Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
25 JANUARY 2005
MR DAVID
SIMPSON, MR
PETER WATT
AND MR
MARK PACK
Q120 Mr Clelland: So if we do have this
centrally held data, what restrictions do you think should be
put on its use?
Mr Watt: The same restrictions
that are put on the local registers. Political parties have access
to the electoral registers for campaigning purposes and that would
continue. All other who have access would have restrictions put
upon them. That would also mean you have the two registers for
those who decide to opt out of the commercially available register.
I do actually agree with David that although there would be a
national register in that sense, there would in reality be a combination
of locally produced registers, which would be produced to a common
data standard. I do not think that in actual fact there would
be much change.
Q121 Chairman: So we have a situation
at the moment in which there are about 10 different computer programmes
which different local authorities use to compile the electoral
register and you would envisage that they all move to one and
then you would have one national list which was completed on the
basis of locally collected information.
Mr Simpson: That is exactly how
I perceive it.
Q122 Chairman: If you are going to go
to being able to vote anywhere in the country, you are going to
have to have the identifiers. You do not accept that a signature
would be suitable for an identifier because that would be electronically
difficult to verify, so you are talking about some other identifier.
Would the fact that you have to produce a piece of information
when you want to vote actually make it harder for people to vote
and therefore less likely that they would vote?
Mr Watt: In a sense we are thinking
outside the box here. When we talk about the advantages in terms
of being able to vote in places other than your constituency,
the reality is that that does not exist at the moment. As the
national register develops, these sort of things will be explored.
You can imagine a situation where, for instance, if I decided
to vote at my normal polling station, or perhaps within my ward
or my constituency, then my signature or whatever would be enough,
whereas if I were going to be voting outside my constituency somewhere
else, then I might be required to produce a second form of identification.
Those things would not be particularly difficult and it would
be easy for the electorate to understand: I am either voting close
to home or I am not.
Q123 Chairman: If I wanted to vote from
somewhere where I was not normally resident, I would have to have
the identifier with me. What do you recommend as an identifier?
Mr Simpson: I would go back probably
to the National Insurance number as being the most simple, straightforward
identifier. Everybody over the age of 16 has one.
Q124 Chairman: Can you tell me your National
Insurance number?
Mr Simpson: Yes, I can.
Q125 Chairman: That was a bad question
from me. I should have asked myself, because I certainly cannot
come out with my National Insurance number and I suspect a lot
of my electorate would not be able to come out, off the top of
their heads, with their National Insurance number.
Mr Pack: As someone who can also
remember their National Insurance number—we are an elite
club here—the reason we have quite deliberately not expressed
a view on the appropriate additional identifiers is because they
tie in very closely with other issues such as the question of
ID cards; the obvious one which comes to mind. In many ways what
is appropriate as an extra identifier to be able to register follows
on from the decisions and questions which lie outside the narrow
remit of electoral registration.
Q126 Chairman: If you were going to have
identifiers, that would be a piece of information which would
have to be entered at the point at which you registered. Is that
right? You would have to provide your National Insurance number.
Mr Simpson: Yes.
Mr Watt: It would certainly be
a number you take with you and that would be the point. If you
moved addresses, that would be a unique identifier which you would
take with you.
Q127 Mr Beith: That is the number they
give you when you supply the information, is it not?
Mr Watt: It would depend what
that was: whether it would be a unique electoral number or whether
it would be a piece of information which you already had.
Q128 Chairman: If it were a unique electoral
number, you would probably have to remember it from 12 months
to 12 months, would you not? You would not use it that frequently.
Mr Watt: If a number were required—as
I said a minute ago we are looking forward to a system which does
not exist and trying to identify whether or not, for instance,
I would be required to carry forward my unique electoral number—it
could be that the unique electoral number is something which is
used by the electoral registration departments of local authorities
to identify individuals, whereas I am required to provide perhaps
my name, address and a form of identification, something else,
so I do not need to remember that number myself. I would say as
well that one frustration we all have about this is that it is
frustrating that we are sitting here talking about a system which
does not exist in terms of the common data standards. It does
seem to all of us slightly difficult to understand why it is that
we, sitting here today, do not even have common data standards
between the Electoral Commission and local authorities in order
to be able to make some progress on the national register.
