Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
1 FEBRUARY 2005
MR NICHOLAS
RUSSELL, MR
SIMON WOOLEY,
MR JULES
MASON AND
MR DAVID
SINCLAIR
Q160 Mr Cummings: What arrangements might
need to be made for those individuals unable to complete the registration
form personally? I am thinking now of people who are part of institutions
which may register corporately—those being university halls
of residence, care/nursing homes, etc.
Mr Sinclair: Certainly in terms
of older people and care homes there are currently informal ways
in which care centre managers or staff help individuals voting.
Equally, a similar sort of thing can happen in terms of registration.
In terms of the older population as a whole, it is hard to generalise
because we have 10-12 million people over the age of 60, we have
got an increasing number of older people living over the age of
85 who have very diverse needs, and the challenge in terms of
delivering service to some of those, particularly perhaps the
750,000 people who currently suffer from Alzheimer's—
Q161 Mr Cummings: What arrangements would
you specifically make for those groups?
Mr Sinclair: It would have to
vary on individual needs. It would have to be, I assume, as well
as drop-in centres perhaps similar to—
Q162 Chairman: They would be among the
exceptions that you referred to earlier?
Mr Sinclair: We would have to
have, essentially, an exceptions service which would be delivering
a service in a variety of different ways. I suppose our concern,
generally, around this is that you would end up looking at Gershon
and the efficiency review and saying: "Clearly it is cheaper
to do it for 95% of the population. Let us throw everything into
this way because it is a cheaper way of doing it", and then
not providing an adequate exceptions service which you do not
promote very well. So it is not just a case of having an exceptions
service; in terms of what we have seen recently in terms of direct
payments in post offices, the Government has a big exceptions
service but it has not been promoting it particularly well. If
you have an exceptions service you have to promote it.
Mr Russell: We share the views
on the issue of a public exceptions scheme. In terms of allowing
someone else to fill in the form with them and then being able
to just make a mark rather than, perhaps, their full signature,
the same applies, I think, to care home managers. I think both
care home managers and registration canvassers need to be trained
in the issue so that they are aware of how to assist to make sure
that people do get their right to vote.
Q163 Dr Whitehead: This is a question
for Mr Sinclair, particularly. In your evidence you suggested
that some particular groups, particularly older people, may have
concerns about the publication of the full register, particularly
in terms of, for example, estranged family members, people in
debt, and so on. What do you think about the current regulations
on making the full register publicly available?
Mr Sinclair: I think that there
is a need for safeguards and to protect the most vulnerable for
whom it may well be that publication does act as a disincentive,
in some cases, to registration in the case of, for example, estranged
wives who have left their husband and do not want to be found,
and in the case of individuals who have genuine reasons for not
wanting to be identified, but there are some barriers there. We
did some work a couple of years ago with Keele University about
looking at socially deprived areas, and there were issues around
certain ethnic minority communities—older minority communities—who
do not want to be identified.
Q164 Chairman: Do you think the present
system is sufficient or are you arguing for something stronger—that
is, the present system under which there is a public register
on which some names are not included but all the names appear
on the register which goes to the parties and candidates before
an election?
Mr Sinclair: I think, as long
as the confidentiality remains. Of course, there is the issue
I spoke about, which is the barrier. The barrier is often that
the individual is worried about having their name on the register
and would not necessarily know whether or not it was going to
be made available, particularly when there is a tick box saying:
"Do you want marketing information?" It does not inspire
confidence that the information is being protected. Of course,
if you did not understand electoral registration you would not
necessarily understand that if you do not want that sort of communication
you do not have to have it. Clearly, registration has experience
from the Poll Tax and other issues, which is an issue which does
create barriers in some small cases to individuals wanting to
vote than actual political or social or individual reasons why
you would not want to register.
Q165 Dr Whitehead: Do you think that
the provision for anonymous inclusion on the full register is
important, and how widespread might you want to see that?
Mr Sinclair: I suppose, to a certain
extent, the issue, as I say, is whether or not it is acting as
a barrier. I am talking from personal experience and from our
limited research, but there is probably strong case to actually
doing some research to look at whether or not there is any evidence
in which people decide not to register because they are afraid
that the implication of doing so is that it is not confidential
and individuals, whether they be the state or other individuals,
contact them. In terms of older people I have not seen that research,
but certainly there is an issue there.
Q166 Dr Whitehead: Do you think there
is a particular issue in terms of the head of the household registering,
in terms of the extent to which that person may or may not find
out whether other people they are registering actually want to
be included in the published register?
Mr Sinclair: Certainly, again,
our research with Keele University did highlight some issues there,
and there are certain ethnic minority communities—Somali
women and other groups—where decisions are made by heads
of households, and not necessarily other members of the household
know—or choose to know. It may be, actually, that the decision
is made by the head of the household with consent. Clearly, there
is an issue, but the way it works at the moment is that somebody
is making that decision and, typically, they are the head of the
household.
