HL Deb 15 July 1980 vol 411 cc1701-10

7.11 p.m.

The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Belstead) rose to move, That the regulations laid before the House on 23rd June be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the Representation of the People (Amendment) Regulations 1980 be approved. There are three other sets of regulations on the Order Paper and, if your Lordships agree, it might be for the convenience of the House if I speak to all four sets of regulations together.

The purpose of these regulations is to implement the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 1980 which received the Royal Assent on 31st January. That Act was sponsored in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. Unfortunately, he is unable to be here because of other business this evening. In the other place the Bill was sponsored by Mr. Cranky Onslow. The Act contains the following provisions.

First, it provides that a spouse of a member of Her Majesty's Forces who is resident in the United Kingdom shall have an option to register for electoral purposes either as a service voter or as a civilian elector. Secondly, attestation or counter-signing "of service declarations made by members of Her Majesty's Forces and their spouses is to be abolished. Thirdly, electoral registration officers are in future to be permitted to add to the published electoral register the names of electors whom they are satisfied were entitled on the qualifying date to be registered, subject to an objections procedure. At the moment, your Lordships will recall that it is possible for amendments to be made to the draft of the annual electoral register available for inspection in Great Britain only between the dates of 28th November and 15th December each year but not to the final register which comes into effect the following February. This new provision in the Representation of the People Act 1980 will enable such amendments to be made all the year round, except after an election has been called.

In form, the regulations now being considered operate by amending existing regulations. I should add that because of the more complicated structure of the electoral law in Northern Ireland, it is in fact going to be necessary to make some of the provisions for Northern Ireland in a statutory rule of Northern Ireland, which will be made if the Northern Ireland regulations are approved. But the net effect is the same. Your Lordships may be assured that while I refer purely for convenience to the English regulations, I am speaking to all the regulations together which apply the same provisions in substance.

May I refer to the main aspects of the regulations and, first, to service wives. The only changes to existing regulations that is necessary is in some of the electoral registration forms. These changes are made by the regulations so that the right to register as a civilian elector can operate from the 1981 electoral register which will be prepared this autumn. Secondly, may I deal with the removal of the attestation requirement. We do not think that this is any longer necessary, and it is provided for in Regulations 9 and 10.

Thirdly, and this is perhaps the most substantive aspect, Regulations 6, 16 and 17 provide a procedure for the newly extended right to correct the register even after it is finally published. The procedure, briefly, is that persons who discover that they were omitted from the register—or it may be that they had forgotten to fill in their forms, so they are not on the register—may make a claim for inclusion in it after it is published, provided that no election is under way. The registration officer will then publish a notice between the 11th and the 20th day of the month in an appropriate manner stating that such a claim has been made. Incidentally, following the publication of the register on 16th February, the period of time when the electoral registration officer will publish the notice will be, in the month of February, between the 11th February and the 22nd February, to give just those extra two days longer for somebody who suddenly sees, when the new register is out, that they are not upon it to do something about it. It will then be open to interested electors, including for example the local political agents, to scrutinise the publicly available list of claimants and to make by the end of that month such objec- tions as they wish to the inclusion of the new names on the electoral register. A hearing, similar to those hearings which occasionally follow claims and objections made to the draft register published in November, could follow and, as in other matters, the electoral registration officer's decision can be appealed against in the courts.

Fourthly, Regulations 4 and 5 follow previous regulations so as to remove certain provisions whereby service voters may be identified as such in the register. More generally, the opportunity has been taken in these regulations to modernise and to simplify some of the electoral registration forms to which it was essential to propose amendments. For example, except for Scotland where the retention of the existing version has been preferred, the regulations incorporate a new, simplified version of the basic electoral registration form, Form A. The bilingual version of this form for use in Wales is also prescribed in the Elections (Welsh Forms) Regulations which are also before the House.

The Home Office has made these changes in the hope that the forms are now easier to understand and may in future be completed more promptly and more accurately. In particular, the Government are anxious to see a substantial improvement in the rate of electoral registration among 18-year-olds, and those who are only 16 and 17 when the form is completed but who will be 18, and thus eligible to vote, during the currency of the register. There is evidence of substantial under-registration among that age group. Perhaps only two-thirds of those eligible do actually appear on the register. It is essential, and their basic right as citizens, that every encouragement is given to them to register.

Finally, I should mention that during the preparation of these regulations many very helpful comments have been received. I beg to move.

Moved, That the regulations laid before the House on 19th June be approved. —(Lord Belstead.)

7.19 p.m.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, your Lordships will be very grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for the clear and detailed explanation he has given of these four sets of proposed regulations. The Act from which these regulations arise, the Representation of the People Act 1980, met, it is right to say, with wide support on all sides of your Lordships' House and of another place when it went through Parliament as a Bill earlier this session. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, who I am sure is with us in spirit, drew well-deserved praise for having introduced it in your Lordships' House. It is worth noting that the speed with which that Bill passed through Parliament and the speed with which these regulations have been brought forward shows that Parliament can act quite quickly, if necessary. And this is not an isolated illustration.

