My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing and explaining the purpose of these instruments.
To take a step back—the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, made these points—the process of registration and indeed now voting with ID is becoming more complicated, both for the voter and for those who administer elections. Some of us have some degree of suspicion about the Government’s motives, which is why it is important to scrutinise these things and ensure that what is being done is administratively sound rather than politically expedient. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, alluded to the concerns raised over the local elections.
We need to be clear that what is being proposed here, first, is fair and objective in increasing efficiency and, secondly, will not make it more difficult for people to register or to vote. Millions of people are not registered. Sadly, Scotland has the lowest number of registered voters at only 81%. Clearly, if being on the register or being a postal voter has to be renewed, for example, that might make it more difficult to maintain that degree of participation. All voters should be encouraged as far as possible to register and to vote; no regulations should be brought in that discriminate against any particular class of voter, if I can put it that way. The feeling at the moment is that this is not the Government’s position.
In passing, on the limitation of proxy voters to four, two of whom could be domestic voters and two overseas, I hope the Minister will forgive me if I say that I sometimes think the Government are more interested in getting votes from overseas people who do not live here than making sure that people who do live here actually vote. To that extent, I am not sure whether restricting the proxies to two domestic voters has practical implications that will effectively exclude people who are currently able to vote perfectly legally and properly. It is a question of whether the bureaucracy is excessive or justified and proportionate.
The proposals seem reasonable on the face of it. However, the Minister said in his introduction that, although we will have an extension for a year, thereafter people will have to renew their postal vote on a regular basis. I guess people will get used to that over time but,
with regard to the committee’s report and the quote it got from the Government about the role of the political parties in encouraging people, that is of course a legitimate thing for political parties to do but it is also the responsibility of the state to ensure that people can vote and know how to register to vote.
However efficient political parties are, none of us speaks to every voter, much as we might wish we could, and therefore we require other things. I seem to recall that, years ago, the postman used to be part of the process of registration. That was a standard process; they would knock on the door one day—possibly more than once—and ask to check the register. That is not being done now; door-to-door registration seems to have gone. Online registration is fine, subject to safeguards, but we need to get to a situation in which registration is understood, simple, quick and straight- forward. It is important to eliminate personation, fraud and misrepresentation but, as has been said on a number of occasions, the evidence across the country—although Northern Ireland possibly had problems in the past, and maybe still does—is that the problems are relatively small.
The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, shakes his head, so let me concur: it is of course important that the procedures are robust, but not so robust that they act as a deterrent and a discouragement. We need people to vote. My parting shot is that the behaviour of politicians has been such that the motivation to vote has been diminished quite substantially. There was an interesting report today by the Institute for Government saying that this Government—not today’s Government but the Conservative Party in government—have pushed the boundaries of our constitution, unwritten as it is, beyond acceptability; I think that is how it expressed it. Some of us feel that is exactly what has been going on—not in these particular instruments but in the backdrop to them.
One other question we are not debating today concerns the rights of EU citizens. We have an extraordinary situation whereby Commonwealth citizens from anywhere in the Commonwealth who are resident in the UK have an automatic right to vote and stand in any election, whereas European Union citizens previously were allowed to vote and stand in local or subsidiary elections to the Westminster on. I note that Scotland and Wales have legislated that that right should continue, but the Government apparently want to reduce their eligibility in England. It is outside the terms of this debate, but it would be interesting to know whether the Government really intend to go with that. It would seem a bit odd if, because they can do so, Scotland and Wales take a different course. The question arises: does Northern Ireland, with an Assembly, have the right to follow Scotland and Wales if it wishes to do so? It may not wish to do so, but does it have the right?
With those comments, I say that, although we can understand the purpose behind this, the Government should recognise that there is genuine concern about where all this might be leading. It is making life much more complicated for everybody. The Electoral Commission has not always covered itself with glory. Indeed, one of my reservations about the Electoral Commission is that, in some ways, understanding of the gritty political process seems to be a little absent.
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I think I can say, as an aside, that my former agent has just been appointed to the Electoral Commission on the basis that it wants to hear more about the practicalities of activism. I know that she will certainly raise her voice. Whether she will change the dimension I do not know, but there have been occasions when the Electoral Commission, in my view, has shown itself remarkably lacking in political understanding. It is important that it gets a little sharper at that.
That said, of course we support these instruments. The Government need to know that they will be scrutinised —by people such as the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and my noble friend Lord Wallace; this is not my area of specialty. We value very much what the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, does in this area. He goes into it in detail, and I am confident that he will go on doing so, as will my noble friend Lord Wallace and others. The Government need to be on notice: we accept this, but we will watch closely to see what the outcome is and whether it is fair, just and proportionate in its application.