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Under the 2004 regulations, candidates for the European Parliament must have their nomination papers subscribed by two electors, as proposer and seconder, and 28 other electors. During the consultation, there was widespread support for the view that this places an undue administrative burden on those seeking to be candidates and on those responsible for verifying that the subscribers are genuine. The regulations before us today would bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the UK by removing the requirement that a candidate’s nomination paper at European elections be subscribed.
6 pm
The Committee may wish to note that a new provision has been introduced to regulate the release of information by presiding officers on the number of ballot papers issued on polling day. It has been common practice for many years in Northern Ireland for this information to be released by presiding officers on polling day. However, there is no statutory provision to regulate the practice. This has led to concerns that presiding officers are not taking a consistent approach to releasing this information, and some presiding officers have had to endure excessive demands for it, often to the extent of distracting them from carrying out their primary duties.
It is clear therefore that statutory guidance is necessary. The question is whether we should legislate to prohibit this practice altogether or seek to regulate it. None of the respondents to the consultation was in favour of legislating to prohibit it. For this reason, the draft regulations include provision for the chief electoral officer to direct presiding officers on when and how they may release this information on election day. Presiding officers will be able to release it only in line with the chief electoral officer’s directions.
I believe that this will protect presiding officers from excessive requests and against claims of favouring one party over another, while still allowing parties to continue to pursue as large a turnout as possible in areas where the turnout may be low. However, I appreciate that this is a new policy and, for this reason, the Government will closely review its operation with the chief electoral officer and the Electoral Commission shortly after the election. If the new policy is deemed to be a success, the Government will look towards
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In summary, these regulations are necessary to ensure that the current law governing European elections in Northern Ireland is fully up to date with legislative developments elsewhere in the UK. The consultation demonstrated that there is widespread support in Northern Ireland for these updates and the other changes contained in the regulations. I strongly believe, therefore, that the regulations are essential to ensuring that the June elections are administered successfully, and I hope that the Committee will agree. I beg to move.
Lord Glentoran: I thank the noble Baroness for that very clear and concise presentation of what, at first sight, looks like a pretty horrendous provision. As she explained, in fact, it makes a lot of changes to a number of Bills. We have been regularly legislating for elections in Northern Ireland over the past five years, and I believe that now we have probably come ahead of the field in Europe. We have as sound and good a system as anywhere, and it is certainly better than the rest of the United Kingdom on all fronts; that is for sure. I am happy about that.
The recent changes seem to be down to good sense. On removing the 30 people who have to vouch for a candidate, it is understood that the fact that the candidate has to put up £5,000 is probably a big enough deterrent to stop him playing the fool as a candidate and messing up the election. The question of releasing information is probably a concern in Northern Ireland more than in other parts, because there are two, three or four parties, or sometimes eight, and everyone assumes that the officials are biased and are going to help one party more than another, and so on. That certainly happened from time to time in elections in Northern Ireland. The parties wanted to know how many voting papers had been released, and sometimes they were told and sometimes they were not. It may have depended on which party wanted to know and which did not, or on what the presiding officer felt at the time. Now, under the present legislation as a result of this instrument, as I understand it, the senior presiding officer will decree that this information will be released twice during the day, at 11 o’clock in the morning and 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and in all the polling stations at the same time and in the same manner I hope. I am getting nods from behind the Minister. That has to be a plus.
This is a good order. I thank the officials for briefing me beforehand, when I was able to ask a number of questions. This is a long order, and we have had a lot of electoral law recently. Are there any plans to consolidate all the amendments and different electoral legislation for our little province into one statute? It would be very handy for all those concerned with managing elections. I support this statutory instrument.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: I, too, thank the noble Baroness the Lord President for introducing this. Our concern about the legislation is about the timing. It is a complicated order, coming quite close to elections. We understood that it was government policy not to
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Like others, however, we welcome this order, which makes sensible provisions to improve the conduct of European elections in Northern Ireland. We particularly welcome the provisions regulating the release of information by presiding officers on the number of ballot papers issued on election day and by allowing the returning officer to direct how and when that information will be released. This provides clarity to presiding officers, party officials and all those involved in the running of election day in Northern Ireland.
