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Mr. Dunn : My hon. Friend makes a telling point. A few moments ago he referreed to the United States. Does he agree that many commentators on this side of the Atlantic often fall into the habit of assuming that a low turnout in an Amercian presidential election is a reflection of low registration? Fifty-six per cent. of people voted in the presidential election, but they were 56 per cent. of those entitled to register, which is a comment on the culture of voting in the United States compared with the United Kingdom.
Mr. Evans : My hon. Friend makes his point very well.
The Government estimate levels of registration at about 95 per cent. of the potential electorate and they also estimate that, every year, £40 million is spent in England and Wales on the process of electoral registration. The Government also launch each year a nationwide advertising campaign to encourage people to complete and return their electoral registration forms. In 1992 we spent £617,000 on that campaign.
I deal now with the community charge. We all know where the sympathies of the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East lie in that respect--not with the millions of law-abiding people who have paid in full, but with those who stuck two fingers up to the rest of us and did not contribute a penny to their local services. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman was a sponsor of the National Action Conference Against the Poll Tax, which co-ordinated civil disobedience and mass non-payment of the community charge. They are hardly the best credentials of a so-called saviour of democracy.
Mr. Barnes : When I argued against the poll tax, I took the line that I would not pay it, but I never advocated that others should not do so. I argued that as an elected representative of the people I had a particular duty, because the poll tax was undermining electoral registration. Acts should never be introduced that undermine electoral registration because such registration is part of our unwritten constitution. It is part of statute and has a higher legal priority according to people such as Blackstone, a past authority on the constitution. The line that I took was associated with my current argument that the register must be accurate. If we have a complete register, the argument that we should not disobey the law as a way of changing things begins to have much more relevance.
Mr. Evans : The hon. Gentleman may say that or he may say something else. All that I can say is that he welcomed the statement by Labour councillors backing illegal mass non-payment of poll tax, in addition to expressing his admiration and respect for the principled stand of someone who was imprisoned for refusing to pay the community charge. Not content to egg on such degenerate tax dodgers, he is now trying to introduce a system that would not penalise those who refused to pay
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their community charge or council tax. Why should people who avoid paying taxes such as the community charge be allowed the opportunity to remain on the electoral register until they die? That is what the rolling register would do.It should be remembered that there was no conspiracy by the Government to have poll tax dodgers removed. The dodgers chose to withdraw their names so that, like outlaws, they could not be traced. They are down-and-outs in terms of civic responsibility. They are the democratically unwashed and I say good riddance to them. If they are not willing to pay, they should not have a say.
Everyone has heard of the old adage "No taxation without representation". What about "No representation without taxation"? As there can be no rule of law without the Government to sustain it, taxation becomes a crucial element in sustaining our society and way of life. Those who have the means to contribute but will not should be gagged.
What has the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East offered us? He offers a magna carta for delinquents. It is not surprising that a Labour Member of Parliament should seek to introduce such legislation because, having lost in 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, Labour needs the support of everyone possible, criminals or not.
Labour believes that it has been cheated. The hon. Gentleman says that the Conservatives won seats because some people were not on the electoral register or did not vote. I shall tell them why they lost. They had an awful leader. Down in Nottingham they were singing, "We are the champions", and fireworks were going off like a load of damp squibs--but they were all Roman candles. There was not a banger among them. Now they have this fool of a leader. What is he up to? He wrote a shadow budget for the nation. No wonder the people never gave him the chance to
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris) : Order. The hon. Gentleman's reference to the present leader of the Labour party and draft budgets is was beyond the realm of the Bill.
Mr. Evans : I withdraw my remarks about the current leader of the Labour party, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I believe that he is called the wriggler from Monklands, East.
