Clause 41 (Hansard, 17 July 1972)

§ Mr. Oakes
I beg to move Amendment No. 229, in page 20, line 19, at end add: 'or where there are two or more districts within one constituency then the councils of the districts may appoint an officer of one of the councils to be the registration officer for the whole of that constituency'. The Clause concerns that very important funtionary, the registration officer, the person whose duty it is to register the electors in a constituency for either parliamentary or local government elections. Under the Clause as drafted, that responsibility must be given to a specific officer within a district. That is reinforced in the case of London, where the Common Council of the Cities of London and Westminster will appoint its own registration officer for the City part.
A conflict or confusion could arise between constituencies and districts, par- 130 ticularly between now and the report of the next boundary commission for parliamentary elections. In some districts there are a number of constituencies. In some constituencies there are a number of districts.
All that the Amendment seeks to do is to make one officer of one district the responsible registration officer for the whole of the constituency if the districts get together and agree that that should be so rather than a separate registration officer having to be provided for each part of the constituency because it happens to be in separate districts.
We all know to our cost that during the course of an election it often transpires that not only a few voters or a few houses but a whole street mysteriously is not on the register because someone has slipped up. All hon. Members know that it is always 100 per cent. one's own supporters that seem to be missing from the register. The more people there are as registration officers, the greater the risk of such an error creeping in. If one man is responsible for the whole register of a constituency there is less risk.
A more practical point is that many election registers are compiled, not on a district basis, but on a constituency basis by means of computer techniques. This is a swifter and sometimes safer way of producing a register, because the necessary material can be fed into the computer and much time can be saved.
If the basis is transferred to a rigidly district basis, rather than the current constituency basis, again there could be cause of confusion and omissions from the register. The Amendment is designed to help where there are a number of districts within one constituency. In Standing Committee the then Minister of State said that he would consider the matter and discuss it with the political parties, who are most concerned about this, because they have the problem of dealing with the registration officers.

§ Mr. Carlisle
As the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) has said, this is a small point which he raised in Committee. The effect of the Amendment would be that where a constituency includes two or more districts the council should be able to appoint an officer as registration officer for the whole constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for 131 Sutton and Cheam (Sir Richard Sharpies) undertook in Committee to look into this matter, because there is an obvious difficulty. It was pointed out in Committee that there are provisions in Schedule 6 for the Home Secretary to make regulations about registration.
As my hon. Friend then forecast, there has been a meeting of representatives of the political parties and the local authorities to discuss the problem which the hon. Gentleman rightly drew to our attention. The outcome of the meeting is that they have concluded that the inevitable difficulties arising could be resolved by regulations designating one of what would be potentially several registration officers in a constituency straddling more than one district to be the co-ordination officer for registration, and laying a duty on the others to meet his requirements. That designation would also provide one registration officer for each constituency to whom both the electors and the parties could refer.
I understand that this proposal is acceptable to the political parties and to the local authority bodies which have considered the matter. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel that this meets his point.

§ Mr. Oakes
By leave of the House. In view of what the Minister of State has said, it is obvious that my point is being met by regulation as distinct from Statute. Therefore, I am happy, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.