Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 42:"Page 6, line 18, at end insert—" ““(   )   The duty to maintain the registers under section 9 above shall include the objective that the registers shall be as accurate as practicable, and in particular that— (a)   all persons who are entitled to be registered are so registered; (b)   no persons are registered who are not entitled to be registered; and (c)   the information on the registers about the elections in which registered persons are entitled to vote is accurate.”” The noble Lord said: We convene again and move on to an extremely important part of the Bill: Part 2, which concerns registration. Part 3 concerns the extremely important matter of personal indicators—personal identifiers, I should say; I will get it right once I get going. Part 2 introduces some interesting measures to reform present law about electoral registration. In particular, it introduces duties on registration officers in more detail than presently exists. The amendment would set a framework of policy and general duty for the specific duties set out in the Bill. The whole system of electoral registers is fundamental; it is the bedrock on which fair, open and honest democratic elections are based. That is why it is so important that we discuss it here today. The accuracy of the register is therefore also fundamental. My amendment is similar in some ways to an amendment moved by my honourable friend David Heath at Third Reading in the House of Commons, although his amendment also included proposals adequately to resource electoral registration officers to do their work. The Government were right to say that that did not belong in this part of the Bill and needed to be tackled in other ways, although it is a fundamental matter, which I hope we shall have time to discuss at some stage during Grand Committee. I propose in the amendment that,"““The duty to maintain the registers under section 9 above shall include””," general objectives: first, to ensure that everyone who should be on the register is on the register; secondly, to ensure that people who are not entitled to be on the register are not on the register; and, thirdly, as is increasingly important as more and more categories of people can vote in specific elections, to ensure that the information is accurate. On Second Reading, the Minister accepted that the present state of accuracy of the electoral registers is not as it should be. In some areas, it is really quite good; in others, it is a shambles. We all accept that. As far as I can see, nowhere in the Bill and nowhere in the extremely complicated legislation that now governs elections—from Acts of Parliament to secondary legislation, which is an absolute nightmare to find your way through—is it a clear duty to aim for the maximum possible accuracy in the register. During the debate on David Heath’s amendment, the Minister in the Commons said that it was all implied—that electoral registration officers are supposed to do this, that and the other—but nowhere is it stated that that is what it is all about. I think that it should be stated. We had some discussion on Second Reading here about whether there is a tension between the integrity of the electoral system and getting maximum participation in it. I had some disagreements with the Minister but, when it comes to registration, there is no tension whatever. It is a win-win situation. The more effort and proper investigation that go into making sure that the electoral register is as accurate as it should be, the greater the integrity of the register, because the people who should not be there will not be on it, and the greater the potential participation, because more people who should be on it will be on it. There is no disagreement about that. At the moment, however, the system is not working effectively in all sorts of areas. We have all come across instances in which people who ought to be on the register are not on it. The Electoral Commission’s research suggests that 3.5 million—at least, between 3 million and 4 million—people in the UK should be on the register but are not. That is a democratic disgrace—there are 500,000 such people in Greater London alone. Wherever we are, we all come across these people when we go out canvassing for elections—at least, those of us who still do those things do. Equally, there is an increasing amount of evidence that, in many places, there are people on the register who ought not to be there. I recently had a communication from a councillor colleague in Manchester, who writes:"““I’ve noticed a flat in my Ward which although I know to be a one-bedroomed flat has no less than 7 electors registered there of which 6 have apparently applied to vote as permanent postal voters at that address””." She goes on to say that, when she made inquiries to the city treasurer, it turned out that the elector who had not applied for postal votes there is claiming a single person discount on the council tax. In inner-city and certain other areas, that kind of experience is not unusual. I could give lots of examples from my part of the world, although I will not detain the Committee with them today. It is very important that we should set out on the face of the Bill a clear requirement that the electoral register must be as accurate as possible. I believe that that will help enormously in all instances where electoral registration officers do not do that as much as they should do, perhaps because councils are underfunding them. I understand that the Government will lay down criteria, standards, objectives and targets, so that electoral registration officers will be under the same sort of regime as everybody else is under nowadays. That is fair enough, but I suggest that the amendment provides the very basis for setting such standards and targets and for getting our electoral registers into a much better condition than they are now in many places. I beg to move.