What I have described is the motive behind the Labour party's move towards proportional representation--the bolthole of minority parties throughout the world. It is typical of the Labour party to pick up an idea just when everyone else is discarding it. Even the Italians, who are fond of loony ideas, are thinking again about the issue. The result of PR--and the Labour party knows it--would be to deliver to this country the sort of Government that we get locally in Derbyshire, Lambeth and Sheffield, in which extreme minorities run roughshod over people's lives. Furthermore, a representative is more likely to respond to the interests of those who appoint him if they are identified with a specific place--yet PR undermines the very idea of a constituency. If the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East really wants to enhance representation he should tell his comrades to drop PR as quickly as they dropped CND. If they want to win an election they will have to convince the electorate that beer and sandwiches at No. 10 is no substitute for sound policies. When we look at this ridiculous Bill we see that the lesson still has not been learnt. The Labour party believes
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that some of its voters are being stopped from voting. It is right--but why has that happened? They have been stopped because they are cheats and have been caught out not paying their taxes. If the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East really wanted to improve our representative system he should have dealt with the sums paid as deposits by candidates. Candidates in all public elections automatically acquire certain rights, privileges and advantages--the right to free post for their election addresses and the free use of publicly maintained buildings for meetings and the right to veto broadcast transmission of material related to the constituency election. In addition, they receive considerable publicity. Is it right that such benefits should be conferred on a candidate whose views are held by only a tiny minority of the electorate? We need a deterrent to ward off the proliferation of fringe candidates who are now undermining the effectiveness with which the campaigns of candidates with significant support can be conducted. A deposit of £5,000 would certainly make fringe candidates think twice. The Bill would be even better if it required a non-refundable deposit of £15,000 from each representative of the Labour party. The money could be passed over to the Exchequer to pay it back for some of the damage done to this country when the Labour party was in power. Part II of the Bill deals with physical access to polling stations. Let us examine Government policy on that subject before we go haring off into making expensive changes. In 1985 we made it a statutory duty for local authorities to choose polling stations that offer facilities for the disabled in preference to those that do not, where there is a choice. Admittedly, choice can be limited. Where the only building available does not provide good access for disabled voters, we provide a grant of 50 per cent. towards the cost of temporary ramps. Nevertheless, our long-term aim is for all polling stations to be accessible to disabled people. That is why we remind returning officers of their duty to choose accessible polling stations where possible.The suggestion that disabled people should be allowed to vote at a more suitable polling station if their local station does not provide good access is being considered in the context of our post-election review. That suggestion has received a mixed reception from local authority representatives and in practice it might not be helpful to many disabled people, for whom travel to a more distant polling station would also be difficult.
There have been consultations with groups representing disabled people. Shortly before the general election the Royal National Institute for the Blind wrote to the Government with suggestions for making it easier for blind and partially sighted people to take part in the electoral process. The Government circulated to acting returning officers guidance provided by the RNIB on the layout of polling stations, the lighting, and the typeface to use on notices and ballot papers. Following more recent consultations with the RNIB, we have invited its representatives to attend a meeting of one of the post-election working groups to explain their concerns.
After the general election, the Spastics Society produced a report entitled, "Polls Apart", about disabled people and the election. It was critical of the standards of
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access to polling stations, claiming that 88 per cent. of those surveyed had one or more problems which would prevent disabled people from voting there independently. We wrote to the Spastics Society suggesting that if it provided material on mobility issues similar to that provided by the RNIB, we should be happy to circulate it to returning officers. There has been no response to that offer. The Bill is unnecessary and it addresses no obvious problem. Most people understand their civic responsibilities and freely exercise their rights. Indeed, at the general election voter turnout increased. If there is a problem, it is a problem of individuals' own choosing. Democracy is not ideal. There will always be people who refuse to participate--on the grounds of conscience or because they want to dodge their responsibilities to the state. Why spend valuable time and money altering a system that works perfectly fairly? If we want to change things for the better we should outlaw those such as the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East, who encourage law breaking and civil disobedience. It is they who undermine our representative democracy and, as outlaws, they should be barred from office.10.37 am
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : The House has been entertained to hear the hon. Member--the Rab C. Nesbitt of Welwyn Hatfield- -voicing his prejudices again. There were a number of rather remarkable contradictions in his speech--not least of which was his extolling of the virtues of Disraeli, while seeking to reintroduce a property qualification for the vote. His speech will not have convinced many people who are interested in democracy as opposed to the more atavistic impulses from the wilder shores of Conservatism. The Bill is a useful, important and timely measure. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) is to be congratulated on having introduced it with the support of hon. Members from so many parties. For several years he has carried on a personal crusade to rectify the deficiencies of our system of registration. As he rightly says, that system is fundamental to the effectiveness of our democratic system of parliamentary government. If we do not have a proper register, we cannot have a proper outcome and whatever the consequences of registration may be, it will be flawed if there are, as is the case today, such apparent discrepancies between the number of people who are entitled to vote and the number who have the opportunity to do so.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East has not made a partisan point. He has made a point that must appeal to all who are concerned about the efficacy of our deomocratic system. From the example of other countries where registration is worse than it is here, it is clear that a good registration system is the key to producing representative government.
