Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
TUESDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2005
MALCOLM DUMPER
AND DAVID
MONKS
Q100 Dr Whitehead: According to local
government finance principles, everything should have a cost centre
and should be charged from one cost centre to another cost centre,
and so it is reasonably transparent. Are you suggesting, which
I think you probably are, that on the occasion of a general election
that principle rather goes out of the window and that, therefore,
as it were, there are effectively in the local authority all hands
to the pumps, that various people do things for electoral registration
and the management of election purposes which not only are hidden
but are actually undiscoverable in as much as they simply go and
do them and then go back to their own department? I assume that
would be how that would work.
David Monks: Yes. I will try not
to make suggestions here. I want to make some statements. What
I am making a statement on is that when we get paid from DCA for
running general elections, if you look down the fees and charges
order it does not say things like the on costs that we always
rack up for all the other services that we run—leisure,
housing, planning and all the rest of it. We do not get that money
back, and some of that is staffing—the caretakers, the people
who shunt ballot boxes around and that sort of stuff—but
some of it is the heating, lighting and capital costs of buildings.
You have got to pay for all that. That is what features in our
accounts, and that is what is at 30%. We do not get that back.
The point I am making is that it is coming out of a different
part of the public purse. What is not fair is for authorities
like mine to pay for that—the local council tax payer—and,
because of the way the government works, and I apologise if you
think this is a political point, we get capped. You cannot have
it both ways.
Q101 Dr Whitehead: Would that also
apply to local elections, although it could be said that local
elections are a little more predictable? Would there be planning
for that service?
Malcolm Dumper: That is exactly
the point. The very fact that you know when election day is going
to be, you have got greater opportunity to plan ahead and apply
the proper resources to it. When you have only got 21 days to
organise a Parliamentary election—we probably knew when
it was going to be in May last year—however, the announcement
came when it did and we have effectively got four weeks to conduct
the election. You will not cope with the resources when you have
got an election on. Luckily I have probably got more than some
in other city offices, but when you are faced with moving, as
we did locally, from 1800 postal votes in 2000 to just under 26,000
in 2005, the enormous pressure that brings in just people getting
the application forms out to electors, getting them back, and
it is not just a question of taking a telephone call, it is a
question of organising a mail-out, receiving the application form,
acknowledging the application form, processing the postal vote,
three and a half people are not going to deal with that.
Q102 Dr Whitehead: That also applies
to local elections, does it not?
Malcolm Dumper: It does, yes,
but you get a spin-off in local elections, as I say, because you
conduct postal voting throughout the course of the year.
Q103 Dr Whitehead: There is also
difference between local authorities which have elections every
year and local authorities which have elections only in the....
Malcolm Dumper: Yes, there is.
David Monks: May I come back to
Dr Whitehead's questions and give a specific example, which I
think may illustrate the point? We run county council elections
because, remember, we are in a two-tier area, and, of course,
we send a bill for that to the county council. Interestingly,
this time when we ran county council elections we were under a
lot of pressure to make Gershon savings—it is shorthand,
I think you know what I am talking about there—but, to pick
up your point, if you want and with the consent of the county
chief executive, we could email one of your clerks with this budget,
but I would have to ask his consent to give the exact breakdown,
broadly speaking, we are sending them a bill for about, I think,
£110-120,000 to run the county election in Huntingdonshire
and of that about £30,000 odd is what I would call on-cost
managerial, clerical and administrative costs. That is the order
of the magnitude of what we are talking about. If you would like
more details I would have to ask the county chief executive—it
is not a secret budget but as a matter of courtesy I would—but
I would be happy to email that to you.
Q104 David Howarth: Can we move on
to the content of the Bill now in substantive terms? Would it
be fair to say that both organisations in their written submissions
have expressed the view that the Bill does not go far enough in
consolidating existing electoral law?
David Monks: I would describe
the Bill as taking the Darwinian approach in the sense that we
are evolving and moving down the path rather slowly. That is no
disrespect towards Darwin, except there are a couple of problems.
I think (1) is it awfully slow and (2) it seems to deny Darwinism
the divine force, the controlling mind behind all of this. I am
sorry if I am getting a bit theological about it, Chairman, but
I think you know what I mean.
Q105 David Howarth: There is a lack
of intelligent design?
