HL Deb 27 October 1982 vol 435 cc551-8

82 After Clause 47, insert the following new clause:

'Electoral registration of patients etc.

. In section 4(3) of the Representation of the People Act 1949 for the words from "who is a patient" to "at any place" there shall he substituted the words "who is detained at any place in legal custody or by virtue of any enactment relating to persons suffering from mental disorder".

(2) Schedule (Electoral registration and voting in case of voluntary mental patients) to this Act shall have effect with respect to electoral registration and voting in the case of voluntary mental patients.'.

Lord Elton

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 82. It may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I speak also to Amendments Nos. 93, 96, 97, 99 and 121. These amendments give effect to the Government's decision that voluntary patients should no longer be prevented from registering as electors solely because their only place of residence is a mental hospital. The amendments do this by allowing voluntary patients to make a declaration which entitles them to be registered as electors for a home address or other address outside the hospital and to obtain an absent vote at the time of an election.

This issue has already been debated at some length in this House. Your Lordships will remember that the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, introduced amendments seeking to remove from Section 4(3) of the Representation of the People Act 1949 the words which prevent mental hospital patients from using their hospital address to register as electors. The Government's view, expressed then by my noble friend Lord Belstead, was that such an amendment raised considerable practical difficulties and that the proper vehicle for discussing the issues was a Representation of the People Bill. There was a further debate in the Special Standing Committee in another place where an amendment similar to that put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, was accepted.

The Government have listened with great care to the various arguments put forward, that this Bill should be used to effect a change in the law. We took the opportunity afforded by the Recess to find a way of giving effect to the principle behind the Standing Committee's decision which would avoid the difficulties to which that amendment would give rise. The results of our deliberations are set out in the amendments now before your Lordships.

Under these amendments, it will be open to a voluntary patient resident in a mental hospital on the qualifying date for electoral registration to make a declaration, if he can do so without assistance. Assistance for this purpose does not include assistance made necessary by blindness or any other physical incapacity. The declaration will specify the address where the patient would be resident if he were not in hospital or, if he cannot provide such an address, the address at which he was resident before admission. A member of the hospital staff will attest the declaration. It will be transmitted to the electoral registration officer for the address specified in the declaration and he will insert the elector's name in the register of electors. Once registered, the patient will be entitled to apply for an absent vote at parliamentary and local government elections.

We believe that this system offers a workable solution to the various problems which have prevented successive Governments from allowing voluntary patients to register. In particular, the difficult common law tests which prevent those termed "idiots" and "persons of unsound mind" from voting are replaced by the simple practical test of a patient's ability to complete a form. We shall consult with the political parties, representatives of electoral registration officers and health authorities on the formulation of guidance to enable our proposals to be implemented in the most effective way. The qualifying date for inclusion in next year's register—10th October 1982—has already passed, but the amendments will come into force in good time for patients to make declarations qualifying them to vote at elections from February 1984.

These amendments will give the vote to many thousands of patients who are quite capable of exercising it. The amendments have been welcomed by those who moved the original amendments in another place and by others, including MIND, as a great step forward. I commend them to your Lordships' House and beg to move.

Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Elton.)

Lord Wallace of Coslany

My Lords, I telephoned the office of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, this morning with certain views. I had assumed that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, was going to deal with this amendment. I hope that the message reached the noble Lord, Lord Elton. It appears that that is the case.

These amendments were considered in another place in the early hours of Tuesday, 19th October, amidst, I am sorry to say, the generation of some heat. But noble Lords need not fear, That is typical of what happens in another place at about 3.30 in the morning. There is always the risk of an explosion, so we need not worry too much. Here we can discuss the amendments calmly and quietly, but at the same time I must advise the House that we are dealing with an important point of principle. The point is that voluntary patients in a psychiatric wing of a general hospital in registering for the vote have the choice of opting for either the hospital address or a home address. In addition, a postal vote can be readily obtained—there are no problems. But where a person is a patient in a mental hospital, under the provisions of Amendment No. 99, that person has to follow an extremely complicated completion of a form of application, and can only register for an address outside the hospital. This may not be difficult for newly-arrived or short-stay patients, but it may be extremely difficult to establish an address so far as a patient who has been resident for some years is concerned.