We must ask why there has been a deterioration in registration in this country over the past decade. It is a subject on which the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, a non-partisan body, focused in its publication of September 1991 entitled "Agenda for Change". The society took evidence from many sources and produced an authoritative report. Some of its recommendations are embodied in the Bill. We look
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forward with interest to hearing the Government's response to the Hansard Society's proposals for improving the system.It is right to get the matter into proportion. The defects of registration are neither uniform nor universal. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North- East referred to two local authorities, Plymouth and Leeds, and there are other areas where there is high accuracy because local authorities have made great efforts to ensure that the register is a true reflection of those who are entitled to vote. However, there has been a deterioration throughout the country as a whole. The Hansard Society report showed that whereas between 1951 and 1966 electoral registers were thought to be between 96 and 97 per cent. accurate, by 1981 the error rate had almost doubled. That was before the introduction of the poll tax. Whatever view one takes of the poll tax on the ground of equity, no one can seriously argue that it has not seriously exacerbated the problem of registration. The electoral registration lists were undoubtedly used by local authorities in the compilation of community charge registers. That fact was widely known and was widely seen by those who were opposed to the poll tax or who felt unable to pay it as a reason for not registering for elections.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Peter Lloyd) : The hon. Gentleman touches on an important point which involves a number of complex arguments. He took up the reference to Leeds made by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) and said that it had a commendably high registration rate. I believe that one of the reasons why it achieved that rate was that it used the community charge list, which it had taken great trouble to get full and up to date, to check who had been left off the electoral register. The argument about the community charge cuts at least two ways. If electoral registration is efficiently carried out in a district, the community charge list can be positively helpful.
Mr. Maclennan : The Minister has linked the two lists together, although at all times during the passage of the community charge legislation the Government said that the lists would be kept separate.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maclennan : I shall just finish the point and I shall then happily give way.
I do not dispute the fact--indeed I made the point--that it was certainly the case that those who compiled the community charge lists referred to the electoral registers. The Minister has informed the House--I am sure that he did so on good authority--that in Leeds the system operated the other way round and I am sure that he is right. That shoots out entirely the argument deployed by Ministers during the passage of the community charge legislation that the community charge would have no effect on voting. That argument was always suspect and the Minister has finally nailed it in his intervention.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : I do not want to labour the point. The Government have recommended many times that electoral registration officers should use the community charge list to check that the electoral registers are up to date. The Government have given that advice. It is good advice and some electoral registration officers have used it very well.
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Mr. Maclennan : I pointed out that I did not wish to dwell on the impact of the community charge on registration. Any fair-minded person who looks at what has happened will share the view of the Hansard Society that the community charge had an adverse effect on the level of registration across the country as a whole. However, that is an historical issue to some extent, as, not before time, we are seeing the demise of that tax.
We must concern ourselves more with the underlying reasons that pre-date the poll tax. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East made it plain that he was not resting his case solely on the poll tax. It is clear that there are variations throughout the country and we must ask the reason for that.
The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) wanted to place the blame entirely on ne'er-do-wells who had not taken the trouble to get themselves registered. The matter is not as straightforward as that. The window of opportunity for registration is narrow and it may require a considerable effort by someone who has been left off the register to discover how to go about getting himself on to the register again. People with language difficulties in some communities may find it even more difficult, which may account for some of the discrepancies in registration.
