Q
81Nick
Ainger: Thank you. I believe that draft guidance should be
presented to Public Bill Committees so that it can be examined during
the scrutiny process. Do you agree that in both this area and the area
covering the triggering mechanism, draft guidance should be produced by
the Electoral Commission as quickly as possible so that this Committee
can look at
it? Sir
Hayden Phillips: I heard what the Secretary of State
said earlier. It depends how long the Electoral Commission takes. In
this sort of area, how and when something is done—talking about
triggering, for example—is very important. Having looked at it,
I think that although one is, in a sense, going back to a previous
regime, no one should assume that because that is the case, all these
people out here who might be potential candidates will understand what
that means. It is important that Electoral Commission guidance on how
that would work in relation to triggering is available as soon as
possible. Whether that can be done during the course of your
deliberations is another question. The relevant people are appearing
before you, so you can ask them directly. I think it is very important
that that guidance is in place and has been consulted on well before
provisions are brought into
effect.
Q
82Pete
Wishart: I am sure that you, Sir Hayden, will agree fully
that public confidence about party political donations has been shaken
to its core in the past couple of years by what have been seen as
abuses. The cash for honours matter, for example, has raised public
concern about how public money is spent. Do you believe that the Bill
addresses the big public concern about party political
donations? Sir
Hayden Phillips: I think that the Bill addresses two
issues that ought to be of concern to the public, the first of which is
the need for a more vigorous regulator with more flexible powers. That
is important in any circumstance. The second is that if we can find a
mechanism for dampening down expenditure that is better—or,
rather, longer—than the current one, that is worth having. I do
not think that the Government have suggested or pretended that the Bill
goes to the heart of the anxieties that you and I have expressed, which
are the basis of the work that I did for that period. That can be done
only if there is a comprehensive new mechanism for controlling party
funding in this country.
Q
83Pete
Wishart: Part of that new mechanism could be suggested in
the Bill. There is a proposal that four commissioners from the
political parties should be added to the Electoral Commission. There is
a difficulty with deciding who should be the fourth commissioner, who
is supposed to come from the smaller parties. I have not got a clue how
that could be decided, and I used to be a joint Whip for all the
minority parties in the House. Do you believe that having political
party representatives on the Electoral Commission would be a good thing
and would help to deal with outstanding issues about which the public
are
concerned? Sir
Hayden Phillips: Yes, I do. I must be consistent. I
was a party to making recommendations, and I agree with that proposal.
I think that it is important, and I do not agree that if you want to
have party representatives or senior party figures involved that will
somehow make the Electoral Commission a non-independent or partisan
body. That is way over the top. A regulator has to have the confidence
of those whom it regulates. It is not just a question of public
confidence; it is also a question of party political confidence. The
successful regulators in this country always have the confidence of
those whom they regulate and have an open dialogue with them. I think
that this will help the Electoral Commission, and will help political
parties to feel more comfortable with the Electoral Commission. Those
four people will be in a minority, and will never be a majority.
Presumably, they will have to be appointed through a mechanism, such as
the Speaker’s Conference, in the same way as everybody
else.
As for how
the minority party representative would be chosen, I bow to your
wisdom. I rather cavalierly felt that an agreement could be reached.
Men and women of good will could sit down and hammer out an agreement
on how that could be done. I think that that is what will
happen.
Q
84Mr.
Djanogly: Sir Christopher, what, in your view, are the
main steps that need to be taken to ensure the integrity of the
electoral
system? Sir
Christopher Kelly: My Committee, under my
predecessor, issued a report, of which I am sure you are aware, that
said clearly that there were two important steps. One was to make the
Electoral Commission a focused regulator with an appropriate range of
sanctions, and the other was to move to individual
registration.
Q
85Mr.
Djanogly: Are you concerned that the Bill ignores
electoral
fraud? Sir
Christopher Kelly: I am extremely disappointed, as
are other members of my committee, that the Bill does not include
measures to deal with individual registration, but I cannot say that I
am
surprised.
Q
86Mr.