Q129 Mr Beith: May I just clarify one
point? Is there not a slight danger that you assume that possession
of a unique electoral number demonstrates that you are qualified
to vote in an election, which may not be the case. You may have
supplied information that you are who you say you are, but you
may be disqualified by virtue of being a citizen of a country
which does not have voting rights in this country; you may be
disqualified from voting in parliamentary elections because you
are a peer or whatever it may be. The mere possession of a number
still has to be recognised as not sufficient proof that you are
qualified to vote in that election.
Mr Pack: There are two different
sorts of electoral fraud in this respect. One is effectively fictitious
people being placed on the electoral register and votes then being
cast on their behalf, or people who should not, for other reasons,
be on the electoral register. Certainly outside of Northern Ireland,
that is a relatively minor concern compared with the other group,
which is where votes are being cast on behalf of somebody who
is legitimately able to vote, but not actually being cast by them.
If you take the scenario of, say, a postman deciding to steal
some postal ballot papers because they are in a distinctive envelope
and they decide to walk off with them, what are they able to do?
How can they cast them? At the moment, if it is a traditional
election with a witness statement, okay, they have to forge some
signatures, but the signatures never get checked. There is no
record to check the signatures against even if one wished to,
so it is quite difficult to make use of the current security arrangements
to ensure that those postal votes were really cast by the people
who should have done so. If there were some other identifier,
take the National Insurance number just as an example, how is
that postman or somebody else who steals the envelopes, going
to know what the National Insurance numbers are of those people?
It would add a significant protection; not perfect, but a significant
extra protection.
Q130 Chairman: May I take you on to the
question of the anonymous registration for people of various categories
who should not be on a public list? Do you see problems with that
and would the problems get worse if you had individual registration?
Mr Watt: Clearly there are categories
of people whose identity should be protected. One can think of
those who are victims of domestic violence, people recommended
by the police or social service departments. Clearly those people
should not be on registers available publicly or to political
parties even and we should not have any problems with that at
all.
Q131 Mr Betts: You talked earlier about
the issue of certain groups being significantly under-represented
on the register and whether it was right to target-canvass. Are
there any views on that between the three of you? Surely in some
polling districts—and I got some information out from my
own constituency two or three years ago and saw this—after
a couple of reminders through the post more than 80% of the forms
have come back, in others probably 60% or less. Is it not reasonable
for electoral registration officers to target, at least in the
first instance, those areas where few forms have been returned?
Mr Watt: We would say yes; yes,
it is. I do not think we would have any problems with that at
all, in fact we would strongly support targeted initiatives. The
Electoral Commission have done some interesting work in terms
of putting together some thoughts about the minimum standards
which might be required, the best performance or performance standards
which could be set for under-represented groups which local authorities
will be expected to achieve. That would also remove any concerns
about political bias, about particular groups being targeted in
particular areas, if they were nationally agreed by a body like
the Electoral Commission.
Mr Simpson: I do not think that
is an unreasonable approach. This brings us back quite clearly
to the advantage as well of maintaining local registration, which
is particularly important. Local knowledge is an important thing
in order to determine and increase the number of people who actually
do register.
Q132 Mr Betts: Could we come onto the
issue of compulsory registration? If we go to individual registration,
should it be compulsory? What penalties should there be for failing
to register? Apart from mobile phones, what incentives could there
be for encouraging people to register?
Mr Simpson: Technically there
is compulsion there already, is there not, in the sense that everybody
is supposed to register and there is a penalty—I think it
is £1,000—if you do not? It seems to me that no local
authority rushes to enforce that particular penalty. I personally
do not see any need nor would have any desire to see any further
compulsion.
Q133 Mr Betts: There is no compulsion
now, is there?
Mr Simpson: There is in the sense
that it is there, it is in the Act, but that is as far as it goes:
whether anybody actually takes that any further, it is in the
Act that you can be fined for not completing. That does not make
you vote, it means you are actually registered to vote.