It is clear that local authorities that have made great efforts to improve the register have had success. They have achieved that success not only by campaigning and advertising widely, but by carrying out follow-up surveys in the community after the returns have been made. There is no doubt that that course must be followed. We should look with favour at the core proposal of the Bill, which is that there should be a rolling electoral register. I understand that such a system has been introduced with success in Australia. No argument of principle can be deployed against it. The haphazard circumstances of the dates chosen for elections--
Mr. Stern : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a bit dangerous to make comparisons between this country and Australia because the fact that there is compulsory voting in Australia must devalue the importance of the timing of the register? Whether there is a rolling register or a fixed register in Australia, people still have to vote. We are talking about giving people the right to vote so we must consider the idea of a rolling register, which, like the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) I largely welcome, with rather more caution.
Mr. Maclennan : I view with caution any matters involving a change in our electoral law, but the example of Australia is certainly worth considering, because the new system appears to have worked well there. As the hon. Gentleman says, the circumstances of its introduction may have been different from those pertaining here, but that does not necessarily mean that it is not transferable. I hope that the Government will express their willingness to look favourably on that principle, because, whatever difficulties there may be in its operation, it certainly has a great deal to recommend it. The funding of registration is also important. There is a great discrepancy in the extent to which local authorities fund registration and I am not altogether sure that that is desirable. We have a national interest in ensuring a high level of registration and that should not really turn on local choice. I believe in the principle of subsidiarity, and that effectiveness and efficiency should be the test of the
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level of government at which decisions are taken. But given that there are extraordinary discrepancies--several percentage points between the best and least good--we must ask ourselves whether the intervention of central Government is required to achieve better results. We cannot be satisfied that our national interests are being adequately protected at present.Following advice from the electoral registration officers about the differences to which I have alluded, the Hansard Society report said that there was a case for increasing the resources devoted to canvassing and advertising for registration, preferably through a system of central funding of electoral registration. At present, only the cost of administering elections is paid centrally. I should be interested to hear the Government's view of that recommendation. The Bill highlights the widespread concern that there is a deterioration in registration, which it would not be wise of the Government to shrug off. The position varies across the country. I have not had access to the most recent figures, but I note that, over a decade ago, in 1981, Wales had a non-registration rate of 9.2 per cent ; England, of 6.5 per cent ; and Scotland, of 5.4 per cent. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys annual reports suggest that there has been an increase in the number of registration officers reporting lower response rates to their surveys.
The Bill will do a great deal of good. Although details remain to be worked out and there are certain problems--the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North- East fairly drew attention to them as Committee points--I support the thrust of the Bill and I am delighted to have the opportunity to support the hon. Gentleman today.
Part II of the Bill deals with the problems of disabled voters--a matter which is not insignificant. It was not only severely disabled electors in the royal borough of Wick in my constituency who felt angry when, at the last general election, they discovered that they were required to vote in polling booths on the second floor of a Victorian town hall with no lift access. Elderly, as well as disabled people, were inadequately cared for as a result of that serious oversight.
Such matters are important and cannot be dealt with exclusively by postal vote arrangments, because, as the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East said, many people want to participate fully in the electoral process. They are entitled to have their needs taken care of. I hope, therefore, that the measures in part II of the Bill, which covers physical access to polling stations, will be given a fair wind by the House so that we may tackle the problem at root. 10.55 am
Mr. Michael Stern (Bristol, North-West) : I am grateful to you for calling me at this point, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because, for constituency reasons, I may be unable to stay until the end of the debate. I apologise in advance to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) and my hon. Friend the Minister.
