Examination of Witnesses (Questions 146-159)
1 FEBRUARY 2005
MR NICHOLAS
RUSSELL, MR
SIMON WOOLEY,
MR JULES
MASON AND
MR DAVID
SINCLAIR
Q146 Chairman: May I apologise for the
fact we were called away, and apologise in advance in case we
are called away again later. We are very glad to have before us
a group of witnesses who can speak about some of the groups who
tend not to register or have not been adequately registered: Mr
Russell, from the Royal National Institute of the Blind; Mr Wooley,
the National Co-ordinator from Operation Black Vote; Mr Mason,
from the British Youth Council and Mr Sinclair from Help the Aged.
We are very glad to have you with us. Can you tell us, in the
groups you represent, what assessment you have made of the sort
of proportion who are not currently registered to vote? Do you
have any figures on that or just a general idea?
Mr Sinclair: Certainly
in terms of the older population we know that generally about
70% of the older population vote as compared to around 30% in
the last election of younger people, with opinion polls suggesting
the figure for the younger population would fall further at the
next election. In terms of registration alone, it appears as though
that does not appear to be particularly, at this stage, a problem,
for the majority of older people vote. It may be for a minority,
and that is really where our concerns are.
Mr Russell: In terms of blind
and partially sighted people the introduction of individual registration
would potentially make this a much worse problem, but evidence
from the Electoral Commission, where they have looked at the situation
in Northern Ireland, which already has individual registration
has shown that it has had an adverse effect on the registration
of this group of people.
Mr Mason: Most young people are
encouraged or engaged about the whole process, not just on voting,
so both on voting and registration it is not something we can
fiddle about—you have to be on the register to vote.
Mr Wooley: With our community
there is a large, significant proportion that are not registered
to vote; generally speaking it is about 24%, which is pretty significant
when you bear in mind that in the white population it is between
7% and 8%. That variation differs when you are looking at the
different minority communities; it is particularly bad amongst
Caribbeans, and, again, particularly amongst the Bangladeshis,
Pakistanis and Africans. I think what is critically important
to understanding this, with the research that we did with Warwick
University, is that their non-registration had little to do with
apathy or laziness; it was more a conscious opt-out of a system
that they thought was failing them. Our work began on voter registration
because we knew that if we were to positively engage in the democratic
process we needed to be registered to vote, so we have been doing
this since 1996, in some areas to great effect. However, I am
glad today and over the weeks ahead we are having this debate
because I think it is crucial to bring in marginalised groups
to civic society.
Q147 Chairman: Are you sure there are
not both categories? That is, people who have made a conscious
decision not to register and others who, because they are in sections
of society which have more mobile and less settled accommodation,
simply slip through the system as others do?
Mr Wooley: Our research said that
was a conscious opt-out; people talk politics in the barbers and
amongst friends, and then when you put the question: "Why
don't you do something about it?" the answer is always: "What's
the point? We have got very few black MPs, they never listen to
us; it is a white institution." What our role has been, really,
is to turn that negativity around to actually say that until we
engage they will not listen. We need to force politicians to be
more accountable to us.
Q148 Andrew Bennett: If there was some
enforcement of registration, possibly a fine, do you think people
would pay rather than register or would they actually conform
because there was a fine that was enforced?
Mr Wooley: That question has been
put to us and, I am sure, some of the other people on the panel,
but I think it is missing the point. I think we have to make the
case and show people that their voices can be heard so that they
engage in politics. There is no point dragging them kicking and
screaming to register to vote if they do not then vote. I think
a deeper kind of work needs to go on to engage marginalised groups.
Q149 Andrew Bennett: Are people not likely
to be motivated in the last few days of an election campaign?
Is that not one of the difficulties? By the time they are motivated
it is too late to register.
Mr Wooley: I think that would
be so to a small minority, but I think a larger groups needs to
be made the case.
Mr Mason: Rather than forcing
people it needs to be about an informed and educated choice, and
about two-thirds of voting people in 2001 who did not vote actually
participated in some form of political activity, whether it is
talking to or meeting an elected representative, writing a letter
about a concern or attending a demonstration. So for a number
of people they are engaged in politics or political activity in
a wider sense but not necessarily in our political process of
electing people to Westminster. How we get to that point is actually
about seeing an end-product; about whether "If I cast my
vote what happened? Who got in? What was the decision?" Especially
for young people, being told you have to do something would actually
make them not want to do it; you have to show them the benefit
of their involvement rather than dragging them, and if you do
not do it you are in trouble. Then people will not engage in that
sort of process.
Q150 Christine Russell: Last Friday I
went to watch the proceedings when the young members were selected
for the Youth Parliament in Cheshire, and there was huge enthusiasm
in the hall. What more do you think schools and colleges can do
to encourage youngsters to get engaged with the political process?
Mr Mason: I think issues like
school councils and mock elections are a good way for young people
themselves at an early age to engage and see the role that they
can play as decision-makers. That is one of the things, as an
organisation, we applaud.
Q151 Christine Russell: Have you got
any good examples that you can give us?
Mr Mason: In Plymouth they have
a city-wide school council where young people from all the schools
get elected (two from each area) and then sit on a city-wide youth
council. In Leighton Buzzard they have a town-wide youth forum
which has representatives from the schools as well as local youth
groups and it is open to individual people. Both models are good
to introduce young people to the political process.
Mr Wooley: I would go even further
because we have just introduced a citizenship programme for schools,
but we do not begin with the democratic institutions because it
is often dry and it turns young people off. Yet you can talk about
power and the dynamics of power within areas that young people
are interested in, such as the dynamics of the power within music—who
gets paid, who gets used—or within fashion and with cultural
identity. Once you put these areas of discussion before children
you see them waxing lyrical about things they are passionate about.
What we argue with Operation Black Vote is get them talking about
the dynamics of power in subjects they are interested in and it
is no longer a quantum leap to talk about the dynamics of power
within the institutions that affect their lives. What we try to
do is make power and politics real for young people to grasp.
We have rolled it out and 100 schools have taken our booklets
and videos, but you do have to think inventively about how you
engage people.
Q152 Chris Mole: Can I just ask if there
is any indication that the reintroduction of the citizenship agenda
to schools is changing attitudes or creating opportunities for
encouraging registration and interest?
Mr Mason: I would say it is good
for teachers, I would not necessarily say it is a good thing for
young people who actually get those lessons. Again, it is about
subjects they are interested in. Just after the last General Election
we were involved with some other organisations in a project called
"Y Vote/Y Not?[1]
" One of the key messages young people were saying there
was that politics does need to feed into their everyday life,
so their media, their TV, their sports programmes or whatever,
but it has to be done in a way which does not patronise them but
actually engages with them on things they are concerned about.
Having it just as a form of education, again, says "This
is something I have to do", and this all relates back to
the aspect about will they register if they are forced or fined
if they do not? So you need a balance, and it is about choice.
Q153 Peter Bottomley: We have tended
to look at the question of whether it should be individual registration
or the householder registering the people in their home. Rather
than just asking which you think would be helpful—and let
us assume that those with particular difficulties can have those
difficulties overcome either exceptionally or within the general
system—do you think it makes sense to maintain the householder
having the responsibility to make sure people know where they
can vote and have individual registration nationally? So you can
answer the question separately: are you on the eligible to vote
and registered? Are you able to know where your vote should be
cast or be counted? Will you be able to vote in some separate
place if you happen to be away? Do you have views on any of those
three elements?
Mr Sinclair: I guess, from Help
the Aged's perspective, the one area where it becomes significant
is in relation to care homes where there are about 570,000 individuals
in about 30,000 care homes in the UK. The way it works, at the
moment, I am told, is that, essentially, the form would come in,
the care home manager would fill it in with all the names and
either tick the box all the way down saying "postal vote"
or arrange for a transfer out. In terms of our general preferences,
that seems to work but we also, in terms of actual empowerment
and actually individuals receiving the information themselves,
to a certain extent, with the individual approach generally, there
do not seem to be any barriers. Some individuals may, of course,
need assistance with filling in the form, but some disabled people
may need assistance in terms of voting anyway. In terms of the
two separate routes, maybe that would get over some of the difficulties,
but in general, particularly in the care home issue, we do not
particularly have strong objections to it being moved to an individual
basis.
Mr Russell: Individual registration
is potentially advantageous for two reasons: one that it will
facilitate the foundation model and move away from the all-postal
voting that we opposed—and we thank the ODPM Committee for
helping us to highlight those problems. Secondly, it could register
individual access needs and, hopefully, make sure that all the
material, in terms of polling cards and things, comes in acceptable
formats.
Q154 Peter Bottomley: So you could have
a tick in the box saying "special arrangements"?