I welcome the efforts made to make provision for voluntary patients to have voting rights, but the finalisation of objectives as indicated in Amendment No. 99 is not only highly complicated but establishes two classes of voluntary mental patients: one with the right to register without distinction of type of address, and the other obstructed by complicated regulations and the restriction of registering only from an address outside the mental hospital. To my mind, this is unfair discrimination. In passing, I have no doubt that my noble friend Lord Underhill will wish to make a contribution because, of course, my noble friend has considerable experience in these matters. It would have been better to have recorded the principle in this legislation and left the Home Secretary to carry out the normal practice of consultation with the political parties. So far as I am aware, no such consultation has taken place. Had this been done, then no doubt the complexities and unfairness of the present proposals would have been avoided.

I must say that I feel very strongly on the matter, but at this stage, with Prorogation tomorrow, I realise that to attempt to reject the amendment, which this House is quite capable of doing, might even lose the Bill. We all want the Bill on the statute book—it is urgently needed. Therefore, may I appeal to the noble Lord the Minister for a little help? Will it be possible for the Government to give a generalised undertaking to take another look at these provisions, bearing in mind our reasoned objections, before regulations are brought in? I am not asking for a firm promise to amend, but for a general undertaking to think the matter over and, if necessary—and I recommend this—to carry out consultation as is normal practice under the Representation of the People Act.

6.43 p.m.

Lord Renton

My Lords, for generations all people of voting age except felons, bankrupts and Members of your Lordships' House were entitled to vote at parliamentary elections. There may be people who, misreading this new clause, might think that something ridiculous was being enacted by us, in that people who could not read or write and who had no understanding of anything were being given the opportunity of having their hands forced to put crosses on election papers and perhaps voting by post. But as I understand it, especially if one considers what is contained in Amendment No. 99, which is the new schedule, and especially paragraph 3(5)(d), a person will not be able to vote who is a voluntary patient unless that person is capable of making the declaration required. That is a statutory safeguard against people who have no hope of understanding being able to vote and perhaps against their votes being exploited occasionally by unscrupulous people. I welcome what has been done and I believe that it has been rightly done—hut by jove! the Government took a tremendous chance with this because they did not consult Mencap, and it is only by the grace of God that they got it right.

Lord Winstanley

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, I would not dream of placing any impediments in the way of this particular Commons amendment. Indeed, I welcome the amendment and its effect, but I am hound to say that, like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, I am a little disappointed because in a sense I felt that the Bill as it was before Report stage in another place was marginally better. I think that it has deteriorated a little and I still feel that there is a distinct risk that certain voluntary patients who are perfectly capable of voting, and despite what is in this Bill, may nevertheless have difficulty in enforcing their right to vote.

I was a little reassured by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, with regard to the consultations which will go on following the enactment of this Bill; consultations with the political parties and so on, and the steps that will be taken in formulating the regulations. But it is only right to place on record the fact that we have now differentiated between two classes of mental patient. The person who is mentally ill and who is in the psychiatric ward of a general hospital is now in a totally different and much more privileged position with regard to voting than the person with precisely the same mental complaint who happens to be in one of the hospitals covered by this particular clause. It is perhaps regrettable that the rights to vote of identical people should be differentiated between in that particular way. However, my noble friends and I are prepared to accept the amendment, and I was glad to hear the words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, with regard to the further steps which will be taken before the next register is compiled.

Lord Kilmarnock

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has been good enough to give some of the prehistory of this amendment. I introduced two amendments; one at Committee stage and one at Report stage. They were in a slightly different form but did not find favour in your Lordships' House. But then an amendment was tabled by my honourable friend Mr. Mike Thomas in Standing Committee in another place, which was won. So this very important step was pioneered by the SDP in another place and I am happy to say that, in accordance with the spirit which has animated many of the proceedings concerned with this Bill, was carried with Conservative support.

What we have before us today is a new Government version, which I welcome. There are details to which one might object but it is very difficult to do something such as this without producing one or two anomalies. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, referred to one such anomaly whereby voluntary patients who are in a psychiatric unit of an ordinary general hospital already have the right to vote from the hospital but, according to the Government's new clause, those in psychiatric hospitals are going to have a postal vote.