In following the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) and in welcoming the Bill, let me start with a note of caution. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland referred to a number of
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difficulties in the Bill as Committee points. I think that he underestimates some of the difficulties to which the Bill gives rise.I welcome the Bill because, if it receives its Second Reading today, it will enable us to consider, in Committee and on Report, a number of detailed questions. I must say, however, that I have little faith that, in the context of the private Member's Bill procedure, it will be possible to resolve those points so as to allow effective legislation to be passed. I welcome the Bill as part of the discussion process that will inform the studies currently taking place in the Home Office, which will, in due course, lead us to the necessary revision of electoral law. I am sure that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East is realistic enough to know that that is the likely outcome and that he, like me, has no great expectation that the Bill in its present form or in a similar form will eventually become law.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East has rightly introduced a Bill which would make it easier for people to register and so minimise involuntary non-registration. That is wholly to be applauded. In a democracy, there is no excuse for people who wish to vote, and who comply with the law in their wish to vote, having barriers put in their way. I entirely accept that. In drafting the Bill in its present form, however, the hon. Gentleman has accepted the principle that there should be some form of legal compulsion, if not in respect of registration itself, certainly in respect of an aspect of registration--the provision of information to enable someone to be registered.
I am a little worried about that principle. If we accept in a democracy that someone is entitled to be registered but not to vote--a point that the hon. Gentleman made in his opening remarks--I can see no justification for not going a stage further. If someone who lives in a democracy is sufficiently unenamoured of the democratic process that he wishes to declare publicly that he will take no part in it, I see no reason why there should be a legal barrier to prevent that person from making such a declaration.
Mr. Dunn : It is not simply a matter of those who may be disaffected by the democratic process or the choice of available parties. Some people do not wish to register on religious grounds. We are all aware of people in our constituencies who would not vote because their strong beliefs tell them not to. They should have an opportunity to say that they wish to have no part in the process because they want their futures to remain in hands higher than the Government or democracy.
Mr. Stern : I entirely accept that point and I was about to consider that issue.
Mr. Maclennan : The duties of citizenship and the relationship of the electoral register to those duties do not simply relate to voting. The hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) should bear in mind the fact that jury service depends on registration. Whatever may be one's religious beliefs, one may not opt out of all the civic duties associated with the electoral register.
Mr. Stern : The hon. Gentleman is right, although his example of jury service depends on several factors other than entry on the electoral register. Indeed, I am always somewhat embarrassed when I argue about the duty of jury service in the House, which has exempted itself from that duty.
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Mr. Michael Shersby (Uxbridge) : My hon. Friend has made an interesting observation. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) has made a proper point. Citizens have duties which, to some extent, flow from electoral registration. A number of people in my constituency belong to the Exclusive Brethren or are Jehovah's Witnesses. They choose not to vote. However, they come to see me as their Member of Parliament when they want me to lobby Ministers on their behalf, and naturally, I do that. However, the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland is right. There is a duty to register. If individuals choose not to exercise their vote having registered, that is a matter for them.
Mr. Stern : I have a similar constituency background, but I am forced to disagree with my hon. Friend. Like him, I consider that I represent members of the Jehovah's Witnesses or Exclusive sects although they do not vote. They come to see me from time to time when they feel that their beliefs are affected by legislation, proposed legislation or by administrative actions of the Government. Quite rightly, they expect me to take up their concerns on their behalf. The people to whom I have just referred accept that although they are in an anomalous position in that they take on many of the duties of citizens, in so far as being registered is considered a duty, they do not like that duty. They would be considerably more at ease in our society if they could declare that they were not part of the process in which people expect them to take part. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) would find that a religious exemption from the duty to register would make such sects more at ease in our society.
There is a philosophical difficulty about the thrust of the Bill in respect of whether we should be reinforcing a legal duty, under pain of monetary penalty, to register in the first place. The main point of the Bill is to encourage by all means the registration to vote. Although I accept the principle and am interested in some of the proposals, I foresee some difficulties. Those points must be considered in Committee and on Report and will, in due course, form part of the Home Office deliberations.
I want first to consider the Bill's resource implications. Although it is often parroted from the Opposition Benches that the first thing that Government supporters consider in respect of any measure is the cost, the fact is that the cost is important. It is even more important when central Government impose additional costs on local government.
I am sure that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East has, like me, on many occasions been told by his local representatives, "Look, you expect us to do these things, but you don't provide us with the resources. How on earth do you expect to continue to increase the responsibilities of local government without providing the resources?"