David Monks: I should be careful
about using those words! Really of all the philosophical principles
to apply to electoral reform, I am not sure if Darwin is regarded
as being the top quartile, if I may use an Audit Commission metaphor,
but I do not think it would. I do think we need now perhaps to
be a little bolder with some of this stuff and not appear just
to react to, say, the problems of postal voting and fraud. We
have asked for many years when this work came out, "Could
we not have new look at this? Could we not have a new Act of Parliament"—preferably
not called "the Representation of the People Act", call
it the "Elections Act" or something like that—"which
reflects what we do in the twenty-first century?" We have
had a variety of replies: "There is not Parliamentary time.
It would be too difficult. It would be awfully hard to draft"—all
the regular stuff—and that is fine, you do not want to keep
bashing your head against a brick wall, and I think chief executives
learn that after a while. I think there is an element of disappointment
about it. I also think it is disappointing we are not taking the
opportunity to consolidate existing legislation, because we have
got all sorts of different rules governing all sorts of elections,
which, I have to say as a practitioner, sometimes are frighteningly
similar, but you always get to that point at 11.30 at night where
you think, "Oh, that will be the same", and if you look
at it, it is not, it is slightly different, something ends at
noon instead of 4.00 o'clock, and election timetables and election
law is desperately unforgiving. There is no point standing in
the High Court saying, "It was quite a good guess at the
time, and I thought I was awfully near." You are wrong, you
are dead and you have had it, so I think that is disappointing.
Having said that, half a loaf is better than none, and so I think
we are pragmatic, we are positive people. It is a step down the
road; it is just a pity it is not a bigger step.
Malcolm Dumper: I would share
that view. It is difficult at times in the heat of the battle
to actually look at some of the legislation and make sense of
it, particularly when you are combining polls, depending on the
combination of polls, where you are referring to several different
pieces of legislation to answer a particular query, or, indeed,
let us take the nomination of candidates at local elections, for
example. You are looking at four or five different pieces of legislation
to validate a nomination. We would hope that all practitioners
and returning officers who are doing that are fully aware of what
each part of that particular legislation is and what it means,
but there are those that are less experienced who may well have
difficulty.
Q106 David Howarth: Looking at the
Bill as a whole, are there any very significant omissions, problems,
that need tackling immediately that have not been tackled?
David Monks: Yes, I would like
to refer to one that I put in the SOLACE evidence and that is
this point about the return of postal votes and them being handled
by—I am sorry to say it—some of the people that work
on behalf of the political parties. We think that should be tackled.
That was a problem this year. People generally going out canvassing—I
do not have a problem with that—saying, "Come on, come
out and vote", and they walk into someone's house and say,
"Aha. Is that a postal vote I see on your mantle piece?"
"Yes." "Well, I will take it back to the town hall
for you", or, "Yes, I know how to drop that in",
or if it is on the day, "We can drop it in at the polling
station." We are very nervous, very jumpy, about that, and
we think that should be tackled. I think there is sufficient there
to make it a specific criminal offence. Having said that, I have
to say that often with politicians, yes, I get that sort of reaction;
it does not receive an effusive welcome. That is fine. I am well
used to that in my career. What I would say is: is it not possible
for the political parties and agents, many of whom I know, very,
very good men and women, to say, "We are not going to have
people doing that", and the political parties to exercise
control and discipline to stop that. We get a lot of complaints
about that, and many of my colleagues in the northern cities and
cities in the Midlands had a lot of trouble in certain areas with
people sort of "hoovering" these postal ballot papers
up and bringing them in, so much so, and I am not telling you
where, but one of my colleagues said the best the piece of equipment
he had in the last general election was the CCTV camera in the
town hall reception because he could see people bringing in carrier
bags full of postal votes. I am extremely nervous with that.
Q107 Chairman: I think we are going
to come back to postal vote fraud later, but do the comments you
have just made apply to the postal vote application process? I
raise that because people around this table knock on doors in
elections, find people who are clearly not going to be able to
vote and who did not realise that the closing date for postal
votes is noon tomorrow; so candidates play a very significant
part in canvasses, ensuring that people get registered. Does that
worry you as much as handling the completed postal vote?
David Monks: No, I apologise if
that was not clear. I am trying to confine those remarks to the
actual ballot paper that we have sent out and the fact that I
wish party political workers, candidates, agents, the whole panoply
of people, would not to handle those. Please encourage people
to put them in the post box, bring them down to our town halls
and offices personally, but please do not give them to party workers.
There are lots of allegations made about those votes being tampered
with, not being returned to the proper address, not being returned
on time or returned in an irregular way. Some of those allegations,
without doubt, have resulted in prosecutions, some are perhaps
false, but they do give us a lot of problems. I am confining my
remarks to postal ballot return not registration documents.