Djanogly: Are you able to put into perspective the
relevance of electoral fraud and party funding
crimes? Sir
Christopher Kelly: I heard the same statistics that
you did earlier when you were questioning the Secretary of
State.
Q
87Mr.
Djanogly: Do you have any concerns in that
regard? Sir
Christopher Kelly: Concerns of what
kind?
Mr.
Djanogly: As to the fact that a lot more priority is being
given to party
funding. Sir
Christopher Kelly: As I have said, I am disappointed,
as are the other members of my committee, that individual registration
was not included in this
matter.
Q
88Martin
Linton: Sir Hayden, I am reluctant to raise issues that
are not in the Bill yet, but since they have been raised, I will seek
clarification on a couple of points. First, I understand that the terms
of reference of your committee include the word
“funding”. I have been interested in party funding for a
long time and I understand that it includes both income and expenditure
of political parties. It has been put to us by the other side that you
were asked to look at only income and not at expenditure. Is that how
you understood your terms of
reference? Sir
Hayden Phillips: Well, no, because I proceeded
differently. I agree with the broad interpretation that you take. You
can look at the terms of reference and ask where the words
“expenditure control” are, and you would find that they
are not there. It seems to me that if I was being asked, with the
understanding of all the three main party leaders, to try to tackle the
subject in a comprehensive way, I would be quite wrong to avoid looking
at spending. So we behaved as though that was in the terms of
reference.
Martin
Linton: I am glad that you
did. Sir
Hayden Phillips: I think that it is a
matter of common sense, and I do not want to enter into that
debate.
Q
89Martin
Linton: Thank you. On another point, on trade union
affiliation, you speak as though trade unions have the opportunity to
affiliate only with one party. As a matter of historical record, there
were trade unions that were affiliated to the Conservative party.
Opposition Members may look surprised, but I spoke to the national
secretary of the National Union of Small Shopkeepers when the
legislation came into force and the union was affiliated to the
Conservative party. Therefore, is it right to expect an independent,
non-state organisation such as a trade union that has made a decision
to affiliate to a particular party also to act as the collecting agent
for another party? Given that all its members are free to contribute to
any party they wish, why should it be a trade union’s obligation
to collect money for a party with which it does not
agree? Sir
Hayden Phillips: You have illustrated one of the
stumbling blocks in trying to create an agreed position. On the one
hand, one position says, “In the modern world, this should all
be much clearer and we should not have this relationship. People should
have freedom of choice.” On the other, we wanted to try to
respect the historic traditions of the different parties. I am
referring not just to the Labour party, but to the structure of the
Conservative party in which some of the proposals presented some
internal constitutional problems. Trying to get the balance right
between respecting the way in which parties have developed and grown
and what their traditions are with greater clarity and freedom of
choice got me to the position that I was in a year ago when I
published my proposals. I did not believe that at that stage the Labour
party could go any further in making changes along the lines preferred
by the Conservative party without creating severe difficulties for
itself. I respect that—it is a pity, but there we are. That is
my general answer.
Q
90Martin
Linton: Thank you. I have a quick question for Sir
Christopher. You express disappointment but not surprise about the fact
that registration is not in the Bill. You are aware that an estimated
3.5 million people in this country are not registered, and that the
experiment in individual registration in Northern Ireland led to a 10
per cent. reduction. A simple back of the envelope calculation shows
that if we had the same experience in this country, we would lose
350,000 people from the electoral register. When you say that you are
not surprised that people are opposed to individual registration, is
that what you mean?
Sir
Christopher Kelly: No, it is not what I mean. My
committee made its report some time ago. I have seen the reaction to it
and we have continued to make the argument for individual registration.
We usually get that response. At the time my committee made that
recommendation, under my predecessor, it was well aware of the
situation in Northern Ireland and of what has happened since the
measure was introduced. That includes the much greater confidence that
now exists in the integrity of the electoral system there. My committee
made that report—although of course I took no part in its
production—but if something is fundamentally flawed, as we now
believe the electoral system in the country to be with the combination
of household registration and postal voting on demand, we should not
keep it because of concern about some other issue. One should address
that other issue directly and that is what is happening in Northern
Ireland.