With respect to any new measure, we have a duty to consider what we would like local government to do and also exectly what it will cost local government to do it. There is then the separate argument of whether we give that area of expenditure a sufficiently high priority that we would wish to provide the extra funds to enable local authorities at least to have a chance to act properly.
The resource implications of the Bill are considerable. At the moment, the electoral registration system, for which I have a very high regard, works on the basis of an annual
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register. There is a clear calendar and clear staffing implications during the year in respect of the duties of the electoral registration officer and his assistants.A rolling register would destroy that timetable. The basic timetable might still exist, but the duties that can now be slotted into different times in the year by the electoral registration officer would be continuous. Clearly, the resource implications are bound to be considerable.
In addition, the Bill requires electoral registration officers to look much wider for sources of information for the register and, in particular, for the rolling register. That must also have resource implications. I do not necessarily say that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East is wrong to extend the work of the electoral registration officer in that way. However, I do not believe that it would be proper for the House to approve measures of this potentially expensive nature without having greater regard to the additional costs that we would place on local authorities.
Mr. Barnes : There are resource implications in clauses 10, 17 and 20 which, essentially, fall on the Home Office. Those resource implications would have to be taken into account. Therefore, if the Bill receives a Second Reading, it would require a money resolution at a later stage. There are not necessarily resource implications for local authorities in addition to the moneys that would begin to become available from elsewhere. In so far as there are resource implications, some of the computer hardware and software already exists with regard to the community charge register. As that register will no longer exist, the computer hardware and software could be used for electoral registration purposes.
Mr. Stern : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. It is unusual to hear praise from Opposition Benches for the community charge collection machinery. However, I must offer the hon. Gentleman a word of caution. I represent the city of Bristol, which is notorious for not collecting the community charge. It has one of the best records of not collecting the community charge of any local authority in the country. The horrific thought that that creaking, outdated, antiquated and unused machinery was to be transferred to electoral registration would be the greatest reversal of democracy that this country has seen for a hundred years. As the hon. Gentleman has admitted, there are resource implications. He said that they might be overcome, but I have some doubt about that.
I am also a little troubled by the frequency of alteration to the register that the hon. Gentleman's proposals would require. Again, I am a little troubled by some implications. There are, of course, resource implications in more frequent amendments to the register, which the hon. Gentleman and I have just discussed. In addition, the fact that we currently have an annual register, albeit one with an annual programme for correction, builds into the system certain checks and balances which would be rather more difficult under the rolling register.
I have always represented an urban seat. Before I represented that seat, I stood as a candidate in another urban seat, Derby, South--very close to the hon. Gentleman's constituency. One problem that is observed in any urban election--it is extremely difficult to pin down, but it is at least suspected in almost every election in which I have ever been involved--is that of impersonation.
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Electoral registration officers have suggested to me that, to check the possibility of false registration, they need time to make adequate checks within the electoral registration system to enable them to decide for themselves whether a registration at a house in a particularly mobile neighbourhood is justified.I am worried that if we move towards forcing the electoral registration officer to take much speedier decisions on a person's entitlement to registration, we might be reducing that officer's ability to ensure to his own satisfaction that the entry or the removal of an entry is correct.
Mr. Dunn : Surely there is another point to consider in the context of the rolling register, not just the valid point that my hon. Friend is making. If it were known that a Member of Parliament was ill or was liable to give up to go to the European Commission on some appointment or other, what is to stop any party gradually moving in some of its more determined zealots to form part of that rolling register for the by-election that might take place?
Mr. Stern : My hon. Friend is slightly unfair to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East ; he referred to that point as a problem. Like my hon. Friend, I am not sure whether the problem can easily be resolved. It is certainly one for which no resolution appears in the Bill, although I accept that the hon. Gentleman said that that point would need to be considered in Committee. I am not sure whether the problem can be resolved so easily when there is often a three-month delay between the need for a by -election and the date of the by-election and when the actual need for a by -election is often predated by a period of increasing certainty that a by- election will take place. That is a problem, particularly in towns with mobile populations and in which the addition of a few extra voters to the electoral rolls could easily go unnoticed until the names are published in the up-to-date rolling register.
