House of Commons Hansard Debates for 12 Feb 1993

Mr. Powell : Before my hon. Friend develops that point, I should like to draw his attention to the fact that I recently changed my address. My constituency was reorganised in 1983 as a result of the reorganisation of parliamentary boundaries. I tried to find accommodation in my new constituency for 10 years. I received a letter dated 2 February from the returning officer in which he informs me that I cannot possibly be registered on the electoral register in my constituency until next October. I cannot get on to the rolling programme suggested in the Bill. As the Member of Parliament for Ogmore, I am not allowed to register until next October. I shall not be allowed to vote for myself and, with the small majority that I have, I shall have great difficulty being returned to the House. That is a very important point.

Mr. Allen : When hon. Members are in the very tenuous electoral position of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell), every vote counts. No doubt he will try to push his Bill more speedily through Standing Committee so that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North- East can get his Bill into Committee and therefore allow my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore the electoral registration that he so richly deserves.

With regard to absentee voting, the entire system of postal and proxy voting is in dire need of reassessment. In general, ignorance of procedure and of the availability of such facilities must be remedied. In the United States of America, which undoubtedly has its own electoral problems, no notes from doctors or employers are necessary for absentee ballots. Such a reform would be widely welcomed in this country. In California recently, one in five of the votes cast in presidential and other elections was cast as an absentee ballot. We shall examine the possibility of postal voting in this country for every individual who needs one, requires one and requests one. Certainly, everyone over retirement age should have an automatic right to apply for a postal or proxy vote on the ground of ill health.

The timing of elections is also an issue. Hon. Members will know that the Labour party remains committed to fixed-term Parliaments. Many people in the electorate

Column 1263

believe that it is an outrage that an incumbent Prime Minister can choose to go to the country to suit his or her

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Order. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that his contribution has nothing to do with the Bill. It would help the debate if the hon. Gentleman could return to the Bill.

Mr. Allen : Access to polling stations is referred to in the Bill and is another vital issue. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East has drawn attention to that matter. We have always been committed to ensuring equality of access to the democratic process. That will not occur while there is still inequality of access to the voting booth. I therefore welcome the proposals in the Bill about accessibility audits.

In July 1992, the Spastics Society reported that only one in eight polling stations surveyed was considered adequately accessible. Although each constituency has an average of 6,000 housebound people, the Government spent just £14,500 in 1991 publicising the rights of the elderly and disabled to obtain long-term postal and proxy votes. Accessibility audits suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East will not be enough on their own. Unless central Government take full financial responsibility for ensuring access for the disabled, there will be no way of effectively ensuring adequate standards of access countrywide. In the face of increased financial pressure from the Government, the current requirement for local authorities to find 50 per cent. of the cost of improving polling station access means that a disabled person's right to vote depends effectively on the spending priorities of the local authority.

I welcome the Bill's attempt to widen and standardise provisions for disabled persons' access to democracy. I urge the House to support the Bill. It contains many positive proposals. It is vital for the health of our democracy that we do not allow our electoral process to stagnate. We must not sit back and watch our inner cities become Americanised, populated by a class of people who are outside our conventional democratic structures. If that is not to happen, we need to act fast. The cycle of disillusionment and disfranchisement is vicious and it needs to be stopped early. The Labour party is fully committed to working towards reversing the growth of that invisible electoral population.

Opposition Members will not stop there. When the Labour party comes to power, it will create a culture of citizenship in which every Briton will take part. We shall have responsive and open government, an end to the dictatorship of the Executive, an elected second Chamber, a Bill of Rights, a reformed and accountable judiciary, Scottish and Welsh Assemblies and independent local government. All will be part of a new democracy for the United Kingdom--a democracy in which people will have pride, one in which they will participate and one which they will feel that they own.

The Bill is a worthy and valiant attempt by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East. It is a good start on the road that beckons us on to more fundamental reform which can come only with a change of Government.

Column 1264

1.50 pm

Mr. Piers Merchant (Beckenham) : Having been present throughout the debate, I expected that it would be an important debate, bearing in mind the topic of the Bill, but I am surprised at how lively and how wide ranging it became. The Bill begins with the laudable objective of improving the democratic process, and I welcome that, but from then on it goes into a rather severe decline. At times, even the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North -East (Mr. Barnes) appeared somewhat confused about the details in his Bill. He certainly proposed measures which are impractical and in some cases are based on an exaggerated analysis of the problem.

I do not deny the hon. Gentleman's sincerity in pursuing that objective, but I regret the late availability of the Bill. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not to blame for that, but on a matter of such importance to everyone in this country it is most important that all elements are most carefully scrutinised and debated at length.

Mr. Barnes : One problem with a private Member's Bill is that, in going to the wire, it is produced as well as it can be. If it is produced earlier, there might be more defects in it. There is the problem of that trade-off. Many other Bills have strong pressure groups behind them, and they do much of the legal and other work. Although I had great support and people were offering ideas, I had to do much of the work myself. Unfortunately, that pushed us to the wire. I agree that the issue is of such importance that we could have done with two months in which to look at the Bill before we debated it.

Mr. Merchant : I appreciate that, but I am bound to say that if there are not many pressure groups trying to exert influence on the topic, the problem is perhaps not perceived by the population to be so great as the hon. Gentleman has portrayed it.

The hon. Gentleman concedes that matters need to be thoroughly discussed and investigated before a Bill is presented and the law is changed. That is why the main fault in the Bill is that it is premature. My hon. Friend the Minister has said that his Department is looking in detail at all aspects covered by the Bill and, indeed, others as well. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East has said that, given another few months, he would have been able to present a better Bill. Surely the answer is to wait until the Home Office review is complete, when all such matters have been investigated and all the ramifications, practicalities and so on are examined before such a Bill is laid before the House.

Apart from the issues incorporated in the Bill, there are two other matters that should rightly be examined at the same time and, if necessary, included in legislation.

There are wider issues such as the question whether double registration should continue to be allowed and whether it is a good thing, the extension of the absent vote, which my hon. Friend the Minister mentioned, the various implications of European agreements on EC nationals and their voting rights at some stage in the future, and electoral counting methods and the possible use of electronics or machine methods to count votes. All those issues need to be examined at length.

The United Kingdom has a precious democratic system. It is important to examine the implication of suggestions about a rolling register or access for the

Column 1265

disabled to ensure that any changes that take place will be for the better and benefit the population in terms of ease of voting. While some of the suggestions in the Bill at first appear attractive--they are ones with which I generally agree--the practicalities need to be taken fully into account. For example, with regard to the clauses dealing with voting for the disabled, one needs to ask whether, by imposing a requirement to have one polling station in a constituency fully equipped and designated for the disabled, one is not making the situation worse by discouraging electoral returning officers from providing adequate facilities at other polling stations, especially in a constituency that may cover a large geographical area. Such matters need to be fully weighed up before any final decision is taken.

The idea of a rolling register is quite attractive. It has many merits and has become much more feasible with the availability of new technology to speed up the process of adding or subtracting names then publishing them, certainly in an electronic form. The difficulties relate to standardisation and finding systems that work and are reliable.

We have all seen numerous examples of the hiccups--often they are more than hiccups--that occur when electronic methods are introduced. A criticism in the early days of the community charge was the difficulty that borough and district treasurers had in getting their machinery to work properly. If we introduce a system that is heavily based on a new electronic process, all the ramifications of it will need to be examined. We need to come to a conclusion on a system that will work and which can be standardised across the country. The sale of the electoral register was mentioned at various times in the debate. I shall refer to that matter briefly, as I have some previous experience, not directly in the direct mail business but in dealing with some of the problems thrown up by the direct mail industry and the public on direct mail matters. I should add that I no longer have a connection with the industry.

I am convinced that, on balance, the sale of the electoral register is a good thing. Apart from the arguments against it being limited by practical factors, I am not sure whether we can prevent the electoral register from becoming available one way or another. Given that availability, we may as well charge for it.

In no case that I can think of is the electoral register used by direct mail houses to blanket an area and deliver junk mail--it would indeed be junk mail as it would be entirely untargeted--which they would not otherwise be able to do. That would be bad direct mailing and of no interest to direct mail houses. Direct mail houses use the electoral register for an entirely benign process--to clean up and check their existing records. People benefit from the system, because it ensures that the names and addresses used are much more accurate than they would be if they were not cleaned up by that process. Preventing direct mail houses from using the electoral register might lead to a deterioration in the targeting quality of direct mail and create many more public complaints than exist at present. Non-registration is the ill which the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East is trying to correct by means of the Bill. There are non-registration problems, of course,

Column 1266

but some of the figures that he quoted exaggerate the problem. Everyone accepts that no one can know accurately, without carrying out an extremely detailed exercise, how many people are unregistered. Many of the figures produced tend to suggest that it is nearer 5 or 6 per cent., not 10 per cent. as the hon. Gentleman suggested. A document produced by the Library tells us that the estimated percentage of people registered when set against the population has increased during the past year over the previous year in Scotland, England and Wales.

