house of lords official report - United Kingdom Parliament

1161 Political Parties and Elections Bill [17 JUNE 2009] Political Parties and Elections Bill 1162
the lateness of the hour I assure noble Lords that I
shall not move those amendments when we come to
them. As regards Amendment 98, I make it clear
again, as we did in Committee, that we still find it odd
that the Government are trying to insist that nothing
can go ahead before 2014, whatever happens. That is
why we strongly support the amendment in the name
of the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Rennard,
myself and my noble friend Lord Bates. That amendment
makes it clear that if the commission believes that an
appropriate assessment has been made, as provided by
subsection (4)(a), a recommendation can then be made
that the process should go ahead. Most of us, being
rather cynical, suspect that there are political motives
behind this and that we are not allowed, if things are
ready, to move ahead of the date 2014, if that is
possible. It might be that the Government have been
conservative, and it might not be possible to get things
moving by 2014, but it might be that we are easily
ready for that date. When the noble Lord, Lord Tyler,
comes to move his Amendment 98, which we are
supporting, we will certainly give it our backing. I do
not know what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, intends to
do with it at this late hour on a Wednesday evening. If
he feels it is inappropriate to divide what I imagine is a
fairly empty House at this hour, he might consider
coming back to it at Report stage. Certainly, as this is
happening at a late hour, we would reserve the right to
consider that if it was necessary.
Lord Tyler: My noble Lords, I think the noble
Lord, Lord Henley, means the Third Reading for a
further look at this. We are getting to the stage now
when we are all a bit punch-drunk.
The integrity of the register is incredibly important
and we welcome the moves that the Government are
making towards personal identifiers. I think I am right
in saying that the Electoral Commission made its
recommendations as long ago as 2003. It is a very long
time ago; we ought to have made more progress by
now. As the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, the
purpose of Amendment 98, standing in my name and
that of my noble friend Lord Rennard and supported
by the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Bates, is to
try to build back into the Bill a little more flexibility. If
we can make some progress, it surely would be right to
do so.
In Grand Committee, the argument that the Minister
gave was that if we were to move more quickly it might
conflict with the run-up to the general election. He is
obviously greatly better informed that I am, because
who knows when the election after next is likely to be?
We might indeed find ourselves with a very short
Parliament. I was the victim of the very short Parliament
in 1974—in and out within eight months. Who knows?
I therefore do not regard that argument as being
conclusive, unless of course the Government are going
to move towards fixed-term Parliaments as part of
their package of reform proposals that are due any
moment now.
We simply thought that it was sensible to ask the
Electoral Commission not to be boxed into a corner of
automatically doing nothing until 2014 and that if
there was a possibility of moving further and faster,
we should do so. But we recognise also that there are
important reasons why that may not be possible. We
are not precluding the possibility of waiting until
2014; we are simply saying that if we can move further,
faster and earlier we should so.
I shall listen with interest to what the Minister says
on this subject in a moment. I assume that he is going
to address that particular point, and then we will have
to think very carefully whether it is appropriate to
pursue this any further at this late hour, or whether it
is more sensible to look at it again, in the light of the
Minister’s response, in time for Third Reading.
Lord Bach: My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords.
Amendment 98 is an important amendment. It provides
the Electoral Commission with a discretion to make
an assessment before 2014 of whether the registration
objectives would be helped or hindered by a move
towards the compulsory collection of personal identifiers.
In tandem, it also provides the commission with the
ability to make a recommendation before that date on
whether the provision of identifiers should be made
compulsory. Our proposal is well known.
Of course, I am aware that some noble Lords
believe that we should be moving more quickly towards
a system of individual registration. As I argued in
Grand Committee, a phased approach is the only way
to ensure that this very radical change is made effectively.
We should not rush it. The specific timetable we have
set out delivers on this phased approach. It has been
developed with great care, with due regard to the
magnitude of the change and the risks involved. What
this timetable allows is, first, sufficient time for the
public to acclimatise itself to the change; secondly,
time for each and every one of the 400-plus electoral
registration officers to adapt to the new system and to
ensure that all are working to the level of the best;
thirdly, time to investigate and test which public sector
databases will be of most assistance to registration
officers in targeting people not included on the register;
and, finally, time to design the infrastructure for the
validation of national insurance numbers, which will
underpin the new system. Importantly, the proposed
timetable will also allow us to minimise disruption to
elections by avoiding, so far as is possible, national
and sub-national elections, such as the 2014 elections
to the European Parliament.
In developing that timetable, we have paid careful
attention to the Northern Ireland experience when
implementing individual registration. That is an
important point in my argument. The registration
rate fell significantly in Northern Ireland when
individual registration was introduced. There is an
ongoing debate about why that happened, and at least
some of the decrease in the numbers registered in
Northern Ireland in 2002 was due to the removal of
the carry-forward, but the Electoral Commission’s
analysis tells us that the impact of that change was
keenly felt among particular groups. It states that
individual registration,
“tended to have an adverse impact on disadvantaged, marginalised
and hard-to-reach groups. Young people and students, people
with learning disabilities and other forms of disability, and those
living in areas of high social deprivation were less likely to be
registered and encountered specific problems with the new registration
process”.