Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her comments on the role I played on this, and I thank your Lordships’ House for the patience with which it has allowed this issue to be dealt. The noble Baroness is right to say that from the beginning of the Bill, my honourable and right honourable friends in another place from the Department for Constitutional Affairs have indicated that this issue has to be addressed. I join the noble Baroness in paying tribute to all those—including Andrew Tyrie, the noble Lord, Lord Garden, and many others—who have contributed to the debate and made clear their strong feeling that we need to address this subject. I would also like to pay tribute to my right honourable friend Des Browne who, on taking over as Secretary of State for Defence, was immediately extraordinarily receptive to the issues that I raised with him. On that basis, I was able to bring forward the amendments that are before your Lordships’ House today, as I promised I would. I take seriously what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord said, and I carefully considered all the questions that the noble Baroness raised both in your Lordships’ House and beyond it. I pay tribute to her for the way in which she has enabled me to have that dialogue, which has been so important. In the remarks that I am going to make, I hope to try to win her and her colleagues over, not least by putting forward the context of this amendment. As the noble Baroness rightly indicated, it is important to see this as part of a broader package. However, this package is different from the one that she suggested. I shall explain precisely what the amendments do, and I have already indicated that they are part of a wider package. The purpose of the amendment is to make the registration process more convenient for service personnel. As noble Lords will see, the amendments to Section 59 of the 1983 Act require the Ministry of Defence to keep a record of the registration arrangements of service personnel, where those personnel wish it to do so and have volunteered the relevant information. The earlier part of the amendment, which amends Section 15 of the 1983 Act, creates a power that will enable the Government to extend the duration of the electoral registration of a member of the Armed Forces resulting from a service declaration. That responds to one of the points the noble Baroness raised about the survey—I hope noble Lords have had a chance to look at it; there are copies in the Library of your Lordships’ House. People were concerned about needing to re-register. That provision will come to your Lordships’ House to be approved, and it is an important element. Its purpose is to make registration more convenient for those who choose to register through a service qualification. Those people could register for an extended length of time, as opposed to annually—that addresses the point that I have made—which would make it particularly convenient for those who are overseas. The amendment does not restrict service personnel to registering solely through a service declaration. Noble Lords who have participated or followed our debates will know that on a number of occasions we have discussed the question of being able to choose to register locally, the potential benefits that people have identified in so doing and their desire not to see us revert back to being able to register purely through a service declaration. I will not go into those again; I think noble Lords are aware of them. The second half of the amendment places a duty on the MoD to keep a record of the electoral registration details of service personnel, to maintain and update that information provided by service personnel about their registration as electors and by what method they are registered to vote. That will then act as a prompt to the individual to update registration details with the local registration officer—most particularly updating the address to which postal votes should be redirected—and enable efforts to be focused on encouraging them to register. It will provide the kind of statistical information that will allow monitoring on a continuous basis, which I know will be very important as noble Lords seek to see that this works in fact. It will also facilitate communication between the unit registration officers and the local ERO regarding the numbers registered and assist in future registration campaigns. I want to put this in the context of other measures that the Ministry of Defence has decided it would like to have as part of a package of measures. These include closer co-operation between the officer in each unit with responsibility for electoral registration and the local ERO, which is an important part of ensuring that this works well, and ensuring that the MoD issues every new entrant into the Armed Forces with an electoral registration form. The MoD will run campaigns during the annual canvass for service personnel whose service declaration is set to expire. Service personnel will receive reminders in payslips about registering to vote, giving such information as website addresses that they can reach. Access will be granted to service accommodation for electoral registration officers. Pilot schemes for on-site polling stations are being set up at two separate military establishments—in the Rushmoor and Westminster authorities. Future campaigns will include a service ““Registration Day””, which will act as a focal point for the campaign when unit registration officers will proactively use all appropriate measures to remind and inform service personnel and their families of the requirement to register to vote and how to do so. I think that fits well with what the Electoral Commission said in its briefing dated June 2006, which I have before me. As the noble Baroness rightly said, the Electoral Commission asks, ““What more can you do?”” It is looking for additional measures that would not require further changes to primary legislation but which could include some of the issues I have already raised. The noble Baroness said that we have not gone far enough. I hope that, having put the matter in context, I have at least begun to reassure her that, as part of a package of things, this is an important measure that I am delighted to be able to bring to your Lordships’ House, having accepted that noble Lords have been extremely active in ensuring that I did bring it to your Lordships’ House. The fundamental difference between us is on whom we put the duty or responsibility for this action. The way our electoral law has worked and the way we have always seen the issue of registration is that the duty and responsibility lies with the individual. I recognise entirely what the noble Baroness says about the difference of the employer status of the Armed Forces. Noble Lords will know that there are other employers who perhaps have people overseas, but I recognise and completely accept the particular significance for the Armed Forces. We do not believe it is right to put the onus on the employer, but rather to work with the employer in these particular circumstances to help to enable the individual to accept and respond to his duty and responsibility. We do not think it is right to treat a government department differently from any other employer as noble Lords could well bring forward other cases involving particular circumstances. We think it is right and proper though that this particular employer should take additional action and be seen to be very positively encouraging people, who carry out for us the most significant of tasks, to register. Of course there will be resources implications in what the noble Baroness is suggesting. I will not go into those because that is not at the heart of the matter. I think that it is very important that we recognise what we are seeking to do. I know that I will probably have disappointed the noble Baroness, but I hope that noble Lords will see that in what we propose, we stick with the principle that it is for the individual to take that responsibility. We should not shirk from that, but it is absolutely right and proper—I pay tribute to all those who have helped me to get this far with the amendment—that we do all that we possibly can to ensure that they can do so. I hope that noble Lords will accept my amendment.