Compulsory Voting (Hansard, 27 November 2001)

§ Mr. Gareth R. Thomas (Harrow, West)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Representation of the People Act 1983 to make voting compulsory in all Parliamentary elections; and for connected purposes. I believe that everyone has a responsibility to vote, to cast judgment on those of us who are elected to the House, on the parties that we represent and on our handling of the important national issues of the day and key local constituency concerns. Even if a guarantee could be given that turnout in parliamentary elections was set to rise dramatically, the Bill would still be entirely justified, but the fact that the turnout on 7 June was the lowest since universal suffrage was introduced adds a particular urgency to the case for compulsory voting.

Elections are a test of opinion in the country. They are a way of holding politicians to account and legitimising our elected bodies. When the turnout is high, elections are more representative, the elected bodies more legitimate and politicians more accountable.

In addition, if rates of turnout are different between sections of the electorate—between different communities, or between those on different incomes—there must be a risk of political parties prioritising the concerns of those most likely to vote. We are not at that stage in this country—Labour Members are certainly not—but some commentators certainly believe that low turnouts in America have focused the collective minds of the parties on those who vote regularly and argue, in turn, that the sense of alienation from the political process has increased among marginalised groups.

Some members of the Labour party have asked me to justify proposing compulsory voting when it is possible that, for whatever reason, only a Conservative and a Liberal candidate had stood for election. I would not dream of asking any good socialist to make that appalling choice. Instead, my Bill would require voters to attend polling stations and vote either for one of the candidates on offer, as now, or to register their abstention—their protest at the system or the choice before them—on a new slot on the ballot paper.

Some people say that compulsory voting would mask wider problems of participation in the political process, Of course, I agree that political parties, we as politicians and other political organisations need to make more effort to champion political debate for its own sake, to promote a sense of citizenship, to engage with those groups least represented in the House and to celebrate the opportunity that politics offers to make a difference to the communities from which we all come, but initiating debate on how to tackle those wider issues should not be used as an excuse to put aside the specific debate that needs to be held again about voter turnout at elections.

I pay tribute to the work that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did when he was at the Home Office to promote a series of experiments to drive up turnout, one of which—easier access to postal voting—was undoubtedly very helpful to many at the last election. Many people did not vote at that general election because they did not think that there was ever a realistic danger of the Tory party being elected. Nevertheless, the fact that more than 40 per cent. of electors did not vote rightly set alarm bells ringing across the political world.

861 What are the alternatives to compulsory voting? One alternative is to do nothing and to hope that turnout somehow improves. I certainly do not support that. Another alternative that has been canvassed is to offer people an incentive to vote—£10 off their council tax, or 1p off income tax. At the risk of provoking some of those who are genuinely engaged in the debate about turnout at elections, I suggest that there is something slightly odd about paying people to vote. What evidence is there to show that such a move would seriously drive up turnout?

Compulsory voting is not an unproven, alien concept. My hon. Friends the Members for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson) and for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), in their excellent Fabian Society pamphlet on this subject last year, highlighted a study of 44 democracies around the world, and an element of compulsory voting was evident in 13 of the 44—30 per cent. of those studied. Compulsory voting operates successfully in Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece and, I understand, in four of the eight provinces in Austria, as well as in a host of other countries on other continents. It operates perhaps most effectively in Australia, where turnouts of more than 95 per cent. are regularly achieved and just 2 to 3 per cent. of people abstain, with just the threat of a $20 fine to encourage adherence to the law.

Some argue that appalling breaches of civil liberties would be committed were we to require people to register their abstention, but compulsory voting is surely just a logical extension of the legal requirement to register to vote. Is being asked to vote once every five years any more an infringement of liberty than having to fill out a census form once every 10 years or to do two weeks' jury service at some point in one's professional life? Compulsory voting involves a small decrease in freedom but—let us be honest—it is much less of a burden than other obligations that we place on our citizens, such as the requirement for compulsory school education or to pay taxes.

Some argue that a reluctant vote is worse than no vote at all and that those forced to go to the polls against their will be unlikely to cast a well-considered vote. Frankly, that view is insulting or deeply patronising. Indeed, there is absolutely no evidence to justify such nonsense.

Others argue that the enforcement of compulsory voting is a potential nightmare. In Australia, however, compulsory voting has delivered high turnouts without the need for heavy penalties. When a voter is recorded as not voting, the Australian Electoral Commission sends out a letter asking for an explanation. After the 1993 election, the AEC investigated almost 500,000 cases of non-voting. The vast majority—more than 462,000 people—gave valid explanations of why they had not voted.

The valid explanations included the fact that people were overseas at the time or that they belonged to a religious order that prohibited voting. Another 23,000 chose to pay the $20 fine straight away. That left a small group of just about 4,000 who went to court, where the fine increases to $50 on conviction. However, not all in that group were convicted.

