Electoral Administration Bill
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Mr. Heath: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for addressing that point. Any sensible person would realise that it is not a good idea for a mother to be deterred from voting because she has a young child in tow— Kevin Brennan (Cardiff, West) (Lab): Or father. Mr. Heath: Or father, as the hon. Gentleman said. Does the Minister have no concern, however, about the provision applying up to the age of 18? First, someone who is just under 18 might be considered to have a potentially intimidating effect in a polling booth and, secondly, it has implications for the secrecy of the ballot. I ask the right hon. and learned Lady to consider whether that is really the intention of the proposal. Ms Harman: Those issues must be considered, but many people feel that they do not know how to vote, or that there is something mysterious about it. If people feel unconfident they might worry about what will confront them when they go into the polling booth. Therefore, the advantages of parents taking their children with them, if they so choose—it is for them to decide—well outweigh the disadvantages. Mr. Heath: I agree with the right hon. and learned Lady in respect of younger children, and if that were the principal reason for the change that would be a strong argument for allowing more than one person into a polling booth, something that we would normally deplore whether or not one of them was unsure about the voting procedure. We normally say that it is inconceivable that two people should enter a polling booth at the same time. Many over-18s, who are already entitled to vote, might have the same reservations about the mechanics of voting and might well want a more experienced person to join them in the polling booth. We do not encourage that. Indeed, when we monitor elections elsewhere in the world, we strongly advocate that it should not be allowed. Mr. Binley: I have concerns about the provision, but not because I wish to prevent children knowing about the voting process; I understand what the Minister says in that respect. However, she will know that if three mothers go to a polling station together, they might have a number of children with them, which could create problems. I am not against the measure in principle, but we should consider the practicalities within the polling station and the problems that might arise, not least the distraction of the polling officers. I should be pleased to hear the Minister’s comments. Ms Harman: The presiding officer will still be in charge of what goes on in the polling station. If three mothers, each of whom has two children, go to a polling station together it will not be possible for one of them to take six children to watch her voting. We must approach the issue pragmatically. It is a change, and I know that change alarms some hon. Members, especially when it involves children. Let us step back and consider whether people will think that the measure is sensible. Column Number: 172 Mr. Robinson: Can we clarify one thing? I thought that permission was being sought to bring children up to the age of 18 into a polling station, not into a polling booth, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said. If they are to be allowed into a polling booth, he is right to make the case that intimidation is a possible outcome. I see no difficulty in allowing children up to the age of 18 into a polling station, particularly in view of the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North. Do we not want to fill the gap for people until they are allowed to vote at 18? This would be a way of making it normal for them to go to a polling station. The Chairman: Order. Before we proceed, we are getting bogged down on a point of detail. Ms Harman: I am glad to have had the opportunity— Mrs. Laing: On a general point, but not a point of detail, I hope that I can help the Minister by telling her that I know of a mother—she will remain nameless lest it cause trouble for the returning officer who was on duty at the time—who took her child, aged approximately four, into the polling booth at a general election and allowed the child to see the ballot paper going into the ballot box. I understand that the incident caused no trouble whatsoever, and has educated the child well. 11.45 amMs Harman: Many parents want to take their children into the polling station with them. The presiding officer will still be able to regulate what goes on in the polling station. For practical reasons, someone arriving at a polling station might have a five-year-old and a three-year-old with them, and they could be told as soon as they come through the door that they have to leave those children at the door. There is also the need for parents who are looking after children to have easy access to voting without having to get somebody to mind the children. There are two issues here: first, teaching children about democracy by bringing them to polling stations; and secondly, not putting artificial barriers in the way of children when it would do no harm to allow them in to polling stations. As for people being allowed to apply to the Electoral Commission to observe what goes on at the count or in polling stations, I fear to mention this in case I cause another controversy, but I look forward to the day when not only international observers but citizenship classes will go to polling stations and counts. I would welcome the idea of a local secondary school from Southwark, or from my constituency of Camberwell and Peckham, taking a group of young people to observe the count as part of a citizenship class. I know that people can see counts on television if the result is on a knife edge—which it is not in Camberwell and Peckham—but I do not see why people should not go and observe them. The idea of parents taking their children to see the vote, and of teachers taking their citizenship classes to polling stations and counts, is about opening up our democracy, including more people and enthusing them to participate. Column Number: 173 Mr. Binley: The point is easily settled, because the presiding officer has the right to ask people to leave the poll, be they children or