Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs and ODPM: Housing, Planning, Local Government and Regions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)

25 JANUARY 2005

MR DAVID SIMPSON, MR PETER WATT AND MR MARK PACK

  Q100 Mr Beith: As a matter of practice how much do your parties use the published electoral register or the marked register as a means of establishing whether some fraud has taken place; not for other purposes mentioned earlier but for establishing whether some kind of fraud has taken place or electoral malpractice?

  Mr Simpson: I would say only at a time when the result of an election in a particular ward or constituency is challenged.

  Q101 Mr Beith: You would be challenging it.

  Mr Simpson: Yes, of course. We would challenge the result in a particular case, if it were maybe a result like the Halesowen case a year or so ago where the returning officer was actually taken to the election court on the balance of probability of whether or not people had received postal vote application forms. It was a key decision which I believe involved the Labour Party in quite some cost.

  Mr Watt: I could not possibly comment on the cost, but we certainly had some interest. That was an interesting case in that the issue there was whether or not the fact that someone did not receive their postal vote, for reasons to do with the Post Office or whatever, was actually a valid reason to contest the outcome of the election. It was an important point of principle. I would agree with David in a sense when it comes to fraud, but what we would use the electoral register for would be as a check, to make sure that people are being registered to vote. It becomes quite clear, as you are getting to know your patch and pounding the streets, as I am sure colleagues do regularly, that there are certain parts of your constituency where rates of registration are very low. If you knock at a house and no-one in the house is on the register and it happens door after door and you realise that there is a particular problem, then you would want to take some remedial action.

  Mr Pack: The other issue in respect of fraud is that the existence of the electoral register, the publication of the marked register and so on are not just useful in terms of when a particular allegation comes up being able to see whether it looks like there is some evidence to make it worth pursuing, but also that it helps prevent fraud in that certain types of fraud are a lot easier to spot because we have a public electoral register and because we have a marked register which can be inspected. If either or both of those did not apply, it is quite plausible that there would be all sorts of fraud taking place which do not happen at the moment because they would then become much easier.

  Q102 Mr Beith: Do you have concerns about the potential reduced size of the register from individual registration, except in so far as that is because of the deletion of fraudulent or mistaken entries?

  Mr Watt: We certainly do. I would say that was our main concern. Whilst we are wholly in favour, as a matter of principle, of individual voter registration, we have real concerns about the speed with which it would be introduced. The Electoral Commission have made some reassuring noises in terms of their recommendations for phasing in individual voter registration, but if you look at Northern Ireland as an example where that clearly would have a big impact, there are certain groups which would be particularly badly affected. Young people and students come to mind. If we were just to go from household registration to individual registration we would have real concerns.

  Q103 Chairman: The problem in Northern Ireland was not necessarily the first register, it was the continuing process. In a sense it could be done quickly, as long as some way was found to make sure that particularly young people and other groups actually registered.

  Mr Simpson: It would be impossible to run things side by side. You have to have a cut-off point and if it were determined by parliament that we should go to individual registration from a particular date, then that is what would happen. I do not see how you can have a dual system.

  Mr Pack: It is also the case that whilst we share the concerns about what would be the initial impact on the registration rate, when you separate out two other parts of that issue, one of which is the impact that actually has on turnout in an election and therefore to what extent the people who do not register initially are the people who are not going to vote and therefore although there is still an impact of having reduced registration rates, it may not be as significant, but, also, in general in this country we are very poor at providing people with opportunities to register. If you compare, for example, the circumstance in Australia with Britain, in Australia there is much more integration, much more joined-up government—in the modern jargon—than there is in Britain. Our view would very much be that if we go down the route of individual registration, one way of dealing with the issue about a possible drop in registration rates is to look also at making it easier for people to register and it being tied up with the other sorts of things people do in terms of telling the Royal Mail when they move, giving information to DVLA and similar activities.

  Q104 Peter Bottomley: In one area we have made the change already for service voters. In the past people in the armed services could register and would not have to change and they could always go on voting. We have now moved to individual registration. It is quite clear that the evidence is that registration has dropped very significantly. There you have a monopoly employer, who knows where the people are and registration has gone down and down, has it not?

  Mr Watt: I would agree and we are concerned. There are some merits in the household system in that we would not throw out the baby with the bath water here. It is not beyond the wit of us to come up with a system which maintains the advantages of the household registration whilst actually having individual voter registration; perhaps a household registration form which requires individual voters to sign, particularly if voters begin to have their own voter identification number or whatever that becomes known as. I do not want to bring in any disagreement when there is clearly agreement between the three of us so far, but a note of disagreement with Mark. Whilst I do not think the issue first of all would be that just because voters did not register, there would not necessarily be a drop in turnout. I do not think that is the issue because if people are on the register then we can communicate with them. If we are communicating with them, it might not mean they vote in this election, but the fact that they have been communicated with over a series of elections may well be a factor which leads them to decide to vote at some point in the future. I certainly would not want to give the impression that we would be unconcerned just because they did not vote when they were not on the register.