In general in Australia, the penalties for non-voting are relatively small, as I propose that they should be under this Bill. When there is a wide acceptance of reasonable excuses—again, as I suggest there should be—there has been a marked increase in the number of people voting.

862 Another comparison—a domestic one—is worthy of note. In this country, one can be punished for failing to register to vote. Registration is compulsory but prosecutions for non-registration are infrequent and usually amount to just a handful every year. The power to prosecute, though rarely used, remains a valuable means of achieving a high level of compliance with the registration process.

We have reached the point where a serious debate about the merits of compulsory voting is urgent. Our forebears fought long and hard for the right to participate in elections. After all, elections are a test of political opinion like no other; they are the defining assessment of the Government and the political leadership of our country. Surely it is not too much to ask that we take 30 seconds out of our busy lives every five years to make a judgment on those who seek to lead us.

§ Mr. James Plaskitt (Warwick and Leamington)

I oppose my hon. Friend's Bill. Although he has raised a legitimate concern, he has identified entirely the wrong solution.

The freedoms of choice in a democracy must include the freedom not to choose. Some people might always wish a plague on all our houses and it would be wrong to force them to participate. Others might wish not to express their choice from time to time when they do not feel that the options available are good enough, and we cannot force them to participate. We need to avoid the arrogant assumption that whatever we and the political parties offer to the electorate at any time is obviously good enough for them to make a choice: sometimes, for some of them, it will not be.

My hon. Friend's Bill risks sending the unfortunate message to the electorate that we are saying, "We are offering you a choice. If you don't like it and it is not good enough for you, we are afraid that we shall still make you choose from among the options."

My hon. Friend suggests a way out in his proposal to allow space for a registered abstention on the ballot paper, but that is not a sufficient solution because an abstention expressed on the ballot paper may be no different from one recorded by staying at home.

My hon. Friend runs the risk of forcing many resentful voters to the ballot box. I fear that it would not be long before minority parties, extreme parties or fringe parties saw an opportunity to place themselves on the ballot and perhaps garner many votes that they would not otherwise have received from resentful voters who do not wish to be at the ballot box and who choose not to mark the abstention slot.

My hon. Friend should think about what it is in our system that imposes discipline on our political parties. Abstentions send a message to us from the electorate, and we are right to be concerned about that. We became used to participation in the 70 to 80 per cent. range, but it suddenly dropped to 59 per cent. at the last general election. The complacent view is that that does not matter because it reflects electoral contentment. I think that that is wrong.

A more realistic view is that there is some disengagement from the process and some question about the legitimacy of us all, not just the Government. After 863 all, allowing for errors in the register, approximately 35 per cent. of the adult electorate did not vote in the last general election, compared with 25 per cent. who voted for Her Majesty's Government, 19 per cent. for the Opposition and 9 per cent. for the Liberal Democrats.

If that unsettles us, instead of forcing people to the ballot box we should think about what choice we offer the electorate, how we communicate it and the nature of elective politics in the 21st century, because that would be the system responding to the message that the electorate are sending us via their abstention. It is an indirect response, but it is a response, and it will come about only if we consider the message and not obscure it by hiding it under forced participation. If there is an issue to address, as my hon. Friend believes there is, we need to confront it, not conceal it.

We also need to think about the process of democracy. Most of the responses that need to be produced to deal with my hon. Friend's concerns should be in the policies that parties offer the electorate and the way in which they communicate them to the electorate. Some of the answer lies in the electoral process. All votes are not of equal value in our electoral system and about 15 million of our voters are partially disfranchised by living in constituencies where parties of their first choice have no chance of winning. That in itself is a disincentive to participation. I do not suggest that changing the voting system will address all the issues that my hon. Friend raises, but it will go some way towards doing that and it forms part of the solution.

Finally, there is the matter of rights and duties. We speak in the House of the right to vote; and that is what it is—a right. It has been fought for, as my hon. Friend said, and as a democratic people we rejoice when others win that right and escape after years of tyranny. He was also correct when he said that with rights come responsibility, but as a true democracy we should hesitate before we forcibly turn those rights into an obligation and introduce sanctions to prevent the exercise of free choice.

We need to be more humble in the face of the message that the electorate are sending by their level of participation, less arrogant about the virtues of the choice that our political parties offer and far more careful about turning a right based on freedom into an obligation to the state. We should smarten up our act as politicians and improve our democracy, but I urge the House to reject compulsory voting.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to. Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Gareth R. Thomas, Fiona Mactaggart, Mr. Paul Marsden, Mr. Peter Kilfoyle, David Winnick, Linda Perham, Mr. Tom Watson, Mark Tami, Mr. Tony Colman and Martin Linton.