Malcolm Dumper: I would agree
with that. I think in the application process one totally accepts
that political party campaigners, candidates, have a very important
role to play in that, and if we are going to disenfranchise somebody
because we say you are not allowed to handle that application,
that would be quite ridiculous. I think the issue, certainly in
the light of Birmingham, is the handling of the actual votes once
they have been issued by the returning officer and are in the
elector's hands to be delivered to the civic offices or wherever
the returning officers might be.
Q108 David Howarth: In terms of the
way you would like to see this happen, obviously what is going
to happen is that the canvassers are going to come round to houses
where people have postal ballots already, and so when the elector
says to the councillor, "Can you take this to the town hall
for me?", what do you expect the canvasser then to say and
what resource implications might this have for local government?
Malcolm Dumper: We set up a local
code of conduct with our agents last year, which I am sure others
did as well. When that situation did develop, and, of course,
it cannot work in every situation, I appreciate, particularly
at five to ten at night on polling day, but we had a helpline
set up whereby the returning officer's staff would facilitate
the collection of that ballot paper. One would argue: has the
returning officer got the right to do that, because they will
say that the elector shall return that particular postal vote
to the returning officer's office; but it is a far safer option
in the light of Birmingham, I think, in overcoming any suspicions
that other people were handling the document who should not have
done that at all and political parties signed up to that local
code of conduct and we did not have a problem. Indeed, I think
we did go out about 12 times on election day and collect postal
votes from individuals who were unable to return the vote.
Q109 David Howarth: It does, of course,
add to the cost to the authority round this system?
Malcolm Dumper: It does, but it
always comes back to the issue of let us pick electoral services
up or process up, let us shake it out and see exactly where resources
need to be applied. It is a question of raising standards. Raising
standards means that the returning officer ensures that everybody
who has a right to vote can do so and that the proper mechanisms
and, of course, proper funding to do that are put in place to
enable the returning office to deploy whatever resources are necessary
to ensure that everybody who wants to vote has voted and it is
complete at the count by 10 o'clock at the close of the poll.
Q110 Chairman: For the record, the
memorandum which SOLACE put into us in Mr Bennett's name did actually
go a bit further than you did by saying that "party workers
should not issue either electoral registration forms or postal
vote applications".
David Monks: We are a broad society,
Chairman, and even chief executives have disagreements. Perhaps
it is not too wise to air them in front of select committees,
so you have made a good point there.
Q111 David Howarth: We had not quite
finished. Moving on to the Bill, one other question, more about
what is in the Bill rather than what is not in the Bill, is there
anything in the Bill that you would seriously disagree with? For
example, are there any proposals which you would take to be unworkable
or unaffordable or which are unacceptable for any other reason?
Malcolm Dumper: I do not think
so, again—and I do not want to labour the point—as
long as the returning officer has sufficient resources to be able
to undertake the new provisions. I did not get an opportunity
to say in answer to your first question, my biggest concern is
the fact that it does not include individual registration. That
might be a different topic you might want to talk about, but clearly
I think this would underpin and provide the mechanisms for the
returning officer to undertake many of the security checks that
are being mentioned but not really giving him the opportunity
to undertake the checks to the proper degree because the original
information is not going to be provided, and that is the principal
concern of our association.
David Monks: I think the general
resources point we have laboured quite a lot. Some of the detailed
stuff I am a bit concerned about. We seem to be going backwards
on the description of candidates and the idea that, yes, you are
either in a political party or an independent or a blank and that
is it. You seem to be moving away back to the old system, which
is that you can be a "stop the by-pass candidate" or
a "save the hospital candidate", and generally that
is okay, but there are a number of situations. I think when I
have given evidence to you before I have talked about the experience
of having the Prime Minister as your local member of parliament,
because when you have that you do attract some of the more colourful
members of our society who are perhaps motivated from slightly
different reasons than seeking high public office and their knowledge
of electoral procedures and election law is distinctly limited,
and we really do not have time to teach them, and they are more
interested in publicity and, I have to say, being somewhat difficult
to people like me and my staff, and then, of course, you are going
to get the media in and then the whole thing kind of escalates.