otherwise. I shall be happy as long as that is emphasised in the instruction notes to presiding officers. However, I would like an assurance that that will be done, because some new officers might not know that they have those powers. Ms Harman: I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that presiding officers will be in control. I am trying to resist suggesting that the issue could be the subject of the Electoral Commission’s performance standards. For the most part, we should just see how people manage, and I am confident that things will go well. I have mentioned citizenship classes and young people going to polling stations, but one point that we have not discussed in relation to the many paragraphs in part 1 of schedule 1 is the requirement for a signature when someone votes in person. The requirement for a signature is another security measure, and it underlines the importance of the fact that the voter must be the person who should be voting. People have to sign for registered post that is delivered to them, but they do not have to sign when they go into the polling station. The Bill introduces the requirement to sign, and the signature will be kept for a year. That will provide additional security if there are subsequent allegations of people impersonating others and stealing their votes, because we shall be able to check the signature. We hope that that will be a deterrent to personation. I have no further points to add on the schedule, which we have discussed in detail. Mr. Heath: The right hon. and learned Lady interpreted our concern as being simply reactionary, which is quite wrong. I strongly welcome the view that parents should be allowed to take small children into the polling station; I have no problem with such an obvious and sensible move. However, there is a distinction between small children, who cannot reasonably be left unsupervised outside a polling station, and older young people. I do not want to return to the previous debate, but those young people are adults in many respects, and they are entitled to enter the polling station with their parents. Indeed, by virtue of paragraph 57, someone of 17 can enter with any voter. Notwithstanding the Minister’s point, I am not totally convinced that that is the approach that we want to take. Why are 17-year-olds allowed to accompany any voter, when grandfather, who lives in the neighbouring polling district, is not? The provision does not ring true, and we need to look at it. I would have put a limit on the age of children who are allowed to accompany a voter, consonant with the age at which children cannot reasonably be left unsupervised. Eventually, the provision will be challenged. The presiding officer can restrict the number of children who enter a polling station at any one time. I can imagine that if presiding officers were to exercise that right in the last few minutes before a poll closed, they might well be challenged. That is highly hypothetical,
The other point that the right hon. and learned Lady made was about the need for a signature before a polling paper can be received. Absolutely; that is what we have been saying all along. It would be much more effective as an anti-fraud measure if we had not only the signature of the elector when they arrived but a specimen signature as part of the registration process. That is precisely the point that some of us have been banging on about in proceedings on the Bill. I hope eventually to persuade the Minister that that is an elementary precaution that will reduce fraud. A signature in vacuo does not do a lot, as there is no way of knowing whether that is the rightful elector’s signature unless there is a comparator from the registration process. We have half the precaution, but not the other. We have the key but no lock, or the lock but no key. That does not seem an entirely sensible way to proceed. Question put and agreed to. Schedule 1 agreed to. Schedule 2 agreed to. Clause 67 Financial Provision Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill. Chris Ruane: I will not take up too much of the Committee’s time, but I want to reinforce a few points. I will not go over the statistics that I have gleaned from the National Assembly for Wales on the amounts spent on registration and on electoral administration. However, finance is key. The figures from Wales show that the local authorities that spent the most on registration had the best results. That should inform our debate. We should look at best practice around the country, and band the areas. For example, we should look at how much is spent by local authorities in inner-city areas, and say, “This registration department got good results spending a certain amount of money and we recommend that as a benchmark for other inner-city local authorities to aim for.” We should recognise that there are differences in registration rates in different local authority areas. We know the profile of those who are under-registered. They are young, low-paid and unemployed, and are associated with large black and ethnic populations. Central Government should recognise that if local authorities have large numbers of unemployed people and young people, and large black and ethnic populations, their electoral registration departments will have difficulty registering those people. Additional resources should be allocated from the centre in recognition of those difficulties. That money, if it is allocated, should be ring-fenced for registration, not for any other electoral purpose. If