Q134 Chairman: Do you have any idea how
many were fined last year?
Mr Simpson: I do not think anybody
was fined. I should be very surprised if anybody had been.
Mr Watt: Technically the issue
of compulsion will need to be looked at if we move to individual
voter registration. At the moment the law only refers to the householder
to whom the form is sent. Clearly that needs to be looked at.
We should be in favour of maintaining a sanction, but it would
come down to local returning officers as to whether or not it
was used. I should expect on balance that most of them would not,
because they would prefer to spend their time and money, rather
than prosecuting individuals, doing the targeted things we were
talking about a moment ago, which would have the effect of increasing
the number of people registered, which at the end of the day is
what we are all interested in doing.
Q135 Mr Betts: We talked earlier about
the possibility of improving data sharing to try to get more information
into the electoral registration process. When we were talking
about identifiers, the issue of identity cards came up. When we
have a comprehensive national identity card system, there must
be a match between the people who should have one of those and
the people who should be registered for electoral purposes in
a way. Has any thought been given to bringing those two processes
together or using the information from the national identity card
system to improve the accuracy of voter registration massively?
Mr Watt: The problem at the moment
is that there is a problem agreeing common data standards between
local authorities. What is absolutely clear is that at the point
we have a comprehensive identity card system in place, when that
comes in, one of the advantages of that would be identity in terms
of voting and it may well help us get round the issues we were
talking about a moment ago, about voting in different constituencies
and how to prove your identity. I would just express our common
frustration again that we are actually struggling at the moment
to agree common data standards between local authorities for the
national electoral register.
Q136 Mr Beith: Is it not the case that
the citizens of the Irish Republic would require an identity card,
but would not be qualified to vote?
Mr Pack: There are several groups
of people where there would be that issue. The other question
is maybe more a matter of if rather than when, in terms of when
there is that comprehensive national identity card system. Even
if one takes the position that one will definitely happen and
everything will work, on the most optimistic timescale we are
still likely looking at several general elections before the ID
scheme is fully in place, national, mandatory and so on. It is
reasonable to say actually that it is worth basing what happens
to the electoral registration system on something which provides
a good workable system on general elections in the interim. Obviously
10, 15, 20 years down the line, all sorts of other things may
change anyway.
Q137 Mr Betts: Back to the here and now
then. You have all been expressing frustration with what you all
agree are these common data systems between various local authorities
and agreed on a national basis as well. Who is dragging their
feet? Who should pull their finger out now and get on with it?
Mr Simpson: The government might
say the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission would probably
say the government.
Q138 Chairman: Who would you say?
Mr Simpson: I would personally
say the government quite frankly. That is not party political,
it is simply the fact that the original idea came through the
IdEA and through the Electoral Commission four years ago, following
the introduction of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums
Act. We all need to have a national database for that alone, never
mind voting.
Q139 Chairman: It does not appear that
the three of you are in a sense disagreeing, or shall I say squabbling.
It is not your input into it; it is government input which is
slowing things down.
Mr Simpson: Yes.
Mr Pack: It is. Our frustration
would be that there have been various projects and various consultations
over the last few years on which all the main parties have given
very similar views and we keep on each year, or each few months,
being asked for our views again and giving the same views again
and the process does not seem to move forward. The one slight
caveat I would add is that at the moment there is clearly a degree
of disagreement between the government and the Electoral Commission
as to what the stumbling block is. The law requires the Electoral
Commission to have a key role in producing the data standards
and there is a question about whether the Electoral Commission
will really do that as quickly as we wish. Certainly over the
overall bigger picture the government has not been moving with
any real speed on the issue.
Mr Watt: The government is absolutely
committed to the national register, is pushing ahead and the funds
are there. What there does absolutely appear to be is an inter-departmental
quagmire at an official level and that is why I think we are getting
stuck and not being able to agree something very basic. We would
all agree politically that we want this to happen; we just do
not seem able to agree the data standards.
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