Paul
Goggins: I also welcome the hon. Member for South-West
Norfolk to his place this afternoon. It is a pleasure to see him. He
began by emphasising, rightly in a way, the importance of anti-fraud
measures—which is where my hon. Friend the Member for Great
Grimsby
has just left off. My hon. Friend shared an anecdote from 1951, but
amply demonstrated in that story the necessity for the anti-fraud
measures in Northern Ireland. I will come back to that
later.
Mr.
Dodds: Lest the impression be given that somehow the
incident referred to by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby is
illustrative of how everything worked in Northern Ireland, I am sure
that the Minister will agree that fraud worked on both sides. There are
many examples of nationalists benefiting at the expense of Unionists.
In recent years, the concern—as evidenced by representations
from the SDLP and others—has been the extent of electoral fraud
on the part of Sinn
Fein.
Paul
Goggins: I am happy to clarify my remarks. I was not
seeking to suggest—nor was my hon. Friend the Member for Great
Grimsby—that it was all on one side of the community. However,
there was a need to tighten that up. Later I will say one or two things
in response to my hon. Friend about why the differences are
there. It
is important to have a deadline base at some point in the rolling
registration, which is now in place in Northern Ireland. Eleven days
seems to be fair. It also seems fair that as that 11-day cut-off point
gets closer, it is the responsibility of the individual elector to
provide the additional verification that they are indeed who they say
they are. Regulation 25 sets out the additional material that can be
brought—birth certificate and other forms of identification.
That is the kind of information that normally the chief electoral
officer would go and find for himself, but because time is short it is
incumbent on the voter to bring that information for themselves. All
that is laid out in the order. I am clear that the chief electoral
officer has an important role and has the resources and support from
the Northern Ireland Office to ensure that he can do his job properly
and do the verification that he needs to, so that everybody can have
confidence in the electoral register.
The hon.
Member for South-West Norfolk asked about the need for a canvass. Of
course, the need for a canvass in Northern Ireland is now different
from the need for a canvass elsewhere in the United Kingdom because
with continuous registration, with individual registration, the chief
electoral officer can focus his resources on the missing 15 per
cent.—the people who we think are not registered to vote. He can
use his powers to gather information, to pursue those people and to
encourage them to register, although it is not compulsory of course.
The need for the annual canvass then recedes. We need it in England and
Wales because we still have household registration and it is important
to do the canvass in that way. I am not saying that the need for a
canvass has been completely eliminated in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the
chief electoral officer has the power, if he wishes, to have a canvass
from time to time in order to verify the accuracy of the register. The
canvass is not ruled out completely; the power is there to have it but
we certainly do not need to have it every year. The resources that
would otherwise be spent on the canvass can be spent on the other work
trying to identify the missing 15 per cent.
I am pleased
with the broad welcome from across the Committee for the proactive work
that the chief electoral officer will be able to do with schools to try
to encourage
young people before they reach the age of 18 to fill in the forms to
register. I confirm that once a year, all secondary schools in Northern
Ireland with pupils over the age of 16 will provide the names,
addresses and dates of birth of those pupils to the chief electoral
officer, under the powers that we are giving him. His staff will use
the information to partially complete forms for pupils who have not yet
registered before they visit the school. They will then ask pupils to
register using the forms that are already partially filled in, while
giving them a proper explanation of the whole process. I know that from
his remarks, the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Dodds)
will be encouraged by that. We need to get more and more young people
to register in Northern Ireland, as we do throughout the United
Kingdom. I confirm that when we refer to service personnel we mean the
armed services, and that it is clear in the legislation. That is a
welcome addition and we are broadly coming into line with the rest of
the United Kingdom. I thank the
hon. Member for South Down, who in his contribution demonstrated his
considerable knowledge and understanding of the intricacies of the
electoral system in Northern Ireland. He broadly welcomed what we are
bringing forward today, and I welcome that. In relation to regulation
27 and the issues that he raised about absent voters, I shall reply in
part now, but I want to write to him to set out a detailed answer to
the important questions he raised. Sections 10A and 13A of the 1983 Act
and regulation 27 of the regulations before us provide the bare minimum
of information that must be provided for an application for
registration. That includes the elector’s signature, date of
birth, national insurance number, address and previous registered
address and a statement that he or she has been resident in Northern
Ireland for three months prior to the date of application. Those are
considerable information requirements and I hope that that reassures
the hon. Gentleman that whatever the application process, that
information will always be required, but I shall write to him with the
detailed information that he seeks.
The hon.
Gentleman raised the issue about time limits, as did the hon. Member
for Belfast, North. We considered whether there should be a time limit.
Even though ID might be out of date, was there a point at which it was
so out of date that it would fall outside the system? The problem is,
if we were to go for a cut-off date, what would we choose—six
months, a year? What really matters is, can the presiding officer be
confident from the document that is given to them at the polling
station that that person is who they say they are? There is a clear
list of ID that is required. It strikes me as unlikely that someone
would be walking around with one of those forms of ID that was 10 to 15
years out of
date.
Christopher
Fraser: Look at
“Dod’s”.
Paul
Goggins: I am sorry; I am slightly confused. Was that a
reference to the hon. Member for Belfast, North?
The key
question is whether the person with the ID is who they say they are.
Rather than give an arbitrary cut-off date, we leave it to the
presiding officer to make that judgment, knowing that people would be
unlikely to be carrying around very specific forms of ID that would be
so long out of date. If the presiding officer is not happy, and does
not believe that the ID confirms that the person is who they say they
are, I am afraid they do not get to
vote. The
hon. Member for Belfast, North emphasised a point, which goes way
beyond Northern Ireland, about the importance of face-to-face contact
with the electorate. That is absolutely crucial, as we all know, not
just at election time but throughout the political cycle. Continuous
registration is proving very effective in Northern Ireland, but it
requires the chief electoral officer to continue with a very proactive
approach in trying to get the missing 15 per cent. on to the electoral
register. I also welcomed his earlier comments about young people. As I
said earlier, that is an important
aspect. My
hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby asked me to explain a little
about the differences between the system in Northern Ireland and the
system in the rest of the United Kingdom. We now have rolling
registration in Great Britain, as Northern Ireland has, but there are
other differences. The electoral register in Northern Ireland is
compiled by individual registration, whereas we still have household
registration. That makes it very different. As we have just heard, at
the point where the vote is cast the voter also has to provide
photographic identification to prove that they are who they say they
are, and that they are entitled to vote. Both those aspects are
different, but the rolling registration remains the
same. I
cannot speak for the whole Government in relation to policy on
electoral systems. My hon. Friend asked me about postal voting. Nothing
specifically being brought forward here would have ramifications for
the electoral process elsewhere in the United Kingdom. I am dealing
this afternoon specifically with the system in Northern Ireland, and
there are those distinctive differences. I hope that my responses will
give the Committee confidence that the measures we are bringing forward
this afternoon will improve the system. The fact that we are
consolidating all the legislation in one place will help to clarify the
position, and I hope the Committee will support my
proposal. Question
put and agreed to.
Resolved, That
the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People
(Northern Ireland) Regulations
2008. DRAFT
SERVICE VOTERS’ REGISTRATION PERIOD (NORTHERN IRELAND) ORDER
2008Resolved, That
the Committee has considered the Draft Service Voters’
Registration Period (Northern Ireland) Order 2008.— [Paul
Goggins.] Committee
rose at twenty-three minutes past Three
o’clock.
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