  Mr Simpson: The thing with the service voting is that it is different in the sense that you have always had one person in the household consistently, every year, having to do a registration. It was considered that if you joined the service of your country and you registered to vote once, that stayed with you for life. It is that principle which has been changed by the 2000 Act and that has caused the real problem and the reduction in the number of service people voting or inclined to vote.

  The Committee suspended from 4 pm to 4.10 pm for a division in the House

Q105 Mr Betts: May I pick up three points, one made by each of you, and see whether there might be some agreement on the way forward with individual registration? Peter Watt was saying that there might be a possibility of having household forms which the head of the household received but then individuals signed them in their own capacity. Presumably that could be backed up by individual forms as well for anybody who wanted one. Mark Pack was making the point earlier about the use of other information, driving licence, council tax or whatever, as a means of getting information about individuals and where they lived and the appropriateness of using that. David Simpson was making the point that we used to have a situation where service personnel, once they were registered in a particular place, stayed on the register. There is that continuity principle: if someone is registered at an address, whether or not they stay there they remain registered. Are they three points about which there might be common agreement?

  Mr Simpson: On the service vote issue I rather think that a squaddy in Basra has more things on his mind than getting a vote back home. It seems to me that once people had signed up for the services they had the right to remain.

  Q106 Mr Betts: I was really asking you about the continuity principle and whether it was a general one which could be applied across to everybody.

  Mr Simpson: I believe that there has to be an annual registration.

  Q107 Chairman: Why? Why does there have to be an annual registration?

  Mr Simpson: Historically that has been the case. Though we do not have to follow history necessarily it has stood us in good stead thus far in creating electoral rolls. One of the problems sometimes is that local authorities, bless them, do not always follow up and do the removals from registers as quickly as they might and that leads to excess numbers on an electoral roll. If you are then looking at the problem like Northern Ireland, where about 120,000 people came off the roll the first year they went to individual registration, an awful lot of that could have been natural wastage; let us put it that way. They still think that annual registration is necessary in order to maintain an interest and maintain an accurate list for a particular local area.

  Mr Watt: In terms of annual registration, what we would say is that again it is the baby and the bath water argument. There are some disadvantages to annual registration which, for example, the Electoral Commissioner identified in that it does not necessarily target under-represented groups particularly well for instance. On the other hand, what it does do is put the onus on local authorities to make an effort once a year in order to make sure their register is accurate. There are some very good examples around the country of authorities which have made the most of the annual registration. Again, what we would support would be a combination of maintaining the annual register, together with more targeted and focused work where local authorities are sharing best practice of what works in terms of increasing the registration of under-represented groups so you would get the advantages of both. I think that is where we would want to end up on this.

  Mr Pack: It also adds an important safeguard in terms of both new properties appearing and old properties going. One of the problems all councils face is that electoral registration is not a great vote winner and therefore when it comes to allocating resources they are often relatively short of money. Having an annual process ensures that at least once a year there is a thorough check of the validity of the data. Whilst councils vary somewhat in how quickly they respond, for example, either to properties being demolished or new properties being built, we have at the moment the guarantee that once a year any issues like that are sorted out and we have a guarantee that once a year a whole range of other issues will be sorted out.

  Q108 Mr Betts: When some of us were recently in Australia and talked to the Electoral Commission there, they just looked in amazement at us when we described our system and said "Why do you bother sending out forms every year to people who have not changed their address, have not changed their circumstances and, if people do not send them back, chasing them up with an actual physical canvass?". What they do there is actually require other organisations, the utility companies, the postal authorities, the driving licence authorities, to inform the Electoral Commission when there have been changes of address. The Commission's job then is to chase those people whose circumstances have changed. They say that therefore they focus their efforts on the people whose registration position is going to be changed.

  Mr Simpson: So all the power is with the Commission out there and not with the local people and the local authorities.

  Q109 Mr Betts: Yes; either the national commission or the state commission. Whether it is or not, that is the requirement and they chase the people whose circumstances have changed. They claim that their register is 98% to 99% accurate, which is a lot more accurate than ours is.