Another problem in connection with the frequency of updating, which is inherent in the Bill, is in the clause relating to publication of the final list of amendments seven days before an election. In terms of postal votes, canvassing, the organisation of transport, particularly for the disabled, and all the other processes in a normal general election in particular, and even more so in a by-election, a seven-day notification of a list of new names is an impossible target for an adequate electoral process as we know it. If our tradition in this country were like the German tradition in which there is very little mass canvassing and great general publicity, that process might be accommodated. The hon. Gentleman is saying that our traditional methods of contacting voters during a general election will no longer apply to a significant number of the electorate. I am not sure whether the House should lightly change that.
Mr. Barnes : We are talking about a significant number only if other measures in the Bill are not working very well. It is a final check. Some areas would undoubtedly have large supplementary lists and others would have small supplementary lists. A large supplementary list would be a sign that extra action might be needed by the returning officers to correct the shortfall. We are talking not about extensive lists but about short additions as a backstop.
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Mr. Stern : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Only time will tell. We are dealing with probably more of an urban problem than a rural problem. Nevertheless, I can foresee areas of my constituency--I shall refer to this point later--which would be seriously affected by a rolling register. I am talking about areas in which, in any normal year, there could be a turnover of about 20 per cent. of the register. Therefore, any political organisation needs considerable time and effort to be able to contact that continually changing electorate.
Another matter in respect of which I have some concerns is the criteria for registration. Again, the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East was right to highlight the fact that our existing criteria might be looking somewhat dated in the light of the mobility of modern life. For example, where people consider their homes to be, where they consider they would normally be, and where they actually lay their heads on the night of 15 October are concepts which, in a settled and less mobile society--
Mr. Dunn : Or September when the forms come out.
Mr. Stern : Or September when the forms come out, as my hon. Friend says.
Those aspects might be appropriate to a settled society in which people move infrequently, but they are increasingly difficult for electoral registration officers to enforce, when, again particularly in urban areas, people move more frequently. What is the position, for example, in relation to people who are moving house at about the time of electoral registration and are genuinely between two houses? They could be living in a hotel or temporarily in a third house. Those problems can be resolved, but they cause difficulty for an electoral registration officer. The Bill, by providing for a rolling list, would increase the difficulty of that officer's work. My final concern about the Bill relates to the almost draconian provisions for the obtaining of information by the returning officer and the sources of that information. It seems that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East is giving greatly increased powers under penalty to the returning officer. Such powers are given to almost no other department of local government and the Labour party was critical when similar powers were given to community charge registration officers.
The hon. Gentleman is relying on confidentiality within local authorities. With the best will in the world, and having the highest regard for electoral registration officers, ordinary citizens would be concerned if the information for which returning officers were entitled to ask was readily available to those returning officers. We have all had recent examples of how easy it is for information that we all consider to be private to be leaked into the public domain and made much of by the media. The House has not yet found an answer to increasing the privacy of such information. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman's measures would contribute greatly to the privacy of individuals. I think that they would detract from such privacy for purposes that the individual might resent.
In addition, I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman has appreciated the extent to which it would be necessary for the electoral registration officer fully to enforce the powers given under the Bill to the officer. I shall give an example from my constituency. I represent two thirds of a new town called Bradley Stoke, which was being built in the years up to and including the last general election, and is
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still being built. With a fixed date for the register, the electoral registration officer still had the greatest difficulty in establishing who was entitled to be on the register at a specific date. Streets were appearing where they had never appeared before and people were moving into empty houses in a steady stream around the night specified for electoral registration.Many streets were discovered only a few months after 15 October. The electoral registration officer had to decide whether the streets existed on 15 October and whether people were living there. To get that information, he had to go not simply to the people who wished to go on the register and to those who had taken no action to go on the register because it did not concern them that much, but to the individual developers--about 20 different ones were involved--and to individual estate agents to find out when houses had been sold. In many cases, he approached local solicitors to find out when completions had taken place. At a time of rapid development in a constituency, one can imagine the additional work if it had to be done not simply once a year but continually and then have to be challenged continually. It would mean that, in the case of a developing new town such as Bradley Stoke, the electoral registration officer would need a line to almost every solicitor in the country to find out whether a completion had taken place on or around the day of entitlement so that he could check any incomplete information that was given to him.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) rose --
Mr. Stern : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Frankly, the proposals of the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East would be incapable of producing a reliable register in any major development.
