HL Deb 23 January 1973 vol 338 cc86-96

6.38 p.m.

THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND (LORD WINDLESHAM) rose to move, That the Draft Northern Ireland (Border Poll) Order 1972, laid before the House on December 14 be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the draft Order standing in my name on the Order Paper. Noble Lords who took part in the debates before Christmas will remember that the Northern Ireland (Border Poll) Act 1972 provides for the holding of a poll to enable voters to say whether they want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom or whether they want it to be joined with the Republic of Ireland outside the United Kingdom. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland subsequently decided that the most appropriate day for the poll would be Thursday, March 8. This date was selected following the advice of the electoral advisory committee and the under-sheriffs, who in Northern Ireland act as returning officers in Westminster elections. March 8 was the earliest practicable date for the poll, bearing in mind the necessary administrative arrangements and particularly the introduction of the new electoral register which comes into force on February 16. The object of this Order is to seek the authority of Parliament for this date and also for the rules on which the poll will be conducted.

The Border Poll Act itself provided that the poll should be conducted so far as possible along the lines of an election to the Westminster Parliament, and the Order has therefore been designed to spell out in detail those parts of the existing electoral law which are to be applied or modified for the purpose of the poll. The form of the questions to be put was also contained in the Border Poll Act and is not therefore part of this Order. I am afraid that this has resulted in a rather technical document, but the alternative would have been to have a self-contained Order, and we were advised that this would necessarily have been considerably greater in length and would not have served its purpose so well.

It is of course important that those who have the responsibility for organising the poll should be quite clear which parts of the existing law are to be applied and modified. Article 4 of the Order provides for the hours of polling to be from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. This compares with 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. for a General Election. The slight reduction in the number of hours for polling is adopted with the agreement of the returning officers; it will enable the majority of voters to vote in the hours of daylight (lighting-up time in Belfast is expected to be about 6.45 p.m. on polling day), and will also make it easier to recruit staff for the manning of the polling stations. We do not expect the reduction in hours to affect the number of votes cast, particularly in view of the provisions for postal voting which I shall explain in a moment.

My Lords, I have mentioned that the under-sheriffs for Northern Ireland are the returning officers for the poll. There are six in all, one for each county, and they are already engaged in preparatory work. Article 5 of the draft Order is precautionary. It provides for the Secretary of State to employ substitute returning officers if for example an existing holder of the post was prevented from acting by illness.

Postal voting is dealt with in Article 6. Any elector may apply to vote by post if he gives an address in the United Kingdom to which the ballot paper may be sent. This is an extension of the normal provisions for postal voting and could result in a considerable proportion of the electorate voting by post. The form of application is shown in Schedule 3 to the Order. These forms will be available shortly at local authority offices and post offices in Northern Ireland or by postal application to the appropriate registration office.

Article 7 enables the Secretary of State to appoint observers to attend at the issue of postal ballot papers at polling stations, at the opening and verification of returned ballot papers and at the central count. Since there are, of course, no candidates for the Border Poll there can be no counting agents, or polling agents, in the ordinary sense of the word, in this instance. However, it is the intention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to invite members elected for Northern Ireland constituencies at Westminster and in the Northern Ireland Parliament to nominate observers who will have broadly similar functions. In addition, my right honourable friend has accepted an offer from the Department of Political Science at the Queen's University, Belfast, to conduct a research project into the Border Poll. It is intended that members of the project team will visit polling stations all over Northern Ireland and also that they will be present at the central count. They will later report to my right honourable friend, and I am sure that this will be a most useful exercise.

Article 8 deals with the arrangement for the central count. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has appointed the Under-Sheriff for Belfast and Antrim to be in charge of the central count. As I explained in the debate on the Border Poll Bill, the result of the poll will be declared for Northern Ireland as a whole and not by constituencies or any other geographical area.

My Lords, the remainder of the Order is taken up with the Schedules setting out those provisions for electoral law which are applicable and any modification which needs to be made to them for the purposes of the Border Poll. That, I think, is all I need say by way of introduction to this Order. We have of course already debated the principle of it when the Bill was before your Lordships' House and before it became an Act of Parliament before Christmas. But if there are any points which have caught the eye of any noble Lord I will do my best to provide a fuller explanation. I beg to move.

