The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Mr.
George Howarth
Crabb,
Mr. Stephen
(Preseli Pembrokeshire)
(Con)
Donaldson,
Mr. Jeffrey M.
(Lagan Valley)
(DUP)
Farrelly,
Paul
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Lab)
Flint,
Caroline
(Don Valley)
(Lab)
Goggins,
Paul
(Minister of State, Northern Ireland
Office)Kennedy,
Jane
(Liverpool, Wavertree)
(Lab)
Liddell-Grainger,
Mr. Ian
(Bridgwater)
(Con)
Lilley,
Mr. Peter
(Hitchin and Harpenden)
(Con)
McCafferty,
Chris
(Calder Valley)
(Lab)
McCarthy,
Kerry
(Bristol, East)
(Lab)
McGrady,
Mr. Eddie
(South Down)
(SDLP)
Marris,
Rob
(Wolverhampton, South-West)
(Lab)
Purnell,
James
(Stalybridge and Hyde)
(Lab)
Reid,
Mr. Alan
(Argyll and Bute)
(LD)
Robertson,
Mr. Laurence
(Tewkesbury)
(Con)
Seabeck,
Alison
(Plymouth, Devonport)
(Lab)
Mark Oxborough, Committee
Clerk
attended the
Committee
Sixth
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Wednesday 20
January
2010
[Mr.
George Howarth in the
Chair]
Draft
Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations
2010
2.30
pm
The
Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Paul Goggins):
I beg to
move,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People
(Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations
2010.
Welcome
to the Chair, Mr. Howarth. This is the first time that I
have served as a Minister under your chairmanship, and it is a pleasure
to do
so.
The
Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008 made
provision in respect of electoral matters in Northern Ireland,
including the registration of electors, absent voting procedures and
access to the electoral register. Members of the Committee may know
that last year I launched a consultation on improving electoral
registration and absent voting procedures in Northern Ireland. Many of
the changes proposed in the consultation can be implemented only
through primary legislation. However, several changes can be made by
amending the 2008 regulations, and those changes are the subject of the
draft
regulations.
I
turn first to those provisions that deal with absent voting procedures
at parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland. The Committee will know
that the rules for absent voting in Northern Ireland are different from
those in the rest of the United Kingdom because, of course, of the
perceived increased risk of fraud. It is important that the Government
maintain the integrity of the absent voting process in Northern
Ireland, and bring legislation before the House whenever necessary,
further to protect against potential
fraud.
Regulation
5 requires an absent vote applicant to provide reasons for requesting
that their ballot paper be sent to an address other than the one at
which they are registered. That will allow the chief electoral officer
to monitor whether ballot papers are being diverted to certain
addresses without good reason and for potentially fraudulent purposes.
The chief electoral officer has recently expressed concern about
potentially false attestations from health care professionals and
others on absent voting applications. Regulations 6 and 7 therefore
require individuals attesting absent vote applications to be on the
electoral register themselves. That would enable the chief electoral
officer to check the information in an absent vote attestation against
information that he already
holds.
Although
protecting against potential abuse of the absent voting process remains
a key priority, we also want to seek ways of maximising the
participation in the electoral process of those who rely on absent
voting. Regulation 6 extends the list of those who can attest an absent
vote application on the grounds of blindness or other disability to
include registered social workers. Currently, the list of eligible
attestors consists largely of
people providing medical or residential care. The change will ensure
that those providing social care to people with disabilities in the
community will also be able to attest applications. Further provision
has been made to exempt those in receipt of the higher rate of
attendance allowance and the highest rate care component of disability
living allowance from the attestation requirement. That will further
assist those with severe disabilities to participate in the democratic
process.
To
protect further against electoral fraud, the 2008 regulations provide
that an individual may attest only one absent vote application at any
election. Regulation 7 amends those regulations, so that an
individual may attest up to two per election. That will mean, for
example, that one valid person can attest applications from a couple,
rather than two individuals being required to carry out two separate
attestations.
The
remaining provisions in the regulations deal mainly with electoral
registration. Regulation 3 extends the circumstances in which the chief
electoral officer may summarily remove individuals from the register to
include when he is notified of an electors death by a registrar
of births and deaths in England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland. Currently,
he may do that only when notified of a death by the registrar in
Northern Ireland. Avoiding the need for a formal review of the
deceaseds entitlement to be on the register in those
circumstances, will allow the chief electoral officer to adopt a more
efficient and sensitive approach, while maintaining the accuracy of the
register. Under the current review process, if somebody died outside
Northern Ireland, for example if they were in the care of family
members in another part of the United Kingdom or in Ireland, or if they
were on holiday, the crude fact is that the chief electoral officer
would have to write to the deceased to ask whether they had died. While
that may be in a sense amusing, it could be distressing to a family to
receive such a letter. The change will allow the relevant registrar in
England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland to provide that
information.
