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Mr. Drew: That point has been made several times before, but I struggle to understand why people in such circumstances would want to make multiple registrations.
Mr. Brady: The hon. Gentleman may have a point. He may also have put his finger on a broader point that people who are sleeping rough have often opted out of community life and may therefore not have the slightest interest in voting for him, or for me or for any other hon. Member. People may indeed choose to abstain or to fail to register, and those are legitimate options.
Mr. Evans: The Bill makes no mention of by-elections, but people might flood into an area to register after an hon. Member dies, so that they can have a vote in the subsequent by-election.
Mr. Brady: My hon. Friend is right, and he raises the spectre of people who are not genuinely homeless or without a permanent address behaving in that way because they are politically motivated. I do not suggest that that is a likely scenario, but we must legislate with a view to the possibilities that could arise.
I come back to the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), which shows why there is a principled objection to the Bill. It does not present a schedule of changes that the House is being asked to accept. Instead, it will enable the Home Secretary to experiment with various pilot schemes in different parts of the country, which could have various outcomes. I do not suggest that the Home Secretary would engage in gerrymandering, but if, in future, an unprincipled Home Secretary wished to achieve party political advantage, the Bill would enable him or her to take an a la carte view of the electoral law. The Bill provides a Home Secretary with the opportunity to try any number of different electoral arrangements. It is a question not of the Home Secretary or the House then accepting or rejecting them, but of the Home Secretary's opportunity to pick and choose between different options. That could be done without primary legislation, with relatively little opportunity for House of Commons scrutiny. This measure could be used to affect the political process in the future.
We must look at the turnouts in general elections, European elections and local elections and at the stories that lie behind those figures. Again, I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby and, to do the Home Secretary justice, I think that he gave a nod in this direction at the beginning of his speech. People vote--or not--because they have a pretty good idea of what voting in a particular election will mean and how much difference it will make to their lives. In 1979, 32.7 per cent. of people voted in the European elections. That figure rose
dramatically to a high of 33 per cent. in 1984, before plunging to a low of 23.3 per cent. in this year's elections. That shows clearly how important the European Parliament is to people.
I accept that the Conservative party shares with the Government a considerable amount of blame for the fact that the diminution of the rights and responsibilities of local government has had an effect in that 40 per cent. of people--the number is frequently far less--vote in local elections. Again, the public are wondering how important such elections are to them, and what effect the results will have on their lives. For some people, the effect can be significant, but often, they think that voting is not worth the effort.
The turnout in general elections is proof of that. On the whole, people still believe that the House of Commons can make a difference to their lives. There has never been a turnout of less than 70 per cent. since 1970 and, while the turnout was as high as 78.8 per cent. in the first of the 1974 elections, it was as low as 71.5 per cent. in 1997. Again, I suggest that the Government have drawn the wrong conclusion from those figures. The reduced turnout was not because it was more difficult to vote, because participation in the electoral process was less attractive, or because it was harder to register on the electoral roll. It is an indictment of all political parties that people did not believe that how they voted would make much difference to their lives.
The result was not a ringing endorsement for the Labour party, which, historically, did not achieve a very high vote in 1997, nor was it a ringing endorsement of the Conservative party. There was clearly a desire to end a long period of Conservative Government, but no great desire for a Labour Government. People were not persuaded that voting would make a great deal of difference to their lives. That is why so few people voted and why the 1997 general election had the lowest turnout since at least 1970.
The myth is that the Government are greatly loved, that people were so confident that the Government would get elected that they did not bother to vote and that they were so ecstatically happy with the Government's election that they gave up voting. I do not think that that hangs together.
However, two items cropped up in my postbag this week that ought to give the House pause for thought. They illustrate what is going wrong, why people are disaffected with the political process and why they do not participate in elections. They also give a clue about what remedy would really make a difference, as opposed to Government proposals to set up polling booths in supermarkets or prisons.
A constituent wrote to tell me about a neighbour, a 10-year-old boy, who felt strongly about a local planning issue. I shall not name him, as I have not spoken to the constituent about the possibility that I would raise the matter. However, the boy was concerned that a historic local building would be pulled down and replaced with a large number of flats, which would increase traffic congestion and damage the environment.
The letter from my constituent said that the boy attended a meeting on the matter, after which he spent several hours writing to local and national politicians, including the Deputy Prime Minister. The letter stated:
A second example involves letters from constituents worried about live exports of sheep. This week, I received a response from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It pointed out that, regardless of the Government's views on the matter, it was not possible to legislate to ban such exports, as to do so would be contrary to EU law.
Constituents write to their Members of Parliament in the expectation that some action will be taken. When they write to me they want to discover my views and the Government's views on the matter at hand. Letters, such as the one about sheep exports that I have described, which say that the Government, the House of Commons and Members of Parliament are unable to do anything about a problem because they are no longer entitled to a view on it must be a cause of dissatisfaction, disinterest and alienation in the political process.
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire):
I thank the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) for two comments that he made about my contributions to the debate on this subject, especially those on the rolling register. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton), who serves on the Select Committee on Home Affairs and who is no longer present in the Chamber, also referred to my contributions, while my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that there might have been no Bill if it had not been for some of my work in the past, which might be going a bit over the top. Those comments place a great burden on me now--this speech had better be good, or I will come in for considerable criticism.
I became interested in electoral registration in 1987-88 when I served on the Standing Committee that considered the poll tax Bill--the Local Government Finance Act 1988. It was clear that that legislation would help to destroy electoral registration. I was dubious about whether that was in order, given the standing of the constitutional legislation on electoral registers that it was seeking to destroy.
