Northern Ireland (Elections) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Government Operations
Paul Tyler (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, on 27 October, on the comparable order for England, Wales and Scotland—to which my amendment also refers this evening—this is what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said: "I do not understand how shortening the transition period contributes to the accuracy of the register".—[Official Report, 27/10/15; col. 1129.] As so often, he summed up the situation admirably, and in so doing completely demolished the Government’s case that evening. Sadly, he did not then follow the logic of his own analysis and did not vote for our amendment to persuade Ministers to think again. Even more disappointing was that a number of Cross-Bench Peers, who rightly pride themselves on being independent of party politics, voted to support a blatant move to distort the electoral register in favour of one particular party—the Conservative Party This order, by contrast, follows the logic of the summary of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, but only in relation to Northern Ireland. It would delay the completion of the transition from head-of-household registration to the full implementation of individual electoral registration—IER—in the Province for a further 12 months, as the Minister explained. The Explanatory Memorandum claims: "In essence, Northern Ireland and Great Britain currently operate very different systems" That is true. As the Minister explained, IER was developed in Northern Ireland earlier than on the mainland. So for those of us who have been watching these developments—this evolution—over a number of years, the initial reaction must surely be that it should be further advanced in Northern Ireland. There ought to be a prima facie case for moving on in Northern Ireland because it has had plenty of time to develop the new system. Far from that, of course, the order does the reverse. The Explanatory Memorandum also reports, as the Minister said, that the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland and the Electoral Commission have both recommended that those electors on the register who have not since confirmed their registration details should be retained on the register until December 2016. Members of your Lordships’ House who attended the debate on 27 October will recall the strong recommendation from the commission that the same should apply to England, Wales and Scotland. Indeed, given that Northern Ireland has had more time to develop the transition, one would think that the case for England, Wales and Scotland was much stronger. On that occasion, the advice from the commission was then ignored by Ministers despite the very special and particular nature of the commission’s statutory responsibility to Parliament The Minister referred to the elections to Stormont next May. In the previous debate, we were looking very carefully at the implications for the elections to Holyrood and the Welsh Assembly, where it may be thought that the same arguments apply. What is so different about Northern Ireland elections and electoral registration there Noble Lords may also recall that, on that occasion, the Minister constantly justified the Government’s denial of the commission’s recommendation on the grounds that there could be hundreds or thousands of ghost voters—ghost entries on the register—if the transition continued for a further 12 months. I reread Hansard this evening and counted a dozen such references in the Minister’s speech alone, and other government supporters followed suit I pointed out in my contribution that if there were so many ghost voters in October 2015, it was highly likely that a fair proportion of them would have been ghosts in May 2015, at the time of the general election. I said then: "Ministers claim that some or many or most of those 1.9 million entries on the electoral register may be false and potentially fraudulent … This is the register on which the general election was fought. Are Ministers really now saying that the whole election could have been based on a wildly inaccurate, potentially fraudulent register? What is the evidence for that? … Are Ministers now challenging the outcome of the election on those grounds?"—[Official Report; 27/10/15; col. 1098.] Are the Government now claiming that there is a much greater danger of ghost entries on the mainland register, then and now, than in Northern Ireland? If so, what is the evidence for that? Others in the Chamber have much more experience of elections to the various levels of governance in Northern Ireland, but anyone studying the history of elections in the Province would surely challenge that interpretation and conclusion. Indeed, as the Explanatory Memorandum admirably explains, Northern Ireland does not have an annual canvass, so electors are not required to reregister each year. Noble Lords may be forgiven for thinking that this may mean that the register there is less accurate—less up to date—than that in Great Britain In truth, the only real difference between the political circumstances in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the UK is simply this: the Conservative Party has no seats in the Province, no likelihood of contesting constituencies there, and therefore no self-interest in distorting the register. Tonight’s order merely undermines the logic of the previous order and displays for all to see the double standards of Ministers. Our amendment simply reads that the draft order is inconsistent with the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015. I beg to move.