Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
7 FEBRUARY 2005
MR NICK
RAYNSFORD MP, MR
CHRISTOPHER LESLIE
MP AND MR
PAUL ROWSELL
Q300 Mr Clelland: The
question of pin numbers and electoral voting cards could place
additional burdens on the elector in terms of having to remember
the numbers and find the cards and all that sort of stuff?
Mr Raynsford: Absolutely.
Q301 Mr Clelland: Have
you considered all of these issues?
Mr Leslie: We are considering
them. You are talking to us in the middle of a policy formulation
process and of course we wait with interest to see the Committee's
recommendations on your own preferences on these things. We want
to keep an open mind on those questions.
Q302 Dr Whitehead: You
have mentioned that the register is slowly subsiding and is harder
to collect. On the other hand, we have had the rolling registration
and the declaration of local connection. Do you have an estimate
of the extent to which that has reversed the trend? Do we have
a steep drop in registration with a fillip produced by rolling
registration and local connection?
Mr Leslie: I do not have the precise
figures. I imagine it would be interesting to see whether it has
had a significant upward effect on rolling registration. It has
probably helped but it is really difficult to know without a major
piece of in-depth research, talking to individuals about why they
did not register or perhaps why they did, what was the motivating
factor behind that. Was it that they could add their name at a
mid-point in the year and so forth? If I do have any figures on
the numbers of persons adding their names through rolling registration,
perhaps I can send those to the Committee.
Mr Raynsford: The Electoral Commission
are quite mindful of the Northern Ireland experience in this area
where, after the original register based on single registration
was established, the register augmented during the subsequent
year as a result of rolling registration, but at the next annual
canvass fell back significantly to a level below that which applied
the previous year. The implication of that is that if we do not
get the system for capturing those people who are disappearing
from the register right the rolling register benefits, which clearly
are significant, will not compensate for the effect that you have
identified.
Q303 Dr Whitehead: Do
you have any evidence or information on the extent to which the
declaration of connection has facilitated registration at the
expense of the accuracy of the register?
Mr Leslie: My anecdotal experience
is that there has not been a massive uplift in the numbers on
the register as a result of the local connection, the ability
for an individual perhaps who is homeless or not rooted to a particular
community to identify that local connection. We needed to make
that change in order to allow people who were perhaps excluded
because they did not have a fixed abode from getting on the register
and that was an important change to make. I do not think it has
been a massive volume of people added on to the register from
that.
Q304 Dr Whitehead: You
also mentioned that it would be a good idea to get the result
of research, for example, on why people do not vote or people
are hard to place on the register. Your Department is conducting
research on this and the Electoral Commission is also doing so
but with a slightly different angle, I believe. Do you have any
indication of the early results of that research? What do they
show?
Mr Leslie: There are two different
strands. There is a qualitative piece of research trying to get
into the minds of individuals who perhaps do not register actively.
What puts them off from registering? That is due to be completed
some time around April. Also, there is a more quantitative piece
of research to look at numbers and shifts in terms of volumes
of persons who have registered historically and who do not register
now. That is still in progress. It is good that we are doing that
as a Department because we really need to be informed in policy
making terms about how we can make a difference to encourage and
enthuse people to get on the register if at all possible and the
extent to which apathy comes into play, the extent to which the
hurdles and barriers put people off entirely. Which factor is
biggest and which is smallest?
Q305 Chairman: Do you
have any idea what proportion of the people who are not registered
know they are not registered?
Mr Leslie: No. We tend to find
these things out when we come round to election periods, when
we hear stories of people going to polling stations thinking that
they have a voting opportunity and finding that they are not on
the register. We have a good coverage of the register. Most people
are registered. I cannot remember the precise percentage but we
have a robust register. It is fairly rare that people find themselves
turning up to vote and cannot but it does happen from time to
time because, for whatever reason, they did not become registered.
Mr Raynsford: My understanding
is that some 30% of the population are quite clear that they rarely,
if ever, turn out to vote. Nine per cent were found not to be
registered. The most serious finding from the study that I have
had reported to me is that there is evidence of a lack of interest
and understanding among particularly young people of the need
to register and the very clear inference that large numbers of
them are registered because they are registered as part of a household
registration. If that ceased, they would almost certainly disappear
off the register.
Q306 Dr Whitehead: Are
you looking in this research at the relationship between registration
on a year by year trajectory or are you looking, for example,
at the relationship of registration against census? If you were
to look at registration against census, if you have not done that,
you might find in a number of places that the registration against
census appears to be very lacking indeed.
Mr Leslie: We have had a number
of adjournment debates in Westminster Hall and elsewhere about
this very problem, particularly in certain constituencies where
Members of Parliament have pointed out the comparison between
the numbers reported on the census versus the number on the register.