There are always people out there, who I think are motivated by
an element of mischief, who will either try to get some description
which is awfully near the mark just to test you, and some of this
is quite tricky, and there are always some folks out there who
want to change their name. You probably heard of the legendary
Mr Huggett who was the "literal democrat" candidate
and then he had a crack in one of the Winchester by-elections—do
you remember this—and he changed his name to Maclone because
the sitting MP, I think, was Malone. I just hope there are not
too many more of those people out there, and I hope they are not
sitting reading this Bill. If they do put themselves forward for
office, perhaps they would keep out Huntingdon and Southampton,
please. Something like that makes me a bit nervous, particularly
in the context of what I was saying in answer to an earlier question,
that many of my colleague chief executives are not desperately
experienced in this area and you have to make quite a tough decision
in a very short period of time. Sometimes these local colourful
candidates perhaps have a backing from some of the members of
your council who you are going to have to work with on the 360
odd days of this year and sometimes members of your council have
a little difficulty in distinguish you, the chief executive, from
you, the returning officer, and you, the electoral registration
officer, and that gets a bit blurred, and some of those decisions
can be quite career limiting at times.
Q112 Chairman: Can you be a little
more precise about what it is in the Bill in relation to candidate
description? It would be easier for you if it was not there.
David Monks: It would be easier
if we stuck to the original rule, frankly, but I do know there
is quite a bit of pressure to allow people to stand with these
other sobriquets. I would be quite happy to stick to the rules
as we have got them now rather than change.
Q113 James Brokenshire: I think we
will pick up on one point that Mr Dumper just made which is about
individual registration. Clearly there has been a lot of debate
and discussion outside of the Bill. Why is it such a key issue,
do you think, for electoral administrators?
Malcolm Dumper: I think the very
fact that only one person in a household confirms the information
to the electoral registration officer on an annual basis has lots
of down sides. If I could start with 18-25 year olds, this is
the category, as you know, that are least likely to vote. I think
there can be lots of reasons for that. It could be that they never
put their name on a registration form; either mum or dad or the
guardian does it for them. They are almost immediately disengaged.
Probably half of them do not even know they have been registered,
have no understanding of what happens next, the fact that they
are going to get a poll card, even though that comes through,
but probably at that very early stage do not feel part of the
process, and if I could even take it back a stage further, and
I know this goes a little way away from the question, it is a
question of what is happening in schools at the moment with the
citizenship programme. I think there is a very ad hoc, varied
programme of citizenship in schools at the moment despite a lot
of local authorities, ours in particular, doing a lot of work
in schools to promote democracy and how important it is and how
important it is to think about voting and representation. We organised
school elections and elections to the Youth Parliament, but the
very fact there is an ad hoc programme, I think they do not fully
understand the importance of getting registered when they are
old enough to be registered, but of course, then there is this
two-year vacuum whereby they leave at 16 and they do not vote
until they are 18. In some cases there might be a six-year vacuum,
of course. If the local elections are by four-yearly turn-outs,
it could be that they have just missed the first election and
a Parliamentary election has gone by, so there could be a six-year
period of disengagement at the outset. Going on from that, in
the 18-25 year category there is so much more movement in households
these days, particularly in areas where there are houses in multiple
occupation where it is evident that a householder is not going
to know the full details of everybody who is resident in that
address, so we do not know whether we get an accurate picture
when a household form comes in, and, let us be perfectly honest,
if somebody wants to defraud the process, this is the golden opportunity
to do it. Very infrequently would we (and I am sure David is the
same) check an electoral registration form when it comes in, and
sometimes you will have a form coming from a household that contains
six or seven names. We conduct no checks on the validity of that
information. Immediately that person, if he seeks to defraud the
process, is going to obtain seven votes. He has got the information,
he can apply for those postal votes, he can get the ballot papers,
he can sign for those ballot papers on a different signature on
the declaration of identity, return them, seven votes cast. No
way could we detect that. An offence has been committed, but no
way do we detect it unless somebody actually comes forward with
the evidence. If we go forward with a process of individual registration,
stage one the person is engaged, secondly the returning officer
has the proper personal identifiable information to compare when
applications are submitted and eventually the postal vote is conducted;
so I think the varied process itself has lots of advantages that
outweigh the disadvantages in possible under-registration.
David Monks: I would characterise
and summarise SOLACE's view from our evidence in one sentence.
Registration is the building-block upon which all else rests.
If we can get that right at the start we are in with a chance
of running a much better election if we have an accurate register
that has integrity and we have got confidence in. I think a lot
of the problems that have come up in some of our urban areas in
this year's elections would have been tackled if we had had a
better register to work off some of those examples Malcolm was
just giving, and I totally agree with them. Having said that,
I have to say on behalf of SOLACE, and as you have seen from the
evidence, we do take a slightly more pragmatic view. I do not
want the Committee or anyone in this place to think if we had
individual registration then all our worries are over and we are
all going to live happily ever after. It is simply not like that.