Regulation
4 adds further education colleges to the list of authorities from whom
the chief electoral officer may request information for the purposes of
registration. The Committee may be aware of the chief electoral
officers schools initiative, where he visits secondary schools
to encourage the registration of young people. Allowing the chief
electoral officer to access information on the number of potential
electors at FE colleges will assist him in extending that initiative to
those colleges, and, in doing so, further encourage the registration of
young people in Northern Ireland. The Committee may be interested to
know that there are now 18,000 under-18s on the register in Northern
Ireland, compared with just 244 four years ago. The initiative has
really helped and extending its remit will help further.
Regulation 10
adds registered medical practitioners to the list of those entitled to
receive copies of relevant parts of the full electoral register. They
may receive that information only if it is necessary for medical
purposes. Because the Northern Ireland register has a high level of
accuracy, medical practitioners believe that it would be useful to have
access to it in certain circumstances, for example, where an incorrect
prescription or test result was issued but the patient could not be
contacted because the address held by the medical authorities was out
of date. We agree that it is desirable for that information to be
provided in limited circumstances.
Regulation 12
amends the parliamentary elections rules and extends the list of
acceptable forms of identity that may be used as proof of identity at
polling stations to include 60+ SmartPasses, provisional driving
licences and European Community driving licences. That will make it
easier for voters to meet the ID requirements for voting, and the chief
electoral officer is satisfied that the extension will not result in
increased voting
fraud.
It
is important that procedures are in place to assist those who are
entitled to participate in the electoral process in Northern Ireland.
It is also important that adequate measures are in place to prevent
those seeking to abuse the system from doing so. The draft regulations
make small but important changes that further contribute to meeting
those important objectives, and I hope that the Committee will support
them.
2.37
pm
Mr.
Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): Welcome to the
Committee, Mr. Howarth. This is the first time that I have
served under your chairmanship and I am sure that it will be a
pleasure.
I am grateful
to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to discuss the
regulations with him earlier today and for the notice of other business
that may come up over the next few months. It is always helpful to be
aware of these things. I have no intention of opposing the order, but I
have one or two questions, which arise from the explanatory
notes.
The Minister
rightly says that the rules for registering for absent votes are
different in Northern Ireland, and we can all understand the reason
that he gave. I am a little concerned about absent votes overall
because there are concerns about them in England as well. In fact,
there was great concern about fraudulent use of absent votes in a local
election in my constituency a few years ago. Is there any need for the
difference? Should we not be the same as Northern
Ireland?
That
point may be slightly beyond these regulations but the Minister may
want to think about it. There are obviously reasons for having
different rules in Northern Ireland, but I suspect that there are
beginning to be reasons to look at the rules across the UK. I always
think it better if laws such as this run across the UK and are not
different in Northern Ireland. A number of us would like to see that
happen.
The Minister
also mentioned that when people ask for their absent vote to be sent to
a different address they need to provide reasons. The explanatory notes
say:
in certain
circumstances, those attesting applications will themselves have to be
on the electoral
register.
Why
does that have to happen only in certain
circumstances?
The
Minister gave a good explanation about why medical practitioners may be
among the bodies that may access the electoral register. Will he, by
way of comparison, list one or two of the other bodies that might
access the register in certain circumstances? I have no intention of
detaining the Committee for longer than necessary, and am generally
supportive of the
regulations.
2.40
pm
Mr.
Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD): It is a pleasure to
serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Howarth. I want to place
on record my thanks to the Minister for our
discussion this morning about the regulations and possible future
business. It is important that we get the balance right between, on the
one hand, preventing fraud, and, on the other, making it
straightforward for people to register and to cast their vote. It is
particularly important that people who, for genuine reasons, are unable
to get to the polling station still have the ability to cast their
vote. The regulations get that balance right, so I support
them.
I
have one concern, however, about regulation 5. The regulation refers to
an elector called A and states towards the end that, if
they apply for their ballot paper to be sent to a different address
from that shown on the electoral register, they have to explain why
their circumstances are such that it has to be sent to that address.
That provision obviously has to be included to cover situations in
which people have moved house. However, it also opens up the
possibility of fraud. For example, an unscrupulous candidate could
persuade electors, either by inducements or by threats, to enter a
different address when completing a postal ballot application. The
unscrupulous candidate would have access to that address and could
direct a large number of ballots towards it. Are there guidelines for
the chief electoral officer to follow when accepting an application?
Moreover, will a limit be placed on the number of postal ballot
applications asking for the ballot paper to be redirected to a
particular
address?
2.42
pm
Mr.
Eddie McGrady (South Down) (SDLP): It is a pleasure to
serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr.
Howarth, although we have met on many previous occasions in different
circumstances. On behalf of my party, I very much welcome the
regulations. I also welcome the refinement of the electoral law in
Northern Ireland, which has a long and troubled history. It is
significant that we are now down to tidying up certain areas and that
the fact that we are here does not excite the blood pressure of parties
in Northern Ireland. There has been huge progress in that respect. I
thank the Minister and the Government in general for a courteous,
helpful and agreeable exchange of views and representations on the
regulations before they were
published.
