Electoral Law Reform (Hansard, 23 February 1983)

§ Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson (Newbury)

I beg to move: That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the residential qualifications necessary for inclusion on an electoral register. The motion relates to the reform of the Representation of the People Act and in particular to the entitlement of persons to vote. As the law stands a person entitled to vote as an elector at a parliamentary election in any constituency is one who is resident there on the qualifying date, that is, 10 October. That definition, like so many others in our law, seems eminently sensible and all-embracing. Clearly, someone living in a particular constituency wants to be able to vote there. In the course of my speech I hope to show that that definition is open to abuse, and that it has been abused.

Our electoral system is subject to a number of restrictions to preserve its integrity. For instance, people living in a constituency, no matter that they have lived there for a long time and are ratepayers, who fail to return their electoral registration form by a certain date are precluded from having their names included in the electoral register for the subsequent year. Persons on holiday may not have a postal vote because, it is argued, they do not have to be on holiday and can choose between coming home to vote and staying away. As section 1 of the Representation of the People Act makes clear, a person is not entitled to vote as an elector at a parliamentary election in any constituency in Northern Ireland unless he was resident in Northern Ireland during the whole period of three months ending on the qualifying date for that election.

I cite these examples of limitations that we have built into our electoral system because each, in its own way, is meant to safeguard the system against abuse—an intention with which I suspect we all agree. The House will therefore imagine my surprise when I was informed that 19 of the women who have been living in tents and caravans on common land outside RAF Greenham Common in my constituency for many months—although the byelaws governing the common specifically forbid camping—had applied successfully to be included on the local electoral register. How was it possible, I wondered, for people whose residential claim was based on an 956 illegality, legally to become electors at national and local elections in a constituency that was far removed from their homes?

The answer, so far as I have been able to discover, seems to lie in the fact that there is now no qualifying period for residence before applying to be included on the electoral register of any constituency, although earlier this century such a residential qualification existed, and, as I hope I have shown, one still exists in Northern Ireland.

The second factor seems to be that trespass, as a claim to residence, has been accepted since the case of Ford v. Beal in 1877, when a Mr. James Beal with his wife and children went to live in his mother-in-law's house, although she had not sought permission from her landlords for that to happen, as the rules governing her house required. Mr. Beal applied to be on the local electoral register, and his request was upheld.

From what I have read of the case, I am not convinced that it is on all fours with the women who are on common land at Greenham. Indeed, I am not clear whether Mr. Beal knew that he was breaking his mother-in-law's tenancy agreement, or whether her landlords sought to have him evicted. What I do know is that the Greenham women are aware that they are breaking the byelaw about camping on the common, and some of them have been successfully evicted by Newbury district council because of that byelaw. In other words, the 19 women have deliberately flouted the laws relating to the common to enable themselves to benefit from electoral law, and I, like many of those whom I represent, believe that to be an intolerable abuse. The Bill that I seek to introduce will remedy that situation. It will be very short, and will add a paragraph to the Representation of the People Act to the effect that a person will not be entitled to vote as an elector if his claim as a resident is founded on illegal occupation of common land". I submit that this change, although small, is significant, and will prevent the abuse to which I have referred.