Mrs.
Laing: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has come
forward with that evidence, which proves my
point. It is not possible to have 103 per cent. so that truly is
miraculous. I do not see how it can be possible for 103 per cent. of
people to be
registered.
Dr.
Whitehead: If we take the 2001 census and then use the
on-year estimates from that census, in some seats where registration is
consistent because the seats are stable, registration may exceed the
total census figure that was recorded prior to the half-year figures
going forward. In other seats, such as those in Brent, which is about
60 per cent. of the census figure, the opposite is the case. I do not
believe that one is miraculous or that the other is because of feckless
citizens failing to register.
Mrs.
Laing: What the hon. Gentleman is saying is all over the
place. No one is talking about feckless citizens failing to register. I
do not understand what he is talking about. He referred to 103 per
cent. but 103 per cent. of what? Did he mean 103 per cent. of the
estimate based on the census? That is interesting but fairly
meaningless, and it is not what we are discussing. We should get on
with debating new clause 1. We are discussing what should be the most
important part of the Bill and, quite honestly, Labour Members are
wasting
time. The
fact that electoral registration in Northern Ireland fell by 10 per
cent. on the introduction of individual voter registration is evidence
that the problem of fraudulent over-registration was tackled directly.
That is the whole point. Individual voter registration and the
accompanying personal identifier system worked in Northern Ireland. It
is a good system. It is better and much tighter, and we ought to have
it in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is important that we tackle
over-registration in Great Britain, and that we restore the trust and
integrity that we should observe in the
ballot. We
should also note that, in its report, the Northern Ireland Select
Committee stated that
the “Electoral
Commission has concluded that the removal of the carry-forward
mechanism is likely to be the most important factor by far in the
decline in the level of voter registration following the introduction
of the 2002
Act.” All
that shows that the lessons from Northern Ireland are there to be
learnt, not to be copied, and that we should not dwell too much on what
is happening in Northern Ireland. What matters is that the integrity of
the electoral system is the very basis of our freedom under democracy.
That is precious. We are here as elected representatives of the people
to defend the process, and we should value it but it is under threat
because of how registration is carried out. It is not more difficult to
borrow a library book than it is to register to vote. In fact, we have
to prove more to take a book out of a library than we do to cast our
vote and influence who governs the country. Integrity could so easily
be restored by introducing individual voter registration coupled with
personal
identifiers. The
Government have said on more than one occasion that they intend to
introduce a scheme of individual voter registration. The Minister has
said that he accepts the principle, as have his colleagues. If the
principle had not been accepted, it would not have been suitable for
Northern Ireland. The Government promised to put the principle into
action, but what puzzles me is that
they have failed to take the opportunity to do so under the Political
Parties and Elections Bill, the perfect vehicle for such a measure.
That is why we put high store by the proposal and why the new clause,
tabled immediately after Second Reading, is about individual voter
registration. In
a report published just last week, the Committee on Standards in Public
Life stated that, although levels of confidence in the electoral system
are reasonably
high, “people
are attracted to the greater security and accuracy of individual voter
registration.” It
goes on to explain that it undertook a survey that showed that about
two thirds of respondents—65 per cent.—in the United
Kingdom thought that the electoral registration system in their own
country was very or fairly safe from further abuse, but that only 15
per cent. of respondents felt that the system was very safe while 18
per cent. considered the system
unsafe. Should
we not in the UK in the 21st century have a system that is very safe
and utterly watertight? Of course, we should. Mediocre is simply not
good enough. Nearly two thirds of respondents to the survey expressed
an overall preference for the individual registration system in
Northern Ireland, compared with 30 per cent. who preferred the
household system in Great Britain. There is a 2:1 plebiscite in favour
of an individual rather than a household system of
registration. I
ask the Committee to imagine it. If we were giving advice to a newly
emerging democracy on how to set up an electoral system in order to
produce the best democratic results possible, we might say,
“Here you are; get on with it. You set up your
Parliament—it may have one House, it may have two—and you
set up a system of voting.” The hon. Gentleman on my left would
say that the single transferable vote or some other proportionate
system was best, while I would say that first past the post was best.
