Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 47:"After Clause 9, insert the following new clause—" ““PROVISIONS AS TO MEMBERS OF FORCES AND SERVICE VOTERS (1)   Section 59 of 1983 Act (supplemental provisions as to members of forces and service voters) is amended in accordance with subsection (2). (2)   For subsection (3) substitute— ““(3)   Arrangements shall be made by the appropriate government department for securing that (so far as circumstances permit) every person having a service qualification by virtue of paragraph (a) or (b) of section 14(1) shall— (a)   have an effective opportunity of exercising from time to time as occasion may require the rights conferred on him by this Act in relation to registering to vote, and in relation to voting in person, by post or by proxy; (b)   receive such instructions as to the effect of this Act and any regulations made under it, and such other assistance, as may be reasonably sufficient in connection with the exercise by him and any wife of his or, as the case may be, by her and any husband of hers, or by any civil partner, of any rights conferred on them as mentioned above; and (c)   have a record maintained by the appropriate government department of his or her electoral registration option updated on an annual basis.”””” The noble Lord said: The amendment would insert a new clause specifically to address the problem of service voting. Having complimented me by describing me as a terrier on this subject on Second Reading, the Minister will not be surprised by the amendment. However, I am surprised that I have had to table it. I shall not repeat all the issues that were covered on Second Reading, but I described the history of this sorry state of affairs where, time and time again, we have had promises and, I must say, wonderful support from Ministers from the Department for Constitutional Affairs in both Houses. The Electoral Commission has agreed that there is a real problem, as have electoral registration officers. Everyone has agreed. The right honourable Harriet Harman, the Minister in the other place, has said that she has zero tolerance for the problem. I now find myself in the strange position of having to move an amendment; I had assumed that, by Grand Committee, the Government would have tabled a carefully crafted amendment that would solve all the problems. I listened with interest to how problems with other voters whom we cannot track down or who live in multiple places have been addressed. I can offer more than a quarter of a million voters, every one of whose location is known, yet they do not get registered and do not get the chance to vote. That is an extraordinary problem. We all know where the problem lies: the Ministry of Defence will not take on responsibility for sorting it out. That goes back to the ministry having abandoned the arrangements that were in place before 2001 and, as a result of the service voting list disappearing year by year, we have now reached the stage where the MoD has washed its hands. It does not keep a register but occasionally distributes leaflets rather late in the day, if the Electoral Commission can deliver them in time. Although we know that we have a problem and an easy solution, it has been left to me to produce—I fear, on the back of the proverbial fag packet—an amendment that does not start to address the problem. I admit that. It should form a separate part of the Bill, because there are two problems—registration and voting—and the new clause falls within the registration part, but I thought that it was easier to have this promised debate by putting it all together. I hope that we can address all the issues. My amendment attempts to use previous legislation by adapting the 1983 Act, which provided for service voting, to modern circumstances. Service registration is now a fading thing because it confers no advantages. The new clause is designed to ensure that all the Armed Forces have the support of the Ministry of Defence, their employer, in facilitating both registration and voting arrangements, and that similar offers are made to their other halves—in this case, married spouses and people in civil partnerships. I have made one extra change from the 1983 provision, which is to place a duty on the MoD to ensure that it does that by keeping a register of the decisions—because, in the end, it will still be a decision for each serviceman and woman whether they wish to be registered—to show that the decisions have been taken. That register would be updated annually. That would start to place the responsibility where it should lie. We know that if tomorrow the Ministry of Defence decided to go full speed ahead to make every service person able to register and to vote, it could implement that without legislation. It has the ability to know where everyone is; it has a command structure to make sure that it can get the information back; and it has the logistics in terms of the voting part to send ballot forms out to operational theatres and to get them back. But as we have seen in our informal meetings, the natural position of the Ministry of Defence is to resist things which, I admit, would have resource implications. But those resource implications existed before, because under the 1983 Act the ministry had a duty to do these things. It is just that the ministry had the benefit of the changes that took place in 2001. I have tabled the amendment as a marker and I hope that the Minister will bring forward a new section for the Bill that will capture our imaginations and provide a right to this wrong. I have to say that, unlike the other amendments that we have been considering today, this is serious in the sense that the Armed Forces are angry. They feel that they are being let down, which is part of the reason why they look for better representation in some way, because they are not getting it through the parliamentary system at the moment. We have to address the issue. I beg to move.