible registrations as possible on the electoral roll. I am sure that that aim is shared by all hon. Members. The Electoral Commission’s most recent estimate was that about 6 million eligible adults were missing and that registers were between 85% and 87% complete. Therefore, these changes, which we can expect will further diminish the completeness of the electoral register, and which as we saw when IER was introduced in Northern Ireland, may well be counter-productive in terms of including people on the electoral register.

I would like to see a duty on the Electoral Commission and on individual electoral registration officers for their principal aim to be that registers are as complete as possible and that there is a presumption in favour of inclusion on the roll, rather than deletion. As we have discussed previously, there is the opportunity for electoral fraud, but the number of convictions for that offence has been small. That is not to say that there is not a problem, but I believe it is more important that we get people on to the electoral register and entitled to vote. That is especially the case now, given the equalisation of constituency electoral rolls being introduced for Westminster elections and the new proposals from the Secretary of State for Wales for boundary reforms for elections to the National Assembly for Wales. No change is not an option now in terms of the National Assembly for Wales; even if we retain the 40:20 split, there will be new, equal-sized constituencies for the 40 seats.

Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill should clearly not be brought into force until IER has been trialled, and until the Electoral Commission is convinced that any adverse impacts will be as limited as they can be and that the completeness of the register will not be affected.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I should say at the beginning that I was slightly surprised that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) said that the Opposition were in favour of individual registration, as I could have sworn that on Second Reading they not only tabled a reasoned amendment, but voted against the Second Reading of the Bill. That was strange; it is difficult to see how they are in support of it. If they had only voted for the reasoned amendment, I could have accepted it as a principle, but it seems to me that they are opposed to our fundamental position.

I wish to make one or two points that I hope are helpful to the Committee. The hon. Gentleman drew attention to the lengthy period of pre-legislative scrutiny we have had. Not only did we have that, but, as I think he has acknowledged, we made a number of significant changes to our approach as a result. All I say to the Committee is that I hope the progress of the Bill reflects that considerable pre-legislative scrutiny. It is probably also worth saying that, as the Committee may have noticed, we deliberately decided not to use knives in the programme motion for the first two days of debate in order to enable it to focus on points that hon. Members thought were important. I hope that the flexibility that that gives the Committee is used properly and that we make reasonable progress that focuses on where the Committee thinks the important issues are.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) for the amendments that they have led on. They have participated very well in the experiment that the Procedure Committee has asked us to undertake. This Bill is an example of it, because all hon. Members tabling amendments were asked to include explanatory statements to enable hon. Members to understand better the nature of the amendments. I am pleased that they have done so, as it is very helpful to the House. It is just a shame that the official Opposition appear to have ignored the fact that we are conducting that experiment and have not taken that opportunity. I am sure that the Procedure Committee will draw the appropriate conclusion.

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[Mr David]

That is an excellent point. The presumption among many people—indeed, dare I say it, among most people—is that once a person is on the electoral register, they are there not for one or two elections but permanently. Most people in this country will not have a clue about this profound change in the nature of the electoral registration system. We need only to consider the lack of press interest and coverage on the subject for months to see that. Given that the Bill was one of the key pieces of legislation in the Queen’s Speech, there has been virtually no press coverage of it, and it is from the press that most people get their information. There is indeed a potential problem here.

We will discuss financing in greater detail later, but when the responsibility is placed very much on the shoulders of local authorities and electoral registration officers, and the resources that are likely to be allocated will not be ring-fenced and will be pretty small anyhow, the concern is that local authorities will not have the capacity to make the superhuman effort needed to chase up those people who they manage to detect have not re-registered under the new system, even though they are entitled to be on the register. There is a host of interconnected problems before us and I thank Members for their interventions. In their different ways, they have highlighted the complexities and the potential problems that lie ahead. The way forward for postal vote carry-overs was clearly set out by the all-party Select Committee, and I very much hope the Government will have second thoughts.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I shall speak briefly to amendment 20, which would increase the length of time that those on the current electoral register remained on the revised register after the introduction of individual electoral registration. The current proposal from the UK Government is that existing registrations will be removed at the end of the second new canvass if people have not provided the required data for individual electoral registration. The effect will be that concerns about a cliff-edge drop in the completeness of the registers, as we saw when they dropped by 11% in Northern Ireland, will be postponed until after the 2015 Westminster general election. This means that the first elections to be held without the roll-on from the pre-IER electoral roll will be the National Assembly for Wales elections in May 2016.

Although I recognise that one election must, at some point, be the first election to be held wholly under IER, I am concerned that the elections to the National Assembly for Wales will be the guinea pig, particularly because if the proposals in the Green Paper on electoral arrangements for the National Assembly for Wales are implemented, the electoral roll arrangements will be used as the basis for determining constituencies. I shall give my opinion on that very interesting Green Paper on another occasion.

The change-over from the current system to IER is fraught with difficulties, and the length of time for the change-over should be as long as necessary to ensure that there are no adverse effects, and certainly should not be rushed. As I say, I am particularly concerned about the possible effects on the National Assembly elections in 2016, and I hope the Government will take this opportunity to push back the final date for the removal of all pre-IER registrations to ensure that the handover is as smooth as possible, without the cliff-edge drop in registration that we fear.

[Lyn Brown]

The hon. Gentleman is clearly as concerned about his area and the effect on voter registration as I am about mine. Does he think that his local authority will have the resources to deal effectively with the problems that will arise and to keep on the electoral register as many people as possible who are entitled to vote?