Moved, That the Draft Northern Ireland (Border Poll) Order 1972, laid before the House on 14th December, be approved.—(Lord Windlesham.)

6.46 p.m.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has said, we have already debated the principle of this poll and my views on the subject have not changed. I suspect that, privately, the views of the Government may not have changed; namely, that they are committed to the poll but that it will contribute nothing to peace in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the situation now is rather more worrying than it was a few months ago. The result of this exercise is foregone. It is inevitable that there will be a majority for remaining with the United Kingdom; and we know all this already. The Government have decided that the votes will be counted centrally. There will be no possibility of deriving useful information about the feeling in counties like Fermanagh and Tyrone where, just conceivably, the result might be not entirely as expected; where it is possible that, in a secret ballot, some of those who might otherwise be expected to be nationalists might vote to remain with the United Kingdom. But this we shall never know.

I was interested in what the noble Lord had to say about the research team from the Queen's University. I take it that the team will not themselves be in a position to investigate the make-up of the various voting boxes. The fact is that the Government have got a commitment and I appreciate that, in the light of some rather dangerous news in the last day or two, they feel that it would be more dangerous to cancel the poll than to go on with it. At this point I would not wish to say that the Government have any choice other than to go on with it, much as I regret that we are having it.

I should like to ask the noble Lord one or two questions. First, I take it that in this very sensitive situation he is still not in a position to announce when the White Paper with the proposals for Northern Ireland is to be published. Many of us have argued that it would be desirable that it should be published before the poll. I realise that this is an exceedingly difficult judgment and, as the noble Lord knows, he and the Secretary of State have my full sympathy. Therefore I am very reluctant to be critical. But I would say from outside Northern Ireland—and this is a fact we all have to remember: that we are outside that troubled part of the world—my inclination would still be to publish the Government's proposals before the Border Poll.

The noble Lord explained, rather briefly (I have no complaint about that because he made clear that it was an introductory speech), the arrangements for the conduct of the poll. If I understood this correctly, it is being conducted under what I believe are sometimes called the Westminster Rules, based on the 1969 Act and the 1949 Act, but with such modifications as are considered to be appropriate in Northern Ireland, and particularly for what is a most unusual and indeed almost unprecedented event, namely, a plebiscite. This has led to certain consequences which have meant that the Government have rightly tried to take steps to replace some of the machinery of an ordinary election. As I understand it, the nominated observers will take the place of what we sometimes call polling agents.

Here I would ask the noble Lord, who is going to authorise these polling agents? The noble Lord may have had the good fortune or misfortune of having to fight an Election, but in any event he will know that those who are appointed as candidates by polling agents have to give certain undertakings, and certain people have to find some sort of identification. Will this be done by those who are entitled to appoint them? When one looks at the Order here, there seems to be quite a wide choice. I can imagine some rather dangerous situations in which people might well be appointed who could seek by their mere presence to influence the poll in a way that is unknown in this country: that could happen from either side. I appreciate the Government's dilemma in this matter. They want to be as fair as possible, but polling agents could be appointed who are members of the Provisional I.R.A. or the Ulster Volunteer Force, who could by their mere presence produce some intimidating factor. That is all part of the difficulties with which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, is far more familiar than I am. Is there any restriction as to who can be a polling agent or an observer? Must he be a citizen of the United Kingdom? I do not think this is spelt out in the Order. But then the Order inevitably draws on a large number of other provisions in sections of the relevant Acts, and it may be that this matter is taken care of there.

The noble Lord then went on to the subject of postal voting. Any noble Lord who knows the Irish situation (and nobody knows it better than my noble friend Lord Longford, who was here, but obviously dislikes the Order so much that he has disappeared) will know that voting in Ireland has an historical significance of a kind that is not known in this country. That is about as anodyne a phrase as I could find. It appears that there may be quite a lot of postal voting. Here again there is a real danger—and this is part of the security aspect—that some of these postal votes may be purloined or stolen, or the carrier may be menaced. I wonder whether the noble Lord can say anything on that subject. I appreciate that here again the Government have been seeking to pursue liberal policies and it is difficult to sustain them in the face of some of the threats of violence. I mention this only to show an awareness of the difficulties and the possibility that there may be some real arguments, and indeed scandal, in relation to postal voting.

