§ The registration officer shall make such additions and corrections in the electors lists (including the absent voters list) as are required in order to carry out his decisions on any objections or claims, and shall also make any such corrections in those lists by way of the removal of duplicate entries, subject to any expression of choice by the person affected as to those entries, or the correction of marks placed against the name of an elector or otherwise as he thinks necessary in order to secure that no person is registered as a Parliamentary elector in respect of more than one qualification in the same constituency, and otherwise make those lists complete and accurate as a register.
§ Amendments made: After the word "entries" ["duplicate entries"], insert the words "the expunging of names of persons who are dead."
§ After the word "or" ["or the correction of marks"] insert the words "the placing of marks or."— [Sir.G. Cave.]
§ Mr. GILBERTI beg to move, at the end of Rule 20, to add the words,
The registration officer when revising such lists shall read out audibly in open court the names expunged and inserted by him therein, and all corrections and insertions made by him, and shall in open court write his initials against the names respectively expunged or inserted, and against any part of the said lists in which any mistake shall have been corrected, or any omission supplied, or any insertion made by him, and shall sign his name to every page of the several lists so settled.I am afraid, at any rate, at the first revision under, this Bill that there will be a great many alterations and changes, and it is very necessary that there should be Some rule fixing what is the correct list passed by the registration officer. This Amendment follows out the practice which now obtains in the Revision Courts of the Revising Barrister, and I hope that the Government will see their way to accept it so as to make it perfectly clear.
§ Mr.ROWLANDSI beg to second the Amendment.
Mr. FISHERI am afraid that this Amendment is not one which the Government could regard with favour. It is really contrary to the scheme of the Bill. It was never intended to be an open matter. We are going to change our procedure. The procedure suggested was well suited to the old revising barristers' Court, but we are inaugurating an entirely new system under which there is no Court. If the registration officer makes any material change in his lists it will be his duty to communicate that change to the person affected. That is all we can ask. This Amendment would necessitate the setting up of a new Court on the lines of the old revising barrister's Court and would be entirely foreign to the scheme of the Bill.
Mr. HEALYI hope that the right hon. Gentleman does not mean that it will be competent for the registration officer to sit in private. This Amendment embodies the existing law. It is sometimes very convenient to examine every name. Surely it ought not to be said that the registration officer, if he thinks fit, may decide the matter in private. A public sitting gives the Press the right to be present, or rather they have no right but come in as the public. A registration officer who sees no necessity for this sort of thing being dealt with in public may say that he will sit in private, that he does not wish the Press to be present, and that he will proceed behind locked doors, I do not think the right hon. Gentleman gave me a good answer to my last Amendment. He said that what I was contending for would be secured by rules made by the Local Government Board. I should be greatly surprised if [...] is left to the power of the Local Government Board to say that these sittings may, if the registration officer thinks fit, be private sittings. I should like to see it in the Bill, so that the rights of voters shall be decided in the face of the public, and with the full knowledge of the whole world. It would be most objectionable to have a kind of Star Chamber held by any registration officer who chose to be insolent to some individual or who, perhaps, has had some quarrel with a particular person before him and who took it into his bead to order everybody present to go out while he dealt with this matter in private. I hope we shall have some assurance that it has not entered into the head of any person connected with this Bill that these Courts are to be held in 2301 private. The right hon. Gentleman spoke as if the word "Court" filled him with horror. A public Court is a very good thing. Where would all our rights be if we had not public Courts to decide upon them? I do not say that necessarily this Court is going to be presided over by a man who is weak in his head, but publicity is the sweetener of all public affairs. However we may change the existing system of registration, I hope that the one thing we will not change is the right that every voter shall have his claim decided upon in public in the presence of the Press and of the world
Mr. H. SAMUELThere appears to be a point of some substance in this Amendment. Under Rule 18 it is provided:
The registration officer shall also consider all claims of which notice is given to him, in accordance with these rules, and in respect of which no notice of objection is given, and, if he considers that the claim may be allowed without further inquiry, he shall give notice to the claimant that his claim is allowed. "Will there be any opportunity for anybody else to know that that claim is allowed?Will it be too late after that for notice of objection to be given? I confess that I am not quite clear as to what is the procedure. Will it be possible for the registration officer, in any circumstances, to make an alteration in the register and nobody know about it except the person affected to whom a notice was sent? That seems to be wrong. If nobody knows about it except the person to whom notice is sent, he may be quite satisfied, but other persons may be much dissatisfied and might wish to register an objection. Perhaps the point will be further considered.