[Jonathan Edwards]

That is an interesting point. On the way down on the train this morning, I was reading a report on the experience in Northern Ireland. It said that it was difficult to envisage the changes being pushed through uniformly in a short period. A longer period of introduction would therefore be better for all concerned.

[Nic Dakin]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark.

I shall speak briefly, mainly to underline the importance of getting the change right. Given that there is cross-party consensus on the introduction of individual voter registration, it ought to be possible to carry it out in a way that minimises and manages risk, avoiding the negative consequences that we can foresee. The debate has made it clear that one of the foreseeable consequences of getting it wrong is that fewer people will be on the register, although they are still eligible. The change must be managed to take account of people who are not sufficiently on the ball to get their registration in place.

I do not see what the rush is. It is better to implement the change carefully and with consideration and get it right than rush it and find the numbers on the register falling off a cliff edge, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) said. If we get it wrong, the number of people participating in very significant future elections will drop substantially. Any significant drop would be a travesty of our democracy. We therefore need to work together to prevent such a drop.

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The amendment seeks to ensure that the individual has a legal duty to declare where their other property is, so that the electoral officer can make a judgment and perhaps enter into a brief discussion with the electoral officer in the other location to ensure that they are not seeking to be on the electoral register illegitimately. For those who can make a case that they are doing so legitimately, it will be absolutely fine. They will go on the register and will be able to vote in local elections as normal. If there is a suspicion that somebody is voting in two places, for whatever reason, it will be much easier for the marked register to be checked and for any problem to be addressed.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about stopping duplicate entrants on the electoral register. Has he given any thought to the impact of the amendment on the process of creating new constituencies with the same number of electors, in particular in constituencies such as Ceredigion, where there is a large student population?

[Dan Rogerson]

The amendment may well make a difference to the size of the electorate in places such as Ceredigion. It would also make a difference in Cornwall, which is being told that it must have five and a half seats, instead of the five that it used to have or the six that it currently enjoys. There will be a seat across the border between Cornwall and north-west Devon. The large number of second homes in north-west Devon and north Cornwall may have a bearing on the size of that constituency, so the hon. Gentleman makes a very good point.

As I said, this is a probing amendment, so I will draw my remarks to a close. I hope that the Government act on this issue, if not in this primary legislation, then in secondary legislation or the guidance for local authorities when they are designing the forms that people will fill in, to make people aware of its importance. Although it is more acute in areas such as mine than in other parts of the country, only through a joined-up approach can we get the information that is needed to resolve the situation. If the Government cannot respond positively today, I hope that they will indicate that they will look at it in the future.

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[Angela Smith]

Before I move to the amendments, I want to reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), when he said that the Opposition support the principle of individual registration—it is important to keep repeating that—but that we think it can be improved. To some extent, then, our amendments seek to test the Minister’s thinking on information sharing.

Schedule 2 deals with information sharing and checking, and provides a clearing-house approach, so to speak, to verifying applications to join the register and to ascertaining the correct information for those who have not applied or those who are registered but not entitled to be so. The schedule provides for an important role, allowing the Secretary of State to establish the boundaries of the process for collecting, processing and disposing of data once used for the purposes for which it was released.

The schedule also makes it clear that criminal penalties will be levied for disclosing information in breach of regulations yet to be laid. Paragraph 93 of the explanatory notes makes it clear that the Secretary of State may require the Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner and any other person he or she thinks appropriate to play a part in establishing the provision, and

“may also require the Commission to prepare a report on how data sharing arrangements have worked by a specified date.”

Furthermore, if a report is provided, it must be published by the Secretary of State concerned.

We consider that the right arrangement. We have laws relating to data sharing, which obviously is a sensitive issue, and those laws are rightly the law of the land. Nevertheless, we have some important questions. The Minister has committed in the legislation to funding the above provision. Will he commit to funding the provision properly, so that the work can be done efficiently and promptly? Will he share his thoughts about establishing the mechanism? Who will staff the new provision? Will it be another quango? Will it be another public body? If so, to whom would it be accountable? Who will oversee its work? And, importantly, will service-level standards be laid down in regulations? The last thing we want is for the right to register to be delayed unnecessarily because of backlogs or because data provided by applicants has not been verified by this new public body—if that is what it is.

Amendment 5, on data sharing, is slightly different: it is not about data sharing between one public body and another but about data sharing within a local authority. We want the Bill to oblige electoral registration officers, within local authorities, to use the data already available to him or her to verify as many applications as possible. We mostly know what those data are. The council tax database is one of the quickest and most effective means of verifying, in particular, the addresses of applicants. We also have council tenant lists and school rolls. All these databases, owned by every local authority in the land, can be used to help identify applicants.

There is no need, then, for the clearing-house mechanism in schedule 2 in relation to the data already held by a local authority. There is a clear distinction to make. A clearing-house mechanism is required, for example, when comparing Department for Work and Pensions data with the data supplied by applicants, but that is not the case within local authorities. That is an efficient use of public money. Many good electoral registration officers already follow this practice and make use of council tax databases to identify those who fail to register, but we need to strengthen that practice by obliging them to do it as a matter of routine.

Amendments 9 to 11 relate to clause 4 but have been grouped under schedule 2. We will come to clause 4 later in proceedings, but suffice it to say that the amendments relate to data sharing. A relatively superficial level of data could be shared by organisations such as universities, sheltered housing providers and private landlords.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Is there not a problem for sheltered accommodation, which has such a quick resident turnaround that the hon. Lady’s suggestion might prove difficult to implement?