As Malcolm rightly says, there are always people out there who
are determined to defraud the system and would always try and
obtain something by deception (i.e. a vote), but the bulk of SOLACE
members accept that individual registration would certainly tackle
some of the problems. Certainly talking to colleagues again in
those Northern cities and Midland cities, if that system had been
in this year, I think their lives would have been a bit easier.
I am not saying we would not have had the Birmingham case, I am
not saying we would not have had those prosecutions, but I think
steps like that are preventative and much easier to take to tackle
the problem rather than prosecutions at the end of the day; but
there are problems and again you might want to ask us questions
about the resourcing needed to do this and how we would tackle
individual registration.
Q114 James Brokenshire: You set out
a very compelling case for individual registration, it being the
building-block, the foundation, all of the issues about engagement.
Why do you think it is not in the Bill on that basis?
David Monks: Can I start us off
on that? Clearly the experience in this country of this type of
process comes from Northern Ireland, and what happened over there
was immediately a drop in the number of electors on the register.
I cannot remember the exact figures, but it was quite significant.
I forget what they are now—around 80% odd or 92%, something
like that. We know Dennis Stanley very well, we talk to him quite
a bit, and I think there would be fears in this place and throughout
this country that if we went to this system there would be a big
drop off: people would not get their names on the register if
we went for that system.
Q115 James Brokenshire: I know AEA
said it was a very positive experience?
David Monks: Okay. As I say, we
are slightly different. I think we would rather dull this session
if we agreed on everything, so I will try and say something different
from him. We think we understand the concerns in numbers dropping
off. Also for us, we have talked about the problems of getting
canvassers out there to do this work, to get one form back from
the household. Let us say we are sending someone out on a night
now and they have got to get four forms back and one of those
four is a young person who has gone off to university and will
not be back until Christmas, or half-term, or the weekend when
it is the sister's birthday, or something like that? That has
a big resource implication for us. We are going to have to change
our culture, change our systems to get that form back, unless
the rules say, "Well, that is tough, David. Do not put that
name on the register." That is another name off. Also, to
give it a really good push, without doubt. However you slice it,
we need more resources. We need more money to put into this. At
the moment in Huntingdonshire we have an electorate of 120,000.
I employ 54 canvassers. I think the most any of them get paid
is £1,100, £1,200 gross for doing some of the things
that Malcolm is talking about—going out on a Sunday night
knocking doors and getting that in. For us to move to a system
where we have got to get all those forms back would need a lot
of money. I think the advantage of piloting—and I put this
in the evidence—is that it is going to throw up in an accurate
way, to answer the questions that Dr Whitehead put to me, what
these costs are rather than folks like us just having a bit of
a guess at it and saying it is that ball-park figure, six or seven
really good pilots, different sort of areas, different sorts of
regions, we get a very, very focused answer.
Q116 James Brokenshire: We will come
on to piloting separately?
Malcolm Dumper: You cannot deny
the fact it would be a challenge to take on individual registration,
an enormous challenge and, David is right, resource is the big
issue. However, if I could just draw a comparison with the dicennial
census, the census obviously provides the stats that we compare
our electoral registration data against. The success of the dicennial
census is very high. I understand they seek to obtain a success
rate of 97%, and that is what we pretty much measure our electoral
registration data against. That is very well organised, very well
funded, trained people albeit conducting this process every ten
years, but it can be done and it has been delivered successfully
and there is no reason why we could not pick up on that, address
those concerns, put in the proper mechanisms with the proper funding
to undertake the registration process properly each year. I would
also say, though, that rolling registration, is individual registration
in effect.... We have been effectively piloting individual registration
through rolling registration since 2001 and it has been successful.
More people now come onto the register through the course of the
year. Year on year our registration levels have increased because
of that. We have got the mechanism there, people are aware that
they are required to fill out the form on their own and that is
how they get on the register, but it will come down to a huge
education exercise, proper funding and performance standards that
would need to be introduced so that there is a consistent approach
to registration in every constituency or local authority.
Q117 James Brokenshire: We touched
very briefly in Mr Monks' comments about the experience since
Northern Ireland, and I know your organisation said that it was
a positive experience, although I note that Mr Monks takes a slightly
different view on that. I wonder if you could comment about the
particular lessons that you would draw from the experience.