One can understand the Government's desire to disperse the vote of voluntary patients because in some cases the population of a hospital might be very big—it might be 1,000—and if all the votes were cast in one place it might have a considerable effect on a local election. That might be no bad thing, but one can understand the concern of the Government to achieve a certain dispersal if this vote. I myself feel that, anomalies or not, the Government have taken a very important and courageous step, although it might be in a sense misconstrued.

I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Renton, point out that apart from Members of your Lordships' House and a few other categories of people who have transgressed the law, the right to vote is a fundamental right for all citizens of this country. The Government have performed a notable service in enfranchising, if that is the correct word, no less than 120,000 of our fellow citizens. This is a very important achievment in the Bill. I hope the House will not take it amiss that I have striven to show the part we played in this; this does not mean that we do not also appreciate the part played by the Government. We very much welcome the new clause and the schedule.

Lord Campbell of Alloway

My Lords, with your Lordships' leave, on the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, may I correct a slip of the tongue for the sake of the record. Among the categories of the disenfranchised he would have wished to have included persons of unsound mind.

6.51 p.m.

Lord Underhill

My Lords, my noble friend said that I might deal with a few angles from the standpoint of the Representation of the People Act. I will endeavour to do so. A number of noble Lords have stressed the anomalies which the Government's proposal leaves, and I will not reiterate those. I would remind your Lordships that as far back as 1974 a Speaker's Conference recommended that there should be no difference between patients in mental hospitals and those in psychiatric wards of general hospitals. The Government's proposal does not meet that recommendation of the Speaker's Conference. That Speaker's Conference also recommended that an inter-departmental working party should be set up, and that was set up between the Home Office, the DHSS and other organisations. They identified a number of problems, six particular ones. Back in 1976 the Government announced that they accepted the Speaker's Conference recommendation in principle but subject to these points which the working party indentified being resolved.

The working party was then instructed to consult relevant organisations and also the political parties. I was sorry to see that on 21st October, when this matter was discussed in another place, the Minister of State at the Home Office said: However, when it"— that is the working party— reported in 1978 the working party did not put forward single or conclusive recommendations on all the issues involved". I have a copy of the working party report because I was one of those who were fortunate to be included from a political party to discuss the matters involved. The working party gave very careful consideration to those six particular problems. Although it is true that they did not put their conclusions in the form of a direct recommendation, I am satisfied that the safeguards, the proposals there would have enabled the Speaker's Conference recommendation to be carried out. It is at that stage, when the report was presented, that I think my noble friend regrets the opportunity was not taken to consult fully with the political parties.

The working party states in paragraph 6 that it started from the premise that the Representation of the People Act would be amended as required by the Speaker's Conference and therefore it was only going to deal with the problems that were outstanding. There is a very important paragraph in the working party's report which I will read: The mentally ill and mentally handicapped are not, of course, all resident in mental hospitals. Some mentally ill patients in particular, as already noted, are treated in general hospitals. Many mentally ill and mentally handicapped people are cared for by their families or in residential homes. The departments concerned are not aware of any problems arising from the electoral registration of these people". That is an important statement in the working party's report. The Government's conclusions as set out now in the Bill do not meet those fundamental points.

The Government have endeavoured to get over the problem by this proposal of a person giving an address at which he normally resides. But this may be an address of many years ago. I would like to question that, and draw attention to what the working party proposed on this point. I am not an apologist for the working party; I was brought in at the tail end, after they had had statements from the various bodies concerned. They referred to the possibility that a patient might be treated in the same way as the Representation of the People Act treats service voters. Also they pointed out that several difficulties are inherent in this proposal: first of all, the additional work that will fall upon both the health service and registration staffs; also there could be objection that in effect patients would be liable to choose the constituency in which they wished to register and in some cases this would relate to many years ago. But this proposal has gone further because there has been added to the declaration the words, if he is able to do so without assistance". No such proposal of that kind appears anywhere in the working party's report, and patients at a general hospital are not required to make that sort of declaration. So, again, we have a difference of treatment between patients in one hospital and patients in another.