We also welcome the introduction of smart passes and photographic provisional driving licences in the lists of documents to verify a voter’s identity on election day. While it is important to have in place proper protection against electoral fraud in Northern Ireland, we must do all we can to ensure that no one is disenfranchised. The order should be helpful in both those respects.
Lord Bew: I, too, thank the noble Baroness the Lord President for introducing this instrument. I welcome the decision to hold the suspension of the count at 11 pm. For Northern Ireland Assembly district council elections, that makes sense. I also agree that it is right to abolish the need for the subscription of nomination papers; the idea that you had to have a proposer, a seconder and 28 others seems to be over-elaborate, and this is a useful change.
The Government have insisted that the broad thrust of this legislation is to bring Northern Ireland’s electoral legislation fully into line with the rest of the United Kingdom. The proposal, which has a lot of common sense behind it, that there should be a regulation for the release of information by presiding officers on the number of ballots issued during the day, and that guidance should come from the chief electoral officer essentially controlling that, in a way takes Northern Ireland away from the UK model. I understand that the Electoral Commission had some concerns on that score, and I would be grateful if the Minister would comment on that point. It is not that I have any serious reservation about the proposal, which seems to be a wise one, but it slightly conflicts with the broader logic of government policy in this respect.
The point has also been made that it is government policy that legislation affecting elections should not be introduced less than six months before an election. This seems to be an exception, even if one accepts that in this case the legislation is basically sound.
I have one final query, which relates to an issue that arose some weeks ago when the Minister was putting through the legislation that she referred to earlier with respect to the Northern Ireland Assembly elections and by-elections. This is slightly outside the remit of the legislation that we are considering today, but it is intimately connected with her answer to me on that day and to a lacuna in this legislation. I asked her to defend the arrangement that by-elections would not be held in the case of Assembly elections. I was
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That is even more so in the case of a European election. Should a nationalist republican—who would in all likely circumstances be elected as one of the three candidates—be run over by the proverbial bus and we had a by-election, which, as I understand it, is the current regulation, it is almost certain that there would then be a unionist victory in the by-election. The sensitivity that the Minister displayed, rightly, in her reply to me in the case of the Assembly elections, for the way in which by-elections could lead to a distorting result and an unfair outcome, is even more marked, potentially, with respect to European elections.
That is outside the scope of these regulations, extensive though they are. I would like to have a sense that the Government are aware of the difficulty; that is really all that I am asking for this afternoon. There is a potential problem on this score. I thank the noble Baroness for introducing the statutory instrument, which is essentially sound and viable.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: I thank noble Lords for the broad support that has been expressed. I agree that Northern Ireland is certainly ahead of the field in many aspects of elections, and it is a delight to be associated with being ahead of the field. I am grateful to the noble Lord for explaining the importance of the release of information, especially in a Northern Ireland context. I understand that there is a sort of conflict with logic here, if I might put it like that, because we are bringing Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom, but not in respect of the availability of information. It is best for Northern Ireland; although it is not logical, we cannot always be logical if we want to serve democracy in the best way. In the way in which we are introducing this part of the regulation, we want to best serve democracy in Northern Ireland.
Consolidation of all the orders and regulations that have been introduced over the past five years is a very attractive idea, and I will take it back to the department. I am sure that it will wish to act on that if it is at all possible, but it would be an enormous amount of work. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, is right to be concerned about timing. We would not wish to have been in a position where we were introducing these regulations so close to the European elections. However, we have been working closely and sharing drafts with the Electoral Commission and the chief electoral officer at a very early stage in the drafting. That has allowed electoral administrators to put together the necessary guidance for the election. I do not think that there will be significant practical implications for the election. It was better for us to take time over ensuring that the regulations were right rather than acting swiftly, so I am glad that we took more time than perhaps might have been expected.
Going back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, about the importance of not favouring one side over the other in Northern Ireland, I emphasise that we will review this after the elections with the Electoral Commission, and we will come back to it.
