Electoral Administration Bill

Indeed, on operations, and sometimes, as we know, in extremely dangerous life-threatening situations. I am grateful to my colleagues in the MOD for the positive and supportive way in which they have responded to the issue. We will do everything that we can to register those people, because it is not acceptable to send them to represent our country abroad in very dangerous situations without giving them every opportunity to vote in any of our elections. Amendments Nos. 78, 87, 94, 105, 107 to 109 and 124 were introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Rix and Lord Carter with support from the Government. They deal with the abolition of common law incapacity and relate to assistance for people with disabilities. The other amendments in the group are consequential, and they change the terms ““physical cause””, ““physical incapacity”” and ““incapacity”” to ““disability””. Amendment No. 78 abolishes any common law rule that links a person’s capacity to vote to their mental state. That is what currently ties the language of ““idiots”” and ““lunatics”” to electoral legislation, and it has led to disabled people being denied the right to vote. That link is derived from outmoded concepts and terminology found in 14th-century statute law and 18th-century cases. It has led to election officials making unjustified assumptions about the mental capacity of disabled people, and it has no place in modern law and our modern democracy. Amendment No. 78, which has been developed in conjunction with organisations such as Scope and Sense, will allow disabled people to be subject to exactly the same eligibility criteria as everyone else. Other amendments in the group clarify the language used about disabled people in election law, replacing the word ““incapacity”” with the word ““disability””, which is a much more appropriate term for the purposes of election law, because it encompasses all forms of disability and does not simply imply mental incapacity. I am proud that the Government have eradicated that language and the behaviour that it encourages from electoral law. Amendments Nos. 82 and 83 relate to anonymous registration and the names of electors allocated to polling stations. As it stands, the returning officer would have no obligation to provide the parts of the register that contain entries relating to those who are anonymously registered. The amendments correct that by substituting ““names of”” in rule 29(3)(c) for ““entries relating to””, and similar consequential changes are already included at other points within the Bill. Amendment No. 83 makes a small change to the provisions relating to anonymously registered electors. Paragraph 15(7) of schedule 1 allows the electoral number of an anonymous entry to be included in the edited version of the register, which is available for general sale. Although an anonymously registered person’s name and address will not appear on the edited register, we believe that the inclusion of even the elector’s number creates a small potential risk, particularly in registers that cover a small area where undue attention could be drawn to an anonymous entry. The risk is small, but it could be avoided altogether if the edited register were not to include anonymous entries. Conservative amendments (a) and (b) would create a system in which the relevant Department would have to register service personnel and Crown servants, unless those people chose to opt out, and they would have significant resource implications. Apart from setting up the system, the Department would be obliged to check with the relevant electoral registration officer that the relevant person was actually registered to vote, which would be extremely time-consuming and costly. In addition, the amendments cover all Departments, which seems unnecessary because, with the exception of service personnel, about whom I have already spoken at length, we have no evidence to suggest that there is a problem with electoral registration among employees of other Departments. I therefore ask the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) to withdraw the amendment.