Certainly it is something that I want the research we are doing
to consider. There are different sections about the requirement
to fill in a census form versus the requirement to fill in an
electoral registration form. To what extent do we need to change
those in order to encourage persons to go on that register more
actively? Those are the sorts of questions we need to address
in the research.
Q307 Mr Sanders: I thought
Nick Raynsford had perhaps put the strongest case against individual
voter registration in that, under the existing system, people
get registered by the householder. Under the individual system,
the onus is on them. We know from benefit take-up, where people
have to fill in a form and make the approach to take up the benefit,
that there is a high percentage of people who do not do that.
What is the aim here? Is it to increase the number of people who
are entitled to vote or is it to increase the accuracy of the
register? By what criteria do you determine where the balance
is?
Mr Raynsford: Numerically, it
would seem to me that there is a greater risk of non-registration
than of error. Nevertheless, our aim must be to ensure that we
do both to the best possible effect. While I certainly see the
risk of moving towards individual registration and express the
concern particularly in terms of young voters not being registered,
I am equally very conscious of the importance of safeguards. That
is particularly important when you talk of young people who are
probably more likely to use electronic means of voting as and
when those become more available. It is in their interests to
do so. The one piece of good news is that a growing awareness
that presence on the electoral register is likely to be important
to secure your mobile phone is likely to be a factor that may
motivate more young people to ensure that they are on the register.
Q308 Peter Bottomley: If
we take two of the four groups least likely to be on a complete
register—I do not want to concentrate for the moment on
service personnel or their families and I do not want to concentrate
on those who are overseas—young people and people who have
a black or minority ethnic background, what other departments
have your Departments talked to about trying to have effective
initiatives that can lead to a more complete register in the first
place and then to a more complete turn-out after that?
Mr Leslie: We have a number of
programme boards and project boards that involve other government
departments. For example, the individual registration project
board involves not just DCA and ODPM but also the Northern Ireland
Office on the working group, the Scotland Office and others, who
are looking at different experiences in different areas of the
country but also that links into the wider question about the
information data sharing issue that we talked about earlier on,
the Citizen Information Project, work that the Treasury have oversight
of. All those things feed into the extent to which we can capture
and hopefully enthuse those groups less inclined to normally engage
with the political process, younger people and minority ethnic
people, into that registration process. We want to talk to other
government departments about that.
Q309 Peter Bottomley: Unless
a young person, whether or not black or minority ethnic, has a
household of their own, is the problem when they leave home or
lose contact with home in terms of registration or do you think
registration for those in multi-person households is pretty good
and then it comes to a question of turn out rather than ability
to vote because you are registered?
Mr Leslie: It comes back to the
question Nick was answering earlier on about whether a head of
household responsible for returning a form is likely to add the
names of teenage children. We need young people to go on the register
even before they are entitled to vote in order to make sure that
they can vote from their age of majority onwards. Typically, that
is done by the head of the householder, I imagine, rather than
the young person themselves. We need to capture that good part
of the existing household registration and try and find a way
of retaining that propensity to get those young people on the
register if we were to move towards some other form of individual
registration.
Q310 Peter Bottomley: If
we are talking about people aged 17 ½ to 21 who may be away
from home and may or may not maintain a home link, which department
would help most? Would it be the Department for Education and
Skills?
Mr Leslie: It depends on how we
can contact young people. Universities, for instance, have their
own process for making available registration information to students.
The declaration of local connection was put in the rules in order
to make it clear that people could add their names to the register
even if they were away for long periods studying. We have tried
to accommodate that in the rules as they have evolved.
Q311 Peter Bottomley: If
we take people who are least likely to be in college or full time
education and who are away from their household of origin, there
are informal and formal local groups who may be able to encourage
them to register. Should they be funded by national or local government,
through the Electoral Commission or in some independent way? For
example, would your Departments fund Operation Black Vote or the
British Youth Council directly for this sort of work?
Mr Leslie: I think a lot of that
work has been done via the Electoral Commission who tend to have
had the lead on innovative registration policy development. We
obviously have to be conscious that there is a finite pot of money
for these activities though of course we will look with an open
mind at any applications or proposals that the Electoral Commission
come forward with. I think the Commission intended to have the
resource for engaging that sort of organisation in registration.
Mr Raynsford: There is quite a
good reason why the Electoral Commission should be in the lead
on this because I think the evidence was put to you by the political
party representatives that there can always be a suspicion, if
you have targeted campaigns focusing on one particular section
of the community, that this may be motivated by a perception,
whether right or wrong, that that particular group may be more
likely to vote for one party or another. If it is promoted by
a local authority or government, there is always that suspicion.
Q312 Chairman: I do not
think it was the political parties who put that forward. I think
it was one of the electoral returning officers who was giving
us the evidence who had that fear. Would it not be logical to
make it quite clear to local authorities in terms of the grants
that you give them so generously that the number of people on
the electoral register was one of the key components in getting
the money?