Q167 Mr Clelland: Nicholas Russell mentioned
before the question of telephone registration and possible problems.
Is the availability of electronic and/or telephone registration
something that acts as an advantage to other groups, or are there
particular access problems involved?
Mr Mason: The "Y Vote/Y Not?"
initiative found that young people wanted technology to be used
to inform them about the process but not necessarily the way that
they cast their vote or, equally, would be able to register.
Q168 Mr Clelland: I am talking about
registering rather than voting.
Mr Mason: There is registering—whether
they want to do it by text messaging or linked to a popular youth
website, or something as a reminder appeals, but not actually
placing themselves on the electoral register by this method.
Q169 Mr Clelland: Why is that?
Mr Mason: Most young people, whilst
they like information technology and the advantages that they
bring, want to be able fully to engage and find out and discuss,
rather than getting a text message and replying to this. So a
reminder or a prompt to go and look here or go to search a place
to find out, to register to vote, yes, but to reply to ensure
you are on the electoral register, no.
Mr Wooley: Again, I suppose, I
echo what Jules is saying but it misses the point. We can tweak
the system however much we like, but unless we are making the
political case people will not register to vote or vote.
Q170 Mr Clelland: So you are saying it
is not a question of how easy it is?
Mr Wooley: It helps. It is tweaking
it and it will not hurt, but we miss a crucial point if we tweak
it any which way without making the case; without engaging communities;
without demonstrating that their participation will have an effect
on this place and other institutions of governance. While I welcome
where we are discussing household or individual, rolling registration,
voting by text or voting by IT—let us not miss the point.
The biggest point why most marginalised groups are not engaging
is because they do not feel they can have an effect on these institutions.
Q171 Mr Clelland: What about individual
identifiers? Do you support the idea of having individual identifiers
for electors?
Mr Wooley: For example?
Q172 Mr Clelland: Individual identifiers—pin
numbers, or National Insurance Numbers or some other way of identifying
each individual elector.
Mr Wooley: I think it would help.
Q173 Mr Clelland: Would it cause any
particular problems?
Mr Sinclair: I think we would
have some concerns based on some research which is about to be
published by UCL which suggests, in terms of pin numbers, for
example, that even with relatively low levels of dementia you
are likely to struggle with pin numbers, and you are talking about
750,000 to one million people. Of course, that creates challenges
in relation to Chip and Pin, but there are clearly some issues
there.
Mr Clelland: Can you think of any individual
identifiers that would not be a problem?
Q174 Andrew Bennett: A signature?
Mr Sinclair: The signature, of
course, is the alternative to chip and pin, which again is not
being very widely promoted. If you cannot deal with the new chip
and pin the signature is an alternative, but, again, it suffers
from the problem that even when you want to move everyone on to
chip and pin there is a lot of incentive on the industry to promote
the alternative, and what incentive will there be for government
to promote exceptional services or alternative services. That
would be the worry.
Mr Russell: Mencap have highlighted
the problems as well which people with learning difficulties have.
Really, I would maintain that something simple like your date
of birth which people will remember and is reasonably secure might
be a good start, but if we do, for God's sake make it as short
as possible.
The Committee suspended from 3.08 pm to
3.18 pm for a division in the House
Chairman: Our apologies
to the witnesses; we have a real difficulty this afternoon and
we anticipate some further votes. Therefore, I will need to bring
this part of the evidence to a close no later than 3.30, which
means we will have to have some very sharp questions and answers.
We have a few remaining items we want to cover.
Q175 Mr Clelland: Following
the question we had on individual identifiers, could I just ask
you simply which would be the simplest individual identifier for
the group that you represent? If we are going to have individual
registration we need to have some way of identifying each voter.
What would be the simplest way of doing it in terms of your group?
Mr Russell: We are suggesting,
as I said, date of birth.
Q176 Chairman: Would National
Insurance numbers be a problem when you have got women in ethnic
minority communities who have not got a number?
Mr Wooley: That might be a problem,
yes.
Q177 Mr Clelland: Signature?
Help us out here.
Mr Wooley: Signature and date
of birth.
Q178 Chris Mole: I think
we have touched quite a lot on the black and minority ethnic issues
but I wonder if there are any issues that you might tell the Committee
about that would cause difficulties for voters for whom English
is not their first language?
Mr Wooley: Most local authorities
are pretty good and have their voter registration forms in different
languages. One of the problems is you get a form through and it
looks cumbersome and it looks like something that you do not want
to deal with. We have a voter registration form online on our
website which is very, very simple and it does not frighten people
away from it.
Q179 Peter Bottomley: Is
it acceptable to Electoral Registration Officers?
Mr Wooley: Yes, it is. You only
need basic information but often local authorities make it very
busy. The other point I wanted to pick up on was what David was
talking about, tweaking the system. I remember, through a quirk
in the system, that you could not get a mobile phone unless you
were registered to vote, and of course there are a lot of young
black men and women, and other youths, that would register to
vote to get mobile phones.
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