Malcolm Dumper: It probably comes
back to the fact that I think you have to make a start. I know
the comparison on the electoral success in Southampton is based
on how many electoral forms we get back. It does not really say
how accurate that information is. The BVPI is based purely on
how many returns have you had from the households in your city.
If I get 95% I am extremely lucky. I get nowhere near David, I
know, but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that data. In Northern
Ireland they sought to address the issues of individual registration
and the collection of personal identifiers, knowing full well
there was going to be a huge drop off. There is bound to be. We
have a current situation of carrying forward names. We carry forward
names for a period of time. Automatically the register is inaccurate.
We have duplicate registrations because we are chasing people
in our authority who probably now live in Scunthorpe, but we carry
them forward on the electoral register, so the statistics are
distorted, turn-out is distorted. It really comes down to taking
a decision to tackle it from stage one so that over a period of
time we will get the process right and get people registered.
You will not do it overnight. It will not be a sea-change in one
canvassing period to another. It will be an incremental stage
in encouraging registration by better awareness. If we move to
a 16 year old registration rather than 18 year old, we could access
other records (education records) to help validate the information
and, again, better engage with those people who would see it as
an important stage in their lives to ensure they are registered
and consequently, hopefully, vote.
Q118 James Brokenshire: I am sure
you will correct me if I am wrong, but the impression I have gained
from both of you is that you seem to be suggesting that individual
registration is not really being taken forward fully at the moment
due to resource. What do you think will be the consequences of
its omission?
David Monks: The consequences
of its omission? I think we will get more allegations a"
la Birmingham, a" la the prosecution in Blackburn and problems
in particular urban areas. I think if we went forward for piloting,
I cannot speak for my personal colleagues as individuals, but
I would like to hope we can do some pilots in some of those cities
to try and tackle that issue. I think we would get more allegations
of fraud from agents, and I am sorry to say these seem to occur
when the result is close and people seem to think that things
have gone wrong and all that sort of stuff, and that is fine.
We need to be thinking of prevention rather than prosecutions
and cure.
Malcolm Dumper: I think we are
still providing the opportunity for people to defraud the process.
Any household form, any person in the household can put any information
on that form that they wish without any other third party or anybody
validating that information, and, more importantly, the returning
officer being required to check certain information with regard
to postal applications and postal votes is not going to have the
proper data to check that against without individual registration
and personal identifiers.
Q119 James Brokenshire: Given the
strength of feeling on this issue that I think has been quite
clear from this session, and we have touched upon the pilot schemes
that are currently proposed in the legislation, do you think that
piloting will delay any changes necessary before the next general
election by virtue of having to go through the pilots and then
having at least one election to test the results of the pilots?
David Monks: Malcolm and I have
been talking about this. Assuming the next election is 2009, which
is what we are working on, we think we could just about do it.
It will be tight at the end, but we think we could just about
do it. If we got going on it next year and had perhaps two years
piloting, we could just about get it in, but it would be tight
at the end. The other thing I would like you to reflect on is
this. As Malcolm says, if there is someone out there determined
to be a fraudster, determined to have go at beating the system,
there is not, frankly, that much we can do to stop them. We can
get unpleasant, we can talk to the police and all the rest of
it, but it is quite difficult with the rules we have got, unless
we wanted to move to something much tougher, and I think then
you would have issues of turn-out and issues of people who would
be put off going on the register, but I think we could just about
do it by 2009. What I would also like to suggest is that we do
have a bit of a culture of piloting now, but local authorities
are asked to volunteer. Perhaps there is a role for the Commission
and our societies in thinking about some sort of programme, "persuading"
people to volunteer so we get a good spectrum of activity, we
get all sorts of different types of piloting authorities coming
forward. Perhaps there are links to the regional sectors of excellence
as well, but that is something we should talk about.
Malcolm Dumper: I think it would
be tight. It very much would depend. I think you would need two
elections to run the pilot. I do not think you could do it in
one and get a meaningful evaluation, and it is the period of time
then you have between what would be May 2008, evaluating the second
pilot and getting the legislation through in readiness for what
probably would be a May 2009 election; and bear in mind that could
be an horrendous set of elections for us, because we will be looking
possibly at a combination of local parliamentary and possibly
European elections all on the same day maybe. I think if there
are going to be pilots they should be wide enough to consider
all possible options, which should be household and proper individual
registration, so that we can test each process against the other
rather than a prescribed type of pilot process.
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