It would be decided one way or the other. Each system has its merits.
But suppose that we then said, “How about copying the British
system? You have a country full of free, individual people, and in
order to be allowed to vote, each one of them has to go to the head of
their household, who has the duty to fill in a form that gives them the
right to vote or doesn’t.” How utterly ridiculous when it
is looked at like that.
We have that
system because it is left over from the Victorian age, when the
paterfamilias did everything. It is left over from an age when only the
men in the household voted. It is left over from an age when we did not
have the technical or practical ability to carry out a canvass of
individuals. It is an affront to the freedom of the individual and it
is totally ridiculous to take away personal power and responsibility.
No wonder lots of young people do not bother to vote or take their
duties seriously. They have to get their mothers or fathers to fill in
the form for them, as though they were children.
In thinking
about it, I realised that it happened to me when I was living under my
father’s roof and was a parliamentary candidate. I was the
person on the ballot paper. I was the person for whom people could
vote. All right, it was in Paisley, North and only 5,252 of them did
vote for me, but I thought that that was quite a lot at the time. I was
the name on the ballot paper, but before I could cast my vote for
myself, my father had to fill in my name and sign the form as head of
the household. How utterly ridiculous. That is the system that
Ministers are defending. It is simply not right.
I speak
jocularly about my situation because my father, being an honourable and
responsible district councillor, filled in the form properly, but if I
had tried to be a Labour candidate and not a Conservative one, you can
bet your bottom dollar that my father would not have let me vote.
Whether that is right or wrong— [Hon.
Members: “It is wrong.”] Of course it is
wrong.
I had better
be careful about using my late and very honourable father as an
example, because he did not do things that were wrong—well, not
that sort of thing, anyway—and he would not have done that, but
under the current system, we give the person who fills in the form the
ability, if not the right, to disfranchise other people who live in
that household. That is indubitably the case. It is not a
right—it would be wrong for a person to fill in the form
wrongly—but we give them the opportunity and ability to
disfranchise other people. It might not happen often in families, but
it might happen in other households in multiple occupation, such as
student or bedsit accommodation or homeless hostels. It is wrong that
one person should have the ability to prevent another from registering
to vote. If we are talking about individual responsibility and
individual duty, each individual must have the ability to register
themselves individually to vote. By not adopting new clause 1, the
Government are saying that they are content with the law of 100 years
ago, under which the head of the household is the person who holds the
power and individuals do not count. That is a disgrace in the 21st
century. 4.45
pm Mr.
Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con): Being as concerned
with the rights of women as she has shown she is in this place and in
various committees on which she serves, would my hon. Friend care to
discuss how women have been disadvantaged by the existing system,
compared with individual voter
registration?
Mrs.
Laing: I thank my hon. Friend for that very helpful point.
I jocularly gave the example of myself bowing to the greater political
wisdom of my father, but fortunately I agreed with him, so there was no
difficulty for me, but what if there was a difficulty? What if there
was a difficulty in a culture in which men say that women should not
take part in affairs of the outside world? I know of many households in
and around my constituency and in other parts of our country where
women are expected to undertake the domestic duties and bring up
children. I am not saying that they are necessarily badly treated,
although sometimes that happens, but the men in the household will
frequently say, “Voting is a matter that men undertake; women
don’t need to do that.” That may happen; it may not
happen. In many cultures, that attitude prevails. The point with new
clause 1 is that it should not be possible. By carrying on without
individual voter registration, the Government are potentially allowing
it to
happen. Tony
Lloyd (Manchester, Central) (Lab): I think that the hon.
Lady has said that she knows of cases in which that happens. Will she
clarify that? If she does know of such cases, that is material to the
debate that we are having, but why has she not done anything about it?
As she has already pointed out, it is a criminal offence to fail to
register, so it would be in her hands, in respect of the cases that she
knows about, to have the matter dealt with properly. Has she done
that?
Mrs.