David Cairns: Again, the Committee is tremendously grateful to my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). He has done a great service to the House by beavering away and collecting the statistics and information that is not centrally collected or provided. Of course, the Bill will allow us for the first time to get an accurate picture of what is spent on the provision of electoral administration and electoral expenses throughout the country. In the absence of that information, all we have to go on is the work done by my hon. Friend, so I am grateful to him for drawing our attention to it. The Bill lays down high-level principles for electoral registration officers and the steps that they should take to raise registration levels. The performance standards, which we will see in due course, will obviously add to that. Of course, if a local authority starts with a 98 per cent. registration level and 97 per cent. of people return the form as soon as they receive it, the authority will not need to take the additional measures to drive up its registration level. In other areas, however, the authority will have to send the letter out more than once, and will have to send people round knocking on doors. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that doing more things requires more money. A local authority that does not have to do any of those things will not have to spend that money. His point is therefore valid, but it will probably be addressed in practice. I have a couple of other quick points to make. We are talking about an estimate—about what we think will be required. Obviously these matters need to be kept under review as we move forward, but we think that this is a reasonable way of setting aside an amount of money for the duties. I am a former local councillor, and there are a number of people with experience as local councillors on the Committee. We will all have had cuts put before us in a budget round: there has to be a cut or a saving from the electoral administration budget, and a saving from social services or elsewhere. It is easy to cut the budget for electoral administration because, wrongly, we do not perceive it as a front-line service and, in the absence of the national standards, the framework and the reporting that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) highlighted the other day, local councils have very little purchase on what electoral registration officers do. That situation is exacerbated in Scotland, where local authorities do not have their own EROs but share them. When all these measures bed in and there is much greater transparency, there will be more—“pressure” is the wrong word, but there will be more understanding among local authorities of what EROs are doing and how important and valid that is. They will see EROs as a front-line service that they want to fund from elsewhere in their budget, from their administration budget. All these measures mean that
Mr. Heath: I listened with interest to the Minister’s reply. Last night I attended a dinner held by the H. S. Chapman Society, whose membership includes many electoral administrators, and those with expertise in this area forcefully made the point to me—it is a constitutional point rather than anything else—that the degree of latitude afforded to local authorities in this respect is not what they perceive. The responsibility lies with the electoral registration officer to spend what is required to do the job, and the Bill confers a stronger duty on the electoral registration officer to perform certain tasks to satisfy the guidelines set out by the Electoral Commission. In a way, however much the electoral registration officer requires to do that forms, in effect, a precept on the local authority. That situation is analogous, in a way, to the position of the coroner, which I recall from my days as a county council leader. The coroner was funded from the county council precept, but there was no suggestion whatever that we had any control over the amount that the coroner required to do his or her job. If we can make it sufficiently clear in the context of the Bill that electoral registration officers have a higher duty than the responsibility to the local authority—a duty to ensure the integrity of the electoral process—and that that requires expenditure that is made available, admittedly, through the local authority budgetary process, but is outside the local determination of the local authority, that will put electoral registration officers in a much stronger position to do their job effectively. That will be the case even in the circumstances described by the Minister, of budgetary constraints and people feeling that electoral administration is a budget head that can be safely reduced. We will then achieve the objectives that the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd wishes to achieve, and I think that we all share that wish. Question put and agreed to. Clause 67 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 68 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 69 12 noonMr. Heath: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in clause 69, page 68, line 22, at end insert—
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 2, in clause 69, page 68, line 37, leave out subsection (5). I point out that the amendments are very narrow. Column Number: 177 Mr. Heath: It would be quite wrong of me, and out of order, to return to our debates about the scope of pilot schemes and whether they should be introduced as a general provision, but we must address a strange anomaly regarding commencement. Ministers must explain why clauses 13 and 14 are to be commenced by an order subsequent to the Act, whereas clause 15, which is the operative clause in relation to the pilot scheme, is not to be commenced by order but is included in clause 69(1) among the provisions that will come into force on the day on which the Act is passed. Clause 15 cannot operate without clauses 13 and 14, which deal with the mechanics of the registration process and providing personal identifiers, and it is hard to see how a clause that essentially depends on earlier clauses can be used when they have not come into effect because they are omitted from the list. That method of commencement suggests that the Government will continue to delay doing anything about this important subject. Given that the clause contains a limited number of identifiers—not the wide group that we debated in Committee and on Second Reading, but simply the basic signature and date-of-birth identifiers—there is no obvious reason why changes to the 1983 Act should not have immediate effect, so that the identifiers can be included from day one. That would provide clarity and the wherewithal for pilots to take place irrespective of their scope and whether they will turn out to be the preferred solution, as many of us hope. The Minister must persuade us why we should have