HC Deb 26 November 1917 vol 99 cc1770-9

The local authority having power to divide any Parliamentary county or Parliamentary borough into polling districts shall not later than one month after the passing of this Act, take into consideration the division of such county or borough into polling districts, and make any rearrangements of those districts and of polling places which it appears necessary to make as a consequence of alterations effected by this Act.

Mr. J. HENDERSON

I beg to move, at the end of the Clause, to insert the words "In all large and sparsely inhabited constituencies the returning officer shall provide such a sufficient number of polling stations as will enable the electors to record their votes without the necessity of travelling more than three miles to such polling station."

This is a very important Amendment, and I do not think there will be any difference of opinion about it. There are in Scotland, at all events, and I believe in England, very wide constituencies, but I will only mention the one which I have the honour to represent. It is sixty miles in one direction and fifty miles in another. At the last three elections I was very much struck by the fact that there were a large number of the electors who were practically disfranchised. They were all three in the winter time. The election of 1906 was, I believe, on 18th January, and the two in 1910 were in the winter months. The first was on a bright frosty day, but at the time of the others there was deep snow all over the Highlands. I was so much struck by the fact that I had a map drawn showing the distances which some of the electors had to go to record their votes. A good many had to go as far as 7½ miles to the nearest polling station. Some had to go six miles, some five, some four, and some three. If you are going to enfranohise a person it is unreasonable to suggest that he should go 7½ miles to record his vote and 7½miles back again, and it is especially so if the voter is a woman. As the cost of providing the polling stations and so forth is to thrown on the Treasury, I fear there will be a tendency to cut down expenses. In this division, which is 16 miles by 50, there are only twenty polling stations.

Mr. HOHLER

How many would you require?

Mr. HENDERSON

About thirty.

Mr. HOHLER

More than that.

Mr. ANDERSON

One man one booth!

Mr. HENDERSON

No; I suggest from thirty to forty. There is a way out of the difficulty. In the elections for local authorities the public schools are used for polling stations. If you use the parish school, such as we have it in Scotland, as a polling station, that would enable the bulk of the people to vote by walking, it may be two or three miles, to which they would not object. To ask a man, still less a woman, to walk 5 miles to a polling station and 5 miles back is simply to disenfranchise them. It is no use holding out to them an altogether empty gift. I can assure the House that well over 100 voters in that constituency were disfranchised at the last election when the snow was on the hills. With regard to the expense, the polling stations could be run at a great deal less expense than at the present time. At present the presiding officer, as a rule, gets three guineas. As election day is a school holiday, there is nothing to hinder the schoolmaster from acting as presiding officer, and in addition to his holiday he might get the additional remuneration of a guinea. That would give you three presiding officers where there are now one. It is the duty of this House to see that men are not disfranchised because of the fact that they happen to live in sparsely inhabited country, and that they should have a sufficient opportunity given them to record their votes, especially now that the registers are very much enlarged. How could a farmer or a farm servant start off at four five, or six o'clock in the evening to walk five or six miles to the polling station and come back again at night[...] They could not do it. When we are providing all these facilities and putting the expense on the Treasury, the sheriff or returning officer should be charged with the duty of seeing that the people who are now enfranchised should have an opportunity of recording their votes. I am not particularly wedded to the words of my Amendment, but I hope that the President of the Local Government Board will put this matter sympathetically before his chief and see if he cannot meet me to some extent, at all events, and make some provision—I do not care how it is done—in one form or another, so that the people are not disfranchised.

Sir JOHN FLEMING

I beg to second the Amendment. I know the constituency of the hon. Member quite well. I think I know every foot of it, and I have been round it in very wintry weather. There is no doubt at all that if there is a severe storm in these far northern glens it would be quite impossible for a large percentage of the voters to record their votes, more especially since women as well as men are now on the voting list. There are no keener politicians than the people of these highland glens away in Aberdeenshire or in any other shire of Scotland—and I do not omit the glens in the North of England. If there is a class of the community whose opinions are well worthy of being recorded, it is the class that lives amongst the hills. If the Government could see their way to meet my hon. Friend, and make more ample provision than there has been hitherto, it would be very much appreciated by the people who live apart from the busy parts of the country.

Mr. HARRIS

In supporting the principle of this Amendment I would suggest to the Mover that it is rather limited in its words. He suggests that it should be confined to large and sparsely inhabited constituencies. I suggest that the words of another Amendment to the same Clause covers his and makes the principle, if it is a good one, general. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have had a very varied experience in constituencies. In my present constituency, the Market Harborough Division of Leicester, there has always been a very fair and generous provision of voting facilities, and no elector who is really anxious to vote should be dependent on motor cars or other vehicles, but ought to be able to walk independently on his own legs to record his vote. On another occasion I fought a constituency in the South of England, where the facilities for polling were most inadequate The election happened to be held on a very wet day. Many of the polling booths were several miles away from the villages or the places where the people lived, and the result was that the working people and others who had not at their disposal motor-cars and other vehicles were disfranchised through being unable to record their votes. It is very undesirable that election agents should interfere in this matter. As it is, the people who make representations to try and get adequate election facilities are generally the party organisations. The less party organisation agents interfere in these matters the better. It should be the duty of the local authority—the town council, the urban council, the parish council, or the parish meeting, or any properly elected local authority—to make representations to the responsible authority, and, finally, to the Local Government Board, to see that within a reasonable distance of all the electors there are ample facilities for them to record their votes when the election takes place.