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The by-elections and the lacuna are being dealt with, as I understand it, in the Political Parties and Elections Bill, so the noble Lord should express his concerns when that Bill is taken through this House.
With that, I thank noble Lords for their support. This set of regulations is dense but relatively simple. They are extremely important in ensuring that the June elections in Northern Ireland will be administered successfully, so they are an important contribution to nurturing democracy.
European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2009
Copy of the Regulation
8th Report from JCSI
Considered in Grand Committee
6.15 pm
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2009.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach): I am grateful to the Committee for agreeing to consider the draft regulations today. Subject to your approval, this will enable the statutory instrument to be in place in good time ahead of the European parliamentary elections on 4 June.
The background is that the European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004 apply the legal framework that is in place for UK parliamentary elections to the conduct of European parliamentary elections, with necessary modifications. The European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2009 amended the 2004 regulations to take into account changes that have been made to electoral law since the last European parliamentary election in 2004. After being approved by this House and the other place, the 2009 regulations were made on 29 January 2009 and came into force the following day.
The draft regulations before us today are necessary to correct a small number of unintentional errors introduced into the 2004 regulations by amendments made in the 2009 regulations. The 2009 regulations substituted new Schedule 1 to the 2004 regulations, which contain the European parliamentary elections rules. Rule 53(3), as substituted by the 2009 regulations, currently provides that, while counting the votes, a local returning officer must keep the ballot papers with their faces upwards and,
The amendment in Regulation 2(2) of the draft regulations corrects this rule, in accordance with the original policy intention, to provide that a local returning officer must take all proper precautions for preventing any person from seeing only,
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Regulation 2(3) of the draft regulations corrects a small number of very minor errors in the absent voting provisions in Schedule 2 to the 2004 regulations, which was substituted by the 2009 regulations. My department has clear procedures in place for checking draft statutory instruments before they are laid. They were adhered to in respect of these regulations, but unfortunately the errors were not picked up. Although in some respects explicable by the length and complexity of the 2009 regulations, it is of course fully recognised that these errors should not have occurred, and I apologise to the Committee. The draft regulations were prepared as soon as the errors were identified, and it is not expected that their timing will create difficulties for electoral administration in the build-up to the European parliamentary elections on 4 June.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Simon): A Division has been called in the House. The Committee will resume at 6.28 pm.
6.18 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
6.28 pm
Lord Bach: Before we were interrupted, I was very close to finishing my opening remarks. As I was telling the Committee, the draft regulations were prepared as soon as the errors were identified and it is not expected that the timing will create difficulties for electoral administrators. As required by statute, the Electoral Commission has been consulted and has confirmed that it is content with the draft regulations. While the corrections made by the draft regulations are relatively minor, they are nevertheless important to ensure the smooth running of the European parliamentary elections in England, Wales, Scotland and Gibraltar on 4 June. That is our objective. I commend the regulations. I beg to move.
Lord Henley: I congratulate the noble Lord on managing to speak for four minutes on these four pages when his noble friend the Leader of the House managed to deal with 90 pages of Northern Ireland electoral amendment regulations in six minutes. Perhaps the Ministry of Justice could take a little advice from the Northern Ireland Office and keep things shorter in future.
We are very grateful for the noble Lord’s apologies on behalf of himself and the department for failing to spot the errors. In the true spirit of the times, I apologise on behalf of the Opposition for our not spotting them when the regulations went through. However, the rectification seems perfectly straightforward and is set out in the Explanatory Note, and for that we are grateful. I am also grateful for the noble Lord’s saying that the department’s procedures did not work as they should have done. Should a further measure be required in future, we hope that the department will ensure that the procedures work as they should, and that such mistakes can be spotted earlier. I offer the Opposition’s full support for the regulations.
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Baroness Garden of Frognal: Although it was obviously unfortunate that the errors crept in, we, too, entirely accept the Minister’s explanation and raise no objection to the regulations.
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Lord Bach: I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for what they had to say.
Committee adjourned at 6.30 pm.
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