The decline measured in previous years was not that great. There were only marginal changes. Most interesting of all, the percentage of the younger age groups--the attainers--estimated to be registered is higher now than a decade ago and has been slowly increasing over that period. There is no suggestion that the community charge or anything else has produced a declining registration among attainers. Opposition Members have claimed that the Labour party would be helped by greater registration or, at least that the results of elections and opinion polls would be different, but there is no evidence on which to base that claim. Anyone who assumes that all those who are not registered would vote for a particular political party and thus make a dramatic difference to the results of elections in marginal seats is greatly mistaken. The majority of opinion polls are not carried out with reference to the electoral register; they are conducted by interviewers who stop others in the street to ask them for their views. That may account for opinion polls being inaccurate, but I doubt whether electoral registration has any impact on such polls.

A valid question is whether registration should be compulsory. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern), who unfortunately can no longer be in his place, suggested that registration should not be compulsory. I have some sympathy with that view because it strikes me as strange that in a democracy people should be forced to register. On balance, I think that the present system is for the best, even if at times I have some doubts about its ethical validity. In practical terms, however, I am prepared to accept it. To the extent that it is compulsory, I find it peculiar that it appears not to be enforced, given that there are penalties. It may interest my hon. Friend the Minister and his right hon. and hon. Friends at the Treasury that if all those who are estimated to be unregistered were prosecuted and fined, the Treasury would be able to raise about £2 billion, which would no doubt be of great help now. A degree of enforcement would help to increase registration by acting as an incentive. If that were complemented by more advertising and more thorough door-to-door canvassing, I believe that many of the problems stemming from lack of registration would be overcome. What are the reasons for non- registration? It has been suggested that it is linked with deprived areas. I find that difficult to envisage, because deprivation existed in past years, and often at much worse levels. Yet the percentage of those reckoned to be registered was higher during those years. The community charge has been used as an excuse, but there is no clear evidence to suggest that it has had a significant effect on registration. There will, of course, always be marginal examples. If we are talking of a severe problem, I believe that deprivation and the community charge are not the causes. Some say that anonymity is a

Column 1267

factor. Some people will always want to guard their privacy to a high degree, and I do not think that anything can overcome that wish.

A difference in administrative practice is probably a main reason, because there is a good deal of variety between electoral registration officers. That problem must be addressed.

There is also the question of dissenters. There are always those who decline to take part in any of the society's activities, including registering and voting. The effort required to overcome the resistance of that last 1 or 2 per cent. would be enormous and not worth it--particularly when one bears in mind that some dissension would be on valid ethical or religious grounds.

It worries me sometimes that once Opposition Members seize on an idea, they are tempted to go almost to totalitarian lengths to enforce it. I find objectionable the Bill's requirement that if one moves to a new address, one must inform the registration officer within three weeks. That is rather draconian, but at least it does not go so far as some Labour Members, such as the hon. Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), who have long campaigned for compulsory voting. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West gets very excited at that prospect. I sometimes wonder whether he will follow it up by requiring compulsory voting for the Labour party. That hon. Gentleman told the House : "Already we consider certain activities in our society too important for the common good to be left as options."--[ Official Report, 5 May 1987 ; Vol. 115, c. 589.]

He includes voting among them. The hon. Member for Rother Valley went further. He said :

"I would not be prepared to make any detailed provision for the right to abstain of religious groups or of anyone else."--[ Official Report, 14 February 1985 ; Vol. 73, c. 615.]

That takes the argument to absurd lengths.

The House must allow the Home Office review to be completed, consider and debate its implications, and then carefully and thoroughly reach its conclusions and right the problems that exist--without altering practices that operate perfectly effectively. Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Deputy Speaker : I call Mr. Ray Powell.

2.6 pm

Mr. Ray Powell (Ogmore) : Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to be called by you, having risen in my place on this spot since last May. On odd occasions, I have been tempted--being so short--to jump on my seat, in the hope that I would catch your eye. I feel very privileged this afternoon to have caught your eye and I am grateful to be called.