The 1988 Act certainly destroyed electoral registration in many areas, especially among attainers--people who would then never appear on any register. Soon after that, I discovered that electoral registers were hit by many other factors. We have a rootless, mobile society, and there is much political alienation, to which many hon. Members have referred. Registration levels are poor in bed-sitter land, among black communities, among young people and the mobile of all classes--those who get on their bikes to look for jobs and those who can travel in more comfort while doing so--and in inner cities.
There is probably a 10 per cent. shortfall in electoral registration; furthermore, the shortfall is subject to serious maldistribution, so constituency boundaries are distorted. Those matters should concern us a great deal.
I am conscious of the time and that other hon. Members wish to speak, so I will concentrate on the rolling register, as hon. Members have stressed my interest in that subject, and express my views on the proposal that is before us. Certainly, such a register is the main technique for tackling under-registration. It is welcome that people can, within a reasonable time, transfer their registration as they move to a new area. However, I do not know whether that represents the full version of the rolling register and whether it will roll as quickly and as fully as I would like.
People who move can certainly transfer their registration, but the current register does not have the benefits of the whiz-bang, computerised, e-mail, e-commerce, technologically advanced methods that some people have said will need to be tried. Certainly, we can look at some of those ideas, but they should basically be applied to the rolling register. Once a person moves, the transfer of registration should take place almost automatically. People should be removed from the old register and transferred to the register in the new area.
We have had monthly lists for a while and when people move to a new area they can get on that. However, they have to register 15 days before the end of the month when the register is published to get on to it. Furthermore, once an election is announced--or once the nominations are in--no new lists will be announced. There is a bit of a blockage to inclusion on the rolling register; depending on when people move, it can be between six and 10 weeks before they are registered. If a system of rolling registration could be used under the evils of the poll tax, I do not see why we cannot have a full and continuous rolling register for electoral registration, which is vastly more important for a democratic system.
If such a register rolled continuously until nominations were made, there would be no need for double registration. Several Members have referred to the difficulties and problems of double registration, but it could be ruled out if people registered at their sole or main place of residence--or, for homeless people, their sole or main location. People could move rapidly from one area to another; for example, university students could be registered at their university constituency while at
college, and back at their home constituency during their long summer break. It should not be beyond the technology to achieve that. We have heard what technology can do to produce fancy voting arrangements, such as weekend provision and access for many people--like the current access to the lottery system. If such techniques are possible, they should be used for the rolling register.
Under the Bill, electoral returning officers are permitted access to local and public authority information in order to assist them for registration purposes. I should prefer a stronger measure whereby it would be compulsory for the officers to use such information--or strong pressure would be put on them to do so. Other forms of information could also be included to improve the register. Those ideas were contained in measures that I proposed in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Technically, civil servants and others would be better placed to produce those measures in order to iron out the difficulties.
We should consider the principle of a high-tech, rolling register that represents real modernisation--rather than merely the best that we can do at the moment; otherwise, we shall have only a veneer of modernity instead of an updated register. I welcome the Bill's proposals for the register, but hope that considerable improvements will be made in Committee, so that my vision of a rolling register can be realised.
I very much welcome the provisions for the registration of homeless people; I have introduced private Member's Bills on that subject. Some people may want checks to deal with some of the worries that have been mentioned. However, a declaration of location so that people can register to vote will enable us to get away from the system under which people can register only when they have a residence and which homeless people find it extremely difficult to get round. The system blocks them and the provisions on their registration are to be welcomed.
The measures to extend registration for people on remand and for mental patients who are not detained are also welcome. There are important provisions on access for the blind and the partially blind, but that is all that there is. Another--greater--possibility would be to extend measures for access for disabled people. The Bill may make it easier for disabled people to register, but they want the same right as able-bodied people to exercise their franchise at the ballot box if they want to do so. They thus need access to polling stations. Scope and others have produced evidence in that connection, and we should take notice.
There were provisions in that connection in the Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, which dealt with rolling registers, and I included a clause on the subject in my Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill. The Government might feel that the matter could be dealt with in other ways. For example, legislation might be contemplated to extend civil rights for disabled people, in which case such a provision might be included. Legislation on the electoral commission may make that much more feasible. However, I hope that we may tease things out to ensure that advances are made for the disabled.
It is an achievement to have the measure before us. It creates the possibility of making the improvement that I have described. I am pleased that the measure will be
debated by a Committee of the entire House, as is only correct and constitutional. Although it might be a bit high-flown to rank the measure with the great reform Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884 and so on, it is nevertheless about electoral registration and tidies up the process.
"The reply he received was not from your office but from the Government Office for the North West in Manchester who stated that it had been passed to them. This reply was a standard letter, identical to those sent out to local residents who had written on this
30 Nov 1999 : Column 231subject. The wording and tone of the letter was totally inappropriate to and completely dismissive of this ten year old boy. He was very disappointed. When he moves to secondary school next year and is taught Citizenship, the Local Democratic Process, Parliament and its workings etc,. in his PSE lesson I can imagine that he will be somewhat questioning of the information that he is given."
The letter went on to say that the boy's
"faith in the democratic process must have been dented both by the experience locally and the response to his letters. In eight years time he will be eligible to vote and these experiences are hardly going to encourage him to do this, whether in local or national elections."
That is what happened when a boy of 10 raised real concerns about a matter of direct concern in his locality. He received a brush-off and a standard letter. He did not even get a direct reply from the Deputy Prime Minister's office. That is a cause for concern, as such a response will lead to disaffection and cause people to think that it is not worth voting when they are of an age to do so.
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