Mr. Corbyn : I am sorry that I did not hear the earlier part of the hon. Gentleman's speech. I think that the electoral registration officer in his constituency is a remarkably assiduous person and tribute should be paid to him for doing that sort of work. I cannot imagine many other electoral registration officers who would go to that degree of detailed investigation without a lot of pressure being put on them to do it.
Parts of the constituency that I represent have an annual turnover of population of up to 25 per cent., so a register compiled in October is out of date by the time it comes into force in February. If there is an October election, the register is often as much as 20 per cent. inaccurate in some places. A rolling register would certainly help us.
Clearly, electoral registration officers would need much more resources than they have at present to do the work. I recognise that there is a cost involved, but it is a cost well worth paying to enable people to have the right to cast their votes.
Mr. Stern : The hon. Gentleman is right. He underlined a number of points that I made earlier. There is a cost involved. Like him, I represent some areas of high mobility where the electoral registration officer has some difficulty. The hon. Gentleman underlined my point that the task is difficult enough when it has to be done on the basis of an annual register. It would be much more difficult on the basis of a rolling register.
Since the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East referred to the report from Warwick university, I must make one final comment. He said that the justification for
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his Bill--or at least part of it--was that increasing the accuracy of the register might be favoured more by the Labour party than the Conservative party. He called in evidence the report by Warwick university, "The UK Poll Tax and the Declining Electoral Roll", which refers to my constituency, among others. It is an example of academic research, through a lack of knowledge of the terrain, coming to a totally incorrect conclusion. Studies in my constituency during the last election campaign showed that the inaccuracies in the register were largely in the faster-developing areas such as Bradley Stoke, where a local town council election at the start of the election campaign proved that the vote was almost entirely divided between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats with the Labour party coming nowhere. If that area of my constituency had a more accurate register at the time, it certainly would not have benefited the Labour party and would undoubtedly have increased by majority.Mr. Barnes : In the end, the question of who benefits should not matter. I have a transcript of a television interview with the Minister. When this matter was raised, the Minister said : "I don't think Labour had any disadvantage over the registers in the last general election. Quite the reverse. It was the sort of Conservative voter areas that were under- represented, because the constituency boundaries there were based on electoral registers many years ago, and in those times the inner-cities were much more highly populated,".
The Minister has an argument about why the Conservatives suffered from under-registration. Whether it is the Conservatives or Labour, we should get the registration right.
Mr. Stern : On that point of agreement, I am happy to conclude my remarks.
11.28 pm
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley) : I wish to support the Bill. Fortunately, the week in which my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) introduces his Bill is the time of the year when the new register is published. We all know that in a few days the electoral registers published in our constituencies will already be four months out of date, because the qualifying date was in October 1992.
The register that is now being published will have to run for 12 months. We all know that there are already a number of errors in the register, for a number of reasons. A number of people will have died or moved, which will make the register out of date on the first day on which it can possibly be used. That will eliminate the ability of certain people to exercise their right to vote.
As the year passes, the margin of error increases. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East referred to an average error of 16 per cent., but we all know that the error in some constituencies is much greater than that. My hon. Friend was referring to the error at the end of a register's life. In many constituencies--for example, those in inner London, and inner city constituencies generally--the error increases to 30 or 35 per cent. when the life of the registers comes to an end. That will be the position in 1993-94. It is an extremely wide margin of error.
I was a full-time agent and a voluntary agent for over 20 years before I became a Member. I know that the register that we use now is nowhere near as accurate as the
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