Laing: I must explain something. The hon. Gentleman knows
that I was not saying that I know of specific cases that I can name. I
have said that I know of cases in which a household is set up in a
certain way. It might be a large house with two families living in it,
in perfectly happy and luxurious conditions, but the men, according to
the particular cultural background that they pursue—it is
entirely a matter of their free will for them to do that; I am not
complaining about it for a moment—take part in the outside world
and the women do not even speak English and stay at home, look after
the children and undertake domestic duties. There is nothing wrong with
that. I am not criticising. Every family and every person can choose to
live the way they want to, but I am saying that keeping the current
system of household registration instead of individual registration
makes it possible for the head of the household, however right or
wrong, not to put down other people on the form. I am not saying that
that is being done vexatiously or even intentionally; I am saying that
it can happen and we should stop it
happening.
The
Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Mr. Michael
Wills): I have been enjoying the excursions into
the hon. Lady’s family history, but I hope that she realises
that under provisions that the Government introduced in 2001, what she
describes need not be the case. Any voter can apply for an individual
registration form, even if they have been left off the household form,
so the hon. Lady need not have been excluded if her father had taken
the route that was
suggested.
Mrs.
Laing: I thank the Minister for that point, which brings
us back again to the fact that the Government have accepted in
principle that individual registration, by individual voters, is the
right way forward. [Interruption.] I thank the Minister for
confirming that. I do not want to go down other illustrative
routes—I intended to make a small point and I have given away on
too many occasions. I do not want to take up the Committee’s
time. I am merely illustrating that things can go wrong under the
current system which would not do so under a system of individual voter
registration. I
am not the only person who thinks that; almost every organisation
concerned with such matters agrees. The chair of the Electoral
Commission, Sam Younger,
said: “Registration
should be a matter for each individual rather than for heads of
household and it is vital that a system of individual registration is
introduced as soon as possible so that the register used at the next
general election is secure, accurate and commands
confidence.” That
is the most important statement made on behalf of anyone on the matter,
and the Government should pay attention to it. A report by the
Committee on Standards in Public Life
said: “Despite
the simplicity and familiarity of household registration, on balance
the Committee takes the view that, as there is agreement among all the
major parties, it is the right time to recommend the introduction of
individual
registration.” It
recommended
that “A
decision should be made and legislation developed to implement a system
of individual voter registration immediately following the next General
Election or by 2010 at the latest.”
The judge who
looked into vote rigging during Birmingham’s 2004 local
elections said that he had heard evidence of fraud
that “would
disgrace a banana
republic.” It
is embarrassing to have such a judgment of our electoral system in the
21st century.
The comments
made by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s
Monitoring Committee were even worse. It
said: “The
voting system in the United Kingdom is open to fraud, and while it
delivers democratic elections, this is despite vulnerabilities in the
system which should urgently be addressed...In particular,
registering voters without personal identifiers—such as date of
birth or national insurance number—made it ‘childishly
simple’ to register bogus voters”.
The Joseph Rowntree
Reform Trust said that there is
“widespread,
and justifiable, concern about both the comprehensiveness and the
accuracy of the UK’s electoral registers—the poor state
of the registers potentially compromises the integrity of the
ballot.” Outside
ministerial circles, there is a widespread view that a fundamental
overhaul of our system is necessary. Coupled with individual voter
registration, we would need personal identifiers and that is laid out
in new clause 2. I suggest that those could be the person’s
signature, date of birth and national insurance number, but if the
Minister were to come up with a better idea, we would support it. I am
not wedded to the practicalities of new clause 2, but I am to the
principle.
Mr.
Wills: For the purposes of the record, will the hon. Lady
accept something else contained in the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust
report? It also
said: “It
is unlikely that there has been a significant increase in electoral
malpractice since the introduction of postal voting on demand in
2000.”
Any malpractice that
did
exist “related
to a tiny proportion of all elections
contested.” Will
the hon. Lady confirm that the report said that, and can she enlighten
the Committee about how many cases of electoral fraud there have been
in recent years?
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