Colonel SANDERS

I am generally in sympathy with the object of this Amendment, but it seems to me that there are some very practical difficulties to it. In the first place, I think it is not the returning officer who decides the number of polling stations there shall be. I believe that is the duty of the county council. That being so, surely this is a matter which must, unless we alter the law altogether, remain in the hands of the county councils, and I think on the whole that is the proper place for it to remain, because the county councils know the circumstances in their own localities, and if there is any special hardship the county councils would be the proper authorities to deal with it, and they can adequately deal with it under their present powers without any further Clause in an Act of Parliament. But on the point of expediency I do not know that you can really lay it down that every elector must be within three miles of his polling station. Two or three hon. Members have spoken of circumstances in Scotland. We have very similar circumstances in the West of England. You get on the moors a very scattered population in some places, and if you were to. have a polling station within three miles of every cottage you would really multiply the number of polling stations almost indefinitely.

Mr. HENDERSON

There are the village schools.

Colonel SANDERS

The hon. Member talks of village schools. There are cases in which cottages are three miles away from a village school. If you lay this down as a general principle you not only have to have them at every village school almost in a moorland area, but you would also have to have extra ones at almost every farmhouse. So that while I am in sympathy with the general objects which the hon. Member wishes to attain, I think it is a thing which might very fairly be left where it stands at present, in the hands of the county councils, and I am not sure that as it stands the Amendment should properly be accepted.

Mr. HOLT

I do not think the Amendment can really be accepted as it stands. The suggestion that every voter must be within three miles of a polling station is an impossibility. I know, both by my own experience in East Invernesshire, where I reside, and where this would involve a polling booth being established in my house, and also from my experience as Member for Hexham, where many people walk nine miles to vote for me, generally accompanied by people who have walked nine miles to vote against me, that it is quite obvious that if every moorland shepherd is to be within three miles of a polling station you are advocating that in certain parts of the country each individual should have a polling station for himself and himself alone. But I think, on the other hand, something more ought to be done than is being done now to make quite certain that people have a reasonable opportunity of voting. In my own Constituency there is a village with about 200 electors. It is a very substantial village, but there is no access to it by road. That is a circumstance which is not unusual in America, but I know of no similar case to-day in England. The access to the village is of such a character that the last time I walked from the nearest point of the road I put up a grey hen as I was going to a meeting. If these electors want to vote, if they are unable to go by rail they have to walk something like four miles over a grouse moor. I do not think that is a state of affairs which ought to be permitted. It ought not to be possible for a body anything like 200 .electors—I am not dealing with cases of one or two people—to be required to walk over moors without any proper track of any sort in order to record their votes. I do not think it is satisfactory to leave the matter solely to the county councils. I would rather suggest that it might be a better course to withdraw the Amendment and adopt the next Amendment and allow the smaller local authorities, town council, urban district council, and parish council, if they feel that a locality is not being fairly treated in regard to the provision of polling stations, to call on the Local Government Board to intervene and see that there is a polling station reasonably accessible to these small villages.

Mr. FISHER

I think the House has shown all through the Debates on this Bill that it wants this measure to be as far as possible an enfranchising and not a disfranchising measure. On the Debate on the question of proxy voting it has shown its desire that people, however far distant they may be from the actual polling station, may, if any means can possibly be devised, be able to make their vote actually operative at a particular election. I am myself influenced by the arguments which have been used, which undoubtedly show that even on the old franchise and in the old elections, with many fewer electors than you are likely to have under the new Bill, there have been unusual difficulties put in the way of those who wished to recall their votes, and when one hears of men walking seven and nine miles, one cannot help feeling that, after all, one is doing something of real value in enfranchising people, because they really value the franchise when it is given them. It would be the desire of us all to place really adequate facilities in the way of these who desire to record their votes. The Amendment is undoubtedly conceived in far too narrow a spirit. The hon. Member seems to have forgotten for the time that he does not reside in West Aberdeen, but spends a great deal of his life in the neighbourhood of London, and there are other places than those which can be described as large and sparsely inhabited constituencies. I think he would be the first to admit that what he asks for large and sparsely inhabited constituencies should also be given to large but very thickly populated constituencies, where very often, as I know from experience, it is very difficult indeed to record votes, because there are too many voters allotted to a particular polling place. The whole question wants to be considered from a very much broader point of view. This Amendment and that of the hon. Member(Mr. P. A. Harris), while in spirit and intention they are good Amendments, yet ought not to find a place in this Clause. If hon. Members will look at this Clause they will see that it is only a temporary Clause, until we put in some more permanent machinery, which will have the effect of giving adequate polling facilities for the whole of the country. That will have to be dealt with in a new Clause.

Mr. HENDERSON

I put this Amendment down as a new Clause on the Committee stage, and Mr. Speaker said it ought to come as an Amendment to Clause 32.