I notice that those citizens of Northern Ireland whose address is now in the United Kingdom will be able to apply for a postal vote. This again suggests that the postal voting provisions are rather wide. They are not confined simply to people who are away on business, as I understand it, and if people have transferred in ordinary circumstances (my recollection is uncertain on this) their vote can be transferred. I should like to ask what is the position of people who are not living in Northern Ireland—people who are registered, but who are living, say, in the Republic. It may well be that the Government feel that it is not possible to recognise postal voters in the Republic; or maybe they can be provided for in other ways, or they can vote by proxy. That brings me to another point. I take it that there will be a number of former Servicemen who were in Northern Ireland at the date when the last registration took place in September and who may be eligible to vote. One would not wish to suggest that the results could be affected—I am sure they will not be—by United Kingdom troops Service votes, but I take it that they will be able to vote by proxy.

If I may make one other point, my Lords, I should like to know whether the Government can say anything about the procedures in relation both to canvassing and to the use of cars. In an ordinary Parliamentary Election it is the Parties and the candidates who organise their cars and their canvassing. I take it that cars can be used. In a Parliamentary Election there are certain restrictions. If I remember rightly, you cannot just hire cars—but it may be that I am out of date. I remember the time when one was severely rationed as to the number of cars one could use; but that has gone. Meanwhile, I take it that the political Parties will be able to canvass for votes, but whether they will have committee rooms and seek to bring the voters out as in a Parliamentary Election, I find it difficult to say.

I do not want to make difficulties for the Government, but this is the sort of question that people in Northern Ireland will be asking. It is not possible for the Government to spell out everything. They are undertaking a difficult operation in which, since they are committed, they deserve the support and help of us all; but I think there will need to be a great deal of explanation to the political Parties. We do not need to explain to political Parties in this country, or for that matter in Northern Ireland, how to run an Election, but when it comes to running this unfamiliar animal, a referendum, then some further guidance will be needed. It may well be that the sort of questions I have asked will be asked by others. I can only repeat the support and sympathy that I have for Her Majesty's Ministers who carry this responsibility, and for the troops, probably in large numbers, who will have the unenviable task of keeping the peace during this poll.

6.59 p.m.

LORD WINDLESHAM

My Lords, I do not need to go back over what I said in the debates we had in December about the reasons why the Government believe it is absolutely essential to hold this Border Poll. It is a prerequisite to the possibility of obtaining a settlement. It is as important as that on the Protestant side. Those of your Lordships who read the leading article in The Times this morning will have seen this point clearly stated.

The noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has asked me a number of detailed questions about the way in which the Border Poll will be organised. I did indeed fight a Westminster election some years ago. Both of us are probably a little rusty on our electoral law, but I can reply to some of the points which the noble Lord put. If I do not answer all his questions it is because I want to study them more carefully in Hansard, and I will write to him fully covering any points that I have not been able to deal with. The noble Lord asked whether the Queen's University research team would be able to analyse the votes by the areas in which they were cast. The answer is that they will not have access to votes for that purpose. I might add, in parenthesis, that I personally believe that this will be a very useful piece of political research by a team under the leadership of Professor Lawrence, of Queen's University, Belfast. Professor Lawrence has been good enough to act as chairman of the Electoral Advisory Committee which was set up to advise the Secretary of State on the Border Poll and also on other electoral matters in Northern Ireland. There is a shortage of hard facts, although many assertions are made, about how elections have been conducted in the past in Northern Ireland. What we need is more information, and I am sure we shall be able to obtain considerable benefit from the findings of the University research team when they have completed their work.