Also, as I stress by reading paragraph 7 of the report: There are other persons who are mentally ill and mentally handicapped who are looked after at home. They may register at that address and they are not required to make any declaration". Furthermore, I think it is a fact—as is known to those of us who have experience of elections—that many persons regarded as mentally healthy find great difficulty in completing Form A. I can assure your Lordships that anyone who has done work on the doorstep for postal votes knows that a great many people find difficulty in completing the necessary form applying for a postal vote on the ground of physical incapacity.

There are one or two other points I would put to the Minister. Difficulties could be caused if persons were registered at certain addresses, possibly at a hospital address, or if they were listed in a way to associate themselves with mental sickness. Is it the intention to consider that these names may be added at the end of each section of the register in alphabetical order, as may apply to service voters? If so, I would ask this: how will persons obtain their addresses in order to send them electoral literature? Again, I notice that the Minister of State said, when this matter was discussed the other day in the other place, that there will be no problem because the registration officer will know the address of the hospital and each elector is entitled to receive the election address; therefore, the problem can be easily solved. Unless I am corrected, the only addresses that will be available will be either those of people who are in the normal electoral register or addresses on the absent voters' list—unless it is the intention of the Government to provide in regulations that it must be a duty of the registration officer to give this sort of information. Otherwise it will not be possible for those concerned to see that electors receive the election literature.

I am pleased to note the provision, in paragraph 7 of the proposed schedule, that persons registered by virtue of this declaration may apply to be an absent voter and vote by post. But there is the advice that was given to the working party, and this appears in paragraph 22: Mental incapacity to attend the polling station is not a ground of eligibility at present". There is a difference between physical incapacity, for which a person may get an absent vote by RPF 7, and mental incapacity. I am afraid I must deal with these points; I say that with all due respect to the Chief Whip. It is rather important that the opportunity is taken on this proposal to try to clarify, if the matter is not already clarified—and I do not think it is—the difference between physical incapacity and mental incapacity, because those who are given the opportunity of a postal vote if they make this declaration will come under the heading of mental incapacity.

The last point is that there is a very useful annexe to the working party's report which deals with the position of Northern Ireland. It indicates quite clearly that for Northern Ireland elections there is no problem of registration of persons suffering from mental illness anywhere, even in hospitals. The statement has been made that no problems whatever have arisen in Northern Ireland in connection with that sort of registration. While appreciating the step forward that the Government have made, there is still more to be done if we are to meet the recommendation of the Speakers' Conference, and there are some practical problems arising in connection with the regulations on which I hope there will be the fullest consultation with the political parties, as the noble Lord said.

Lord Elton

My Lords, I am grateful to your Lordships for the varied reception that these amendments have received and for the general agreement that they are a move in the right direction. It is a matter for regret that there has not been longer for discussion in the House, although there were two debates on the matter. Although we felt that it would have been better to have placed this in another vehicle, it was clear from what went on in another place, and from a great deal of what went on in this House, that it was preferred that it should go here. The Government have abided by that.

The points raised by your Lordships on the question of adding names of these people to the end of the register, and a great many other questions, will be reviewed by the Government in the light of what has been said by your Lordships. My understanding is that Form A, the new form, is sent off with an address and that is the address that appears on the register. Therefore, there will be no distinction on the register of this type of voter. I cannot be more specific, but if I am wrong I shall write to the noble Lord. As I say, there will he consultation. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, asked about consultation. I have already given that undertaking and what the noble Lord said will also be noted.

I recognise the distinguished work of the noble lord, Lord Underhill, in the working party. At the same time, I should say that the working party could not agree on who should advise the electoral registration officer on which patients were legally capable of being included on the register. That, of course, is the key problem, which was never solved. We have, instead, a test which may or may not be too severe. It is no more severe than Form A. I find it less difficult perhaps than the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. I do not think it is terribly difficult and it is better than nothing.

On the question of dispersal of votes, the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, said that hospitals might be 1,000 or 1,500 strong and that, in a local election, can be a tantalising prize for people who want to carry out unscrupulous and, for mentally disturbed people, unsettling forms of lobbying. It is right that this effect should he dispersed in the manner we have suggested.

If I have left out other matters, I apologise, but I think your Lordships' are agreed that these amendments should go forward even if we do not all think they are perfect. I hope your Lordships will allow this to happen.

Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in their said amendments.—(Lord Elton.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.