a delay of any kind in the commencement of clauses 13 or 14 but not clause 15, which requires subsequent orders to specify the scope of the pilots, and which could not possibly be implemented without clauses 13 and 14. That is the purport of the amendment. I hope that I have kept within the strict constraints of the commencement of the Bill, Mr. O’Hara. I look forward to the Minister’s reply. Ms Harman: The amendments seek to roll out the collection of personal identifiers when the Bill receives Royal Assent without first holding pilots, but there is not yet enough evidence on which to base a decision about national roll-out. Our proposal to trial the system using pilot schemes is a practical way in which to test policy. We want clause 15 to come into effect on Royal Assent so that individual identifier pilots can be in place for the annual canvass in 2006. If the personal identifier pilot schemes are successful, they might be implemented nationally to improve the integrity of registers without reducing registration. That would affect the electoral process as a whole by 2008. That timetable requires that individual pilots should take place at the annual canvass in September to October 2006. We do not want to roll the scheme out without giving Parliament the chance to debate the outcome of the pilots. That will be a big decision and therefore needs parliamentary consideration. Clause 15 is a stand-alone clause and includes a power to bring into force the relevant provisions of clauses 13 and 14 for the purpose of the pilot. Bringing those clauses into force would commence national
Mr. Heath: I hear what the right hon. and learned Lady says, but clause 15(13) states:
which will not have come into effect when clause 15 does. The argument is a circular one that does not bear close scrutiny. I shall return to the matter in the wider context of the pilots, because, as the right hon. and learned Lady knows, we are unpersuaded of the need for pilots in this context. We want integrity of the ballot box rather than further experimentation. Nevertheless, on my rather incomplete understanding of the Minister’s response, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 69 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 70 Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill. Mr. Heath: Will Ministers update us on any subsequent conversations that they have had with Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office about extending to the Province some provisions in the Bill that do not presently extend to it? David Cairns: The short answer is no. We have had no such discussions since we covered the matter at the end of last week. Our colleagues in the NIO are considering the position in the light of a possible new Northern Ireland elections Bill, and we shall wait to see what measures will be presented then. Question put and agreed to. Clause 70 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 71 ordered to stand part of the Bill. New Clause 1
Brought up, and read the First time. Column Number: 179 Mr. Heath: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The new clause is about regulations on the content of electoral addresses—material sent out by candidates via freepost and delivered by the universal service provider, which is, of course, currently Royal Mail. It deals with whether Royal Mail has powers of editorial control over candidates’ material. I say that it does not, apart from the requirement, already enshrined in statute, not to send out offensive material, material that contravenes statute, or material irrelevant to the election. Some people in Royal Mail think otherwise. They think that they have the right effectively to determine that material is unsuitable for their postmen and postwomen to carry. I think that they are wrong, but the law is sufficiently ambiguous to require some clarification. An aspect of the matter that causes constant concern to many candidates is any reference to or depiction of the Post Office in election material. Every hon. Member in the Committee knows that the Post Office has been a current political issue for some years. Our views on what should happen to it and to Royal Mail deliveries are a proper political issue, within the province of Parliament, on which we can and should express an opinion. The topic is particularly current when closures of sub-post offices are threatened. This has been a very hot political issue in my constituency, and, I suspect, in the constituencies of many other Committee members. On post office closures or the future of the Royal Mail, some postmasters—not all; there is some difference in practice—will not accept such material in a freepost leaflet. Some splendid rows have developed as a result. Some postmasters go even further. It is not even a question of expressing an opinion, positive or negative, about Post Office or Royal Mail services. The suggestion is that being pictured with a post office in the background is somehow inappropriate for freepost material and must be changed, even if, incidentally, Royal Mail does not own if it is a sub-post office or a private dwelling that is part of the streetscape, village or community. Postmasters know perfectly well that a general election period is brief and that there is no time for a long argument about whether election material is acceptable. If their initial reaction is that it is not, expediency dictates that the design of the election material must be changed. I understand from the Electoral Commission’s statutory report that that was a big issue in the 2001 election and remained a problem in 2005, despite the best endeavours of the Electoral Commission and the Government to talk to Royal Mail. That also happened during the European parliamentary election, in which postmasters decided of their own accord that certain political issues were not the province of election candidates and that they had no right as candidates to talk about them in their constituencies because it was not a matter for the European Parliament. It is not for a postman to decide what goes into a communication between a candidate and the electorate; it is a matter for the candidate and
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