Electoral Commission

In today’s estimates debate, it is appropriate to consider whether the Electoral Commission is giving the taxpayer value for money. I believe that it could improve the service it provides and reduce its costs if it took certain steps, which I shall outline. The commission employs about 150 people. I acknowledge the tribute that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers) paid to their enthusiasm and youth—I was glad to hear that—and to the excellent role played by the chairman. The commission costs the taxpayer approximately £26 million—a figure that could be cut by up to a half immediately if the commission accepted the suggestion inherent in the remarks made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), that all the activity to encourage participation is well beyond the role that the Electoral Commission can realistically be expected to perform. The fact is that, as I am well aware following my recent involvement in the by-election in Bromley and Chislehurst, participation in general elections and in local elections is affected by very different matters from putting an advert on the side of a London bus telling people to go and vote and giving them more information. The issue is far wider and bigger than that, and, to be frank, the Electoral Commission is wasting its time getting involved. The activity was imposed on the commission by the Government—it was not in its original remit—and I think that the commission should get well clear. Quite apart from anything else, that sort of marketing activity requires different skills from the regulatory role that is the commission’s core business. The commission should concentrate on its core business. As we know, it has taken a conscientious and straightforward approach in advocating individual registration and personal identifiers. The fact is, however, that the Government have in large measure refused to implement those measures through the Electoral Administration Bill. At that point, the commission should have had the robustness to say openly that the Government, to their credit, set it up precisely to take such delicate issues out of party politics but then, when the commission made sensible proposals, the Government voted them down, and that is to fly in the face of the logic of setting up the commission in the first place. The Government have adopted a nonsensical position and the Electoral Commission should have been more robust in making that plain. I realise that there are difficulties in the way of the commission making those points in public with force. None the less, it should have tried, especially in view of the information dug up by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) about the advice given on the Government’s consultation document by various Labour consultees that are in favour of individual registration and personal identifiers. That was brought out dramatically in our last debate on the Electoral Administration Bill, and I am pleased because it shows that there is support, not merely from the official Opposition, the Liberal Democrats and the minor parties, but from the Labour party for that sort of sensible improvement. As we have always said, Britain and Zimbabwe are the only countries that do not have individual registration, and it is ridiculous that it should be so. Several hon. Members have spoken about the Speaker’s Committee and accountability and their points were well made. With due respect to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport, who has done a conscientious and comprehensive job, as has the Speaker’s Committee, whose independence and neutrality we accept absolutely, the fact is that the Speaker’s Office and the Speaker himself have many, many other responsibilities. The amount of time that the Speaker and the Speaker’s Committee can devote to these issues is limited. I do not know how many times the Committee has met to consider the matter of the Electoral Commission, but I suspect that the number of such occasions is quite small in any one year. That suggests that, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test said and my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) has said on more than one occasion, we need to examine the arrangements for accountability to this House. Various suggestions have been made—some rather complicated—but the matter should be grasped as soon as possible. The present arrangements are not entirely satisfactory, even though the Speaker’s Committee is very conscientious. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) pointed out, with great force, in his intervention, the whole business of whether the Electoral Commission should take over the work of the boundary commissions is a total mess. It is profoundly unsatisfactory and there seems to be no clear decisiveness about what will happen.