Mr Raynsford: This is a very interesting
idea. It goes right to the heart of issues that we have debated
frequently in front of your half of this Committee, if I may say
so, in previous discussions about the balance between ring fenced
as against general grant to local government. I know there are
many electoral administrators who would love the funding that
is included within the EPCS block notion to support electoral
registration to be ring fenced, to enable them to insist on having
their share of the budget. However, that runs very strongly counter
to the principle of a degree of financial freedom for local government
which I know the ODPM Committee has strongly supported in the
past and we have been seeking to follow as a policy objective.
Q313 Peter Bottomley: For
clarity, neither Minister knows of a line in their own budgets
that would allow funding other than through the Electoral Commission.
Is that correct?
Mr Raynsford: Correct.
Mr Leslie: I will have to check.
I think our preference is for the Electoral Commission—
Q314 Peter Bottomley: I
asked whether you knew of a budget line within your own Department
for the promotion of registration, other than through the Electoral
Commission.
Mr Leslie: I think it is through
the Electoral Commission.
Q315 Peter Bottomley: Can
I clear up one detail which comes in the Electoral Commission's
evidence to us, paragraph 5.20? There is at least a doubt as to
whether electoral registration officers can spend money to promote
registration in terms of campaigning, not just going out and saying,
"Here are the forms. Please can we canvass for you?"
If there is any doubt, do you think it is your responsibility
to promote legislation to make sure that there is no doubt?
Mr Leslie: Yes. We want electoral
registration officers to be proactive, to gather information,
to encourage people to participate and go on the register. I certainly
do not know of any electoral registration officers who have reported
to me in my Department that they feel there is a legislative obstacle
preventing them doing that. I would be interested to know if the
Committee has had that so far. Obviously, electoral registration
officers are limited in terms of the budgets they have at their
disposal. Notwithstanding that, most EROs do a pretty good job
in promoting the availability of registration within the constraints
that are upon them.
Q316 Peter Bottomley: It
may be that on reading the answer the Minister will see he has
answered a question that was not put and has not answered the
question which was put. If the Electoral Commission has put to
a government that they would like to see the law clarified and
if the government has not yet responded in a positive way, could
they reflect on it and possibly let both committees know what
their possibly revised answer might be, please?
Mr Leslie: Yes.
Q317 Mr Clelland: The
purpose of such promotional work is for the sake of the accuracy
and completeness of the register. At the moment, there is an obligation
on the household to return the forms, although we have heard it
is on very rare occasions that anyone is prosecuted for not returning
the forms. Therefore, we have a less than accurate and complete
register. If we move to a situation where we have individual registration,
should that be compulsory? If so, what would be the appropriate
penalties for failure to register?
Mr Leslie: We have a system at
present where electoral registration officers have the power to
prosecute for failing to comply with a request for information
from that electoral registration officer, with a fine of up to
£1,000 if found guilty of that. Prosecutions are relatively
rare but nevertheless there is that requirement to comply with
the request. Therefore, in some ways, you could almost describe
this as a compulsory system as it is, but there is not a compulsory
requirement if one moves house, for example, to instantly use
a rolling register capability to update one's entry on the new
register about where you are moving house to. There is a balance
to be struck in terms of how strict the enforcement of that desire
to comply with the request from the registration officer is. The
balance is that, if an electoral registration officer spent all
his or her time prosecuting individuals for non-registration,
very soon that resources of that registration officer would be
used up so there would not be much left available to promote proactive
registration amongst the wider population. Quite naturally, they
take a balanced approach.
Q318 Mr Clelland: I am
not quite sure whether you are saying that it should be compulsory
in a situation where we have individual registration, as it is
now, or would the same penalties apply?
Mr Leslie: The balance that is
struck at present is a good one in that there is an onus on an
individual to cooperate with the electoral registration officer
when that request comes to that individual for information, that
individual being told that there is a penalty of up to £1,000
for failure to comply with that request reasonably. In effect,
we have a fairly compulsory system as it is.
Q319 Mr Clelland: That
is the stick. What about the carrots? Should there be incentives
for people to register? We have heard about the mobile phone one.
Apparently some local authorities will issue parking permits and
link that with automatic registering.
Mr Leslie: I have not heard of
the last one but I know that the use of the register by credit
reference agencies in order to verify addresses, names of applicants
for mortgages, loans, mobile telephone applications and so forth
is probably one of the bigger incentives for people to go on the
register. I had a constituent last week who had a new job, a teenager,
who was not on the register but wanted to receive the pay cheque
through the bank account process and could not open a bank account
unless they were on the register. They were keen to find out as
soon as possible how to get on the electoral register. It was
not necessarily because of any forthcoming general election. It
was more a financial imperative, but nevertheless it was an imperative
that motivates people to go on the register.
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