Electoral Commission

As we know, the Electoral Commission is responsible for overseeing several aspects of electoral law, such as the registration of political parties, the monitoring of significant donations and the regulation of party spending on electoral campaigns. A further responsibility is promoting public awareness of, and involvement in, the democratic system. I understand that that responsibility commands 50 per cent. of the commission’s budget, and I will refer to that aspect of its role first. Over the past nine months or so, we have been discussing and debating low turnout in elections and the associated problems of falling electoral registration. In the Second Reading debate on the Electoral Administration Bill last October, hon. Members acknowledged that there was a crisis in registration. The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), talked about ““democracy deserts”” and the fact that 3 million people, most of whom share some of the characteristics of being poor, council tenants, black, or living in inner-city areas, would not be on the register, whereas those who were better off would be. The problem is illustrated in my constituency and local authority area. Registration levels in Salford vary from 75 per cent. to 92 per cent., with some wards having registration levels as low as 64 per cent., which represents less than two thirds of the people in those wards. Low registration leads inexorably to low turnout, and the turnout recorded in last year’s general election was 61 per cent. The Electoral Commission’s most recent audit of political engagement showed that beneath the headline figures there were now considerable disparities in the extent of political engagement among certain social groups. That shows that social and political exclusion are strongly related and mutually reinforcing. The report says that professional workers are more likely to feel knowledgeable about politics than manual workers or the unemployed. Only a minority of those in very deprived areas are interested in politics, while a quarter are now unwilling to engage in any activity around influencing decisions. Perhaps most depressing of all, the extent of political knowledge and interest in acting and participating is lower among younger people than it is among the population as a whole. Anyone who is active in political campaigning will know that there is a cohort of younger people who have never voted and are becoming less likely to do so as the years pass. I find it depressing to canvass a 30-year-old who says, ““I have never voted.”” Such trends are well known by those who are locally and nationally politically active, and they form the subject of comment and debate by bodies such as the Hansard Society and of reports such as that of the Power inquiry. Having set up the Electoral Commission with the express responsibility of promoting public awareness of, and involvement in, the democratic process, hon. Members should be worried that, five years on, we have a crisis in registration and democracy deserts, with young people and people in deprived areas being uninterested in our democracy and unwilling to vote or to try to influence decision making. Happily, there are measures in the Electoral Administration Bill to start to remedy the problem of registration and to give returning officers more powers to improve access to voting and promote participation. The Electoral Commission has presided over a slide in registration and has done little that has been truly effective to halt the decline in turnout. Additionally, the commission has quite wrongly argued for amendments to the Electoral Administration Bill that might lead to an even greater decline in registration. It has backed individual registration despite knowing that when such a system was introduced in Northern Ireland, it caused a 10 per cent. dip in registration.