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3 Feb 2010 : Column 84WH—continued
As I was saying earlier, I am not confident that the result of the general election is known. Clearly, there are three possible results. We are in a perilous economic state and the general election counts will be taking place when all the financial markets are open. I hope that Labour Members will forgive me for saying so, but if by some fluke it looked like we were going to have five more years of the current Prime Minister, I suspect that we might well see problems with regard to our credit rating and the value of gilts. That situation might occur with any political party at any given time, and if it was thought that there would be a hung Parliament, with all the uncertainty that that would ensure, again there might be an effect on the financial markets.
It matters not if these mistakes are made in the middle of the night-traditionally, the BBC has underestimated the number of seats that the Conservative party has taken; it has done that consistently in every local government election for the past five years. Usually at about 4 o'clock in the morning, the truth begins to dawn on the BBC that the Conservative party has taken rather a lot of seats. However, given the issue of market stability, we cannot rely on exit polls. By the time the financial markets open, there should be a clear idea about whether there has been a change of Government.
I want to make a final point about returning officers. Generally, a middle-ranking officer does the work on an election day but it is the chief executive who turns up to announce the result. They enjoy the full glory of that role. I must say that I think that time is starting to run out for the post of chief executive in local government. With elected mayors and the cabinet system in local government, people are starting to ask whether a chief executive is a worthwhile post. I will put that issue to one side for a moment, but any chief executive who cannot organise an election count and who cannot have enough people present to count the votes in a parliamentary constituency once every five years-on some occasions, there may be slightly less time between general elections-should question whether they are in the right job, because organising an election count is relatively easy.
If the good folk of Morecambe and Lonsdale in the 19th century could organise a count with all the problems they faced of fetching ballot papers down from Cumbria by horse and cart-indeed, I have a picture in my own home of Sir Winston Churchill going in a carriage to his own count in Epping-why cannot these modern, rather well paid, rather opinionated and rather self-aggrandising individuals do it?
I congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde on securing this debate. I look to the Minister not to ring-fence money for the count, but simply to say that the count shall take place on Thursday night.
10.15 am
Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, South) (Lab): I want to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns) on securing this debate. I also want to thank Members from both sides of the House for supporting the two early-day motions that I tabled, in the last Parliament and this Parliament, to save general election night. Both were supported by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles); he was one of the first six names on those early-day motions.
Of course this is an important issue to us all personally, but it should be important to the whole country and not just politicians. How have we reached the point where returning officers who are responsible for only about half the seats in this House have today decided to count votes immediately following the close of polls?
By now, we all know the list of excuses put forward by returning officers for delaying the count; my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar have referred to them. This issue is not just about the counting of postal votes; if it was, there would be no impact whatever on the time it takes to produce an election result. Returning officers are suggesting that the validation of the postal ballots in advance of the count is causing concern and could cause a delay of the count until the next day.
At the next general election, whenever it is, it is hardly likely that-even with an increase in postal ballots-the turnout will be anything like the high turnouts that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s, which were in the high 70s or 80 per cent. The total number of votes that returning officers and their staff will have to count will be significantly reduced from previous years; it is the validation that is the problem.
When the Interim Electoral Management Board of Scotland issued its consultation paper, it highlighted the problem that
"a significant percentage of the total number of postal ballots cast in each election would be submitted, or would be expected to be submitted, on polling day itself."
It is very important that the interim board did not give a specific figure about the number or even the percentage of ballot papers that it expected to be submitted on polling day itself. The reason why it did not do that is that, as everyone who has taken part in an election campaign will know, the number of postal ballot papers submitted on polling day-even now, following a vast increase in the number of people who apply for postal ballot papers-is insignificant. Although postal ballot papers have to be validated and the signatures on them have to be checked, it is simply not the case that so many of them are submitted on polling day, before office hours end at 5pm, that they will in any way affect a timeous result.
Mr. Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester) (Lab): My hon. Friend is quite right that the postal vote ballot paper is being used as a reason, perhaps as an excuse, for delays in counting. However, another reason is the separation of ballot papers if there is a local government election on the same day as a general election. My own experience of such counts, in both 2001 and 2005, was that it was more than possible to carry out that separation of ballot papers. In our case, if there is a local government election and a general election on the same night, the custom now is to count the local government election ballots the following morning.
Mr. Harris: My hon. Friend has made absolutely the right suggestion, as far as having elections for two different bodies on the same day is concerned. In Glasgow, it was natural practice that, whenever the Scottish Parliament elections were held on the same day as local elections-as happened until 2007-the local election results were announced the next day and the Scottish Parliament election results were announced overnight.