When the Bill was given a Second Reading here my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell welcomed it and I am very happy today to welcome these sets of regulations. Before the Bill was introduced there were extensive consultations outside Parliament among various organisations, and it received wide support as a result of those. I would only ask the noble Lord the Minister whether consultations with appropriate bodies took place before these regulations were brought forward and whether there was similar general and wide support for them. The regulations give detailed effect to the very useful reforms which were made under the Representation of the People Act 1980, both to rectify omissions or errors in the electoral register and to meet the very valid objections which service voters and their spouses had to the previous system.

I should like to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has said about the welcome which we on this side of the House would like to give to the simpler forms and also to join him in expressing the hope about an increased proportion of voters of 18 who we hope will be filling up those forms or contributing to them and so appearing on the register. Therefore, I join in urging noble Lords to support these regulations. They do not enable an elector to rectify an error on the register, and to have his name put on it if it has been omitted, once an election has started. That is perfectly reasonable and understandable, because, as I think my noble friend Lord Underhill mentioned during the course of the Second Reading debate on the Bill, there has to be a cut-off point.

So far as the Welsh Forms Regulations are concerned, I for one must admit to having to take on trust those parts of the draft forms which are in the Welsh language. I have had only one previous experience of debating Welsh forms regulations and that was in April of last year when, thanks to the assistance of officials of the Minister's department and of the Welsh Office here in London and in the Principality, I was enabled to say Erfyniaf am gymeradwyaeth, which, as noble Lords will know if my pronunciation has not defeated them, means, "I beg to move". Therefore I cannot use that formula tonight; it would indeed be presumptuous of me to attempt to do so, but I offer it to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and with it, offer him support for these regulations.

Lord McNAIR

My Lords, may I also thank the noble Lord and welcome these regulations from these Benches and also put one question. The noble Lord has mentioned under-registration of 18 year olds and has also mentioned the bilingual form in use in Wales. Can he say whether there is any evidence of under-registration among other citizens who may not understand English but would not understand Welsh either? I am thinking chiefly of people of Asian origin. Can anything be done for them to simplify the task of filling in the registration form?

Lord UNDERHILL

My Lords, as I supported the original Bill which is now the Act of Parliament upon which these regulations are based, I should like to say a few words. I have had an opportunity to check these proposed new forms against the existing forms, and I agree both with the noble Lord the Minister and with my noble friend Lord Boston of Faversham, that the simplification is a great improvement and I echo the comment that I hope the political parties and representatives of the electoral registration officers were fully satisfied with the new forms.

There are three points which I should like to raise with the noble Lord the Minister. Under Regulation 6, dealing with the new Regulation 27(A), paragraph 5(a), notice of a claim "shall be published in the way the registration officer thinks best." I am a little con cerned about that, because the registration officer may consider it best to publish it in newspapers. On the other hand, he may consider it best just to put a notice outside the town hall or the council office. In the light of the next point I am going to raise, this is rather important, because it is essential that the persons who may be submitting objections should have an opportunity to see the claims notice.

One would hope that this would somehow be drawn to the attention of persons who would normally have received copies of the electoral lists, who would be the persons making the claims and objections arising on the lists in the normal way, because the next point I want to raise affects this time limit. The period for claims and objections arising in the normal way from the electors' lists gives a period of 18 days; that is, from the 28th November to the 16th December. As the noble Lord has pointed out, the period for objections to a claim could only be 10 or 11 days from the publication of the notice of the claim up to the end of the month by which objections must be submitted and in the case of February it is only six or seven days. If there has not been adequate publication of the notice of a claim, one could find some difficulties arising. That is why those two points are linked. I know that there is a keen desire, which I think we all share, to expedite this process so that there is no delay and therefore there can be no objection to these short periods so long as there is adequate assurance that person who might be making the objections have had the opportunity of seeing the notice and there is no doubt that they would have seen the notice of a claim.

With regard to my third point, I may be wrong in my reading of the regulations (and I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong), but if a claim is received between the 16th December and the 16th February and appears to be related to the current register ending on the 15th February, a notice of claim must be published, even if it is received in that period, and paragraph 5(d) provides that objections must be received by the end of the month in which the notice is published. Therefore, we could have a rather comical situation, and I wonder whether the regulations should have either a cut-off date or a proviso, because any claim that is received after the end of January, to go through all this process when objections can be received by the end of the month, which is after the end of that current register, seems to me to be an oversight. It may be that I have missed something in the regulations. It may be argued that nothing is likely to arise in this case, but if it does arise, then the registration officer has a compulsory duty to go through this process, and I am wondering whether there should not be a cut-off date or a provision of some kind.