I
would like to ask the Minister one or two short questions. My first
point relates to the scheme for the measurement of performance
standards by the chief electoral officer. The Electoral Commission
currently has that authority, but has agreed for it to be transferred
to the chief electoral officer. The Government, however, have also
agreed to initiate a pilot scheme. Has that pilot scheme been drafted
and put into operation? How far advanced is it? It surprises me that
the scheme requires primary legislation, because I consider it almost
an administrative exercise.
Secondly, I
welcome the change on identification for overseas electoral
applications from Northern Ireland, so that people can now declare
themselves, if they so wish, as Irish rather than British citizens.
Sometimes in the past that has been a thorny and debateable subject,
but since the advent of the Good Friday agreement some 12 years ago it
has become common practice for partnership in Northern Ireland. I
welcome that as an indication of where our society is
heading.
The
next item I want to mention is the transfer of responsibility for
registration and election awareness from the Electoral Commission to
the chief electoral
officer. I understand that the Government were to have discussions about
that. Will the Minister indicate in his reply to what extent those
discussions have taken place, what progress they are making and when he
expects further information to be made public? However, we again have
the strange scenario where that change, as administrative as we could
imagine it to be, requires primary legislation. I count four issues
that require primary legislation and which are therefore not reflected
in the regulations. Those matters were dealt with by agreement of the
parties and the Government. As we knew we were heading in that
direction, is there any programme for that primary legislation to be
amended? Will it be a simple amendment process or a bulky Act? Will the
Minister indicate how he worked in parallel with the regulations in
framing and developing the primary
legislation?
2.47
pm
Mr.
Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP): I join others
in welcoming you, Mr. Howarth, to the Chair. I also add my
voice, on behalf of the Democratic Unionist party, in welcoming the
legislation. I join the Minister in expressing appreciation to the
chief electoral officer and his staff in Northern Ireland for the work
they have done in recent years to reduce electoral fraud. As the hon.
Member for South Down will know all too well from his long experience
in fighting elections, that problem has dogged the political process in
Northern Ireland for years, and there is no doubt that some marginal
constituencies may have changed hands as a result of fraudthere
is an old adage in Northern Ireland that even the dead vote often.
Thankfully, most of that has come to an end, and we have seen a
remarkable transformation. The electoral office and the team are to be
commended on the steps that have been taken, with the minimum of
inconvenience for voters. The proposed changes are
welcome.
Earlier,
the Minister identified the problem that only a small number of young
people had registered under the new rolling registration system in
Northern Irelanda mere few hundred initially. The Minister has
indicated that the figure has now increased to about 18,000. That
increase is welcome, and the figure includes young people who are
attaining the voting age of 18. Will the Minister confirm whether his
Department has any statistics available, through ongoing statistical
research for other purposes, that might indicate where the shortfall is
and how many young people around the age of 18 there are in Northern
Ireland? We could then judge the gap between the overall total and the
18,000 who are registered to vote at present. The addition of further
education colleges is a welcome step in trying to gather information
about young people to ensure that they are properly registered to
vote.
I welcome the
steps on absent voting. It is right that there should be an exemption
for claimants on higher rate attendance allowance or DLA benefit, and
that they are not required to have an attestation for their absent
vote. Equally, it is important that individuals can attest two absent
votes. It is one at the moment and I know from my own experience in
elections that it has been a problem. It means that every individual
who seeks an absent vote has to find another elector who is
able to attest their application. The steps provide a welcome
flexibility. The protections identified by the chief electoral officer
are necessary to ensure that those who attest an absent vote
application are not committing electoral fraud in any way, and that
there are proper procedures in place to check the validity of those
undertaking the attestation.
On the
subject of access to the register and polling station identification,
the proposals are sensible in allowing health care professionals access
to the register for the purposes of trying to identify patients who may
have moved away from home and need to be contacted urgently. Will the
Minister clarify what monitoring will be in place to ensure that those
privileges are not abused in any way? The inclusion of the 60+
SmartPass is a sensible move. It is one of the benefits of the
Executive in Northern Ireland that they have been able to extend free
travel for our older people to those aged 60 and over. That means that
when they qualify now at 60, they will be able to use their SmartPass
as ID for voting
purposes.
Will
the Minister clarify whether the inclusion of European Community
driving licences is targeted towards migrant workers who are now living
in Northern Ireland and are, I believe, eligible to vote in European
and local government elections? If so, will he also inform us of any
other steps that the chief electoral officer intends to take to
facilitate voting arrangements for those who come from other EC
countries and may have problems with language barriers when it comes to
election time?
In general, I
welcome the legislation and look forward to the Ministers
response.
2.53
pm