  Mr Watt: I would agree with that. I do not have any problems with that in the sense of the advantage of data sharing. I heard some of your conversation with previous witnesses and I think that there is a lot to be gained from data sharing with utility companies, even within local authorities. There is also a practical consideration which gives us concern in terms of the more targeted rolling approach and that is that there is the danger of political bias, or at least the allegation and perception of political bias in terms of where is being targeted for registration. Certainly in some of the proposals which have come forward from the Electoral Commission, we can imagine scenarios in which, even if it were not true, there would be the perception that particular areas were being targeted for voter registration for party political purposes. The advantage at the moment is that we have an annual registration and we know for practical purposes what that means for us practically. It works, so I think it is better to stay where we are and add on the benefits of the sorts of things you are talking about, than to get rid of the system and start again.

  Peter Bottomley: Is it not true, picking up what Sir Paul Beresford said, that if electoral registration officers use the 192.com and Experian type of information, that should be able to throw up households where they thought something had changed and they could check, on an exception basis? Is it not also true that the Andrew Bennett issue, that so long as local authorities say you can just ring up and report that there has been no change, you actually cut out half the expense of organising it? Would it not be a good idea also if even this place could actually agree with the Treasury that to call both the Treasury and Number One Parliament Street parliamentary building Number One Parliament Street is absurd?

  Chairman: I cannot get smiles on the record very easily.

  Q110 Mr Betts: In terms of the cut-off date for allowing people to register before an election, do we not have to get that far closer particularly to general election dates? We all know people who suddenly realise that they are not registered and who become very disgruntled and disaffected and cannot understand why, as there are still weeks to go to polling day something cannot be done. In many states in the United States, for example, you can literally register on the day. I know they do not have an electoral registration system we would want to copy in every respect, but would there not be something to be said for trying to get the data a lot closer to polling day and how close do you think we can get?

  Mr Pack: Our view would certainly be that we would agree there is an almost, one is tempted to say, very English eccentricity that the point at which most members of the public are aware that there is an election on and maybe they have not sorted out their electoral registration, the deadlines have been and gone. It is difficult to see, if one were to sit down to invent a system, that one would come up with that system of having a deadline before most people notice there may be an issue. That said, the electoral register is used for a range of purposes, including, for example for Westminster elections and the provision of the Freepost election address leaflet, if candidates decide they wish to use an addressed leaflet they pull that information from the electoral register. In terms of it being an important tool for candidates campaigning. There is a trade-off between having a deadline which is closer to polling day, which is more convenient for the public and having a deadline which is further away from polling day, which is more convenient for those who make use of the electoral register.

  Q111 Chairman: Come on. If a political party has 10 extra names, it is not that difficult to do an extra set of labels, is it?

  Mr Pack: Absolutely. The question is whether you get the 10 extra names two hours before the polls close or you get them with a little bit more notice. There is a trade-off. Certainly our view would be that the current date is not the optimal one for trading off those different factors. The other issue it does tie into is exactly what happens with the rest of the registration process. The question is: at that deadline date, whenever the date happens to be, are you getting 10 extra names or are you getting 5,000 extra names, which are two very different scenarios?

  Q112 Sir Paul Beresford: If the cut-off date were very, very close to the election, particularly where you have small numbers of votes which would conclude the election in particular wards, do you not feel you would run the possibility of a transitional movement of individuals?

  Mr Watt: Yes, there is that risk and that is the balance. In a sense you have hit the nail on the head. For practical purposes we would support the registration up to close of nominations; that would seem to us to be sufficiently far away from polling day. Even with that, it does not completely mitigate the situation you are describing. As with all these things, they have to be balanced against the fact that there are individuals—take a parliamentary by-election—who suddenly become aware of the fact that there is this rather important event taking place in their constituency and at that point they realise they cannot actually take part. Those two things have to be balanced.

  Mr Simpson: I would go along with Peter here. Sir Paul may be referring back to the Swampy factor in Newbury some years ago. There is a danger of small groups of people believing that they should have a disproportionate ability to influence a result.

  Q113 Mr Betts: Are you talking about the Liberal Democrats?

  Mr Simpson: I am not talking about the Liberal Democrats at all; would I dare? I am merely talking about the fact the there are groups of individuals, who may not be party political, who may have a view on the outcome of that particular result in that particular constituency. I do think it is quite right that we should have a date which is a bit further out than that.

  Q114 Mr Betts: May I raise one other issue and that is that if we go to individual registration there clearly are some arrangements now, which operate in nursing homes and halls of residence for students, where there is a bit of a centralised attempt to register everyone? How do you see that being affected by moving towards individual registration? How can we practically develop systems to make sure people do get registered?