Mr Russell: A tick in the box
or you could actually fill in what those are. Hopefully, you would
get your future registration material in your preferred format,
otherwise we have a situation where many blind and partially sighted
people, who are older people living on their own, rely on someone
to read their post, perhaps, once a week, and we have a real danger
of people not being registered at all.
Q155 Chairman: Missing deadlines?
Mr Russell: Missing deadlines.
We were talking about penalties and things before, but if people
cannot read it penalties either way are not going to make much
of a difference.
Mr Wooley: We have found problems
with the householder because we would often go to local authorities
and say, "There is a significant black and minority ethnic
community in your local authority and we would like to have a
programme to register them to vote", and the Electoral Registrar
would say to me "Actually, we are fine; we are near to 97-98%
voter registration, so there is no programme needed here."
We just knew that that could not be so, but if one person had
registered to vote in that house of 10 it would be seen as 100%.
We were shackled to do anything because the local authority would
not put any money to any initiatives with that system.
Mr Mason: From our point of view,
household registration would not necessarily take account of the
many stages in life that young people go through in terms of where
they are actually located, and also the fact that not every young
person, even if they are living with their parents or guardians,
necessarily live in what is termed "a house"—say,
gypsies or travellers where they move to a different caravan site
and very regularly move around the country. So I do not think
having a dual system of household and individual would actually
circumvent that issue. Also, in terms of household registration
for older young people—say 18 to early-20s—who have
left home and have entered higher education but still would be
on their own, where-they-recently-came-from, household list as
well, they could actually incur difficulties. I know there has
been lots of work done by National Union of Students to encourage
students to register to vote because a lot of students always
have the idea that it is where they have come from rather than
the city or town where they have come to universities, and they
do not need to do anything about the process.
Q156 Christine Russell: Can I ask you
whether you have any evidence about the fact that often parents
are reluctant to register their, perhaps, more itinerant offspring
who may go off to college and then come back for a while and then
move out and flat-share with someone, and that that reluctance
is sometimes based on the erroneous belief that if they put their
child down on the voters' register they could then lost their
single person's discount for the Council Tax if they are a lone
parent?
Mr Mason: I used to be involved
in the National Union of Students, and that was one of the big
issues during my time on the National Executive that we did encounter,
because a lot of students were very aware of that—"Just
being on the list, will that mean I am going to get charged the
community tax?" So there are a lot of hidden issues which
need to be unravelled when you go down the household registration
list, especially for young people regardless of whether they are
living at home as a dependent or they have moved to, say, to a
Foyer[2]and
whether or not the manager of that Foyer would feel empowered
to register all those young people, and the fact that they are
there to get help and assistance to move into the work place and
accommodation of their own.
Q157 Mr Betts: Just following the point
you made earlier about the issue of having a different model of
voting and not having all-postal votes, which the Committee had
picked up on, and also your comment about ticking a box if you
want special assistance, could there not be an extension to say
that every registration form could easily have a box that can
simply be ticked if you want a postal vote or not, and not that
you have to fill another form in? That could actually be part
of the process. Is that something you have considered?
Mr Russell: I think we would have
no objection to that. Our objection to the all-postal system was
that there was no choice in how you voted and for disabled people
with different impairments if you have different systems you are
more likely to make the voting process accessible.
Mr Sinclair: We would welcome
a single form. Many people get annoyed about the fact that they
have to fill in lots and lots of forms and the databases do not
match up and then, due to certain regulations, you are not allowed
to share the information on the database with another. Actually
having one tick on one form would make absolute sense. In terms
of the second point, I think we would be extremely concerned if
whatever method of registration was chosen there was not some
form of exceptions service. The real disaster, as it were, with
the East Midlands pilots, in terms of accessibility, in terms
of having to fold the paper up in complex ways and in terms of
having exceptions service departments which were 40 miles away
from where people lived and involved three bus journeys—the
point is whichever route you go down there has to be an exceptions
service for the population who cannot deal with that, and the
tick-box is one way to identify it. Of course, another issue which
we may come on to is the issue of technology, and exactly the
same occurs. We have got less than 20% of older people who have
ever used the Internet, and less than 25% of over-75s have mobile
phones. The ONS stats are not changing; there is not a cohort
effect. It is often seen that over time, as the generations go
through, things will change and we will have more people online,
for example. Actually, it is 1 or 2% a year, so you are talking
about many years before change happens. The main point is whatever
you go for, if you go down the technology route you have got to
have an alternative.