Another excuse that has been given by returning officers for delaying the count is cost. Returning officers do not mind accepting the extra payment themselves, of course, but they do not want to pay their lower-paid staff the extra money that they would receive for performing overtime duties. Therefore, those lower-paid staff are expected to do the counting in office time on a Friday. That is all very well, except for the fact that those staff who are counting ballot papers on a Friday would normally be doing something else; they would normally be doing their other duties, for which they are paid. When will those duties be carried out if they must now count ballot papers on the Friday? There is no significant cost saving to that; it is a red herring.
My favourite excuse so far is health and safety. I am not aware of many people who count ballot papers fainting or dropping down dead. I am not saying that there are no pools of blood on the floor of the Scottish exhibition and conference centre when the Glasgow seats are counted, but that is largely the result of frank and firm exchanges between candidates rather than a plethora of paper cuts to the people doing the counting. That is another tremendous red herring.
The Gould report, commissioned after the unfortunate delays and problems with the 2007 election results in the Scottish Parliament, has been used as another excuse for not holding election counts immediately after the polls close. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde, who was probably closer to the debacle than he likes to remember-[Interruption.] He was not responsible for it, but is certainly familiar with what occurred in May 2007. As he has pointed out on many occasions, although at the beginning of its consultation document the interim electoral board quoted Ron Gould saying that there should be no more overnight counts, what went wrong in 2007-the breakdown of the counting machines, the confusion over the ballot papers-would have occurred anyway. Delaying the count until Friday would have had absolutely no effect on a single ballot paper.
We have discussed accountability; it is the title of this debate. As my hon. Friend said, the Government cannot and should not run election counts, and returning officers' operational duties must be seen to be utterly immune to political interference. However, it has been suggested that some amendment to the Constitutional Reform Bill currently before the House might be phrased so as to place a duty on returning officers to make every effort to count as soon as possible after the polls close. Will the Minister indicate in winding up whether he believes that such an opportunity might be available next week? I am more than happy to table such an amendment if it is deemed appropriate.
There is arrogance and high-handedness among returning officers, who-certainly in Scotland-are all paid six-figure sums for their day job as chief executive of a council. If they really believe that the job of returning officer is beyond them, if they cannot cope with the responsibility of conducting a punctual count of ballot papers immediately after the polls close, and if their other duties as chief executives of local authorities delivering important services to local people are far too important to allow them to spend much time doing the job of a returning officer, then, as the hon. Member for Brentwood
and Ongar said, there are other people willing to take up the reins. If they cannot do the job, I am sure that others will step forward.
Why is it important to hold the count immediately after polling? It has entertainment value. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar seemed almost to dismiss that, but it should not be dismissed. A general election count is an important television event. We should not underestimate or dismiss the value of making politics entertaining, and even gripping, at a time when engagement in politics is, by all accounts, fading. My earliest political memory is of keeping my mum company on the sofa during the early hours of a Friday morning after everyone else had given up and gone to bed. Her fascination with what was happening in the country and with the results as the night unfolded was so infectious that it influenced the choice of my current profession.
Another reason is that holding the count immediately after polling is democratic. I cannot emphasise that enough. A delayed count justified by all the erroneous excuses to which I have referred would send out an appalling message that the casting of votes as part of the country's decision about which party should form the Government is not important enough to do quickly, and is certainly not as important as in the past.
Mr. David Wilshire (in the Chair): Before I call Mr. Ruane, may I point out that I hope to call Jo Swinson at half-past 10?
10.24 am
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab): I shall be as brief as possible, Mr. Wilshire. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns) on securing this debate and thank him for the praise that he heaped on me. I would also like to recognise other MPs who have campaigned on the issue.
I was first alerted to the issue by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown), and a band of us, including my hon. Friends the Members for Edmonton (Mr. Love), for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) and for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall), have campaigned on it for nine years. I have tabled 260 questions about electoral registration and, along with other MPs, have had about 10 meetings with the Electoral Commission. I have met every single Minister and Secretary of State and contacted hundreds of my colleagues about the important issue of electoral registration.
We had some success with the Electoral Administration Act 2006, convincing Ministers to alter the balance not just by securing votes to prevent postal ballot fraud but by widening participation. However, I judge success by numbers. Ten years ago, 3.5 million people were missing from the electoral register; today, 3.5 million people are also missing. There has been very little progress on electoral registration officers' function of ensuring that everybody who should be on the register is on it.
