My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for that fighting speech which has enlivened our afternoon. I shall try to answer her questions as well as I can. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked me about open lists versus closed lists. It is probably fair to say that there is no common view within the coalition on this, nor is there between the Government and the Opposition, so it is a matter on which we hope there will continue to be some form of debate. It is certainly the case that next year the local elections will be held on the same day as the European elections, on 22 May, but will then return to their otherwise normal date the following year.
He also asked about moving polling to a Sunday. All sorts of suggestions have been made for encouraging people to vote and making it easier for them to do so, including possibly having two days of voting over a Saturday and a Sunday. The problem with many of them is that the additional costs in staffing terms would be quite considerable, and thus these suggestions have not yet gained the degree of traction that I suspect the noble Lord might like.
On the question of how far we are checking the qualifications of voters in Ireland and Gibraltar, I had better write to the noble Lord to make sure that I get the answer entirely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, proclaimed the depth of the Labour Party’s commitment to the sovereignty of Gibraltar. Perhaps I might be allowed to repeat something that I said some years ago when this question came up. Under the 30-year rule, papers were released on discussions within the then Conservative Government in 1971-72, when a spat with the Spanish over Gibraltar was in full spate. The Foreign Secretary scribbled on one paper that perhaps one ought to consider possible alternatives. One alternative came up from a relatively junior member of the Foreign Office, who suggested that one might perhaps think of assigning the governance of Gibraltar to the Knights of St John on Malta. A
senior official scribbled: “Have you ever met the Knights of Malta? You might as well give the sovereignty of Gibraltar to the Young Liberals”. The reason I use this example is that I once intervened on a Question under the Labour Government and the Minister responsible for negotiating with the Spanish Government had been the national president of the Young Liberals in 1971-72. I pass that on as an anecdote for a pub quiz, if the noble Baroness wishes to take part in one. I was very disappointed that the noble Baroness did not ask me how many postal voters there were on Gibraltar for the most recent European elections. I could have assured her that it was probably fewer than 100. The entire electoral roll is about 20,000.
I take her point about the demands on the Electoral Commission. We will come back to that in the transparency of lobbying Bill, which I am sure we will all enjoy discussing from Second Reading on 22 or 23 October.
On the question of personation, I am assured that the rules for personation in European elections are the same as those that apply to UK parliamentary and other elections. The intention of the regulations is precisely to reconcile as far as possible the regulations for national parliamentary, local and European elections.
I take the noble Baroness’s point that there is no mention on the papers going out at the moment of the move towards individual electoral registration. Perhaps I may take that back and be in touch with her again, because I entirely agree that we need to make people think about the change as soon as possible, and must consider how best to alert people about our move to it. I admit that, as usual, the effective head of my household filled in our Wandsworth and Saltaire election forms again this year, and that I did not check what she did. Therefore, I cannot tell the noble Baroness whether either the Bradford or the Wandsworth electoral forms alerted us to individual electoral registration.
I hope that I have answered all the questions that were raised in the debate, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.