Lord BELSTEAD

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord McNair, and the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, for the welcome which they have been good enough to give to the regulations which arc made under the Act which was passed earlier this year.

The noble Lord, Lord Boston, asked me about the consultations. As the noble Lord said, consultations preceded the introduction and the passage of the legislation. What about consultations before these regulations were made? I perhaps referred rather too fleetingly in my speech to this important aspect, and I should like now to say that the regulations have been the subject of consultations, as is usual in electoral matters, with the political parties represented at Westminster; with the local authorities and with electoral registration officers associations and, I repeat, all the comments we received have been most constructive and helpful.

The noble Lord referred to the fact that of course the provision which is absolutely new in these regulations; that is, for a person to be able to get their name on to the register if it has been omitted at any time of the year—a matter which has attracted some detailed note of criticism from the noble Lord, Lord Underhill—none the less is not effective if it is during the time after an election has started. Just for the record, I should like to make it clear that that, of course, means 25 days before polling day in local elections, and that 25 days excludes Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

The noble Lord, Lord McNair, drew attention to the possibility that there may be problems with people who are resident in this country, citizens of this country, but who none the less may find it not entirely easy to master the reading of the electoral registration form. If I may say so, I think the answer lies in some words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, when he welcomed the simplification of the forms. If the noble Lord, Lord McNair, cares to glance at the first of the regulations, the Representation of the People Regulations, he will see on page 7 that the new simplified version of the form, which one fills in relating to one's place of residence on 10th October, is, I like to think, a very much simpler form and easier to understand. None the less, the noble Lord makes a valid point, and I should like to give him an assurance that there will be discussions within the Advisory Committee on Race Relations shortly about the problem the noble Lord has raised.

Finally, if I may turn to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. He raised the point about the publication of the notice by the electoral registration officer when an objection or objections have been received by people who say, "We have been left off the register". The noble Lord asked me whether it would not have been better if the duty had been placed on the electoral registration officer to make available a list of such people who had been omitted at least to the people who get free copies of the register. We have in fact worded Regulation 6 in the way that we have—that the notice is to be published by the electoral registration officer in a way "best calculated to bring it to the attention of the electors"—for two reasons: first, because this is the way notices have been published previously and therefore there is precedent; secondly, we felt that from the point of view of public expenditure falling on local authorities this was a reasonable and reasonably cost-effective way of laying the duty.

As the noble Lord pointed out, it is indeed going to be exceedingly important, particularly from the point of view of local government elections falling at the beginning of May, that people left off the register should spot it immediately the registers have been published on 16th February and raise their objections very quickly, and we have given an extra two days in February for them to be able to do that. So that notices can be published by the electoral registration officer, objections raised if necessary by people who are interested parties, and maybe even a hearing held by the electoral registration officer, so that the whole thing can be decided for those people to go on the register, if that is where they ought to be, in time to be there firmly and to have their vote in any year for local government elections, bearing in mind that they have to be on the register for 25 days, not counting Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, before those elections are held at the beginning of May.

I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, that I feel that, knowing that there is this particular local government point with regard to the moment when the registers are published in February, people living locally, particularly the interested parties like the agents for the political parties, will very soon get to know, as they have done in the past, the way in which the electoral registration officer will discharge his or her duty under Regulation 6. I like to think that Regulation 6 is a fair and reasonable way of laying that duty.

Finally, the noble Lord put to me a point to which I found some difficulty in thinking of the answer; namely, that there ought to be a cut-off point, otherwise one would have unnecessary work falling on the electoral registration officers during the early part of the year. Regulation 6(4) provides that claims received after 16th December will be treated as relating to the next new register. That is the advice I have received.

7.35 p.m.

Lord UNDERHILL

My Lords, it was because of the complications of Regulation 6(4) that I had to read it four or five times. I may have made a mistake even now. It says: Where a claim made under paragraph (1) is received … after the sixteenth day of December but before the sixteenth day of February … he shall, unless it appears that the claim relates to the existing register"— treat it as if it was the next register. It could be that the claim is for the current register. It may well be that there will be very few of these cases, and one cannot imagine them, but if one comes in for the current register the electoral registration officer has to go through this whole process, which seems ridiculous in regard to something which may be received early in February.

Lord BELSTEAD

My Lords, I hesitate to cross swords with the noble Lord, with his very long and deep experience of electoral registration matters, but I can only say that from my reading of Regulation 6(4), and from the advice I have received from my right honourable friend's department, I do not think the noble Lord is on to a sound point. If I might repeat what I said, in case there was a misunderstanding, I am advised that claims received after 16th December will be treated as relating to the next new register. For that reason the point that the noble Lord raises is not a valid one in this particular case. With that, I hope, correct advice to your Lordships, I beg to move that the first of these regulations be agreed.

On Question, Motion agreed to.