I am grateful also to my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) for presenting a Bill of great importance--in particular, to this country's democracy. Earlier, he told me that if there were to be compulsory voting, that should operate today. Perhaps all hon. Members will take due note. I hope that most are in the House today.

I regret that I was unable to be in the Chamber earlier, to hear the Minister and his suggestion for a Home Office review. I have grave doubts of its value, if it applies any previous Conservative legislation affecting the electoral register. I refer, for example, to the Representation of the People Act 1990 to permit British residents overseas to

Column 1268

apply for registration, which became law prior to the last general election. I know for a fact that Labour lost one seat as a result of that legislation. Labour lost Vale of Glamorgan by 19 votes in an election in which 58 registered overseas electors cast their votes by proxy--undoubtedly for the Conservative candidate. Most of the votes were cast by overseas residents who could qualify for the electoral roll if they had at one time been resident in this country, even if they had not been resident here or on the electoral roll for as long as 20 years. Not only could they register, but they could identify the constituency in which they wanted to register, even if they had never lived in that constituency. Therefore, I would not rely on the Home Office review to resolve the problem.

Mr. Peter Lloyd : It is interesting to know that the hon. Gentleman is sure that any British resident overseas is bound to vote Conservative. That was not the view of the Labour Front-Bench team when it assented to the inclusion of the paragraph in the legislation. The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong to say that overseas British residents can register in the constituency of their choice. No overseas British resident can do that. They can register only in the constituency where it can be demonstrated that they were resident and on the register immediately before they left this country.

Mr. Powell : On the first part of the Minister's answer, I cannot be responsible for actions taken by other Labour Members, whether Front Benchers or Back Benchers. If they had 15 years experience as a parliamentary constituency agent. as I have, and had studied the Representation of the People Act 1990 to ensure who was entitled to vote in an election, their opinions would probably be different. On the amending legislation, although the Minister suggested that not all overseas residents voted Conservative, when a television programme was shown in this country involving an organisation for those with properties abroad, its president asked the audience of 500 people at a dinner to take note of their rights to register. He said that he hoped that they would all vote for the Conservative party. Those people might have been misguided, as they had been out of this country for so long--some of them for as long as 14 or 15 years. They might have been unaware of what had happened in that period under the Conservative Government, but that progranne was shown in this country only a matter of weeks before the general election, and it undoubtedly had some impact.

Mr. Thomason : The hon. Gentleman appears to be saying that most overseas voters vote Conservative. Is he arguing that, therefore, they should not be allowed to vote? If so, what does that have to do with the Bill?

Mr. Powell It has a lot to do with the Bill. It is unfair to extend rights to people who have not resided in this country for 20 years when those rights go beyond those held by residents and Members of Parliament in this country. Even as an elected Member of Parliament, when I moved I was denied the right to register on the electoral roll at my new address as my name was not on the roll before October. The register of electors is open to people who have not been residents in this country for periods of up to 20 years. That was the subject of the Home Office review when the amending legislation was introduced.

Column 1269

Mr. Doug Hoyle (Warrington, North) : Does my hon. Friend agree that, whatever the political opinions of the people, Conservative Members who went abroad made a concerted attempt to contact those people and get their names on the register? I do not think that those Conservative Members would have been making that effort if they did not believe that most of those people were Conservative voters.

Mr. Powell : I accept entirely what my hon. Friend suggests. That undoubtedly happened. It had a direct effect on a number of marginal seats. It should not have been allowed, but it was allowed, by agreement on both sides--

Lady Olga Maitland : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Powell : Let me deal with the point that has been made ; then I shall gladly give way to the hon. Lady.

That should not have been allowed, because the amendment extended rights to citizens outside this country that are not afforded to citizens in this country.

Lady Olga Maitland : This strikes me as a case of sour grapes. What steps did the Labour party take to find their voters? I suspect they did not take any steps because there were no Labour voters.

Mr. Powell : The hon. Lady is making the very point that I made. The primary objective of both the Home Office and the Government was to extend this right to their own supporters.

Lady Olga Maitland : Will the hon. Gentleman give way again?

Mr. Powell : Yes, I will. If I do not do so, the hon. Lady will, I know, be up and down all day.

Lady Olga Maitland : The same opportunities can be given to Labour voters overseas. If they do not choose to vote, or if there are no Labour voters overseas, we cannot help the hon. Gentleman, can we?

Mr. Powell : No, but most of the people who live abroad and who have properties abroad are obviously those who benefited from opening shops on Sunday that they should not have opened.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman is now beginning to stray away from the Bill. I should be grateful if he would return to its contents.

