European Union Referendum (Voter Registration) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I add my general welcome to the statutory instrument before us today. It is absolutely essential and I am pleased that the Government acted so quickly to remedy what was clearly a wrong. I hold no truck with those who criticise this, or even try to allege some kind of conspiracy whereby the website was crashed on purpose—that is absolutely bizarre. Clearly, it is right that as many people who have the right to vote are able to do so. That is crucial We do not yet know the reason why the crash happened. As the noble Baroness said, I think part of it will be down to those from the last-minute generation. It might also be that some people saw others in their household receive their polling cards and, realising they had not got one, wanted to go online. I would also like to think that the TV debate excited passions about the issue—but I suspect not. That is something to note in future I wish that this measure was not necessary and I appreciate that there was unprecedented demand on the night. That is generally accepted. However, it seems strange that there was no back-up. During the course of the website being down, it was still flashing across the TV and information was still going out saying, "Go on to the website and register now". That will have exacerbated the problem. There was a failure of process somewhere along the line. Now is not the time to look into that, but I would like assurances that it will be looked at in the fullness of time The noble Lord said that no one from Northern Ireland was unable to register on Tuesday evening. How does he know that? It seems clear that, because Northern Ireland already has a form of IER, nobody was not on the register because of the transition to IER. I am just curious: how do we know that nobody from Northern Ireland tried to register on that evening The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, mentioned electoral registration officers. This now puts additional pressure on them. The reason for the deadline of midnight on Tuesday was to enable EROs to process all the applications. What consultation has there been with EROs and with the Local Government Association The Minister would think me remiss, and that I had gone soft in my old age, if I failed to raise with him an issue I raised yesterday—it seems longer—individual electoral registration. Against the advice of the Electoral Commission, the Government forged ahead with it. The Electoral Commission sent briefings to everyone in your Lordships’ House making it clear that it could not be certain that, if everybody had not individually registered by the cut-off date specified by the Government in previous legislation, there would not be people entitled to vote who were knocked off the register. Clearly, the Electoral Commission was right and the Government should not have pressed ahead. We would not be in the position we are in now if the Government had not forged ahead against the advice of the Electoral Commission. We all recognise that that measure passed only narrowly in this House. One reason the Government gave for doing so was that the boundaries review was dependent on the cut-off date being December 2015. Can the Minister tell the House today—if not, I am happy for him to write to me—how many people have been added to the register since that cut-off date? That is quite significant and would indicate whether the Government were correct to choose that cut-off date, or acted with undue haste At the time, the Government basically said that the names being knocked off the register were really a matter of fraud. It may well be that it was not fraud but just people who had not responded to the, in many cases numerous, requests. I doubt that everybody who was not individually registered had the nine communications and contacts that the noble Lord spoke of, but there were numerous requests and people still failed to respond. However, that is life and people do not respond to every request they get. These things can be quite difficult If the noble Lord can address those points, that would be helpful. As I say, we support this measure. It is essential on an issue such as this that everybody who is entitled to vote does so. I am encouraged that the Electoral Commission is now predicting an 80% turnout on the poll on 23 June. I just hope that the Government are looking at that to make sure they are geared up for it. I remember high turnouts in 1997, when some polling stations were unable to cope and closed their doors before some people had managed to vote. I hope that can be looked at to show that once people have got over the hurdle of registering, they will be able to use their vote on the day.