Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-10-27
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Hayward (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise having listened to the full debate and, like many in this place, having fought many elections. In fact, my noble friend Lord Cormack referred to having canvassed in every election since 1959. I have fought a fair number of elections and the House of Lords Information Office has been good enough to produce biographical details on me. According to its information, I first fought Kingswood in January 1900 and in the same month it says I fought Christchurch, so, according to the Information Office, I somewhat outdo most Peers in this House. That will be corrected at some point I start on an aspect of harmony. A number of noble Lords on both sides, but originally the noble Lord, Lord Wills, identified that we should produce ID in voting. I wholeheartedly agree with all those who made those points On elections, a number of those who know me know that I have been interested in this subject for many years. In fact, and this is to some extent an admission of guilt but I hope of impartiality as well, I was the second new entry in the 1983 intake into the other House to vote against a government three-line whip. I did so on the paving Bill in relation to the abolition of the GLC because I thought it inappropriate. My comments today in support of what the Government propose are against the background that I have taken and still take a very dispassionate view on these matters I will pick up a number of points covered by other Members of this House. First, the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, commented on registration fraud. Unfortunately, it would appear that she has not read the verdict, statements and analysis of the recent case in Tower Hamlets where there is clear identification of that position. Also, the Electoral Commission in 2012 made the point that there should be improvements in electoral registration in Tower Hamlets. It identified that Tower Hamlets had a policy and administration that were above the practice of many of the London boroughs I turn to the question of "ghost" voters. I choose to call them that because having tried to contact these people nine times, they must be pretty close to being ghosts. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to the fact that there may well be people among that 1.9 million—dropping to 1.4 million or 1.2 million—who voted in May. I could understand it if the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, had made particular reference to that and said that this order should not be introduced until there had been that sort of matching process. Instead, we have a catch-all that we will do away with it completely or delay it until 2016 However, these people have been called on nine times. I now speak from personal experience. I currently live some 200 yards from where the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, went to primary school. When I attempted to be a candidate in the last London elections, I visited my neighbours. They were not on the electoral roll. I visited the neighbours four doors down, and they were not on the electoral roll either. When I first moved into my current address, I had eight years of having somebody on the electoral roll who had never lived there. That is the essence of this debate. We are talking about removing people who we have attempted to contact nine times as against those people who a number of noble Lords have said we need to get on the electoral roll. Those are two different groups of people, and that should be recognised in this debate I also listened to a number of contributions in which there have been criticisms of what happened in Northern Ireland. They said, "It happened like this", or "It happened like that". That seems to be a justification not for delaying but for not having IER in the first place. You cannot have both. If you are to have IER, then you will face some of those problems. They have to be tackled through better collecting of registration In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made comments about shop stewards which a number of people who have backgrounds as shop stewards would consider a little unfortunate. He suggested that the AEA was the "shop stewards’ fora"—I think that was the phrase he used. He then went on to quote the Electoral Commission’s report. On page 3, under acknowledgements, there is only one acknowledgement and it is to that same group of people for their work I turn to the question that he identified about primarily urban or rural communities and their retained electors. Taking the top 20 authorities with the worst record on retained electors, it is not, as has been suggested, filled purely with Scottish or London boroughs, although there are a lot of London boroughs among them. The deprived London borough of Kensington and Chelsea is third on the list. The equally deprived borough of Windsor and Maidenhead comes out 12th. Harrow and Scarborough appear in the same block. None of them is an area that one would identify as being either deprived or necessarily totally urban.