  Mr Watt: I would say that for all practical purposes we would prefer a system where there was a maintaining of household registration whilst introducing individual registration. In the situations you describe, for practical purposes, the warden or whoever it was would receive a list of those people who were previously registered and it would be incumbent upon them to ensure those individuals signed, marked the form, whatever it was. You do not then lose people off the register while at the same time you maintain the individual voter registration.

  Q115 Chairman: It would be a nightmare, would it not, for the principal of the hall of residence? You would have 95% of the students having signed and you would be waiting for that one who had disappeared somewhere. It would be somewhat onerous.

  Mr Watt: Yes, if you took it to the Nth degree in that sense it would be a nightmare. There must be a practical way through this in terms of halls of residence which could be worked through.

  Q116 Mr Clelland: It says here that the Labour Party favours the introduction of a national register and that the Conservatives are firmly against any moves to centralise electoral registration services. Perhaps Peter Watt could tell us what the advantages of a centralised register would be and David Simpson could tell us what the disadvantages would be. Perhaps Mark Pack could give us a third way.

  Mr Watt: The advantages of a national register in campaigning, or for individual voters, is that we can then move towards a multi-channel-enabled election which I know the government are in favour of, so that people are not tied to voting in one polling station which is somewhere near where they are actually registered to vote, but they could in theory vote anywhere in their constituency or even outside the constituency. Obviously once you have a national register, those sorts of things become possible in the way that, for practical purposes, they are not possible at the moment. There are also some very practical advantages for political parties. At the moment the cost of managing 600-odd different registers, which are given to us in different formats, and turning those into a campaigning tool, a process which all major political parties have to go through, is extremely high and over a year the costs seem to increase disproportionately. There are both advantages for voters, but also advantages for political parties as well.

  Q117 Mr Clelland: So the individual voter would have a unique number or identifier which would be allocated to them and their constituency. They could vote anywhere in the country but that vote would be allocated to that particular constituency.

  Mr Watt: Yes.

  Q118 Sir Paul Beresford: Would that increase the chance of impersonation?

  Mr Watt: Security is always a concern with these things. It has to be balanced against making it easier for people to vote. Impersonation can take place now. People could just walk into a polling station, if they wanted to. The requirements for security versus the ease with which people can vote have to be balanced. Take myself, if I had a unique voting number and I went to a polling station and was told I had already cast my vote somewhere else, then that would clearly be cause for concern and there would be an audit trail, because it would be obvious where my vote had been cast.

  Q119 Sir Paul Beresford: One of the advantages of having it quite narrow is that there is a chance you will meet the neighbour, but if the head of the household wanted to vote a particular way for the whole of his household and they were all away on holiday, he could go round a selection of polling booths voting for himself, his son—not his wife, but you get the point.

  Mr Watt: I do not believe that we would invent a system which was absolutely 100% secure whilst at the same time making it as easy as possible for voters to cast their vote and that is the balance. The Electoral Commission will certainly have a really vital role, once we have a national register, in terms of auditing some of these. Spot checking, random checking of voters who voted and those sorts of functions are ways which will not only increase the security of the ballot, but will also be seen to increase the security of the ballot.

  Mr Simpson: We believe, frankly, that local is best and local people vote for local communities, they vote in their local communities and their registration should be kept within their local communities. On the other hand, obviously there has to be a national database and we are fully signed up to the creation of a national register, but by keeping it local and bringing it together through a system. We are all looking forward to the day when the money comes forward from government and we get the CORE project properly under way; we hope that will be not very far away, because we all believe, without exception amongst the larger parties, that that is the right way forward to create a national database. It is how you get there. As far as we are concerned, we should say: keeping things local, making sure people have an interest in their local community and that registration remains local is the best way forward.

  Mr Pack: In some ways the differences of view are slightly a matter of semantics. There is quite broad agreement amongst political parties and hopefully Peter and David will not immediately contradict what I have to say in terms of believing that there is an important role for the local knowledge and expertise which councils and their electoral services staff have, particularly about where the flat over the shop is, where you get to it, round by the steps, round the back on a different street, and so on. Whatever electoral registration model we have, having that degree of local knowledge and expertise is important. Secondly, I think there is a broad degree of consensus that there is a deep level of frustration at the huge variation in data standards and quality of data on the register. On the one hand local expertise is important, but on the other hand much more uniformity of data standards should go hand in hand with that. What you are left with then in terms of scope for disagreement is relatively minor in my view in terms of whether people have a unique national electoral registration number or whether we use some other number which is in existence for other purposes and doubles up for that. If we have that, do we allow people a much wider degree of discretion as to which polling station they vote in or not? To be honest, both of those are in a sense options. In terms of the immediate future, in my view they might be less pressing than getting a good set of national data standards implemented, enforced and followed.


 
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