Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak on the role of the Electoral Commission, in which I, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others are involved. I apologise first to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for missing the opening phrases of his speech, but I know very well what his amendment is about and have considerable sympathy for it—indeed, I fully support it—as it deals with an important issue. Of the two things that I want to say, the first relates to the Electoral Commission. When I have spoken on previous occasions when we have considered the Bill, I have not mentioned that I am a representative on the Electoral Commission’s parliamentary advisory group, which includes Members of both Houses and all parties. The parliamentary advisory group offers advice on the Electoral Commission’s proposals and the Electoral Commission listens to our comments. Given that a number of problems with registration need to be looked at, there is certainly a case for having a debate—although perhaps not at this stage—on the role and powers of the Electoral Commission. The commission performs an important job, for which, as the noble Lord, Lord Martin, pointed out, it is also well resourced. However, I think that the noble Lord would agree with me that one problem is the lack of real clarity on the commission’s powers to investigate and to make strong recommendations on the effectiveness of local authority registration processes. Various members of the Electoral Commission frequently mention—and the Members from the political parties who attend the parliamentary advisory group recognise—that, although the commission can try to persuade local authorities to drive up registration levels, it does not have the power to say, ““This is not good enough, so we will not certify you””. Without that power, as I think was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, the local authorities ultimately do not need to try that hard. As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and others have pointed out, we should all be able to agree that registration levels in this country could and should be far better. The current levels are not good enough. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Thornton quoted the Electoral Commission’s March 2010 report, which makes the point—this is true—that registration levels in London went up and then stabilised but appear to have gone down in other areas. My other point is that, as I and others in this House have seen, when a local authority makes a major effort to improve registration, it achieves it. When my own local authority in Hammersmith set out to increase registration, it went up dramatically. As I think my noble friend Lord Foulkes was saying, it was a matter of going and knocking on doors and handing the form to people, asking them to fill it in and then following that up if it did not arrive back. In areas such as London and, indeed, in some other big cities, this is particularly important because you have a very high turnover of population. One estate in my area, the White City estate, had at one stage a 25 per cent turnover of population every year. There was still quite a stable core to the estate’s population, but all the others were changing. I remember making that point strongly to the Electoral Commission a couple of years ago and it was sympathetic. It understands the problem and would be the first to say, ““Yes, the local authority ought to make that extra effort””. There are two issues. First, local authorities can and should make a far greater effort than they are doing and there should be less variation in the country if we are all agreed—as I assume that we are—that registration ought to be maximised. The other point is that, as I have indicated, at some stage we need to think about whether the Electoral Commission has enough power to say to the local authority, ““You are not doing well enough and we expect you to do better, or you will not get properly registered or certified””. We really need to increase that power. As I understand them, this amendment and the following amendment, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, will both have the effect of making it more likely that we will get people to register than we will at the moment with the Bill.