Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course, and I hope that the noble Lord will apologise in due course to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for describing him as moderate.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

Before the noble and learned Lord either withdraws or presses his amendment, perhaps I may say a few words. I have held back to hear the noble Lord speak from the Front Bench. We have had a very interesting debate. We have covered all sorts of aspects, from the Scottish aspect to whether we should return to the debate about central register and identity cards. We have discussed the nuts and bolts and the administrative problems that arise from the Bill.

The noble Lord said something very interesting about the motivation to vote, which is what concerns me. In a real democracy, the motivation should come from the heart and the mind, and because people believe that it is worth getting on the register and worth going out to vote. I am of an age when the register was about 90% accurate of those who were entitled to be on it. However, that has fallen considerably. People were on the register then because they wanted to be on the register, and they insisted that they were on it—and God help the registration officer if his or her name was not on the register.

Something has gone wrong, because people now do not do that. I go back—because I have fought many elections in my life, as other Members of this House have done. I remember the election of 1955 when in Reading Ian Mikardo was under pressure. In that election, because people were motivated to go out to vote and to be on the register, we got an 85% turnout—and of course he won. He was not supposed to win, but he won because of the people’s motivation. That was a good word that the Minister used. It does not matter what we say about going around and getting people on to the register; what we really need is the motivation of the people themselves to go on to the register and to believe that it is worth going out to vote because it makes a difference. At the moment, they see no difference between the political parties. They believe that it does not matter what they say or what they do because the Westminster and Whitehall elite will do what they think. As well as being concerned in this Bill about the nuts and bolts, the administration and even Scotland, we should really be thinking about whether the political class is doing sufficient to make people enthusiastic about getting on the register and going out to vote.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, refers to a golden age when he himself sought office by election and when everybody was very keen to vote. Now we are in a different age, or so he identifies—maybe because he is no longer seeking election and, as a result, there is not that motivation on the part of people to vote.

It has been a very interesting and important debate. At its heart was the issue of what steps would be taken to ensure that the move from household to individual electoral registration would not lead to an undue reduction in the number of people registered. At the heart of our amendments was the idea that you have to have independent assessments made of that. What emerged in the debates was that the Government were so supremely confident that all would be well that they were removing the involvement of the Electoral Commission in giving independent advice, and there is no mechanism, other than a new Act of Parliament, to ensure—