Mr. Powell : The hon. Lady got me so excited that I was bound to go astray.

Reference was made earlier to opinion polls. Some years ago I introduced a ten-minute Bill that would have prevented opinion polls from being carried out five weeks before a general election or a by-election. One day, Members of Parliament in all parts of the House will come to their senses and realise that that is the right approach. It would save all political parties millions of pounds in carrying out opinion polls. In all probability, we should then have a true reflection of how the electorate intended to vote. I am surprised that the Conservatives are concentrating on opinion polls and the influence that they have, instead of wanting electors to vote in accordance with their political views.

Many changes occurred during the 15-year period that I was a political agent. At one time the register was

Column 1270

collated in October, with a supplementary register being published by 16 February of the following year. If electors registered during that period they were allowed to vote. Therefore, the agents of all the political parties had the opportunity between October and February to ensure that their supporters were registered. That opportunity has been taken away from us. It is high time that the Government considered introducing a system under which there would be a rolling register and also the possibility, after the register had been compiled in October, of a cut- off date three months later so that people who were not on the register in October could be registered within that three-month period.

At the last election I was disturbed by the fact that between 400 and 500 of my constituents were not on the register. Since then, a survey has been conducted to find out the total.

On the day of the election, two residents of the Caerau area of Maesteg in my constituency went to vote. Apparently, one of them--I could not understand where he came from or his family background--went to vote Conservative, and we are conducting an investigation into that. Misguided though he was, he went to the polling station with his next-door neighbour, who had been a neighbour and a friend for years. They used to go to the Conservative club together--although the neighbour voted Labour he was an officer of the Conservative club in Caerau, which is typical of the valley people.

When that man went to the polling station he found that he was denied the right to vote because he was not on the electoral register, although he had lived at the same address and voted at the same polling station for the past 50 years--and he paid his poll tax. His neighbour aggravated the situation because he was voting for two non-residents of the Ogmore constituency, who had been recruited on to the register because of the iniquitous decision to allow voting rights to residents abroad. That highlights the problems created at the last election--the postal date of registration and the fact that people from abroad are allowed to register and to vote.

I hope that there will be a Division on whether the Bill should have a Second Reading. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East will succeed in that Division. I also hope that the Minister will concede that there is time for the Bill to be debated and will find time for early completion of the preceding Shops (Amendment) Bill, which I am promoting. I hope that the House will encourage the Minister to arrange an early Report stage for that Bill so that my hon. Friend can get his Bill into Committee.

Mr. Thomason : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Bill would not have helped the voter from his constituency who turned up on the day of the election to find that he was not on the register? The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East says that the Bill requires more than seven days' prior notice--in my opinion, as drafted, it requires 14 days--for a name to be put on the register. It is not a rolling register, but is fixed to two points in time--an election and the annual update. Does the hon. Gentleman concede that it will not deal with that problem?

Mr. Powell : It would be a big help if the draft register were published in October and if adjustments could be made until February, which is what used to happen. Of course, it would help if people were allowed to go on a

Column 1271

rolling register and to ensure that their names were on it before the day of the election. As my constituent had been on the register for 50 years, it is surprising that he should find that he was not on it.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East will get support for the Bill. I and a number of other hon. Members will be in the Lobby to support him, and we are grateful that he has taken the time, effort and energy to promote the Bill, with the backing of a number of organisations, so that Parliament has the chance to rectify many mistakes, and to allow people to exercise their democratic right to be on the register and to vote for a Labour Government which, in all probability, is what will happen at the next election.

Mr. Barnes rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put :--

The House divided : Ayes 78, Noes 0.

Division No. 150] [2.24 pm

AYES

Ainger, Nick

Allen, Graham

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Austin-Walker, John

Barnes, Harry

Bayley, Hugh

Beckett, Margaret

Bell, Stuart

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Benton, Joe

Blair, Tony

Boateng, Paul

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Brown, N. (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)

Burden, Richard

Cann, Jamie

Clapham, Michael

Cohen, Harry

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Corbyn, Jeremy

Corston, Ms Jean

Cox, Tom

Cryer, Bob

Dobson, Frank

Dowd, Jim

Eagle, Ms Angela

Flynn, Paul

Foster, Derek (B'p Auckland)

Gapes, Mike

Gerrard, Neil

Next Section

Home Page