Q
91Mrs.
Laing: Sir Christopher has just about answered the
question that I was going to put to him. It might interest our guests
to know that I have tabled a new clause to amend the Bill and introduce
individual voter registration. If the Government are persuaded by the
deliberations of Sir Christopher’s committee, this Committee and
the two Houses of Parliament, it is possible that they might also
accept that individual voter registration should go ahead. Let me take
you further on this, Sir Christopher. In your committee’s
deliberations—I appreciate that this is before it was your
committee—was a distinction made between the particular problems
that occurred in Northern Ireland, which were correctly put right by
the introduction of individual voter registration, and the completely
different situation in the rest of the United Kingdom? That different
situation would be likely to lead not to a similar reduction in those
who are registered—as Mr. Linton suggested—but
rather to a fairer system where those who ought to be registered are,
and those who ought not to be registered are not.
Sir
Christopher Kelly: As you say, I was not there. I
believe everybody is conscious of the very different circumstances that
exist in Northern Ireland. It would be rash to assume that if such a
system was introduced here, there would not be a fall-off in
registration. There are a number of reasons for that. When the system
was introduced into Northern Ireland, the issue was not
only about individual registration but also, as I understand, the fact
that in the past, even if someone did not reply to the annual canvass,
their name remained on the register for a further 12 months. When
individual registration was introduced, that 12 months’ leeway
was also abolished, and I am told that much of the fall-off in
registration may have been down to that as well. Northern Ireland also
demonstrates that if you have an energetic administrator who is charged
with the maintenance of the register and prepared to look at different
ways of maintaining it, they could begin to make use of the powers that
are available to them. In Northern Ireland, although this may not
receive universal acclaim, I believe that the administrator even
started writing to people saying, “I believe you should be on
the register and if you’re not, you should realise that I have
the ability to cause a fine of £1,000 to be levied on
you.” Clearly, that would not be a good thing all over the place
or in many circumstances, but the fact is that an energetic person is
beginning to make use of the powers available to him, presumably in a
way that is visible to people who have not put their names on the
register. I suggest that that model could be followed in England if we
had a system of electoral administration that was administered rather
more robustly than the present
one.
Q
92Mrs.
Laing: That is very helpful, Sir Christopher. You
expressed no surprise that the Government have not taken the
opportunity to introduce individual voter registration in the Bill. Has
anyone on your committee come forward with a good reason why the system
should remain as it is, and why there should be one person in a
household who effectively has the power to disfranchise others in the
household? Sir
Christopher Kelly: The committee’s report was
unanimous.
Q
93Mr.
Wills: Sir Christopher, may I ask two brief questions? I
note that you say that, in your view, the current system is
fundamentally flawed—I think that I am quoting you correctly.
Will you share with the Committee the evidential basis for that? How
many prosecutions are there and how geographically widespread are
they?
Sir
Christopher Kelly: As you will recall, that
information was given earlier in the sitting. I do not think that my
belief is based so much on the number of prosecutions as on the
principle of combining household registration with postal voting on
demand without the requirement to produce personal
identifiers.
Mr.
Wills: Thank you, Sir Christopher. I am quite sure that we
will come back in the process of the Bill to the particular measures
that we have taken to protect the integrity of postal votes—I
will not trouble the Committee with that at this stage. May I ask a
more fundamental question that picks up on your point about principles?
Are you aware that the Government actually share your view that, in
principle, individual registration is a good
thing? Sir
Christopher Kelly: I am.
Q
94Mr.
Wills: I think that you are also aware that the Government
share your worry that a move to individual registration could well lead
to a significant decline in
enfranchisement. Mr. Linton has already alluded to the fact
that probably 3.5 million people in this country are not on
the register who should be, as the best estimates suggest. There is a
very significant degree of disfranchisement already, so we share your
worry that any moves that lead to further disfranchisement are a very
serious democratic problem. In moving forward on this, as everybody
wants to, do you agree that it would be a good idea to take every step
we can to improve the register as part of any process of moving towards
individual
registration? Sir
Christopher Kelly: There can be no answer to that
other than yes, of
course.
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