There are many reasons for that. The performance indicators developed by the Electoral Commission are inadequate and rely on self-assessment, which is not always the best form of assessment, even with follow-up. It is not good that it has taken three years-from 2006 to 2009-to determine officers' performance. When I met the Electoral Commission last year, I asked whether it would write to each MP who had an underperforming
ERO. It said that it could not do so. I had to go on the Electoral Commission website, which was not functioning properly, look at each individual authority and determine which EROs were not performing, find out the MPs for those local authorities and contact them to tell them that they had an underperforming ERO.
That should not be down to me as a Back-Bench MP. The Electoral Commission should be engaging MPs, Assembly Members, MSPs, Members of the Legislative Assembly and local councillors to tell them that they have an underperforming ERO. I am pleased that today's answer to a parliamentary question that I tabled last week has at least named all the underperforming EROs. There are 66 of them, including eight in Wales-Caerphilly, Carmarthenshire, Conwy, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport, Rhondda, Cynon and Taff and the Vale of Glamorgan-and several in Scotland.
Things are not progressing as they should be. Self-assessment is not effective and needs to be enhanced. Perhaps it is down to a lack of training or ignorance on the part of some EROs. I was informed last week by a colleague that when he asked his local ERO whether he would go on an electoral registration drive, the ERO looked at the wards and said, "Hold on, these are Labour wards. It would be political if I got them on the register." That is not the case. It is not about benefiting one party or another. The worst performing authority in the country is a Conservative authority. The worst in Wales is a Plaid Cymru authority: it is Ceredigion, with 55 per cent. electoral registration. The issue is not about politics, but about democracy-and a basic building block of democracy is the register.
I tabled a parliamentary question about the funding for electoral registration in England, but the figures are not collected centrally, although they are in Wales. I asked for the figures in Wales and then analysed them in descending order. Lo and behold, the more money spent on electoral registration, the better the registers. Who would have thought it?
Under the Electoral Administration Act 2006, the Government gave £17 million to local authorities for electoral registration. It was not ring-fenced, so the Government do not know whether the money is being spent on what it should have been spent on. We need to follow the trail. The minimum that we should do is allocate the money and say, "This is what you should be spending it on. If you don't spend it on that, we'll want an explanation."
On individual registration, there are currently 3.5 million people not on the register. If individual registration is introduced, we will lose another 3.5 million people; that would make 7 million people. Those are some of the most disadvantaged people in society. A third of the poorest people in the UK are off the register. There cannot be a functioning democracy without those people on the register.
I pay tribute to my local authority, Denbighshire county council, and its electoral registration officer, Gareth Evans. Over the past three or four years, he has put a further 6,000 people on the register, taking it from 50,000 to 56,000. That was done through active dialogue with me and through the support of the local authority. Nevertheless, we still have only a 92 per cent. registration rate according to the latest figures for the United Kingdom, which are there for everybody to look at in the House of
Commons Library. I congratulate my officer, Gareth Evans, but 92 per cent. is not good enough, so I wish him the power, the will and the finance to do even better.
Mr. David Wilshire (in the Chair): Before I call Jo Swinson, I should say to Members that I have also been in the position of being frustrated when I could not be called. I am sorry, but I said that I would call Jo Swinson at 10.30.
10.30 am
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD): Thank you, Mr. Wilshire. I congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns) on securing this debate and on his thorough and well-argued introduction. We have benefited from his experience of being a Minister in charge of electoral administration and of proximity to the difficulties in the Scottish elections in 2007, as has been mentioned.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) on tabling the early-day motion on this issue and on encouraging Members to hold an Adjournment debate on the subject. I am glad that we have that opportunity today. The over-subscription of speakers in this debate goes to show the interest of MPs in all things electoral.
I will focus mainly on the issues of election night. Before I come to that, I should say that I think returning officers do a vital job. It is not always a straightforward one, and in some cases they have to make difficult decisions and judgment calls. It is right that they should be able to get on with it independently of politicians, within the framework that Parliament sets.
The move towards additional postal voting in recent years has been helpful for democracy. I am sure that when knocking on doors, other hon. Members have spoken to elderly people who are concerned when an election is coming up. For example, we had a by-election in my constituency in December when there were slightly more treacherous conditions and it was getting dark very early. The ability to apply for a postal ballot without the need for huge forms or doctors' letters has enfranchised many people. Issues of fraud have been raised as a result of postal voting so I welcome that signatures are now required. That raises the issue of verification, but the implementation does not generally seem to have been problematic.
I was shocked by the statistic, given by the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), that 3.5 million people are not on the electoral register. That should shock and horrify us all. Being on the register is vital if people are to have a voice and choose who should represent them.
Chris Ruane: Would the hon. Lady like to comment on the former Liberal Democrat leader of Islington council, who wanted to keep even more people off the register?
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