The noble Lord also asked whether persons who are on the new register—that is the one coming into effect in February—hut who at the date of the poll are living in the Republic would be able to vote. In those circumstances they would be entitled to vote by proxy, since they are outside the United Kingdom and cannot vote by post. The postal voting facilities are very much wider than is normally the case in United Kingdom Parliamentary elections. As the noble Lord will remember, there are a small number of defined categories in the Representation of the People Acts which give entitlement to a postal vote. But they are narrowly defined: physical incapacity; unavailability because of the nature of service or occupation; the necessity of making a journey by air or sea; or religious observance. What we are saying is that anyone who is on the register, and who can satisfy the returning officer that he is the person he says he is, and has an address in the United Kingdom is entitled to a postal vote. Therefore if people are apprehensive about voting, for whatever reason—perhaps intimidation—or are not happy about going to a particular polling station, they can get a postal vote.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, this is going to take a great deal of organising. As the noble Lord will recall, postal voting tends to be organised by the political Parties. The Conservative Party in this connection, with their greater resources, usually get their postal votes all lined up before the election and the Labour Party hurry to get theirs lined up in the course of the election. Who is going to tell people about this? I do not believe that without the political Party system and in the absence of candidates with a deep vested interest things Will happen in the same way in this instance. Will steps be taken to inform every voter how this is to be done? I rather gathered that the noble Lord was saying something like that.

LORD WINDLESHAM

My Lords, I do not have the details before me, but we are absolutely at one with the noble Lord in agreeing on the need for the maximum publicity, by way of explanation and guidance, to be given to voters as to their rights under this Order. The Order has first to be approved by Parliament, but we will certainly endeavour to make sure that the facilities for postal voting are widely known.

The noble Lord also asked who would authorise the polling agents. The agents will be appointed by the Secretary of State and will be sworn to secrecy by the returning officer in the normal way. The Secretary of State will rely on the sense of responsibility of those nominating them—that is, the Members of Parliament at Westminster and Stormont. I understand that the Secretary of State wrote to the noble Lord yesterday to give him details of the scheme my right honourable friend has decided upon. It is clearly desirable to try to find some way of enabling the political Parties to provide observers; but since this is the first time there has been a plebiscite of this kind in Northern Ireland, or indeed in the United Kingdom, we have to devise appropriate measures to meet the circumstances. Members of Parliament who represent Northern Ireland constituencies at Westminster, or who were Members of the prorogued Parliament of Northern Ireland at Stormont, cover a very wide range of political Parties. What will probably happen is that the political Parties will provide lists of observers in the normal way and a Member of Parliament will then ask for them to be appointed as observers. There should be a reasonably wide range of observers from Parties who are willing to support the poll. We hope that as many political Parties as possible will encourage their adherents to vote in this particular Border Poll, although it is not of course a matter for the political Parties as such.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, may I say that I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for having written to me. I did not refer to this point because the noble Lord more or less covered it in his opening speech. I am not in disagreement. Quite clearly, the Government are doing the best they can and are using their brains on this. I would only say that if people are going to be sworn in, if I remember rightly, this can be done by any justice of the peace locally. He says that they have to be sworn in before him by the returning officer and I believe there is a senior returning officer and a limited number. I mention this point only because one of the fears one has is that there will be some awful trip-up of the "nuts and bolts" organisation, and I just offer that as a further complication.

LORD WINDLESHAM

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for drawing my attention to these points. I hope that I have answered most of them; hut. as I said earlier, I will check back in Hansard and write to the noble Lord later. It is useful to have this opportunity to debate the provisions contained in these regulations, because it is the first time a poll of this sort has been carried out, and we are determined that it shall be conducted in an orderly and efficient way. The security forces will make sure that polling can take place at the polling stations, and at the same time the Administration must ensure that it is all properly and efficiently organised.

I have already paid tribute to the assistance we have had from the Electoral Advisory Committee, the members of which are people experienced in this field, and this also applies to the returning officers who are the under-sheriffs. In this respect there is a slightly different procedure for Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the United Kingdom. These officials have been working in a most admirable way, closely together with the Northern Ireland Ministry of Home Affairs. We are greatly in their debt. My colleague, Mr. Howell, will be introducing this same Order in another place later this evening. Since there are a number of Northern Ireland Westminster Members who will have a direct interest in appointing observers and so on, we shall have the benefit of their comments, which we can then pursue in discussion with the returning officers in the weeks remaining before the poll takes place.

[The Sitting was suspended at 7.9 p.m. and resumed at 7.40 p.m.]