Q158 Mr Cummings: Experience in Northern
Ireland tends to suggest that the already "hard to engage"
groups (and I am including disabled within these particular groups)
are most likely to fall off the individual register. What do you
believe could be done to perhaps mitigate this effect?
Mr Russell: Firstly, make sure
all your forms are produced within RNIB Clear Print Guidelines.
You can also do a lot in terms of advertising campaigns, particularly
using things like talking newspapers and local radio, so that
people realise they should be registering even if they have not
been able to see the form. Again, as we have been referring to,
there is more than one way of doing it. For an increasing number
of visually impaired people, though far from all, an accessible
website is one way of doing it. Indeed, the Electoral Commission
website already has a basic template for registration on their
website, and we have given a link to the accessibility guidelines
for websites that need to be followed to make sure those websites
are accessible. However, as my colleague has said, not everyone
is on the Internet so a telephone voter registration system would
also help. There is the whole issue, which we need to be very
careful of, of balancing the need to make it a secure process
and prevent fraud, and these huge, long pin numbers that are impossible
to remember. It seems to be suggested in the voting pilots that
the longer the number the better, but the RNIB are happy, as we
have already done with the banks, to advise on accessible pins.
If they can be avoided, all the better. How about your address
and your date of birth? That should be fairly simple and straightforward
to remember, for example.
Mr Sinclair: In terms of the most
socially excluded, they are probably not registered under the
household system either. Clearly, we have got a fairly small proportion
of the population who are outside of all contact with government
and they are not registered under the current systems, so becoming
all individual would not make that much of a difference to those.
A lot of Help the Aged's work in terms of social exclusion is
about how you identify the most isolated individuals. The Government
is trying to do it, for example, with its campaigns on the take-up
of the Pensions Credit and Council Tax Credit. Clearly, the Government
would quite like to have much higher levels of success in identifying
these people, but I do not think they are currently registered
anyway.
Mr Mason: I would also encourage
partnership working with the voluntary sector who work with the
"hard to reach" and socially excluded sectors of society.
For example, last year the Electoral Commission ran a roadshow
called The Box, which visited a number of universities and college
campuses up and down the country. There were a number of interactive
games which included a large Perspex box where somebody had to
go in and then other people outside had to decide what activity
they were doing. They also used it as a mechanism to speak to
young people about the voting process and actually signed people
there on the spot to get them on the electoral register. A lot
of it is about going to these groups rather than always expecting
them to come to you. If they do not know about the process they
are not going to know where to go. Organisations that focus on
trying to improve life in society for hard to reach and socially
excluded groups have a better mechanism of reaching out to those
people, and by working in partnership with those people I think
you are going to increase the percentage of those groups in society
who do get on the electoral register.
Mr Wooley: I would echo that,
particularly for black and minority ethnic communities. Local
authorities or the Electoral Commission in general say: "Register
to vote, it is a good idea. Have your say." To the cynic
and to the frustrated it does not mean a lot; you really have
to engage in a long-term process to make the case for civic engagement.
Local authorities are bound not to talk political, even if it
is a small group, and so is the Electoral Commission, so engaging
with NGOs and grass roots organisations is probably the key route
to engage with the "hard to reach".
Q159 Mr Cummings: Do you believe more
effort should be made to employ local canvassers belonging to
the same community as the electors they are helping to register?
Mr Wooley: I do think that would
be a good idea. It is a bit like Big Brother coming round your
house; a lot of people do not answer the door, they think you
may want their Council Tax or something else. However, if you
see someone who looks like you and speaks your language, I think
you might have a better opportunity of them answering the door.
Mr Russell: Inasmuch as it would
be good if we could have a large number of visually impaired people
being electoral registration canvassers. Probably the reason the
registration process would still make it impossible is because
of the problem I have alluded to already about people not realising
for a week that they have got a vote. Just, basically, keeping
the canvasser system going is absolutely essential, even if you
got your sight. As someone who has worked in electoral registration
canvassing, I know how easy it is to have missed your voter registration
form, if you cannot see it. You have got almost no chance if no
one is going round and trying to make sure you fill it out and
help you do it.
1 For more information about Y Vote/Y Not? visit www.ycp.info/yvotereview/ Back
2
For more information on the work of the Foyer Federation visit
www.foyer.net Back
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