§ Sir G. YOUNGERI hope we are not to take it from the President of the Local Government Board that there is going to be any privacy in this matter. I have already alluded on a previous Amendment to the Act of 1843, and I notice that in the Schedule that Act is repealed, with the exception of Sections 81, 82, 85 to 90, 93, and 97. I do not know whether those Sections include the provisions for a public hearing. If they do, no rules of the Local Government Board can possibly get over them unless they are repealed. If, on the other hand, the Sections dealing with a public hearing are being repealed, I think we ought to consider this matter further.
§ Colonel Sir C. SEELYWhen the House did away with the revising barrister and his 2302 Court, we had no idea that we were turning registration into a matter for the registration officer to decide in his private room. If there is any doubt about it, we should be wise to insert this Amendment, or, if the words are not appropriate, they could be dealt with in another place. The House, and the country generally, will consider it very important that the management of registration should be a public matter known to everybody, and not a private matter between each individual voter and the registration officer. I should like to press the Amendment very strongly on the consideration of the right hon. Gentleman.
§ Sir G. CAVEI hope the words will not be inserted. The Amendment requires the registration officer to read out audibly in open Court the names. Under the Bill he has claims submitted to him and gives notice of them. If there are objections he gives proper notice to everybody affected and the lists are published. That gives the whole world notice of what is done.
§ Sir C. SEELYWill not the Press be able to be present at the hearing?
§ Sir G. CAVEThat, of course, is a. matter for the Local Government Board to determine; I do not know at all.
§ Sir C. SEELYThat is the way in which publicity is secured.
§ Sir G. CAVEThat would not be the effect of this Amendment. This Amendment requires the registration officer to read out audibly in open Court what the registration officer has done. The Bill requires that notice shall be given publicly of what has been done.
§ Mr. GILBERTAt present there is a hearing of the objection in open Court, before the revising barrister, to decide whether the objection is good or bad, and he allows or disallows the vote. The voter knows it, and the people in Court know it. Under the present scheme the registration officer will consider the matter privately and will only inform the person affected but not the public.
§ Sir G. CAVENot at all. The person objected to will be there and the register will be published.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Colonel SANDERSI beg to move, at the end of Rule 20, to add the words
"Any person whose name shall appear in the list of voters of any parish in any 2303 county constituency and who resides outside the polling district in which he is entitled to be registered shall be at liberty to make his claim before the registration officer to be registered to vote at any other polling place within the same constituency.
Any person so registered shall be admitted to vote at such polling place accordingly."
This Amendment was considered in Committee, and the right hon. Gentleman did not actually reject it. I can best show what is meant by giving a personal instance. I have a habitation not very far from Lynton in North Devon, and the polling place is Lynton. Railway communications there are very bad indeed, and it is a difficult place to get to. I have voted for this place hitherto in Barnstaple, which is in another polling district. That means that I have to apply at the Registration Court to be starred to vote in another polling district. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are starred in the same way. That is the existing law. All I ask is that the existing law may be continued in this particular. There is no recommendation on the subject by Mr. Speaker's Conference, and it is only right, when no such recommendation has been made, that the existing law should not be altered.
§ Mr. BOYTONI beg to second the Amendment.
§ Sir G. CAVEIf there is no objection to the Amendment, I think the words might be inserted in the Bill. I have a vivid recollection of trying to find the residence of my hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Sanders) some distance from Lynton, and it took me about half a day to get there. It must take him a long time to get to Barnstaple to vote.
§ Amendment agreed to