Localism Bill

My Lords, this amendment stands in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lord Greaves. I shall speak also to Amendment 129A, Amendment 129H and Amendment 188 within this group. Amendment 120G simply requires that the electoral registration officer should check that the signature of the person on one of these petitions requesting a referendum is the signature of that person on the register. Amendment 129A says that they must be on the register, not just entitled to be on the register. That is an important issue of clarification. Amendment 129H says that they must be on the register on the date that they sign. Amendment 188 says that this process cannot really start effectively and properly until we have individual voter registration, so that we have on the register the signatures of the people signing these things and those can be checked against it. On Tuesday, we listened to many discussions about how many signatures should be required to trigger a request for a referendum of this nature. Apart from the arguments over whether it should be 5, 10, 15 or 25 per cent, it is of considerable importance that, if we are collecting any signatures demanding that such a referendum be held, we know that the people signing petitions are on the electoral register, on it on the relevant day and that their signature on the petition matches what is recorded by the electoral registration officer. That is as will be the case in future for all voters with individual voter registration but is at present the case only with postal voters. At the moment, people sign nomination forms for elections but it is not possible to check their signatures. There are so few signatures required on a nomination form that it is possible quickly to make enough inquiries to see whether those signatures really are the signatures of those people nominating a candidate. However, if in future we are going to trigger perhaps expensive referendums requiring dozens, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of signatures, we must have a process for checking that they are genuinely the signatures of local electors. There will be nothing to check that these signatures are really the signatures of those people until we have individual voter registration in place. We will have it before the next general election campaign. Otherwise, there will be accusations that small groups of people may be able to fill in the forms with different signatures from names that they simply find on the register. There will be no effective way of checking that they really are the electors that they are supposed to be. I have often argued in this House that we need greater security in our election process. We do not really know how much abuse there is of the election process. If more people knew how easy it would be to cheat on some of our election rules, there would perhaps be much more cheating in elections. The previous Government moved and this Government are moving to tighten up our electoral processes as a safeguard against potential fraud. We should have proper safeguards against fraud in relation to these petitions. For example, there have been a lot of problems with the Electoral Commission dealing with donations made to political parties from people on or perhaps not on the electoral register. One of these amendments makes plain that you should be on the electoral register if you are signing this petition—not simply that you should be entitled to be on it. This principle was a matter of significant debate when we considered the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It was clearly the view of this House, the other place and the Government that if you make a donation to a political party as an individual you should definitely be on the register—not simply able to claim that you are entitled to be on it, had not gone on it and had been missed out. The same principle should apply for these petitions. Finally, in these various provisions considering how referendums may be triggered, what consultation has there been with the Electoral Commission about such matters? I beg to move.