Mr. FISHER

I was not aware of that. After all, we have had time to consider it, and those who are responsible for meeting the wishes of the House, and that is what we all desire to do, have come to the conclusion that a new Clause is wanted. That new Clause will be far more embracing than the Amendments which have been put down to this Clause. The new Clause will undoubtedly provide, and I hope it will satisfy hon. Members, that when proper representation is made to the Local Government Board by a local authority or by any influential body of voters that there are no adequate facilities for recording votes in their localities or polling districts, the Local Government Board will be able to give directions, which shall be obeyed either by the local authority or the returning officer—whoever is responsible for any default, negligence or incapacity to fulfil what is the dominant desire of the people in the locality—that adequate facilities be provided. The law is a little complex. It is different in England than in Scotland. In Scotland the returning officer has far greater powers as regards polling districts than the returning officer in England. In England the chief body concerned for polling districts is the local authority. In Scotland it is the sheriff or the returning officer. Whether it is the local authority or returning officer who are in default, if either of them have failed to provide proper and adequate facilities by which the large number of newly enfranchised voters and the old voters can record their votes without any great strain being put upon them by walking perhaps seven, eight, or nine miles, then it will be within the power of the Local Government Board to order that facilities shall be provided. It may be said that the Treasury having to pay the expenses in connection with polling booths and polling facilities might not be very much inclined to adequately meet the wishes of the voters in remote districts. I do not think my hon. Friend(Mr. Henderson) need fear about that. I believe the Treasury will catch the spirit of the House of Commons, and the spirit of the House of Commons is such that it would support the Local Government Board in this country or in Scotland in their determination, after adequate evidence has been submitted to them, that the returning officer or the local authority shall provide proper facilities in order that people may record their votes in the manner we desire.

Mr. HENDERSON

After the sympathetic way in which my right hon. Friend has met me, and in view of his promise to bring in a new Clause to put this matter right, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. NIELD

I beg to move at the end of the Clause to insert the words, "The local authority for the purposes of this Section shall, in the case of a Parliamentary borough which is coterminous with an urban district, be the urban district council of that district,"

This Amendment is to deal with an urban district which is coterminous with a Parliamentary borough. For the first time in our Parliamentary history we have got what is known as a Parliamentary borough, which may consist of an urban district, but that case is not provided for in the Bill. I have no fewer than three cases in my own county of Middlesex where new Parliamentary boroughs have been created and where the boundaries of the Parliamentary boroughs are precisely the boundaries of the urban council district. The local authority under this Clause having power to divide any Parliamentary county or Parliamentary borough into polling districts is the county council. Therefore, you have this anomalous state of things, that for everything else, including urban council elections, these urban councils have entire autonomy; but for a Parliamentary elec- tion, of which they are a complete entity, they are to have the county council coming in to alter their boundaries as if they were one amongst many urban districts. The common case is a collection of urban districts, and there it would be impossible to allow these urban, districts to settle the matter, and it is left to the county council. But when you come to an autonomous area exercising every jurisdiction, it would be utterly against the spirit of the age not to allow that autonomous urban district to divide itself, so far as its convenience is concerned, into polling districts for a Parliamentary election, seeing that it is created an entire district for Parliamentary purposes as well as an urban area. There are in my county Willesden with its two divisions, Tottenham with its two divisions, each a complete Parliamentary area, and Edmonton, which is at present in the Enfield Division. The new Parliamentary borough of Edmonton is entirely an urban district. My own Division of Ealing has always had the powers which I seek to confer by my Amendment because it is a municipal borough, but in my Division, Acton, which has been turned into a Parliamentary borough as a new county division, is coterminous with the urban district area. There the county council will have to step in. When the House has gone out of its way to declare that there must be these new entities of a Parliamentary borough consisting of an urban district, it surely ought to provide that that new borough should have the power to divide itself into polling districts for holding a Parliamentary election. I am quite sure that the authorities could not have appreciated the effect of the words they use in the Clause which provides that the local authority having power to divide a Parliamentary county or Parliamentary borough into polling districts should be the county council. I am a county council man always in these matters, but it is an absurdity to leave the county council to come in and to exercise jurisdiction which can so much better be done by the local authority.

Major NEWMAN

I beg to second the Amendment.

I know there is a certain amount of feeling between county councils and district councils on these matters, and in a place such as Edmonton, which is an urban district council, there is a very strong opinion that the council ought not to be overridden by the county council.

Mr. FISHER

I have listened to the arguments advanced in support of this Amendment with a good deal of attention, and if the hon. Members will allow me I will undertake to consider the matter in connection with the Clause which, I have already informed the House, we intend to bring up at a later stage with a view to securing that proper facilities are given for voters to exercise the franchise.

SIR R. ADKINS

Will the right hon. Gentleman's consideration extend to the Amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division (Mr. Leif Jones), providing that on local representation as to a failure to provide adequate polling facilities in a given district within two months after the passing of the Act the Local Government Board should order an inquiry and require the local authorities to provide such facilities?

Mr. FISHER

I think I may say we shall also be able to deal with that point.

Mr. NIELD

After the sympathetic statement of the right hon. Gentleman, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.