| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
10.35 am
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire): It is a pleasure to speak in a debate during which there have been so many impressive maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) has already dealt with the maiden speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley, North (Mr. Cranston) and for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) and of the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris). I associate myself with the remarks that he made about those speeches, which were all very impressive. I should like to refer to the two fine maiden speeches made subsequently.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) represents an area not too far away from North-East Derbyshire. He mentioned that the Peak district is on the boundaries of his constituency. The Peak district extends a short distance into north-east Derbyshire, too. It is a beautiful area in which we both have considerable interest. He stressed environmental concerns. The environment in the area is very attractive, yet he identified environmental problems in his constituency, as I certainly
do in mine. Although I was politically active in my constituency when I was first a candidate and then its Member of Parliament, I was surprised to discover the depth of environmental problems that were impressed on me. I have always played a very active role in such matters, so the hon. Gentleman and I may well find ourselves with various common interests.
The House always takes well to kind remarks made about predecessors such as the immediate predecessor of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove, Sir Tom Arnold, especially when hon. Members realise that the remarks are genuine and not merely a form of words.
I must also compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman) on her maiden speech. It is quite appropriate for me to compliment her since I am a fellow Derbyshire Member of Parliament. The kind words that she said about Angela Knight are appreciated. No one more than myself would argue and dispute many of the positions and lines that Angela Knight took. We all recognise that Angela Knight was a serious hon. Member representing serious interests on behalf of her constituents.
The interests of my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash and I directly linked on environmental matters when she referred to Stanton plc. I have a Stanton plc unit in my constituency. We have had problems with dioxin in the area, which was traced to the Stanton unit. Investigations in the Erewash area revealed similar problems. The problems were tackled, which shows that serious investigations into environmental matters enable us to discover what action is needed to correct such problems. They were corrected in both cases.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash also mentioned her experience in education. We have serious concerns about education in Derbyshire. In North-East Derbyshire, we have 45 primary schools, 41 of which--four small village schools apart--have a problem with class sizes. Those schools have classes of more than 30 pupils, and some have 40, 42 and 44. Therefore, Labour's commitment to tackling class sizes is very important. The other key to tackling education problems in Derbyshire is the future of the standard spending assessment and its calculation. Both my hon. Friend and myself are greatly concerned about that, and I am sure that we will unite to press the Government to correct the formula for Derbyshire.
All the maiden speeches have been fine speeches. In debates with short speeches, most hon. Members do not usually pay attention to what others are saying because they are waiting to say their own bit and get away. On this occasion, some fine maiden speeches have grabbed the attention of established hon. Members. Many of us feel that we need to look to our laurels with so much talent around and displayed in those speeches.
I wish to speak on a matter that I raised at the end of the previous Parliament, and I wish to continue to press the issue. Electoral registration involves a massive shortfall and we need a new, up-to-date system. On that issue, I am a Labour party moderniser, although some might dispute that title in connection with some of my other ideas. If we had had a modern electoral registration system for the election, many of those enfranchised would have been more likely to vote for Labour than for the previous Government. Our victory at the election would have been even more astounding if we had had an effective electoral register.
I was disappointed that it took so long to get hold of the figures for the numbers registered in each constituency at the end of the last Parliament. That information was provided only the day before the Parliament ended and I sought an emergency debate under Standing Order No. 20, because the figures were as bad as in previous years. The problems that I had highlighted in the House on many occasions still existed.
People may think that the urgency has gone from the issue because the election has passed, but it is still important, not least because of the debate that we will have this afternoon. If we are to have referendums for Scotland and Wales, we should ensure full registration. If, as some people suggest, thresholds are to apply to the referendums, the percentages should take account of the fact that the registers contain many redundant names.
The new Government need to clarify their position. The 1993 Plant report, which was presented to the Labour party, argued for a modern, rolling electoral register. I have explained the principle behind a rolling register to the House on previous occasions and, when we were in opposition, my colleagues on the Front Bench made some commitments to that idea. However, the rolling register and modern electoral registration techniques were not part of the "Road to the Manifesto" and were not in our actual manifesto. I was disappointed that those ideas were not discussed in the constitutional talks that were held with the Liberal Democract party before the election. I was also disappointed that the Liberal Democract party did not press the issue, because it had given solid support to my proposals for a rolling register.
I hope that we can now begin to prepare the ground for a new electoral registration system. I have often argued that 3 million to 4 million people are missing from the electoral register. We now need some investigation and research to check out that claim. I hope that the Home Office will undertake a thorough investigation of the arrangements for the general election, including registration. I would like the Home Affairs Select Committee, when it is appointed, to instigate a report to investigate the issue.
In 1991, the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys produced a report which has been very useful to me in my arguments about the numbers missing from registers. I hope that the Office for National Statistics will now update the work that was done in 1991.
I have asked Members, through The House Magazine, for any information that they have from canvassing returns that shows how many people on the registers have died or moved, how many are not registered and whether any other problems were discovered. I will deal with the information in confidence if necessary because I am interested only in the global figures. That evidence could form part of the investigations by the Home Office and the Home Affairs Select Committee.
I am convinced that the evidence will show the need for a rolling electoral register that puts people on the register when they move into an area and deletes their names when they are no longer there. It is nonsense that people who have died are left on electoral registers. Unless we take great care, we send electoral communications--even special postal shots on specific issues--to people who have died. However, councils receive regular weekly information from the registrars of births, deaths and marriages so that people can be
excluded from council tax and housing benefit. The changes could also be made to electoral registers, if we kept rolling registers.
We also need to begin to register homeless people. The legal definition of who can be included on a register is a problem because people must be residents. Residents have to have a residence and, by definition, a homeless person does not have a residence. Homeless people should be included on registers even if they have to use accommodation addresses, hostels, benefit offices or other places as their residence. The Home Office could make a difference by issuing an early circular to returning officers to make a liberal interpretation of the current law, but the wording of the law will need changing in the future.
Mr. Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton, North-East):
My hon. Friend intends to increase opportunities to register, but does he agree with the proposition that no one should be forced to register? If he does, we have a problem in defining how many people are missing from the register. Those who do not wish to be registered are still counted in the some 4 million who are unregistered. Is there any way to distinguish between those who are not on the register through lack of opportunity or being thwarted by the system and those who do not wish to register?
Mr. Barnes:
I want to do everything possible to give people the opportunity to register. Information about people moving could be made available to returning officers and requests to be registered could be fulfilled. As the law stands, a person can be fined £1,000 for failing to register. The offence is dealt with fairly leniently; I do not remember the last case in which a charge was brought--and I would not encourage that to happen. On the other hand, the fact that the provision remains may provide an extra pressure towards ensuring that people register.
Certainly there should be plenty of imaginative publicity about the need to register, and the importance of registration. People cannot even exercise an abstention, or show their abhorrence of politics in general, if they do not register, so as to show that they are among the genuine people who have not voted on a particular occasion.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |